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NEW PLOTTINCtS INT AID OF THE REBEL DOCTRTNE OP 
 STATE SOVEREIGNTY. 
 
 MR. JAY'S SECOND LETTER 
 
 ON 
 
 DAWSON'S INTRODUCTION TO THE FEDERALIST. 
 
 Exposing its Falsification of the; History of t:ie Constitution ; its 
 
 Libels on DUANE, LIVINGSTON, JAY and HAMILTON ; and 
 
 its relation to recent efforts by Traitors at home, and 
 
 Foes abroad, to maintain the Rebel Doctrine of State 
 
 Sovereignty, for the Subversion of the Unity of 
 
 the Republic and the Supreme Sovereignty of 
 
 the American People. 
 
 " The bantling— I had liked to have said — Monster." 
 
 Washington to Jay on Mate Sovereignty. 
 
 " If any man attempts to haul down the National Flag, 
 Mioot him on the spot." — Dix. 
 
 N K \V YORK: 
 
 AMERICAN NEWS COMPANY, 121 NASSAU STREET. 
 
 LONDON : 
 
 TRUBNER & COMPANY, 60 PATERNOSTER ROW. 
 1864. 
 
.- *i 
 
 Washington to Madison*, 1787 : 
 
 " * * Thirteen Sovereignties pulling against each other and all 
 tu^ins? at the Federal head, will soon brine: ruin on the whole." 
 
 Franklin Pierce to Jefferson Davis, Jan. 6, 1860: 
 
 (Quoted in the Boiton Journal ) 
 
 " * The fighting will not be along Mason and Dixon's line 
 
 merely. It will be within our borders — in our own streets," &c. 
 
 Vallandigham to Col. D. D. Inshall, of the 8ih Alabama Volunteers, 1863 : 
 (Quoted in the Boston Journal.) 
 
 " ■ * * You have but to persevere, and the victory will easily 
 be yours. You must strike home. * * You can have your own terms by 
 giving battle on your enemies' soil." 
 
 * / 
 
NEW PLOTTINGS IN AID OF THE REBEL DOCTRINE OP 
 STATE SOVEREIGNTY. 
 
 MR. JAY'S SECOND LETTER 
 
 DAWSON'S INTRODUCTION 
 
 THE FEDERALIST. 
 
 To the Editors of the Evening Post. 
 
 Sirs, — When in February I wrote my first letter on Mr. Daw- 
 son's edition of the Federalist^ I had been chiefly struck with 
 the instances to which I called attention, of the singular misap- 
 preciation exhibited, in the " Introduction," of the character of 
 the work, its extraordinary misrepresentation of the course pur- 
 sued by the friends of the Constitution, and its inexplicable 
 violation of historic truth in regard to the most familiar incidents 
 in the life of my grandfather. 
 
 In the face of the fact apparent to every student of American 
 history, and which is thus stated by John Adams, " Mr. Jay 
 had as much influence in the preparatory measures for digesting 
 the Constitution and in obtaining its adoption as any man in the 
 nation," a fact which has been eloquently dwelt upon by Mr. 
 "Webster in his well known letter to the Honorable James A. 
 Hamilton and other citizens of Westchester county, the declara- 
 tion of Mr. Dawson that Jay found in the Constitution " little 
 that he could commend, and nothing for which he could labor," 
 seemed to me to exhibit a very remarkable amount either of 
 ignorance or of malice. 
 
 A more careful reading of the " Introduction," the tone of Mr. 
 
Dawson's reply printed in the Evening Post, and facts that have 
 since come to my knowledge of his association with certain 
 writers in the interest of the Rebellion, convince me that it 
 would be unjust to attribute Mr. Dawson's errors purely to ignor- 
 ance, or his assaults upon Jay simply to personal malice ; and I 
 propose to consider the bearing of his Introduction upon a wide 
 spread attempt now being made to mystify and demoralize the 
 American people in regard to the American Constitution : to 
 convince them, if possible, that they do not constitute a nation : 
 and to pursuade them that their only safety consists in dissolv- 
 ing the Union, and recognizing the individual sovereignty of 
 each separate State. 
 
 The questions involved in the examination, relate to the con- 
 stitutional history of the country, and in their bearing upon the 
 issues of the pending war, concern the gravest interests of the 
 American people. In noticing, therefore, some parts of Mr. 
 Dawson's letter, I shall not reply to the gross personalities which 
 he has introduced, seemingly with no other intent than to divert 
 attention from the real issue. If he has misrepresented the facts 
 of history, as I shall prove that he lias done, he cannot justify 
 those misrepresentations by perverting the facts of the last de- 
 cade : nor can he, by his abuse and slanders of the living, atone 
 for his libels on the dead. 
 
 MR. I)AWSON ? S PLEDGES IN ASKING ASSISTANCE. 
 
 Before proceeding to expose the character and aim . of Mr- 
 Dawson's introduction, it may be proper for me to explain how 
 I was induced to countenance, at his hands, an edition of the 
 F, ,h ralist. Having known him some ten years since as an active 
 member of an Anti-Slavery League, my intercourse with him had 
 been interrupted by causes to which it is unnecessary to refer 
 until, on the 17th of February, 1S02, he wrote to me that he had 
 undertaken to carry an edition of the Federalist through the 
 press, and asked my assistance. He said : 
 
 " I desire to make such a work as will satisfy all who may 
 " examine it." And he closed his letter with this assurance : 
 
 " In making this request, I beg to assure you that I am actu- 
 ated entirely by a desire to render justice to the memory of 
 " your ancestor, as one of the authors of the work in question : 
 
" and I trust that for the same reason, and for the purpose of 
 " this enquiry at least, I may be met in the same spirit, regard- 
 less of past differences on less important subjects." 
 In a second letter, of March 15, 1862, he remarked: 
 " As I have said before, I desire to produce an edition of the 
 " Federalist, which shall stand the test of the most careful ex- 
 " animation, and my plan of operations has been examined and 
 " heartily approved by Hon. James A. Hamilton, — Mr. John 
 " C, his brother, is too sick to be seen — and I have received the 
 " use of every paper which he has in his possession. It will 
 " afford me the greatest satisfaction, if I may also enjoy the hen- 
 " efit of your papers, and your advice on the same subject, that 
 " those who follow us may receive from our hands the uncon- 
 "taminated writings of those who have preceded us." 
 
 To these requests and assurances, after some hesitation, in 
 view of the urgent occasion for an edition of the Federalist, I 
 persuaded myself that I should accede. How Mr. Dawson's 
 pledges have been kept, will appear in the sequel. I promptly 
 wrote to him, as he says, a letter of sixteen pages, with numer- 
 ous references to the works of Washington, Franklin, Adams, 
 Jay, &e., which I thought might assist him to a thorough ap- 
 preciation of the contest in regard to the Constitution ; and I 
 sent him three extracts from letters of Washington and Jay, 
 bearing upon the same general topic, advising him, however, at 
 the same time, as he admits, that I could find nothing among 
 Jay's papers relative to the Federalist. 
 
 Having thus — setting aside personal differences — done what I 
 could to assist Mr. Dawson (with whom I had not spoken for 
 years) to make his edition of the Federalist as complete as pos- 
 sible, and his acknowledgment of my courtesy and my assist- 
 ance having been rendered in a manner calculated to induce the 
 belief that I approved of his conduct as an editor, I feel myself 
 absolutely at liberty to subject his part of the work to " the 
 careful examination " which he invited : and to show, not by 
 vague assertions, but by particular facts, that he has not only 
 broken faith with me in his volunteered pledge to do justice to 
 my ancestor, whom, as I showed in my former letter, he has 
 grossly misrepresented, vilified, and belied; but that he has 
 with questionable faith towards the subscribers to the work, and 
 
towards the American people, converted their reverence for the 
 Federalist to his own purposes, and made this edition, which I 
 was induced to believe would be " uncontaminated," the vehicle for 
 circulating, in an introduction, distorted criticism on the work, 
 monstrous misrepresentations of the truth of history, and unjust 
 aspersions on the fame of the authors ; in short, that this volume, 
 so eagerly subscribed for by loyal citizens, as an honest edition 
 of the Federalist, is welcomed by apologists of secession as coming 
 from a sympathizer with the London Times in its assaults upon 
 our nationality, and as calculated to strengthen that " monster " 
 doctrine of State Sovereignty which is now striving to overthrow 
 our Constitution. 
 
 NORTHERN CONSPIRACY TO AID THE REBELS. 
 
 The Foening Post has occasionally directed attention to 
 i{ Papers from the Society for the Diffusion of Political Knowl- 
 edge," organized under the auspices of Mr. S. P. B. Morse, and 
 there is reason to believe that a wide-spread conspiracy exists 
 throughout the North, among the sympathizers with the re- 
 bellion, for organizing a State's Eights party, for the subversion 
 of the American Constitution, and its reconstruction on the 
 basis, not of National, but of State sovereignty. 
 
 It will be remembered that the rebel commissioner from Mis- 
 sissippi to Maryland, in December, 1S60, expressly declared that 
 " their plan was for the Southern States to withdraw from the 
 Union for the present, to allow amendments to the Constitu- 
 tion." And it is well known that the rebels have been recom- 
 mended, by their Northern sympathizers, to continue their 
 resistance, in the hope that the American people might be in- 
 duced to acquiesce in a project of national suicide. In the 
 Senate of New Jersey, a bili has been recently introduced, to 
 punish, with fine and imprisonment, whoever shall enlist free 
 negroes, thus exhibiting the spirit of State sovereignty, and the 
 manner in which the doctrine may be made effective to weaken 
 the National Government, and add strength to the rebellion. A 
 recent Boston paper calls attention to new movements in 
 Massachusetts, of rebel sympathizers, under the name of 
 "Citizen Caucuses," and the use of this term, for the purpose 
 of disloyalty and treason, recalls its employment for similar ob- 
 
jects, during the administration of our first President. It was 
 a favorite designation with that disreputable faction which 
 fomented the rebellion in Pennsylvania, to increase the embar- 
 rassments of Washington, and, if possible, to overthrow the Gov- 
 ernment ; which, in defiance alike of patriotism and decency, 
 encouraged Genet, the Minister of the French Republicans, in 
 his efforts to compromise our neutrality, and his threat to appeal 
 from the President to the people, and which exhibited the extent 
 to which party hostility may be carried, by gravely charging 
 Washington, Hamilton, and Jay, with intent to subvert the 
 Constitution and establish a monarchy. Such were the patriots 
 who, in the excess of their zeal for the good of the people, im- 
 itated the Jacobins of Paris, f.nd substituted " Citizen " for Mr., 
 and " Citess " for Miss. 
 
 The efforts of the faction which is to-day repeating towards 
 the administration of Mr. Lincoln the conduct of its predecessor 
 towards that of Washington, are by no means confined to 
 caucuses. 
 
 Among the elaborate works issued by this modern band of 
 conspirators, who call themselves indifferently, " States' Rights 
 Democrats " and " Federal Republican Citizens," is one upon 
 which I chanced in the " Astor Library," entitled, " Citizen- 
 ship Sovereignty, by J. S. Wright, assisted by Professor J. 
 Holmes Agnew, D. D., Chicago. Published for American 
 Citizens, the true maintainers of State Sovereignty, 1803." 
 The latter of these gentlemen has since been announced as the 
 editor of the Knickerbocker, which in an article of the March 
 number, entitled, " The Issue Between the North and the 
 South," denounces the Declaration of Independence as inspired 
 by " a spurious philosophy." As Mr. Wright and Doctor 
 Agnew cordially recognize Mr. Dawson, as an efficient co- 
 worker with them in their labors for destroying and recon- 
 structing the Constitution, and quote him as almost wholly 
 concurring in their views, it will be useful to glance at the 
 principles and theories, which, according to them, Mr. Dawson 
 has brought to his editorial exposition of the character of the 
 Federalist his elucidation of the history of the Constitution, 
 and the fame and services of its framers and expounders. The 
 work of Messrs. Wright and Agnew — no name of printer or 
 
8 
 
 publisher appears, but the funds are supplied by " a kind patro 
 in "New York," and some in Chicago — seems to be intended as a 
 feeler of the public pulse. Its law, according to the advertisement, 
 is approved of by the Hon. Chas. O'Conor — a statement which, 
 however honestly made, I regard as singularly erroneous and un- 
 just to that eminent jurist, and its authors have been constantly as- 
 sisted by Mr. S. F. B. Morse, to whom they make their acknowl- 
 ments for his "judicious counsel and affectionate interest." Its 
 display of learning is well calculated to impress the uninstructed 
 and careless reader, while its parade of impious piety, its daring 
 familiarity with God's designs, its audacious application of 
 Scriptural texts, its affected jealousy of the honour of " our King 
 Jehovah," and its misplaced invocation " for enlightenment by 
 the Holy Ghost," seem intended to divert the attention of the un- 
 suspecting, from the diabolical character of the plot which is 
 gradually unfolded in the volume, for overthrowing the constitu- 
 tional liberties of our Republic and the National Sovereignty of 
 the American people, and subjecting all loyal citizens to the 
 tender mercies of slavery and secession. The reader is treated 
 with references to the Bible, and Barbeyrac, Bacon and Puf- 
 fendorf, Grotius and Hooker, Sir Walter Raleigh and Sir 
 Thomas Ridley, Ilobbes and Harrington, Cumberland and 
 Clark, Sherlock and Selden, Tower and Milton, Filmer and 
 Locke, Burlamaqui and Montesquieu, Ferguson and Rutherford, 
 Vattel and Ward, Bentham and Wheaton, Webster and Kent, 
 Martens and Heineccius, Foucher and Lieber, Manning and 
 De Tocqueville, Gillies and Bynkershoeck, Wolfe and Rous- 
 seau, Blackstone and Sydney, Manning and Thirlwall, Aristotle, 
 Lord Brougham, Guizot, Lacroit, and ]STecker. He is cau- 
 tiously advised of the unfairness of Kent, the misconceptions of 
 Story, the erroneous theories of Hamilton and Jefferson, the 
 ignorance of John Adams of the ABC of the Constitution, 
 the errors of Madison, the confusion of principles exhibited by 
 the views of Marshall, Rawle, Wheaton, Dane, Bradford, 
 Web-ter, Duer, Lincoln, Everett, Curtis, and Motley, and is 
 taught that on important points, the Governmental teachings 
 of Wheaton, Kent, and Story, have the same tendency with 
 those of Rosseau, Tom Paine, and the French school of Infi- 
 delity (page 49). Amid this condemnation of the publicists of 
 
9 
 
 America, the teachings of Calhoun are eulogized ; the oppor- 
 tnness is welcomed of " Sectional Controversy," a hook by 
 Wm. Chaunccy Fowler, LL. D., published by Scribner, New 
 York, advocating the right of secession, and warm praise is 
 bestowed on Bishop Hopkins' " valuable work, the American 
 Citizen.' 1 '' The reader is next taught that a Sovereign State 
 should be unaccountable to all else but Deity : (p. 48), and that 
 it was ignorance of Governmental principles which led the North, 
 almost to a man, to deny the right of secession. 
 
 Among the wrongs of the South, is included by the authors, 
 c' the infamous deception as to supplying Forts Sumpter and 
 " Pickens, * *' * to say nothing of previous wrongs, 
 which are greater than even the South has known !" (51.) 
 
 The only remedy for secession is represented to be a " re- 
 newal of the league," and " every slave stolen or absconded, 
 and all losses or injuries of every description to be paid for." 
 " The South" (says the author), " can never with honour consider 
 " the question of re-union, except on the Federal basis," * :: " * * 
 " and the alternative being war or consolidation, which must 
 " bring monarchy, I hope" (he adds), "with all my heart, the 
 " South will adhere to its course, though the war should last 
 <' fifty years," (p. 59). 
 
 These States' Rights Democrats, with a marvellous assurance, 
 think this a fitting time to enlarge upon the advantages which 
 the people of the North have derived from the South giving to 
 the Federal service their "genuine aristocrats," whose superior- 
 ity to the better classes at the North is warmly insisted upon. 
 (Page 151.) 
 
 "If" (say these model democrats! — and it is hard to say 
 whether the sham aristocracy of the Southern slave-masters or 
 the sham democracy of their Northern serfs is the most 
 despicable,) " we cannot have and perpetuate a high grade 
 " of aristocracy from which our rulers shall be almost uniformly 
 " elected, we can never sustain free Government. Revolu- 
 " tions and anarchy must be our fate, till we find relief in Des- 
 " potism, and then fortunate shall we be, if, by establishing an 
 ' hereditary Aristocracy, with all its burthens, we shall reach 
 '' as free a condition as Britons enjoy." (P. 150.) " Let the 
 " nobility of Britain understand that they have in us, earnest 
 
10 
 
 1 coadjutors to maintain Aristocracy" (153) ; and, as if to show 
 the sincerity of this assurance, we have, on page 159, a sentence 
 almost as startling in its sentiments as in its grammatical con- 
 struction : 
 
 " Had George III. only been as good a Tory as were our 
 " Fathers, (sic) the noble fellow, for he was a splendid monarch, 
 " would never have endured the mortification of acknowledging 
 " the independence of these States." 
 
