On March 4, 1801 Thomas Jefferson climbed the steps of the Capitol in Washington for his inauguration ceremony. In stark contrast to the two previous inaugurations, Washington’s arrival in a carriage drawn by six white horses in New York and Adams’s attempt to appear republican riding in a carriage drawn by just two horses in Philadelphia, Jefferson’s ceremony was devoid of pomp, and in more ways than one, pedestrian. He walked from his boarding house over Washington’s muddy streets to the Capitol, still under construction.[1]
Jefferson disdained fashion, at a time when clothes defined a man’s rank. The foundation of society, he maintained, was based on cloth. The Federalist press repeatedly remarked that his corduroy clothes seemed too small for him, making fun of his waistcoat and pointed-toe boots. His appearance, described by one observer as a “loose, shackling air,” was even more accentuated by his lanky frame and awkward manner. He stood six feet two and a half inches tall, with a slender build. His loping gait, and lax manner of lounging in a chair, coupled with the lack of attention he paid to his hair, reminded another observer of a farmer. Jefferson’s attire was emblematic of his political beliefs. [2]
Jefferson was about to preside over a nation of 5.3 million citizens. He was caught between William Pitt, prime minister of Britain, with a population of 15 million and Napoleon Bonaparte, who ruled the French Republic with a populace of more than 27 million. During his administration, he dealt with Napoleon’s mercurial personality, and his decisions, first to invade the American continent, and then to sell it in what became known as the Louisiana Purchase.
In Philadelphia, as Jeffersonians gathered to celebrate their victory, differences in their celebrations foreshadowed factions forming in Pennsylvania. Alexander Dallas organized an elegant ball at Francis’s Union Hotel, located in the house once occupied by presidents Washington and Adams. John Beckley staged his banquet at the county courthouse. William Duane, along with the Republican Greens, his militia company, celebrated on the lawn of Bush Hill, where celebrants had gathered following the Federal Procession of 1788. Humbler immigrant radicals ate and drank toasts at John Cordner’s tavern.[3]
Guests at Dallas’ party at the Union Hotel toasted George Washington, the “spirit of Union [to] allay the feuds of party,” and “conciliation [to] revive the harmonies of Society.” At the county courthouse, Beckley and his friends raised their glasses to “The People—the only legitimate source of all power” support of the constitution and the Declaration of Independence, “May it become the political gospel of our country.” Duane’s militia was more intent both with denunciation of the “authors of the Alien and Sedition Laws…[to]…universal and perpetual execration, ” and sarcasm, toasting then groaning at John Adams as the “Duke of Braintree.” The crowd at Cordners drank to “a leaden weight to the heels of sinking federalism” and that their enemies would be “well treated but never trusted.” In another round of toasts they appealed for the revision of Pennsylvania’s constitution.[4]
In 1803, in the new capital of Washington Jefferson observed with detachment that his followers in Pennsylvania were splitting into three distinct factions:[5] The Philadelphia Democrats, called the Malcontents by those who opposed them; the the Tertium Quids, or Third Whats, the moderates led by Alexander Dallas, Thomas McKean, Tench Coxe , Mathew Carey and William Jones; and the Snyderites of western Pennsylvania derisively called the Clodhoppers, an epithet they adopted as their own.
William Duane and and Dr. Michael Leib emerged as the leaders of the liberal and most radical faction, the Philadelphia Democrats or Malcontents. Leib lived in the Philadelphia suburb of Northern Liberties, home to many of the city’s artisans. Trained as a medical doctor, Leib ministered to the city’s poor offering his services at the dispensary, prisons, almshouse and Philadelphia’s hospital. Like Carey, he stayed in the city during the Yellow Fever epidemic of 1793, and again in 1798, when Philadelphia’s well-heeled citizenry fled to the countryside. He envisioned Jeffersonian politics serving the common laborer and the poor, advocating their involvement in government.
