Image of the American Patriot
II. The Patriot File, Unearthed
by Anton Chaitkin
November 2007
Table of Contents for this series
PDF version of this article, 3.04 MB
As we enter the 2008 election period in the USA, we have a US Congress whose approval rating is below 11%, just one year after the “New Politics” election sweep in 2006. With a group of terribly unqualified Presidential candidates running for the nation’s top office, the economist and statesman Lyndon H. LaRouche proposed mass educational project to present a true image of what a real American patriot is, around which to mobilize the country and shape the Presidency itself. These studies have been published in EIR Magazine and EIR Online, on the LaRouche PAC website, and we are happy to post them now on the Schiller Institute website as well. We begin the series with James Fenimore Cooper, who was a leader of the second generation of American Revolutionaries, and whose novels today are much better known all around the world than his diplomatic work. Cooper worked on behalf of the American System, organizing opposition to the British System of Empire. Many other articles about the American Intellectual Tradition are linked below.
On October 27, 2007, Anton Chaitkin spoke on the LaRouche Show, an online radio broadcast. The archives are now available and is a compliment to this article.
Introduction
Biographers of Martin Van Buren refer to a newspaper, put out in 1823 and 1824 in New York, called The Patriot, which they say was created solely to attack and undermine Van Buren. These biographers identify four main men behind the paper: Gen. Winfield Scott, Gen. Joseph Gardner Swift, Secretary of War John C. Calhoun, and Samuel Gouverneur, son-in-law of then-President James Monroe.
I searched out that daily newspaper, mentioned in this anti-Van Buren context, but otherwise unheralded in 20th-Century historical literature. I found a set of four bound volumes of the paper, moldering in the Maryland warehouse of the Library of Congress, and took about 200 digital photographs from its first issue, May 28, 1823, to the end of December 1824.
Study of The Patriot opened an unusual window into the minds and actions of its actual sponsors and writers, an extended circle (beyond those named by Van Buren's scribbling biographers) of many of the leading strategists guiding America in military, political, economic, and literary fields.
This kind of valuable window-material that is alive and first-hand, not filtered through the later accumulations of ignorance and prejudice; reports on then-current politics, history, and international affairs-naturally directs the student to peer into that period, and backward and forward in time, to the thoughts and work of the predecessors of these patriots, and to those who were later to follow in their footsteps-and to look across the globe, to the wider sphere of strategic contests, which The Patriot shows to be the proper context of the current events on which it reports.
We are thus aided in forming a more authentic idea of the historical and global continuum that is active in the minds and motives of those shaping that period. This helps us outflank the habit of academic/commercial historians to load us with their degraded explanations of why historical figures acted as they did.
Within Lyndon LaRouche's multi-millennial historical and scientific frame, this study is illuminated by the work of Graham and Pamela Lowry, the investigations of Philip Valenti and David Shavin, and the published and ongoing work of many other associated thinkers.
The intended purview (and the work to be done) extends across three overlapping time-arenas: 1) Gottfried Leibniz and his allies in colonial America and Europe, coinciding with the lives of Cadwallader Colden and Benjamin Franklin; 2) the American Revolution and its immediate aftermath, with George Washington, the Marquis de Lafayette, Alexander Hamilton, and their Society of the Cincinnati; and 3) the nationalists, West Point, the Whigs, the mentors of Abraham Lincoln and his successors. Franklin D. Roosevelt, to conceptualize his course of action, reached back, around the evils of the Teddy Roosevelt/Woodrow Wilson/Andrew Mellon era, to this earlier humanist legacy. This is the heart of the story of America as a project, and of the modern world made possible by the ideas of power supplied by Leibniz and Franklin and their heirs.[1]
The timeline given below focusses on what was initially seen through the window of The Patriot, its general period and locus of action, only touching on certain available-to-hand aspects of the earlier and wider reality which will be the proper subject of historical inquiry. The current document is intended to spur interest and collaboration, with in-depth analysis to come in future articles.
1. Prehistory
 |
1715-16: Scotland-born Cadwallader Colden is in London, amidst the Leibniz-Clarke battle (the debate of Leibnizian science versus Newtonian dogma). Colden then goes to America, lives in Philadelphia, marries James Logan's cousin. At the invitation of New York governor Robert Hunter (ally of governors Spottswood and Keith, the colonial leaders sponsored by the Swift-Leibniz-Queen Anne faction,[2] Colden moves to New York and becomes surveyor general of the province.
1724: Colden writes the first document on the need to improve the route which was to become the Erie Canal. Colden addresses to Gov. William Burnet, Hunter's chosen successor, "A Memorial Concerning the Fur-Trade of the Province of New York," stressing the necessity to develop the river/portage route from the Hudson River along the Mohawk Valley to Lake Erie. This memorial is published a century later as an appendix in the 1829 book, Memoir of DeWitt Clinton, by David Hosack, the physician who attended the Burr-Hamilton duel and cared for the dying Hamilton.
1727: Colden's "The History of the Five Indian Nations Depending on the Province of New York" is first published. Colden studied the problem of achieving peace with the Indians whom the British and French oligarchs and Jesuits were using against American continental development.
1731: Colden hires immigrant Charles Clinton as a surveyor. Over the years Colden advances Clinton's career and brings him into prominent society.
1747: Abraham Kästner[3] receives his copy of Colden's 1745 anti-Newtonian work on the physical nature of the universe, Principles of Action in Matter.
 Founders of The Patriot (clockwise from the top left): Gen. Winfield Scott, top U.S. military strategist; Gen. Joseph Gardner Swift, leader of West Point; John C. Calhoun, pronationalist statesman, before succumbing to intrigues and becoming a “Southern” fanatic; President James Monroe, who sponsored the paper politically, and whose son-in-law, Samuel Gouverneur, financed it. |
1748: Kästner publishes a German translation of Colden's work.
