The evening of November 5, 1796, was especially lively in New York City. Guy Fawkes Night was still observed in New York after independence as a kind of Hallowe’en, and the streets were filled with revelers.
Pushing his way through the crowd was the British consul general to the United States, Sir John Temple, Bt. Having left his horse at a stable, Temple was walking to his Queen Street home carrying his riding whip under his arm. Suddenly, a large man assaulted him with a club. This “ruffian” was nearly thirty years younger than Temple, who was about sixty-five years old. Nevertheless, he had picked on the wrong man. As Temple reported it to Lord Grenville, the British foreign secretary, he “exceedingly well horsewhip’d” the assailant until his whip broke; then he used the butt end to knock the man “down in the dirt his proper place.”
“Had I been but a private Gentleman,” the consul general told the foreign secretary, this “suitable & proper chastisement” would have been sufficient. But because Temple held a “high and important Commission under his majesty in this Country,” he felt compelled to swear out a complaint against “the said large ruffian,” so that “some legal punishment . . . for the high indignity so offered to one of the Kings Servants . . . may forever deter any ruffianly attempts of the like kind in the future.”
Assaults were not rare in New York City, especially during the hijinks associated with Guy Fawkes Night. What makes this one noteworthy is that the “large ruffian” the British consul general had horsewhipped was a United States senator, John Rutherfurd of New Jersey.
What could have caused the senator to attack the elderly diplomat? It is improbable that the Guy Fawkes Night set-to had politics behind it. There was no reason for them to be political enemies. Indeed, they were logical allies. Rutherfurd’s family had been at best lukewarm in its support of the American Revolution, and John spent the war as a Princeton student (class of 1779) and studying law. The Rutherfurds and Temples attended the same social functions and were even guests at each other’s tables. John Rutherfurd, like John Temple (who was the son-in-law of James Bowdoin, the Federalist governor of Massachusetts), was a firm Federalist. Rutherfurd had been a presidential elector in 1788, and the New Jersey legislature sent him to the U.S. Senate in 1790, re-electing him in 1796. In the Senate, he consistently supported better relations with Great Britain.