Duane was editor of the Aurora, which had the largest circulation of any Jeffersonian newspaper in the country. Duane’s experiences alienating authorities in India galvanized him into being a provocateur and radical. After Duane advocated the French Revolution in his Calcutta newspaper, British authorities ignored English common law and imprisoned him for three days, then banished him from India. He went to London, where he joined the radical London Corresponding Society and the United Irishmen.[6]
Duane and Leib organized a political machine they skillfully but ruthlessly directed to achieve their radical ideals. In the Aurora, they developed an ideology that proposed restructuring Pennsylvania’s legal system.[7] They questioned the effectiveness of Pennsylvania’s constitution in fostering true democracy and equal opportunity. They railed against power concentrated in the few—be they European aristocrats, English manufacturers or a new class of American republican superiors. Citizens who labored, they argued, should not depend on the resources of others. They prized independence and community over the right or the ambition to accumulate wealth. A true democracy required an “equality of condition.” They questioned the notion that hard work and ability alone guaranteed success. One’s labor would come to naught unless political power was redistributed and truly democratized. [8]
The emergence of printing, and expanding commerce, they argued should have challenged aristocrats’ stranglehold on Britain, but it had not. Instead the oligarchy had co-opted men in commerce, and power remained concentrated among the few. The result, the growth of what the English poet William Blake characterized as “dark, satanic mills” was worse than feudalism. The common laborer was subject to dependence and more poverty. The growth of manufacturing was not necessarily liberating. Duane and Leib advocated manufacturing, but for it to serve the majority Pennsylvania’s policies needed to broaden access to its development.[9]
After Duane’s experiences in India and in the United States, writing an expose on the “Grand Committee,” when the Federalists circumvented a fair trial by jury, it comes as no surprise that Duane and Leib attacked Pennsylvania’s independent judiciary and use of English common law.
Duane and Leib’s Malcontents advocated the governance by the majority. Under Pennsylvania’s constitution, and common law, the checks and balances of upper houses and lower houses, executives and legislatures and judges and legislatures, they argued, undermined the effectiveness of majority rule.[10]
In Philadelphia, it became clear to Governor Thomas McKean, Alexander Dallas, Tench Coxe, Mathew Carey and William Jones that opinions emanating from the pages of the Aurora were not those of every Jeffersonian.
Governor McKean was an elder statesman and signer of the Declaration of Independence who had risen from obscurity. He was chief justice in Pennsylvania for twenty-two years, forcefully transforming Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court into an independent judiciary. He played key roles in the ratification of the federal Constitution by Pennsylvania, and the adoption of Pennsylvania’s revised constitution in 1790. He disliked Alexander Hamilton’s plan to fund the public debt, and joined Jefferson’s party. When the outcome of Jefferson’s election seemed uncertain, McKean warned that he would call out Pennsylvania’s militia to assure a Democratic-Republican victory. McKean had a quick legal mind and was impatient with others who did not. He could be petty and temperamental. He alienated Duane when he refused to follow the radical’s suggestions for political appointments.
Alexander Dallas had a Caribbean-Scots background similar to that of Alexander Hamilton. Dallas was born in Jamaica, returned to Scotland at the age of five and spent his formative years in London. He hoped to attend the Inner Temple to study law, but a reversal of family fortunes caused him to return to Jamaica, where with family connections he read law and joined the bar. After inheriting some money, he moved to Philadelphia. Unlike Hamilton, he was not a participant in the American Revolution, and did not have the social connections that Hamilton’s marriage had provided. He was not a speculator, and worked hard for his money. Despite his love of extravagant entertainments, and penchant for dressing in fine clothes, he did not associate with Hamilton, and Robert Morris ostracized him.[11] After attacking English common law, during the furor over the Jay Treaty, he eventually favored it and a broad interpretation of the Constitution. While awaiting a two-year requirement to join the bar in Pennsylvania he edited two of Mathew Carey’s former publications, The Evening Herald, owned by William Spotswood, and the Columbian Magazine. He managed to alienate Spotswood after they differed on his account of the proposed federal Constitution. Dallas opposed the Jay Treaty, and wrote “Features of Mr. Jay’s Treaty” that Carey published in the American Museum. Carey drew on arguments outlined by Dallas for his own writings on the treaty.
William Jones was a merchant who had come from an obscure background to fight in the American Revolution and serve in the Continental navy. He was a merchant who became successful importing silk and opium. A close friend of Dallas, he led the opposition to Michael Leib.
The Tertium Quids vowed to discredit the Malcontents’ radicalism.[12] They opposed their challenges to Pennsylvania’s legal system, and considered the power of the majority a direct threat to a citizen’s right to personal property. They optimistically envisioned the future greatness of the United States, based on development of a transportation system, a strong central bank, the preservation of Pennsylvania’s constitution and independent judiciary and protective tariffs. The pursuit of prosperity, they believed, was possible and available for Pennsylvania’s citizens. The Quids sought to unite democracy, equality of opportunity and capitalism.[13] Mathew Carey in particular, sought to achieve a moderate course for the party.[14]
To challenge and discredit Duane, Leib and the Aurora, the Quids needed a newspaper of their own. On February 20, 1804, the Philadelphia Evening Post, appeared in Philadelphia a newspaper dedicated to articulating their ideas. After the Aurora repeatedly and falsely linked the paper to the New York Evening Post, a newspaper that espoused Hamilton’s views, William McCorckle, the paper’s editor, changed the name to the Freeman’s Journal.[15]
To the west of Philadelphia, from Montgomery and Chester, to Northumberland and Dauphin counties in Pennsylvania, a group of Jeffersonians coalesced around a successful mill owner and shopkeeper, Simon Snyder and his associates Nathaniel Boileau and John Binns.[16]
Simon Snyder was of German descent. His parents had immigrated to Northumberland County, Pennsylvania from the Palatinate a year before he was born. He worked as an apprentice for a tanner, spending his evenings studying with a Quaker to gain an education. Deeply religious, he joined the Moravian church. In Northumberland County, he served as justice of the peace and in the Court of Common Pleas as a judge. He had helped to transition Pennsylvania’s government to the federal system of the Constitution. He was a member of Pennsylvania’s Assembly, its house of representatives.
