T H E F E D E R A LI S T P R E S S
A N D S L AV E RY I N T H E
A G E O F J EF F E R S O N
J O H N K Y LE D AY
THE FEDERALIST PARTY is currently undergoing a renaissance among historians
of the early Republic. This development is based largely on their occasional
criticism of slavery. As the Democratic Republicans’ stock has fallen in response
to rising concerns over their leader Thomas Jefferson’s racial views and deep
entanglement with slavery, the Federalists who denounced Jefferson, the Republicans, and democracy itself have begun to look much better in comparison. While
it has long been known that certain Federalist leaders—notably Alexander Hamilton and John Jay—opposed slavery and that attacks on slaveholding Virginia
nabobs were part of the Federalist rhetorical arsenal after 1800, recent historians have found new significance in these facts. Studies such as those included in
Doron Ben-Atar and Barbara B. Oberg’s Federalists Reconsidered1 are beginning
to question the older view that Federalist antislavery was merely the empty partisan rhetoric of an antidemocratic oligarchy willing to threaten the Union if necessary in order to displace the Jeffersonian Republicans from power and restore
Federalist control over the national government. Some historians, such as Paul
Finkelman, even depict Federalist denunciations of slavery as an early but genuine
articulation of the religious and reformist abolitionism that became so prominent
in northern culture during the Jacksonian period. Scoring better than Thomas
Jefferson on the litmus-test issue of slavery, Federalists begin to look like the real
political reformers of the early Republic.
There are, however, some problems with this view. Based upon notions of religion and certain sectional issues of the era, antislavery criticisms of the Jefferson
administration made by the Federalists, as reflected in their partisan New England
press, were sincere but narrowly restricted in nature. They were ultimately
designed to alienate northern voters from Jefferson, and were just one aspect of
a general and largely personal critique of Jefferson that focused as much or more
John Kyle Day is a Ph.D. candidate in history at the University of Missouri-Columbia and an
adjunct professor of history at Columbia College of Missouri.
1. Doron Ben-Atar and Barbara B. Oberg, Federalists Reconsidered (Charlottesville, Va., 1998).
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THE HISTORIAN
upon his Enlightenment-based religious and political beliefs as on the immorality of slavery. These criticisms, in part, originated in the Federalists’ conservative
views regarding property, hierarchy, and the social order, and thus contained little
potential to become the basis of substantive social reform. Exploring how popular
or broadly disseminated these Federalist criticisms were, and whether they really
should be used to define what Federalism was about and how historians should
think about it, will demonstrate that this aspect of Federalist criticism of the
Virginia Dynasty was a secondary or tertiary item on the spectrum of debate,
and subordinate to other, more immediate concerns and/or issues of their party.
This article will assess the slavery debates of the Age of Jefferson by focusing
upon criticisms of his administration made by the New England Federalist press.
These periodicals provide an adequate summation of Federalist thought for a
number of reasons. Foremost, New England was the Federalists’ geographic base,
and many of these editors, such as Fisher Ames and Theodore Dwight, were
highly influential within Federalist circles, and thus helped construct the party’s
political ideology.2 The Federalists, who had previously dismissed the use of the
popular press, after Jefferson’s election in 1800 increasingly adopted the propaganda techniques of their opponents and used newspapers to publicize their
political agenda. This article will specifically focus upon five individual
events occurring during the Age of Jefferson: the scandal surrounding James T.
Callender’s exposure of the relationship between Jefferson and his slave Sally
Hemings; the debates over the Louisiana Purchase of 1803–04; the Embargo Act
of 1807–08; and the War of 1812 and the subsequent Hartford Convention.
While these are disparate events, they are among the most prominent of
political issues that entailed the issue of chattel slavery. All of these issues clearly
divided the northern and southern sections during the period. Taken together,
this collection of events elucidates the attitudes, perceptions, and opinions of the
Federalists toward the institution of slavery.3
The Age of Jefferson is traditionally viewed by historians as a period when
slavery was of relatively little importance to the political issues defining the first
2. Elisha P. Douglas, “Fisher Ames, Spokesman for New England Federalism,” Proceedings of
the American Philosophical Society 103 (1959): 713; Richard Lee Archer, “New England
Federalism and the Hartford Convention,” (Ph.D. diss, University of California-Santa
Barbara, 1968), 186–88. Fisher Ames was a former U.S. senator and associated with the
Boston Repertory, while Dwight was an editor of the Connecticut Courant and Connecticut
Mirror during the period.
3. For a description of the relationship of the Federalists with newspapers, see David Hackett
Fischer, The Revolution of American Conservatism: The Federalist Party in the Era of
Jeffersonian Democracy (New York, 1965), ch. 7, “Federalists and the Press,” passim.
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party system of the United States. Specifically, historians have viewed the rise of
the first party system that culminated in the wake of Thomas Jefferson’s so-called
“revolution of 1800” as based upon disputes over financial and commercial policies as well as contrasting interpretations of the federal Constitution. Central to
the debate over the prominence of slavery is the depiction of the first party system
that emerged during the Federalist Era, achieving definite form after 1800.4
During this first system, the Federalists’ primary power base lay in New England,
and was composed of both those American citizens (adult white male property
holders) who supported and benefited from the policies of the Washington and
Adams administrations, as well as those citizens who opposed the policies of the
newly elected Jeffersonian Republicans. The geographic base of the Jeffersonian
Republicans was primarily in the South, with the Middle Atlantic states holding
the balance of power. Therefore, most scholars have portrayed the differences
between these first two parties as based foremost upon conflicting views toward
commercial and financial policies that benefited their respective regions. The
slavery issue was thus not a pressing concern to either New England Federalists
or southern Republicans. In this view, any objections to chattel slavery by New
England Federalists were not based upon moral or religious grounds—as seen in
the Age of Jackson—but rather upon grievances toward the South’s inordinate
representation in the Congress and the Electoral College, due to the Constitution’s three-fifths clause counting slave population for representation.5 Federalist
grievances were most apparent after Jefferson’s election in 1800, a direct result
of this constitutional provision that gave the South an inordinate amount of influence within the federal government.
Scholars have looked for links between antebellum abolitionists and their
Federalist forebears. James Truslow Adams, in New England in the Republic,
1776–1850, argues that slavery was an important topic for the Federalists, and
was an integral aspect of public debate in the early Republic. He notes that opposition to the three-fifths clause remained the core of the Federalists’ suspicion of
southern slaveholders from the inception of the federal government in 1788.6
4. Scholars generally recognize five subsequent party systems in United States History. They are
known as the Age of Jackson (1828–60), the Civil War System (1860–96), The “System
of ’96” (1896–1932), the New Deal Coalition (1932–80), and the Age of Reagan
(1980–present).
5. The three-fifths clause of the Constitution, allowing for three out of every five slaves counted
toward a state’s representation in the House of Representatives, appears in Art. I, §2. The
Fourteenth Amendment, §2, abolished this stipulation 8 July 1868.
6. James Truslow Adams. New England in the Republic, 1776–1850 (Boston, Mass., 1926),
175.