1751: Colden's work is published in Paris, by the networks of Benjamin Franklin.
1752: Colden receives the 1748 German edition of his book, translated and critiqued by Kästner. Colden writes to Franklin about having received it and not knowing German, and "I find my name often in company with those of very great ones Newtone, Leibniz, and Wolfius and Leibnizs Monades often mentioned a New Doctrine which perhaps you have seen and is of great repute in Germany." Colden then has Kästner's commentary translated into English by Reverend John Christopher Hartwick.
1752: Colden and Franklin collaborate on electricity and on the attack against Newton. Swiss mathematician Leonhard Euler attacks Colden, who writes to Franklin that Euler "writes much like a Pedant-highly conceited of himself."
1753: Franklin and Colden send a reply to Kästner. Kästner's known response was to organize the Leipzig scientific community to sponsor a trip to America for his protégé, Mylius, who unfortunately died before he could reach Franklin and Colden in America.
1754: Franklin is at the Albany Congress, in Colden's New York province.
1756: James Clinton, son of Colden's surveyor, enters the colonial militia.
1757-62: Franklin goes to England, spurs and guides the humanist inventors and developers of the Industrial Revolution.
1760: Colden, James Clinton's family sponsor, becomes lieutenant governor of New York.
1761: Philip Schuyler, colonial militia officer, goes to England. He inspects the newly completed Bridgewater Canal, which Franklin's circle had organized the Duke of Bridgewater to construct. This canal opens Manchester to industry, and the little Franklin circle quickly builds other canals, numerous inventions, mining, and the first steam engine. Schuyler determines that such a canal must be built in America.
1760s-1770s: Franklin directs the American strategy for the development of the West. He creates the Illinois company, which comes under the management of Robert Morris and James Wilson, Illinois planned to be populated by government-aided settlers with cheap mortgages. Under the British yoke, Franklin struggles to create Ohio. Lord Shelburne dissembles to Franklin that although he approves of Franklin's Ohio scheme, other Brits oppose it, because they will not permit the establishment of a settled power in the interior of North America.
1769: Birth of James Clinton's son, DeWitt Clinton.
1775: James Clinton becomes a colonel in the Patriot militia, a brigadier general the next year.
1775-83: The American Revolution. The Americans take areas of the West from the British. But the British remain there, surrounding and menacing the first settlers from British Canada. The West is cut off from the new U.S.A. to the east, by the mountains.
1776: Jonathan Williams (age 26) joins his great uncle-Benjamin Franklin-in Paris. Williams sets up his base in Nantes, as the Continental Congress agent in charge of arms supplies being shipped from France.
1777: George Clinton, brother of Gen. James Clinton and son of Colden's surveyor, becomes the first governor of New York State (governor 1777-95, 1801-04). His nephew DeWitt begins political life as secretary to Governor Clinton.
Elkanah Watson goes to France bearing messages to Franklin, then tours and intensively inspects the canals in Holland.
1778: British and Tories direct the Indians in the horrible, long-remembered massacre at Cherry Valley, N.Y.
1779: Gen. James Clinton, ordered by Washington to take command at Lake Otsego, to punish the Cherry Valley massacre perpetrators, famously dams the lake at its outflow into the Susquehanna River, raising the lake level, and when ready, bursts the dam so that his heavily laden supply boats get swept down the river to reach General Sullivan.
1780: Alexander Hamilton marries Elizabeth, daughter of Philip Schuyler.
1783-89: At Revolution's end, George Washington works in New York plotting the route for a canal to Lake Erie, and in the middle Atlantic for routes to the Ohio River. Organizing for these canals by Washington and Hamilton leads to the assembling of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia.
Elkanah Watson, back from Europe, meets with Washington to discuss the development of a New York canal to Lake Erie.
 Cadwallader Colden, anti-Newtonian American scientist; he and his descendants ardently promoted the Erie Canal. |
1785: William Cooper of New Jersey visits Lake Otsego. Originally a skilled worker, Cooper is an avid reader of Jonathan Swift, of history, and of London political literature, in the library set up in Burlington, N.J. by Philadelphia-based Quakers, an apparent spin-off from the Logan-Franklin library.
1786: William Cooper acquires 40,000 acres at the lake, including the site of Cooperstown, on the interior frontier contested with Britain. Alexander Hamilton is Cooper's political sponsor and lawyer, and Cooper's partners include Robert Morris, Tench Coxe, and Benjamin Rush. Cooper rapidly populates his area with settlers getting cheap mortgages, allowing them to pay just about anything to get their land.
1790: One-year-old James Fenimore Cooper arrives at the settlement of his father William.
The Cooper land adjoins the 24,000-acre patent owned by John Christopher Hartwick, who translated Kästner's version of Colden's Leibnizian physics. Hartwick turns over to William Cooper the entire management of his land. Hartwick dies in 1796. Hartwick's Cooper-managed estate sets up an Indian School which becomes Hartwick Seminary and then Hartwick College. In 1990, the papers of William Cooper were donated to the Hartwick College Archives as the bequest of Paul Fenimore Cooper, Jr., great-great-great grandson of William Cooper. Around 1983, a member of the Cooper family took me to lunch at the Yale Club and into the Century Club, where a portrait of Aaron Burr was hanging over the fireplace, and we discussed the 1809 assassination of William Cooper by Burr's people.
Aaron Burr was the attorney for the Prevost family,[4] the Martinist-allied British intelligence figures who contested in the court system against William Cooper and his family for ownership of this strategic landholding on the frontier in New York.
