A Treasury of Foolishly Forgotten Americans (4 page)

William Dawes had the misfortune of being at the right place, but with the wrong rhyme. While his fellow patriot and midnight rider, Paul Revere, was immortalized in verse by Henry Longfellow, Dawes is all but forgotten. It's a grave injustice to a man whose efforts on that fateful April night in 1775 were every bit as valiant as Revere's. So listen, children, and you shall hear of the midnight ride of William Dawes.

Tension between Britain and the American colonists in Massachusetts had reached a breaking point in the spring of 1775. Independent-minded rebels had repeatedly defied British authority with numerous acts of subversion like the Boston Tea Party, and now the mother country was determined to enforce some strict discipline. Colonial ringleaders John Hancock and Samuel Adams were to be arrested, and a large cache of arms and ammunition stored in the town of Concord destroyed. “Keep the measure secret until the moment of execution, it can hardly fail of success,” the Earl of Dartmouth assured the royal governor of Massachusetts, General Thomas Gage. “Any efforts of the people unprepared to encounter with a regular force, cannot be very formidable.”

Secrets were hard to keep in Boston, however. Word of British preparations buzzed around town throughout the day on April 18, and a network of informers within the tight-knit community kept leading citizens Paul Revere and Dr. Joseph Warren apprised of their every movement. A highly placed source among the British—some historians believe it was General Gage's American wife—confirmed to Dr. Warren that plans were indeed underway to arrest Samuel Adams and John Hancock, who were known to be in the town of Lexington, and then to destroy the weapons and ammunition stored at Concord. Armed with this information, Dr. Warren sent Revere
and
William Dawes, both established and reliable couriers, on an urgent mission to warn Hancock and Adams.

Each man took a different route to Lexington to ensure that if one was intercepted by British regulars patrolling the region, the other could still relay the vital message. Dawes left town through the gate at Boston Neck, a narrow isthmus that provided the only land access to and from the mainland. He was “mounted on a slow-jogging horse,” according to his biographer Henry W. Holland, “with saddle-bags behind him, and a large flapped hat upon his head to resemble a countryman on a journey.” Accounts vary as to how Dawes actually got through the closely guarded gate. Some say he joined a group of farmers returning to the mainland from Boston; others that he knew the British sentries on duty because of his frequent travels as a tanner by trade. Whatever the case, it is said that no sooner had he passed through the gate than orders arrived to stop all movement out of town.

Dawes made his way on his slow horse south across Boston Neck to Roxbury, and then west and north through Brookline, Brighton, Cambridge, and Menotomy (now Arlington) to Lexington—a nearly seventeen-mile journey that took about three hours. While his ride had none of the dazzle and flash of steeple lights that Revere's did (at least none that's known because, unlike his fellow messenger, Dawes didn't leave a record), it was every bit as heroic. The countryside was crawling with redcoats determined to stop any alarms from reaching Lexington, and Dawes deftly avoided them to deliver his message. Although no record exists of his alerting people along the way, he almost certainly did. “I can't imagine him riding mute,” says Bill Fowler, professor of history at Northeastern University and former director of the Massachusetts Historical Society. Still, Revere gets all the credit and, says Fowler, “poor Dawes sort of limps along.” Historian David Hackett Fischer and others say that's because Revere was much better connected with the leaders of the towns along his route and thus better equipped to rally them. But the fact remains that both Revere and Dawes accomplished their mission, against great odds, by reaching Lexington and warning Hancock and Adams.

After a brief rest in Lexington, Dawes and Revere set out together to warn the town of Concord about the British approach. They were joined by a third man, unheralded like Dawes, named Dr. Samuel Prescott. About halfway through their journey, during which they alerted a number of homesteads along the way, the riders were intercepted by four well-armed British Regulars. “God damn you! Stop!” one shouted. “If you go one inch further you are a dead man!” The three tried to push through the officers, but were overpowered. They were ordered off the road and directed at gunpoint to an enclosed pasture. The officers “swore if we did not turn into that pasture they would blow our brains out,” Revere later recalled. Prescott saw an opportunity for escape, however. “Put on!” he whispered to Revere, and both men spurred their horses to a gallop. Prescott turned left, jumped a low stone wall, and disappeared into the woods. He was the only rider to reach Concord that night. Revere was quickly surrounded and captured.

