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I'm just finishing the last 20 pages of a book titled: "The Way of Duty: A Woman and Her Family in Revolutionary America" by Joy Day Buel & Richard Buel, Jr. It is based on the journals kept by Mary Fish Noyes Silliman Dickinson, three-times a widow who lived in Connecticut. She had children from two of her three marriages.

Her first husband was a clergyman. Her second husband Gold Selleck Silliman had been a General in a Connecticut militia unit. He had one son, named Billy from his first marriage. General Silliman died in 1790, and his son struggled through the years, despite help from the rest of his family. In 1804, he apparently flirted with joining what was then, the early beginnings of the Democrat Party. He had participated in some of their caucuses.

In 1804, his daughter Patty wrote her Uncle Ben Silliman, Billy's half-brother about her concern over her father's involvement in the party. This is what Ben wrote back to her:

"You ask me whether any good comes from democratical Caucuses....No! I am not so unhanded as to believe that the democrats, as a party, are aiming at mischief; but I do sincerely believe that it is the genuine tendency of their principles & practices to weaken the religious, moral & sober habits of domestic life & to undermine the foundations of social order & good government. Multitudes of them are not aware of this, and while they are fascinated with the sounds of republicanism, liberty &c, they do not dream that they are toiling to elevate a few ambitious men to power & emolument, while themselves remain, & will, as obscure as before."

It was amazing to learn that the true nature of the Democrats reared its ugly head even that far back.