There's More to New Jersey than the Sopranos

11 John Adams’s Ass

58 There’s More to New Jersey . . . No, the credit for that historic first flight goes to Blanchard. And New Jersey gets a bit of the glory by just being there when he needed a place to land. 11 John Adams’s Ass The year 1798 was an important one for human creative expression. In London, Wordsworth wrote poetry; in Madrid, Goya painted frescos; in Vienna, Beethoven composed piano sonatas. And in Newark, New Jersey, Luther Baldwin expressed the hope that the president of the United States would get hit by a cannonball in his rear end. Baldwin was a gruff and grizzled captain of a Passaic River garbage scow, a fellow who enjoyed having a drink or two with the boys down at the local tavern. His rendezvous with history came one summer morning when President John Adams was passing through Newark on his way from the nation’s capital in Philadelphia to his family home in Braintree, Massachusetts. The leading citizens of Newark turned out with a band and an artillery company to salute the chief executive. As the president’s coach made its way through the town, the artillery fired salutes, the church bells rang, and the president’s supporters cheered. What happened next was described by a local newspaper: “Luther Baldwin happening to be coming toward John Burnet’s dramshop, a person that was there says to Luther, there goes the President, and they are a firing at his a–––. Luther, a little merry, replies, that he did not care if they fired through his a–––.” The type of low humor expressed by Baldwin is as old as human society . Shakespeare used the same kind of ribald jokes about the human anatomy to evoke laughter from his London audience. But where Shake- John Adams’s Ass 59 speare got away with it, Baldwin did not. He was arrested and charged with “speaking seditious words tending to defame the President and Government of the United States.” To understand why Baldwin was in such deep trouble for such an innocuous remark by today’s standards, we have to go beyond the country town of Newark to weighty issues of national government and foreign affairs. This was the age of the fearsome Napoleonic Wars between England and France. America was a new, weak country far from the European centers of power. But America was a proud country too, and the Federalist government of President John Adams bristled when the French government interfered with American shipping, hanged American seamen serving on John Adams, President of the United States of America For daring to insult President Adams, a Newark tavern lounger ran afoul of the law. Library of Congress. 60 There’s More to New Jersey . . . British ships, and demanded bribes from American diplomats in Paris. In retaliation, the American navy attacked French warships in the Atlantic. The Republican Party of Thomas Jefferson (the forerunner of today’s Democratic Party) admired the ideals of the French Revolution and felt kinship with France. Republicans bitterly attacked Federalists like President Adams, Alexander Hamilton, and even the sainted George Washington , for throwing America on the side of Great Britain. Using their majority in Congress, the Federalists struck back at the Republicans by passing a series of laws aimed at suppressing dissent. These notorious Alien and Sedition Acts made it a crime to “threaten any officer of the United States Government with any damage to his character, person, or property” or to speak “in a scandalous or malicious way against the government of the United States, either House of Congress, or the President, with the purpose of bringing them into contempt.” Twenty-five people, including newspaper editors, journalists, and political leaders were arrested under the acts. Among them was Matthew Lyon, a fiery Republican congressman from Vermont, who became known as the “Spitting Lyon” for expectorating in the face of a Federalist opponent during a brawl in Congress. Another Republican convicted under the acts was the writer James Callender, who described President Adams as “a repulsive pedant, a gross hypocrite, and an unprincipled oppressor.” By his intemperate remarks in Newark, Luther Baldwin joined this group of prominent lawbreakers. Republican newspapers around the country such as the Newark Centinel of Freedom, the Portsmouth Oracle of the Day, the Philadelphia Aurora, and the New York Argus hailed Lyon, Callender, and others as martyrs. These feisty newspapers loved to skewer the pompous Federalists , and they...