Dawes escaped during the confusion and raced to a nearby farm with two officers in pursuit. Upon reaching the abandoned farmhouse, his horse was spooked and stopped abruptly. Dawes was pitched to the ground, and the horse ran off. Helpless now, he devised a clever feint. “Halloo, my boys,” he shouted into the empty house. “I've got two of them.” Unsure how many armed people might be inside, the British officers who had given chase rode off. Dawes then limped back to Lexington.

With the revolutionary spark ignited, Dawes joined the army in the siege of Boston, fought at Bunker Hill, and won a commission as commissary to the Continental Army. Dawes family lore also has it that he later returned to the empty house where he had fooled the British soldiers and recovered the watch he lost in his fall. He died on February 25, 1799, at age fifty-three, and is buried at King's Chapel in Boston. There he lies all but forgotten, a fate that might have been shared by Revere had it not been for Longfellow. The injustice of it all was captured in another, less-celebrated poem written by Helen F. Moore and published in
Century Magazine
in 1896:

The United States had barely emerged as a new nation before it was rent by what George Washington called “the baneful effects of the spirit of party.” Ideological factions clashed fiercely, often using newspapers and pamphlets as the vehicles to promote their agendas. Writers for these blatantly partisan publications savaged politicians with whom they disagreed, and few of the founding fathers—not even Washington—were spared their venomous quills. A scandalmonger by the name of James T. Callender was among the most vicious of these literary character assassins who roamed the early Republic. During his brief but colorful career, Callender relentlessly hounded the nation's first leaders and published a number of salacious stories about them that endure to this day. In the process, he ran afoul of one of the most odious laws ever enacted by the U.S. government.

A fugitive Scot from British sedition laws, Callender arrived in America in 1792 and soon established himself as a rabid anti-Federalist whose screeds against the party in power attracted the attention of the Republican opposition. Thomas Jefferson secretly funded and encouraged him, while others fed him the dirt that fueled his vituperative rants. Alexander Hamilton was an early target: Callender learned that in 1792 this leading Federalist had been investigated by James Monroe and others for alleged financial improprieties involving a scoundrel named James Reynolds while serving as the nation's first secretary of the treasury. Hamilton had denied any pecuniary misdeeds, explaining to the investigators that he was actually guilty of adultery with Reynolds's wife, Maria, and that the couple had blackmailed him.
¹
The money he had given Reynolds was not for any illegal speculation with public funds, as had been charged, but from his own pocket as hush money for his sexual sins. Monroe took Hamilton at his word, with reservations, and the matter was concluded.

Five years later, however, documents from the investigation were leaked to Callender, probably by John Beckley, a former clerk of the House of Representatives who had been assigned by Monroe to copy them.
²
Callender gleefully published the papers, neglecting to include Hamilton's humiliating explanation of his dealings with Reynolds and Monroe's note of the same. With all the hyperbole typical of his trade, Callender grossly exaggerated Hamilton's supposed corruption and excoriated him for his abuse of the public trust: “The funding of certificates to the extent of perhaps thirty-five millions of dollars, at eight times the price which the holders had paid for them, presents, in itself, one of the most egregious, the most impudent, the most oppressive, and the most provoking bubbles that ever burlesqued the legislative proceedings of any nation.”

Faced with Callender's damning charges, Hamilton did something few politicians would ever dare: He publicly confessed his affair with Maria Reynolds to save his reputation. “The charge against me is a connection with one James Reynolds for purposes of improper pecuniary speculation,” he wrote in a ninety-seven-page pamphlet. “My real crime is an amorous connection with his wife Maria, for a considerable time with his privity and connivance, if not originally brought on by a combination between the husband and wife with the design to extort money from me. This confession is not made without a blush.”