 The reader, after duly digesting this new fact in American 
 History, will remember that our Constitution, which Mr. 
 Dawson characterizes as " the devoted instrument," forbids the 
 granting of patents of nobility ; there is in this prohibition a 
 real grievance, which loudly demands the reconstruction of the 
 Constitution, to secure to us " as free a condition" as is enjoyed 
 by Britons. 
 
 The author proves, to his own satisfaction, that the Confede- 
 rate States " have nobly sustained themselves," and are better 
 able to-day to continue the contest than when it was begun, and 
 asks : " Should not such a power be recognized by sister nations 
 "as having an existence" (p. 1G3)? and assures Britain that 
 " thousands of us in the North will rejoice" if she will lead 
 Europe in thus maintaining States' Bights. The writer might 
 here, with great propriety, have eulogized the democratic gen* 
 tlemen of New York who secretly approached Lord Lyons ana 
 besought him to secure the intervention of the British Govern- 
 ment in our domestic affairs, an act of infamy on the part of 
 American citizens which should never be forgiven nor forgotten. 
 
 Mr. Wright expresses displeasure at the timely and able letter 
 of Mr. Motley to the London Tunes, that ally of secession, 
 vindicating our nationality: but declares that "Mr. Henry B. 
 " Dawson has a rod in pickle that will be sufficient to whip him 
 " (Mr. Motley) into the traces." (P. 187.) 
 
 The reader is now deemed prepared for the development of 
 the^lot; a coming struggle in the North on the question of 
 State Sovereignty is predicted as at hand, and we are told that 
 " the struggle in the days of Adams and Jefferson was nothing 
 " to what this will be." (P. 192.) 
 
11 
 
 A page or two further, and the infernal scheme is hinted at, 
 rather than disclosed, by which these pious States-rights gentle- 
 men think to accomplish the destruction of our nationality, and 
 the overthrow of the sovereignty of the people : 
 
 "Yet will it not be the most impossible of circumstances, if 
 " the Federal republican citizens of the North should be joined 
 " with the armies of the South, to re-establish the Federal insti- 
 " tutions of our Fathers against the efforts of consolidists and 
 " abolitionists. May God save us from such a horrid catas- 
 " trophe, yet, if it must come, in order to save our institutions, 
 "Amen!" 
 
 This" Christian resignation to the banding together of North- 
 ern renegades'and Southern traitors, to desolate the homes of all 
 who cling to the American Constitution and the American Flag, 
 is illustrated by~an impious application of the text, as a warning 
 to those who are disposed to resist the traitors, " "Woe unto him 
 who striveth with his Maker." 
 
 Similar hints begin to abound in the secession newspapers of 
 the North. The Detroit Free Press of the 17th March, 1864, 
 in a leader headed "Is a Revolution Imminent? " threatens the 
 Government that unless it yields to their demands, " a revolu- 
 tion will come sweeping over the country with the besom of 
 destruction." 
 
 The writer again refers to the London Times, the demolition 
 ot whose arguments in favor of secession he is not disposed to 
 forgive, and says, once more (p. 197) : " Mr. Dawson will soon 
 publish a reply to Mr. Motley's letter to the London Times." 
 Then comes, on page 197 of Mr. Wright's volume, a passage of 
 great signiiicance in illustrating Mr. Dawson's charges of fraud- 
 ulent conduct on the part of Hamilton and his associates, in the 
 Introduction to the Federalist : 
 
 " It has been supposed that prior to the adoption of the 
 present Constitution we were almost in anarchy; to use the 
 words of the elegant Mr. Motlej-, ' in chaos.' Mr. Dawson will 
 soon publish a reply to Mr. Motely's famous letter to the Lon- 
 don Times, to which the reader's attention is earnestly bespoken, 
 wherein he demonstrates our immense prosperity at that time, 
 
12 
 
 and beyond doubt it could have been said of us as Moses said of 
 the Hebrews. But Jeshuran waxed fat," &c. Although an- 
 nounced by prospectus nearly two years ago, the world has not 
 yet been favored with this wonderful letter of Mr. Dawson, 
 which has so delighted the hearts of the Chicago secessionists, 
 and which is to demonstrate " our immense prosperity " at the 
 most critical and gloomy period of our history. 
 
 I will add but one more extract from Mr. Wright's volume. 
 The opening clause of the Constitution, " We the people," is a 
 clause detested by these " Federal Republican citizens." It un- 
 mistakeably recognizes the nationality, the sovereignty of the 
 American people, which the foes of our country at home and 
 abroad are resolved, if possible, to destroy. The significance of 
 those words was not overlooked when the Constitution was 
 adoped. Patrick Henry said, in the Yirginia Convention, 
 " Have they said, ' We the States?' Have they made a proposal 
 " of a compact between the States % If they had, this would be 
 " a Confederation. It is otherwise, most clearly, a consolidated 
 " Government. The question turns, sir, on that poor little 
 " thing, the expression, 'We the People,' instead 'of the States 
 " of America.' " 
 
 Mr. Wright thinks that the founders of the Constitution 
 should have said, " We the Ptoplcs^ (a word, I believe, hardly 
 used with us until anglicized by Kossuth,) and he speaks in his 
 book not of the American people, but of " these A-merican 
 Peoples." 
 
 At its close, amid Scriptural texts and pious ejaculations that 
 besprinkle the page like a sermon, occurs this objurgation : 
 
 " The very first three words, " We the People," of that in- 
 " strument, drawn without a public invocation of Divine wis- 
 " dom, with no recognition of the Sovereign of the Universe, 
 " have been the prime, almost the sole cause of leading these 
 " peoples astray and into civil war. * * * Accursed be the 
 " instrument, no matter what loved and honored names are at- 
 " tached to it, that thus dishonors the Monarch of all Peoples. 
 " Tear it to shreds, trample it in the dust, damn it to evcrlast- 
 " ing infamy," &c &c. P. 198. 
 
13 
 
 The volume from which these extracts are taken is entitled 
 <{ Introductory Compend," and it is to be followed by a work to 
 be entitled " Our Federal Union — State Rights and "Wrongs," 
 in five volumns, at $2 50 each, and it is announced that Dr. 
 Agnew is to issue, with appropriate notes from the " Republican 
 Stand-Point," translations of Aristotle, Grotius, and Puffendorf. 
 
 MR. DAWSON'S CONNECTION WITH TOESE CONSriEATOES, AND THE 
 PART ASSUMED BY HIM. 
 
 But the author, and the work, upon which Mr. Wright and 
 Dr. Agnew seem chiefly to rely for important aid in their scheme 
 against the Constitution, which they would tear to shreds, 
 trample in the dust, and damn to eternal infamy, is Mr. Henry 
 B. Dawson, and his edition of the Federalist. They evidently 
 look to him as a leader, and quote him as an authority. In the 
 ■" Explanatory," p. iv., they say : 
 
 " Many of the ideas in the compend and also in the work will 
 u be so novel to many readers, that the writer deems it suitable 
 * l also to remark that they are almost wholly concurred in, both 
 " as to Governmental principles, and as to historic facts, by 
 " Mr. Henry B. Dawson, who being in a similar line of research, 
 " we have frequently had occasion to compare notes. The 
 " chief point of difference between us is, that he considers the 
 
 " WORD ' NATION ' SHOULD NEVER BE USED IN CONNECTION WITH THE 
 
 " United States, each State being the only ' natton ;' whereas 
 " it appears to the writer that with clear conceptions, that each 
 " State is the real nation, the United States may properly be 
 " called a ' nation ' of nations. Mr. Dawson's edition of the 
 " Federalist has been alluded to, and his valuable notes will he 
 "found coincident with the views herein taken, and will be fol- 
 lowed with (sic) the publication of other debates connected 
 " with the adoption of our Constitution, most opportune, and 
 ■" furnishing important information of which few have knowl- 
 " edge. * * * 
 
 " His extensive historical explorations convinced him, years 
 " ago, that we wer» all wrong about the theory of our Govern- 
 *< ment." 
 
 A note, with a statement about his views on slavery, in which 
 
14 
 
 it says, "Mr. Dawson very properly desires to have it added r 
 &c," intimates that the statements contained in the text, had 
 been approved by him with that addition / and with the new 
 light thus thrown upon Mr. Dawson's theoretic views, the facility 
 with which he bends to them the most stubborn facts of history, 
 and the plan of action in which he is co-operating, we recur once 
 more to his Introduction to the Federalist : prepared to under- 
 stand aright the part assumed by him in the scheme for denation- 
 alizing the American people by preparing their minds to discard 
 the American Constitution, and to demand a convention of 
 delegates from the States to inaugurate again a simple con- 
 federacy or league, from which each State, in the exercise of its 
 separate sovereignty, may secede at pleasure. 
 
 It is to be noted that the authors of " Citizenship Sovereignty n 
 profess to be entirely confident of success, although after " a 
 tremendous conflict." How widely ramified is their organize, 
 tion is unknown, but they say (page -± of " Explanatory ") : 
 " The views taken by Mr. Dawson as to the nature of our exist- 
 "ing Government, and which are herein also presented, are 
 " surely to be adopted by ninety-nine hundredths in the North," 
 and they speak as though it were a certain thing, of " the 
 changes that must be made in the new Union." 
 
 Among the first steps which ingenious plotters for the over- 
 throw of our Constitution by effecting a revolution in public 
 sentiment in favor of the confederate form of Government, which 
 was discarded in 1789, would be : 
 
 First, to undermine the confidence of the people in the 
 statesmen who- exposed the defects of the confederation, and 
 recommended the Constitution. 
 
 Secondly, To induce the belief that the evils under which the 
 country then laboured, and which led to the relinquishment of the 
 articles of confederation, and the adoption of the present Govern- 
 ment, did not naturally result from any defects of the con- 
 federacy, but from extrinsic causi s, and, 
 
 Thirdly, To show that the people had been induced to accede 
 to the new Constitution on false pretences and by political 
 trickery. 
 
15 
 
 The publication of the Federalist with, an Historical Intro- 
 duction, has afforded an opportunity which lias not been ne- 
 glected, for endeavoring to indoctrinate the American public 
 upon these three points, with the assumed impartiality of an 
 editor, and the determined recklessness of a partizan. 
 
 The first point — the attempt to impair the confidence of the 
 people in the heroes and statesmen who laid the foundation of 
 our country's greatness — was one that no native-born American 
 could be expected to undertake. Amid all the divisions and 
 rancour of American parties, there is one ground on which our 
 countrymen are accustomed to meet in harmony, one sentiment 
 that they hold in common. From infancy they are^ taught to 
 rejoice in their priceless heritage as citizens of one Republic, and 
 on each recurrence of our national birthday they meet to cele- 
 brate in unison, the brave deeds and virtues of their fathers, and 
 teach their children to do reverent homage to the great dead of 
 our "Revolution. 
 
 Not even a foreigner who in the least appreciated the historic 
 grandeur that belongs to the infancy of our Republic, the hero- 
 ism that in the cause of Constitutional freedom defied, in the field, 
 the armies of Britain, and the statesmanship which commanded 
 the highest eulogium from the lips of Chatham, could descend 
 to the low office of violating the truth of History, in order to 
 revile and cover with odium their cherished fame. Easy as it 
 is to pervert facts and misrepresent opinions, to rake over the 
 newspapers and correspondence of the Revolution, and hunt up 
 and dig out the exploded slanders of the last century, which 
 have been buried so deep that their unpleasant effluvium has 
 hardly polluted our atmosphere for generations : easy as it is to 
 •disinter these decayed libels, and to attempt to re-animate them 
 with the breath of modern secession, and present them to the 
 world as veritable facts of history, it is a task from which any 
 man whose ancestors had fought in that struggle on the side of 
 liberty, or who had himself drawn his first breath in the Ameri- 
 can Republic, would naturally have shrunk. 
 
 This was the t'-ik which, in the scheme disclosed by the 
 *' Explanatory " of the Chicago volume, for demoralizing the 
 American people in regard to their national Constitution, with a 
 view to aiding the Rebellion, was assigned to or voluntarily as- 
 
16 
 
 sumed by Mr. Henry B. Dawson. His fitness for the work had 
 already been proven beyond a question by the reckless audacity 
 of his foul attack upon the fair fame of General Israel Putnam. 
 
 HIS UNPROVEN CHARGES AGAINST PUTNAM. 
 
 With none of those advantages of education which the country 
 that he assisted to create has since bestowed upon his calumnia- 
 tor, with few of the accomplishments or characteristics which are 
 usually associated with military greatness, and in despite of the 
 temporary prejudices aroused against him by mishaps for which 
 it afterwards appeared he was not responsible, General Putnam 
 is yet one of the most popular among the heroes of the Revolu- 
 tion. By the force of his own talents and energy he raised him- 
 self from the position of a farmer to the station of the first 
 Major-General in the army of the United States, standing in rank, 
 according to his biographer, second only to Washington himself. 
 Brave, humane, and devoted to the cause of his country, these 
 manly virtues were combined with an illiterateness that seemed 
 to identify him with the masses, and his fearlessness and patriot, 
 ism have been handed down as household words : while the stories 
 of his entering the wolf's den as a boy, and of his dashing down 
 the heights of Horseneck where the British cavalry feared to 
 follow, are cherished legends with the American schoolboy ; and 
 to-day the farmers of New York designate the county that bears 
 his name by the title that was familiarly and affectionately given 
 him of " Old Put." 
 
 In a small quarto volume, entitled " Gleanings from the Har- 
 vest Field of American History, Part VI., by Henry B. Daw- 
 son," printed at Morrisania, 1ST. Y., for private circulation, in 
 1SG0, occurs, in a note on page 1G5, the following passage, in- 
 tended, by a stroke of the pen, to brand Putnam as a traitor, and 
 thus to convert the gratitude and admiration of the American 
 people into execration and abhorrence: 
 
 "The evidence is before me which clearly proves the compli- 
 '• city of General Putnam with Arnold in the West Point treason, 
 '•' tor which Major Andre was hung and General Arnold became 
 " an exile and an outlaw.*' 
 
17 
 
 Not a scintilla of the alleged evidence is produced nor even 
 referred to, unless it be a New York letter in a London news- 
 paper of December 21st, 177G, which says Putnam "never was 
 a favorer of American independence," and which is entitled to 
 about the same consideration as the letters in our time of " Man- 
 hattan," in the London Standard, or those of Charles Mackay, 
 LL.D., in the London Times, or any other of the romances 
 written to order by the British advocates of secession. 
 
 Washington, who had. during the war, disapproved in part of 
 Putnam's conduct, at the close of the war in 1783, wrote to him 
 in these words : 
 
 " I can assure you that among the many worthy and merito- 
 "rious officers with whom I have had the happiness to be con- 
 " nected in service through the course of this war, and from 
 " whose cheerful assistance and advice I have received much 
 " support and confidence in the various and trying vicissitudes of 
 " a complicated contest, the name of Pctkam is not forgotten : 
 " nor will it be but with that stroke of time which shall obliterate 
 "from my mind the remembrance of all the toils and fatigues 
 "through which we have struggled for the preservation and 
 " establishment of the rights, liberties, and independence of our 
 " country." 
 
 During the Presidential tour, in 1789, General Washington, 
 mindful of his old companion in arms, and of the attachment 
 felt for him by the country, and especially by New England, 
 selected his route through Connecticut, with the intent of honour- 
 ing him with a visit, and Dr. Dwight, who knew Putnam well, 
 has recorded of him that his " uprightness commanded absolute 
 confidence." 
 
 And it is the fame of a Revolutionary General thus trusted by 
 Washington, thus endorsed by his intimate friends, and thus 
 cherished by the American people, that Mr. Dawson has pro- 
 posed to blot with treason and infamy, upon the unsupported 
 word of a hostile Englishman, and the slanderous insinuation of 
 a foot-note. 
 
 It must be admitted that Mr. Dawson, the champion of the 
 London Times, in its attacks upon our nationality, and now at 
 once the editor of the Federalists and the friend of those who 
 
IS 
 
 are striving to destroy the constitution and give us in its place a 
 compound of Southern secession and British aristocracy, lias 
 little reason to feel strong affection for the memory of the Gen- 
 eral who once sent so unpleasant an answer to Sir Henry Clin- 
 ton, the representative of that " noble fellow, and splendid 
 monarch, George III." 
 
