CHAPTER treaty-a subject to which attention had also been called on the floor of the House. XVI. 1802. No report was made by this committee till three days May 1. before the close of the session, when a very one-sided statement, drawn up by the administration majority of the committee, with the aid of Gallatin, and without the knowledge of the Federal members, was laid before the House a miserable electioneering document, under the disguise of a Congressional report; the first instance of the sort in our history, but of which too many, the usual consequence of bad precedents, have since occurred. The studied intention of this report was, by a partial statement of facts, which the committee well knew to be capable of complete explanation, to convey the impression to the public that the pecuniary transactions of the late administration had been conducted in the loosest manner; that many large sums of public money remained unaccounted for; and that many large expenditures had been habitually made without any lawful authority. Though any direct assertion of that sort was carefully avoided, the report pointed distinctly to the conclusion that, when the accounts came to be finally settled, very large defaults might appear. To this attack upon the late secretaries, made in an The repeal of the Judiciary Act, denounced by the XVI. Constitution itself (which they still charged to be the se- CHAPTER cret object of the Republican leaders), and followed up. by a report like this, and by new removals from office, 1802. tended but little to the subsidence of political feeling. Wolcott having lost his office as judge, his friends in New York gladly availed themselves of his financial talents as president of the Merchants' Bank, established in that city about this time, at first under articles of association, without a charter. Two new journals, on the ultra Federal side, had recently made their appearance, the Evening Post, at New York, edited by Colman, and understood to express the sentiments of Hamilton (Webster's Commercial Advertiser adhering to the more moderate section of the party), and the Palladium, at Boston, to which Ames made large contributions, but the aid of whose pen was presently transferred to a still newer journal, called the Repertory. In their renewed attacks upon the president, the Federalists found an unexpected ally in that zealous Democrat, the notorious Callender, who, at the time of Jefferson's accession, had just served out his term of imprisonment under the sentence against him for seditious libel. He had even been able, by the assistance of political friends, to pay into the hands of the marshal the fine imposed upon him, which, however, Jefferson, by a somewhat doubtful exercise of power, ordered to be returned by virtue of a pardon which he hastened to grant. Not satisfied with this mere remission of his fine, Callender applied to be appointed post-master of Richmond; but his libelous pen being no longer needed, Jefferson sent him fifty dollars and a civil refusal. Indignant at this treatment, Callender availed himself of the columns of the Richmond Recorder, of which he became an editor, to charge upon Jefferson's encouragement and aid in, and XVI. CHAPTER responsibility for, the libels which he had published, especially "The Prospect before us," that scandalous pam1802. phlet which had given rise to his prosecution under the Sedition Law. This "base ingratitude" on the part of Callender, whom he denounced as a "lying renegade," touched Jefferson to the quick; and he wrote to Governor Monroe, authorizing a public statement, which was accordingly made, that his connection with Callender had been only that of a generous patron to a distressed man of letters, to whom, out of pure charity, he had made occasional donations. He promised to send copies of all the letters he had ever written to Callender; but from this he afterward excused himself on the plea that he could not find them. Callender, however, had preserved the originals, and he hastened to print them; whereby it appeared that Jefferson had not only contributed fifty dollars toward the publication of the "Prospect before us," but that he had furnished information for it, and had seen and highly approved of a part, at least, of the proof-sheets. Nor did Callender stop with the publication of these letters. Assisted with information from Jefferson's Federal neighbors, he entered into the history of his private life; and it is a striking instance of retributive justice that the very man who had been instigated and assisted, if not by Jefferson himself, by some one or other of the Virginia clique, to bring before the public the amours of Hamilton, should now, to Jefferson's infinite annoyance -for his temperament was so sensitive that he blushed like a woman at any such allusions have done the same kind office for him. It was from this source that originated, among other things, the story of Jefferson's attempt to seduce a neighbor's wife, and of his semi-African concubine by the father's side a sister, it was said, of his more lawful spouse, and the mother, by him, of a large XVI. family of unrecognized colored children-stories told with CHAPTER minute circumstances, never contradicted, and which, acquiring general credit, formed the sting of many a polit- 1802. ical pasquinade. In this emergency, George Hay, late one of Callender's counsel on his trial for libel, and now, by Jefferson's appointment, district attorney of Virginia, procured Callender to be arrested and carried before two magistrates, with the intent to play off upon him that same piece of legal tyranny lately exercised by M'Kean over Cobbett, in compelling him to give security to publish no libels. But this attempt appears to have excited some misgiv ings among some of the Virginians who had raised such clamors against the Sedition Law, and Hay found himself obliged to defend his conduct in a pamphlet. Jefferson was presently relieved from his troublesome accomplice, who was accidentally drowned not long after while bathing in James River. But the stories which he had put in circulation did not die with him; they continued to be kept alive in the Federal newspapers, and some three years after (1805) received additional confirmation through an unlucky movement of Jefferson's friends in the Massachusetts Legislature, by whom a motion was made to deprive the publishers of the Palladium of the state printing, on the ground of its abuse of the president in the republication of, or allusion to, these stories; in consequence of which motion, an affidavit was presently obtained from Virginia, and published in the Palladium, from a person who professed himself a neighbor of Jefferson's and personally cognizant of the facts. Nor was it his association with Callender alone by which Jefferson was exposed to obloquy. The egregious vanity of Thomas Paine had led him to publish in Paris Jefferson's letter containing the offer of a passage to XVI. CHAPTER America in a public vessel. But Paine, instead of being esteemed as formerly as a lover of liberty, whose vig1802. orous pen had contributed to hasten the Declaration of Independence, was now detested by large numbers as the libeler of Washington and the scoffing assailant of the Christian religion; and this marked piece of courtesy extended to him, coupled with Paine's return to America soon after, occasioned a renewal of the attacks upon Jefferson's religious opinions, which had, indeed, been a good deal urged pending the presidential canvass. The first American Free-thinker who went so far as to deny the supernatural origin of the Christian religion appears to have been Jeremiah Dummer, for many years colonial agent of Massachusetts and Connecticut, and celebrated for his "Defense of the New England Charters." Though a grandson of one of the Puritan fathers, and himself a theological student, Dummer had imbibed from personal intercourse the religious opinions of Bolingbroke. But as he was careful to keep them to himself, and as he lived the greater part of his life and died in England, his views could have had little or no influence in America. Yet converts were not wanting there to the same opinions, of whom Franklin was the most illustrious. He, however, at least in his maturer age, was no propagandist. He thought religion necessary for restraining the ignorant and viciously inclined; considered it highly dangerous "to unchain the tiger;" ostensibly adhered to the Church of England; and seems not to have favored any attacks upon current religious ideas. The first work of that kind published in America was Ethan Allen's "Oracles of Reason," which appeared in 1786. That Jefferson entertained similar opinions was evident from several passages in his "Notes on Virginia," published in London in 1787. |