first Democratic President, for it is pervaded by a personality which,
if quieter in its operation, was more potent in results than the most
burning eloquence could have been. The spirit of modern democracy, which
has become, for good or evil, the common characteristic of all American
parties and leaders, was here first put into living words. Triumphant in
national politics, this spirit now had but one field of struggle, the
politics of the States, and here its efforts were for years bent to the
abolition of every remnant of limitation on individual liberty. Outside
of New England, the change was accomplished as rapidly as the forms of
law could be put into the necessary direction; remnants of
ecclesiastical government, ecclesiastical taxes of even the mildest
description, restrictions on manhood suffrage, State electoral systems,
were the immediate victims of the new spirit, and the first term of Mr.
Jefferson saw most of the States under democratic governments. Inside of
New England, the change was stubbornly resisted, and, for a time, with
success. For about twenty years, the general rule was that New England
and Delaware were federalist, and the rest of the country was
democratic. But even in New England, a strong democratic minority was
growing up, and about 1820 the last barriers of federalism gave way;
Connecticut, the federalist "land of steady habits," accepted a new and
democratic constitution; Massachusetts modified hers; and the new and
reliably democratic State of Maine was brought into existence. The "era
of good feeling" signalized the extinction of the federal party and the
universal reign of democracy. The length of this period of contest is
the strongest testimony to the stubbornness of the New England fibre.
Estimated by States, the success of democracy was about as complete in
1803 as in 1817; but it required fifteen years of persistent struggle to
convince the smallest section of the Union that it was hopelessly
defeated.
The whole period was a succession of great events. The acquisition of
Louisiana, stretching from the Mississippi to the Rocky Mountains, laid,
in 1803, the foundations of that imperial domain which the steamboat and
railroad were to convert to use in after-years. The continental empire
of Napoleon and the island empire of Great Britain drifted into a
struggle for life or death which hardly knew a breathing space until the
last charge at Waterloo, and from the beginning it was conducted by both
combatants with a reckless disregard of international public opinion and
neutral rights which is hardly credible but for the official records.
Every injury inflicted on neutral commerce by one belligerent was
promptly imitated or exceeded by the other, and the two were perfectly
in accord in insisting on the convenient doctrine of international law,
that, unless neutral rights were enforced by the neutral against one
belligerent, the injury became open to the imitation of the other. In
the process of imitation, each belligerent took care to pass at least a
little beyond the precedent; and thus, beginning with a paper blockade
of the northern coast of the continent by the British Government, the
process advanced, by alternate "retaliations," to a British proclamation
specifying the ports of the world to which American vessels were to be
allowed to trade, stopping in England or its dependencies to pay taxes
en route. These two almost contemporary events, the acquisition of
Louisiana and the insolent pretensions of the European belligerents,
were the central points of two distinct influences which bore strongly
on the development of the United States.
The dominant party, the republicans, had a horror of a national debt
which almost amounted to a mania. The associations of the term, derived
from their reading of English history, all pointed to a condition of
affairs in which the rise of a strong aristocracy was inevitable; and,
to avoid the latter, they were determined to pay off the former. The
payment for Louisiana precluded, in their opinion, the support of a
respectable navy; and the remnants of colonialism in their party
predisposed them to adopt an ostrich policy instead. The Embargo act was
passed in 1807, forbidding all foreign commerce. The evident failure of
this act to influence the belligerents brought about its repeal in 1809,
and the substitution of the Non-intercourse act. This prohibited
commercial intercourse with England and France until either should
revoke its injurious edicts. Napoleon, by an empty and spurious
revocation in 1810, induced Congress to withdraw the act in respect to
France, keeping it alive in respect to England. England refused to admit
the sincerity of the French revocation, to withdraw her Orders in
Council, or to cease impressing American seamen. The choice left to the
United States was between war and submission.
The federalist leaders saw that, while their party strength was confined
to a continually decreasing territory, the opposing democracy not only
had gained the mass of the original United States, but was swarming
toward and beyond the Mississippi. They dropped to the level of a mere
party of opposition; they went further until the only article of their
political creed was State sovereignty; some of them went one step
further, and dabbled in hopeless projects for secession and the formation
of a New England republic of five States. It is difficult to perceive
any advantage to public affairs in the closing years of the federal
party, except that, by impelling the democratic leaders to really
national acts and sympathies, it unwittingly aided in the development of
nationality from democracy.