 Lieutenant Palmer, an officer in His Majesty's service, had 
 been arrested within our lines, and Sir Henry demanded his re- 
 lease. Putnam replied in language not to be mistaken, that 
 Palmer " was taken as a spy, lurking in our lines, he has been 
 tried as a spy, condemned as a spy, and shall be executed as a 
 spy," and, an afternoon postscript to the note, curtly added, 
 " he is hanged." 
 
 But even admitting that Mr. Dawson, in view of the awkward 
 exposure by Mr. Wright of his desire to strengthen the London 
 Times in its malignant assaults upon our nationality, may be ex- 
 cused for not entertaining a warm sympathy for an officer who 
 dealt thus summarily with an English spy who falsely assumed to 
 be a loyal American, it must still be admitted that his effort to 
 overthrow the fame of Putnam by his naked ipse dixit, is as fine 
 an exhibition of British assurance, although not nearly so amus- 
 ing, as any that Bourcicault has pictured fur the stage, or that 
 the American people have yet been favoured with in real life. 
 
 Where sleeps the ample proof, alleged by Mr. Dawson to be 
 in his possession, that Putnam was the accomplice of Arnold ? 
 Why is it not demanded by the Historical Societies ol Massachu- 
 setts, Connecticut, or Vermont, or do our Historical Societies 
 think that they have nothing to do with the memories of Ameri- 
 can Statesmen, beyond furnishing facilities for British calum- 
 niators to distort their history and blacken their fame? 
 
 There is no true patriot of the Revolution who may not be 
 condemned as guilly of untold vices, if party libels and newspa- 
 per scurrility are received as proof. Washington was denounced 
 in and out of Congress as " destitute of all merits as a soldier, or 
 a statesman," and accused persistently of robbing the treasury — 
 while Jay was damned as a traitor who had sold his country, 
 and Hamilton as a monarchist who was resolved to overthrow 
 the Constitution and introduce a king. 
 
 In addition to the lies circulated through the press, no small 
 
19 
 
 amount of scurrility was perpetrated in more ephemeral ways ; 
 and I was told tlio other day, at Boston, by the venerable 
 James Savage, President of the Massachusetts Historical So- 
 ciety, of one rather remarkable anathema, which will be an 
 invaluable addition to the stock which Mr. Dawson, according 
 to his announcement, has accumulated with a view to proving 
 Jay to be unworthy of the fame accorded to him. 
 
 It was during the height of the excitement aroused by the 
 Democrats, who, under the lead of French Jacobins, raved 
 against the Jay Treaty, that Mr. Savage saw these words chalked 
 in large letters on the board fence around the enclosure of Mr. 
 Treat Paine : "Damn John Jay ! damn every one that won't 
 damn John Jay ! ! damn every one that won't put lights in his 
 windows and sit up all night damning John Jay ! ! I" 
 
 If upon this curious reminiscence Mr. Dawson should base an 
 assertion that Mr. Treat Paine had done the chalking with his 
 OAvn hand, that it embodied a solemn order of the City Council, 
 and that all Boston sat up that night with lights in their win- 
 dows damning Jay, and all who refused to damn him, the story 
 of Mr. Savage would probably afford him fifty times stronger 
 proof for his new version of it, than he can adduce for his most 
 insolent declaration that General Putnam was a traitor. 
 
 By the same rule, some Dawson of the next century, may de- 
 clare that he has the proof before him that Mr. Seward was " an 
 habitual drunkard :" that Gen. Butler was a veritable " beast:" 
 that Gen. McClellan had a secret interview with Gen. Lee the 
 night after the battle of Antietam : and that Lincoln, sometimes 
 supposed to be notably honest, truthful and patriotic, was in fact 
 " a liar — a thief— a robber — a brigand — a pirate — a perjurer — a 
 traitor — a coward — a hypocrite— a cheat — a trickster — a mur- 
 derer — a tyrant — an unmitigated ecoundrel, and an infernal 
 fool." For this character of Mr. Lincoln, posterity may have 
 the personal assurance of the editor of the Selimgrove, Pa., 
 Times, a democratic sheet that swears by "Woodward, Vallandig- 
 hani and McClellan. 
 
 Mr. Dawson has adopted, as the innocent motto of his auda- 
 cious tract on Putnam, the verse from It nth : " I pray you, let 
 me glean and gather after the reapers among the sheaves." It 
 may be impossible to lix a limit to the license of quotation, but 
 
20 
 
 this is, I believe, the first time that the gentle appeal to Boaz 
 has been cited as a warrant fur playing the part of a scavenger 
 of tory libels on American statesmen, or for robbing of their 
 fame the silent dead of the battle-fields of the Revolution. 
 Nearly four years have elapsed since that dastardly attack upon 
 the patriotism and loyalty of the farmer-soldier of New Eng- 
 land, and although Mr. Dawson declared that ample proofs of 
 Putnam's treachery were before him when he penned the slan- 
 der, he took excellent care not to produce them. He has never 
 since submitted them to the world, and the country may well 
 cherish its ancient confidence in the patriot-general, and rest 
 undisturbed in their assurance that Putnam was loyal, and 
 that the charge of his calumniator is false. 
 
 In view of his treatment of Putnam — which can hardly be 
 characterized in language that a gentleman likes to use — the 
 world will estimate aright the assurance given in Mr. Dawson's 
 reply, that he can produce proofs of the infamous charges he 
 has now brought against the great statesmen of our republic ; 
 for the reception of which, he has converted an introduction 
 which pretends to be historic, into a cess-pool of libels on the 
 authors of the Federalist — libels which, like insects in amber, 
 the Federalist itself is insolently made use of to preserve. 
 
 IIIS INJUSTICE TO CHANCELLOR LIVINGSTON. 
 
 Recurring to that introduction, let . us glance at the portraits 
 he has drawn of the leading friends of the Constitution in New 
 York. One of the most earnest, eloquent, and efficient mem- 
 bers of the State Convention, Chancellor Robert R. Livingston, 
 who had been Secretary for Foreign Affairs, and had been 
 thanked by Congress for his services in that high position, and 
 who was subsequently our minister to France, appointed by 
 Jefferson, is declared to have " evinced in public but little in- 
 terest in the subject" of the Constitution ; and the editor, with 
 the same assurance with which he pronounced Putnam a traitor, 
 accuses Livingston of an " overpowering love of ease," rendering 
 him " dilatory and uncertain ;" and with these unjust slurs upon 
 his character and his course, this illustrious statesman is dis- 
 missed. 
 
 How wickedly truthless in its suggestions is this view of 
 
21 
 
 Livingston's connection with the Constitution, will be seen by 
 contrasting it with a sketch by Webster, in speaking to the citi- 
 zens of New York : 
 
 " * * At the time of the adoption of the Consti- 
 tution he was its firm and able advocate. lie was a member of 
 the State Convention, being one of that list of distinguished and 
 able men who represented this city in that body ; and he threw 
 the whole weight of his talents and influence into the doubtful 
 scale of the Constitution." 
 
 HIS WRONGFUL INSINUATIONS AGAINST DUANE. 
 
 Next is introduced the Honorable James Duane, an alumnus 
 and trustee of Kings, now Columbia, College, and eulogized by 
 an eloquent writer as one of the few faithful among the faith- 
 less. As his biography is still unwritten, I will refer briefly 
 to the leading incidents of his life. Mr. Duane represented 
 New York in the first Continental Congress, heading the list of 
 five deputies; and Duane and Jay are referred to by Lt. Gov. 
 Colden, in his dispatch of the Cth July, 1774, to the Earl of 
 Dartmouth, on these illegal proceedings, as " two eminent law- 
 yers." Duane's course in that Congress was so satisfactory to 
 his constituents that he was re-elected in April, 1775, to the 
 Congress which met in Philadelphia on the 10th May. He was 
 present on that clay, assisted in raising an army, electing Wash- 
 ington commander-in-chief, establishing a post-office, and assum- 
 ing other powers of government. He attended Congress faithfully 
 until 31st May, 177 G, when New York claimed his attendance 
 in the New York Convention, to assist in framing a State Con- 
 stitution, which he subsequently reported, acting meanwhile as 
 an active member of a special committee on the forts in the 
 Highlands, and the Committee of Safety, In 1777, Duane was 
 one of a committee to arrange the Articles of Confederation. 
 In 1778, he was again a member of Congress, at the urgent re. 
 quest of the Governor and his fellow-citizens ; and still again in 
 1779-80. 
 
 In 1781, some slanderous articles, published anonymously in 
 the newspapers were brought to the attention of the Legislature, 
 and that body, on the 27th June, passed a joint resolution ex- 
 
22 
 
 pressing their continued confidence in him, and requesting his- 
 return to Congress. At the same time, Generals McDougal, 
 Schuyler and Scott, Colonel Floyd, Chancellor Livingston, Mr. 
 "Wisner, and Gov. Clinton, who had been his colleagues in Con- 
 gress at different times, came forward in his full vindication. 
 
 At the close of the war, the Common Council of New York 
 City petitioned the Governor to nominate Mr. Duane as Mayor ; 
 " as no one," they said, " is better qualified, so none will be more 
 acceptable to us and our constituents at large than Mr. Duane. 
 Few have sacrificed more or deserve better from their country."' 
 
 As Mayor, in 1785, he welcomed to New York the old Con- 
 gress, and in 17S9 the first Congress under the Constitution, 
 and "Washington as President of the United States. In the 
 Mayor's Court, and as State Senator, he performed valuable ser- 
 vices to the State, and in 1788 he was nominated by Washing- 
 ton District Judge of the Southern District of New York. 
 
 This office he resigned in 179-1, when he declined also the 
 wardenship of Trinity Church, which he had held since 17S1, 
 having been a vestryman some years before the Revolution. 
 Resolutions were passed by the vestry testifying their regard. 
 lie soon removed to Duanesburgh, where, in 1795, Bishop Pro- 
 voost consecrated an Episcopal church built at Mr. Duane's ex- 
 pense ; and in 1796 he died honored and beloved. 
 
 Mr. Dawson takes pains to blacken the memory of Judge 
 Duane by charges and insinuations of sympathy and collusion 
 with the Royal authorities, carefully avoiding, however, specifi- 
 cation of time — a most convenient omission for the more plausi- 
 ble perpetration of this sort of slander — especially if the reader 
 should fail to remember that in the commencement of our Rev- 
 olutionary difficulties there was not the slightest desire for inde- 
 pendence on the part of the colonies, but that they exhibited 
 the loyally to the Royal authorities, which after the Declara- 
 tion of Independence, they transferred to the revolutionary 
 government established by the people. Washington, Jay 
 Duane, and many of those most instrumental in establishing 
 the National independence of the United States, and con- 
 stituting them a nation, previously held honourable places under 
 the Crown or the colonial governments ; and the charge of 
 sympathy or collusion with the Royal authorities, against a 
 
23 
 
 statesman like Duane, made without specification of time, place, 
 ■or circumstances, while it may seem to one forgetful of these 
 facts to have a narrow basis of truth, is in its implication against 
 his patriotism infamously false. 
 
 Botta, in his interesting history of the Revolution, fell into 
 the mistake far more excusable on the part of an Italian, writ- 
 ing so long ago, than it can ever be on the part of later histo- 
 rians, of supposing that " there existed in the Colonies a desire 
 for independence." 
 
 In a letter (13 January, 1S21,) to Geo. A. Otis, of Boston, 
 Jay, in regard to this passage, refers to the explicit professions 
 and assurances of allegiance and loyalty to the Sovereign 
 especially since the accession of William III., which abound in 
 the journals of Colonial Legislatures, and the Congress and Con- 
 ventions, from an early period to the second petition of Congress, 
 in 17T5; and remarks, that if they were factitious and decep- 
 tive, they present to the world an unprecedented instance of 
 long continued, concurrent, and detestable duplicity in the 
 Colonies. He adds, " our country does not deserve this odious 
 and disgusting imputation. During the whole course of my 
 life and until after the second petition of Congress, in 1775, I 
 never did hear any American of any class or description ex 
 press a wish for the independence of the Colonies." 
 
 Dr. Franklin, in language if possible more comprehensive, 
 assured Lord Chatham in August, 1774, that he " never had heard 
 in conversation from any man, drunk or sober, the least expres- 
 sion of a wish for a separation, or a hint that such a thing 
 would be advantageous to America." The letter of Jay to 
 Mr. Otis was submitted by the latter to John Adams and 
 Jefferson, both of whom thoroughly confirmed its statements. 
 Jefferson declared, and his personal and political sentiments 
 add force to his testimony, that before the commencement of hos- 
 tilities, " I never heard a whisper of a disposition to ([separate 
 from Great Britain, and after that, its probability was contem- 
 plated with affliction by all." 
 
 Mr. Gibbs, in the just and philosophic comments with which 
 he introduces his "Memoirs of the Administration of "Washington 
 and Adams," after quoting Burke's remark of the American 
 war, that it was not a Involution, but a Revolution prevented, 
 
Bays, " the course of events made it indeed a war of Indepen- 
 dence, but there was in its tone nothing revolutionary, nothing 
 subversive of the established order of things. Some leaders, 
 more far-seeing than the rest, had predicted the result, but what 
 the people wanted — what they took up arms to get, was not 
 some new privilege — some new liberty, but the security of 
 rights, privileges, and immunities which they had always had." 
 
 On the 6th of July, 1775, Congress published a declaration 
 " setting forth the cause and necessity of their taking up arms," 
 and in this they proclaimed, "we mean not to dissolve that 
 union which has so long and so happily subsisted between us, 
 and which we sincerely wish to see restored." 
 
 On the 8th of July, 1775, two days later, Congress individu- 
 ally signed a petition to the King. This "rather singular 
 measure," in the language of the Kew York Review, " origin- 
 ated in the sagacity and prudence of Jay, who argued, and 
 wisely, that in order to unite the nation in forcible resistance to 
 Britain, it must be satisfied that all possible peaceful remedies 
 were exhausted by the action of Congress. The result evinced 
 his wisdom. Its rejection by the throne was the throwing away 
 of the scabbard." 
 
 The petition, according to Mr. Curtis, in his "History of the 
 Constitution," was refused a hearing in Parliament as emanating 
 from an unlawful assemblage in arms against the Sovereign 
 and the country was thus prepared to accept with an unanimity 
 that would otherwise have been impossible, the decisive action 
 of Congress which culminated in the Declaration of Indepen- 
 dence. "While touching upon the subject of this petition, and 
 Jay's part in it, I may refer incidentallyto the testimony of Mr. 
 Bancroft, who, in his seventh volume, had unwittingly clone in- 
 justice to Jay, by erroneously attributing to him traits which 
 Jay in a familiar letter to an intimate friend written before the 
 Revolution, and before his own character had been developed, 
 had with characteristic modesty attributed to himself. In his 
 eighth volume Mr. Bancroft, while gradually unfolding Jay's 
 career in its close connection with the history of the country 
 recognizes "the firmness and purity of his character," and the 
 profound wisdom of his counsels in securing unanimity in the 
 adoption of a National policy and the recognition of the sov- 
 ereignty of the people. 
 
25 
 
 " The darker the hour, the more he stood ready to cheer — the 
 " greater the danger, the more promptly he stepped forward to 
 " guide. He had insisted on the doubtful measure of a second 
 " petition to the King, with no latent weakness of purpose or 
 " cowardice of heart. * * Joining a scrupulous 
 
 " obedience to his ideas of right with inflexibility of purpose, 
 " he could not admit that the Provisional Congress then in 
 " session had been vested with power to dissolve the connection 
 " with Great Britain, and he therefore held it necessary, first, 
 " to consult the people themselves. For this end, on the 1 1th 
 " of June, the New York Congress, on his motion, called upon 
 " the freeholders and electors of the Colony to confer on the 
 " deputies they were about to choose full power of aclminister- 
 " ing Government, framing a Constitution and deciding the 
 " question of Independence — in this manner the unanimity of 
 " New York was ensured." 
 
 Mr. Dawson completes his calumnies on Duane by clc 
 nouncing him as " an unworthy member of Congress," &c, 
 &c, and the fair fame of this gentleman, so closely identified 
 with the city of New York as the first choice of her citizens 
 for the mayoralty, honoured by Washington, cherished by 
 Columbia College and Trinity Church, and remembered with 
 pride and affection by the people of the State, is without the 
 slightest occasion dragged before the public, to be branded with 
 infamy and dismissed with scorn. 
 
 Then come the two statesmen of New York chiefly identified 
 with the Federalist, and the triumph of the Constitution, to 
 whom a classic orator of Columbia College has thus referred : 
 
 " Before our Revolutionary struggle, while itself scarce 
 "fledged, our college took an eagle's flight and gave to the 
 "nation and its coming contest, I might almost say its sword 
 " and shield, the Marcellus and Fabius of our Rome, Hamilton 
 " and Jay. What, I pray you, were the story of our Itcvolu- 
 " tion without these names." 
 
