Note 932 — Chapter IV · (continued 2)

To the Freemen of Rhode-Island, etc., p. 4. This pamphlet was issued anonymously and without date. Its author was Jonathan Russell, and the date of its publication fell within the period of the Adams-Jefferson contest for the presidency, i. e., 1800–1801. The passage from which the quotation is taken is marked by not a little dignity and comprehension. “The people have been continually agitated by false alarms, and without even the apparition of a foe. They have been made to believe that their government and their religion were upon the eve of annihilation. The ridiculous fabrications of plots, which have been crushed out of being by the weight of their own absurdity; and the perpetration of massacres which never existed, but in the distempered malevolence which preached them, have been artfully employed to excite an indignation which might be played off for the purposes of party. Tubs have arrived at Charlestown. The crews of the Ocean and Pickering have been murdered…. No falsehood which depravity could invent, has passed unpropagated by credulity; and no innocence which virtue could render respectable and amiable has escaped unassailed by federal malignity. Bigotry has cried down toleration, and royalism everything Republican.” (Ibid.)