Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 by Various

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THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY.

A MAGAZINE OF LITERATURE, ART, AND POLITICS.

VOL. IV.--JULY, 1859.--NO. XXI.

THOMAS PAINE'S

SECOND APPEARANCE IN THE UNITED STATES.

"Nay, so far did he carry his obstinacy, that he absolutely invited a
professed Anti-Diluvian from the Gallic Empire, who illuminated the
whole country with his principles and his nose."--Salmagundi.

We lukewarm moderns can hardly conceive the degree of violence and
bitterness reached by party-feeling in the early years of the United
States Constitution. A Mississippi member of Congress listening to a
Freesoil speech is mild in demeanor and expression, if we compare his
ill-nature with the spiteful fury of his predecessors in legislation
sixty years ago. The same temper was visible throughout the land. Nobody
stood aloof. Two hostile camps were pitched over against each other, and
every man in Israel was to be found in his tent. Our great experiment
was a new one; on its success depended the personal welfare of every
citizen, and naturally every citizen was anxious to train up that
experiment in the way which promised to his reason or to his feelings
the best result.

The original Federalists of 1787 were in favor of effacing as much
as possible the boundary-lines of the Thirteen Colonies, and of
consolidating them into a new, united, and powerful people, under a
strong central government. The first Anti-Federalists were made up of
several sects: one branch, sincere republicans, were fearful that the
independence of the States was in danger, and that consolidation would
prepare the way for monarchy; another, small, but influential, still
entertained the wish for reunion with England, or, at least, for the
adoption of the English form of government,--and, hoping that the
dissensions of the old Confederation might lead to some such result,
drank the health of the Bishop of Osnaburg in good Madeira, and objected
to any system which might place matters upon a permanent republican
basis; and a third party, more numerous and noisy than either, who knew
by long experience that the secret of home popularity was to inspire
jealousy of the power of Congress, were unwilling to risk the loss of
personal consequence in this new scheme of centralization, and took good
care not to allow the old local prejudices and antipathies to slumber.
The two latter classes of patriots are well described by Franklin in his
"Comparison of the Ancient Jews with the Modern Anti-Federalists,"--a
humorous allegory, which may have suggested to the Senator from Ohio his
excellent conceit of the Israelite with Egyptian principles. "Many,"
wrote Franklin, "still retained an affection for Egypt, the land of
their nativity, and whenever they felt any inconvenience or hardship,
though the natural and unavoidable effect of their change of situation,
exclaimed against their leaders as the authors of their trouble,
and were not only for returning into Egypt, but for stoning their
deliverers.... Many of the chiefs thought the new Constitution might be
injurious to their particular interests,--that the profitable places
would be engrossed by the families and friends of Moses and Aaron, and
others, equally well born, excluded."

Time has decided this first point in favor of the Unionists. None of
the evils prophesied by their opponents have as yet appeared. The
independence of the individual States remains inviolate, and, although
the central executive has grown yearly more powerful, a monarchy
seems as remote as ever. Local distinctions are now little prized in
comparison with federal rank. It is not every man who can recollect the
name of the governor of his own State; very few can tell that of the
chief of the neighboring Commonwealth. The old boundaries have grown
more and more indistinct; and when we look at the present map of the
Union, we see only that broad black line known as Mason and Dixon's, on
one side of which are neatness, thrift, enterprise, and education,--and
on the other, whatever the natives of that region may please to call it.

After 1789, the old Egypt faction ceased to exist, except as grumblers;
but the States-Rights men, though obliged to acquiesce in the
Constitution, endeavored, by every means of "construction" their
ingenuity could furnish, to weaken and restrict the exercise and the
range of its power. The Federalists, on the other hand, held that want
of strength was the principal defect of the system, and were for adding
new buttresses to the Constitutional edifice. It is curious to remark
that neither party believed in the permanency of the Union. Then
came into use the mighty adjectives "constitutional" and
"unconstitutional,"--words of vast import, doing equally good service
to both parties in furnishing a word to express their opinion of the
measures they urged and of those they objected to. And then began to be
strained and frayed that much-abused piece of parchment which Thomas
Paine called the political Bible of the American people, and foolishly
thought indispensable to liberty in a representative government. "Ask an
American if a certain act be constitutional," says Paine, "he pulls out
his pocket volume, turns to page and verse, and gives you a correct
answer in a moment." Poor Mr. Paine! if you had lived fifty years
longer, you would have seen that paper constitutions, like the paper
money you despised so justly, depend upon honesty and confidence for
their value, and are at a sad discount in hard times of fraud and
corruption. Unprincipled men find means of evading the written agreement
upon their face by ingenious subterfuges or downright repudiation. An
arbitrary majority will construe the partnership articles to suit their
own interests, and _stat pro constitutione voluntas_. It is true that
the _litera scripta_ remains, but the meaning is found to vary with the
interpreter.