If the essential characteristic of colonialism is the sense of
dependence and the desire to imitate, democracy, at least in its earlier
phases, begets the opposite qualities. The Congressional elections of
1810-11 showed that the people had gone further in democracy than their
leaders. "Submission men" were generally defeated in the election; new
leaders, like Clay, Calhoun, and Crawford, made the dominant party a war
party, and forced the President into their policy; and the war of 1812
was begun. Its early defeats on land, its startling successes at sea,
its financial straits, the desperation of the contest after the fall of
Napoleon, and the brilliant victory which crowned its close, all
combined to raise the national feeling to the highest pitch; and the
federalists, whose stock object of denunciation was "Mr. Madison's war,"
though Mr. Madison was about the most unwilling participant in it, came
out of it under the ban of every national sympathy.
The speech of Mr. Quincy, in many points one of the most eloquent of our
political history, will show the brightest phase of federalism at its
lowest ebb. One can hardly compare it with that of Mr. Clay, which
follows it, without noticing the national character of the latter, as
contrasted with the lack of nationality of the former. It seems, also,
that Mr. Clay's speech carries, in its internal characteristics,
sufficient evidence of the natural forces which tended to make democracy
a national power, and not a mere adjunct of State sovereignty, wherever
the oblique influence of slavery was absent. For this reason, it has
been taken as a convenient introduction to the topic which follows, the
Rise of Nationality.
THOMAS JEFFERSON,
OF VIRGINIA, (BORN 1743, DIED 1826.)
INAUGURAL ADDRESS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON, AS PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED
STATES,
MARCH 4, 1801
FRIENDS AND FELLOW-CITIZENS:
Called upon to undertake the duties of the first executive office of our
country, I avail myself of the presence of that portion of my
fellow-citizens which is here assembled, to express my grateful thanks
for the favor with which they have been pleased to look toward me, to
declare a sincere consciousness, that the task is above my talents, and
that I approach it with those anxious and awful presentiments, which the
greatness of the charge, and the weakness of my powers, so justly
inspire. A rising nation, spread over a wide and fruitful land,
traversing all the seas with the rich productions of their industry,
engaged in commerce with nations who feel power and forget right,
advancing rapidly to destinies beyond the reach of mortal eye; when I
contemplate these transcendent objects, and see the honor, the
happiness, and the hopes of this beloved country committed to the issue
and the auspices of this day, I shrink from the contemplation, and
humble myself before the magnitude of the undertaking. Utterly, indeed,
should I despair, did not the presence of many, whom I see here, remind
me, that, in the other high authorities provided by our Constitution, I
shall find resources of wisdom, of virtue, and of zeal, on which to rely
under all difficulties. To you, then, gentlemen, who are charged with
the sovereign functions of legislation, and to those associated with
you, I look with encouragement for that guidance and support which may
enable us to steer with safety the vessel in which we are all embarked,
amidst the conflicting elements of a troubled world.
During the contest of opinion through which we have passed, the
animation of discussions and of exertions has sometimes worn an aspect
which might impose on strangers unused to think freely, and to speak and
to write what they think; but this being now decided by the voice of the
nation, announced according to the rules of the Constitution, all will
of course arrange themselves under the will of the law, and unite in
common efforts for the common good. All too will bear in mind this
sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases
to prevail, that will, to be rightful, must be reasonable; that the
minority possess their equal rights, which equal laws must protect, and
to violate which would be oppression. Let us then, fellow-citizens,
unite with one heart and one mind, let us restore to social intercourse
that harmony and affection without which liberty and even life itself
are but dreary things. And let us reflect, that having banished from our
land that religious intolerance under which mankind so long bled and
suffered, we have yet gained little, if we countenance a political
intolerance, as despotic, as wicked, and as capable of as bitter and
bloody persecutions. During the throes and convulsions of the ancient
world, during the agonizing spasms of infuriated man, seeking through
blood and slaughter his long-lost liberty, it was not wonderful that the
agitation of the billows should reach even this distant and peaceful
shore; that this should be more felt and feared by some, and less by
others, and should divide opinions as to measures of safety; but every
difference of opinion is not a difference of principle. We have called
by different names brethren of the same principle. We are all
Republicans; we are all Federalists. If there be any among us who wish
to dissolve this Union, or to change its republican form, let them stand
undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may
be tolerated, where reason is left free to combat it. I know, indeed,
that some honest men fear that a republican government cannot be strong;
that this government is not strong enough. But would the honest patriot,
in the full tide of successful experiment, abandon a government which
has so far kept us free and firm, on the theoretic and visionary fear,
that this government, the world's best hope, may, by possibility, want
energy to preserve itself? I trust not. I believe this, on the contrary,
the strongest government on earth. I believe it the only one where every
man, at the call of the law, would fly to the standard of the law, and
would meet invasions of the public order as his own personal concern.