 HIS MALICIOUS BLUNDERING IN KEGAED TO JAY. 
 
 I have already exposed the untruthfulness of the charges 
 against Jay, which arc made with such blundering ignorance, as 
 
26 
 
 almost to refute themselves, as for instance, when Mr. Dawson 
 declares, that during the contest for the Constitution in New 
 York, Jay was not looked to by the people for counsel or for 
 leadership, but was regarded " by a majority of his fellow, 
 citizens as selfish, impracticable, and aristocratic," when the 
 total New York city vote for members of the Convention was 
 2,833, of which Jay received 2,735, leaving to represent Mr. 
 Dawson's majority, who did not look to Jay for counsel or 
 leadership, the beggarly account of 9S. While on this topic, I 
 may adduce one item of historic information, which I have 
 within a day or two received from Mr. Bancroft, and which 
 comes just in time to place the stamp of error upon one of the 
 reckless assertions of Mr. Dawson, who after representing Jay 
 as lukewarm in his sympathy for the Constitution, says that he 
 was " induced to undertake," the portions of the Federalist 
 written by him, " both of them being subjects which his posi- 
 " tion enabled him to discuss with unusual ability, without 
 " compromising in the least his general political sentiments, 
 " and without obliging him to assent, even by implication, to 
 " any portion of the proposed Constitution." 
 
 JAMES MADISON TO THOMAS JEFFERSON. 
 
 " New York, August 10, 1788. 
 
 " Colonel Carrington tells me that he has sent you the first 
 < c volume of the Federalist, and adds the second by this convey- 
 " ance. I believe I never yet mentioned to you that publication. 
 '' It was undertaken last fall, by Jay, Hamilton and myself. 
 " The proposal came from the two former. The execution was 
 " thrown, by the sickness of Jay, mostly on the two others." 
 
 Mr. Dawson's additional charge, that " some portion of Jay's 
 earlier political action was remembered," at this period to his 
 disadvantage, and had impaired the regard and confidence of 
 his fellow citizens, is also disposed of by that most significent 
 vote, and, indeed, by the concurrent testimony of American 
 historians. On the 16th of May, 1774, he was appointed one 
 of the New York Committee of Fifty, to consult on the measures 
 
27 
 
 proper to be pursued, in consequence of the passage of the 
 Boston port bill: next, one of a sub-committee, which, on the 
 23d of May, reported a letter to Boston, of which copies were 
 sent to Connecticut, Philadelphia, and South Carolina, propos- 
 ing a Congress of Deputies from the Colonies in general. On 
 the 25th of July, he was elected unanimously to the Congress at 
 Philadelphia, and there drafted the address to the people of 
 Great Britain, which Jefferson pronounced the production of 
 the finest pen in America — and which Dr. Sam. Johnson an- 
 swered in his " Taxation No Tyranny." " That address," said 
 the North American Review, " gave to Jay, at once, an ascend- 
 ency which he never afterwards lost." In 1778, elected 
 President of Congress, and the next year appointed Minister 
 to Spain, then a Commissioner to negotiate the Treaty of 
 Peace, and after its conclusion, elected Secretary for Foreign 
 Affairs, while yet abroad, and holding that place, the most 
 important in the Confederacy, until it was superseded by 
 the Constitution, when Washington offered to him the choice 
 of places, and he selected the Supreme Court ; it is difficult to 
 conceive of a more truthless charge than that which, without 
 the slightest regard to facts, has been so blunderingly brought 
 by Mr. Dawson. " The first thing that strikes us in it," said Dr. 
 McVickar, in the New Fork Review, October, 1841, after a 
 after a rapid sketch of Jay's life, " is the unbroken continuity — 
 " the ceaseless succession of honorable confidences throughout 
 " this twenty-eight years' course, reposed in Jay by his country - 
 " men. Prom first to last not one intervening hour, the new 
 " office or new honor always claiming him before the old was 
 " ready to yield him, and oftentimes two or even three incom- 
 " patible calls of his country, contending for his choice ; as, for 
 " instance, in the year 1795, Special Minister to England, Chief 
 " Justice of the Supreme Court, and Governor elect of the State 
 " of New York, all at one and the same moment. This, cer- 
 " tainly, is a singular fact in the history of any country ; but, 
 " above all, in one especially jealous of such monopoly. What 
 " again adds to their wonder, in the popular judgment, though in 
 " ours it helps to explain it, is the total absence in Jay's char- 
 " acter, of all personal ambition. If honours came, they came 
 " unsought, and as often rejected as accepted, and we have his 
 " own direct authority, for asserting that through his whole life 
 
28 
 
 " lie Lad never asked an office, nor solicited a vote ; and jet, as 
 " we have seen, honour and office flowed in upon him in a 
 " stream." 
 
 The American people are too well instructed in their own 
 history to be at all disturbed in their estimate of Jay by the un- 
 supported assertions of a foreigner. Of the insinuations against 
 his patriotism and purity, so audaciously and insolently put 
 forth in Mr. Dawson's letter, where each charge is, if possible, 
 more infamous in its intent than the preceding, I shall take no 
 notice. "Webster's remark that " when the spotless ermine of 
 the judicial robe fell on John Jay it touched nothing less spotless 
 than itself," stands unquestioned by any American author, of 
 any school of politics ; and when it is known that Jay's new 
 assailant is an Englishman, who denies our nationality, and would 
 destroy our Constitution, his libellous critiques on its framers 
 and supporters, after the first flush of indignation at this new 
 instance of British audacity, will arouse no sentiment but con- 
 tempt, with perhaps a slight feeling of annoyance, whenever he 
 may chance to endorse a fact, or to commend a statesman. 
 
 HIS EVIPEACHMEXT OF HAMILTON, AXD HIS FALSIFICATION OF 
 lIISTOFaC TRUTH. 
 
 Of Hamilton, Mr. Dawson, in his introduction, professes to 
 speak with admiration and respect; but his very compliments 
 are indictments. On page 19, he intimates that Hamilton, as a 
 matter of expediency, resolved to employ the press " for the 
 dissemination of sentiments, which he hoped would counteract 
 the arguments 01 his opponents ;" and then an elaborate scheme 
 which Mr. Dawson pretends to unfold for the deceiving and 
 deluding the people of New York into the adoption of the 
 Constitution, he attributes to what lie calls " the tact which 
 formed so prominent a trait in Hamilton's character." But it is 
 quite clear, that if Mr. Dawson's statements are correct, Gen^ 
 Hamilton exhibited, not " tact " in its acceptable sense, but 
 downright knavery, and that Mr. Dawson, while eulogizing his 
 tact, is in fact, impeaching his integrity and his honour. 
 
 Of the Union formed by the present Constitution, Webster said : 
 " It had its origin in the necessities of disordered finance, prostrate 
 commerce, and ruined credit," and in the language of Curtis, in 
 his able work on the Constitution, speaking of our condition 
 
29 
 
 under the confederacy, the Union was " feeble, and trembling on 
 the verge of dissolution," and the Government, utterly inade- 
 quate to the exigencies of a great empire, without funds and 
 without credit, was unequal to the task of preserving the prop- 
 erty and honor, or vindicating the rights of the nation. Disunion 
 and ruin stared the country in the face, and its far-seeing states- 
 men viewed the probable consequences, in case the Constitution 
 should fail to be adopted, with profound anxiety. 
 
 Mr. Dawson, after praising the acuteness and ability of the 
 States' Rights leaders, in opposing the Constitution, and eulo- 
 gizing their " powerfully written essays" against it, and, on the 
 •other hand, describing the Federalist as wanting in precision in 
 the use of technical terms, and disfigured by the misfortune of 
 its authors being hampered by their training under British 
 masters, and their imperfect knowledge of the ancient Republics} 
 and intimating that it was intended to disseminate sentiments in 
 reply to arguments, ventures, with singular audacity, to confront 
 the great facts of history, to deny the reality of the evils from 
 which the country was suffering : to deny that the derangement 
 of the Federal finances was the legitimate result of a radical 
 defect in the articles of confederation : to charge that " the stag- 
 nation of trade," which he represents as " apparent " and not 
 real, was "the necessary consequence of an over supply of goods 
 and of an undue proportion of vendors when compared with the 
 aggregate of the population ■" and to aver that Hamilton, with 
 the view of assisting " both to his projected condemnation of the 
 •existing Federal system, and to his proposed appeal in behalf of 
 the new- Constitution," resolved that the existing evils — that is, 
 the derangement of the Federal finances, and the apparent stag- 
 nation of trade, should be " magnified to such an extent, and 
 presented in such a manner, as to make them appear as the 
 necessary results of a defective form of Government." (P. xx.) 
 
 We will stop for a moment, to examine this all important 
 historical question of the condition of the country when the Con- 
 stitution was adopted, in regard to which Mr. Dawson takes 
 issue with the statesmen of the Revolution, and I believe with 
 every American historian, for it is upon this, that he bases the 
 charge of perfidy and deception against the friends of the Con- 
 stitution, and against Hamilton as their leader. 
 
30 
 
 In Mr. Dawson's letter to Mr. Motley, according to his friend, 
 Mr. Wright, who anticipated from its publication such important 
 advantage to the cause of secession and rebellion, and who be- 
 speaks for it his readers' earnest attention, he — Mr. Dawson — 
 "demonstrates our immense prosperity at that time," and 
 " beyond doubt," says Mr. "Wright, who evidently trusts to Mr. 
 Dawson as to an oracle of truth, " beyond doubt it could have 
 been said of us, as Moses sang of the Hebrews, — But Jeshuran 
 waxed fat and kicked ; thou art waxen fat that has grown thick, 
 thou art covered with fatness." 
 
 In his introduction, Mr. Dawson, with milder phrase, but with 
 equal significance, charges that the apparent stagnation of trade 
 was not owing to any defect in the government of the Confed- 
 eracy ; a: id makes these two assumptions, first, that our national 
 prosperity at that time was so immense, and the land so 
 covered with fatness, that overcome by an excess of prosperity, 
 we kicked liked Jeshuran ; and secondly, that whatever appear- 
 ance there might have been of stagnation of trade — there being 
 no such stagnation in reality, was owing to temporary and local 
 causes. Upon these two assumptions rests his charge, made with 
 some degree of circumvolution, it is true, but still distinctly made 
 and implied, that Hamilton deliberately misrepresented and 
 magnified the derangement of the Federal finances, and the 
 apparent stagnation of trade, so as to make them appear as the 
 legitimate result of a defect of the Articles of Confederation ; and 
 the conclusion naturally follows that Hamilton and his i 
 ciates were a set of rogues, that their opponents were the only 
 true patriots, and that the American people, by the most scan- 
 dalous deception, were swindled into the ratification of the Con- 
 stitution. 
 
 It would be impossible to open the volume of American 
 history, in the years 17SG, '7, and '8, without finding the saddest 
 proofs, multiplying and accumulating, until the most sanguine 
 of the revolutionary statesmen were almost in despair, of evils, 
 calamities, and disorders, and above all of the loss of public 
 faith and rectitude, that were fast humbling in the dust the 
 American people, at the very time when Mr. Dawson would 
 like his readers to believe that they were exulting in the 
 immensity of their prosperity — and in fact kicking from a 
 superfluity of fatness. 
 
31 
 
 It would be hardly the thing to quote in opposition to his 
 grave assertions, the explicit testimony of Hamilton, Madison, 
 and Jay, or any other of the men of the Revolution, of whom, 
 by gentle insinuations, that they were " uncertain " patriots, 
 " unworthy" members, and not entitled to the confidence of the 
 people, he attempts to convey an idea not far removed from that 
 expressed by Mr. Benton, when he said to the constituents of Mr. 
 Petit — " Your Senator is a great liar and a dirty dog :" but as 
 thus far Washington has escaped denunciation at the hands of 
 Mr. Dawson, we will cpiote one or two from the multitude of 
 similar testimonies contained in the private correspondence of 
 the Father of his country, and they will show at the same 
 time, the reasons he had for regarding State sovereignty as a 
 " monster." 
 
 To Knox he wrote, 26 December, 17SG — " I feel, my dear 
 General, infinitely more than I can express to you, for the dis- 
 order which has arisen in these States. Good God ! who besides 
 a Tory could have forseen, or a Briton predicted them ?" 
 
 After reading the account given by Washington, in the next 
 extracts, of the extent of these disorders, the reader will be 
 tempted to ask "who but a Tory could misrepresent, or a 
 Briton deny them ?" 
 
 To Madison he wrote : 
 
 " How melancholy is the reflection, that in so short a time 
 .we should have made such large strides towards fulfilling the 
 prediction of our trans-Atlantic foes, — leave them to themselves, 
 and their government will dissolve. * * Thirteen 
 
 sovereignties pulling against each other, and all tugging at the 
 Federal head, will soon bring ruin on the whole." 
 
 To Knox, ^5th February, 1787, lie wrote : 
 "Our affairs generally seem to be approaching some awful 
 crisis. God only knows what the result will be." 
 
 To Lafayette, 15th August, 1787: 
 
 "The present Government has been found too feeble and in- 
 adequate to give that security which our liberties and property 
 
32 
 
 render absolutely essential, and winch, the fulfillment of public 
 faith loudly requires. 
 
 " Vain is it to look for respect from abroad, or tranquillity at 
 home ; vain is it to murmur at the detention of our Western 
 posts, or complain of the destruction of our commerce ; vain arc 
 all the attempts to remedy the evils complained of by Mr. Demas, 
 to charge the interest due on foreign loans, or satisfy the claims 
 of foreign officers, the neglect of which is a high impeachment 
 of our national character, and is hurtful to the feelings of every 
 well wisher to his country, in and out of it ; vain is it to talk of 
 chastising the Algerines, or doing ourselves justice in any other 
 respect, till the wisdom and force of union can be more concen- 
 trated and better applied." 
 
 "We can understand, after reading this letter, the significance 
 of the language used by the Convention which framed the Con- 
 stitution, in submitting their work to Congress: "In all our 
 deliberations on this subject, we kept steadily in our view that 
 which appears to us the greatest interest of every true American, 
 the consolidation of our Union, in which is involved our pros- 
 perity, felicity, safety, perhaps oar national existence." 
 
 Remembering that Mr. Dawson, according to Mr. "Wright, 
 has discovered that we are " all wrong about the theory of our 
 Government," and " that he considers the word ' nation ' should 
 never be used in connection with the United States, each State 
 being the only nation ;" it is perhaps natural enough that ho 
 should wish, if possible, to discover new facts to support, in 
 some degree, his theory. And as the Dawson theory is opposed 
 to that of Jay, Marshall, Story, "Webster, Curtis and Kent, it is 
 not extraordinary that the Dawson facts adduced to support it, 
 should be plumply contradicted by the emphatic testimony of 
 Washington. 
 
 We return now to Mr. Dawson's introductory sketch and his 
 further notice of the plan of operations concocted by Hamilton, 
 for persuading the people that the Articles of Organization were 
 defective. This " plan of operations," including, as we have seen, 
 according to Mr. Dawson, the perpetration of a fraud on the 
 people by unduly magnifying the apparent public evils, and 
 falsely presenting them as d - ie to one cause, when they were 
 really due to another, if indeed they existed at all, he describes 
 
33 
 
 as " well calculated to produce confusion in the ranks of those 
 <' who opposed the new system, and to shake the confidence 
 «' of its leaders," meaning the anti-constitutionalists ; and it 
 " needed," adds Mr. Dawson, " only a careful elaboration of its 
 " details, and a prompt and energetic execution of its different 
 " parts to insure some degree of success. To secure these 
 " Colonel Hamilton appears to have sought the assistance of 
 " those whose peculiar qualifications adapted them to the dis. 
 " charge of peculiar lines of duty, reserving to himself, however, 
 " not only the general control of the discussion, but the execu. 
 " tion of that portion of it which ajDpears to have been attended 
 " with the greatest difficulties." 
 
 "Whether the parts of this "plan of operations" attended with 
 the greatest difficulties, were those which required the largest 
 skill and audacity in invention and misrepresentation, the 
 greatest coolness in moral perjury, and the widest sconndrelism 
 in deceit, is left to the imagination of the reader; but this 
 according to Mr. Dawson, was the damnable scheme to mystify 
 a nation and deceive a people, into discarding a confederacy 
 suited to their wants, and adopting a constitution inconsistent 
 with their liberties, which Hamilton's " tact " enabled him to 
 inaugurate, and which, as the head manager, he carried into 
 execution, employing Jay and Madison as his subordinates and 
 tools. 
 
 Well may the secessionists of Chicago claim Mr. Dawson as 
 their honored ally, and point to his edition of the Federalist as 
 an important instrument in preparing the people of America to 
 subvert a constitution so fraudulently imposed upon them. 
 