In 1791, when the two parties were fairly formed and openly pitted
against each other, a new element of discord had entered into politics,
which added the bitterness of class-feeling to the usual animosity of
contention. Society in the Middle and Southern States had been composed
of a few wealthy and influential families, and of a much more numerous
lower class who followed the lead of the great men. These lesser
citizens had now determined to set up for themselves, and had enlisted
in the ranks of the Anti-Federalists, who soon assumed the name and
style of Democrats, an epithet first bestowed upon them in derision, but
joyfully adopted,--one of the happiest hits in political nomenclature
ever made. _In hoc verbo vinces:_ In that word lay victory. If any one
be tempted, in this age, to repeat the stupid question, "What's in a
name?" let him be answered,--Everything: place, power, pelf, perhaps we
may add peculation. "The Barons of Virginia," chiefs of State-Rights,
who at home had been in favor of a governor and a senate for life, and
had little to fear from any lower class in their own neighborhood, saw
how much was to be gained by "taking the people into partnership," as
Herodotus phrases it, and commenced that alliance with the proletaries
of the North which has proved so profitable to Southern leaders. In New
England, the land of industry, self-control, and superior cultivation,
(for the American Parnassus was then in Connecticut, either in Hartford,
or on Litchfield Hill,) there was, comparatively speaking, no lower
class. The Eastern men, whose levelling spirit and equality of ranks
had been so much disliked and dreaded by the representatives from other
Colonies in the Ante-Revolutionary Congresses, had undergone little or
no social change by the war, and probably had at that period a more
correct idea of civil liberty and free government than any other people
on the face of the earth. General Charles Lee wrote to an English
friend, that the New-Englanders were the only Americans who really
understood the meaning of republicanism, and many years later De
Tocqueville came to nearly the same opinion:--_"C'est dans la Nouvelle
Angleterre que se sont combinees les deux ou trois idees principales,
qui aujourd'hui forment les bases de la theorie sociale des
Etats-Unis."_ In this region Federalism reigned supreme. The
New-Englanders desired a strong, honest, and intelligent government;
they thought, with John Adams, that "true equality is to do as you would
be done by," and agreed with Hamilton, that "a government in which every
man may aspire to any office was free enough for all purposes"; and
judging from what they saw at home, they looked upon Anti-Federalism not
only as erroneous in theory, but as disreputable in practice. "The name
of Democrat," writes a fierce old gentleman to his son, "is despised; it
is synonymous with infamy." Out of New England a greater social change
was going forward. Already appeared that impatience of all restraint
which is so alarming a symptom of our times. Every rogue, "who felt the
halter draw," wanted to know if it was for tyranny like this that the
Colonies had rebelled. "Such a monster of a government has seldom or
never been known on earth. A blessed Revolution, a blessed Revolution,
indeed!--_but farmers, mechanics, and laborers had no share in it._ We
are the asses who pay." This was the burden of the Democratic song.

