The NY Argus seditious libel case and AH
On 14 Nov 1799, AH wrote a personal letter to James McHenry* (letter missing). We have McHenry’s response, dated 18Nov1799:
I recd two hours ago your letter of the 14th, begging me to call upon and send you certain papers you had lodged with Mr Bingham. As he has not yet returned to the City I dispatched my servant with a note to which I have received the answer inclosed. I do not remember to have seen the papers aluded to.
McHenry enclosed to AH the following note he had received from William Bingham:
It Surely must have escaped Genl Hamilton’s Recollection, that the Papers he alludes to, never were deposited with me.
After reading the publication, in which he mentioned this deposit being thus made, I was Surprized at the omission of which, in Case I had been applied to for a View of them, I Should certainly have reminded him—under any other Circumstances, it would not have been delicate to have addressed him on the Subject.
Most people conjecture that these “Papers” are the original documents printed in the Appendix of the Reynolds Pamphlets, about which AH stated:
...I am permitted to refer any gentleman to the perusal of his letter in the hands of William Bingham, Esquire; who is also so obliging as to permit me to deposit with him for similar inspection all the original papers which are contained in the appendix to this narrative.
Bingham does later supply papers to AH, stating (21Jul1801):
Having a Packet of Papers which by your Desire were deposited with me, & which have long laid dormant in my Possession, & being about embarking in a Short time for Europe, permit me to return them to you.
And from this, many speculate (reasonably) that the Hamilton family once again acquired, and later likely destroyed, the original letters that AH claimed were from James and Maria Reynolds.
Why was AH requesting these papers at this time (14Nov1799)? What else was going on? On 6Nov1799 AH wrote the following letter to NY Attorney General Josiah Ogden Hoffman:
“Greenleafs new Dayly Advertiser” of this morning contains a publication intitled “Extract of a letter from Philadelphia dated September 20th,” which charges me with being at the “bottom” of an “effort recently made to suppress the Aurora” (a news paper of that City) by pecuniary means.2
It is well known that I have long been the object of the most malignant calumnies of the faction opposed to our government, through the medium of the papers devoted to their views. Hitherto I have foreborne to resort to the laws for the punishment of the authors or abettors; and were I to consult personal considerations alone I should continue in this course, repaying hatred with contempt. But public motives now compel me to a different conduct. The design of that faction to overturn our government, and with it the great pillars of social security and happiness, in this country, become every day more manifest, and have of late acquired a degree of system, which renders them formidable. One principal Engine for effecting the scheme is by audacious falsehoods to destroy the confidence of the people in all those who are in any degree conspicuous among the supporters of the Government: an Engine which has been employed in time past with too much success, and which unless counteracted in future is likely to be attended with very fatal consequences. To counter act it is therefore a duty to the community.
Among the specimens of this contrivance, that which is the subject of the present letter demands peculiar attention. A bolder calumny; one more absolutely destitute of foundation was never propagated. And its dangerous tendency needs no comment; being calculated to inspire the belief that the Independence and liberty of the press are endangered by the intrigues of ambitious citizens and by foreign gold.
In so flagrant a case the force of the laws must be tried. I therefore request that you will take immediate measures towards the prosecution of the persons who conduct the inclosed paper.
This was the content of the column published in Argus, Greenleaf’s New Daily Advertiser:
An effort was recently made to suppress the Aurora, and Alexander Hamilton was at the bottom of it. Mrs. [Margaret H.] Bache [widow of Benjamin Franklin Bache] was offered 6,000 dollars down, in the presence of several persons, in part payment; the valuation to be left to two impartial persons, and the remainder paid immediately on her giving up the paper: but she pointedly refused it, and declared she would not dishonour her husband’s memory, nor her children’s future by such baseness. When she parted with the paper, it should be to republicans only... “It would not be amiss to enquire by what magic Mr. Hamilton finds it in his power to raise a sum of money to spare, sufficient to purchase the Aurora, the establishment of which is worth between 15 and 20,000 dollars? In order to do away a charge of speculation, brought against him while he was secretary of the treasury, he says he was not able to raise 1,000 at one time. To support this assertion, he brings forward the receipts of James Reynolds, the reputed husband of the dear Maria, for that sum, paid him at different periods; alledging that a secretary of the treasury who had been guilty of the crime laid to his charge, could not possibly be supposed to require time for payment of so small a sum, when the delay left it in the power of Reynolds to blast his character.