 The temper and object of Mr. Dawson's Introduction may 
 perhaps, in part, be gathered as much from what is omitted as 
 from what is expressed. In the first place, there is no reference 
 in the Introduction to the large influence exerted with the 
 American people in favor of the Constitution, by the fact that 
 it was reported to Congress by Washington, and by that great 
 man warmly recommended for adoption ; nor has Mr. Dawson 
 ventured directly to attack the patriotism of the Father of his 
 County. Such a course would instantly have excited alarm ; 
 but it is attempted to be shown that those whom Washington 
 
34 
 
 loved and trusted were unworthy of confidence, and the views 
 which they held in common with Washington, are misrepresent- 
 ed and decried. Even in his reply, Mr. Dawson ventures a 
 sneer at the designation of States' Eights Sovereignty as a 
 " monster," although he knew that the expression was from the 
 pen of "Washington. 
 
 Washington emphatically declared (Aug. 15, 1786), " Per- 
 suaded I am that the primary cause of all our disorders lies in 
 the different State Governments and in the tenacity of that 
 power which pervades the whole system." 
 
 The men of our day who would enlarge the sovereignty of 
 the States, at the expense of that of the Xational Go\ er.iment, 
 however much they may profess to reverence the wisdom of 
 Washington, are setting at defiance his deepest convictions and 
 most earnest counsels. In his Farewell Address, which, as Mr. 
 Horace Binney, Jr., has recently reminded us, he did not date at 
 Philadelphia, nor at Mount Yernon, hut which he significantly 
 signed " George Washington, United States, Sept. 17, 1796," 
 he solemnly impressed upon the American people that " the 
 unity of government is a main pillar in the edifice of your real 
 independence." 
 
 Again, Mr. Dawson, writing of the birth of that Constitution 
 which has given to our country its proud place among the na- 
 tions — of the more perfect consolidation of that Union which had 
 existed since the Declaration of Independence, and of which the 
 enlightened Emperor of Russia recently said : " The Union has- 
 exhibited to the world the spectacle of a prosperity without ex 
 ample in the annals of history," we find not one syllable. from 
 Mr. Dawson of eulogy or commendation ; not one of the new 
 vista of prosperity and happiness which it opened to the Ameri- 
 can people, and which might have continued unbroken for 
 c enuries but for the assaults of that "monster," State sov- 
 ereignty. 
 
 In Madison's Debates is preserved a pleasing reminiscence of 
 Franklin, which might probably have found place in an intro- 
 duction to the Federalist from the pen of one who believed us 
 to be a nation. 
 
 On the last day of the session of the Convention, when the 
 members were signing the engrossed Constitution, Dr. Franklin, 
 
35 
 
 looking toward the President's chair, at the back of which a sun 
 was painted, observed to the person next him, " I have often 
 and often, in the course of the session, and the vicissitudes of 
 my hopes and fears as to its issue, looked at the sun behind the 
 President, without being able to tell whether it was rising or 
 setting; at length I have the happiness to know that it is a ris- 
 ing, and not a setting sun. 
 
 On the 20th of July, 1788, Washington wrote to Trumbull : 
 " We may, with a kind of pious and grateful exultation, trace 
 the linger of Providence through the deep and mysterious events 
 which first induced the States to appoint a General Convention, 
 and then led them, one after another, by such steps as were best 
 calculated to effect the object, into an adoption of the system 
 recommended by the Convention ; thereby, in all human proba- 
 bility, laying a lasting foundation for tranquillity and happiness, 
 when we had to much reason too fear that confusion and misery 
 were coming rapidly upon us." 
 
 Mr. Dawson, presumptuously assuming, according to Mr. 
 Wright, that we were " all wrong about the theory of our gov - 
 eminent," and that he is to correct the errors of our constitu- 
 tional expounders, the well-known authoritative rulings of the 
 Supreme Court of the United States, in regard to the character 
 of our Constitution, are contemptuously ignore:!. The object of 
 the framers, as Mr. Justice Story remarks, was to substitute a 
 government of the people for a confederacy of States — a consti- 
 tution for a compact. The Constitution, said Chief Justice 
 Marshall, was ordained and established, not by the States in 
 their sovereign capacities, but emphatically, as the preamble of 
 the Constitution declares, by the people of the United States. 
 
 " The sovereignty of the nation," said the Supreme Court, by 
 Jay, Chief Justice, in 1793, " is in the people of the nation, and 
 the residuary sovereignty of the State in the people of the 
 State." 
 
 The national government, according to Story, adopting the 
 language of Webster, is as popular, and just as much emanating 
 from the people as the State governments. It is created for one 
 purpose, the State governments for another. It was made by 
 the people, made for the people, and is responsible to the 
 people. 
 
36 
 
 The language of the Supreme Court, through Chief Justice 
 Marshall, in the case of McCullough against the State of Mary- 
 land, and of Chief Justice Taney, in the case of Booth against 
 the United States, is to the same effect, and in each case the 
 Court was unanimous. It is true that the people, in adopting 
 the Constitution, acted in their several States ; and " where 
 else," asked Chief Justice Marshall, " should they have as- 
 sembled ? No political dreamer was ever wild enough to think of 
 breaking down the lines which separate the States, and of com- 
 pounding the American people into one common mass. Of conse- 
 cpience when they act they act in their States. But the measures 
 they adopt do not on that account cease to be the measures of 
 the people themselves, or become the measures of the State 
 governments. * * " * The assent of the States in their 
 sovereign capacity is implied in calling a Convention, and thus 
 submitting that instrument to the people. But the people were 
 at perfect liberty to accept or reject it, and their act was final. 
 It required not the affirmance and could not be negatived by the 
 State governments. The Constitution, when thus adopted, was 
 of complete obligation, and bound the State sovereignties." 
 
 From that time, for all the purposes declared by the Constitu- 
 tion, the people of the United States were, in Mr. Madison's 
 words, " one people, nation, or sovereignty." And the States 
 having been shorn of the attributes of sovereignty which the 
 people with the volunteered assent of the State governments, and 
 by their own sovereign will, had conferred upon the national 
 government, although retaining all the rights of sovereignty 
 which had not been so ceded could no longer be regarded as 
 " Sovereign States " in the general acceptation of the word, but 
 as States bound to recognize the supreme sovereignty of the 
 National Government within the sphere prescribed to it, and 
 bound to fealty to the limitations of the Constitution, and to the 
 rightful jurisdiction of the-Supreme Court. The Honourable 
 Iieverdy Johnson, in recently alluding to the doctrine avowed 
 by the rebel leaders — the doctrine which it is the object of Mr. 
 Wright's volume to inculcate, and which he announces that 
 Mr. Dawson's notes to the Federalist will materially assist — 
 that the only true sovereignty is that which belongs to the 
 States ; expresses his conviction, in which intelligent and loyal 
 
37 
 
 men will concur, that " there never was a greater political 
 heresy ; and that if this was doubtful before the war, which is 
 now desolating that section and carrying distress and agony into 
 every household, it is demonstrated to be as fatally ruinous as it 
 is unsound." 
 
 It is difficult to conceive that any man with a spark of intelli- 
 gence or a grain of patriotism should now, in view of the fact 
 that this heresy of " State sovereignty " is the basis of the 
 rebellion which is shaking the Republic to its foundation, shed- 
 ding our dearest blood, wasting our resources, and subjecting 
 us to insult and outrage by foreign nations, believe that he can 
 advocate the doctrine of " State sovereignty," without becoming 
 morally guilty of aiding and abetting the plot for the over- 
 throw of the American Republic, and of assisting in the slaughter 
 of the armies that are fighting to protect the honour of our 
 national flag and to perpetuate the principles which it symbolizes 
 to the world. 
 
 If Mr. Dawson has been naturalized, and has become a citi- 
 zen, not " of the State of New York," as he says, but of the 
 United States of America, it is, of course, a pity that he can 
 make no better return to the country which has so highly 
 honoured him, than by thus attempting to defame her statesmen, 
 to misrepresent her history, and to pervert her Constitution. 
 One would suppose that the experience of the thirty years, dur- 
 ing: which he has shared the blessings which the Constitution has 
 secured to the American people, might have taught him that 
 the strongest feeling in the American breast is that of National- 
 ity, and that he might have learned during the last three years, 
 if he never learned it before, that when the question of national- 
 ity arises, true Americans of all parties are united ; that loyal 
 Democrats as well as Republicans hold alike to the resolve 
 of Jackson, that the Union must and shall be preserved ; that, 
 whatever our differences on other topics, we are one in the de- 
 termination that the sovereignty of the whole people of the 
 United States, and the unity of our great Republic shall be main- 
 tained from the St. Johns to the Rio Grande, from the Lakes 
 to the Gulf, and from the Atlantic to the Pacific ; and that we 
 will tolerate no interference with that sovereignty from any 
 quarter, foreign or domestic, and certainly not from that ex- 
 
38 
 
 eeedingly small class of Englishmen, who, admitted to the privi- 
 vileges of American citizenship, deny to the United States the- 
 right to be called a nation, and who attempt to strengthen the 
 arguments of our European opponents, by playing the part of 
 Jackal to the British Lion, and second fiddle to the London 
 Times. 
 
 Least of all are the loyal American people, at this moment,. 
 and in regard to this rebellion, in a humor to tolerate any want 
 of frankness. 
 
 If Mr. "Wright correctly represents Mr. Dawson's views — and 
 no indictment for libel has been found against him, for mis- 
 representation, — Mk. Dawson might properly have announced 
 in advance his discovery that " we were all wrong in our theory 
 of government" — that " the word nation should never be used in 
 connection with the United States," and that his notes on the 
 Federalist would il be found coincident with the views" taken by 
 the author of " citizenship sovereignty." 
 
 Had such an announcement been made, or had he simply 
 adopted as the motto of his edition the language of 
 his Chicago friend, and placed upon his title page 
 the words " The Constitution of the United States ! tear 
 it in shreds! trample it in the dust!! damn it to everlast- 
 ing infamy ! ! !" he would certainly have escaped all possible 
 imputation of having solicited subscriptions under false pre- 
 tences ; and if he had thereby admitted himself an ingrate to 
 the country that had received him, and a traitor to the flag he 
 had sworn to support, he might yet have commanded a certain 
 sort of respect, as one who manfully avowed his real sentiments, 
 and bravely accepted the responsibility. A Southern member 
 of Congress, who was once referred to, on the floor of the house, 
 as " an incarnate fiend,*' replied that, " if he was a devil, lie was 
 not a mean, sneaking devil ;" but the right to indulge in such 
 a boast presupposed qualities which are not conspicuous in the 
 behaviour of this editor of the Federalist towards the gentlemen 
 whose countenance he sought, to give character to his edition. 
 The language in which he refers to Jay, both in his Introduc- 
 tion and in his letter, contrasts so strangely with that in which 
 he solicited my assistance, as almost to entitle the promise and 
 its fulfillment to aplace among the Curiosities of Literature. " I 
 
39 
 
 am actuated entirely," was his language on the lTtli February, 
 1SG2, when asking assistance, "by a desire to render justice to 
 the memory of your ancestor." 
 
 " * * It will be your duty and mine," he publicly writes, on 
 the 22d February, 1864, after the assistance he sought had been 
 rendered, " to examine your grandfather, both as a man, a pro- 
 fessor of religion, and a politician ; as a British subject, and as 
 a citizen of an independent republic ; as a friend and supporter 
 of the Royal Colonial government in New York, and as an open 
 and untiring opponent of popular rights in America; as a mem- 
 ber of ' Popular Committees,' of Provincial Congresses, of 
 State Conventions and of Continental Congresses ; as an active 
 opponent of ' independence ' in the Continental Congress of 
 1770, and as its spasmodic supporter, after twelve of the thirteen 
 colonies had become ' free and independent States,' in the Pro 
 vincial Congress of New York ; as the secret opponent of Frank- 
 lin in the formation of the treaty of 1783, as the nominal friend 
 and supporter of that treaty at the time of its execution, and as 
 the first of those who had signed it, subsequently to repudiate 
 its terms ; as ' Publius,' and as the open opponent of ' Pub- 
 lius's' sentiments ; as one of the authors of the Federalist, and 
 yet not an advocate of the proposed Constitution ; in short, as 
 the earnest and consistent advocate of a concentration of politi- 
 cal power in the few, of whom he should always he one, and the 
 equally earnest and consistent opponent of the political equality 
 of the many, of whom he shoidd never oe one.'''' 
 
 The assault upon the fame of Hamilton, if somewhat less 
 indecent in its language, is equally scurrilous and truthless, and 
 the descendants of those statesmen, for vindicating their memo- 
 ries from such abominable falsehoods, are thus answered : 
 
 " Both alike fear the result of an honest, earnest, and inde- 
 pendent exposition of the truth. Each of you is more or or 
 less a pretender ; each has endeavored, in his own way, to en- 
 velope his family with a " glory " which shall rival that which 
 is said to surround the heads of the saints ; each, like another 
 sorcerer, has succeeded only in raising a smoke, with which ho 
 hopes to deceive the spectators, and secure for himself and his 
 family the veneration of the world." 
 
40 
 
 Perhaps no further reply would have been needed to the mis- 
 representations of the Introduction than these brief quotations 
 exhibiting the tone of this editor of the Federalist ; but the 
 revelations made by Mr. "Wright, who, it is proper to say, pro- 
 fesses a profound veneration for the Revolutionary statesmen 
 whom Mr. Dawson has devoted himself to defame, seemed too 
 important to be overlooked in their relation to the pending 
 efforts to weaken the moral power of the National Government, 
 and to encourage the belief that it has no right to exercise a na- 
 tional sovereignty, and that our country cannot properly be 
 called a nation. 
 
 On the assumption that the Introduction was the work of 
 one who appreciatcdthe wisdom and had imbibed the spirit of the 
 Federalist, who listened reverently to the counsels of Washing- 
 ton, and clung to the nationality over whose birth he presided, 
 the tone and statements of the Introduction were an unexplained 
 enigma. But the moment the author is disclosed as an English- 
 man who denies our nationality, who is announced as one who 
 has discovered that we are " mistaken in our theory of govern- 
 ment," and that our Justices of the Supreme Court, from Jay to 
 Taney, were ignorant of the first principles of constitutional law, 
 as one who asserts our immense prosperity when the Constitu- 
 tion was adopted, and who has "a rod in pickle" for Mr. Mot- 
 ley for daring to differ from the London Times, the moment 
 these sympathies are disclosed, the American who runs may 
 read the whole meaning of the Introduction : and the fitness of 
 this editor's maligning Putnam and Duane, and Livingston, and 
 Hamilton, and Jay, and of his intimating that the Constitution 
 was fastened on the people by political trickery and fraud is 
 perfectly apparent. The " monster " character of this edition 
 of the Federalist is found out, and henceforth it takes its 
 place in our literary history as a notable feature of this era of 
 rebellion. 
 
 It will, of course, be a subject of mortification to the gentle- 
 men who have been deceived, ami the exposure will be a warn- 
 ing to Historical Societies how they allow themselves to be used 
 in advancing that rebel doctrine of State sovereignty, which has 
 proved itself, as Washington anticipated, the pretence for trea- 
 son, and which now endangers " our national existence." Little 
 
41 
 
 blame, however, can fairly attach to those who have supposed, 
 until they had read carefully his Introduction, that this editor 
 of the Federalist was a supporter of American nationality. He 
 came possessed, as he declared of copies of the family papers o* 
 Jay and Hamilton, and they were approached in as innocent a 
 guise as that assumed by the pirates of Jeff. Davis, when they 
 shipped as passengers on board the Chesapeake. And this 
 brings me to a point involving an interesting question of fact 
 upon which I have a word to offer in reply to Mr. Daweon. 
 
 QUESTION OF FACT ABOUT TUE FAMILY PAPERS OF JAY. 
 
 Mr. Dawson says : " You say concerning the family papers of 
 Jay, relative to the Federalist, ' I (you) gave you (me) none 
 such ;' and on that slight foundation you assume that I have had 
 no such ' family j>apers of Jay,' at any time past or ^re&ent, from 
 any other person, and by inuendo you accuse me of falsehood 
 and deceit. If it will gratify you, I will admit, as I do admit 
 that I have not received from you at any time any paper what- 
 ever ' relative to the Federalist per se, except the original drafts 
 of number LXIII (these were discovered in a bundle of ancient 
 newspapers after the volume was printed) ; but you must admit 
 that I never said, even in the ' Prospectus,' which you have 
 quoted from, that you had given any such papers to me at any 
 time ; and you must also admit, if you are not a willing slan- 
 derer, that the only foundation for your insinuation has been 
 your own disordered imagination. Indeed, I challenge you to 
 produce a single specimen of ' Prospectus,' ' Advertisement,' or 
 any other publication, either by myself or my publisher, wherein 
 it is stated, either by me or for me, that you had given me such 
 ' family papers of Jay,' as you have described, or any other." 
 