But the real issue between the two parties, which underlay all their
proposed measures and professed principles, was the old struggle of
classes, modified of course by the time and the place. The Democrats
contended for perfect equality, political and social, and as little
power as possible in the central government so long as their party was
not in command. The Federalists, who held the reins, were for a strong
conservative administration, and a wholesome distinction of classes.
The two parties were not long in waiting for flags to rally around, and
fresh fields on which to fight. The French Revolution furnished both.
In its early stages it had excited a general sympathy in America; and,
indeed, so has every foreign insurrection, rebellion, or riot since, no
matter where or why it occurred, provided good use has been made of the
sacred words Revolution and Liberty. This cry has never been echoed in
this country without exciting a large body of men to mass-meetings,
dinners, and other public demonstrations, who do not stop to consider
what it means, or whether, in the immediate instance, it has any meaning
at all. John Adams said in his "Defence of American Constitutions," "Our
countrymen will never run delirious after a word or a name." Mr. Adams
was much mistaken. If, according to the Latin proverb, a word is
sufficient for a wise man, so, in another sense, it is all that is
needful for fools. But as the Revolution advanced in France towards
republicanism, the Federalists, who thought the English system, less the
king and the hereditary lords, the best scheme of government, began to
grow lukewarm. When it became evident that the New Era was to end in
bloodshed, instead of universal peace and good-will towards men,--that
the Rights of Man included murder, confiscation, and atheism,--that
the Sovereignty of the People meant the rule of King Mob, who seemed
determined to carry out to the letter Diderot's famous couplet,--

"Et des boyaux du dernier pretre
Serrez le cou du dernier des rois,"--

then the adjective _French_ became in Federal mouths an epithet of
abhorrence and abuse; up went the flag of dear Old England, the defender
of the faith and of social order. The opposition party, on the contrary,
saw in the success of the French people, in their overthrow of kings
and nobles, a cheerful encouragement to their own struggle against the
aristocratic Federalists, and would allow no sanguinary irregularities
to divert their sympathy from the great Democratic triumph abroad. The
gay folds of the tricolor which floated over them seemed to shed upon
their heads a mild influence of that Gallic madness that led them into
absurdities we could not now believe, were they not on record. The
fashions, sartorial and social, of the French were affected; amiable
Yankees called each other _citizen_, invented the feminine _citess_,
and proposed changing our old calendar for the Ventose and Fructidor
arrangement of the one and indivisible republic. (We wish they had
adopted their admirable system of weights and measures.) Divines are
said to have offered up thanks to the Supreme Being for the success of
the good _Sans-culottes_. At all events, their victories were celebrated
by civic festivals and the discharge of cannon; the English flag was
burned as a sacrifice to the Goddess of Liberty; a French frigate took
a prize off the Capes of the Delaware, and sent her in to Philadelphia;
thousands of the populace crowded the wharves, and, when the British
colors were seen reversed, and the French flying over them, burst into
exulting hurras. When a report came that the Duke of York was a prisoner
and shown in a cage in Paris, all the bells of Philadelphia rang peals
of joy for the downfall of tyrants. Here is the story of a civic _fete_
given at Reading, in Massachusetts, which we extract from a newspaper of
the time as a specimen of the Gallo-Yankee absurdities perpetrated by
our grandfathers:--

"The day was ushered in by the ringing of the bells, and a salute of
fifteen discharges from a field-piece. The American flag waved in the
wind, and the flag of France over the British in inverted order. At noon
a large number of respectable citizens assembled at Citizen Raynor's,
and partook of an elegant entertainment. After dinner, Captain Emerson's
military company in uniform assembled and escorted the citizens to the
meeting-house, where an address pertinent to the occasion was delivered
by the Rev. Citizen Prentiss, and united prayers and praises were
offered to God, and several hymns and anthems were well sung; after
which they returned in procession to Citizen Raynor's, where three
farmers, with their frocks and utensils, and with a tree on their
shoulders, were escorted by the military company formed in a hollow
square to the Common, where the tree was planted in form, as an emblem
of freedom, and the Marseillaise Hymn was sung by a choir within a
circle round the tree. Major Boardman, by request, superintended the
business of the day, and directed the manoeuvres."

In the Gallic jargon then fashionable, England was "an insular Bastille
of slaves," and New England "the Vendee of America." On the other side,
the Federalists returned cheer for cheer,--looked with true British
contempt on the warlike struggles of the restless Frenchman,--chuckled
over the disasters which befell "his little popgun fleets,"--and damned
the Democrats for a pack of poor, dirty, blasphemous cutthroats. Hate
one another was the order of the day. The religious element, which
always exasperates dissension, was present. French Democrats had set
up the Goddess of Reason (in private life Mme. Momoro) as an object of
worship; American Democrats were accused of making Tom Paine's "Age of
Reason" their Bible; "Atheist" and "Infidel" were added to the epithets
which the Federalists discharged at their foes. So fierce and so general
was the quarrel on this European ground, that a distinguished foreigner,
then travelling in this country, said that he saw many French and
English, but scarcely ever met with an American. Weld, a more humble
tourist, put into his book, that in Norfolk, Virginia, he found half the
town ready to fight the other half on the French question. Meanwhile,
both French and English treated us with ill-disguised contempt,
and inflicted open outrages upon our commerce. But it made little
difference. One faction was willing to be kicked by England; and the
other took a pleasure in being _soufflete_ by France. The rival flags
were kept flying until the close of the war of 1812.

