Amid the uproar over the Jay Treaty, three exiled leaders of the United Irishmen came to Philadelphia in the summer of 1795. The Democratic-Republicans hailed Theobald Wolfe Tone, Dr. James Reynolds and Archibald Hamilton Rowan as heroes. The Federalists alarmed that Irish revolutionaries were infiltrating Irish democratic societies referred to them derisively as Jacobins. The Federalists insinuated the American United Irishmen were radical, and were supplanting the more centrist democratic societies.[1]
John Chambers was a printer and bookseller in Dublin, a close friend of Carey’s who had helped him evade authorities when he escaped from Ireland. Chambers was one of the founders of the society of United Irishmen in Dublin. He wrote to Carey sending him the news of the political situation there. Chambers wrote a letter of introduction for Wolfe Tone to Mathew Carey, asking him to help the political refugee. Carey’s correspondence with Chambers shows he was in contact with the society in Ireland. How Carey reacted to their visit in the face of what had happened to his brother William Paulet Carey, is unknown. Tone’s agenda in the United States was to urge France’s minister, Pierre Adet, to promote the idea of a French invasion of Ireland.[2]
Chambers also sent Carey a collection of tracts entitled Proceedings of the Society of United Irishmen of Dublin. Thomas Stephens, whom Chambers had recommended to Carey in a letter of introduction, published them. Carey’s involvement with the United Irishmen of Dublin was becoming increasingly risky.[3]
The Society of United Irishmen in America began in Philadelphia in 1797, organized by William Duane, John Daly Burk and Dr. James Reynolds. [4] Carey kept any association he had with the American United Irishman under wraps. The Society in Philadelphia was a secret organization, modeled on Freemasonry. Members were bound by an oath, and belonged small cells of no more than eight members. They met weekly to discuss political works and secretly corresponded with the larger organization.[5]
William Cobbett was making a name for himself as the editor of Peter Porcupine’s Gazette, a Federalist newspaper that denounced Democratic-Republicans and cursed the French. The provocative Englishman arrived in Philadelphia in 1793, setting up shop as a bookseller on Second Street opposite Christ Church. He was heavy-set, six feet tall with a ruddy complexion, bushy brows and gray eyes. After removing the shutters from the façade of his building, he had it painted brilliant blue. He sold Federalist and British propaganda and displayed portraits of Kings George III and Louis XVI in his windows. Eight months later, he published the first issue of his Porcupine’s Gazette, with an opening salvo at the Aurora, calling it a “vehicle of lies and sedition.”[6]
Carey angered Cobbett, an Englishman, by refusing to publish his Observation on the Emigration of Dr. Joseph Priestly. Joseph Priestly was a scientist, philosopher and a founder of the Unitarian Church. Cobbett accused him of treason in Britain. Later Cobbett obtained some letters to Priestly sent by John Hurford Stone, a radical printer, and Helen Maria Williams, a liberal writer who lived in France. Cobbett claimed that Priestly was trying to foment a French-style revolution in the United States.
“[Carey] looked at the title from top to bottom, and then, at me, from head to foot. ‘No my lad,’ says he, ‘I don’t think it will suit’ – My lad! God in heaven forgive me…I wished for another yellow fever…to furnish me too with the subject of the pamphlet that might make me rich…”[7]
William Cobbett on Carey’s refusal to print his work
In the spring of 1795, Cobbett attacked the United Irishmen. He published A Bone to gnaw for the Democrats, linking Jacobins, United Irishmen and the emerging Democratic-Republican Party together. He claimed these groups sought division of private property and warfare among classes.[8]
In July 1795, crowds gathered at Philadelphia’s state house to protest the Jay Treaty. Many Irish were present as Carey’s friend, Blair McClenachan president of the Democratic Society of Pennsylvania, delivered a speech working his listeners into a frenzy. McClenachan, who was born in Londonderry, came to the United States and became wealthy as a merchant trading flaxseed. Enemies described him as the “most violent anti-foederalist in America.” Hamilton Rowan, an exiled United Irishman, who had just arrived in Philadelphia, joined him in the protest. McClenachan turned to Rowan and asked those present for “three cheers for the persecuted patriot, Hamilton Rowan.” McClenachan then tossed a copy of the despised treaty into the assembly, saying, “kick this damn treaty to hell.” The mob of about three hundred then stormed through the streets of Philadelphia, throwing stones at windows of the houses where George Hammond, the British minister, and William Bingham, a Federalist senator lived.[9] The Federalist press condemned the Democratic-Republicans for attempting to ruin relations with Britain, destroying her commerce and provoking the Irish to revolt.[10]
Archibald Hamilton Rowan (1751-1834) was a founding member of the United Irishmen in Dublin, who came to Philadelphia in 1795. Three years later the United Irishmen staged a rebellion in Ireland expecting support from the French just as America and France entered into an undeclared war at sea.
As the decade ended, the United Irishmen staged a rebellion in 1798, expecting the support of the French at the same time that America and France were in an undeclared “Quasi-War” at sea.
TRANSITION TO PUBLISHER | CAREY THE NATIONALIST | John Adams and the Quasi-War
[1] Edward C. Carter II, The Political Activities of Mathew Carey Nationalist, 1760-1814, Bryn Mawr College PhD. Dissertation, 1962, 232-233.
[2] Carter, The Political Activities of Mathew Carey, 218-219.
[3] Carter, The Political Activities of Mathew Carey, 216- 217.
[4] David A. Wilson, United Irishmen, United States: Immigrant Radicals in the Early Republic, (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998) 43.
[5] Wilson, United Irishmen, 44
[6] Richard N. Rosenfeld, American Aurora: A Democratic-Republican Returns: The Suppressed History of our Nation’s Beginnings and the Heroic Newspaper that Tried to Report It (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997) 25.
[7] Edward Smith, William Cobbett, A Biography in Two Volumes, (London: Samson, Low, Marston, Searle & Rivington, 1878) 116-117.
[8] Carter, The Political Activities of Mathew Carey, 217.
[9] Wilson, United Irishmen, United States, 41.
[10] Carter, The Political Activities of Mathew Carey, 218.