In 1940, the New York State Historical Association held a 150th-anniversary commemoration of James Fenimore Cooper coming to Cooperstown. In the pageant, participants performed the roles of John Christopher Hartwick, Gen. James Clinton, and Lieutenant Prevost of Switzerland (nephew of two British commanders in the Revolution and the War of 1812).
1792: Philip Schuyler, assisted by Elkanah Watson, creates the Western Inland Lock Navigation Company to build the Erie Canal. Schuyler begins construction, but needs the government to take over to get the job done.
1794: DeWitt Clinton, a member of the New York State Board of Regents, addressing the Legislature, says: "Great Improvements must take place which far surpass the momentum of power that a single nation can produce, but will with facility proceed from their united strength. The hand of art will change the face of the universe. Mountains, deserts, and oceans will feel its mighty force. It will not be debated whether hills shall be prostrated; but whether the Alps and the Andes shall be leveled; nor whether sterile fields shall be fertilized, but whether the deserts of Africa shall feel the power of cultivation; nor whether rivers shall be joined, but whether the Caspian shall see the Mediterranean, and the waves of the Pacific lave the Atlantic."
1800: Aaron Burr, having organized the anti-Federalist vote in New York State for the Jefferson Presidential ticket, is encouraged by Albert Gallatin to try to get the Presidency himself, with backing of anti-Union Northern Federalists. DeWitt Clinton and Hamilton block this; Hamilton convinces enough Federalists to back Thomas Jefferson and elect him through Congress action.
1802: The U.S. Military Academy (USMA) is established at West Point. The Academy was in some respect Hamilton's project. He had prepared the legislation for its creation for Congress, proposed the general curriculum, and inspected the West Point fort as the intended site for the Academy. Congress passes legislation to set up the USMA only after Jefferson became President.
Jonathan Williams is founding superintendent. Joseph Gardner Swift is the first graduating cadet.
In his memoirs, Joseph Swift writes that in October 1802, he and his mentor, Col. Jonathan Williams, traveled together to Albany and met Hamilton, then titled a U.S. General:
General Hamilton ... invited me to dine with him at his father-in-law's-General Philip Schuyler's. After dinner, among the subjects of conversation was the canal and improved navigation of the Mohawk.... It was graphically described by General Schuyler.... He regretted that the locks were too small, and the Mohawk unmanageable. He spoke of the object of the tour of Washington in 1789 to be, among other enquiries, to learn what improvements could be made to connect the Hudson and the lakes....
 Library of Congress DeWitt Clinton, ally of Hamilton against Burr, “Father” of the Erie Canal. |
 Library of Congress Aaron Burr, U.S. politician, asset of the British Empire; he and his cohorts killed Alexander Hamilton and William Cooper, and dueled with DeWitt Clinton. |
The following day General Hamilton, Colonel Williams and General Schuyler discussed the subject of the Military Academy, the colonel giving his ideas and purposes to encourage an enlargement of the present plan; General Hamilton approved....
Colonel Williams and myself examined the old octagonal Dutch church, that stood at the junction of Market and State Streets, and the old hall where, in 1754, a congress had been held, which had been described to him by his friend and relative, Dr. Franklin....
On the 12th [of November 1802] a meeting was assembled in the "long room" of the Academy, consisting of Lieutenant-Colonel Williams, Major Wadsworth, Professors Barron and Mansfield, Lieutenants Wilson, Macomb, Swift and Levy, and Cadet Armistead, for the purpose of forming a Military Philosophical Society, to promote military science and history. This society soon embraced as members nearly every distinguished gentleman in the navy and Union, and several in Europe. Its funds were invested in New York city stock [i.e., city bonds].
The Military Philosophical Society included DeWitt Clinton and John Quincy Adams. In the Society's minutes as of 1807, Joseph Gardner Swift is listed as the corresponding secretary.
1802-03: Pamphlet War between the Aaron Burr organization and the DeWitt Clinton organization. (Clinton is in the U.S. Senate; he then becomes mayor of New York City. Burr is Vice President.)
DeWitt Clinton shoots Burr's aide John Swartwout, in a duel at Weehawken, N.J.. Clinton's arranged duel with Burr ally Sen. Jonathan Dayton of (N.J.) is called off.
Martin Van Buren begins his political career in the law office of Burr's aide William P. Van Ness, the main author (pseudonym "Aristedes") of the Burr group's pamphlets attacking DeWitt Clinton. (Peter Irving, Washington Irving's brother, writes pro-Burr articles in this pamphlet war! Thus Washington Irving is in the middle of this affray from the very beginning.)
The DeWitt Clinton organization replaces the Burr organization as leaders of New York State politics in the Jefferson party.
1803-06: James Fenimore Cooper is at Yale. His science teacher is Benjamin Silliman.
1804: President Jefferson chooses New York Gov. George Clinton (DeWitt's uncle) to be Vice President for Jefferson's second term, replacing Burr. Burr seeks the vacated New York governorship, and conspires with Federalist secessionist New Englanders. Hamilton goes against his own party, exposing Burr as a would-be Napoleon.
Burr shoots Hamilton in duel at Weehawken, N.J. John Swartwout, earlier wounded in a Weehawken duel by DeWitt Clinton, is Burr's second. William P. Van Ness, Martin Van Buren's mentor and boss, awakens Burr for the duel.
1804-06: Aaron Burr, in league with British Amb. Anthony Merry, Sen. Jonathan Dayton (Clinton duel challenger), John Randolph of Roanoke, Va. (first cousin of chairman Tucker of the East India Company), and Andrew Jackson, aims at conquest of Louisiana and Mexico for a new, British-backed empire.
1806-11: James Fenimore Cooper is in the U.S. Navy, rises to lieutenant; warships take him to England and Spain.