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Adams admits that, prior to the debate over the proliferation of slavery into the
western territories with the admission of the state of Missouri in 1819–20, opposition to slavery in New England was not conspicuous: “although there had been
more or less antislavery feeling in New England, there were few workers to the
cause, no organized propaganda, and but little crystallized public sentiment.”7
However, he highlights Federalist denunciations of the clause, combined with
antidemocratic rhetoric, in controversies such as that over the Louisiana Purchase
of 1803, in which the United States bought the Louisiana Territory from
Napoleonic France.8
Adams attests that fear of southern slaveholding interests was essential to
Federalist opposition to the War of 1812. For example, Federalists loudly
denounced southern slaveholding politicians’ conduct of the war, seen in public
toasts, circulating political pamphlets, and continuing criticism of the three-fifths
clause by the Federalist press. He also believes there was widespread antislavery
sentiment at the Hartford Convention of 1814–15, when many prominent New
England citizens convened to draw up a list of grievances against the federal
government’s conduct of the War of 1812. Accordingly, Adams notes that the
convention’s first recommended amendment to the U.S. Constitution was the
repeal of slave representation.9
Similarly, David Hackett Fischer, in The Revolution of American Conservatism:
The Federalist Party in the Era of Jeffersonian Democracy, provides numerous
examples of Federalist charges that Jeffersonian Republicans served their regional
slave-based economic interests at the expense of the nation’s welfare. Though he
points out that Federalists were no friends of African Americans or any other
minorities, such as Irish immigrants or Jews, Fischer believes that New England
Federalists viewed the Jeffersonian Republicans as “a dynasty of Virginia planteraristocrats who merely masqueraded as friends of the people. Federal polemicists
throughout the period repeatedly referred to ‘slave driving nabobs of Virginia,
who would fain conceal their designs of domination beneath the masks of liberty,
and a pretended zeal for the rights of the people.’ ”10 Fischer, however, departs
from Adams’s view when he argues that as the Federalists lost influence during
Jefferson’s administrations, they did not turn so much to advocating secession
as they did to seeking the succor of disenfranchised groups, most notably Irish
7. Ibid., 326.
8. Ibid., 235.
9. Ibid., 280, 288–89, 295–98.
10. Fischer, 159–60.
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immigrants and northern free blacks. He even suggests that Federalist attacks
upon the Jeffersonian Republicans as beholden to the economic interests of the
southern plantation system was an indirect attempt to secure the support of free
blacks in the northern states.11
Shaw Livermore’s The Twilight of Federalism: The Disintegration of the
Federalist Party, 1815–1830 supports the view that politics provided a venue for
the Federalists to express their disdain for slavery. For example, in his discussion
of the Missouri statehood debates of 1820 over the proliferation of slavery into
the western territories, Livermore argues that this issue allowed Federalists to use
their longtime antipathy toward slavery for the rebirth of their party, thereby
forming an alliance between the northern and western sections of the country
against the South. Moreover, Federalists believed that this would erase the stigma
imposed by their opposition to the War of 1812 and the infamous Hartford
Convention.12 According to Livermore, “Most northern Federalists, of course,
sincerely deplored slavery. It would have been strange if the Federalists had not
seized upon the Missouri question.”13
Many historians actually argue that not only were antislavery views a vital
aspect of the Federalist agenda during the Jeffersonian era, but also that the abolitionist movement was the direct descendent of New England Federalism. Linda
K. Kerber’s Federalists in Dissent: Imagery and Ideology in Jeffersonian America
points to longtime Federalist denunciations of the three-fifths clause and Federalists’ fear that the Louisiana Purchase would increase the slaveholding South’s
political power at the expense of New England. For Kerber, these iniquities
proved to Federalist leaders that Jefferson put the interests of slave owners before
the financial and commercial interests of the Republic.14 As for the relationship
between the Federalists and abolitionism, Kerber points out that many prominent abolitionists, such as Theodore Sedgewick, Jr., John Phillips, and Josiah
Quincy, Jr., came from leading Federalist families. According to Kerber, this
progeny provided a “continuum,” whereby the political exigencies of the
Federalists set the stage for the next generation: “the political abolitionism of an
earlier generation was transformed into a humanitarian abolitionism by sons who
11. Ibid., 165–67.
12. Shaw Livermore, The Twilight of Federalism: The Disintegration of the Federalist Party,
1815–1830 (Princeton, 1962), ch. 5, “A Beam of Hope From Missouri,” 88–112, passim.
13. Ibid., 89.
14. Linda K. Kerber. Federalists in Dissent: Imagery and Ideology in Jeffersonian America
(Ithaca, N.Y., 1970), 43–50.
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took their fathers at their word.”15 Furthermore, Kerber concludes, “By their
ideas—and their sons—they [Federalists] helped to found the larger antislavery
crusade of the Jacksonian generation.”16
Paul Finkelman, in “The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Federalism,” furthers Kerber’s view. He argues, “Federalists helped lay the groundwork for what
would become the abolitionist critique of American politics.”17 Finkelman supports Fischer’s contention that the Federalist Party was supported by free African
Americans of the North, and concurs with Kerber that the conflicting policies
between the Federalists and Republicans over Saint Domingue (Haiti) proves
that the former were inherent supporters of abolitionism.18 Finkelman notes that
the administration of John Adams, in its antipathy toward revolutionary France,
thought of extending diplomatic recognition to Haiti after African American
slaves successfully revolted and overthrew French colonial officials. According to
Finkelman, “in the Age of Jefferson, the Federalists were the people most committed to liberty and racial fairness, if not necessarily equality and fraternity.”19
A middle ground between these contrasting interpretations is presented by
James M. Banner, Jr., in To The Hartford Convention: The Federalists and the
Origins of Party Politics in Massachusetts, 1789–1815. Banner believes that while
antislavery was a constant aspect of Federalist thought during the period, it was
based upon the political inequality of the three-fifths clause and fear of the South’s
political and economic domination, rather than the revolutionary idealism that
lingered through the Federalist Era. According to Banner, Federalist leaders saw
abolitionism as a political liability that would further weaken their southern flank
if they pressed the issue in national debate.20 However, Banner concurs that
Federalist antislavery attacks upon the Jeffersonian Republicans laid the basis for
the future abolitionist movement by articulating the distinction between the
societies of New England and the South. He concludes that “in fortifying the antisouthern bias of the North, the larger Federalist ideology which encompassed
15. Ibid., 62.
16. Ibid., 66.
17. Paul Finkelman. “The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Federalism,” in Federalists
Reconsidered, ed. Doron Ben-Atar and Barbara B. Oberg. (Charlottesville, Va., 1998),
138.
18. Ibid., 146–52.
19. Ibid., 156.
20. James M. Banner, Jr., To The Hartford Convention: The Federalists and the Origins of Party
Politics in Massachusetts, 1789–1815 (New York, 1970), 107.
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such sentiments taught a third generation of political leaders to understand that
slavery lay at the root of New England’s powerlessness.”21
Historians of Federalism in the South are also important in this debate. For
example, James M. Broussard’s The Southern Federalists: 1800–1816 contends
that, “on the slavery question, it would be a cautious claim that southern
Federalists were somewhat more liberal than southern Republicans.”22 Using state
legislative records and southern Federalist newspapers, Broussard notes that
Federalists generally did not have the support of the planter class. Furthermore,
economics, notions of patriarchy, and moral concern drove many southern
Federalists to work toward ending the slave trade, encouraging voluntary
manumission, and preventing discrimination against slaves and free blacks.
According to Broussard, this distance from the plantation system, combined
with conservative views toward private property rights, inclined southern Federalists to be more lenient toward slavery. However, Broussard states that
“[c]hipping away at the slave trade in its various forms was all well enough, but
this by no means indicated Federalist hostility toward slavery itself. Some southerners might have branded the institution an economic and moral burden, but
very few took any positive steps to eliminate it, even gradually. Federalists were
no exception.”23
Lisle A. Rose, in Prologue To Democracy: The Federalists in the South,
1789–1800, attests that the uncovering of a slave insurrection in South Carolina
in 1797 converted many citizens of this state to a support of Federalist policies
that advocated national development. Rose believes that South Carolina displayed the “siege mentality” of other slave societies, supporting Federal policies
such as a strong defense budget, the building of fortifications in Charleston
Harbor, and galleys for coastal defense. Rose contends that the 1798–99 Quasi
War with France led many backcountry Anglo southerners “from Georgia to
Virginia to fear physical attack from the ‘savages’ around them should war with
France come.”24 This meant American Indians as well as African American slaves,
the latter of whom had been heavily imported into the backcountry during that
21. Ibid., 108.
22. James H. Broussard, Southern Federalists, 1800–1816 (Baton Rouge, La., 1978), 320.
23. Ibid., 317.
24. Lisle A. Rose, Prologue To Democracy: The Federalists in the South, 1789–1800 (Lexington, Ky., 1968), 58, 194. For a discussion of slave rebellions in eighteenth century South
Carolina, see Philip D. Morgan, Slave Counterpoint: Black Culture in the Eighteenth Century
Chesapeake & Lowcountry (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1998), passim. For a discussion of the Quasi
War with France, see David McCullough, John Adams (New York, 2001), ch. 9–11.