In Montgomery County, Nathaniel Boileau emerged as another leader of the Snyderites. Although he was a farmer, who excavated the cellar of his house and quarried the stone for it himself, he was a graduate of Princeton University. In 1797, residents of Montgomery County elected him to Pennsylvania’s Assembly.
John Binns was Irish, born in Dublin. His father was a Moravian, like Snyder, but his mother was an Anglican. His education was scant, but like Carey, he loved to read, and was influenced by the Volunteers. From 1792 to 1794, he was a member of the Dublin Society of United Irishman. In 1794, he moved to London where he joined the London Corresponding Society, where he met and befriended William Duane in 1795. Rising quickly in the organization, Binns joined the executive committee. He had exceptional skill as an orator. In Birmingham, he lectured at a tavern known for its Church-and King party sympathies with a sign on the door “No Jacobins admitted here.” Authorities arrested him for his seditious remarks, but a jury acquitted him.[17] Operating underground, he and his brother organized the United Irishmen in London. He was arrested and acquitted two more times. Authorities finally managed to incarcerate him for almost two years under the Suspension of Habeas Corpus Act. In September 1801, Binns immigrated to the United States, moving to Northumberland County, where he set up a printing press, bookstore and became editor of the Northumberland Republican Argus, in December 1802. Binns was a close advisor to Simon Snyder, and the Argus articulated the Snyderite’s positions on issues fracturing Pennsylvania’s Jeffersonians.
The counties where the Snyderites’ appeal was strongest were rich agricultural areas where wheat thrived. The Germans and Scots- Irish who settled there were able to begin with relatively little and become prosperous, selling their wheat to markets in Philadelphia, Baltimore and beyond, to the Caribbean and Europe. [18]
Snyder, Boileau and their followers sought to limit the powers of the governor. Like Duane and Leib, the Snyderites questioned the role and function of the judiciary.
Inevitably, as the factions arose, Carey and Duane had a falling out. Carey launched an aggressive and successful campaign for a seat on the Bank of Pennsylvania, soliciting the help of Nathaniel Boileau and Michael Leib leading to speculation that he used bribes.[19] Duane pursued the same course, but his editorials in the Aurora had estranged him the Quids who presided over patronage. He became embittered and angry.[20] Carey and Duane’s friendship disintegrated. Carey frowned on Duane’s marriage to Benjamin Franklin Bache’s widow, Margaret. Duane was envious of Carey’s success in creating a prosperous publishing firm.[21]
Leib had also helped Carey to obtain at least one profitable government printing contract. William Jones, leading the charge to discredit Leib, convinced Carey to denounce Leib in the Freeman’s Journal. Once again, Carey’s politics endangered his business. Without more government printing contracts, Carey’s firm suffered losses. At Carey’s request, Tench Coxe lent him $2,850[22] ($40,866 in 2010).