Sometimes it is said, that man cannot be trusted with the government of
himself. Can he then be trusted with the government of others? Or, have
we found angels in the form of kings, to govern him? Let history answer
this question.
Let us then, with courage and confidence, pursue our own federal and
republican principles; our attachment to union and representative
government. Kindly separated by nature and a wide ocean from the
exterminating havoc of one quarter of the globe; too high-minded to
endure the degradation of the others, possessing a chosen country, with
room enough for our descendants to the thousandth and thousandth
generation, entertaining a due sense of our equal right to the use of
our own faculties, to the acquisition of our own industry, to honor and
confidence from our fellow-citizens, resulting not from birth, but from
our actions and their sense of them, enlightened by a benign religion,
professed indeed and practised in various forms, yet all of them
inculcating honesty, truth, temperance, gratitude, and the love of man,
acknowledging and adoring an overruling Providence, which, by all its
dispensations, proves that it delights in the happiness of man here, and
his greater happiness hereafter; with all these blessings, what more is
necessary to make us a happy and prosperous people? Still one thing
more, fellow-citizens, a wise and frugal government, which shall
restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free
to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall
not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the
sum of good government; and this is necessary to close the circle of our
felicities.
About to enter, fellow-citizens, upon the exercise of duties which
comprehend every thing dear and valuable to you, it is proper you should
understand what I deem the essential principles of our government, and
consequently, those which ought to shape its administration. I will
compress them within the narrowest compass they will bear, stating the
general principle, but not all its limitations. Equal and exact justice
to all men, of whatever state or persuasion, religious or political;
peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling
alliances with none; the support of the State governments in all their
rights, as the most competent administrations for our domestic concerns,
and the surest bulwarks against anti-republican tendencies; the
preservation of the general government in its whole constitutional
vigor, as the sheet-anchor of our peace at home and safety abroad; a
jealous care of the right of election by the people, a mild and safe
corrective of abuses which are lopped by the sword of revolution where
peaceable remedies are unprovided; absolute acquiescence in the
decisions of the majority, the vital principle of republics, from which
there is no appeal but to force, the vital principle and immediate
parent of despotism; a well-disciplined militia, our best reliance in
peace, and for the first moments of war, till regulars may relieve them;
the supremacy of the civil over the military authority; economy in the
public expense, that labor may be lightly burdened; the honest payment
of our debts, and sacred preservation of the public faith; encouragement
of agriculture, and of commerce as its handmaid; the diffusion of
information, and arraignment of all abuses at the bar of the public
reason; freedom of religion, freedom of the press, and freedom of
person, under the protection of the _habeas corpus_, and trial by juries
impartially selected. These principles form the bright constellation,
which has gone before us, and guided our steps through an age of
revolution and reformation. The wisdom of our sages, and blood of our
heroes, have been devoted to their attainment; they should be the creed
of our political faith, the text of civic instruction, the touchstone by
which to try the services of those we trust; and should we wander from
them in moments of error or of alarm, let us hasten to retrace our
steps, and to regain the road which alone leads to peace, liberty, and
safety.
I repair, then, fellow-citizens, to the post you have assigned me. With
experience enough in subordinate offices to have seen the difficulties
of this, the greatest of all, I have learned to expect that it will
rarely fall to the lot of imperfect man, to retire from this station
with the reputation and the favor which bring him into it. Without
pretensions to that high confidence you reposed in our first and
greatest revolutionary character, whose pre-eminent services had
entitled him to the first place in his country's love, and destined for
him the fairest page in the volume of faithful history, I ask so much
confidence only as may give firmness and effect to the legal
administration of your affairs. I shall often go wrong through defect of
judgment. When right, I shall often be thought wrong by those whose
positions will not command a view of the whole ground. I ask your
indulgence for my own errors, which will never be intentional; and your
support against the errors of others, who may condemn what they would
not, if seen in all its parts. The approbation implied by your suffrage,
is a great consolation to me for the past; and my future solicitude will
be, to retain the good opinion of those who have bestowed it in advance,
to conciliate that of others, by doing them all the good in my power,
and to be instrumental to the happiness and freedom of all.
