federalist fracture -- 5/12/25

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Today's selection-- from A Magnificent Catastrophe by Edward J. Larson. by As the 1800 election neared, deep divisions between President Adams and Hamilton’s High Federalists threatened to fracture the Federalist Party from within.

“Leading High Federalists monitored Adams's words closely throughout the summer and perceived that they were directed as much against Hamilton and Pinckney as against Jefferson. ‘He everywhere denounces [High Federalists] as an oligarchish faction [that is] combining to drive him from office and to appoint Pinckney,’ House Speaker Theodore Sedgwick complained. Adams's whole plan, Ames warned in August, ‘is, by prating about impartiality, Americanism, liberty, and equality, to gull the weak among the Feds’ and turn them against Hamilton, Pinckney, and the Essex Junto. Some leaders on both sides of the Federalist divide openly discussed breaking the party into two-one archconservative, one pragmatic. Inevitably they concluded that the American political system could not sustain a third party, however. The factions would fight for the party's soul and unite to battle the Republicans. ‘Perhaps a party, whenever it thinks itself strong enough, naturally splits,’ Ames mused. ‘Nothing but dread of its rival will bind it firmly enough together.’

‘As a warm spring turned into a hot summer, more Federalists took sides in their party's increasingly bitter and public breakup. On the one side, many Federalists rallied to their embattled President as he defended his pragmatic course and reminded Americans of his long, patriotic service to the country. Even if they did not like him, Federalist leaders could not deny that Adams remained the party's only viable popular candidate. Pinckney could win only by bootstrapping on to Adams in the North and capturing a few additional votes on his own in the South. ‘If under the present administration the country has prospered;’ the High Federalist Congressman Robert Harper now wrote in an open letter to his constituents, ‘if peace has been preserved with honor during a conflict which has involved almost every nation except ourselves; if commerce has been protected, industry been made to flourish, public credit maintained, tranquility preserved at home, and the character of the nation raised abroad; I ask, what more could any administration have done? Where is the need for change?’

“Harper may have simply been trying to preserve the facade of Federalist unity, but New York Governor John Jay and the respected Maryland jurist and former governor Thomas Johnson unequivocally took Adams's side. ‘It really appears to me that the mission of our envoys to France has been treated with too much asperity,’ Jay wrote in defense of Adams. ‘His attachment to the dictates of honor and good faith, even supposing it to have been too scrupulous, is amiable and praiseworthy.’

“On the other side, more High Federalists began speaking out against Adams even at the risk of losing the presidency. ‘The public feeling is opposed to the censure of Mr. Adams in this quarter,’ Cabot wrote from Massachusetts in July. ‘It is impossible, however, that Mr. Adams should govern as a Federal man and this must be seen presently by all sagacious men.’

“Cabot and his crowd never cared about following public opinion; they wanted to lead it. As High Federalists, they sought to purge the party of Adams despite—indeed, perhaps in part because of—his popularity. In some respects, he represented a greater threat to them than Jefferson: Better the devil without than the devil within. In a letter that laid bare the High Federalists' election strategy, Cabot had reminded Wolcott several months earlier about the ‘great pains’ that leaders in their party had taken ‘to make it believed that the French revolutionary system was a war against real liberty and legitimate property in every country.’ The strategy had helped the Federalists get elected and enact their policies. But following Adams’s peace overture, Cabot noted, ‘It is asked now, if this were true, would the heads of our nation be seen negotiating with France?’ Federalists could not effectively invoke revolutionary France as a boogeyman if their own President was reaching out to its leaders. Expressing his final break with the President, Wolcott now wrote back to Cabot, ‘If General Pinckney is not elected, all good men will find cause to regret the present inaction of the Federal Party’ against Adams.

Federalist Party Cockade

“Hamilton, who by this time wanted nothing more than to unseat Adams, saw the political landscape in much the same way as Cabot. Throughout New England, Adams remained popular with Federalists ‘of the second class,’as Hamilton contemptuously referred to those he deemed lesser lights within his own party. ‘The leaders of the first class’ know better, he maintained in a letter to Wolcott. This state of affairs posed a problem for Hamilton's plan of swinging the election to Pinckney through a combination of Federalist votes from the Northeast and favorite-son votes from South Carolina. If New England electors abandoned Pinckney to save Adams by casting their second votes for someone like John Jay, as happened to Pinckney's brother in 1796, then either Jefferson or Adams would prevail. To prevent this from happening again, Hamilton decided to meet with leading New England Federalists and urge them to stick with Pinckney even at the risk of Adams's loss.