In 1803, Duane and Leib leapt at the opportunity to raise questions about the independent judiciary first in the state during the impeachment of Pennsylvania judge Alexander Addison, then nationally during the furor over misconduct by a federal judge, Samuel Chase.[23] Agitation for impeachment came not from the Malcontents, but from Pennsylvania’s legislature, in the case of Addison, and the House of Representatives, for Chase’s impeachment. In the Aurora, Duane and Leib proposed that judges’ whose behavior did not comply with the will of the people ought to be removed.[24]
Duane had long opposed common law and an independent judiciary, considering the judiciary in particular as subjective and deaf to the will of the people.[25] Most Jeffersonians loathed Addison, if nothing else, because he his opinions set forth important arguments for the Alien and Sedition Acts, then defended and enforced them.[26] Arrogant, irritable and argumentative, Addison considered Pennsylvania’s courts superior its legislature, deriding its legislators more than once. After he squelched the remarks of a fellow judge while they heard a case together, Duane and the Malcontents attacked Addison for obstructing a fair trial before all judges, declaring his conduct unconstitutional. Jeffersonians were unified in support of Addison’s impeachment. Tertium Quid Alexander Dallas was in charge of the case, but his arguments did not satisfy the Malcontents. Dallas contended that Addison committed a crime. Malcontents agreed, but argued that impeachment was necessary to remove Addison in particular and judges in general who simply antagonized the rights of the people. Dallas successfully removed Addison from the bench to popular acclaim.[27]
“Give to any men command of the press, and you give them the command of the country.”[28]
Judge Alexander Addison
Attempts to impeach Samuel Chase were not successful. Chase had reveled in the enforcement of the Alien and Sedition Acts, and had forced a conviction in another trial, but he had not committed a crime. Caesar Rodney, a representative from Delaware, charged Chase using the very argument the Malcontents had urged with Addison. Rodney claimed that Chase’s conduct harmed representation of the people in the legislature. The House of Representatives remained unconvinced, uncomfortable that Rodney’s arguments weakened the checks and balances between the judiciary and legislature set forth in the Constitution.[29]
Nationally, the Malcontents’ arguments for judicial reform may not have gained acceptance, but in Pennsylvania’s rural counties, they made sense. Lawyers were scarce and the courts were overburdened. The Malcontents championed a simpler legal system, one in which Pennsylvanians could take their disputes to arbitrators, bypassing the courts. In the Argus, John Binns reprinted articles from the Aurora emphasizing that lawyers endangered the will of the people, suggesting instead that disputes go to arbitration. Simon Snyder and Nathaniel Boileau agreed, proposing arbitration bills in the legislature. By 1803, they shepherded arbitration bills through both houses. Tertium Quid, Governor Thomas McKean vetoed them. [30]
After Governor McKean vetoed Snyder and Boileau’s arbitration bills, the legislature pragmatically whittled down and passed a new bill, known as the $100 Act. McKean passively ignored it allowing it to become law. The $100 Act enabled governors to appoint arbiters for small disputes, meeting the needs of western Pennsylvanian farmers. In the west such disputes were common, and courts and lawyers were overburdened. The Snyderites supported it; the Malcontents did not. Their agenda was to change to state’s judiciary according to their radical ideals.[31] Nevertheless, in 1804, the Quids considered both city and country radicals as one in the same. They viewed the radicals’ efforts to promote arbitration as a threat to private property.[32] Squabbles submitted to arbitration were frequently about private property issues. A citizen’s property was not necessarily protected by the full force of the law, but by the whims of the arbitrators.
The Quids were concerned. The Malcontents and Snyderites were forming a coalition. In the Aurora and Argus, articulate and organized forces were proposing fundamental changes to the legal system, changes that had the potential to disrupt the notion, if not sanctity, of private property. [33]
In 1803, a Philadelphia merchant Thomas Passmore inadvertently blew the issue of independent judges and common law wide open when he sued his insurers, Andrew Petit and Andrew Bayard, for damages after his property was destroyed at sea. Both Passmore and his insurers agreed to submit the case to arbiters, who decided in favor of Passmore. Petit and Bayard appealed the case to Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court. Alexander Dallas, leader of the Quids, defended them.[34]
Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court favored the Petit and Bayard, overturning the arbiter’s decision. Enraged, Passmore posted a statement condemning Bayard in a Philadelphia coffee house. Dallas urged the judges to hold Passmore in contempt, and they did. Using a broad-brush interpretation of the common law, they extended their jurisdiction well beyond their courtroom into the coffee house where Passmore posted his statement. The arguments by Dallas and the judges were defective. Passmore was not in court, he made no mention of the judges or their decision, his actions occurred after case was closed, and the court was not in session. Nevertheless, the judges fined Passmore, throwing him in prison for a month.[35]
Predictably, Duane and the Malcontents defended Passmore. Taking it one step further, they argued for the rule of the people in Pennsylvania’s independent judiciary. Passmore’s unjust fine and imprisonment by three independent judges demonstrated exactly why Pennsylvania’s legal system needed to change. Duane made the complete revision of the state’s independent judiciary the centerpiece of his agenda for Pennsylvania’s Democratic-Republican Party.[36]
1804 and 1805 were pivotal years in Pennsylvania politics. McKean was up for re-election. Snyder had guided the $100 Act through the legislature, and the city and country radicals had joined forces to elect him Speaker of Pennsylvania’s house. The Quids realized he would challenge McKean for the governorship.[37]
In the Aurora, the Malcontents tied Snyder’s gubernatorial campaign to their broad-based agenda to transform Pennsylvania’s judiciary. The radical coalition moved to impeach and unseat the three Supreme Court judges, who at the urging of Alexander Dallas, had outrageously fined and imprisoned Thomas Passmore for contempt of court.[38]