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decade as the western lands had been opened for settlement after the American
Revolution. According to Rose, many of these Anglo southerners believed that
war with France would precipitate hostilities with Indian tribes, as they had done
in the Northwestern Territory in previous decades, as well as encourage slave
revolts. Furthermore, Rose believes that the Virginia slave revolt known as
Gabriel’s Uprising in 1800 “was attributed to French democratic influence.”
Therefore, this event influenced many white Virginians to support Federalist
President John Adams in the national elections that year.25
II
If Federalists were genuine antislavery political reformers, they should have
expressed moral outrage at Jefferson’s sexual exploitation of his slave Sally
Hemings. James T. Callender, a disgruntled office-seeker who had previously
worked as a pamphleteer for Jefferson, revealed this relationship. He published
articles in September and October 1802 in the Richmond Recorder that charged
that Jefferson kept one of his slaves, now known to be Sally Hemings, as his concubine. Callender’s allegations, today accepted as historical fact by most scholars of the period, outlined the basic parameters of the relationship between
Jefferson and Hemings that began when Jefferson was the U.S. ambassador to
France in the late 1780’s, and that ultimately lasted until Jefferson’s death in
1826.26
After the election of 1800, Federalists increasingly used the press to articulate
their criticism of the Jefferson administration. The issue of the relationship
between Jefferson and Hemings thus provided a sensational as well as scandalous
topic for the nascent New England press to both attract readership and to criticize their archenemy.27 The Hemings scandal, however, was a subsidiary topic to
25. Ibid., 254, 266; For a general description of Gabriel’s Uprising, see Darlene Clark Hine,
William C. Hine, and Stanley Harrold, The African American Odyssey (Upper Saddle River,
2000), 109–110. For a general discussion of the relationships and interaction between
Anglos, American Indians, and African slaves, see Gary B. Nash, Red, White, & Black: The
Peoples of Early North America (Englewood Cliffs, 1992).
26. James T. Callender’s two articles discussing the relationship between Hemings and Jefferson
appeared in the Richmond Recorder, 1 September 1802 and 20 October 1802. Jan Ellen
Lewis and Peter S. Onuf, eds., Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson: History, Memory, and
Civic Culture (Charlottesville, Va., 1999), 259–61.
27. New York Evening Post, 9 September 1802, for Callender’s allegations of the affair between
Hemings and Jefferson. For an in depth description of the Hemings scandal, see Michael
Durey, “With the Hammer of Truth”: James Thomson Callender and America’s Early
National Heroes (Charlottesville, Va., 1990), 157–63; For a general discussion of
the Hemings–Jefferson relationship, their families, and historians’ treatment of the subject,
the standard work is Annette Gordon-Reed, Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An
American Controversy (Charlottesville, Va., 1997).
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the pecuniary relationship between Jefferson and Callender, stemming from
Jefferson’s pardon and subsequent assumption of Callender’s $200 fine for libel.
Although these editors published Callender’s exposé, his allegations received
relatively little commentary compared to that of Jefferson’s assumption of
Callender’s debt.28
When Federalist periodicals did comment upon the Hemings scandal, the tone
was more of sarcastic humor and bitter jest than any public outrage and/or moral
condemnation of Jefferson’s treatment of a female slave. For example, the New
York Evening Post, while first professing that Callender’s allegations were “rather
too dark for our winterly climes,” published the “private disreputable tale” yet
saved the bulk of their condemnation for Jefferson’s personal relationship with
Callender, the latter of whom was by no means popular in Federalist circles, due
to his polemical satire of their leaders in The Prospect Before Us (1798).29 Actually, most editors questioned the validity of Callender’s charges, considering the
source, and used the feud between Callender and Jefferson for political expediency. The widely read Columbian Centinel declared the following year that while
“Callender had more truth for his numerous assertions, than even some of the
Federalists gave him credit for,”30 they would tolerate his simultaneous criticisms
of the New England press, “provided he continues his useful exposures of the
hypocrisy, turpitude and misconduct of the Executive:—‘Rail on—while our
revenge shall be, “To speak the best we know of thee!” ’ ”31 However, the public
relationship between Jefferson and Callender, not the improprieties of the president, remained the preeminent focus for criticism of the administration. One
editor summarized the opinion of the Federalist community regarding Callender’s
exposé of Jefferson:
Mr. Jefferson’s private life has been repeatedly and successfully attacked in
all parts of the United States, this story has been almost kept from circulation. It was of a nature which in our own opinion required the most positive and explicit evidence from the injured party himself, before it could
28. New England Palladium, 14 September–8 October 1802; Columbian Centinel, 21 July–1 September 1802; New York Evening Post, September–October 1802; For a description of the relationship between Jefferson and Callender, see Henry Adams, History of the United States
1801–1809 (New York, 1962), 219; Noble E. Cunningham, Jr., In Pursuit of Reason: The Life
of Thomas Jefferson (Baton Rouge, La., 1987), 222; Dumas Malone, Jefferson the President:
First Term, 1801–1805 (Boston, Mass., 1970), 207–18, vol. 4 of Jefferson and His Time (6 vols.).
29. New York Evening Post, 9 & 29 September 1802.
30. Samuel Eliot Morison, Harrison Gray Otis, 1765–1848: The Urbane Federalist (Boston,
Mass., 1969), 366; Columbian Centinel, 6 August 1803.
31. Columbian Centinel, 11 September 1802.
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with propriety be adopted as correct. We were not able to believe that a
piece of conduct could be fastened on Mr. Jefferson.32
Federalist writers did not demonstrate sympathy and/or support for slave
women in general and Hemings in particular. Rather, Federalist editors seemed
susceptible to describing Hemings as a “nasty wench,” and chided Jefferson for
his alleged miscegenation.33 Despite their absolution of Jefferson, they nevertheless insinuated that Jefferson would be embarrassed if all facts of his private life
were revealed, stating, “should all be made known, he would not . . . exultingly
exclaim—‘Look at my children.’ ”34 They professed that other aspects of Jefferson’s life were sufficient “for finishing the character of any man,” even if “Sally,
and her five mulatto children, and her fifteen or thirty gallants of all colours,
could at once be expunged from existence—that all memory of them . . . could
be obliterated from recollection.”35 The tone of these criticisms was of satirical
punditry, not moral outrage.
This type of portrayal of Hemings was also seen in public toasts and printed
poems. For example, first appearing in the Boston Gazette, then reprinted in the
Boston Recorder, was a poem sung to the tune of “Yankee Doodle” that was
attributed to Jefferson himself by the Federalist press:
Of all the damsels on the green, On mountain, or in valley,
A lass so luscious ne’er was seen, As the Monticellian Sally.
Yankee doodle, who’s the noodle? What wife were half so handy?
To breed a flock of slaves for stock, a blackamoor’s the dandy.36
Even future president John Quincy Adams of Massachusetts offered crude commentary on the subject that showed little sympathy or respect for Hemings. In
an “Ode to Xanthius Phoecus,” which appeared in his Port Folio of 1802, Adams
wrote, “Dear Thomas, deem it no disgrace with slaves to mend thy breed/Nor
let the wench’s smutty face deter thee from thy deed. . . . /Speak but the word!
32. New York Evening Post, 9 June 1803.
33. For a description of the traditional depiction of African American women in American slave
society, see Kathleen M. Brown, Good Wives, Nasty Wenches, and Anxious Patriarchs:
Gender, Race, and Power in Colonial Virginia (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1996). Brown specifically
discusses Hemings and Jefferson on p. 373.