1807: Robert Fulton, a member of the Military Philosophical Society, demonstrates the operation of a steamboat on the Hudson River. (Beyond the scope of the present chronology are Fulton's life and projects in tandem with Franklin, Hamilton, et al., the origin of heat power/steam power from Leibniz and Franklin, the crucial early role of steamboats in the West, and in Ambassador J.Q. Adams' proposal for Fulton steamboats to Czar Alexander I.)
1807: Jefferson puts Burr on trial for treason. At the trial in Richmond, Va., Andrew Jackson, called as witness, harangues in the street against Jefferson. John Randolph is the grand jury foreman, conspiring with Burr and, like Jackson, haranguing against Jefferson.
Observers at the Burr trial, young lawyer/patriot Winfield Scott, and Washington Irving meet, and they become lifelong friends. Scott enters the Virginia militia and without authorization captures British sailors who have been raiding the Virginia coast.
1807-08: James Kirke Paulding and Washington Irving collaborate to write satires, including "Salmagundi." Paulding, Irving, and a few friends form a literary/intelligence set. Paulding later writes The Lay of the Scottish Fiddle, a famous satire on Sir Walter Scott.
1809: William Cooper is assassinated in Albany while his son J.F. Cooper is in the Navy.
2. Breakout for the 'Continental Republic' of Leibniz/Swift/Franklin
 Washington Irving, America’s happiest writer; military and political intelligence leader. |
1809-12: Henry Clay (migrant to Kentucky under lifelong sponsorship of Society of the Cincinnati, who as a grouping, are the direct founders of Kentucky) and John C. Calhoun of South Carolina, jointly organize the "War Hawks" for defensive war against Britain. (Calhoun is known to most people today only as the "Southern rights" fanatic he later became, after being ground down by the British-run enemy oligarchy.) With the 1814 publication of Mathew Carey's Olive Branch, the nationalist movement (which Clay and Calhoun lead together) successfully promotes Hamilton's program within the Jefferson party!-protective tariff, Second Bank of the United States, and internal improvements-i.e., government-financed infrastructure projects.
1812-15: U.S. war against Britain, known today as the War of 1812, known then as the Second War of Independence. Monroe becomes war leader, Secretary of War, and simultaneously Secretary of State. During the war, Washington Irving is aide and military secretary to New York Gov. Daniel Tompkins.
1812-13: British intelligence leader Jeremy Bentham's agent Aaron Burr quietly returns to the United States just before war breaks out. He collaborates with Martin Van Buren on political strategy.
1810s: The sons of Augustine Prevost, Jr. press their suit against the Cooper family, seeking to ruin them and disrupt their position in central New York State.
1815: DeWitt Clinton resigns as Mayor of New York City. On Dec. 30, there is a meeting of Clinton and the city fathers to organize support for the state to take over construction of the Erie Canal from Schuyler's private enterprise. Co-organizer of the meeting is Cadwallader David Colden, the president of the anti-slavery Manumission Society and the grandson of the Leibniz/Franklin man, Cadwallader Colden.
Washington Irving sails for England. He befriends Sir Walter Scott and the cream of British high society.
1816: The Bank of the United States is restored, and a protective tariff passed under Treasury Secretary Alexander Dallas, co-leader with Mathew Carey of Pennsylvania's Jefferson Party.
Monroe is elected President. Appoints Calhoun Secretary of War, John Q. Adams Secretary of State. North and South are united behind nationalism and Jeffersonian anti-British politics. Political parties essentially go out of existence.
1815-23: Martin Van Buren creates the Albany Regency, a New York State organization, succeeding the moribund Burr organization, for the purpose of fighting the Monroe Administration, and explicitly to revive the party division and bitter rancor in the country. Van Buren's group in New York City is called the Bucktails. He organizes them to fight against the development of the Erie Canal.
1815-18: Joseph G. Swift is Superintendent of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. He had served with Winfield Scott in the War of 1812. Calhoun, Scott, Swift, and, in France, young Sylvanus Thayer, Lafayette, and Alexander von Humboldt, all collaborate on upgrading the Military Academy at West Point.
1817-19: General Swift organizes creation of the West Point Foundry, as a private enterprise across the river from the Academy. The main owner is Gouverneur Kemble, brother-in-law of James Kirke Paulding.
The salon of Washington Irving's group, with General Swift, establishes the informal but rigorous continuation of the Military Philosophical Society: A dinner is held every Saturday night at the Kemble home at the Foundry, where officer-teachers and cadets meet with strategists and distinguished foreign guests, from about 1819 until after the 1861-65 Civil War. Joel Poinsett of South Carolina is a member of the inner circle of the group.
The West Point Foundry, on government contracts, makes about one-third of all U.S. artillery up through the Civil War, including the famous rifled Parrott guns (Robert Parrott is superintendent of the West Point Foundry, 1837-67). The Foundry factory produced steam engines, and America's first iron ship (the cutter Spencer). The engine for the first American locomotive, the Best Friend, is cast at the Foundry, as are the locomotives DeWitt Clinton and West Point, metal fittings for the Erie Canal locks, and cast-iron piping for the New York City water system. The Foundry employs at its height over 1,000 workers, and can produce 10,000 tons of cast iron per year.
1817: DeWitt Clinton, elected governor, wins overwhelming popular backing for the state to build the Erie Canal. Albany Regency boss Martin Van Buren, acknowledging enormous public pressure, changes course to back the canal in the state Senate, while his New York City Bucktails still oppose it.
1817: James Fenimore Cooper joins the state militia, becomes military aide-de-camp to Governor Clinton. Now living in Westchester County, Cooper stays close to his father's friend, old John Jay, co-author with Hamilton and Madison of The Federalist papers. Jay tells Cooper the story of the American secret agent during the Revolution, in Westchester County, which Cooper later makes into his book The Spy.