 In this paragraph Mr. Dawson makes two points : 
 
 1. He attempts to vindicate the truth of his assurance to the 
 public, that, in the preparation of the Federalist, he had been 
 favoured with copies of the family papers relative thereto of 
 Chief Justice Jay, by giving the public now to understand 
 that although he had received no such papers from me, he had 
 
42 
 
 received them at some time or other from some other person or 
 persons. 
 
 2. He insists that my assumption, that he could have had no 
 such papers, because I had given him none such, rests upon a 
 " slight foundation " — that its only foundation was my " disor- 
 dered imagination," and he challenges me to produce a line 
 from himself or his publisher in support of my assumption that 
 he had indicated me as the source whence he received the 
 papers. 
 
 In reply to this second point, I quote the entire paragraph 
 from his prospectus, of which he twice quotes only the first sec« 
 tion, ending with " Chief Justice Jay," each time carefully 
 omitting the last paragraph, which does indicate the source of 
 the favor. I mark the section quoted by him No. 1, and the 
 section omitted No. 2. 
 
 (No. 1.) " In the preparation of this edition of the Fede- 
 ralist, the subscriber has been favored with copies of the family 
 papers relative thereto of General Hamilton and Chief Justice 
 Jay ; (No. 2) and has also the pleasure to announce, through 
 the farther courtesy of Hon. James A. Hamilton and John Jay, 
 Esq., original portraits of Messrs. Hamilton and Jay, for the 
 illustration of the work." 
 
 I understood " the further courtesy" of Mr. James A. Hamil- 
 ton and myself in furnishing portraits, to imply that it was 
 through o\\v previous courtesy that Mr. Dawson had been fur- 
 nished with copies of family papers. I submit that that is the 
 plain meaning of the passage, that the construction of the sen- 
 tence justifies no other interpretation, and that his own language 
 in the prospectus refutes the idea he now wishes to impress 
 upon the public that he never intimated that he had received 
 such papers from me. I entirely disbelieve his present intima- 
 tion that he has copies of the family papers of Jay relative to 
 the Federalist per se which have been given to him by some 
 person or persons other than myself, and there are one or two 
 facts bearing on this point in reply to his charge that my sus- 
 picion that he has no such papers rests on a " slight foundation," 
 
43 
 
 and, indeed, solely on my " disordered imagination." The will 
 of Chief Justice Jay contained this item : 
 
 " I give and bequeath all my manuscript books and papers, 
 other than such as respect my own estate or the estate of others, 
 to my two sons, Peter A. Jay and William Jay, jointly, and not 
 to he divided. On the death of one of my sons, these manu- 
 scripts are to belong solely and absolutely to the survivor." 
 
 Mr. Peter A. Jay died first, and the papers which had re- 
 mained at Bedford, in my father's possession, then belonged 
 solely to him, and by his will, he gave them to me. They have 
 been kept together and not divided. Thinking it barely pos- 
 sible that a few papers might have by chance remained in the 
 hands of Mr. Peter A. Jay, and have been given to Mr. Dawson 
 by his son, John C. Jay, Esq., of Rye, I inquired, and was in- 
 formed by Mr. Jay that he had no papers of Chief Justice 
 Jay, and that he did not know Mr. Dawson. 
 
 I know, from a conversation with my father about the 
 Federalist, that he knew of no papers of Jay relating to the work, 
 and if such manuscripts or copies of manuscripts exist, furnished 
 to Mr. Dawson, as he intimates, by some " other person," at 
 some " time past or present," I know not why I should not 
 repeat " Produce the papers !" 
 
 Nor am I disposed to acquiesce in the propriety of his not 
 producing them, on the plea that he has ceased to lay stress upon 
 them in his advertisements, and that he finds them comparative- 
 ly unimportant. His language on this point is, " As my facili- 
 ties for acquiring information concerning the Federalist were 
 increased from time to time, I became myself satisfied of the 
 comparative unimportance of the family papers of Jay and 
 Hamilton relating to the Federalist per se, and I discontinued 
 my references to them as deserving of special notice." 
 
 Whether this subsequent discovery of the little value of the 
 papers was the only reason for discontinuing his references to 
 them, or whether that discontinuance was owing, in part at 
 least, to Mr. James A. Hamilton's declaring that there were no 
 such papers of his father as the prospectus announced, and in- 
 sisting that the announcement should be suppressed, I shall not 
 stop to inquire : but the passage I have quoted from Mr. Daw- 
 son's reply will not satisfy the public with the non-production 
 
44: 
 
 of the papers, for the question now is, not of their " comparative 
 unimportance," but of their actual existence. 
 
 Mr. Dawson has had the temerity to charge me with having 
 a "disordered imagination," and with being guilty of slander 
 because I intimated that he was mistaken in supposing that he 
 had any copies of family papers of Jay relative to the Federalist. 
 He assures the public that he has such papers — not received 
 from me, as he distinctly intimated in his prospectus, but from 
 some other person, and he intimates that he has examined them 
 at least twice ; once, before he announced in his prospectus that 
 he had been favored with such papers, which he then regarded 
 as important, and again, after his facilities for information had 
 increased, when he decided that they were of comparative un- 
 importance, and discontinued the reference to them in his 
 prospectus. 
 
 These " copies of family papers" — he mentions them in the 
 plural, so that there was more than one — have become matter of 
 profound historic interest, apart from their bearing on Mr. Daw- 
 son's veracity. Who gave to Mr. Dawson these copies ? who 
 has the originals ? and where did the person or persons get the 
 originals ? Seventy-six years have elapsed since the Federalist 
 Mas written, and here are family papers of Jay respecting the 
 Federalist, per se, of which his family never heard, discovered 
 just in time to be useful to Mr. Dawson in his prospectus, dis- 
 closed to him alone, not communicated by him to me, notwith- 
 standing the courtesies I had extended to him might seem to have 
 entitled me to so simple a requital : suddenly discovered by Mr. 
 Dawson to be comparatively unimportant, after the prospectus 
 had accomplished its object, and no longer announced either by 
 him or his publisher, not quoted in the text, nor as yet referred 
 to in foot notes. So far as their historic value is concerned, ac- 
 cording to Mr. Dawson, they spring up in a night, and wither 
 in a day. But he still insists upon their reality; he represents 
 them as tangible and visible, and he intimates that none but a 
 disordered imagination could suppose that his statement was 
 baseless as a dream. 
 
 Mr, Dawson, however will see, or, at all events, those who 
 read this correspondence will see, that nothing but the produc- 
 tion of the alleged papers, and the disclosure of the person or 
 
45 
 
 persons from whom he professes to have received them, will 
 satisfy his subscribers that lie ever received copies of any family 
 papers of Jay relative to the Federalist., from any person other 
 than myself, and that, as he admits, he received no such papers 
 from me, the assertion that he has such papers in his possession 
 is entirely erroneous. 
 
 EXPOSURE OF ME. DAWSON BY HON. JAMES A. HAMILTON. 
 
 Mr. Dawson, in his reply to my first letter, in which, alluding 
 to his claim that lie possessed " copies of family papers relative 
 to the Federalist, " I had said, "the sons of Hamilton knew of 
 no such papers of their father," intimated that I was his sole 
 accuser, and that "Mr. Hamilton, the respected second son of 
 General Hamilton, had read that portion of the proof sheets of 
 the advertisement to which I had alluded, ivithout suggesting 
 any change whatever in the portion to which I objected," and 
 added, " he has subsequently been pleased to approve, in the 
 kindest and most gratifying terms, my entire volume as it has 
 been given to the public, and my whole course as its editor, with- 
 out the least exception" 
 
 Here are two distinct averments voluntarily proffered by Mr. 
 Dawson : 
 
 1. That Mr. James A. Hamilton suggested no change in that 
 part of the advertisement to which I had alluded, and, 
 
 2. That Mr. Hamilton had approved of the entire volume, 
 and of Mr. Dawson's whole course as its editor, without the least 
 ■exception. 
 
 To these declarations Mr. Hamilton has responded in the 
 Evening Post, in a letter dated April 7, 1864, in which, in refu- 
 tation of the first statement, he quotes a letter addressed by him 
 to Mr. Dawson, on the 31st July, 1863, desiring him to strike 
 his (Mr. Hamilton's) name from the advertisement, because he 
 had given him no such advice or assistance as to authorize such 
 a notice, and because he did not choose to be considered in any 
 respect responsible for a work which he had not examined. 
 
46 
 
 Mr. Hamilton quotes also a letter he had sent to Mr. Dawson 
 on the 20th September, 1862, in which he said : 
 
 "Your prospectus is received. I regret to find in it this 
 statement : ' In the preparation of this edition of the Federalist, 
 the subscriber has been favored with copies of the family papers 
 relative thereto of General Hamilton.' I have no knowledge 
 of any family papers of General Hamilton, and did not favor 
 you with any copies of such papers. My brothers and friends 
 know such papers do not exist." 
 
 In answer to the charge that Mr. Hamilton had approved of 
 Mr. Dawson's course as an editor, without the least exception,. 
 Mr. Hamilton quotes from the same letter, in which he declared 
 hedid not choose to be considered in any respect responsible for 
 the work, v hich he had not examined. 
 
 * * * "I observe, with regret, that your introduction 
 bears hardly upon Mr. Duane, &c." 
 
 Mr. Hamilton remarks that he has since read that part of the 
 introduction relating to his father's strategy, in which Hamilton 
 is represented " as a mere politician, deliberately uttering con- 
 scious sophistries and absolute untruths, for the purpose of cheat- 
 ing the people into a course of action that should serve his selfish 
 ends, and, thereby, his party;" and, with natural indignation 
 that Mr. Dawson should have asserted that he approved of this 
 with the rest of his volume, he exclaims : 
 
 " Surely, even the slightest respect for a father's memory 
 would not permith such an assertion to pass unnoticed." 
 
 Mr. Hamilton, after alluding to Jay's wisdom, foresight, fair- 
 ness, and patriotism, and to the confidence reposed in him by 
 "Washington and his contcinporories, declares: "It is impossible 
 that I should have approved the groundless strictures upon his 
 conduct and character." After a well deserved and scorching 
 rebuke of that taste for calumny which " will go mousing about 
 the scurrilous publications of our country during the period of 
 
47 
 
 our ferocious party conflicts" for atrocious libels on the wisest, 
 purest, and most patriotic men of the time, he refers to the lies 
 of one of Mr. Dawson's predecessors in this dirty work — " An 
 English hired calumniator" — one Callender, who, in a work 
 published in 1800, sneered at the extravagant popularity posses- 
 sed by " this citizen," Washington, and accused him of being 
 twice a traitor and a robber of his army, with as much coolness 
 as his successor and fellow-Briton, Mr. Dawson, now vents his 
 ghoul like spite upon the fame of Putnam, Livingston, Duane, 
 Hamilton, and Jay. The thanks of the country are due to Mr. 
 Hamilton, for his complete exposure of the various falsehoods 
 whose utterance had compelled him to come before the public, in 
 vindication alike of his own conduct and of his great father's 
 memory, in spite of his advanced age, when controversy becomes 
 a burthen, and of a recent domestic sorrow, in which a wide 
 circle has deeply sympathised. His calm, clear, and convincing 
 statement of facts, convicts Mr. Dawson of a degree of bad faith, 
 which, but for the positiveness of the proof, would seem almost 
 incredible, towards a venerable gentleman who had honoured him 
 with friendly attentions : and whose generous confidence he has 
 basely betrayed, first by calumniating the father, and then by 
 giving the country to understand that these calumnies were ap- 
 proved of by the son. Mr. Dawson sought, in his advertise- 
 ment, to convey a similar impression with regard to myself, and 
 to make tha world believe that I had furnished him with family 
 papers that might be supposed to justify his mendacious charges 
 against my grandfather. 
 
 paw son's renewed charges against jay, and their refutation* 
 
 In my first letter, unadvised of the object of his misrepresen. 
 tations, I gently pointed out some of his more notable blunders^ 
 referring him, in several cases, to the positive proof of their un- 
 truth. Among others, I showed him that his averment that 
 Jay's earlier conduct caused distrust and dissatisfaction ; that he 
 was not looked to by the people for counsel or leadership in 
 regard to the Constitution, but was regarded by a majority of 
 his fellow-citizens as selfish, aristocratic, and impracticable ; was 
 signally and thoroughly refuted by the vote of the city of New 
 
48 
 
 York electing liim, at the very time referred to, to the State 
 Convention, by a majority of twenty-eight to one ; and by the 
 fact that in that Convention, Jay was selected to move the adop- 
 tion of the Constitution ; and again, to draft the " Circular let- 
 ter " to the States, recommending the adoption of the proposed 
 amendments, which received the unanimous approval of the 
 body, and secured the cordial acquiescence of the people of this 
 State in the relinquishment of the Articles of Confederation, 
 and the establishment of a National Constitution by the united 
 voice of the whole people. 
 
 In hrs reply, Mr. Dawson, with a fatuity which would be sur- 
 prising, had his behaviour towards Mr. Hamilton left room for 
 surprise at any degree of persistence in mis-statements, again 
 asserts that Jay was " not an advocate of the proposed Consti- 
 tution." 
 
 In case this persistence should lead any one to suppose that 
 there is a shadow of truth in the charge, I will quote a para- 
 graph or two from Mr. Webster's elaborate letter to citizens of 
 Westchester, to which I have already alluded, in which he dwelt 
 at length on Jay's devotion to the Constitution, and quoted 
 largely from his writings in its behalf : 
 
 " Gentlemen," said Mr. "Webster, after an eloquent eulogium 
 on Hamilton, " the mortal remains of another great man, vener- 
 ated and loved through the whole course of a long life, repose in 
 the county of Westchester ; of course, I mean John Jay. The 
 public life of this illustrious man was almost wholly devoted to 
 the preservation of the States, the establishment of the Con- 
 stitution, and the administration of the powers conferred by it. 
 No man saw more clearly, or felt more deeply, the evils arising 
 from the existence of States with entire avid distinct sovereignties. 
 No man appealed to his countrymen against such a state of 
 things with more earnestness, eloquence, or power. * * He 
 foretold its dangers, and did as much as any man to secure the 
 public opinion from its pernicious grasp." 
 
 Advised by Mr. Wright's volume that Mr. Dawson's edition 
 of the Fed* ralist and the volume with notes that is to follow it, 
 is relied upon to aid in resuscitating at the North the Itebel 
 
49 
 
 doctrine of State Sovereignty, that he denies that the United 
 States constitute a nation, and insists that each State — South 
 Carolina for instance — is a separate nation : and that his Chicago 
 associates, who claim him as an earnest and effective ally in 
 their scheme, are striving to trample the Constitution in the 
 dust, and are prepared, if necessary, to join themselves " with 
 the armies of the South," and inaugurate war upon Northern 
 soil, against all loyal citizens ; learning Mr. Dawson's advocacy 
 of that "monster" State Sovereignty, it is clear that the fierce- 
 ness of his assaults on Jay is induced not by the pretended fact 
 that he was opposed to the Constitution, but by the historic fact, 
 so clearly stated by Mr. Webster, that to no man was the country 
 more indebted for the establishment of the Constitution, and that 
 no man more early or more effectively opposed the assumed right 
 of the States to override the sovereignty of the people. Whether 
 as a legislator or as Chief Justice, Jay uniformly maintained the 
 doctrine — then as now denied by the opponents of our nation- 
 ality — that " the only true source of sovereignty is the People." 
 The further fact stated by Mr. Webster, and confirmed by the 
 testimony of the living and the dead, that Jay was " venerated 
 and beloved through the whole course of a long life," seems to 
 have afforded to Mr. Dawson a provocation to attribute to him 
 qualities that would forbid all idea of such veneration and affec- 
 tion, and impair at once the regard of youthful and unenlight- 
 ened readers, for his character, his abilities, his influence, and 
 his position. 
 
 The task is one which Mr. Dawson would have found diffi- 
 cult to accomplish, even if his own views had not been discovered. 
 As it is, the malignant hatred he exhibits towards Jay, I accept 
 as the most fitting homage which can be paid to his memory by 
 an Englishman, who, declaring that his own " grandfather was an 
 honest English laborer," would subvert the nationality of the 
 Republic in whose preservation are involved the hopes of honest 
 labourers of England and the world over ; — of a foreigner, who, 
 sheltered by our flag, and educated in our schools, repays the 
 debt by attempting to pervert the American Constitution, join- 
 ing himself with the London Times and aristocratic sympathi- 
 zers with rebellion, to destroy the unity of our Republic, and 
 bjot our country from the roll of nations. 
 