34. Ibid., 13 September 1802.
35. Ibid., 24 September 1802.
36. Boston Recorder, 17 November 1802; Malone, Jefferson the President, 214.
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Alike for thee Thy venal tribe shall swear/PUREST OF MORTALS thou shalt be
And SALLY shall be fair.”37
III
Jefferson received information on 3 July 1803 that his representatives in Paris,
Robert Livingston and James Monroe, had signed a treaty with France that ceded
the entire Louisiana Territory to the United States for fifteen million dollars.38
Because this issue dealt directly with the question over the proliferation of slavery
in the Republic, it presented the New England Federalist press an opportunity
to articulate a moral opposition to the institution. However, the press did not
respond to the Louisiana Purchase in this manner. Indeed, Federalist denunciations of the acquisition encompassed the gamut of economic and societal differences between the northern and the southern sections of the Republic. There is
scant evidence, however, showing concern for the plight of the southern slaves
by New England Federalists. Rather, any criticisms of the Louisiana Purchase
relating to slavery by Federalists concerned continued fears of economic and political subjugation to the South due to the three-fifths clause, including subsequent
strategic and geographic concerns, rather than the social implications of the introduction of slavery.
Slavery did not receive much attention in the congressional debates concerning the Louisiana Purchase. Instead, Federalist leaders in Congress opposed the
acquisition mainly upon the questions of the constitutional legality of the treaty
between the United States and the French Republic, the validity of the Treaty of
San Ildelfonso between France and Spain that returned Louisiana to the French,
and the possibility of foreign threats by these European powers as a result of the
acquisition.39 The leading Federalists in the U.S. Senate, Timothy Pickering of
Massachusetts and Uriah Tracy of Connecticut, formally opposed the acquisition
upon legal grounds. Pickering argued that a constitutional amendment was
required in order for the federal government to acquire new territory.40 At the
37. Robert R. Thompson, “John Quincy Adams, Apostate: From ‘Outrageous Federalist’ to
‘Republican Exile,’ 1801–1809,” Journal of the Early Republic 11 (summer 1991): 165.
38. For a description of the Louisiana Purchase, see Malone, Jefferson the President, ch. 16,
“The Louisiana Treaty,” 284–310.
39. See “Louisiana Treaty (November 1803),” Annals of Congress, [Eighth Congress, 17
October 1803–3 March 1805 (Washington, 1852)], Sec. I: 381–418, 431–88, and 497–514.
40. Ibid., vol. 13, 45–46, 54–58. See also 31–74, passim, et. seq. The bill authorizing payment
for Louisiana passed the Senate 26–25, with Pickering, Tracy, James Hillhouse of
Connecticut, William Hill Wells, and Samuel White of Delaware dissenting.
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time still identified as a Federalist, Sen. John Quincy Adams supported the acquisition but concurred with Pickering on strict constructionist grounds that a constitutional amendment was needed to validate the acquisition.41
The New England Federalist press also focused their denunciation of the
Louisiana Purchase on the aforementioned issues, and rarely mentioned the
spread of slavery. For example, the Columbian Centinel believed the acquisition
was a financial liability: “Now, in a time of profound tranquility, the national
debt is to be increased fifteen millions of dollars in one year, for the purchase of
a country most of which is uninhabited and totally useless to the United States.”42
Likewise, Fisher Ames believed, “that the acquiring of territory with money is
mean and despicable. For as to the right of navigating, &c. the Mississippi, that
was our right before; and the nation that will put its rights into negotiations, is
deserving of shame and chains.”43 The press furthered charged that not only was
the acquisition fiscally unsound, but also followed the lead of New England’s
congressional delegation in questioning the validity of the territory’s transfer
from Spain to the French Republic.44
Federalist leader Alexander Hamilton, however, supported the Louisiana Purchase. Attempting to prevent an open breach within Federalist ranks, Hamilton
wrote under the pseudonym “Pericles” in an editorial appearing 5 July 1803 in
the New York Evening Post. Hamilton noted the strategic advantage of possessing New Orleans, though he also questioned the inherent value of the entire transMississippi West and denounced Jefferson’s general fiscal policies. Similar to
standard Federalist opinion regarding the Purchase, he nonetheless said that,
“adding to the great weight of the western part of our territory, must hasten
the dismemberment of a large portion of our country, or a dissolution of the
Government.”45 Hamilton did not mention the proliferation of slavery into the
41. Thompson, “John Quincy Adams, Apostate,” 170, 174.
42. Columbian Centinel, 10 August 1803; see also New York Evening Post, 28 November 1803.
For an example of Maryland Federalists denouncing the Louisiana Purchase as fiscally
irresponsible, see Noble Cunningham, ed., The Making of the American Party System,
1789–1809 (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1965), 158–59.
43. Seth Ames, ed. Works of Fisher Ames with a Selection from His Speeches and Correspondence, 2 vols. (New York, 1971), 323.
44. Columbian Centinel, 10 August 1803.
45. New York Evening Post, 5 July 1803. The editorial was conclusively identified as written
by Alexander Hamilton in “Hamilton on the Louisiana Purchase: A Newly Identified
Editorial from the ‘New York Evening Post,’ ” William and Mary Quarterly 12 (1955):
276ff. According to this article, Hamilton established this periodical as “his personal organ,”
see p. 271.
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Louisiana Territory. However, the Columbian Centinel noted in September
1804 that a petition for admission to the Union drawn up by French residents
of Louisiana included a stipulation that requested a repeal of the prohibition
of further importation of slaves.46
These public debates over Louisiana demonstrate Federalist fears of both the
Francophile policies of Jefferson and the economic and political subjugation to
the slaveholding South that resulted from the three-fifths clause. These two issues
complemented one another, for Federalists believed that the democratic principles of Jeffersonian Republicans were hauntingly similar to the violent excesses
of French Jacobins. Moreover, these upper-class Federalists believed that the
southern institution of slavery and its spread westward was proof that the
Jeffersonian Republicans were plotting to subjugate New England both politically and economically. For Federalist leaders, this meant that the New England
citizenry would eventually devolve to the status of African American slaves. Federalists perceived the Louisiana Purchase as the coup de grâce whereby Jefferson
would establish Jacobin democracy and a slave-based economy at the expense
of the merchant-based economy of New England. This remained the core of
Federalist criticism of the three-fifths clause and the pro-French policies of the
Jeffersonian Republicans.
These Federalist concerns were articulated in a number of spheres. For
example, in the aforementioned editorial, Hamilton lauded the “courage and
obstinate resistance” of the Haitian Revolution, and argued that Toussaint L’Ouverture had halted French plans for colonization of Louisiana.47 His criticism of
Jefferson in the same article pointed to Federalist antagonism toward Jefferson’s
pro-French policies.
Federalist opposition to the Louisiana Purchase was also seen in the overt hostility shown throughout New England for the spread of slavery into the newly
acquired territory. This was based upon opposition to the three-fifths clause. For
example, Thomas J. Farnham has detailed the Federalists’ efforts to rescind the
three-fifths clause in the wake of the Louisiana Purchase. The Federalistcontrolled Massachusetts general assembly passed a proposed amendment to the
U.S. Constitution, introduced by Rep. William Ely of Springfield, which would
have repealed the three-fifths clause, limiting representation to be based solely on
46. Columbia Centinel, 5 September 1804.
47. Ibid., 274.
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free persons.48 Numerous toasts were printed in the Federalist press, lauding
Massachusetts and stating that New England citizens were “descended from
Freemen, they will never be governed by Southern Slaves.” The Federalist press
urged the adoption of the amendment, stating it would allow the Constitution to
“suffer no further innovation, to increase the influence of Negro Electors.”49
This fear of southern domination due to the three-fifths clause was apparent
in Federalist rhetoric discussing the Louisiana Purchase. Pickering, for instance,
warned Sen. Rufus King of New York that the spread of slavery into Louisiana
without repeal of the clause would lead to a perpetuity of “Negro Presidents and
Negro Congresses,” at the expense of New England.50 Federalist leader Josiah
Quincy warned that the voting power of the growing immigrant population of
Louisiana would be under the control of the planter elite who would use it to
subjugate the interests of New England to the South: “the voices of our Representatives will be drowned amid the discordant jargon of French, Spanish,
German and Irish delegates, chosen by slave owners, in a disproportionate ratio.”
