V.

came out with an affidavit denying that he had ever had CHAPTER any negotiations with Jefferson as to the establishment of his paper, or was ever controlled or influenced by him 1792. in its management, or that he ever wrote or dictated a line for it. But to this "an American" replied, that facts spoke louder than words, and, under certain circumstances, louder than oaths, and it was still insisted that Freneau's paper was Jefferson's organ. It was not at Freneau, but at Jefferson, so this second article stated, that these strictures had been aimed, their object being to expose a public officer who had not scrupled to embarrass and disparage the government of which he was a member; the prompter, open or secret, of unwarrantable aspersions on men who, so long as actions, not merely professions, should be taken as the true test of patriotism and integrity, need never decline a comparison with him as to their titles to public esteem.

These articles, at once ascribed to Hamilton, produced a great excitement among Jefferson's friends, and drew out several answers, to which Hamilton in due time replied. As soon as Washington, then at Mount Vernon, became aware of the breaking out of this newspaper war, he made an effort to bring about a truce between his rival and angry secretaries. In a letter to Jefferson, after Aug. 23. detailing some information just received from the frontiers tending to show British and Spanish intrigues with the Indians, he added, "How unfortunate and how much to be regretted it is that, while we are encompassed on all sides with avowed enemies and insidious friends, internal dissensions should be harrowing and tearing out our vitals? The latter, to me, is the most serious, the most alarming, the most afflicting of the two; and without more charity for the opinions and acts of others in governmental matters, or some more infallible criterion

CHAPTER than has yet fallen to the lot of humanity, by which the V. truth of speculative opinions, before they have undergone 1792. the test of experience, is to be forejudged, I believe it will be difficult, if not impracticable, to manage the reins of government, or to keep the parts of it together; for if, instead of laying our shoulder to the machine after measures are decided on, one pulls this way and another that, before the utility of the thing is fairly tried, it must inevitably be torn asunder; and, in my opinion, the fairest prospect of happiness and prosperity that ever was presented to man will be lost perhaps forever.

"My earnest wish and my fondest hope therefore is, that instead of wounding suspicions and irritating charges, there may be liberal allowances, mutual forbearances, and temporizing yieldings on all sides. Under the exercise of these, matters will go on smoothly, and, if possible, more prosperously. Without them, every thing must rub; the wheels of government will clog; our enemies will triumph, and by throwing their weight into the disaffected scale, may accomplish the ruin of the goodly fabric we have been erecting.

"I do not mean to apply this advice or these observations to any particular person or character. I have given them in the same general terms to other officers of the government, because the disagreements which have arisen. from difference of opinions, and the attacks which have been made upon almost all the measures of government, and most of its executive officers, have for a long time past filled me with painful sensations, and can not fail, I think, of producing unhappy consequences at home and abroad."

Two or three days after he wrote to Hamilton to the same effect, but perhaps a little more pointedly. The answers returned were sufficiently characteristic of the

writers.

"It is my most anxious wish," wrote Hamil- CHAPTER ton, "as far as may depend upon me, to smooth the path

of your administration, and to render it prosperous and 1792. happy. And if any prospect shall open of healing or Sept. 9. terminating the differences which exist, I shall most cheerfully embrace it, though I consider myself as the deeply injured party. The recommendation of such a spirit is worthy of the moderation and wisdom which dictated it; and if your endeavors should prove unsuccessful, I do not hesitate to say that, in my opinion, the period is not remote when the public good will require substitutes for the differing members of your administration. The continuance of a division there must destroy the energy of government, which will be little enough with the strictest union. On my part there will be a most cheerful acquiescence in such a result.

"I trust, sir, that the greatest frankness has always marked, and will always mark, every step of my conduct toward you. In this disposition I can not conceal from you that I have had some instrumentality of late in the retaliations which have fallen upon certain public characters, and that I find myself placed in a situation not to be able to recede for the present.

"I considered myself compelled to this conduct by reasons public as well as personal, of the most cogent nature. I know that I have been an object of uniform opposition from Mr. Jefferson from the moment of his coming to the city of New York to enter on his present office. I know, from the most authentic sources, that I have been the frequent subject of the most unkind whispers and insinuations from the same quarter. I have long seen a formed party in the Legislature under his auspices bent upon my subversion. I can not doubt, from the evidence I possess, that the National Gazette

CHAPTER Was instituted by him for political purposes, and that one V. leading object of it has been to render me, and all the 1792. measures connected with my department, as odious as possible.

"Nevertheless, I can truly say that, except explanations to confidential friends, I never, directly nor indirectly, retaliated or countenanced retaliation till very lately. As long as I saw no danger to the government from the machinations that were going on, I resolved to be a silent sufferer of the injuries that were done me. I determined to avoid giving occasion to any thing which could manifest to the world dissensions among the principal characters of the government—a thing which can never happen without weakening its hands, and in some degree throwing a stigma upon it.

"But when I no longer doubted that there was a formed party deliberately bent upon a subversion of measures which, in its consequence, would subvert the government; when I saw that the undoing of the funding system in particular was an avowed object of the party, which, whatever may be the original merits of that system, would prostrate the credit and honor of the nation, and bring the government into contempt with that description of men who are in every society the only firm supporters of government, and that all possible pains were taking to produce that effect by rendering the funding system odious to the body of the people, I considered it as a duty to endeavor to resist the torrent, and, as an effectual means to that end, to draw aside the veil from the principal actors. To this strong impulse, to this decided conviction, I have yielded; and I think events will prove that I have judged rightly.

"Nevertheless, I pledge my honor to you, sir, that if you shall hereafter form a plan to reunite the members

V.

of your administration upon some steady principle of co- CHAPTER operation, I will faithfully concur in executing it during my continuance in office; and I will not, directly or in- 1792. directly, say or do a thing that shall endanger a feud."

Here was a letter, like the writer, indignant under a sense of injury, strong in conscious integrity, exhibiting a calm confidence of ability to repel all assaults and to punish the aggressor, but without bitterness, malice, or any thing like an implacable spirit.

Jefferson's letter, dated on the same day, and written Sen. J from Monticello, is in a very different strain, made up, in a great measure, of a violent attack upon Hamilton and his system of policy, reiterating as his own, and as matter of fact, those gross charges of corruption which, in his previous letter, already quoted, he had conveyed to Washington merely as "hackneyed in the public papers," and with the qualification of being "real or imaginary." "When I embarked in the government," he writes, "it was with a determination to intermeddle not at all with the legislative, and as little as possible with the co-departments. The first and only instance of variance from the former part of my resolution I was duped into by the Secretary of the Treasury, and made a tool for forwarding his schemes, and, of all the errors of my political life, this has occasioned me the deepest regret." The allusion here was to Jefferson's agency in bringing about the log-rolling compromise, by which the assumption of the state debts and the fixing of the seat of government on the Potomac were coupled and carried together. His own account of that matter as given in his Ana, and already referred to, abundantly shows that this pretense of having been duped on that occasion was but a lame apology for his subsequent course, amounting only to this, that, not having very fully considered the mat