James Callender

From Thomas Jefferson Encyclopedia

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James Thomson Callender (1758-1803) was a political writer and newspaper editor. Thomas Jefferson and Callender had a sorted history together. Born in Scotland, Callender wrote the The Political Press Progress of Britain, that attacked British Institutions. The document was outlawed in January 1793 and thus, he fled to America arriving in the States in May 1793.

For Callender, he believed in more radical ideas about government. The U.S. should be a pure democracy than the Constitution provided. Checks and balances, mixed government, any provision that kept the people from participating was a roadblock. In his mind, all that was needed was a judiciary and a House of Representatives. Meanwhile, the Senate was not directly elected, so it was a path to tyranny. To him, a citizen had the right to hear the truth, even if it was in a strained or exaggerated manner as he saw it.


In order to curb Alexander Hamilton's influence, Callender published in his work, History of the United States for 1796 (1797), the affair between Alexander Hamilton and Maria Reynolds, a married woman. Where did Callender get this information? In 1792, a three-man congressional delegation composed of James Monroe, Abraham Venerable, and Frederick Muhlenburg discovered the affair while investigating Maria Reynolds' husband James. Documents relating to the affair existed from the investigation and Hamilton asked if he could have copies. Those copies were made by the clerk of the House of Representatives, John Beckley. Who passed these documents to Callender in 1796? It is still debated among historians. Callender denied that Jefferson gave him any information. The now ex-clerk of the House of Representatives, John Beckley, could have been a likely source. Also, James Monroe played a role, because he gave the entrusted documents to Beckley in the first place.[2] Another possibility was that Beckley also gave Tench Coxe, assistant secretary of Treasury, a copy of the documents.

Besides the Hamilton affair, Callender also supported the publishing of the XYZ dispatches. One day before the Alien and Sedition Acts became law on July 13, 1798, Callender fled to Virginia to the home of Senator Stevens Thomson Mason of Loudoun County. Then, in 1799, he moved to Richmond where he wrote for the Richmond Examiner. His anti-Federalist pamphlet, The Prospect Before Us, led to his prosecution under the Sedition Acts. He was sentenced on May 24, 1800 to nine months and jail and a $200 fine.




  2. See Durey,Michael."With the Hammer of Truth": James Thomson Callender and America's Early National Heroes. (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1990), 99-102 and Chernow, Ron. Alexander Hamilton, (New York: Penguin Press, 2004), 531.
  4. Richmond Recorder, September 1 1802.

Further Sources