According to Fisher Ames, this supposed rabble of “Gallo-Hispano-Indian
omnium gatherum of savages and adventurers” would lead to mob rule over the
United States, under the direction of the Jacobin demagogue Jefferson.51
There were other elements of American society that protested the spread of
slavery into Louisiana. These groups were not, however, a significant part of the
Federalists of New England. There were many petitions to Congress coming from
Quaker congregations of New Jersey and Pennsylvania in late 1804 that sought
the prohibition of slaves into the Louisiana Territory.52 These petitions, however,
given the traditional abolitionism of the Society of Friends, the geographic origin
of the petitions, and the political heterogeneity of Quaker congregations, cannot
be considered endemic to Federalist ideology. More than any other Protestant
denomination of the era, the Society of Friends possessed a strong and
longstanding tradition of opposition to slavery based upon moral and religious
48. Thomas J. Farnham, “The Federal State Issue and the Louisiana Purchase,” Louisiana
History 6 (1965): 20–24. The Ely Amendment was eventually introduced in Congress by
Pickering, but “was speedily tabled and forgotten.” See also Morison, Harrison Gray Otis,
270–71.
49. Connecticut Courant, 4, 18 July 1804. Farnham, “The Federal State Issue,” 21.
50. Farnham, “The Federal State Issue,” 18.
51. “Fisher Ames to Thomas Dwight,” 31 October 1803, in Seth Ames, ed., Works of Fisher
Ames with a Selection from His Speeches and Correspondence (New York, 1971), 1: 329.
52. Noble Cunningham, The Process of Government under Jefferson (Princeton, N.J., 1978),
298.
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convictions. Any support for antislavery measures by either Federalists or Republicans would most likely come through this denomination. However, Quaker
abolitionism and its relationship with the Federalists were ambivalent at best,
for many leading Federalist congressmen, including John Rutledge, Jr. of South
Carolina and Harrison Gray Otis of Massachusetts, publicly condemned the
antislavery petitions that Congress repeatedly received from this denomination.
Federalist John Brown of Rhode Island was at the forefront of defense of the
slave trade. As the historian Winthrop Jordan states, “individual and sectional
feeling rather than party lines determined the division of opinion” on the question of slavery during this period.53 In regards to Jefferson’s annual message to
Congress in December 1806, which called for the abolition of the slave trade,
the congressional debates were mainly between Quaker-dominated Pennsylvania
and Jeffersonian Republicans of Virginia, with Federalist New England largely
abstaining due to indifference.54
Federalists used the Callender–Hemings scandal and the Louisiana Purchase as
a basis for their criticisms of Jefferson during the presidential campaign of 1804.
Throughout the summer and fall of that year, New England Federalist editors
repeatedly alluded to the relationship between Jefferson and Callender. They also
portrayed the Louisiana Purchase as proof that the Republicans were instigators
of democratic mob rule and French Jacobinism.55 For example, the Columbian
Centinel asked its readers, “Can you behold with complacency Mr. Jefferson
Emperor of Louisiana?” This Federalist organ charged that Jefferson’s supporters in Congress had “invested him [Jefferson] with an authority over Louisiana
as uncontrolable [sic], as that, which BOUNAPARTE [sic] exercises over his
French slaves. Indeed, the French government seems to have been their model.”
This periodical further prophesied that if the Republicans were not defeated at
the polls, tyranny was certain to reign, and hereafter, “the clanking of chains of
slavery will remind it [the United States] of the freedom, foolishly immolated on
the altar of party.”56 The press also overlooked the divisions between Federalists
themselves in the presidential election of 1800, when many Federalists defected
from President John Adams to support slaveholder Charles Cotesworth Pinckney
of South Carolina. Instead, they argued that the three-fifths clause remained the
53. Winthrop Jordan, White over Black: American Attitudes toward the Negro, 1550–1812
(Chapel Hill, N.C., 1968), 328–29, 359.
54. Adams, 840, 848, 852–53.
55. Columbian Centinel and New York Evening Post, September–October 1804, passim.
56. Columbian Centinel, “Hume No. XXII,” 6 October 1804.
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root cause for the triumph of Jefferson: “had not the voice of southern slaves
been heard through their masters, he [Jefferson] would still have remained a
private citizen.”57 John Quincy Adams also denounced the Jeffersonian Republicans during the election as “a privileged order of slave-holding Lords,” who were
beset by an “itch for popularity.”58
After Jefferson won the election in a landslide, which included the support
of all New England save Connecticut, the Columbian Centinel continued its
traditional denunciation of the three-fifths clause and warned that the South’s
political domination over New England was increasing.59 They highlighted,
for instance, the continued importation of slaves into the South, which only meant
further impotence for New England in the federal government. Though showing
no sympathy for the plight of the slaves themselves, this newspaper articulated
the iniquity of the three-fifths clause, as well as its continued abuse by southern
planters:
In South Carolina, from January to October last, there was imported from
Africa, in that State, Four thousand two hundred and seventy-two
negroes;—which have all been sold, at public auction, as slaves—Now,
these 4272 black slaves entitle their purchasers to Two Thousand six
hundred and sixty-two votes; more than equal to ALL the votes given in,
at the last election, in the towns Salem, Marblehead, Gloucester, Lynn, and
Dracut.—And yet the peaceable and Constitutional attempt to obtain a
remedy for this flagrant and abominable evil, is denounced by Men
pretending to be republicans, as an effront [sic] to effect “THE DISSOLUTION OF THE STATES.”60
These and other examples point to a general consensus among Federalist
opinion-makers that the unfair advantage of the slaveholding states in national
politics due to the three-fifths clause meant the oppression and subjugation of
the northern free states. This reveals that while the moral question of slavery was
not a subject of debate, the question of slavery itself and its implications was
the focus of people’s perceptions of the distinction between the North and the
57. Ibid. “Hume No. XXVII, and Last,” 27 October 1804.
58. Thompson, “John Quincy Adams, Apostate,” 174.
59. For a discussion of the 1804 presidential election, see Malone, Jefferson the President,
433–34.
60. See Columbian Centinel, 14 November 1802.
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South. Thus political and economic questions drove a moral dilemma to the
forefront.
The aforementioned editorial by Hamilton notwithstanding, the Federalist
press generally did not show sympathy for the Haitian revolutionaries. For
example, in its discussion of Tom Paine’s return to the United States in 1802, the
New England Palladium equated the forces led by Toussaint L’Ouverture, as well
as the French refugees from the island, with the masses of Europe: “The United
States has many ambitious knaves, but only a small number of destitute rabble.
All our cities have not so much as London or Paris. Shall we import rabble from
St. Domingo or Ireland, or France? Things are not yet ripe for bringing over more
than one PAINE.”61 The press also warned its readers about the influx of refugees
from the island who had brought their slaves with them:
A horde of the most dreadful, desperate and bloody-minded wretches are
daily and nightly disgorged upon our shores from the French frigates. . . .