Hamilton's revealing pamphlet titillated the nation and absolutely thrilled Callender, who continued his assault on the founder and dismissed his tortured admission as a flimsy cover for his real crimes. “If you have not seen it, no anticipation can equal the infamy of this piece,” he wrote to Jefferson. “It is worth all that fifty of the best pens in America could have said against him.”

Having demolished Hamilton's reputation, or so he believed, Callender set his sights on the Federalist president John Adams—a friend of British tyranny, Republicans claimed, with kingly pretensions of his own and an enduring enmity for freedom-loving France. Why, Callender demanded to know in an editorial for the Republican organ the
Aurora,
was Adams withholding information about a failed U.S. diplomatic mission to France? Could it be that the president, so favorable to Britain in its war with France, had deliberately undermined it? What Callender didn't know was that the American envoys had been insulted by French officials—identified in coded dispatches as X, Y, and Z—who had demanded significant cash bribes before they would deign to meet with the U.S. delegation. Fearing the XYZ Affair, as it came to be called, would provoke a war that the United States could ill afford to fight, Adams wanted to keep secret the dispatches that detailed the French outrages. His hand was forced, however, by a Republican-led demand from Congress that the dispatches be released. Predictably, anger over France's affront to American pride was sharply aroused, and the cries for war were resounding. It was in this belligerent atmosphere that Callender and his Republican cohorts found themselves threatened not only by angry mobs, but by the law.

During what became known as the Quasi-War with France, President Adams, enjoying widespread support from an inflamed public, signed into law the Alien and Sedition Acts. They were “rightly judged by history as the most reprehensible acts of his presidency,” writes David McCullough, Adams's biographer. The Alien Act gave the president the legal right to expel any foreigner he considered “dangerous.” And while Callender's Republican supporters helped him avoid the consequences of this law by arranging for his citizenship,
³
the Sedition Act was another matter. Clearly unconstitutional and aimed at people like Callender, it made any “false, scandalous, and malicious” writing against the government, Congress, or the president, or any attempt “to excite against them…the hatred of the good people of the United States, or to stir up sedition,” crimes punishable by fines and imprisonment.

Callender was determined to take a stand against the Sedition Act, and, if necessary, become a martyr to it. He left his young sons in Philadelphia, which in the midst of war hysteria had become dangerously hostile to him, and moved to Jefferson's home state of Virginia. There he penned
The Prospect Before Us,
a scorching blast against the president—that “repulsive pedant” and “gross hypocrite” who was to face Jefferson in the upcoming election of 1800. “The reign of Mr. Adams has hitherto been one continued tempest of malignant passions,” Callender wrote. “The grand object of his administration has been to calumniate and destroy every man who differs from his opinion.” He called the president “a hoary-headed incendiary” determined to make war on France, and “in his private life, one of the most egregious fools upon the continent.” There were a number of other seditious epithets guaranteed to provoke the president. Callender described him as “that strange compound of ignorance and ferocity, of deceit and wickedness,” a “hideous hermaphroditical character which has neither the force and firmness of a man, nor the gentleness and sensibility of a woman,” and “a wretch whose soul came blasted from the hand of nature…a wretch that has neither the science of a magistrate, the politeness of a courtier, nor the courage of a man.”

Jefferson was pleased by Callender's toxic tract. “Such papers cannot fail to produce the best results,” he assured the author. Adams was decidedly less enthusiastic, and Callender was promptly arrested for sedition. His subsequent trial was a sham presided over by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Chase, who was later impeached (and acquitted) for his conduct during the proceedings.

“James Thomson Callender, by his writings attached hereto, has maliciously defamed the President of the United States, John Adams,” declared prosecutor Thomas Nelson. “The accused is a person of wicked, depraved, and turbulent mind and is disposed toward evil. He has written and caused to be published these words with the bad intent of bringing him into contempt, and to excite the hatred of the people against him and their government.”

All efforts by the defense to argue on their client's behalf were thwarted by Chase, a Federalist who was determined to see Callender convicted. In one typical exchange, Nelson referenced a sentence from
The Prospect Before Us:
“So great is the violence of the President's passions, that under his second administration, America would be in constant danger of a second quarrel.”