Dallas successfully defended the three judges.[39] That forced the Quids to articulate their moderate democratic ideals. They considered the state’s constitution the foundation of the law. The judges’ role was to interpret it. The legislature represented the people deciding issues such as the construction of roads, the selection of candidates and how many banks to charter. The judiciary held the legislature in check, keeping the representatives of the people within the bounds of their duties defined by the state’s constitution.[40]
When Pennsylvania’s senate voted, the results enraged the Malcontents. The radicals were defeated. The judges retained their seats, despite their behavior.[41]
“Republicanism will moulder into anarchy, and the labor & hope of our lives will terminate in disappointment and wretchedness…At present we are the slaves of men, whose passions are the origin, and whose interests are the object of all their actions. I mean your Duanes, Cheethams, Leibs &c. They have the press in their power; and…it is too plain, that we have not spirit enough to resist the tyranny of the Printers.”[42]
Alexander Dallas
“[I hope the acquittal will] teach the unprincipled, the fractious and anarchical, that Republicans will never sacrifice conscience, truth or justice to obtain favor with Jacobins, Demagogues, and Levellers.”[43]
Quid James Hopkins
“…the abuses of the executive power—of the judiciary—and the lawyers, ha[s] become after three or four years of struggle, [too] intolerable to be borne.”[44]
Malcontent Duane in the Aurora
The Malcontents called for a bolder action, a constitutional convention that would radically alter Pennsylvania’s government, especially its judiciary.[45] The Snyderites joined them, clamoring for change. In response, the Quids linked the Malcontents’ call for a convention with support for Snyder. [46]
It appeared that Snyder could defeat McKean, after Snyder and some legislators met with him about judiciary reform. During the meeting, McKean erupted angrily, shouting at the legislators, and, according to the Aurora, calling the Snyderites “clodhoppers.”[47]
The Quids stressed that a vote for Snyder was a vote for the Malcontents’ most extreme demands—especially the convention. Duane counter-attacked in the Aurora seeking to drive McKean and Dallas from the Democratic-Republican Party.[48] To defend McKean and preserve the state constitution, Dallas formed the Society of Constitutional Republicans.[49] Eventually the Quids fractured the coalition. In the Argus, the Snyderites found their own voice. They positioned themselves as true representatives of the people, adopting McKean’s alleged epithet of “clodhoppers” as their own. They argued that McKean distained the common man. Distancing themselves from the Malcontents demands for a convention, they abandoned their criticisms of the constitution and judiciary, focusing on McKean and his privileged associates. They defined democracy by its culture, the notion of the common man, rather than the demands of the people, and the sweeping changes to the legal structure needed to achieve them. [50]
The Quids and McKean triumphed, but by a narrow margin. In fact, McKean was not elected by a majority of Pennsylvania’s Democratic-Republicans. He needed the support from the state’s Federalists to win. [51] More important, the state constitutional convention was averted.
In November 1805, Philadelphia’s journeyman cordwainers struck against their masters, the shop owners who manufactured and sold shoes. Under an age old system, a laborer began as an apprentice. When he had learned the trade he began a journeyman, providing work on a daily basis for master cordwainers, who owned shops and sold shoes. The shop owners brought suit against their rebellious journeymen to end the strike.
Commonwealth v. Pullis was underway by January 1806, the first time a group of laborers went on strike, and been brought to trial within the framework of Pennsylvania’s laws.[52]
The journeymen had formed an organization to strike against their employers, forcing all journeymen to participate in the strike even if they disagreed with the majority’s decision. The Aurora leapt to the defense of the striking journeymen.[53]
The trial revealed the first inklings of the Industrial Revolution going on specifically in the cordwainer’s craft in Philadelphia, and in many artisans’ trades in the city. The nature of production was changing and with it, the relationship between masters and journeymen. Master cordwainers were beginning mass production to meet the needs of plantation owners in the South and the Caribbean, who needed cheap shoes for their slaves. To compete for lucrative contracts for large orders, which were beginning to dominate the business, masters reduced the wages of their journeymen. Both the testimony of the masters and journeymen at the trial reflected that change. The journeymen complained that they needed to “obtain a fair and just support for our families.”[54]
Moses Levy, a founding member of the Quids, presided at the trial. Two Federalists, Jared Ingersoll and Joseph Hopkinson, represented the shop owners. Their opening arguments concerned the Aurora’s efforts to “poison the public mind, and obstruct the pure streams of justice flowing from the established courts of law,” remarks that supported Moses Levy, his court, and the Quids.[55]
If the Quids’ ideas were to prevail, not only on the legal system, but also on the protection of infant industries, Ingersoll and Hopkinson had to win the trial. In order to promote American manufacturing they needed to show that the current legal system offered all Pennsylvanians the chance for prosperity as the scale of production increased.[56]
In order not to alienate Judge Levy, Caesar Rodney and Walter Franklin, the lawyers defending the journeymen, disassociated themselves from the Malcontent’s rejection of English common law and an independent judiciary. They argued that the shop owners had conspired to lower the pay of the journeymen. To achieve equality, cordwainers, both masters and journeymen, needed to eliminate collective action. Rodney and Franklin envisioned a large marketplace in Philadelphia where these craftsmen, working independently, could sell their manufactures.[57]
In spite of what Rodney and Franklin had said, Ingersoll and Hopkinson re-framed the argument in terms of the debate between the Quids and the Malcontents over whether to legal system needed reform.
