Hamilton, Alexander

Autograph letter signed ("A. Hamilton"), one page (10 x 8 in.; 254 x 203 mm), New York, 17 May 1798, to New York Senator John Laurance, excoriating the House of Representatives for thwarting President Adams's proposed bills for defense, including what would become the Alien and Sedition Acts, integral address leaf franked "A Hamilton" with postal stamp dated New York | May 16; seal tear on address leaf, several fold separations on fore-edge of address leaf.  

Not in Syrett

Autograph letter signed ("A. Hamilton"), one page (10 x 8 in.; 254 x 203 mm), New York, 17 May 1798, to New York Senator John Laurance, excoriating the House of Representatives for thwarting President Adams's proposed bills for defense, including what would become the Alien and Sedition Acts, integral address leaf franked "A Hamilton" with postal stamp dated New York | May 16; seal tear on address leaf, several fold separations on fore-edge of address leaf.
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"I have seen with deep regret and humiliation the paltry spirit which has been exhibited in the House of Representatives. They have literally castrated all the measures of the Senate. The soi disant friends of the Government having the game on their own hands play it like babes. It is deplorable that the interests of a great Country should be committed to such unfledged and puerile Guardians." In the wake of the XYZ Affair and the French Directory decree allowing French privateers to prey on American shipping, a livid Hamilton fires off a letter to New York Senator John Laurance in which he castigates the pro-French Republican faction in the House of Representatives for thwarting President Adams's recommendations for the prompt adoption of measures for the protection of neutral commerce, the defense of exposed territory, and the provision of necessary military supplies and revenue.

"The object of creating naval force is frustrated by refusing to the President power to employ it adequately. The reduction of the provisional army to 10000 is boyish — The making it a condition of its being raised that there shall "be imminent danger ... of an invasion" is to render it a nullity. ... Such a conduct is calculated to make men of energy abandon the cause of the Government through Contempt and Despair of its being true to itself. Timid men through fear and distrust — and to embolden its foreign and domestic enemies to undertake to trample the feeble..."  For the next two years, Adams waged a "half war" to protect commerce on the high seas by means of armed merchantmen and an incipient navy yet, like Jefferson, set little store by the provisional army that was so dear to the heart of Hamilton. He urges the New York senator to "maintain the ground of the Senate," which Laurance did.  Riding on the crest of anti-French hysteria, the Federalists (ardent Hamiltonians included) passed the bill for the creation of the Marine Corps, as well as the Alien and Sedition acts, aimed at both the French and the Republicans.