An outbreak of Democratic fury bordering upon treason took place, when
Senator Mason of Virginia violated the oath of secrecy, and sent a
copy of Jay's treaty with England to the "Aurora." Meetings passed
condemnatory resolutions expressed in no mild language. Jay was "a
slave, a traitor, a coward, who had bartered his country's liberties for
British gold." Mobs burned Jay in effigy, and pelted Alexander Hamilton.
At a public meeting in Philadelphia, Mr. Blair threw the treaty to the
crowd, and advised them to kick it to hell. They carried it on a pole
in procession, and burned it before the English minister's house. A
Democratic society in Richmond, Virginia, full of the true modern South
Carolina "sound and fury," gave public notice, that, if the treaty
entered into by "that damned arch traitor, John Jay, with the British
tyrant should be ratified, a petition will be presented to the next
General Assembly of Virginia praying that the said State may recede
from the Union, and be left under the government and protection of
one hundred thousand free and independent Virginians!" A meeting at
Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, resolved, "that it was weary of the tardiness
of Congress in not going to war with England, and that they were _almost
ready_ to wish for a state of revolution and the guillotine of France
for a short space, in order to punish the miscreants who enervate and
disgrace the government." Mr. Jefferson's opinion of the treaty is well
known from his rhetorical letter to Rutledge, which, in two or three
lines, contains the adjectives, _unnecessary, impolitic, dangerous,
dishonorable, disadvantageous, humiliating, disgraceful, improper,
monarchical, impeachable_. The Mazzei letter, written not long after the
ratification, displays the same bitter feeling.

The Federalists had a powerful ally in William Cobbett, who signed
himself Peter Porcupine, adopting for his literary _alias_ a nickname
bestowed by his enemies. This remarkable writer, who, like Paine,
figured in the political conflicts of two nations, must have come into
the world bristling with pugnacity. A more thorough game-cock never
crowed in the pit. He had been a private in the English army, came
to the United States about 1790, and taught French to Americans, and
English to Frenchmen, (to Talleyrand among others,) until 1794, when
the dogmatic Dr. Priestley arrived here, fresh from the scene of his
persecutions. The Doctor losing no time in laying his case before the
American public, Cobbett answered his publication, ridiculing it and the
Doctor's political career in a pamphlet which became immediately popular
with the Federalists. From that time until his departure for England, in
1800, Cobbett's pen was never idle. His "Little Plain English in Favor
of Mr. Jay's Treaty" was altogether the best thing published on that
side of the question. Cobbett had more than one point of resemblance to
Paine, the object of his early invective, but later of his unqualified
admiration. These two men were the best English pamphleteers of their
day. In shrewdness, in practical sense, Cobbett was fully Paine's equal.
He was as coarse and as pithy in expression, but with more wit, a better
education, more complete command of language, and a greater variety of
resources. Cobbett was a quicker and a harder hitter than Paine. His
personal courage gave him a great advantage in his warfaring life. In
1796, in the hottest of the French and English fight, the well-known
Porcupine opened a shop in Philadelphia. He filled his show-window with
all the prints of English kings, nobles, and generals he could collect,
and "then," he says, "I took down the shutters, and waited."