Moses Levy used the trial to condemn the Malcontents. After noting that common law was difficult to interpret, requiring the expertise of lawyers and judges, he suggested that the journeymen were at fault. The jury pronounced them guilty, and they were penalized, but not imprisoned.
The Quids had triumphed. The courts retained their right to preside over issues concerning property, and relations between emerging manufacturers and their employees. While the Quids were able to discredit the Malcontents, McKean’s election had shown that they had at best a tenuous hold on most of Pennsylvania’s Jeffersonians. [58]
In 1807, John Binns, the Snyderite editor of the Republican Argus, moved to Philadelphia, to publish the Democratic Press. At first Binns was well received by the Malcontents, but Michael Leib was elected to Pennsylvania’s legislature. Leib promptly began to campaign for the impeachment of Governor McKean.[59] Binns attacked Michael Leib.[60] His paper became an alternative to Duane’s Aurora leading to speculation that Mathew Carey and other moderates helped to fund it.[61]
Binns and Duane held similar political convictions, but they battled for backing in Philadelphia’s Irish neighborhoods. Duane kept control of Southwark and Northern Liberties. His followers forced Binns out of St. Patrick’s Benevolent Society. Duane also spread rumors that Binns had betrayed a fellow radical in a trial in Ireland in 1798, a false charge that Binns denied for the remainder of his life.[62]
Simon Snyder had his sights set on becoming governor. Impeaching McKean did not suit the Snyder, who needed the votes of the Quids to win. They tried to delay impeachment proceedings. Nathaniel Boileau suggested that initiating a campaign for impeachment was inappropriate, because McKean was ill. Boileau withheld his support. Binns initially called for McKean’s impeachment, but by 1807 had reversed his position, and had joined Boileau.[63]
Leib continued to insist that the executive branch of Pennsylvania’s government needed to be brought under the legislature’s control. Boileau responded cautiously. The Snyderites, or Clodhoppers, were close to taking control of the state government. They did not want to damage the status quo, nor did they want to lose potential votes.[64]
Leib continued to antagonize Boileau, unwittingly aided by Federalist Horace Binney. Boileau proposed legislation reforming legal procedures in Pennsylvania’s courts. Lawyers in Pennsylvania often read British legal precedents before the judge in court. Boileau wanted to put a stop to that practice. Horace Binney attacked the measure, intimating changes to common law threatened private property. Leib attacked Binney, and suggested that Pennsylvania purge all of its laws of British legal precedents, and codify United States law.[65]
Boileau, locked in battle with Leib, reminded legislators that his bill did not seek to do what Leib proposed. He failed to answer Binney’s charges. If Federalists like Binney could link the Snyderites to the Malcontents, they feared the Quids would desert to the Federalists.[66]
Clearly, Leib was not serving the Snyderites. They mounted a campaign to oppose him. A Philadelphia printer, Joseph Lloyd published a pamphlet critical of Leib. The Aurora thought the libel originated from the Quids. Lloyd was not a Quid, and wanted to publish a rebuttal in the Aurora. The paper refused. Lloyd, seeking to distance himself from the Quids, went to the Democratic Press. He criticized the Quids and McKean condemning Leib for his ambition, self-promotion with a quest for personal power detrimental to democracy.[67]
Leib’s power emanated from meetings held throughout the city and county of Philadelphia to elect democratic candidates. The Quids had long favored district meetings, enabling them to secure wealthier districts. The Snyderites attacked Leib’s power base by demanding meetings by district, adopting the position of the Quids. Despite the objections coming from John Binns in the Democratic Press the Malcontents considered protests a Quid attack, and nominated Duane for the state senate and Leib for state assembly. The Democratic Press shot back that the city and county-wide meetings were actually the work of a minority, because of poor attendance. As such, the newspaper claimed the nominations of Duane and Leib were not legitimate.[68]
The Snyderites pursued their campaign, seeking to discredit Duane and Leib. They blamed Leib for Snyder’s defeat in the gubernatorial campaign of 1805. The Malcontents responded by claiming a new coalition had formed. The Snyderites, the Quids and the Federalists, they wrote, had coalesced into a group the Aurora dubbed “the Quadroons.” The Clodhoppers from Pennsylvania were managing to achieve what the Quids originally set out to do. They were able to portray the Malcontents as detrimental to democracy.[69]