Already may we predict, that constant additional watch will be found
necessary the ensuing winter, to preserve our houses from conflagration,
our dwellings from burglary, and every species of property from being plundered. We have here to mention a dangerous and shameful species of traffic,
which is going on daily between the Long Island people and the frigates in
the purchase of their negroes for small sums of money. Cannot this be
stopped? One question must occur to every citizen—for what purpose were
these cargoes of negroes brought here?62
The elitism and disdain for democracy inherent in Federalist ideology of the
period would make strange bedfellows with a moral system endemic to a later
generation of New England abolitionists. There were signs of continued Federalist concerns for the problems resulting from slaveholding, but these usually
followed the traditional warnings of insurrections stemming from a large
slave population that Americans had feared for centuries.63
61. New England Palladium, 12 October 1802.
62. New York Evening Post, 10 September 1802.
63. For an example of New England fears of slave insurrections, see Democratic-Republican
representative Barnabas Bidwell’s speech calling for an end to the slave trade in the debates
over the Yazoo Claims. Annals of Congress, Ninth Congress, First Session, February 1806:
433, 437–38; For a discussion of initial relationships between Anglo-Americans and African
Americans, see Philip D. Morgan, “British Encounters with African and African-Americans,
circa 1600–1780,” in Strangers within the Realm: Cultural Margins of the First British
Empire, ed. Bernard Bailyn and Philip D. Morgan (Chapel Hill, N.C. 1991), 157–219.
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IV
The Jefferson administration’s embargo of 1807–08 proved to be another significant point of contention that divided the northern and southern regions of the
United States and highlighted the respective economic and political systems that
separated these sections. The embargo came from a conflict over British maritime
policy in its war with Napoleonic France. Beginning with the so-called Chesapeake affair, British ships routinely halted neutral American ships on the high
seas, searching for deserters and then impressing many American sailors into the
British navy. Jefferson’s policies ultimately banned trade with the belligerent
nations, thereby devastating the New England economy, which relied heavily
upon British trade. This controversy also revived support for the Federalists, who
had been defeated in the elections of 1804.64
Federalist editors denounced this Jeffersonian Republican policy, which seemed
to be directly aimed at undermining New England commerce. Criticism of
Jefferson’s embargo articulated Federalist fears that the administration’s perceived
pro-French policies would not only cripple the economy of New England but also
subjugate the region to the political will of the South. New England Federalists
believed the embargo was intentionally designed to ruin their market-based
economy and make it subservient to the South in order to aid Napoleonic France
in its war with Great Britain. As strong commercial ties existed between New
England and the British, Federalist leaders in Congress accused the Jeffersonian
Republicans of “forging chains to fasten us to the car of the Imperial Conqueror.”65 They equated the embargo’s disastrous effects upon the New England
economy with a step toward slavery: “Like the Israelites in Egypt, we are to make
brick and find our own straw. We are to have faith, and find our own reasons
for it. This course will do in this country not longer.”66 The debate focused upon
the foreign influence upon the issue, with New England favoring British interests
while Virginia supported Napoleonic France.67
64. For a discussion of the embargo, see James Truslow Adams, 259–80; Banner, passim;
Cunningham, In Pursuit of Reason, 311–18; The Jeffersonian Republicans in Power, passim;
The Process of Government Under Jefferson, passim; Malone, Jefferson the President:
Second Term, 1805–1809 (Boston, Mass., 1974), ch. 23, “The Chesapeake Affair,” 415–38,
and ch. 26, “The Lesser Evil: The Embargo,” 469–90, in vol. 5 of Jefferson and His Time;
Morison, Harrison Gray Otis, 300–12.
65. Annals of Congress, Tenth Congress, First Session, 1654.
66. Ibid., 1658.
67. See ibid., 131–40, 1411–20, 1659–74.
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Many scholars view the dispute over the Embargo Act as the impetus for the
revitalization of the New England protest movement that would culminate in the
Hartford Convention of 1814–15, which is usually depicted as in part based upon
antislavery sentiment.68 The issue of slavery, however, does not appear in Massachusetts’s formal protests of the Embargo Act. The city of Boston’s petition to
Congress stated that Bostonians were “praying liberty to export a quantity of dry
and pickled fish” and argued that the region’s economic solvency depended upon
its ability to export goods.69 Likewise, the commonwealth’s legislature in late
1808 formally sent “Instructions of Massachusetts to her delegation in Congress
to Procure a repeal of the Embargo laws.” Approved by president of the Massachusetts Senate Harrison Gray Otis and Speaker of the House Timothy Bigelow,
the legislature cited economic distress and a possible war with Great Britain as
their principal grievances.70 In a second petition to Congress in February 1809,
however, the legislature further stated formal opposition to the Embargo Act on
the grounds that the federal government had unduly placed a standing army in
their state:
Whenever a petty officer shall be found hardy and adventurous enough to
exercise the authority conferred by this act, the sovereignty and independence of the State will be humbled in the dust, or its Government [Massachusetts] must vindicate by force of its dignity and its honor, and may be
consequently involved in civil war.71
The War of 1812 saw the culmination of the Federalists’ long-held antipathy
toward the Jeffersonian Republicans. Federalist denunciations during the conflict
inculcated many of the traditional charges of sectional favoritism and Francophile
68. Morison, Harrison Gray Otis, x; see also Archer, “New England Federalism,” 29–30.
69. Annals of Congress, Tenth Congress, First Session, American State Papers, Documents, Legislative and Executive of the Congress of the United States [Commerce And Navigation
(Washington, 1832)]; “Embargo, petition of inhabitants of Boston against,” No. 129, Vol.
1, Serial 014, 21 April 1808: 727. For an example of the concern of New England’s congressional delegation over the embargo’s impact upon the region’s economy, see Rep. Barent
Gardenier of New York, “defending rights of New England fisherman,” ibid., 1218,
1239–56, 2069–78. Sen. Josiah Quincy offered an amendment to the embargo bill that
would have exempted New England fisheries from the act, but was overwhelmingly defeated
by southern Republicans.
70. Ibid., Tenth Congress, Second Session, No. 131, Vol. 1, Serial 014, 25 November 1808:
728–29.
71. Ibid., “Remonstrance of Massachusetts against the Embargo Laws,” No. 142, Vol. 1, Serial
014, 27 February 1809: 776–78, 496. The Massachusetts petitions were signed by over
forty-five hundred citizens of the state, but were overwhelmingly rejected by Congress.
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policies that they had been charging the Republicans with since the ascension of
Jefferson in 1800. Actually, the Federalists’ critique of the southern Republicans
was at its strongest point of articulation during this conflict.
Federalist rhetoric during the War of 1812 is usually depicted as indicative of
the proto-abolitionist sentiment endemic to the party’s ideology. Yet under careful
examination, these anti-southern sentiments expressed by Federalists during the
war do not show evidence of a morally based antislavery argument. Rather, these
heightened denunciations show that Federalist criticisms of the South were based
upon political and economic fears resulting from the three-fifths clause. Federalist charges against the southern Republicans showed as little concern for the
plight of slaves as for that of slaveholders. Moreover, Federalists expressed one
of their central criticisms of southern slaveholders: they feared that the southern
Republicans’ penchant for using slave labor would eventually result in African
Americans migrating northward into their communities, a prospect highly unpopular among these urban elites.72 One Federalist editor even parried British
criticisms of American slaveholding by accusing them of hypocrisy. Similar to
Jefferson’s accusation toward the Georgian crown in his unedited Declaration of
Independence, the editor charged, “England thus forced up on us the very slaves
whom we are now reproached with holding, and whom she disclaims for our
destruction. Does she forget Jamaica and Barbados.”73
Federalist objections to the three-fifths clause significantly increased during the
war years, due in large measure to New England’s perceived lack of influence on
the conduct of military policy. Federalists believed New England was completely
subordinate to southern interests during the war. For example, one editor correctly declared, “we see that the Executive, the Judicial, the Patronizing, and half
the Legislative Power, are under the exclusive management of the ten Southern
States.”74 For Federalist editors, this unequal distribution in political power
would continue unabated so long as new states were formed in the southwestern
territory:
72. This aspect of Federalist rhetoric is seen for example in the Columbian Centinel of 2 January
1813, in its discussion of northern grievances concerning inadequate troop deployment in
New England: “To those who consider the slaves as a degraded, enfeebled race, instinctively
terrified at the appearance of a white man, one white man will be considered amply sufficient to balance four or five slaves. To those who go further and reflect that the slaves in
the southern States are engaged in those employments which in other countries embrace the
whole physical strength of the nation, and that they are framed by nature in which they live,
will think they do the whites no injustice in balancing them with their slaves man for man.”