“Making the most of the short time remaining in his tenure as Inspector General of the Additional Army, Hamilton set out in June to bolster Pinckney and undermine Adams among potential Federalist electors in New England during a four-state tour ostensibly designed to bid farewell to the disbanding troops. Traveling in full military regalia, Hamilton planned to meet with Federalist leaders throughout the region. Surely they still deferred to him, he believed, even if Adams did not.

“Any military purposes for Hamilton's trip took a backseat to political ones. ‘The General did not come to disband the troops,’ Abigail Adams explained in a letter to her son, Thomas. ‘His visit was merely an electioneering business, to feel the pulse of the New England states, and to impress those upon whom he could have any influence to vote for Pinckney and bring him on as president.’ Her husband had heard as much from several of those subjected to Hamilton's pleas. By this time, the First Lady was referring to Hamilton as ‘the little cock sparrow general’ and Fisher Ames was mocking her as being ‘as complete a politician as any lady in the old French court.’

“The General did review the troops at Oxford, Massachusetts—the Army's northern base. The much-maligned soldiers mustered in dress parade to hear Hamilton deliver an emotional speech that some observers compared to Washington's legendary farewell address to the Revolutionary Army—a tribute they scarcely deserved if even half of the stories about them had any merit. According to widely reported Republican accounts, these full-time soldiers had used their idle time to prey on the local citizenry without serving any meaningful purpose in the Quasi-War with France. Addressing the soldiers, however, Hamilton blamed their dismissal solely on Adams.

“Hamilton's other stops had purely political purposes. Adams could not win, Hamilton told Federalists in Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island. Only a solid vote for Pinckney could hold the presidency for the party. Some listened; others balked. The high point for Hamilton surely came when the EssexJunto turned out in force for a gala banquet in his honor at Boston's elegant Concert Hall. ‘At no public feast ever prevailed greater harmony, good humor, and public spirit,’ one High Federalist newspaper reported. Hamilton hit the low point, however, when he tried to lobby Rhode Island Governor Arthur Fenner. ‘I then asked him what Mr. Adams had done that he should be tipped out the tail of the cart,’ Fenner recalled telling Hamilton, adding ‘that my attachment for Mr. Adams was much greater now ... that he had sent envoys to France ... [and] had disbanded an unnecessary army.’ When pressed by Hamilton, Fenner reported saying that he preferred even Jefferson to Pinckney, ‘for the British yoke I abhorred.’ The Republican campaign to link High Federalists such as Hamilton and Pinckney with the British was working; at least Fenner seemed to believe the charge.

“Ultimately, Hamilton's trip did little more than harden positions within both Federalist camps. ‘I yesterday returned from an excursion through [four] of the [five] eastern states,’ Hamilton wrote onJuly 1. ‘The greatest number of strong minded men in New England are not only satisfied of the expediency of supporting Pinckney, as giving the best chance against Jefferson, but even prefer him to Adams; yet in the body of that people there is a strong personal attachment to [the President].’ If by New England's ‘strong minded men’ Hamilton meant the Essex Junto, then he was probably right-but in general New Englanders and their elected leaders were determined to stick by Adams.

“Despite the division between High Federalists and moderates that threatened to tear apart their party from the top down, most New Englanders remained loyal to both the Federalist Party and Adams. High Federalists may have best represented their commercial and maritime interests in the national government but New Englanders had also grown to trust and respect Adams despite his quirks. He was their region's hero of the Revolution and nothing that Hamilton could say about him would tarnish that reputation. The structure of Federalism in New England, complex as it was, simply rested on too firm a foundation for Hamilton's gusts to shake it even as they wreaked havoc elsewhere. Certainly his belligerent style played poorly in the region. He bullied local leaders and belittled those who disagreed with him. ‘Electioneering topics were his principal theme,’ one Adams supporter said of Hamilton's visit. ‘In his mode of handling them, he did not appear to be the great general which his talents designate him.’ Even Ames now conceded about Hamilton, ‘You know he is the most frank of men.’”

author:	Edward J. Larson
title:	A Magnificent Catastrophe: The Tumultuous Election of 1800, America's First Presidential Campaign
publisher:	Free Press
pages:	150-154