1818: Ethan Allen Brown is elected Ohio governor, on a platform of canal building to link up with New York's Erie Canal, then under construction. Brown started out in public life as an assistant to Alexander Hamilton, in Hamilton's law office in New York, 1797-1802.
1819-20: Washington Irving's The Sketch Book comes out, including the short story "Rip Van Winkle"-the modern world awakens from British colonial backwardness.
 Library of Congress Martin Van Buren, successor to Burr in the British Empire’s underground machine, later U.S. President; The Patriot was established to counterattack his treason. |
1820: James Fenimore Cooper is Secretary of the Clinton Republicans for Westchester County, organizes the county for Clinton's re-election as governor, versus the Van Buren "Bucktails," which Cooper says includes many anti-national Federalists.
1820: General Swift, in Philadelphia, negotiates for the development of Pennsylvania's anthracite coal, and outlines the creation of canals that must carry the coal into New Jersey and New York. Swift writes that the first anthracite coal that was burned in New York City, was burned in his own office.
At precisely this point in his memoirs, General Swift also discusses his work as the president of the Handel and Haydn Society (he was a later founder of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra.)
We take note of the cultural contrast between America's military nation-builders and the present current of Utopians and assorted losers.
1820 to late 1820s: Mathew Carey and Nicholas Biddle, in league with the Society of the Cincinnati circle, organize the first large-scale American coal mining: to begin with, anthracite, then bituminous. Coal production goves rapidly from virtually nothing, only local driblets, to globally significant millions of tons. See below.
1820-22: James Fenimore Cooper moves to New York City, reviews books for Col. Charles K. Gardner's magazine, The Literary and Scientific Repository. Cooper had served with Gardner in the military, and Gardner had served with Winfield Scott in the War of 1812. Gardner's magazine is promoted by General Swift and Cadwallader D. Colden, grandson of Franklin's collaborator, and mayor of New York (1819-20). Cooper writes The Spy, published December 1821.
1823: President Monroe appoints Nicholas Biddle president of Bank of the United States. The Biddle family and the Carey family become Fenimore Cooper's main confidants in Philadelphia. Cooper's The Pioneers (1823) is modeled on his father William Cooper (later, the circles of Teddy Roosevelt considered Cooper's historical treatment false, and too sympathetic to the Indians). In New York City, Cooper creates the Bread and Cheese club, meeting in the back room of Charles Wiley's bookstore.
1823: On May 28, the first issue of New York's The Patriot daily newspaper appears. Gen. Winfield Scott and Gen. Joseph Gardner Swift, assisted by James Fenimore Cooper, formulate the paper's viewpoint and coverage, along with writer Henry Wheaton of the Irving circle. Finances and overall organization are arranged by President Monroe's son-in-law, Samuel Gouverneur.
Col. Charles K. Gardner, Cooper's magazine publisher, is the editor of The Patriot [see box].
Under the condition of global menace from the British-Hapsburg Concert of Vienna, the main purpose of the newspaper is to combat Martin Van Buren's "Albany Regency" and its new political axis with the wildest Southern anti-national, anti-industrial forces, arranged through London's John Randolph of Roanoke and his Richmond friends. The patriots must hold the Union together, industrialize, develop the West, create a new North American physical/political geography, and thus overcome the European-supported plantation slavery political universe, with a new American universe.
This is the next to the last year of Monroe's Administration, and the control of the Presidency is at issue.
For the 1824 election, Van Buren backs free-trader William Crawford of Georgia, who was then Treasury Secretary. Van Buren picks old Albert Gallatin for Crawford's Vice Presidential running mate-this has special significance when Crawford has a stroke, since he would likely die in office if elected.
The Patriot's candidate is John C. Calhoun, Monroe's Secretary of War. Calhoun has called for using the revenues from the Bank of the United States to fund a national system of roads and canals. Calhoun writes to Samuel Gouverneur and Generals Scott and Swift, that they have to launch The Patriot to break Van Buren and the Richmond junta, who combine to spread states-rights "radicalism" in the South and West.
The Patriot boldly defends American System economics and the government's Constitutional powers, against the Regency attacks, hitting directly at Mordecai Noah, editor-stooge for Van Buren.
The Prospectus of The Patriot newspaper says:
... In the present crisis of European affairs, it is important to sustain the attitude of defence, heretofore indicated by the measures of Government; it is important to adopt such a course of policy, as will tend to encourage the domestic manufactures of our country; to sustain our shipping interests, by a proper provision of naval forces; to provide for a system of internal improvements, by which our internal trade may be extended, and our reliance upon ourselves increased; and finally-to harmonize the Agricultural, Manufacturing and Commercial interest; showing that the whole may be advanced by a system of well concerted measures. In supporting these, we shall advocate the Republican cause, without reference to geographical divisions; and we shall reprobate any attempt to introduce the odious and impolitic distinction of slave and non-slave holding states.
Besides political subjects ... our press will be devoted to a discriminating defence of American Literature: As in Politics and in the Arts, we would achieve our independence of other countries also in Literature....
On the front page of The Patriot's first issue, a long article entitled "Washington Irving" boasts of Irving's talent, disparaging Walter Scott and Lord Byron. Also on the front page, and continuing for many weeks, is an ad for Charles Wiley's bookstore, offering The Spy and The Pioneers, and Washington Irving's works, and Catholic books for sale (DeWitt Clinton was known as the champion of Irish immigrants).
We note here that The Patriot's leader, Winfield Scott, acts with his friends Irving and Cooper as both a maker and a writer of history, and acts from the historical perspective of a fight across the centuries for mankind against the oligarchy, identical to our perspective in publishing the present report.
In the preface to his Memoirs, published in 1864, General Scott lamented the paucity of autobiographies by those who had actually themselves shaped history. He says that those who knew of the secret councils of rulers, and how the leadership thought, have not generally written about these things, though there have been good writers writing history.