73. Connecticut Mirror, 26 December 1814.
74. Ibid., June 30, 1812; see also 16 June 1812 and 22 January 1814.
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If the Congress continue[s] to make new States in the southern section of
the Union 3–4ths of the States may and probably will soon be slaveholding States. The slaveholding States, therefore, though containing a large
minority of the People of the United States, may by these acts of Congress
be invested with an absolute and constitutional control of the liberties of
the Northern States. They may constitutionally reduce us to the most abject
slavery, a majority slaves of a minority, men who call themselves freemen
the slaves of slaves.75
In this view, the three-fifths clause allowed southern Republicans to continue
placing the economic burden upon the North, especially for a war that New
England neither wanted nor supported. According to the Connecticut Mirror, the
clause was “Forcing the commercial States to support the Burthens and expenses
of the nation, while the Southern and Western States are in equal decrees
EXEMPTED.”76 The New England Palladium called on its readers to “defy the
enmity and machinations of the slave-holders and backwoods men.”77 Particularly galling to Federalist editors was the Embargo Act of 1813, passed along
strict party lines, which hindered New England commerce in the Atlantic
market.78 For example, “Camillus” informed readers that if New England “were
to submit to this act, our doom is sealed, and we are slaves forever.” He predicted that the citizens of New England would “soon be the willing slaves of some
southern master.”79
The widespread secession sentiment within Federalist circles during the War of
1812 was intimately tied to a fear of being made politically and economically
servile to southern Republican interests. This fear was based upon the belief
that New England citizens would be subjected to the same status of African
American slaves. This is clearly seen in those Federalist organs advocating measures to either make substantial alterations to the U.S. Constitution or let it be
dissolved altogether. For example, the New York Evening Post insinuated that
the proposed Hartford Convention should imitate the Constitutional Convention
of 1787 and frame an entirely new government that would, among other things,
75. Ibid., 30 December 1812.
76. Connecticut Mirror, 19 December 1814.
77. New England Palladium, 27 April 1814.
78. For a brief discussion of the Embargo Act of 1813, see Marshall Smelser, The Democratic
Republic, 1801–1815 (Prospect Heights, 1968), 262.
79. Columbian Centinel, 12 February 1814; for economic differences, see also Connecticut
Mirror, January 1815, passim.
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allow only “free white citizens” to vote as well as abolish slave representation.80
Appearing in the Columbian Centinel, a writer professed, “I ought . . . with frankness, to state, that many men believe that there are evils worse than disunion. I
am one of these. I think slavery worse—By slavery, I mean grogs and intolerable
oppression, insecurity in our rights, and unreasonable search and seizures.”81 The
Connecticut Mirror, moreover, laid the blame for the threatened abrogation
of the Union squarely upon the Jeffersonian Republicans: “if these States are even
separated, all this evil will flow from such an event will be chargeable to Jefferson, Madison, and their . . . Desperate adherents who with their eyes open, and
against all remonstrances, are . . . bringing the evil upon the NATION.”82
The Hartford Convention’s proposed constitutional amendment repealing the
three-fifths clause could also be seen as evidence of antislavery sentiment within
the Federalists’ rank-and-file. Historians such as Adams have generally taken this
proposal out of context, and therefore misconstrued both the meaning of the
amendment itself as well as that of the declaration’s larger intent. The declaration of the Hartford Convention was an articulation of the traditional Federalist
antipathy toward the three-fifths clause and the pro-French policies of the
Jeffersonian Republicans. The declaration advocated an alteration in military
policy. The military measures proposed demonstrate the Federalists’ traditional
antipathy toward revolutionary France. For example, the declaration compared
President James Madison’s conscription policies to that of Emperor Bonaparte:
“The example of France has recently shewn that a cabal of individuals . . . may
transform the great body of citizens into soldiers, and deliver them over into the
hands of a single tyrant.”
The abolition of the three-fifths clause was subsidiary to these military measures, and one of many proposed amendments. These included a two-thirds
majority in the House of Representatives for the admission of new states, for
the limitation of commerce between foreign powers, and for a declaration of
war. Other proposals were: embargo restrictions by Congress limited to sixty
days; limiting presidents to one single term; and, in a slight to the Swiss-born
Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin, the exclusion of all but native-born
citizens from public office. These proposals alluded to grievances Federalists
had professed since Jefferson’s first inauguration. The Convention declaration
80. New York Evening Post, 9 November 1814.
81. Columbian Centinel, “A Response To Mr. Dexter’s Creed,” 12 March 1814.
82. Connecticut Mirror, 19 December 1814.
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spoke of the “implacable combinations of individuals, or states, to monopolize
power and office, and to trample without remorse upon the rights and
interests of the commercial sectors of the Union.” Federalist leader and Convention secretary Theodore Dwight, who twenty years afterward published a
memoir of the Hartford Convention, stressed the sectional, military, and representational grievances of the delegates in their proposals to weaken the South’s
hegemony.83
The relationship between Federalists and the early abolitionists of New
England was not altogether harmonious. Actually, many leading Federalists in
their later years denounced abolitionists as extremists and dangerous to the
nation’s welfare. For example, Harrison Gray Otis informed the mayor of
Savanna, Georgia, that he regarded the abolitionist pamphlet Walker’s Appeal
“with deep disapprobation and abhorrence” when it appeared in 1831.84 At the
time dean of the old-guard Federalists and one of the last to remain influential
in national affairs, Otis also repudiated William Lloyd Garrison and his followers in Boston. Moreover, Otis said he supported the African Colonization Society
(ACS) because he believed its efforts would “get rid of Negro slavery and the
Negro problem at the same time.”85
Other New England Federalists of Otis’s generation were of similar opinion.
For example, Pickering showed repeatedly during the period that he was largely
apathetic toward the moral implications of slavery. That is, at the height of his
influence upon New England as well as national politics, Pickering did not make
an attack upon slavery a prominent aspect of his denunciation of Jeffersonian
Republicans. According to the historian Gerard Clarfield, Pickering—like Otis—
was an early enthusiast of the African Colonization Society. But, in contrast to
his contemporary, Pickering abandoned the concept of colonization after the
Missouri Compromise and instead turned toward efforts aimed at halting
the spread of slavery, up to and including outright manumission, throughout the
Union as the only viable solution to the problem. Therefore, Pickering provides
a link between the Federalists of the Age of Jefferson and the abolitionists of the
Age of Jackson. However, if Pickering were typical of New England sentiments,
then it would only demonstrate how leading Federalists did not emphasize antislavery policies until it became politically expedient after 1820. If this were the
83. Theodore Dwight, History of the Hartford Convention: With a Review of the Policy of the
United States Government, Which Led to the War of 1812 (New York, 1833), 270–71.
84. Morison, Harrison Gray Otis, 464.
85. Ibid., 471; for a thorough discussion of Otis’s relationship with abolitionism, see 455–70.
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case, then political opportunism would be the hallmark trait of Federalist policy
toward slavery, supporting moral denunciation of the institution only after it
became a salient issue after the War of 1812.86
Many leaders of the American Revolution who later became identified as
Federalists did publicly denounce slavery. For example, both Hamilton and Gov.
