James T. Callender

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James Thomson Callender (1758 – July 17, 1803) was a political

slave Sally Hemings
.

Self-educated, Callender worked as a recorder of deeds in Scotland when he began publishing satire. He turned to politics, some thought to sedition, in a pamphlet, The Political Progress of Britain, which caused a furor and led him to flee Great Britain for America. He gained notoriety in Philadelphia in the 1790s with reportage and attacks on Alexander Hamilton. Subsequently, he was imprisoned under the Alien and Sedition Acts, and later turned against his one-time Democratic-Republican patrons. In 1803, he drowned, apparently falling in the James River due to intoxication — although there was some speculation among Federalists that his death may not have been an accident, as he was due to testify in a highly publicized trial later that month.[2]

Scotland

Callender was born in Scotland. He was not given a formal education but secured employment as a sub-clerk in the Edinburgh Sasine office, the equivalent of the Recorder of Deeds. While working in that office, Callender published satirical pamphlets criticizing the writer Samuel Johnson. "Deformities of Samuel Johnson", published anonymously, appealed to Scottish sentiments.[3] Later he wrote pamphlets attacking political corruption. Callender's political writings were tinged with radical democratic egalitarianism, Scottish nationalism, and a pessimistic view of human nature. They were critical of the liberal notion of progress.[4] An admirer of Jonathan Swift, Callender sought to cut the wealthy and the powerful down to size in his writing.

After clashes with his employers, Callender lost his job in the Sasine office. In 1791 Callender wrote a pamphlet criticizing an excise tax, paid for by the brewers who resented it. His writing attracted the attention of some reform-minded members of the Scottish nobility: Francis Garden, Lord Gardenstone, became his patron.[5] In 1792 he published The Political Progress of Britain, a critique of war, imperialism, and corruption. He fled to Ireland and to the United States to avoid prosecution. After Callender left Scotland, Lord Gardenstone exposed him as the author; the journalist's reputation also was marred by the rumor that he had implicated Gardenstone.[6]

Philadelphia

Callender quickly gained a position as a Congressional reporter in Philadelphia and wrote anonymously for the partisan press. His first American article lambasted pro-war sentiment.[7] Although he was frequently dogged by poverty and unemployment, by 1794 Callender was a regular freelance commentator on American politics and he would remain at the epicenter of the political life within the new nation until his death.[8]

Over the next few years, while living by ghostwriting and piecemeal assignments, Callender became one of a group of radical Republican journalists who socialized together and held similar views on democracy and economic nationalism. During this period, he produced a series of pamphlets in which he attempted to frame a comprehensive political theory, advocating for the government's duty to the poor (in the form of progressive taxation), economic independence from Europe, and the promotion of native industry. These goals put him at odds with the Federalists as well as with some of the more conservative and agrarian Republicans.[9]

Title page, Observations of certain documents contained in no. V & VI of 'The history of the United States for the year 1796,' in which the charge of speculation against Alexander Hamilton, late secretary of the Treasury, is fully refuted. Written by himself. Printed at Philadelphia, 1797
Title page, The Prospect Before Us, by James T. Callender, printed for the author by M. Jones, Jr., and J. Lyon, 1800

His writings attacked Federalist positions with a mix of reasoned argument, satire, and personal invective. His first pamphlet challenged the introduction of an

The Reynolds Pamphlet, denying being a party to any improper financial matter, although he confessed to the adultery and proved that he had been victim of blackmail
by James Reynolds over his adultery with Reynolds' wife rather than consorting with him in speculation. According to Callender, that was just a smokescreen. The financial charges were never proven, and after the scandal somewhat subsided, in 1798 President Adams appointed Hamilton for a new public office, Major General of the Continental Army.

Callender's success was short-lived. By 1798 his fortunes were in a downward spiral: he was forced to seek poor relief, his wife died of yellow fever, and his anonymously published political broadsides were exposed as his by a rival pamphleteer, William Cobbett, putting Callender in legal jeopardy and physical danger.[11] He fled from Philadelphia to Virginia, leaving his children behind.

Prosecution for sedition

Stevens Thomas Mason
. This was due to his fleeing of the acts against him on sedition, after calling out Hamilton.

In Virginia, he completed The Prospect Before Us, whose subject was the pervasiveness of political corruption, particularly among Federalists and the Adams administration. His populist style had his targets permanently on the defensive.

Alien and Sedition Act by the Adams administration. His trial was presided over by Supreme Court Justice Samuel Chase, who later was impeached, in part for his handling of the Callender trial. Callender was fined $200 and received the longest jail term of the journalists prosecuted under the Sedition Act. He was released on the last day of the Adams administration, in March 1801. After his release, Callender and the others who had been prosecuted were pardoned by the new president, Thomas Jefferson.[citation needed
]

Attacks on Thomas Jefferson

Out of jail, Callender asked Jefferson to appoint him Postmaster of Richmond, Virginia, warning that if Jefferson did not, there would be consequences. Callender believed erroneously that Jefferson was conspiring to deprive him of money owed to him by the government after the pardon, and that Jefferson did not appreciate his sacrifices. Jefferson refused to make the appointment, as placing the ill-tempered Callender in a position of authority in the Federalist stronghold of Richmond would have been, in the words of the Jefferson biographer R.B. Bernstein, "like whacking a hornet's nest with a stick."[16]

With his career and his social ambitions thwarted, Callender returned to newspaper work, as editor of a Federalist newspaper, the Richmond Recorder. In a series of articles attacking corruption on all sides, Callender targeted Jefferson, revealing that Jefferson had funded his pamphleteering. After denials were issued, he published Jefferson's letters to him to prove the relationship. Later, angered by the criticism from Jefferson supporters, who asserted that Callender had abandoned his wife to die of a

venereal disease,[17] Callender reported in a series of articles that Jefferson fathered children by his slave Sally Hemings.[18][19]
The first of those articles, printed on September 1, 1802, contained this excerpt:

It is well known that the man, Whom it delighteth the people to honor, keeps and for many years has kept, as his concubine, one of his slaves. Her name is Sally. The name of her eldest son is Tom. His features are said to bear a striking though sable resemblance to those of the President himself. The boy is ten or twelve years of age.[20]

Callender's reporting on the Jefferson-Hemings relationship used racist rhetoric of the time. Although he had expressed anti-slavery views when he first arrived in the United States, he eventually adopted a position on slavery and race similar to that of Jefferson's in Notes on the State of Virginia.[21] After the Hemings controversy ran its course, Callender turned to publicizing Jefferson's earlier attempt to seduce a married neighbor decades before.[citation needed]

Death

By some accounts, Callender was slated to provide testimony for a New York trial, The People v. Croswell, which involved libel charges against a publisher, Harry Croswell, who had reprinted claims that Thomas Jefferson paid Callender to defame George Washington. Croswell's lawyer was Alexander Hamilton.[22] Jefferson, wary of the controversy generated by the Adams administration's sedition prosecutions, had begun a selective campaign against individual newspaper critics.

Despite his popularity among newspaper readers, Callender had an uneasy situation. Former allies had turned against him. In a surprise attack in December 1802, George Hay, one of his former defense attorneys, clubbed him in the head with a walking stick in retaliation for an article about an international incident to which Hay had ties.[23]

In 1802, Meriwether Jones who was a friend and supporter of Thomas Jefferson and James Callender, had published an open letter to Callender:

The James River you tell us has suffered to cleanse your body; is there any menstrum [solvent] capable of cleansing your mind... Oh! could a dose of James river, like Lethe, have blessed you with forgetfulness, for once you would have neglected your whiskey.[24]

In 1803, Callender's children joined him in Richmond, perhaps removed from Philadelphia due to the Jefferson controversy; he had a falling out with the owner of the Richmond Recorder over money.[25] In March, the offices of the newspaper were attacked by young Republicans from Hay's law firm. One week after the People v. Croswell trial began, Callender drowned on July 17, 1803, in three feet of water in the James River, reportedly too drunk to save himself.

Legacy

In 1990, the Australian writer Michael Durey published a biography covering Callender's life. Durey noted that Callender's then-reputation as a liar, drunkard, and scandalmonger had been uncritically based on the original attacks against Callender by his political targets and rivals in the press. He believed their attacks obscured Callender's message of democratic egalitarianism, his relevance to the early formation of Republican politics, and his role in the birth of political journalism.[26]

In 1997, the historian

MacArthur Fellowship for "dramatically chang[ing] the course of Jeffersonian scholarship."[27]

In 2000, the journalist and author William Safire published a historical novel, Scandalmonger, about Callender's life in the United States that was based on letters of notable people of the time, including presidents Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe. Forty-four pages at the end of the hardcover edition of the book are what Safire calls "the underbook", a section distinguishing the historical information from fiction and including notes and sources.[28]

In 2008,

smearing of Adams as the critical factor that gave the presidency to Jefferson.[29]

References

Notes

  1. ISBN 978-0-312-15052-5
    .
  2. ^ Chernow, Ron. Alexander Hamilton (Penguin Books, 2005) p. 668
  3. ^ Durey 1990, p. 6
  4. ^ Durey 1990, p. 9
  5. ^ Durey 1990, p. 22
  6. ^ Durey 1990, p. 44
  7. ^ Durey 1990, pp. 53, 55
  8. ^ Durey 1990, p. 64
  9. ^ Durey 1990, pp. 74–83
  10. ^ Durey 1990, p. 102
  11. ^ Durey 1990, pp.103–106
  12. ^ Durey 1990, p.106
  13. ^ Miller 1977, pp. 148–151
  14. ^ "John & Abigail Adams - James Callender". PBS. WGBH. August 26, 2005. Archived from the original on January 16, 2016.
  15. ^ Durey 1990, pp.109, 124–125
  16. ^ Bernstein, R. B. Thomas Jefferson (Oxford University Press, 2003) p. 154
  17. ^ Randall, Willard S., Thomas Jefferson: A Life, Henry Holt & Co., 1993, p. 556
  18. ^ Miller 1977, pp. 152–153
  19. ISBN 0-8139-1698-4
  20. ^ Brodie 1974, p. 349
  21. ^ Durey 1990, p. 138
  22. ^ Henderickson, Robert A., The Rise and Fall of Alexander Hamilton, (New York, Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1981), 579.
  23. ^ Durey 1990, p. 164
  24. ^ Brodie 1974, p. 356
  25. ^ Ridgway, Whitman H. "Callender, James Thomson (1757 or 1758–1803)". Encyclopedia Virginia. Retrieved 2016-05-04.
  26. ^ Durey 1990, pp. 173–174
  27. ^ "Annette Gordon-Reed". MacArthur Foundation. 2010. Archived from the original on 9 February 2011. Retrieved 9 February 2011.
  28. ISBN 0684867192
    .
  29. ^ Swint, Kerwin (August 22, 2008). "Founding Fathers' dirty campaign". CNN.com. Cable News Network.

Cited literature

  • Brodie, Fawn, Thomas Jefferson, An Intimate History (New York, W.W. Norton, 1974)
  • Durey, Michael, With the Hammer of Truth, James Thomson Callender, (Charlottesville, Univ. Press of VA, 1990).
  • Miller, John Chester, The Wolf by the Ears, (The Free Press, 1977).

See also

External links

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