Then Scott speaks of Jonathan Swift-whom most people would think of only as a literary figure-as follows:
"This friend and counselor of [Henry] St. John and [Robert] Harley, brought them to power (and, according to Dr. Johnson, dictated public opinion to England) mainly by a pamphlet-The Conduct of the Allies-that broke down the Godolphin ministry.... The masterly narrative-The Last Four Years of Queen Anne, seems to complete Swift's claim to a place in the small category of makers and writers of history."
The Patriot carries dispatches from Mexico, Colombia, and Peru, on the desperate political and military fight against Spain and the Concert of Vienna.
The Patriot spearheads a short-lived New York State People's Party, electing its candidates (Wheaton, Gouverneur, et al.), and breaking Van Buren's hold on the state legislature-which body selects the state's Presidential electors.
1823: President Monroe enunciates the Monroe Doctrine, which J.Q. Adams had worked out in response to the menaces of Russia's ambassador to the United States, Baron Van Tuyll Van Serooskerken, and against the imperial pretensions of the British.
DeWitt Clinton, advised by General Swift, asks New Jersey leaders to proceed with their canal project, which is headed by Cadwallader D. Colden. Clinton says we must get the Pennsylvania coal into circulation, to industrialize, and we must become nationally independent, and with state projects we avoid subjection to the narrow consideration of foreign and domestic capitalists.
As of 1823, the strategic question is hanging fire: Will the Erie Canal and related canals be completed, altering the natural geography of North America so as to permit the Western settlers to ship and travel to the East without having to go through British territory? Or will the enemy overturn the whole breakout by putting in a rotten successor to President Monroe?
1824: Lafayette tours New York, greeted by Cooper's Bread and Cheese club, and by DeWitt Clinton, and is taken to West Point by General Swift. Cooper writes a beautiful account of the celebration honoring Lafayette. Lafayette's translator, Friedrich List, settles in Pennsylvania in association with Nicholas Biddle and Mathew Carey. This is the Pennsylvania grouping which starts, virtually overnight, the U.S. production of anthracite coal, which leads to the production of bituminous coal. In response to the Erie Canal project, they pass through the Pennsylvania legislature a huge canal-building program, the chief use of which is to put the coal onto the market to industrialize the country.
The Presidential election hinges on New York as the key battleground state. A dramatic turning point is the action by the Van Burenites-April 12, 1824-kicking old DeWitt Clinton out of his chairmanship of the Canal Commission, before the Erie Canal is finished, and when Clinton holds no other office. The patriots, led by General Swift and his allies, jump on this with mass protests, producing an emotional public reaction. DeWitt Clinton is swept back into the governorship. The head of The Patriot-promoted People's Party, War of 1812 Gen. James Tallmadge, Jr., is elected lieutenant governor and serves 1824-26 under Governor Clinton. William Paulding, friend of Washington Irving and brother of West Point Foundry's James K. Paulding, backs The Patriot and is mayor of New York City (1824-26).
Throughout and behind these events, the combined actions of the circle of Lafayette and Hamilton may be seen.
Congress passes the 1824 General Survey Act, allowing the President to assign Army engineers to work in non-Federal enterprises. Congress passes a seriously protective tariff, especially for iron.
John C. Calhoun drops out of the Presidential race. Calhoun later changes sides under blackmail, and phony South Carolina slave-revolt hysteria, and succumbs to the combination of those who join with Martin Van Buren's scheming with the Venetian/British party of slave-owners.
1825: The Erie Canal is completed, the triumph of Gov. DeWitt Clinton. Alexander Dallas Bache graduates from West Point. Bache is Benjamin Franklin's great-grandson, named for his maternal grandfather Alexander Dallas, Mathew Carey's Pennsylvania political partner who, as Treasury Secretary, restored the Bank of the United States (see above, 1816).
 John Quincy Adams, a Promethean statesman; his Presidency successfully employed the West Point-political alliance to begin U.S. industrialization. |
John Quincy Adams becomes President, the vote in Congress swung by New York's Stephen Van Rensselaer. Adams activates the Army to design the first U.S. railroads. The Army Engineers' Board of Internal Improvements is tasked with choosing appropriate projects, beginning with the city- and state-funded Baltimore & Ohio Railroad. Gen. Joseph G. Swift is the mentor and co-worker for most of the railroad-building engineers. Swift's brother-in-law and protégé, George Washington Whistler, engineers many of the first lines.
President Adams puts through Federal money for the creation of Midwest canals. Under state leadership, with Bank of the United States funding, these canals connect the Erie Canal, Lake Erie, and Lake Michigan with the Ohio River, Indiana, Illinois, and the Mississippi River. DeWitt Clinton's aide Cadwallader D. Colden is New York's emissary to the Midwest states to organize the canal system. The Erie Canal makes New York City a giant.
Abraham Lincoln runs for the Illinois legislature (1831) on this strategic infrastructure program. Based on the success of the Erie and Midwest canals, Lincoln and his immediate circle create the city of Chicago.
The iron industry, coal-mining, canals, and railroads take off, to begin America's industrialization.
1827: Martin Van Buren travels to South Carolina, with fast horses and carriage provided by Russian Amb. Baron Van Tuyll (the Baron's descendant, in the 1930s, would organize the Military Christian Fellowship, uniting Brits and Nazis, and would aid Joseph Rettinger in the 1950s "Bilderberger" schemes).
Van Buren conspires with John Randolph of Roanoke (who reportedly vows never to wear clothing made in the U.S.A.) and with the anti-U.S. extremists in Charleston, to create a new "Democratic Party." Van Buren becomes the main national organizer for the Presidential candidacy of Andrew Jackson, whom Van Buren had not supported in 1824.
