#james callender

[valend]

[cureattroy]

"i can't even use this quill!"

scene from the au where lin manuel miranda gets isekaid/time travelled into james callender a la sqh from scum villain**. he spends his time making bucks off publishing modern literature and getting chewed out by teej (transmigrator and inuniverse version of sqq?)

[jamescheetham]

"Why did Jefferson turn on Callender? Part of the reason may lie in a recurring feature of American politics: a successful president's discomfort with the less respectable men and means that got him to victory. There is usually a moment in the life of a new president when he begins to see himself not as an aspirant desperate to win but as a statesman above the squalor and the sweat of actual vote getting. Rising men do not like to be reminded of the smell of the stables; dignitaries dislike recollections of the dust through which they have come. The polemicist had been useful on the journey, but there was apparently no place for his acidic attacks now that the popular votes were cast and his machinations had been put on display at trial. In Callender, in the pursuit of power, Jefferson made a devil's bargain: He supported and consorted with a man skilled in the dark arts of partisan warfare, but he seems not to have considered that the same man might one day turn on him."

— Jon Meacham, Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power

[aswithasunbeam]

did ham fake the letters in the Reynolds pamphlet? cause I read somewhere that James T Callender even thought this in a pamphlet he published called "Sketches of the History of America"

Great question! Possibly. This is a theory that’s been bouncing around for over 200 years now. For context, James T. Callender was the one who initially published letters from the Reynolds affair along with accusations of financial malfeasance in his pamphlet “The History of the United States for 1796,” which in turn prompted Hamilton to write the Reynolds Pamphlet to defend himself. In July 1797, before the Pamphlet was published, Callender wrote a letter to Hamilton later published in the Merchant’s Daily Advertiser, alleging:

According to my information, these Written documents consisted of a series of letters pretended to be written relative to your alledged connection with Mrs. Reynolds. You told the members a confused and absurd story about her, of which they did not believe a single word, and which, if they had been true, did not give a proper explanation as to your correspondence with her husband.

(The same letter ends, mockingly, “The[ public] have long known you as an eminent and able statesman. They will be highly gratified by seeing you exhibited in the novel character of a lover.”)

After the Reynolds Pamphlet was published, Callender again wrote to Hamilton on 29 October 1797, requesting an inspection of the original correspondence from Maria Reynolds. Hamilton endorsed the request “Impudent Experiment No Notice” and did not reply. (Though, after Callender’s initial pamphlet and later mocking letters, Hamilton being reluctant to engage with him further hardly seems surprising.)

At this point, Callender published “Sketches of the History of America” and leveled the accusation that the Reynolds letters were forged:

These letters from Mrs. Reynolds are badly spelt and pointed. Capitals, also, occur even in the midst of words. But waving such excrescences, the stile is pathetic and even elegant. It does not bear the marks of an illiterate writer. The construction of the periods disagrees with this apparent incapacity of spelling. The officer who can marshall a regiment, must know how to level a musquet. A few gross blunders are interspersed, and these could readily be devised; but, when stript of such a veil, the body of the composition is pure and correct. In the literary world, fabrications of this nature have been frequent. Our ex-secretary admits that he has been in the habit of writing to this family in a feigned character. The transition was easy to the writing in a feigned stile. (Sketches, p.99)

But even in this pamphlet, Callender hedged on whether he truly believed the letters were forged. After the above passage, Callender added, “Mrs. Reynolds herself may have written these epistles from the dictating of the Colonel,” and then later waffles further, “[E]ven admitting that the love letters and others were genuine, this does not take away the probability of a swindling connection between Reynolds and Hamilton.” (Sketches, p.100).

