of democracy. New England Federalism was not so much a body
of political doctrine as a state of mind. Abhorrence of the forces
liberated by the French Revolution was the dominating emotion. To the
Federalist leaders democracy seemed an aberration of the human mind,
which was bound everywhere to produce infidelity, looseness of morals,
and political chaos. In the words of their Jeremiah, Fisher Ames,
"Democracy is a troubled spirit, fated never to rest, and whose dreams,
if it sleeps, present only visions of hell." So thinking and feeling,
they had witnessed the triumph of Jefferson with genuine alarm, for
Jefferson they held to be no better than a Jacobin, bent upon subverting
the social order and saturated with all the heterodox notions of
Voltaire and Thomas Paine.

The appointment of the aged Samuel Bishop as Collector of New Haven was
evidence enough to the Federalist mind, which fed upon suspicion, that
Jefferson intended to reward his son, Abraham Bishop, for political
services. The younger Bishop was a stench in their nostrils, for at a
recent celebration of the Republican victory he had shocked the good
people of Connecticut by characterizing Jefferson as "the illustrious
chief who, once insulted, now presides over the Union," and comparing
him with the Saviour of the world, "who, once insulted, now presides
over the universe." And this had not been his first transgression: he
was known as an active and intemperate rebel against the standing order.
No wonder that Theodore Dwight voiced the alarm of all New England
Federalists in an oration at New Haven, in which he declared that
according to the doctrines of Jacobinism "the greatest villain in the
community is the fittest person to make and execute the laws." "We have
now," said he, "reached the consummation of democratic blessedness.
We have a country governed by blockheads and knaves." Here was an
opposition which, if persisted in, might menace the integrity of the
Union.

Scarcely less vexatious was the business of appointments in New York
where three factions in the Republican party struggled for the control
of the patronage. Which should the President support? Gallatin, whose
father-in-law was prominent in the politics of the State, was inclined
to favor Burr and his followers; but the President already felt a deep
distrust of Burr and finally surrendered to the importunities of DeWitt
Clinton, who had formed an alliance with the Livingston interests to