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were folks like him, the elite. The unwashed throng were to be feared and blocked at every turn. Hence his pushing for the creation of a Senate to short curcuit the will of the rabble.
In Philadelphia memories of Adams aren't so fond, if you were Irish anyway. The Alien and Sedition Acts he had passed into law were designed to lock up and or silence his political enemies, and if they were Irish, deport them.
From my blog named after the Philadelphia Aurora (A Jefferson organ) the newspaper started by Benjamin Frankin Bache, who when he died in 1798, was taken over by one William Duane. (The Aurora eventually became the Inquirer in 1820 something.)
This from "American Aurora" by Richard N. Rosenfeld.
July 24, 1799
Secretary of State Timothy Pickering writes to president John Adams:
"There is in the Aurora of the city an uninterrupted stream of slander on the American government. I enclose the paper of this morning. It is not the first time that the editor has suggested that you had asserted the influence of the British government in affairs of our own and insinuated that it was obtained through bribery. The general readers of the Aurora will believe both. I shall give the paper to Mr. Rawle, and, if he thinks it libelous, desire him to prosecute the editor . . .
The Editor of the Aurora, William Duane, pretends he is an American citizen, saying he was born in Vermont, but was when a child, taken back with his parents to Ireland, where he was educated. But I understand the facts to be, that he went from American prior to our revolution, remained in the British dominions till after peace, went to the British East Indies, where he committed or was charged with some crime, and returned to Great Britain, from whence, within three or four years past, he came to this country to stir up sedition and work other mischief.
I presume, therefore, that he is really a British subject and, as an alien, liable to be banished from the United States. He has lately set himself up to be the captain of a company of volunteers, whose distinguished badges are a plume of cock-neck feathers and a small black cockade and a large eagle. He is doubtless a United Irishman, and the company probably formed to oppose the authority of the government; and, in case of war and invasion by the French, to join them."
Duane attacked and beaten:
On Wednesday, May 15, 1799, William Duane was attacked in his office by a contingent of Federal troops from the city's volunteer Calvary unhappy about an article he had written about them the day before. They demanded to know who the source of his story was but he would not divulge the name. He was grabbed by the leader of the group of about thirty toughs out of his chair and dragged down the stairs and into Franklin Court where he was mercilessly beaten in front of his young son and then, as a final humiliation, whipped.
Mere minutes after the assault he wrote this:
"If any circumstance could more deeply impress on his mind . . . to guard, with vigilance of republican jealousy, against the artifices, the intrigues and injustice of arbitrary men; -- this conduct would only more and more attack him to his principles -- but he has never slackened since he has had the honor to hold his present situation -- and while he holds it, his hand must perish or his vital principles must be suspended by the hand of some of those assassins before he will shrink from exposing villains and crimes to public obloquy."
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