Hamilton claimed to have given the letters to his friend William Bingham so that they might have been inspected by anyone wishing to do so. Bingham, however, claimed never to have received the letters. Where the letters ended up is still unknown. However, the introductory note to the Reynolds Pamphlet on Founders Archive posits:

In 1795, when Hamilton thought that he was going to fight a duel with James Nicholson, he entrusted the disposition of his estate to Robert Troup. At the time he wrote to Troup: “In my leather Trunk … is also a bundle inscribed thus—J R To be forwarded to Oliver Wolcott Junr. Esq. I entreat that this may be early done by a careful hand.” Hamilton then added: “This trunk contains all my interesting papers.”80 In going through her husband’s papers after his death, Elizabeth Hamilton wrote under Hamilton’s letter to Troup: “to be retained by myself.” If Broadus Mitchell is correct in assuming that the initials “J R” refer to the Reynolds correspondence,81 it may not be too wild a leap of the imagination to conclude that Elizabeth Hamilton inherited and then destroyed the documents describing her husband’s affair with Maria Reynolds. In this connection it may be relevant to point out that Joseph Sabin states that Hamilton’s edition of the “Reynolds Pamphlet” was bought up and destroyed by Hamilton’s family.

So, Callender claimed the letters were forgeries written by Hamilton, but he never had the chance to inspect the originals to definitively say one way or the other. And the originals, if they were returned to Hamilton, were very possibly burned by Eliza after his death. All in all, it remains an unanswerable question.

[an-american-experiment]

No… Boooo! Have you read this? Well, he’s never gon’ be president now. Never gon’ be president now. He’s never gon’ be president now. Never gon’ be president now. He’s never gon’ be president now. Never gon’ be president now. That’s one last thing to worry about. That’s one last thing to worry about.

Lin-Manuel Miranda

James Callender, the man who published many unsavory pieces about many men in the early republic was who Jefferson wanted to write and publish a piece about Hamilton. However, there was no need for anyone else to publish a piece against him since Hamilton essentially did it himself, though for a different crime than was talked about in rumors on the street. 

Sources: the following sources were used - the collected letters/writings of Alexander Hamilton, Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton the Revolution, Ron Chernow’s biography of Hamilton, The Intimate Life of Alexander Hamilton by Allan McLane Hamilton, Hamilton by Richard Syllia, and Charles Cerami’s book called Young Patriots. In addition, War of Two by John Sedgwick and Washington and Hamilton by Tony Williams were used throughout. Eliza Hamilton: The Extraordinary Life and Times of the Wife of Alexander Hamilton by Tilar J. Mazzeo was used too.

Follow us at @an-american-experiment where we are historically analyzing the lyrics of Hamilton with a new post every day!

[sonofhistory]

President Adams never enforced the Alien Act, but there were fourteen prosecutions under the Sedition Act.

James Madison by Richard Brookhiser

A few prosecuted under the act:

Matthew Lyon: A Republican congressman from Vermont convicted for writing in a newspaper he edited that John Adams “grasp[ed] for power” and was a “ridiculous pomp”. He was fined $1,000 and spent four months in jail. 

James Callender: Arrested for calling Adams a “hideous hermaphroditical character”. He was fined $200 and was sentenced nine months in jail. 

Benjamin Franklin Bache: Editor of the Aurora Republican newspaper. Escaped prison by dying of yellow fever while awaiting trial. 

William Duane: An Irish immigrant who avoided prosecutions by threatening to expose administration secrets. He also went underground. 

Chalres Holt: Editor of a New London, Connecticut, newspaper

Thomas Cooper: A British radical who edited a small Pennsylvania newspaper

[thefederalistfreestyle]

who are these guys, what’re they gonna do...! [x x x x x]

[vexilloquy]

Republicans claimed that they scarcely took the time to think about invented stories aimed at the preside's 'private feelings' because they were undoubtedly designed for gullible Federalist press by the crass Callender, 'whose infamy is proverbial.' That did not stop the Federalists from having their fun. One paper went so far as to record the president's purported monologue on learning what Callender had done: 'He broke into a violent passion, and so far forgot the dignity of office as to call him a damn'd rascal, a damn'd eternal miscreant, and other such polite christian phrases.'

Madison and Jefferson by Andrew Burstein and Nancy Isenberg (p. 412)