The Sedition Act Trials
Historical Documents
James Callender’s The Prospect Before Us (excerpts from the indictment)
James Callender was the author of some of the most extreme and provocative language penned by any of the Republican newspaper writers during the Adams administration. After gaining notoriety for newspaper editorials in Philadelphia and Richmond, Callender was indicted in the U.S. Circuit Court for the District of Virginia for writing a lengthy pamphlet in favor of Thomas Jefferson’s election as President.
The Prospect Before Us
took the form of a political history of the 1790s, with special emphasis on the supposed corruption and monarchical principles of John Adams and his administration. Jefferson reviewed a draft of the pamphlet and predicted, in an intentionally unsigned letter to Callender, that “such papers cannot fail to produce the best effect.” Callender made sure that his pamphlet was reprinted in several cities, and he brazenly sent a copy to President Adams.
Justice Chase received a copy of the pamphlet while presiding in the circuit court in Maryland and read it before he arrived to convene the circuit court in Richmond, Virginia, on May 22, 1800. The following day the grand jury returned an indictment of Callender. The pamphlet’s 187 pages offered plenty to offend the Federalists, and the indictment cited 20 separate passages that were alleged to be libelous.
[Document Source:
The Prospect Before Us
(Richmond, Va.: M. Jones, S. Pleasants, jun. and J. Lyon, 1800).]
[T]he reign of Mr. Adams has, hitherto, been one continued tempest of
malignant
passions. As president, he has never opened his lips, or lifted his pen, without threatening and scolding. The grand object of his administration has been to exasperate the rage of contending parties, to calumniate and destroy every man who differs from his opinions. Mr. Adams has laboured, and with melancholy success, to break up the bonds of social affection, and, under the ruins of confidence and friendship, to extinguish the only beam of happiness that glimmers through the dark and despicable farce of life. (p. 30–31)
The following passage concluded a lengthy discussion of a federal officeholder who allegedly lost his position when he refused to sign a public address in support of the president’s preparations for war with France.
The same system of persecution has been extended all over the continent. Every person holding an office must either quit it, or think and vote exactly with Mr. Adams. (p. 32)
Callender was one of the few Republican writers willing to criticize George Washington in the same kind of language as that directed toward Adams. “Paper jobber” was a derisive eighteenth century term for someone who offered political support in return for a government job.
Adams and Washington have since been shaping a series of these paper-jobbers into Judges and Ambassadors. As their whole courage lies in want of shame, these poltroons, without risking a manly and intelligible defence of their own measures, raise an affected yelp against the corruption of the French directory; as if any corruption could be more venal, more notorious, more execrated than their own. (p. 72)
The object with Mr. Adams was to recommend a French war, professedly for the sake of supporting American commerce, but, in reality, for the sake of yoking us into an alliance with the British tyrant. (p. 73)
Here Callender offered his readers a list of what was at stake when voters chose between Jefferson and Adams in the presidential election. The indented and italicized passage is a quotation from Alexander Pope’s “
An Essay on Criticism
.” “Connecticut sailor” was a reference to Jonathan Robbins, the British sailor who claimed United States citizenship but was extradited to Great Britain for trial as a mutineer.
You will then take your choice between innocence and guilt, between freedom and slavery, between paradise and perdition. You will choose between the man who has deserted and reversed ALL his principles, and that man,
Whose own example strengthens all his laws,
that man, whose predictions, like those of Henry, have been converted into history. You will choose between that man whose life is unspotted by a crime, and
that
man whose hands are reeking with the blood of the poor friendless Connecticut sailor! I see the tear of indignation starting on our cheeks! You anticipate the name of JOHN ADAMS. (p. 84)
Every feature in the conduct of Mr. Adams forms a distinct and additional evidence that he was determined, at all events, to embroil this country with France. (p. 85)
He was a professed aristocrat. He had proved faithful and serviceable to the British interest. (p. 124)