What it said
The Federalist message fit in one line of type, and the Gazette of the United States in Philadelphia set it again and again through the autumn.
shall I continue in allegiance to GOD—AND A RELIGIOUS PRESIDENT; Or impiously declare for JEFFERSON—AND NO GOD!!!
A letter in the same paper the day before called Jefferson an avowed DEIST, an ENEMY to pure morals and religion, consequently an enemy to his country and his God,
and said anyone who helped elect him insults his maker, and redeemer, and boldly defies omnipotence to arms!
In August the Gazette had reprinted a Boston essay signed "Decius," The Jeffersoniad no. VIII, which called Jefferson a Jacobin chieftain
and said his party's real aim, is to introduce Gallic licentiousness and overturn and destroy the empire of the constitution and the laws.
An unsigned etching, The Providential Detection, drew the same charge: Jefferson on his knees at an "Altar to Gallic Despotism," the eye of God overhead, and an eagle pulling the "Constitution & Independence" out of his hand.
The Republican answer was louder about the man than about God. James Thomson Callender's The Prospect Before Us, Volume I, came out in Richmond early in 1800 marked "printed for the author." Its title page carried an epigraph signed "P. HENRY":
BUT, SIR! IT HAS AN AWFUL SQUINTING! IT SQUINTS AT MONARCHY!
Later parts of the book, some written in a jail cell, called the President that strange compound of ignorance and ferocity, of deceit and weakness
and a hideous hermaphroditical character, which has neither the force and firmness of a man, nor the gentleness and sensibility of a woman
(wording as given by Monticello's research staff). Monticello also notes that the second line is often pinned on Jefferson himself. It was Callender's. In Richmond, the Republican Virginia Argus, whose masthead read A FREE PRESS MAINTAINS THE SOVEREIGNTY OF THE PEOPLE,
reprinted the Mazzei letter on 16 September with a rebuttal that blamed the aristocratical
papers for circulating it.
Who made it and why
These were party papers in a country where nearly every paper had a party. The Library of Congress counts 92 American newspapers in 1790 and 329 by the end of Jefferson's presidency, with "all but 56" attached to one side. Jefferson and Madison had already helped Philip Freneau start the Republican National Gazette in 1791. The archive's record says they gave him "encouragement, money and a position" in Jefferson's State Department.
Callender's book had a sponsor the title page did not name. On 6 September 1799 Jefferson, then Vice President and a candidate, wrote to him unsigned and in the third person that an agent would pay you 50 dollars, on account of the book you are about to publish.
On 6 October he thanked Callender for proof sheets and wrote that Such papers cannot fail to produce the best effect,
leaving the letter unsigned because of the curiosity of the post offices.
In July 1802, after Callender had turned on him, Jefferson told James Monroe he had paid two sums of $50 and that he and other Republicans had contributed to the fines of Callander himself
and to papers struggling under the Sedition law.
He described that as ordinary support for his side's printers.
On the Federalist side the archive names the Gazette, the Connecticut Courant in Hartford, and the unknown etcher. Its record does not show that any Federalist leader paid for the "Grand Question" or for the September essay signed "Burleigh" in the Courant, which warned that under Jefferson murder, robbery, rape, adultery, and incest
would be taught and practised. That line comes to the archive through Monticello and later historians. The archive did not open the issue itself.
What it got right or wrong
Neither side argued the record in office. "Avowed DEIST" and "hermaphroditical character" do the same job: a label arrives where a case about policy should be. The "Grand Question" is worse than an insult, because it turns a ballot into a religious oath. The archive found no Republican item from 1800 built as that kind of loyalty test, so that charge belongs to the Federalist press alone.
The Republican fault is the hidden sponsor. A pamphlet "printed for the author" that a sitting Vice President had helped pay for, and had read in proof, was not what it said it was. Jefferson's own letters establish the money and the proof sheets. They do not show that he read or approved the "hermaphroditical" passage before it ran, and this page does not say he did. Whether Jefferson was a deist or Adams a monarchist is a question these pages raised and did not settle. Neither does this one. Nor does the record show that either set of charges moved a known number of electors.
The insults were legal; the prosecutions were the wrong
The insults were legal. The prosecutions were the wrong. Adams signed the Sedition Act on 14 July 1798. It made it a federal crime to publish any false, scandalous and malicious writing
against the government, Congress, or the President with intent to defame,
with fines to $2,000 and prison to two years. Truth was a defence, and the Act was set to expire on 3 March 1801, one day before the next term began. It protected the President from print. It did not protect the Vice President. The National Archives notes that the only journalists prosecuted under it edited Democratic-Republican papers.
Callender was one of them. A federal grand jury in Richmond indicted him over The Prospect Before Us in May 1800. Justice Samuel Chase presided at the trial that opened on 3 June. The sentence was nine months in prison, a $200 fine, and a two-year bond for good behaviour. Callender kept writing from his cell, and in 1804 the House cited Chase's handling of the case in its articles of impeachment. The "Grand Question" and the "Burleigh" essay, aimed at Jefferson, drew no charge. A speech law enforced against one party's printers in an election year is not neutral law. It is part of the incumbent's campaign, and it was wrong under any reading of the First Amendment that means what it says.
The libertarian reading does not let the other side off. In February 1803 President Jefferson wrote to Pennsylvania's governor, Thomas McKean, that a few prosecutions of the most prominent offenders
among the tory presses
under state law would have a wholesome effect.
The man who had paid fines for jailed Republican writers wanted Federalist writers tried once his own party held power. The principle that survives both men is simple: no officeholder gets to choose which critics go to court.
Its legacy
Then the system did the thing propaganda said it could not. The electors split Jefferson 73, Aaron Burr 73, Adams 65, Charles C. Pinckney 64, John Jay 1. The tie went to the House, where ten state delegations voted for Jefferson, four for Burr, and two made no choice. Adams, whose papers had told voters a Jefferson victory meant a godless nation, left office in March 1801. A government changed hands between bitter rivals because a count said so. That is the admirable part of 1800, and it outweighs every line quoted above.
The other legacy is a warning about sponsors. In 1802 Callender broke with Jefferson and printed in the Richmond Recorder his charge about an enslaved woman at Monticello. The writer a candidate had funded in secret became that candidate's accuser in public. The lesson of the campaign press is the same one the Revolutionary printers left: put a name on the sheet, and keep the courts out of the argument.
Sources
- FRAME case study "The 1800 election: 'Jefferson and no God' and 'squints at monarchy'," for the dates, the Sedition Act terms, the Callender indictment and sentence, the Jefferson letters, the "Burleigh" line, the newspaper counts, and the electoral result. It cites the Gazette of the United States, 10 and 11 September 1800 (Library of Congress); Jefferson to Callender, 6 September and 6 October 1799; Jefferson to Monroe, 17 July 1802; Jefferson to McKean, 19 February 1803; the National Archives' Sedition Act and 1800 Electoral College pages; Monticello's note on the "hermaphroditical" quotation; Encyclopedia Virginia on Callender; and Bruce A. Ragsdale, The Sedition Act Trials (Federal Judicial Center).
- FRAME archive record "Gazette of the United States, 'The Jeffersoniad' no. VIII, 14 August 1800," with transcription.
- FRAME archive record "The Virginia Argus, 'Letter to Mazzei' and rebuttal, 16 September 1800," with transcription.