XII. gus, the opposition organ, edited by Greenleaf-the same CHAPTER printer whose office had been mobbed ten years before on account of his opposition to the adoption of the Federal 1798. Constitution-Brockholst Livingston undertook to ridicule the persons concerned in getting up the meeting, selecting, among other objects of his satire, a Mr. Jones, who happened not to have been present. Jones gave him a caning in consequence, which led to a challenge and duel, in which that unfortunate gentleman was killed -a result which occasioned a great excitement at the time, and which left on Livingston's mind a gloom from which he never recovered, though afterward rewarded for his party services by high political preferment. Nor was it to Philadelphia and New York that these testimonies of zeal were confined. Addresses poured in from every side, and the spirited replies of the president, who was now in his element, served, in their turn, to kindle and sustain the blaze of patriotic indignation. Appealing, as in the days of the Revolution, to religious feeling, he issued a proclamation for a day of national May 8. fasting and prayer, and, much to the chagrin of the leaders of the opposition, the appointment was very generally observed. Protected against the responsibility of voting by his fortunate position as president of the Senate, in which the Federalists had a decided majority, Jefferson could afford to be firm in his private correspondence. But the Virginia members of the House begun to waver, and several of them to seek safety in flight under pretense of attending to their private affairs. "Giles, Clopton, Cabell, and Nicholas have gone," so Jefferson wrote April 26. to Madison, "and Clay goes to-morrow. Parker has completely gone over to the war party. In this state of things, they will carry what they please. One of the war CHAPTER party, in a fit of unguarded passion, declared some time XII. ago that they would pass a citizen bill, an alien bill, and 1798. a sedition bill. Accordingly, some days ago, Coit laid a motion on the table for modifying the citizen law. Their Bache's paper, for which Jefferson expressed so much. anxiety, was at this moment, during Bache's temporary absence, under the editorial charge of Callender, who filled it with all sorts of falsehoods and slanders against the leading Federalists. His personal adventures, not long after, gave occasion to much sport among the Federal editors. Though quite disgusting in his manners XII. and habits, he was invited by Mason, the Virginia sen- CHAPTER ator, to honor him with a visit at his house near Alexandria, which he accordingly did shortly after the term- 1798. ination of the session of Congress. Soon after his arrival there, he was taken up in the purlieus of a neighboring distillery, drunk and dirty, and carried before two justices of the peace, under the Virginia vagrant act, on suspicion of being a runaway from the Baltimore penal wheelbarrow gang; nor could he obtain his release till Mason, his host, produced before the justices the letters of naturalization which the terrors of the alien law had induced Callender to take out, testifying, also, that he was a person of good character. Shortly after, under the patronage of some leading Virginia politicians, Callender established at Richmond an opposition paper called the Examiner. Sufficient reasons will presently appear for being thus particular as to his personal history. The present Federal majority in the House was not so much owing to any accession of their numbers, though some few, like Parker, did change their politics, while others, like Smith of Maryland, voted occasionally with the Federalists, as to absence or inaction on the other. side, several opposition members omitting to vote. While most of the other leaders had thus surrendered at discretion or retired from the field, Gallatin, however, still stood firm, resisting, by all the arts and maneuvers of an adroit politician, every thing proposed by the Federalists, and maintaining to its fullest extent the policy recommended by Jefferson of patiently submitting to the insults and injuries of France without the least effort at resistance or defense. The Senate bill for raising a provisional army underwent some modifications to meet the objections of the opposition in the House. In the shape in which it was CHAPTER finally passed, it authorized the president, at any time XII. within three years, in the event of a declaration of war 1798. against the United States, or of actual invasion of their territory by a foreign power, or imminent danger of such invasion before the next session of Congress, to enlist ten thousand men (half the number originally proposed), to serve for a term not exceeding three years, and to be entitled to a bounty of ten dollars, half of it on enlisting, and the other half on joining their corps. As a substitute for the other ten thousand, the president was authorized to accept the services of such volunteer corps as might offer, the whole to be organized as cavalry, artillery, and infantry, according to the exigences of the service, with a suitable number of major generals conformably to the existing military establishment. was also authorized to appoint a lieutenant general, and an inspector with the rank of major general. No officer was to have any pay except while in actual service, and all might be discharged, together with the soldiers, whenever the president might deem the public safety to per mit it. He The opposition complained loudly of the vast discre tion thus given to the president, and they denied that any danger of invasion existed. It was argued, on the other side, that Victor Hugues, the French commissary in the Caribbee Islands, might land at any time on the coast of the Southern States with five or six thousand of his enfranchised black soldiers from Guadaloupe, thereby endangering a servile insurrection. Indeed, who knew how soon a detachment of the fleet and army collected at Bordeaux and Brest, nominally for the invasion of England, might suddenly appear, perhaps under Bonaparte himself, on the American coast? The bill for a provisional army was speedily followed XII. up by another, authorizing the president to instruct the CHAPTER commanders of the ships of war of the United States to seize and bring into port, to be proceeded against ac- 1798. cording to the law of nations, any armed vessel which might have committed depredations on American ships, or which might be found hovering on the American coast for the purpose of committing such depredations, and to retake any American ship taken by such vessels. This bill was strongly opposed as placing the country in an actual state of war. Meanwhile the House had under discussion a bill for amending the naturalization law, the "citizen's bill" alluded to in the above quoted letter of Jefferson's. The greater part of the immigrants to the United States since the adoption of the Federal Constitution had been either Frenchmen whom political troubles had driven from home, and most of whom, even those who had been obliged to fly because they had been charged with being aristocrats, still remained warmly attached to their native country, the military glory and victories of the French republic having served, even in their minds, to veil its injustice and its crimes; or else Englishmen, Scotchmen, and Irishmen, who had espoused ultra Republican opinions, and who, in flying from the severe measures of repression adopted against them at home, brought to America a furious hatred of the government and institutions of Great Britain, and warm admiration and hearty good wishes for Republican France. In fact, many of them had been engaged in schemes more or less illegal, such as that of the United Irishmen, for co-operating with expected aid from France in the overturn of the British government. There were some among these immigrants, such, for example, as Priestley, however enthusiastic they might be, and, on some points, mistaken |