Late 1820s: President John Q. Adams' ambassador to Spain is Alexander Everett, who was his private secretary when Adams was ambassador to Russia. Everett goes to see Washington Irving in Paris, and recruits him to come to Spain, under the sponsorship of the Adams government. At issue is Spain's role in the Americas, the heritage of America versus the heritage of the Inquisition, and the role of Russia with respect to all of this.
Adams' man Everett officially asks Irving to work on biographical material relating to Christopher Columbus. At this time, the Adams Administration is seeking Russian help to keep Spain from doing mischief in Ibero-America.
Irving moves to Spain with an official connection to the U.S. Embassy. He becomes partner with Russia's Prince Dolgorouki (of that pro-republican Russian family) who is attached to the Russian Embassy in Spain. Irving and Dolgorouki live and work together in the old Muslim palace, the Alhambra, in Granada. Irving writes pioneering works on Islam, and the Muslim greatness in Spain, and a biography of Columbus-a celebration in response to British/Hapsburg anti-American fulminations.
1828: Andrew Jackson, presented as a pro-nationalist, is elected President.
Late 1820s-early 1830s: James Fenimore Cooper is in Europe, the close collaborator of Lafayette.
1831-32: At Lafayette's request, Cooper writes a 50-page pamphlet ("Letter to General Lafayette," Paris, December 1831) and a newspaper series defending the U.S. Constitutional government. For this, Cooper comes under attack in Whig Party U.S. newspapers. Cooper counterattacks.
1831: Cooper's The Bravo is published, showing that a banking oligarchy could mask its power behind the front of a "republic."
1832: Henry C. Carey, son of Mathew Carey, and later the principal strategist for nationalist politics everywhere, arranges the publishing of Cooper's The Heidenmauer. Cooper shows the oligarchical interest that pushes Luther's Reformation, while at the same time he spotlights the duplicity of the Benedictines, who manipulate superstitious public opinion.
1833: Cooper's The Headsman is published; it is set in Switzerland, based on the figure of the executioner, the type so beloved of Catholic fundamentalist and freemason Joseph de Maestre (1753-1821).
1829-1830s: President Andrew Jackson appoints Martin Van Buren as Secretary of State. Van Buren gets the insane John Randolph of Roanoke in as U.S. Ambassador to Russia. Van Buren resigns from the Cabinet in a successful scheme to finally destroy the nationalist connections of John C. Calhoun, then the Vice President. Calhoun becomes the spokesman for Nullification, anti-tariff agitation, and Southern states-rights. Van Buren consolidates the regime's attacks against internal improvements, and destruction of the Bank of the United States. The Bank of England withdraws credit from the U.S.A.
1837: For a eulogy of the recently deceased Mathew Carey, Edgar Allan Poe writes in the Southern Literary Messenger a review of Carey's Autobiography; Poe calls Carey a truly great man.
1837: Van Buren becomes U.S. President. The economy crashes, mass poverty and chaos follow. Western states are bankrupted, canal- and railroad-building are blamed! Laws and new state Constitutions are put in place, banning state sponsorship of internal improvements.
And yet, shaping the Presidency is not a simple matter.
Consider these strange facts concerning the Van Buren Administration.
James K. Paulding is Van Buren's Secretary of the Navy, and is one of Van Buren's closest personal counselors. Joel Poinsett is Van Buren's Secretary of War, continuing the pro-Union role Poinsett played in leadership in South Carolina under President Jackson and Army chief Winfield Scott, in the Nullification crisis.
Paulding and Poinsett team up to organize and send out the bold Charles Wilkes naval exploring expedition (1838-41), to discover the South Magnetic Pole, a project based on the program of Carl F. Gauss and to map the Pacific and Antarctic. (This is the same spirited Wilkes who would later capture the Confederate commissioners on the British steamer Trent, in the early days of the Civil War.)
"Jackson Democrat" Alexander Dallas Bache is sent to Germany by Nicholas Biddle (who himself had voted for Jackson); Bache meets with Humboldt and Gauss and forms with Gauss the Magnetischeverein or World Magnetic Union, whose geodesy and global-magnetic experimentation Bache had spread through the United States.
"Jackson Democrat" Friedrich List is already in Europe as a U.S. diplomat organizing for the American System.
1838-39: "Jackson Democrat" James Fenimore Cooper is in Philadelphia, researching for his History of the Navy of the United States of America. Thurlow Weed and other Whig Party scoundrels attack Cooper in their newspapers, and Cooper thrashes them all in successful legal actions. Yet Cooper is the most potent opponent of Jackson's degenerate racism and of the Van Buren anti-national agentry acting through Jackson. Cooper later organizes the Presidential candidacy of Gen. Winfield Scott, who becomes the Whig Party's 1852 nominee.
1842: Gen. Joseph G. Swift and his brother-in-law George Washington Whistler plan the building of Russia's first railroad, by former Army engineer Whistler.
From General Swift's Memoirs:
May 7, 1842: Whistler and myself to Washington, ... meeting Major Bautatz of the Russian service, and General Tallmadge [of the old New York "People's Party"], who gave Whistler some points in the character of the Emperor Nicholas, in reference to his industry and desire to improve public works, that may be useful to Whistler.
On 8th met the Russian ambassador, Mr. Bodisco, and arranged for Mr. Whistler's service at Twelve thousand dollars a year. Had with Mr. Bodisco an interesting conversation on the difficulties of a Russian campaign across the Indus and the sands to India, and of its inutility, while England had the supremacy of naval power.
Whistler builds the Moscow-to-St. Petersburg railroad, and fortifications, and is much beloved in Russia, where he dies in this service.