“This is the same as saying, ‘Do not re-elect the present President, for he will involve you in a war,'” Nelson declared. “It predicts the future. How can that be true? Therefore, it must be false, scandalous, and uttered with malicious intent.”

“It is an opinion,” countered defense attorney George Hay. “A political opinion does not purport to be a fact. It can neither be true nor false.”

“Your objection is irrelevant,” Chase snapped.

“Your Honor,” Hay responded, “are you ruling that it is against the law to have an opinion, to speak your mind during the Presidency of John Adams?”

“Your argument is disrespectful, irritating, and highly incorrect,” Chase said sharply. “I will have no more of that, young man.”

The outcome of the case was almost preordained, and Callender was convicted. “If your calumny, defamation, and falsehood were to be tolerated,” Chase lectured after the verdict was announced, “it would reduce virtue to the level of vice. There could be no encouragement to integrity, and no man, however upright in his conduct, could be secure from slander.” Concluding his speech, the justice gave the convicted man an opportunity to speak. “Do you have any contrition to express that might bring about a diminution of your sentence?” he asked. Callender remained defiant. “I may be insolent,” he said. “I have written some words that may be abusive. But the insolence and abusiveness of liberty, sir, are far preferable to the groveling decorum of the Court and the funereal silence of despotism.”

Sentenced to nine months in prison and a $200 fine, Callender became a martyr for the First Amendment and the Republican cause, as perhaps he had intended all along. Adams was defeated in the election that followed (one of the most bitter in American history, and the only time a president and vice president ever ran against each other). It was in the wake of this victory, however, that the nation's preeminent muckraker did something astonishing: He turned on the man who had silently supported him and who was now president.

Callender expected to be rewarded for all the services he had rendered Jefferson and the Republicans—not the least of which had been his defiance of the Sedition Act, which contributed to the public's disenchantment with Adams—and the $50 the new president gave him as “charity” simply wouldn't suffice. At the very least, he wanted to be reimbursed for the $200 fine that had been levied against him as part of his sentence, and he wanted to be Richmond's postmaster as well. Callender simmered with resentment when his requests were ignored. “I now begin to know what Ingratitude is,” he wrote to Secretary of State James Madison in 1801. Driven now by this festering sense of betrayal, Callender intimated to Jefferson's secretary, Meriwether Lewis, and others that he had compromising information about the president and was prepared to publish it. The $50 he had received was not charity, he said, but his due—hush money, in fact, for all he knew about Jefferson's secret machinations against the Federalists.

The president was furious when he received the reports of Callender's threats. “Such a misconstruction of my charities puts an end to them forever,” he announced, a bit disingenuously, having actively (albeit secretly) supported and funded Callender's crusades against Adams and others. “He knows nothing of me which I am not willing to declare to the world myself,” Jefferson continued. “I knew him first as the author of
The Political Progress of Britain,
a work I had read with great satisfaction, and as a fugitive from persecution [in Britain] for this very work. I gave him from time to time such aides as I could afford, merely as a man of genius suffering under persecution, and not as a writer in our politics. It is long since I wished he would cease writing on them, as doing more harm than good.” Callender gave lie to the president's pretensions when he published the letters Jefferson had written him encouraging his attacks. It was merely an opening salvo, to be followed by an explosive story that shocked the nation and remains part of the third president's legacy.

“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,” Callender wrote in the September 1, 1802, edition of the Richmond
Recorder
. “Her name is Sally. The name of her eldest son his Tom. His features are said to bear a striking though sable resemblance to those of the President himself…. By this wench Sally, our President has had several children. There is not an individual in the neighborhood of Charlottesville who does not believe the story, and not a few who know it.”

By exposing the president to contempt and ridicule with the Sally Hemings story, Callender effectively banished himself for good from the party he had once so stoutly supported. He was vilified in the Republican press, and even bludgeoned nearly to death by the same lawyer who had defended him in his sedition trial. Drinking heavily now, but unbowed, Callender continued his assault on Jefferson and Hemings, whom he referred to as “Dusky Sally,” with all the signature vitriol he had used against the Federalists. And he dredged up other scandals from the president's past as well, including his attempted seduction of his best friend's wife.