The Snyderites continued their campaign, distancing themselves from the Quids, by attracting Walter Franklin, who in opposition to the Quids, had rallied to the defense of the journeymen cordwainers.[70]
Their efforts to undermine Duane and Leib were partially successful. Duane was humiliatingly defeated in his bid to become a state senator.[71] Leib retained his seat in the state legislature. The Snyderites needed votes to elect Snyder as governor in 1808, and needed to work around Leib. Beginning in 1807, they began to court the Quids, inviting them back into their fold. As an enticement, they put a stop to the impeachment inquiry of Governor McKean. They insisted however, on their brand of popular politics: that arbitration was necessary in some cases; that any man of talent, however obscure, could attain prominence; and that Pennsylvania’s economy promote equality and social mobility.[72]
In a special coup, the Snyderites were able to attract Quids Tench Coxe and Mathew Carey as followers. Important converts included Alexander Dallas, Charles Jared Ingersoll and Blair McClenachan.[73]
With the alliance of the Quids and the Clodhoppers, the Malcontents no longer dominated the democratic debate. The gubernatorial election of 1808 presented new challenges for the Quids. When the Federalists promoted James Ross as candidate for governor, most Quids did not support him. One notable exception was William McCorkle, editor of the Freeman’s Journal. After the formerly Quid editor defected to the Federalists, Mathew Carey criticized the newspaper in the Snyderite’s newspaper, the Democratic Press. Some Quids favored their own candidate, John Spayd. Most, however, migrated, like Carey, to Snyder’s camp.[74]
Snyder successfully defeated Ross and Spayd in the election of 1808. After 1807, circulation of the Aurora declined rapidly and with it, Duane’s influence. Binns gained the advantage from Synder’s gubernatorial election in 1808. First, he gained the support of Democratic-Republicans outside of Philadelphia. He courted Dallas and invited the Quids into his camp. Soon, he wrested power and influence away from Duane. Binns worked with Snyder’s German supporters in Philadelphia to break the alliance between the Snyderites and the Malcontents. Finally, Binns was able to move into the offices formerly used by Duane and the Aurora.
Duane suffered financial losses and legal troubles. His criticisms of Snyder and McKean caused him to lose lucrative printing contracts with the state. He faced many lawsuits, which put additional strain on his finances.[75]
By 1810, Philadelphia’s Democratic Republicans split into two factions over economic development in the state. The Malcontents called themselves the Old School Democrats. They were wary that rapid industrialization would unfairly sideline low wage artisans and journeymen. Binns, Carey, Coxe and the New School Democrats gained the support from the flourishing trade masters. They were optimistic that a strong banking system, and tariffs would encourage the development of manufacturing.[76]
In 1810 during state elections, the Old School Democrats united their followers for a face-off with the New School Democrats for Philadelphia’s Irish vote.[77] Duane and Binns entered a heated argument during a ward meeting. Cooler heads prevailed, preventing bodily injuries, after Duane attempted to assault Binns with a candlestick.[78]
The Quids had a vision for Pennsylvania’s economy that would enable its citizens to pursue prosperity with self-determination. Tench Coxe and Mathew Carey advocated protective tariffs to encourage manufactures in the Freeman’s Journal, and established the Pennsylvania Society for the Encouragement of Manufactures and the Useful Arts.
Carey, who had first argued for protective tariffs for Irish artisans, renewed his arguments, this time for manufacturers in the United States. He applied his nationalism, nurtured in Ireland, to the United States.[79]
[1] Henry Adams, History of the United States of America during the Administration of Thomas Jefferson, (New York: Literary Classics of the United States, 1986) 126-7.
[2] Adams, History…of the Administration of Thomas Jefferson, 126-7.
[3] Jeffrey L. Pasley, “The Tyranny of Printers” : Newspaper Politics in the Early American Republic, (University of Virginia Press, Charlottesville and London, 2001)291. David A. Wilson, United Irishmen, United States: Immigrant Radicals in the Early Republic (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998) 62.
[4] Pasley, “Tyranny of Printers,” 292, Wilson, United Irishmen, 62.
[5] Andrew Shankman, “Malcontents and Tertium Quids: The Battle to Define Democracy in Jeffersonian Philadelphia, “ Journal of the Early Republic V. 19 1 (Spring, 1999) 43.
[6] Jeffrey Pasley, Tyranny of Printers 180.
[7] Wilson, United Irishmen, 63.
[8] Andrew Shankman, Crucible of American Democracy: The Struggle to Fuse Egalitariasm & Capitalism in Jeffersonian Pennsylvania, (University of Kansas Press, Lawrence, Kansas, 2004)74-6, 80-1.