50 
 
 Long before the instinctive conviction of Washington and Jay , 
 in regard to the danger with which the doctrine of State Sover- 
 eignty threatened' the American people, had been verified as it 
 now is, by the most detestable rebellion recorded in history, and 
 while loyal Democrats still looked with doubt and displeasure 
 on the national doctrines held by the framers of the Constitution, 
 which have since been approved by the supreme judiciary, and 
 incorporated with our common law — one of the very warmest oi 
 Jay's political and personal foes, James Monroe^ (according to 
 his eulogizer, John Quincy Adams,) in the zenith of public 
 honour, and in the retirement of his latter days, "left, recorded 
 with his own hand, a warm and unqualified testimonial to the 
 pure patriotism, the prominent ability, and the spotless integrity 
 of John Jay." When such was the feeling towards Jay in the 
 calm evening of life, on the part of one who had been his active, 
 earnest, and prejudiced opponent, — and a similar testimonial is 
 said to have been paid to him, after a long period of separation, 
 by his early friend and subsequent rival, Chancellor Livingston : 
 — we need not wonder at the bold language used by that accom- 
 plished scholar and elegant writer, Gulian C. Verplanck, in 
 his often-quoted eulogy on Jay : 
 
 " A halo of veneration seemed to encircle him as one belong- 
 ing to another world while yet lingering among us. When the 
 tidings of his death came to us, they were received through the 
 nation, not with sorrow or mourning, but with solemn awe, like 
 that with which we read the mysterious passage of ancient 
 Scripture — And Enoch walked with God, and he was not, for 
 God took him." 
 
 OUR PRESENT POSITION, AND Till; COMBINATIONS AGAINST US. 
 
 One advantage, and it is not a slight one, which we derive 
 from the disclosures made by the frank volume of Mr. Wright, 
 and his political literary coadjutors, among whom Mr. Dawson 
 is so prominently introduced, is a more accurate knowledge of 
 our position. We learn from their own pens the real sympathies 
 and designs of these " Federal Republican " citizens, alias State- 
 Rights Democrats, who, in their assaults upon American nation- 
 
51 
 
 ality, their distortion of American jurisprudence, their falsifica- 
 tion of American history, and their shameless libels upon 
 American statesmen, are found to be sympathizers with slavery 
 and rebellion, the last friends of British aristocracy, and the 
 earnest allies of the London Times. 
 
 The same men who, under pretence of maintaining State 
 Rights, consign to infamy the American Constitution, and 
 threaten to unite with the rebels and devastate the loyal North, 
 are the men who declare, "Let the nobility of England under- 
 stand that they have in us, earnest coadjutors to maintain aris- 
 tocracy ;" and they rightly feel that any step in this direction is 
 hopeless, unless they can impair the feelings of American na- 
 tionality, by destroying the reverence of the people for the men 
 who assisted at the birth of the nation, who proclaimed its fun- 
 damental principles in the Declaration of Independence — who 
 rescued it from the dissolution threatened by the imbecility of 
 the Confederation, and established its unity and strength by our 
 National Constitutipn. 
 
 The effect of that Constitution in consolidating the power of 
 the American people, was at the time duly appreciated by the 
 sagacious statesmen of Europe, and when Genet came to us as 
 minister from the " French Republic," he submitted to our 
 Government official documents disclosing the unfriendly views 
 which had been entertained by Yergennes and Montmorin to- 
 wards the United States, manifesting in plain terms the solici- 
 tude of France and Spain to exclude the United States from the 
 Mississippi, their jealousy of the growing power and ambition 
 of this country, and the wish of France, expressed while the 
 question was pending, that the Constitution might not oe adopted, 
 as it suited France that the United States should remain in their 
 present state, because if they should acquire the consistency of 
 which they were susceptible, they would soon acquire a force or 
 a power which they would be very ready to abuse."'"" 
 
 Notwithstanding the careful avoidance by the United States 
 for seventy years of all meddling with the affairs of Europe, and 
 the recognition, as an American principle, of the non-interven- 
 tion recommended by Washington, we have found that aristo- 
 
 *See note on "Tub Policy of Fkancu towards tub United States," in the Appendix. 
 
52 
 
 c:\atic England is, from the real or supposed exigencies of its 
 position, the inevitable foe of the American Republic, express- 
 ing frankly, in view of our supposed dissolution, the fears it has 
 entertained of our rising greatness. They saw in lis, according 
 to the London Times, " a great empire that had threatened to 
 predominate over all mankind," and for a little while they 
 exultingly believed that we were shattered into fragments. It 
 is not to be supposed that they will view with satisfaction the 
 re-establishment of our national unity, or that they will forget, 
 in our case, the maxim which England so well understands, 
 — divide and conquer. 
 
 Immense disappointment has been created by the views and 
 the conduct of the British aristocracy, British statesmen, and 
 British authors : with such notable exceptions as the Duke of 
 Argyle and Lord Carlisle, Richard Cobden, and John Bright, 
 ]\Iill and Xewnian, and Eorster, and others, whose names will 
 be always remembered with honour as men who ros3 to the 
 dignity of the occasion, and remembered their duty to humanity 
 and to God. But, however great has been our disappoint- 
 ment at the low and narrow view of the American question 
 taken by the higher classes in England, or however modified that 
 disappointment has been by the wider instincts and broader 
 sympathies of the working classes, in the efforts of the American 
 people to maintain against the assaults of slavery, liberty, na- 
 tionality and law, the fact remains that we have calmly ac- 
 cepted the situation ; we recognize the inexorable fact that our 
 late is in our own hands ; we have had a bitter foretaste of the 
 treatment that awaits a divided people, and we realize the 
 truth that there is no end to the insults, and no depth to the 
 humiliation which we may expect, not alone from England, but 
 from every nation in Christendom, unless we re-establish the pres- 
 tige of our Republic, by maintaining the integrity of our borders, 
 the supremacy of our Government, and the honour of our flag. 
 
 It is not the part of wisdom to undervalue the significance of 
 hostile and simultaneous lvovements on account of the insignifi- 
 cance of the tools employed, nor in our contempt for the infamy 
 of the workmen, to overlook the dangers with which their masters 
 threaten us. To those accustomed as we are, to contemplate 
 
53 
 
 with pride, the intelligence, the patriotism, and the common 
 sense of the American people, it may at first seem unreasonable 
 to suppose that men who murder the Queen's English, can do 
 the least harm to the American Constitution : or that book-worms, 
 burrowing amid the rubbish of the party by whom that Consti- 
 tution was opposed in its infancy, can aid the faction that would 
 subvert it in its strength, by resuscitating for the benefit of the 
 Tories of to-day, the libellous abortions that struggled and died in 
 the last century 
 
 But the fact is not to be forgotten that each is doing his own 
 particular part in a grand conspiracy against American nation- 
 ality, " and that like grains of gunpowder" to borrow an image 
 from Coleridge, " although each by itself be smutty and con- 
 temptible, their combined force may be terribly destructive." 
 
 In this conspiracy are arrayed against us not simply the rebels 
 of the South, bent upon the establishment of a slave empire, 
 headed by crafty and desperate leaders, guided by officers edu- 
 cated by. ourselves, who have violated their honour and betrayed 
 their flag, and backed by a misguided army of determined 
 bravery ; but the aristocracy of England, who having thrown 
 away the friendship of this great nation, with a folly as great as 
 that by which their ancestors estranged and lost their most 
 loyal colonies, now see in the success of Republican government 
 the decay of their order and the prostration of their power. To 
 these must be added the despotism of France, presently to be 
 represented on our continent by an Arch-Duke of Austria, whose 
 very presence on the throne of Mexico, guarded by French 
 bayonets against the reluctant people he comes to govern, will 
 be of itself an insult to our country that will rankle in the 
 breast of every true American. Last of all, to aid these foes ot 
 our Republic in the South, in Britain, in France, and in Mexico, 
 appears an anti-constitutional party in the North, with Democ- 
 racy and State Sovereignty for their battle-cry, equally bent 
 with our aristocratic, our monarchial, and our imperial enemies 
 upon the destruction of our nationality — a party, whose wealthy 
 members in this metropolis supply funds for circulating per- 
 versions of history and travesties of religion : whose ideas of 
 patriotism and honour allow men assuming to be gentlemen to 
 approach with supple knees a British minister, and solicit in our 
 
54 
 
 domestic affairs foreign intervention : who as 3ure of their sym- 
 pathy and support the British aristocracy, even while they are 
 chuckling over the exploits of British iron-clads in sweeping from 
 the seas American merchant-ships and transferring our commerce 
 to British bottoms : who volunteer assistance to the " London 
 Times" in its malignant assaults upon our national integrity, 
 and distort facts to sustain its unsupported arguments : and who, 
 when they forget their caution, raise their traitorous voice against 
 the American Constitution, calling on the people to tear it into 
 shreds, and consign it to eternal infamy. From the citations 
 already given, the reader can decide for himself how far the 
 man who now advocates the " monster " and rebel doctrine of 
 State Sovereignty, in defiance of the constitutional adjudications 
 of the Supreme Court, aids and abets the wide spread conspiracy 
 against American nationality ; and how far it is possible for 
 one who denies that nationality, under colour of history to falsify 
 the truth, and under pretence of enlightening the world by re- 
 producing the wise counsels of the Federalist, to rake the ashes 
 of the Revolution for libels on its authors, and issue to an 
 unsuspecting people the immortal volume of Hamilton, Madison 
 and Jay, prefaced by insinuations, infamously false, against the 
 purity of their patriotism and the worthiness of their fame. 
 I am, Sirs, 
 
 Respectfully your obedient servant, 
 
 JOHN JAY. 
 119 Madison Avenue, 
 
 New York, April 14, 1864. 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 {Note to page 51.) 
 
 The Policy of France towards the United States. — This quotation is 
 from a note in the 5th volume of Marshall's Life of Washington, and the 
 important fact it discloses proves, beyond all question, the soundness of 
 Jay's views (in 1783) touching the policy of the French Court, which he had 
 had the opportunity of studying for years during his residence in Spain, at a 
 Court then closely allied to France, and governed, like France, by a Prince 
 of the House of Bourbon. It proves, also, the wisdom and propriety of his 
 resolve in negociating the Treaty of Paris to disregard the positive instruc- 
 tions of Congress, " to undertake nothing in the negociation for a peace or a 
 truce without their (the Ministers of the King of France) concurrence;" and 
 " ultimately to govern yourself by their advice and opinion." This humilia- 
 ting instruction had been dictated to Congress by the diplomatic representa- 
 tive of France, and accepted by a majority of its members with an unbounded 
 confidence in the disinterested friendship of that Court, that redounds, per- 
 haps, rather to their amiable confidingness of disposition and unlimited sense 
 of gratitude to France, than to the sternness and exclusiveness of their 
 regard for the honour, rights and interests of the Republic. 
 
 The first advice given by France, under these instructions, decided promptly 
 the course of Jay. The British Cabinet wished to compel the negociators 
 to treat not on equal terms, as the ministers of one independent na- 
 tionality, but as individuals, not even named in the British Commission, 
 representing the several thirteen colonies or plantations of America. By an 
 acquiescence in this, the American negociators would have admitted themselves 
 to be British subjects, who, after having for seven years claimed to be a free 
 and independent people, were at last obliged humbly to acknowledge that 
 their Independence was still a subject of negociation, and that its recognition 
 was a boon to be granted by Great Britain as an article of treaty. 
 
 The French Court, by Vergennes, instead of sustaining the demand of Jay 
 for a new and proper Commission, was found by him to have interfered 
 through Mr. Fitzherbert, to prevent the British Cabinet from treating us as an 
 Independent nation; and then Jay, assured that the interests of our Republic 
 
u 
 
 required that the treaty should not be framed by an ally so regardless of her 
 honour, announced hid views to the British Minister with such determi- 
 nation and address, as to induce the British Cabinet to issue a proper Com- 
 mission ; and thus was given to the statesmen of bath nations, who even 
 then anticipated the early dissolution of our Confederacy, their first lesson in 
 that fundamental principle which they find it so difficult to comprehend, that 
 it is not for transatlantic powers to disturb the unity, to check the growth, or 
 to direct the destiny of the American Republic. 
 
 Freed, by the resolution of Ja}^, from all further interference by Vergennes, 
 with whom no further communication was had on the treaty until the pro- 
 visional articles had been signed, the American negociators were enabled to 
 attend simply to our own national interests, and to secure the boundaries and 
 the fisheries without being hampered by the claims of Spain to the one, or 
 of France to the other. 
 
 The English, freed from the malign influence of France, were persuaded to 
 yield to us the boundaries which they had claimed for Canada — the Ohio on 
 the South, extending due west to the Mississippi, including all the lakes, Ohio, 
 Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and the North-west. The claims of Spain, as 
 set forth a little further South by M. D'Aranda, at the suggestion, according 
 to "Washington, of the Court of Fiance, to boundaries commencing on the 
 North " at the confluence of the Ohio and the Renhawah. and running round 
 the Western shores of Erie, Huron, and Michigan, to Lake Superior," were 
 as summarily laid aside ; and our young Republic, which commenced the nc- 
 gociation by refusing to treat except on the footing of an independent na- 
 tionality, emerged from the European Congress with a diplomatic prestige 
 that was yet more increased, when the large advantages gained by her nego- 
 ciators, by their manly frankness and unassisted skill, were compared with 
 the slender concessions that the trained diplomatists of France and Spain suc- 
 ceeded in extorting from the Court of England. 
 
 " The treaty," says the author of the Diplomacy of the United States, " was 
 exceedingly favorable and honourable to America, and was negociated by the 
 Commissioners with uncommon address." 
 
 The difference of view in regard to the disinterestedness of the friendship 
 professed for us by France, on the part of Jay and Adams on the one side, 
 and of Franklin on the other, altho' it did not prevent the venerable 
 philosopher from following the lead of his more youthfid colleague, has in- 
 duced an earnest and persistent effort on the part of the biographers and 
 eulogists of Franklin to prove that Jay was unreasonably suspicious and 
 altogether mistaken : and that he deserved censure for not deferring to the 
 suggi i 'lines, and allowing him to approve of the form of the 
 
 Commission, and to decide the question of the fisheries and the boundaries. 
 
 It is singular that in this discussion, in which Dr. Jared Sparks has borne 
 so prominent a part, and in which his assurance that he had examined 
 official documents in London and Paris which proved the good faith of 
 
Ill 
 
 France, (Mr. Sparks' note, vol. 8, Diplomatic Correspondence, p. 208,) has 
 been accepted by maay as conclusive : that the fact has been so entirely 
 ignored that the whole question engaged the attention of Washington, and 
 received at his hands and that of his Secretary of State, Mr. Pickering, the 
 most careful and thorough investigation. 
 
 I refer to the letter addressed by Mr. Pickering to Mr. Pinckney, our newly* 
 appointed Minister to France, in reply to the complaints and reproaches of M. 
 Adet, the Minister from the French Republic. It was communicated to Con- 
 gress by President Washington, by special message, on the 19th Jan., 1797; 
 and may be found in the 1st volume of American State Papers, pp. G59-57G. 
 
 After quoting largely from the observations of the Court of France on the 
 justicative memorial of the British Government vindicating the war it in- 
 tended to wage against France, in which France admitted that her only object 
 in entering into engagements with us, after she regarded our independence as 
 secured by the defeat of the army of Bourgoyne, was to diminish the British 
 power, to advance her own interest, and secure her own safety: the Secretary 
 reviewed the conduct of the French Ministers in our negotiations for peace, 
 and the effort of M. Vergennes to induce the American negociators to con- 
 sent to treat under a British Commission, in which neither the United States 
 nor their commissioners were named — in which case, pending the negeciation, 
 " they would have been," said the letter, " not independent citizens, but, by 
 our own acknowledgment, British subjects. * * The honour of an inde- 
 pendent nation forbade their treating in a subordinate capacity." The Secre- 
 tary goes on to shew the reasons why France wished the American 
 negociators so to act; and why France, having formed other connections, with 
 whose views we had no concern, we were not bound to postpone the offered 
 peace. He referred to a combination of facts and circumstances which had 
 satisfied the American Government that, in facilitating our independence of 
 Great Britain — " leaving the King master of the terms of peace" — the mani- 
 fest object of certain measures of the French Court was to deprive the United 
 States of an immense Western Territory, of the Navigation of the Mississippi, 
 and of the Fisheries, except on our own coast. 
 
 Referring to our negociations with Spain, the Secretary said — " It is certain 
 " that, originally, Spain made no pretensions to any line eastward of the 
 «' Mississippi, to the northward of the Floridas, and it is clear that the idea 
 " of her finally making the claim was suggested by the Court of France." 
 