If the quondam secretary was really as poor as he wished to make us believe, how happens it that he can now throw away thousands upon an object that was to bring him in nothing. Perhaps however, the money was to be raised in the same manner that [James Thomson] Callender was to be driven out of Richmond,—by an association of orderly federalists. There is also another resource—British secret service money—a hint to Sir Robert would do the business at once. Mr. Liston [British Minister to the United States] is so well-bred a man, that he could not politely refuse to enter into the plot. By becoming a partner in the concern, he would naturally expect to screen the ‘Defender of the faith’ and his satellites from many hard rubs which the mildness of the sedition law as yet suffers the Aurora to bestow on them; and also prevent his courtly ears from being offended with the repetition of the story of the horse thief dispatches British influence &c.
One would have supposed Mr. Hamilton might have fallen upon a better plan to suppress the Aurora; for it is a bungling piece of work at the best, to attempt to suppress a paper by getting it in the power of the proprietors to furnish themselves with a new set of materials.
We would advise him, as he is now a major general, to call on capt Montgomery and his troop, whose heroism in the Northampton expedition certainly entitles them to this post of honor; they might have jibbeted the Editor and destroyed the office so effectually in half an hour, that not a vestige would have remained.
This would have been attended with no expense whatever, which to a poor man as the general was, should be matter of serious consideration. It is astonishing that this did not occur to him. Nothing should have escaped a man of such nice calculations.”
AH requested that Hoffmann pursue criminal seditious libel charges against the publisher(s) of the Argus Greenleaf’s New Daily Advertiser, by which one had to only establish that a person was subjected to "hatred, contempt or ridicule.”
One can tell in his letter how pissed off AH is, while getting a sense of how he re-works his arguments: inserting “audacious falsehood,” “flagrant,” “ malignant” instead of “virulent,” “ its dangerous tendency is obvious” becomes “needs no comment.” x, x
The case against David Frothingham, who served as foreman or manager of the Argus, was tried in the New York Court of Oyer and Terminer on 16 Nov 1799; the “substance of the indictment was, that with a design to injure the name and reputation of General Hamilton, and to expose him to public hatred and contempt, and to cause it to be believed that he was hostile and opposed to the Republican Government of the United States, the defendant had published a libel, in which it was alleged that General Hamilton was at the bottom of the efforts to purchase the Aurora …” (Wharton, State Trials, 649). (Brockholst Livingston was the attorney for the defendant; read more here.)
The jury found Frothingham guilty, and the judgment of the court was, “That the said David Frothingham, the aforesaid defendant, for the said offence whereof he is convicted, pay a fine of five hundred dollars, and that he be imprisoned in the Bridewell of the City of New York, for the term of four calendar months; and it is further ordered, that he stand committed until the said fine be paid, and until he enter into a recognizance, himself in $1,000, conditioned for the good behavior of the said defendant, for the term of two years after the expiration of the said imprisonment” (Wharton, State Trials, 651). There are a number of articles focused on the Frothingham libel trial as an example of government over-reach and persecution of the press. Chernow’s description of events (p 576-7) and his inclusion of the re-hashing of the Reynolds Affair by Republican newspapers is quite good.
AH was upset to not get the opportunity to testify about the allegations made against him - he wanted a hearing on the truth of the matter, not merely whether the comments had been meant to harm him. I suspect this is why he was requesting the Reynolds papers back from Bingham - to present as evidence. This experience likely influenced his own framing of libel in People v Croswell, which was heard before the NY Supreme Court in 1804. One can read more in this older article by Thomas Fleming. And thus Hamilton receives some reverence as a defender of freedom of the press.
*I find it interesting that AH made this request of McHenry instead of William Jackson, AH’s longtime friend and second in the 1797 dispute with Monroe. Jackson was Bingham’s brother-in-law by marriage and, I speculate, the reason Bingham was chosen as the person to hold on to these original documents from the Reynolds Pamphlet appendix. Perhaps since AH (as Inspector General) was corresponding with McHenry (Sec’y of War) so much already it was already on his mind. Like Jackson, McHenry was unfailingly discreet and loyal to AH.
And an aside: Eliza Hamilton was born on 20 Nov 1799. I imagine AH sitting in a courtroom waiting for a chance to testify about the falsity of the Aurora accusations while asking an assistant to just let him know when his wife was in labor.