[9] Andrew Shankman, “Malcontents and Tertium Quids” 47-50; Shankman, Crucible of Democracy, 108-110, 115.
[10] Shankman, “Malcontents and Tertium Quids,” 50.
[11] Shankman, Crucible of American Democracy, 60.
[12] Wilson, United Irishmen, 63
[13] Shankman, Crucible of American Democracy, 96-7
[14] Wilson, United Irishmen, 63.
[15] Shankman, Crucible of American Democracy, 102, Pasley, Tyranny of Printers, 305.
[16] Shankman, Crucible of American Democracy, 90.
[17] Wilson, United Irishmen, 27.
[18] Shankman, Crucible of American Democracy, 90.
[19] Wilson, United Irishmen, 72.
[20] Wilson, United Irishmen, 73.
[21] Edward C. Carter II, “The Birth of a Political Economist: Mathew Carey and the Re-charter Fight of 1810-11,” Pennsylvania History V. 33 N. 3 (July, 1966) 278.
[22] Shankman, Crucible of Democracy, 99.
[23] Shankman, Crucible of Democracy, 84.
[24] Shankman, “Malcontents and Tertium Quids” 51-2.
[25] Pasley, Tyranny of Printers, 272-3.
[26] Pasley, Tyranny of Printers, 119.
[27] Shankman, Crucible of Democracy, 84-5.
[28] Alexander Addison, quoted in Pasley, Tyranny of Printers, 119
[29] Shankman, Crucible of Democracy, 85.
[30] Shankman, Crucible of Democracy, 94, 100-1, Wilson, United Irishmen, 63
[31] Shankman, Crucible of Democracy, 127-8.
[32] Shankman, Crucible of Democracy, 130.
[33] Shankman, Crucible of Democracy, 94.
[34] Shankman, Crucible of Democracy, 100-1.
[35] Shankman, Crucible of Democracy, 101, Pasley, Tyranny of Printers, 302.
[36] Pasley, Tyranny of Printers, 302.
[37] Shankman, Crucible of Democracy, 130-1.
[38] Shankman, Crucible of Democracy, 130-1.
[39] Pasley, Tyranny of Printers, 309.
[40] Shankman, Crucible of Democracy, 132-3.Pasley, Tyranny of Printers, 309.
[41] Pasley, Tyranny of Printers, 309.
[42] Pasley, Tyranny of Printers, 309
[43] Shankman, Crucible of Democracy, 133.
[44] Shankman, Crucible of Democracy, 133.
[45] Pasley, Tyranny of Printers, 310.
[46] Shankman, Crucible of Democracy, 143.
[47] Shankman, Crucible of Democracy, 147.
[48] Pasley, Tyranny of Printers, 310.
[49] Pasley, Tyranny of Printers, 310.
[50] Shankman, Crucible of Democracy, 153-5.
[51] Shankman, Crucible of Democracy, 159-60, Pasley, Tyranny of Printers, 312, Wilson, United Irishmen, 64.
[52] Shankman, Crucible of Democracy, 160.
[53] Shankman, Crucible of Democracy, 161.
[54] Shankman, Crucible of Democracy, 163.
[55] Shankman, Crucible of American Democracy, 162.
[56] Shankman, Crucible of American Democracy, 164-5.
[57] Shankman, Crucible of American Democracy, 164-5
[58] Shankman, Crucible of American Democracy, 167, 171.
[59] Shankman, Crucible of American Democracy, 173-4.
[60] Pasley, Tyranny of Printers, 314.
[61] Wilson, United Irishmen, 73.
[62] Wilson, United Irishmen, 73-4..
[63] Shankman, Crucible of American Democracy, 174.
[64] Shankman, Crucible of American Democracy, 175.
[65] Shankman, Crucible of American Democracy, 176.
[66] Shankman, Crucible of American Democracy, 176.
[67] Shankman, Crucible of American Democracy, 177.
[68] Shankman, Crucible of American Democracy, 178.
[69] Shankman, Crucible of American Democracy, 178.
[70] Shankman, Crucible of American Democracy, 179.
[71] Pasley, Tyranny of Printers, 313.
[72] Shankman, Crucible of American Democracy, 180-181.
[73] Shankman, Crucible of American Democracy, 186-7, Pasley, Tyranny of Printers, 315.
[74] Shankman, Crucible of American Democracy, 185.
[75] Pasley, Tyranny of Printers, 316.
[76] Pasley, Tyranny of Printers, 315-6.
[77] Wilson, United Irishmen, 74.
[78] Wilson, United Irishmen, 74.
[79] Wilson, United Irishmen, 82.