 " We are now prepared," he adds, " to understand the declarations made 
 "in the instructions to Citizen Genet, Minister Plenipotentiary from the 
 " French Republic to the United States. These instructions are dated the 4th 
 "of January, 1793, and were published in December of that year, in Phila- 
 delphia, in vindication of his extraordinary measures which had induced 
 "our Government to desire his recall. In these instructions we find the fol- 
 lowing passages: 'The Executive Council has called for the instructions 
 ''given to Citizen Genet's predecessors in America, and has seen in them 
 
IV 
 
 «' with indignation, that at the very time the good people of America ex- 
 pressed their gratitude to us in the most feeling manner, and gave us every 
 ''proof of their friendship, Vergennes and Montmorin thought that it was 
 " right for France to hinder the United States from taking that political sta- 
 "hility of which they were capable; because, they would soon acquire a 
 "strength which it was probable they would be eager to abuse.' * * 
 
 " ' The same Machiavellian principle influenced the operations of the war for 
 " independence ; the same duplicity reigned over the negotiations for peace! 
 
 " We see, then," continued the Secretary, " that in forming connections 
 " with us in 1788, the Court of France, the actual organ of the nation, had no 
 " regard to the interests of the United States : but that their object was, by 
 " seizing the occasion of dismembering the British Empire, to diminish the 
 '' power of a formidable rival, and that when after we had carried on a dis- 
 " tressing war for seven years, the great object for which we had contended — ■ 
 " Independence — was within our reach, that Court endeavoured to postpone 
 " the acknowledgment of it by Great Britain, and eventually to deprive us of 
 " its fairest fruits — a just extent of Territory, the Navigation of the Missis- 
 " sippi, and the Fisheries. 
 
 " Such being the motives and conduct of France, what inspired our truly 
 " grateful sentiments to that nation ? * * We were engaged in a common 
 •' cause against Great Britain — we received loans of money — we were as- 
 " sisted, by troops and ships, in attacking the common enemy in the bosom 
 ' : of our country, and this association in war produced acquaintance, which 
 ''became friendship ; and experiencing these benefits, we gave way to our 
 ' ; feelings without enquiry into the motives from which they w T ere rendered." 
 
 The despatch has the additional value of exhibiting the clear, calm, convic- 
 tions of Washington, which were approved also by Hamilton, after the lapse 
 of thirteen years. 
 
 Washington's letter to Mr. Pinckney (4th Jan., 1797), while the despatch 
 was in progress, exhibits the strongest anxiety that it should be unexception- 
 able and unanswerable, for the reason that "if there be the least ground fo 
 " it, we shall be charged with unfairness, and an intention to impose on and 
 " to mislead the public judgment." 
 
 " Hence, and from a desire that the statement may be full, fair, calm, and 
 " argumentative — without asperity, or anything more irritating in the com. 
 " ments thau the narrative of facts which expose unfounded charges and 
 " assertions, does itself produce, I have wished that, the letter to Mr; 
 " Pinckney may be revised over and over again. Much depends on it, as it 
 " relates to ourselves, and, in the eyes of the world, whatever may be tho 
 " effect as it respects the governing powers of France." 
 
 It is more than probable that the official documents submitted to our Govern- 
 ment by Genet, and which so strongly aroused the indignation of the French 
 Directory, were not among those submitted in Paris to Dr. Sparks' scrutiny - 
 since proofs that carried such firm conviction to the calm mind of Washing- 
 ton could hardly have been passed over by his biographer without tho 
 slightest notice ; and yet I am not aware that Dr. Sparks has ever even re- 
 
ferred, in this connection, to the very extraordinary disclosures of Genet, nor 
 to the use made of them by Washington in triumphantly vindicating our Re- 
 public from the charge of ingratitude. 
 
 The unfortunate blunder into which Dr. Sparks seems to have permitted 
 himself to fall, and which I doubt not he will be the first to regret, by assum- 
 ing to decide so grave a question, involving the honour of American diplo- 
 matist?, upon the strength of documents exhibited to him in Europe, strangely 
 overlooking the unanswerable official proofs (embodied in our own diplomacy) 
 gathered from the French archives by the French Directory, and discovering 
 beyond all possibility of doubt the duplicity of Vergennes, is a blunder that 
 to this clay is being perpetuated in works claiming to be historic, and made 
 the basis of the most unworthy slanders both in America and in Europe. 
 
 The comments of Mr. Parton, in his recent Life of Franklin, where he relies 
 confidingly and complacently on Dr. Spark's assurances about the documents 
 he examined abroad, ignoring equally with Dr. Sparks the positive proofs so 
 strangely brought to light by the French Revolution, and communicated to 
 Washington by Genet, have their counterparts in the charges of Mr. F. C. 
 Schlosser, the author of a History of the Eighteenth Century, translated from 
 the German by D. Davison, M.A., and published at London in 1845. 
 
 On the 297th page of the fifth volume, Mr. Schlosser, after stating that 
 Franklin wished to delay the settlement of the preliminaries " out of gratitude 
 to France," but "he was overruled by Jay and Adams, and the latter signed 
 the treaty" (Mr. Schlosser's language implies that Franklin did not sign it) 
 " without even asking Vergennes, to whom America owed so much;" the 
 author refers to the very advantageous terms obtained by the American nego- 
 tiators in " regard to territory beyond the Blue Mountains, where the most 
 flourishing provinces and towns now are," — an extent of territory far beyond 
 what had been expected in America — " as well as in regard to ports, islands, 
 and the right of fishing," and remarks — slandering in one breath the Republic 
 and its Commissioners — "according to the universally received proposition in 
 " America, that the principal end of human wishes is and ought to be the 
 " greatest wealth and external advantage, the American lawyers Jay and 
 " Adams behaved very properly in opposing their colleague Franklin. The 
 u American quibblers invented a word to avoid that condition in their treaty 
 " with France, according to which they were not to sign any preliminaries 
 " until France had clone the same. They called the articles on which they had 
 " agreed provisional articles. Franklin's most recent biographer has plainly 
 u asserted what Franklin only hints at in his letters, that he by no means ap- 
 " proved of the ruse by which Messrs. Jay and Adams deceived the French 
 " ministry." 
 
 As it was expressly stipulated by the provisional articles, that the prelimi- 
 naries agreed upon in Paris by the American and English negotiators, should 
 not be signed until the English and French had come to terms at Versailles, 
 the charges of quibbling and chicanery, based upon the language of Dr. 
 Sparks, lead back directly to the question, how far the good faith of France 
 towards the United States justified the commissioners in disobeying the in- 
 
VI 
 
 structions of Congress, to defer in everything to French advice ; and upon this 
 point the testimony, but little known, of Lord St. Helens, who, as Mr. Fitz- 
 herbert had been commissioned by England to treat at that time with the 
 European powers, may be worth referring to. I quote from the N. Y. Re- 
 view, vol. ix., pp. 306-7. The memoranda of Lord St. Helens were addressed 
 to Sir George Rose, in returning the volumes of Jay's Life and Letters. 
 
 " These memoirs are indeed highly deserving of further attention on both 
 " sides of the Atlantic, and, as you justly foresaw, particularly interesting to 
 " myself, from my intimate acquaintance with Mr. Jay, when we were re- 
 " spectively employed at Paris, in 1782 ; and I can safely add my testimony 
 " to the numerous proofs afforded by these memoirs, that it was not only 
 " chiefly but solely through bis means that the negotiations of that period 
 " between England and France were brought to a successful conclusion." 
 
 After referring to the British official discussion with France touching the 
 French Fisheries, Lord St. Helens added : 
 
 "But in the course of their discussion, M. de Vergennes never failed to insist 
 " on the expediency of a concert of measures ~bdv:een France and England, for 
 " the purpose of excluding the American Stales from these fisheries, lest they 
 " should become a nursery for seamen." The New York Review, in a note, to 
 show that it was well understood at the time that to Jay belonged the chie 
 merit of saving the fisheries, quotes John Adams as writing to him — ' You 
 have erected a monument to your memory in every New England heart;' 1 
 and a letter from Hamilton, saying: "The New England people talk of mak- 
 ing you an annual fish offering." 
 
 The undue length to which this note has unintentionally extended itselj 
 will, no doubt, be pardoned, if its references to the official proofs of Jay's sa- 
 gacity in discovering and defeating the designs of France to abridge the 
 territory, limit the resources, and cripple the greatness of our young Repub- 
 lic, shall lead to a definitive settlement of the historic doubts on tins subject, 
 which have naturally enough been engendered by the too hasty opinion, 
 long since uttered after a partial investigation of our own archives, by the 
 venerable historian, and biographer of Washington and Franklin. 
 
 Extraordinary as it may seem to those familiar with the extent of the 
 field covered by Dr. Spark's historical researches, that he should actually 
 have been ignorant of the decisive bearing on this discussion of the reply of 
 Washington, in 1797, to the complaints of Mr. Adet — at once undignified and 
 unjust — that America was guilty of ingratitude to France, and of the unan- 
 swerable testimoi y cited by Washington, that France had cancelled any debt 
 we might have owed her for favours during the Avar, by her secret attempts 
 to deprive us, at its close, of its fair fruits; — extraordinary as it may seem, 
 that Dr. Sparks should never even have alluded in this connection, to the 
 resurrection at the hands of the French Directory, of the secret proofs, buried 
 deep in the confidential recesses of French diplomacy, of "the Machiavellian 
 principle" that had governed the friend-hip towards America of Vergennes 
 and Montmorin, and of "tiiic DUPLICITY," on their part, that "presided over 
 the negotiations of peace," I do not for a moment suppose that Dr. Sparks, 
 
Vll 
 
 while laying stress upon the documents at London and Paris to prove the 
 good faitli of Vergennes and Montmorin, purposely concealed from his readers 
 the incontrovertible proofs afforded by our own State papers, which abso- 
 lutely overthrow his theory. 
 
 In his Life of Franklin, (see note, vol. I., p. 498.) after a rash attempt to 
 prove that Jay was wrong in not allowing the French Court to control the 
 negociation, Mr. Sparks permitted himself to remark that " the author" of 
 Jay's Life, the late honourable William Jay, "appears to have acquired but a 
 limited knowledge of the negociation." 
 
 It would have been impossible for Dr. Sparks to have indulged in such a 
 suggestion, in regard to one whose opportunities for learning the entire his- 
 tory of the Treaty of Paris were excelled by none, had he actually been 
 aware that my father's memoirs of the negociation, and of the part borne in 
 it by the ministers of France — endorsed as they have since been for ac- 
 curacy and completeness by Lord St. Helens, of the British Court — had 
 been confirmed in advance as regards the correctness of their facts, the 
 soundness of their reasoning, and the historic truth of their conclusion,!, by 
 the testimony of Vergennes and Montmorin themselves, wrested from the 
 recesses of the French archives by the jeaiousy of the French Directory. 
 
 I freely acquit him of the profound injustice of which he would have been 
 guilty had he penned his defence of the French ministers and his derogatory 
 comments upon the cool-headed, watchful sagacity of Jay and Adams, after 
 having read the letter to Pinckney, the instructions to Genet, or the official 
 documents communicated by the Directory, all showing that it was their sa- 
 gacity that penetrated and defeated the unfriendly designs of our French ally 
 and not simply saved our Republic from the disgrace of treating in a subordi- 
 nate capacity for the satisfaction of England and of Europe, but that it se- 
 cured by one masterly move — albeit, in disobedience to the commands of 
 Congress — the domain of our Western States and Northwestern Territory, the 
 navigation of the Mississippi, and the Fisheries, which, as France and Spain 
 rightly anticipated, and perhaps reasonably feared, have proved il a nursery 
 for our seamen." 
 
 The incidents of the negociation of the Treaty of Paris, and the recollection 
 of the humiliation and dangers we escaped, and the glory and strength which 
 we won, by turning a deaf ear to the courtly as^u.anees of France, and re- 
 fusing to accept an European monarchy as the arbiter of our destiny, may 
 teach a useful lesson to those who, in this second war for American Inde- 
 pendence, are now charged with the diplomacy o!' the American peop'e. Tho 
 inevitable hostility of European aristocrats to the progress of our Free In- 
 stitutions, in whose success they read the presage of their own decay — a 
 hostility which, but for the sagacity and resolution of our negociators, would 
 have checked us in the onset, has not been modified by the unmistakable 
 signs which have since marked the westward course of the Star of Empire* 
 and to-day, whatever their differences and jealousies among themselves, the 
 great powers of Europe, with the exception of Russia, entertain a common 
 desire, if not a common resolve, to assist in the dissolution ol our Republic : and 
 
Vlll 
 
 if they can persuade us to listen with credulity to their diplomatic assur- 
 ances, they may easily convert us into tools for accomplishing our destruction. 
 The British Cabinet demand our admiration, if not our gratitude, for having 
 inaugurated, under the name of " neutrality," a system of Piracy that 13 
 lighting the ocean with the flames of our ships, and transferring our commerce 
 to British vessels; and France has called forth expressions of " eminent satis- 
 faction" from Washington by such emphatic declarations of the Emptror as 
 these. "It is contrary to my interest, my origin, and my principles, to im- 
 pose any kind of Government whatever on the Mexican people — they may 
 freely choose that which suits them best, &c." 
 
 That same France, now asks, and seems to expect us to believe, that 
 the subversion of the Mexican Republic, the establishment of a Mexican 
 Empire, and the election of an Austrian to represent, as Emperor of Mexico, 
 the policy of France, was not at all the act of Napoleon, but was done of 
 their own accord, by the Mexican people. 
 
 Every American diplomatist, of course, who judges of the disposition and 
 policy of a foreign Government by its acts, and not by its professions, and 
 who looks at those acts with American eyes, and not through the rosy spec- 
 tacles politely preferred him by the perpetrators, will be compelled to meet 
 the charge from imbecile credulity of taking a narrow view and indulging in 
 unjust and unworthy suspicions; but the recollection of the treaty of I'aris, 
 and of the subsequent disclosures by the French Directory, and a thought of 
 the untold advantages then secured for our country, by a simple devotion to 
 her rights and her honour, ur.beguiled and undiluted by the officious friendli- 
 ness and pressing assurances of our courtly ally, may well encourage the 
 exhibition by our diplomatists of a true national spirit, which, while render- 
 ing to other nations their just rights and a proper courtesy, "will not allow 
 diplomatic assurances to stultify their judgment or blind their vision. 
 
 However convenient and charming in social life may be the habit of 
 gracefully acquiescing in the conventionalities of society, that have occasion- 
 ally more of courtesy than of truth, expressing no doubts, entering no caveat, 
 venturing no contradiction, it is a habit — the adoption of which, as a rule of 
 thought and action, as well as of manner and expression — is apt to prove in- 
 convient alike for individuals and for nations. 
 
 Painful as it may be to the sensibilities of amiable optimists, it is neverthe- 
 less a stern truth, that our Republic has still to contend in her foreign 
 diplomacy with those "Machiavellian principles" — and that hereditary 
 " duplicity," which, with less resolute negotiators of the Treaty of Peace, 
 would have miserably betrayed us in our infancy ; and which now, after 
 seventy years, unhappily for our commerce, our honour and our prestige, 
 flaunt their triumph over our innocent credulity ; illustrating, by the exploits 
 of British iron clads, the sort of neutrality that England regards as good 
 enough towards a Republic, and blazoning upon the historic record of Mexico 
 the Napoleonic ideas of good faith, of Non-intervention, and of Popular 
 Freedom, 
 
; r ,' . 
 
 Sir :— 
 
 The Century having adopted at its last meeting a resolution to celebrate 
 the Seventieth Birthday of its distinguished Associate, Mi;. Bryant, on the 
 evening of the 5th of November next, the Committee of Management have 
 the pleasure to announce the following arrangements for that occasion : 
 
 Tickets will be required at the door, and may be obtained from the 
 Steward, at any time previous to the meeting. 
 
 Addresses of Welcome will be made by the President to Mr. Bryant and 
 to the invited guests, at nine o'clock. 
 
 Supper will be served at half-past ten o'clock. 
 
 As it is intended to decorate the rooms with natural flowers, the Commit- 
 tee beg contributions of bouquets and baskets from the Members, to be sent to 
 the Club House on the morning of the 5th of November. They request, also, 
 that Evening Dress be worn at the reception. 
 
 The Members' right of inviting Guests is necessarily suspended for that evening 
 
 In order to defray the additional expenses without burdening the Treas- 
 ury, the Committee propose to issue to each Member desiring it, a Lady's 
 Ticket, at Three Dollars. These may be obtained from the Steward until the 
 29th of October. If on that day the number of tickets so taken falls short 
 of 250, the remainder of that number will be issued to subscribing Members 
 in the order of subscription, not more than one extra ticket being allotted 
 to each subscriber. 
 
 $3n ©rbcr of the goarb of ggtanagcnwnt. 
 
 

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