John Jay were charter members of the New York Society for Promoting the
Manumission of Slaves. Jay was one of the first presidents of the society, while
Hamilton served as its chief legal counsel. On 13 March 1786 Hamilton and
other leading members petitioned the New York Legislature to abolish the slave
trade, labeling it “a commerce so repugnant to humanity, and so inconsistent
with the liberality and justice which should distinguish a free and enlightened
people.”87 Further, during the events leading to and during the French Revolution, the Marquis de Lafayette repeatedly requested that his longtime friend
Hamilton enlist him into the ranks of the various manumission societies of the
United States. According to the French aristocrat, he had learned that Hamilton
and Jay’s manumission society was an association “[a]gainst the slavery of
negroes [sic] which seems to me [worded] in such a way as to give no offense to
the moderate Men in the Southern States. As I ever Have Been partial to my
Brethren of that Colour, I wish . . . for my Being Admitted on the list.”88
These examples give credence to Banner’s argument that antislavery inclinations were endemic to the Revolutionary generation but largely discarded and/or
abandoned by Federalists once they became the party of opposition during the
Jeffersonian era. While ideological sentiment against slavery was a prominent
aspect of the Federalists in the aftermath of the American Revolution, instances
such as these, where Federalists openly condemned slavery on moral grounds,
were few and far between during the Jefferson years. Why this idealism was abandoned remains unanswered. Lastly, slavery was still conspicuous in New York
State in the last two decades of the eighteenth century. In New England, slavery
had by this time become an aberration.89
86. For a discussion of Pickering’s views toward slavery in his later years out of office, see Gerard
H. Clarfield, Timothy Pickering and the American Republic (Pittsburgh, Pa., 1980), 264.
87. Harold C. Syrett and Jacob E. Cooke, eds., The Papers of Alexander Hamilton (New York,
1961–87), 11: 344; 3: 597, 654; 21: 355; 26: 81.
88. Ibid., “Marquis de Lafayette to Alexander Hamilton,” 13 April 1785.
89. New York enacted a gradual emancipation law in 1799 that freed all of the state’s slave
population by 4 July 1827. For a general depiction of slavery in New York, see Alan Taylor,
William Cooper’s Town: Power and Persuasion on the Frontier of the Early American
Republic (New York, 1996), 299, passim.
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Rufus King of New York worked throughout the Articles of Confederation
period to halt the spread of slavery into the Northwest Territory, and was also
at the forefront of the successful effort to impose a twenty-year deadline for the
abolition of the slave trade at the Constitutional Convention of 1787. However,
King was by temperament a strict constructionist, seeing slavery as a local matter,
and was “no abolitionist and did not wish to risk disruption of the Union he so
eagerly championed.”90 During the debates over Missouri, King openly opposed
slavery’s further expansion into the western territory. This was consistent with
his traditional position that the federal government could only restrict the extension of slavery into federal territory, but not legally abolish the institution in states
where it already existed. According to his biographer, Robert Ernst, King’s “conservative disposition, respect for property, and legal training led him to acquiesce
in the definition of slaves as property where slavery was legal. He could not
defend slavery, but he did not burn with zeal for emancipation.”91
Hamilton was of a similar disposition. Though morally opposed to the institution, he defined slaveholding as a legal question of property rights. Hamilton
explicitly defended the three-fifths clause along these lines while advocating New
York’s ratification of the U.S. Constitution in 1788. According to Hamilton, “representation and taxation go together—and one uniform rule ought to apply to
both. Would it be just to compute these slaves in the assessment of taxes; and
discard them from the estimate in the apportionment of representatives?”92
Hamilton and Jay’s involvement in the New York and other northern antislavery
societies should also be considered as proof of Federalist interest in the issue,
though by 1806 until after the War of 1812—the very height of the issue’s saliency
in the era due to the abolition of the slave trade—the national antislavery societies were largely inactive, and there was no concerted effort on a national level
toward the goal of abolition.93
Combined with the rhetoric of their press, the ideology espoused by these
Federalist leaders reveal similarities to that of later ideologues within the FreeSoil Party and like-minded Whigs of the Age of Jackson, including Abraham
90. Robert Ernst, Rufus King, American Federalist (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1968), 109–11, 53–55,
171.
91. Ibid., 369–70.
92. Alexander Hamilton. “Remarks in the New York Ratifying Convention,” 20 June
1788, Poughkeepsie, New York. Morton J. Frisch, ed., Selected Writings and Speeches of
Alexander Hamilton (Washington, D.C., 1985), 202–03.
93. Jordan, White over Black, 306.
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THE HISTORIAN
Lincoln and other founders of the Republican Party. Likewise, this Federalist
rhetoric expresses an early yet genuine articulation of the southern slave power
conspiracy that became a prominent issue in the period leading to the American
Civil War. Therefore, Federalist policies toward slavery during the Age of Jefferson are much closer to those of the aforementioned political entities than those
of the morally oriented, religiously-based abolitionism that emerged from New
England in later years.94
V
The antislavery rhetoric of the Federalists during the Jefferson presidency was
different from that of later abolitionists. The distinctions between the cultures of
the North and the South were apparent to New England Federalists at this time.
Though many of the most prominent abolitionists of the post-1830 period came
from Congregationalist backgrounds, the Second Great Awakening and spread
of evangelical Christianity, as well as the general liberalization of New England
religion, would be needed before ethical criticisms of slavery prevailed over political and economic considerations.
When looking at the prominent issues concerning sectional differences between
the North and South—particularly New England and Virginia—Federalist denunciations of the institution of slavery on moral grounds do not appear. Distinct
sectional differences were apparent to Federalist leaders during the early years of
the Republic, but their political rhetoric was not shaped by an overt concern for
the plight of slaves. Rather, Federalist criticisms of Jefferson and the South were
based upon a fear of political and economic subjugation to the institution of
slavery. Federalists feared that if Virginia continued to dominate the federal government they would eventually lose any and all influence in national affairs.
Moreover, they viewed their economic interests as directly opposed to those of
the slave based system of the South, and worried that if the power of Jeffersonian Republicans was not curtailed they themselves would face the same plight
as southern slaves. The basis of these fears was their political disadvantage
stemming from the three-fifths clause. The Federalists’ moral criticisms of
Jeffersonian Republicans and their views and policies regarding slavery
were valid. However, historians should not automatically attribute to Jefferson’s
opponents an agenda that they themselves did not promulgate or emphasize.
94. For the ideology of the Whig and Free-Soil Parties, see David Herbert Donald, Lincoln (New
York, 1995); For Federalist views toward citizenship, see Rogers M. Smith, “Constructing
American National Identity: Strategies of the Federalists,” in Ben Atar and Oberg, eds.,
Federalists Reconsidered.
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This is the problem with the current slavery debate in antebellum studies: where
is the supposed heroism? It certainly would not be found with the political leaders
of the time. While the argument that race is the crucial factor for understanding
historical change in American history is certainly valid, Federalists cannot be
stood alongside African Americans and relatively small religious groups like the
Quakers as concerted advocates of emancipation. The orthodox Federalist
critique was articulated in the address of “Johannes In Eremo,” which appeared
in the Columbia Centinel in 1803:
The fierce spirit of the Virginia chieftains is very much like that of King
John’s barons, with this formidable difference arriving not from temper but
situation, that the Virginia lords struggle not to confer rights to the people,
but engross them to themselves—not to establish liberty but to usurp power:
Not to extort from a despot a magna carta that should make justice sacred,
free to all, prompt and impartial. But to disengage their own despotism
from the wearisome shackles of that very fort of justice; and to make her
servile and dependent; to oblige her to ask alms to those whom she ought
to control, and to crowd and profane the very sanctuary of her temple with
the money changers and their tables.”95
Thus, as this review of the five key issues of the Federalist/Republican debates
has shown, Federalist opposition to slavery, or rather to its proliferation into the
western territories, was based upon anger at the political domination of the
federal government given to Virginia and the South by the three-fifths clause,
opposition to the pro-French policies of the Jeffersonian Republicans, and fears
stemming from New England’s decreasing influence within both the federal government and the national economy. Among all of these considerations, a moral
outrage of the institution of slavery figures hardly at all.
95. Columbian Centinel, 17 September 1803.