Albert Beveridge - The Life of John Marshall (Volume 2 of 4)

Lafayette to Washington, March 17, 1790; Cor. Rev. : Sparks, iv, 322.

Washington to Lafayette, August 11, 1790; Writings: Ford, xi, 493.

Paine to Washington, May 1, 1790; Cor. Rev. : Sparks, iv, 328. Paine did not, personally, bring the key, but forwarded it from London.

Burke in the House of Commons; Works : Burke, i, 451-53.

Ib.

Reflections on the Revolution in France ; ib. , i, 489. Jefferson well stated the American radical opinion of Burke: "The Revolution of France does not astonish me so much as the Revolution of Mr. Burke… How mortifying that this evidence of the rottenness of his mind must oblige us now to ascribe to wicked motives those actions of his life which were the mark of virtue & patriotism." (Jefferson to Vaughan, May 11, 1791; Works : Ford, vi, 260.)

Paine had not yet lost his immense popularity in the United States. While, later, he came to be looked upon with horror by great numbers of people, he enjoyed the regard and admiration of nearly everybody in America at the time his Rights of Man appeared.

Writings : Conway, ii, 272.

Writings : Conway, ii, 406. At this very moment the sympathizers with the French Revolution in America were saying exactly the reverse.

Writings : Conway, ii, 278-79, 407, 408, 413, 910.

Compare with Jefferson's celebrated letter to Mazzei ( infra , chap. vii). Jefferson was now, however, in Washington's Cabinet.

Jefferson to Paine, June 19, 1792; Works : Ford, vii, 121-22; and see Hazen, 157-60. Jefferson had, two years before, expressed precisely the views set forth in Paine's Rights of Man . Indeed, he stated them in even more startling terms. (See Jefferson to Madison, Sept. 6, 1789; ib. , vi, 1-11.)

Writings, J. Q. A. : Ford, i, 65-110. John Quincy Adams wrote these admirable essays when he was twenty-four years old. Their logic, wit, and style suggest the writer's incomparable mother. Madison, who remarked their quality, wrote to Jefferson: "There is more of method … in the arguments, and much less of clumsiness & heaviness in the style, than characterizes his [John Adams's] writings." (Madison to Jefferson, July 13, 1791; Writings : Hunt, vi, 56.)

The sagacious industry of Mr. Worthington C. Ford has made these and all the other invaluable papers of the younger Adams accessible, in his Writings of John Quincy Adams now issuing.

Jefferson to Adams, July 17, 1791; Works : Ford, vi, 283, and footnote; also see Jefferson to Washington, May 8, 1791; ib. , 255-56.

Jefferson wrote Washington and the elder Adams, trying to evade his patronage of Paine's pamphlet; but, as Mr. Ford moderately remarks, "the explanation was somewhat lame." ( Writings, J. Q. A. : Ford, i, 65; and see Hazen, 156-57.) Later Jefferson avowed that "Mr. Paine's principles … were the principles of the citizens of the U. S." (Jefferson to Adams, Aug. 30, 1791; Works : Ford, vi, 314.) To his intimate friend, Monroe, Jefferson wrote that "Publicola, in attacking all Paine's principles, is very desirous of involving me in the same censure with the author. I certainly merit the same, for I profess the same principles." (Jefferson to Monroe, July 10, 1791; ib. , 280.)

Jefferson at this time was just on the threshold of his discovery of and campaign against the "deep-laid plans" of Hamilton and the Nationalists to transform the newborn Republic into a monarchy and to deliver the hard-won "liberties" of the people into the rapacious hands of "monocrats," "stockjobbers," and other "plunderers" of the public. (See next chapter.)

Writings, J. Q. A. : Ford, i, 65-66.

Although John Quincy Adams had just been admitted to the bar, he was still a student in the law office of Theophilus Parsons at the time he wrote the Publicola papers.

Writings, J. Q. A. : Ford, i, 65-110.

Writings, J. Q. A. : Ford, i, footnote to 107.

"As soon as Publicola attacked Paine, swarms appeared in his defense… Instantly a host of writers attacked Publicola in support of those [Paine's] principles." (Jefferson to Adams, Aug. 30, 1791; Works : Ford, vi, 314; and see Jefferson to Madison, July 10, 1791; ib. , 279.)

Writings, J. Q. A. : Ford, i, 110.

Madison to Jefferson, July 13, 1791; Writings ; Hunt, vi, 56; and see Monroe to Jefferson, July 25, 1791; Monroe's Writings : Hamilton, i, 225-26.

A verse of a song by French Revolutionary enthusiasts at a Boston "Civic Festival in commemoration of the Successes of their French brethren in their glorious enterprise for the Establishment of Equal Liberty," as a newspaper describes the meeting, expresses in reserved and moderate fashion the popular feeling: —

At this celebration an ox with gilded horns, one bearing the French flag and the other the American; carts of bread and two or three hogsheads of rum; and other devices of fancy and provisions for good cheer were the material evidence of the radical spirit. (See Columbian Centinel , Jan. 26, 1793.)

It is certain that Madison could not possibly have continued in public life if he had remained a conservative and a Nationalist. (See next chapter.)

Marshall, ii, 239.

Jefferson to Martha Jefferson Randolph, May 26, 1793; Works : Ford, vii, 345.

Marshall, ii, 249-51.

Marshall, ii, 251-52.

Jefferson to T. M. Randolph, Jan. 7, 1793; Works : Ford, vii, 207.

Mass. Hist. Collections (7th Series), i, 138.

Typical excerpts from Short's reports to Jefferson are: July 20, 1792: "Those mad & corrupted people in France who under the name of liberty have destroyed their own government [French Constitution of 1791] & disgusted all … men of honesty & property… All the rights of humanity … are daily violated with impunity … universal anarchy prevails… There is no succour … against mobs & factions which have assumed despotic power."

July 31: "The factions which have lately determined the system … for violating all the bonds of civil society … have disgusted all, except the sans culottes … with the present order of things … the most perfect & universal disorder that ever reigned in any country. Those who from the beginning took part in the revolution … have been disgusted, by the follies, injustice, & atrocities of the Jacobins… All power [is] in the hands of the most mad, wicked & atrocious assembly that ever was collected in any country."

August 15: "The Swiss guards have been massacred by the people & … streets literally are red with blood."