To each XV. states, is tremulous, timid, feeble, deceptive, and coward- CHAPTER ly. They write private letters. To whom? other. But they do nothing to give a proper direction to 1800. the public mind. They observe, even in their conversation, a discreet circumspection, ill calculated to diffuse information, or to prepare the mass of the people for the result. They meditate in private. Can good come out of such a system? If the party recover its pristine energy and splendor, shall I ascribe it to such cunning, paltry, indecisive, back-door conduct?" The Federal leaders in New England, dreading the weight of Adams's name and influence, desired that the first open demonstration against him, if any was to be made, as to which they very much doubted, should come from Maryland or New Jersey. But the Federalists of these two states, accustomed to look to New England for leadership, did not think it at all expedient to place themselves at the head of so serious a movement. Fully aware of the intrigues going on against him, Adams was not the man to remain quietly on the defensive. He freely denounced his Federal opponents under the appellation of the "Essex Junto"-several of their chief leaders in Massachusetts being residents in or connected with that maritime county-as a faction de. voted to England, whose real ground of complaint against him was that he had refused to involve the nation in an unnecessary war with France. Thus, both personally and through his partisans, he appealed to that spirit of animosity against England, deeply rooted in his own. breast, and still operating with great force on the popular mind. The men thus struck at thought it hard indeed that this imputation of subserviency to Englanda long-standing accusation of the opposition as against the whole Federal party, and of which Adams himself had XV. Aug. 3. titude. CHAPTER been a special mark-should now be caught up by him and pointed exclusively against them; nor could they 1800. see any thing in it but a mere electioneering trick, a dishonest appeal to the passions and prejudices of the mul"You will at length," so Ames wrote to Wolcott, clearly discern in the gazettes the whole plan of a certain great man. It is by prating about impartiality, Americanism, liberty and equality, to gull the weak among the Feds. Half the wealthy can be made to repine that talents without wealth take the right hand of them. Purse-pride works in Boston. They are vexed that an Essex Junto should be more regarded than the men whose credit in money matters so far outweighs them. The Federalists hardly deserve the name of a party. Their association is a loose one, formed by accident, and shaken by every prospect of labor or hazard." Yet this charge of devotion to England, though somewhat exaggerated, was not by any means without foundation. Though, when first brought forward against the whole Federal party, it had been a mere chimera, the offspring of that unsatiated hatred which saw in any thing approaching to moderation and candor symptoms of a culpable attachment, it had come now in the course of events to describe something that actually existed—a counterpart, though comparatively a very modest one, to that French faction which had exercised so powerful an influence upon the national politics. Sympathy for revolutionary France, regarded as the champion of political and social reforms as against the ancient despotisms of Europe, had created a faction in the United States, the object of which seemed to be to throw America headlong into the arms of France-an object supported and encouraged, to a very considerable extent, by the general opposition of which this faction formed a part. At first XV. these enthusiasts had found their principal opposition in CHAPTER the firmness of Washington, the sagacity of Hamilton, and especially from that inertia which always opposes it- 1800. self to any great and sudden movement. But those excesses of the French Revolution which, at the moment of their happening, had seemed to strike the public attention as little more than a horrible dream, had begun, in the minds of a large portion of the community, to assume the character of terrible realities, and to be brooded over, without any very nice analysis of their real causes, as the necessary consequences of the practical application of those principles which the leaders of the French Revolution had proclaimed-principles held up to execration under what had now become the odious name of Jacobinism. As developed in practice, whatever it might be in theory, the system of Jacobinism had turned out to be nothing more than the violent seizure of power by successive factions of audacious, enthusiastic, and turbulent men, impatient of all control and greedy of authority, who, as the pretended agents of the people, and in the name of the rights of man, had successively exercised a horrible despotism, not to be paralleled except by the worst passages in the history of the worst times. A natural reaction against the admirers and would-be imitators of such a system and such men, joined to the late outrageous conduct of France, and to the fact that England seemed to be the only power capable of offering to her any effectual resistance, had in many bosoms extinguished the Revolutionary antipathy to Great Britain, and had gradually brought her to be regarded as the great champion of law, order, religion, and property, against what seemed the demoniac fury of the French Revolutionists. Of those entertaining these feelings there were many ready and anxious to join England in the war CHAPTER against France, as the only means of saving the United XV. States from French influence and Jacobin triumph. 1800. Naturally enough, they had been greatly displeased at the renewal of negotiations with France; and these were the men whom Adams denounced, and not altogether without reason, as constituting an English faction. With the same degree of truth with which they had charged French influence as operating on Jefferson and his associates, they might be now said to be themselves acting under English influence. French sympathies and English sympathies would, in either case, have been the more accurate expression; but the language of political passion, always greatly exaggerated, makes, at the best, only a certain approach toward the truth. Very unfortunately for Adams, as to this point of British influence, his enemies of both parties were enabled, just at this moment, to put him to a mortifying disadvantage. An old letter of his, betrayed through a gross breach of confidence, displayed in a striking light some of the weakest points of his character. Like all persons of his impulsive temper, always too ready to betray himself by his tongue or his pen, Adams had been inveigled, during Washington's first term of office, into a confidential correspondence with Tench Coxe, a mousing politician and temporizing busy-body, though a man of considerable financial knowledge and ability, who held at that moment the place of Assistant Secretary of the Treasury. The insignificance of Adams's position as vice-president was, as we have had occasion to notice, far from agreeable to his active temperament, and he had even expressed his readiness to return to England as embassador-an appointment, however, which Washington did not think consistent with the position of vice-president, which Adams desired to retain. In a fit of ill humor at XV. this disappointment, Adams had written a letter to Coxe CHAPTER (May, 1792), in reply to one containing some allusions. to the appointment of Thomas Pinckney, in which he 1800. remarked, "The Duke of Leeds once inquired of me, very kindly, after his classmates at Westminster school, the two Mr. Pinckneys, which induces me to conclude that our new embassador has many powerful old friends in England. Whether this is a recommendation of him for the office or not, I have other reasons to believe that his family have had their eyes fixed upon the embassy to St. James for many years, even before I was sent there, and that they contributed to limit the duration of my commission to three years, in order to make way for themselves to succeed me. I wish they may find as much honor and pleasure in it as they expected, and that the public may derive from it dignity and utility; but knowing as I do the long intrigues, and suspecting as I do much British influence in the appointment, were I in any executive department, I would take the liberty to keep a vigilant eye upon them." Subsequently to this correspondence, under the new arrangement of parties which grew out of the French Revolution and Jay's treaty, Coxe, who made some pretensions to speculative science, became, like almost all persons of that description, a zealous partisan of France, and, of course, a member of the American opposition. Being dismissed from the office of Supervisor of the Revenue, shortly after Adams's accession to the presidency, for gross misbehavior, as the Secretary of the Treasury alleged, but as Coxe would have it, on account of his political principles-in fact, for carrying stories about the treasury to the Aurora, where they were detailed with great exaggeration and a very false coloring-he waited his opportunity for revenge. Nor did he have occasion to wait long. An |