1850s-1860s: Abraham Lincoln personally organizes the building of the railroad grid in Illinois, complementing the canal system. Then as President, he builds the Transcontinental Railroad, thus opening up the West as the heirs of Leibniz had planned. And Lincoln joins hands with the heirs of Leibniz in Russia, to preserve the Union, and break the United States finally out of colonial backwardness.
Selections From 'The Patriot,' 1823-24
May 28, 1823: Prospectus [see facsimile, p.7]
Article on Washington Irving
Wiley books advertisement
Dispatch from Vera Cruz, Mexico, April 10, 1823; 1822 coup attempt, attempt to disrupt Mexico's Congress.
"Catholic books" advertisement
May 29, 1823: History of Battle of King's Mountain
Dispatch from Colombia, South America: Our country is "wanting the Promethean fire of life and emotion."
Defeat of Colombian naval forces by Spain
Article defending Commodore Porter from gossipy public insinuations
May 31, 1823: "The greater interests of the State of New York are undoubtedly those of Manufactures and Internal Improvements." A letter to the editor attacks the Advocate, the paper run by Mordecai Noah on behalf of Martin Van Buren.
Spain's military expedition against Peru.
Dispatch from Rio de Janeiro, dated April 9, 1823
On the Susquehanna Canal—Baltimore report
On Gen. Andrew Jackson, from a Baltimore paper
June 2, 1823: "In republics, the leaders of factions and intriguers, are the same vile race, which in monarchies are known by the name of courtiers, sycophants and parasites ... dictators and their instruments." (speaking of the Van Buren gang)
June 5, 1823: "Republican General Cttee will meet at Tammany Hall on June 5—William Paulding, Junior, Chairman
"At a meeting of the Republican General Cmttee held June 5, it was resolved that the New York Patriot be recommended...—W. Paulding Jr., chairman"
June 7, 1823: Defense of Judiciary and U.S. Constitution from attack by The Advocate; "Was Washington, or Franklin, or Madison ... an enemy of freedom?" Defense of implied powers, and of a national bank and the Supreme Court, against "a faction of state bankers and brokers."
June 10, 1823: Report that a systematic opposition has been formed against the Administration of President James Monroe, with "secret intrigues"
Crawford vs. Calhoun, internal improvements and tariffs
August 28, 1823: Pro-Calhoun letter
Internal improvements national story—canals history—Erie progress—address by Dr. Mitchill
Anti-Crawford, anti-Noah
November 16, 1823: Dinner in Washington, D.C. discusses canals, anti-Crawford
Letter Oct. 24, 1823: DeWitt Clinton on the Morris Canal
November 18, 1823: Need to reform New York State election laws to bring about popular election for U.S. President
On the "rats" (Van Buren, Crawford)
The Holy Alliance, France and Spain, vs. Colombia
December 4, 1823: Editorial against Crawford
"National Industry"
The cause of the Greeks
William Bayard, Charles King
Europe's recent history
In response to commentary on the Monroe Doctrine, an editorial stating that we must not enter into an alliance with Britain
January 1, 1824: "Matthew Davis [aide to Aaron Burr, and later Burr's executor and biographer] is busy again, in the Advocate, defeated but not subdued, he is still working as an insidious enemy to the government of his country, and as a conspirator against the people whom he dare not openly confront ... [taking part in] Van Buren's party ... the proceedings of the next legislature will exhibit two parties, the PEOPLE and Principle, against VAN BUREN and Intrigue. The adder, that the People have heretofore nursed in their bosom, must be crushed and effectively obliterated, before his venom poisons the whole fountain of power...." The writers in the Advocate claim a contrast between J.Q. Adams, Clinton, and Calhoun.
Advertisement for Cooper's The Pilot, just published
April 17, 1824: Short item on the Hero of New Orleans—Andrew Jackson, then considered a potential nationalist
Commenting on the attack against Jackson in the Van Buren paper, The Advocate
Defending Jackson's actions in Florida
May 1, 1824: Letter defending J.Q. Adams against charges of conspiracy with Henry Clay
Somehow dated Oct. 15, 1824: Memorial from the Cherokees, against Georgia
Letter from Franklin to Lafayette, Aug. 24, 1778
New York canal history
Report: Crawfordite newspaper talks of separation of the Union
circa August 11, 1824: Concerning the Tariff
Albert Gallatin's sons revile President Monroe; report on Gallatin as a betrayer and VP candidate.
Report from Ireland, ugly sight of an Orange Procession; history of British oppression of Ireland
September 6, 1824: Austria and Italy
Lafayette's visit to New York
Lafayette will dine today at the Cincinnati society at Washington Hall
October 20, 1824: People's ticket—Wheaton, Gouverneur
On the redemption of the state from the disgrace and "intrigue of the Caucus King and his devoted Regency at Albany"
December 31, 1824: One article favors Andrew Jackson over John Quincy Adams, while other reports had favored Adams. (The paper's nationalists were still mulling over their course of action, as the 1824 Presidential election was thrown into the Congress. With nationalists' support, Adams was chosen on the first ballot on Feb. 9, 1825.)
Winfield Scott left West Point for Washington.
[1] Anton Chaitkin, "Leibniz, Gauss Shaped America's Science Successes," EIR, Feb. 9, 1996.
[2] H. Graham Lowry, How the Nation Was Won: America's Untold Story, 1630-1754 (Washington, D.C.: Executive Intelligence Review, 2004 reprint of 1988 edition).
[3] David Shavin, "Leibniz to Franklin on 'Happiness,' " Fidelio, Spring 2003.
[4] On the allied Prevost and Mallet families, British intelligence and enemy agents inside the United States such as Burr and Gallatin, see Anton Chaitkin, Treason in America, From Aaron Burr to Averell Harriman (Washington, D.C., Executive Intelligence Review, 1998).