Party-feeling reached the boiling-point when Washington retired to Mount
Vernon. Mr. Adams, his successor, had none of that divinity which
hedged the Father of his Country to protect him. Under the former
administration, he had been, as Senator Grayson humorously called him,
"his superfluous Excellency," and out of the direct line of fire. He
could easily look down upon such melancholy squibs as Freneau's "Daddy
Vice" and "Duke of Braintree." But when raised above every other head by
his high office, he became a mark for the most bitter personal attacks.
Mr. Adams unfortunately thought too much about himself to be the
successful chief of a party. He allowed his warm feelings to divert
him from the main object and end of his followers. He was jealous of
Hamilton,--unwilling, in fact, to seem to be governed by the opinion of
any man, and half inclined to look for a reelection outside of his own
party. Hamilton, the soul of the Federalists, mistrusted and disliked
Mr. Adams, and made the sad mistake of publishing his mistrust and
dislike. It must be confessed that the gentlemen who directed the
Administration party were no match as tacticians for such file-leaders
as Jefferson and Burr. Many of their pet measures were ill-judged, to
say the least. The provisional army furnished a fertile theme for fierce
declamation. The black cockade became the badge of the supporters of
government, so that in the streets one could tell at a glance whether
friend or foe was approaching. The Alien and Sedition Laws caused much
bitter feeling and did great damage to the Federalists. To read these
acts and the trials under them now excites somewhat of the feeling
with which we look upon some strange and clumsy engine of torture in a
mediaeval museum. How the temper of this people and their endurance of
legal inflictions have changed since then! There was Matthew Lyon, a
noted Democrat of Irish origin, who had published a letter charging the
President with "ridiculous pomp, idle parade, and selfish avarice." He
was found guilty of sedition, and sentenced to four months' imprisonment
and a fine of one thousand dollars. There was Cooper, an Englishman,
who fared equally ill for saying or writing that the President did not
possess sufficient capacity to fulfil the duties of his office. What
should we think of the sanity of James Buchanan, should he prosecute
and obtain a conviction against some Black-Republican Luther Baldwin of
1859, for wishing that the wad of a cannon, fired in his honor, might
strike an unmentionable part of his august person? What should we say,
if Horace Greeley were to be arrested on a warrant issued by the Supreme
Court of New York for a libel on Louis Napoleon, as was William Cobbett
by Judge McKean of Pennsylvania for a libel on the King of Spain?

Fiercer and more bitter waxed party-discord, and both sides did ample
injustice to one another. Mr. Jefferson wrote, that men who had been
intimate all their lives would cross the street and look the other way,
lest they should be obliged to touch their hats. And Gouverneur Morris
gives us a capital idea of the state of feeling when he says that a
looker-on, who took no part in affairs, felt like a sober man at a
dinner when the rest of the company were drunk. Civil war was often
talked of, and the threat of secession, which has become the rhetorical
staple of the South, produced solely for exportation to the North, to be
used there in manufacturing pro-slavery votes out of the timidity of men
of large means and little courage or perspicacity, was then freely
made by both divisions of the Union. Had we been of French or
Spanish descent, there would have been barricades, _coup-d'etats,
pronunciamentos_; but the English race know better how to treat the
body-politic. They never apply the knife except for the most desperate
operations. But where hard words were so plenty, blows could not fail.
Duels were frequent, cudgellings not uncommon,--although as yet the
Senate-Chamber had not been selected as the fittest scene for the use
of the bludgeon. It is true that molasses-and-water was the beverage
allowed by Congress in those simple times, and that charged to
stationery.

What terrible fellows our ancestors were for calling
names,--particularly the gentlemen of the press! If they had been
natives of the Island of Frozen Sounds, along the shore of which
Pantagruel and Panurge coasted, they would have stood up to their
chins in scurrilous epithets. The comical sketch of their rhetoric in
"Salmagundi" is literally true:--"Every day have these slangwhangers
made furious attacks on each other and upon their respective adherents,
discharging their heavy artillery, consisting of large sheets loaded
with scoundrel, villain, liar, rascal, numskull, nincompoop, dunderhead,
wiseacre, blockhead, jackass." As single words were not always explosive
enough to make a report equal to their feelings, they had recourse to
compounds;--"pert and prating popinjay," "hackneyed gutscraper," "maggot
of corruption," "toad on a dung-heap," "snivelling sophisticating
hound," are a few of the chain-shot which strike our eyes in turning
over the yellow faded files. They are all quiet now, those eager,
snarling editors of fifty years since, and mostly forgotten. Even the
ink which records their spiteful abuse is fading away;--

"Dunne no more the halter dreads,
The torrent of his lies to check,
No gallows Cheetham's dreams invades,
Nor lours o'er Holt's devoted neck."

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