Relying then on the patronage of your good-will, I advance with
obedience to the work, ready to retire from it whenever you become
sensible how much better choices it is in your power to make. And may
that infinite Power which rules the destinies of the universe, lead our
councils to what is best, and give them a favorable issue for your peace
and prosperity.
JOHN RANDOLPH,
--OF VIRGINIA' (BORN 1773, DIED 1833.)
ON THE MILITIA BILL--HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, DEC. 10, 1811.
MR. SPEAKER:
This is a question, as it has been presented to this House, of peace or
war. In that light it has been argued; in no other light can I consider
it, after the declarations made by members of the Committee of Foreign
Relations.
The Committee of Foreign Relations have, indeed, decided that the
subject of arming the militia (which has been pressed upon them as
indispensable to the public security) does not come within the scope of
their authority. On what ground, I have been, and still am, unable to
see, they have felt themselves authorized to recommend the raising of
standing armies, with a view (as has been declared) of immediate war--a
war not of defence, but of conquest, of aggrandizement, of ambition--a
war foreign to the interests of this country; to the interests of
humanity itself. * * *
I cannot refrain from smiling at the liberality of the gentleman in
giving Canada to New York in order to strengthen the northern balance of
power; while, at the same time, he forewarns her that the western scale
must preponderate. I can almost fancy that I see the Capitol in motion
toward the falls of Ohio; after a short sojourn, taking its flight to
the Mississippi, and finally alighting at Darien; which, when the
gentleman's dreams are realized, will be a most eligible seat of
government for the new republic (or empire) of the two Americas! But it
seems that in 1808 we talked and acted foolishly, and to give some color
of consistency to that folly we must now commit a greater.
I hope we shall act a wise part; take warning by our follies since we
have become sensible of them, and resolve to talk and act foolishly no
more. It is, indeed, high time to give over such preposterous language
and proceedings. This war of conquest, a war for the acquisition of
territory and subjects, is to be a new commentary on the doctrine that
republicans are destitute of ambition; that they are addicted to peace,
wedded to the happiness and safety of the great body of their people.
But it seems this is to be a holiday campaign; there is to be no expense
of blood, or of treasure on our part; Canada is to conquer herself; she
is to be subdued by the principles of fraternity! The people of that
country are first to be seduced from their allegiance and converted into
traitors, as preparatory to making them good citizens! Although I must
acknowledge that some of our flaming patriots were thus manufactured, I
do not think the process would hold good with a whole community. It is a
dangerous experiment. We are to succeed in the French mode, by the
system of fraternization--all is French. But how dreadfully it might be
retorted on the southern and western slave-holding States. I detest this
subornation of treason. No; if we must have them, let them fall by the
valor of our arms; by fair, legitimate conquest; not become the victims
of treacherous seduction.
I am not surprised at the war spirit which is manifesting itself in
gentlemen from the South. In the year 1805-6, in a struggle for the
carrying trade of belligerent colonial produce, this country was most
unwisely brought into collision with the great powers of Europe. By a
series of most impolitic and ruinous measures, utterly incomprehensible
to every rational, sober-minded man, the Southern planters, by their own
votes, have succeeded in knocking down the price of cotton to seven
cents, and of tobacco (a few choice crops excepted) to nothing; and in
raising the price of blankets (of which a few would not be amiss in a
Canadian campaign), coarse woollens, and every article of first
necessity, three or four hundred per centum. And now, that by our own
acts, we have brought ourselves into this unprecedented condition, we
must get out of it in any way, but by an acknowledgment of our own want
of wisdom and forecast. But is war the true remedy? Who will profit by
it? Speculators; a few lucky merchants, who draw prizes in the lottery;
commissaries and contractors. Who must suffer by it? The people. It is
their blood, their taxes that must flow to support it.
I am gratified to find gentlemen acknowledging the demoralizing and
destructive consequences of the non-importation law; confessing the
truth of all that its opponents foretold, when it was enacted. And will
you plunge yourselves in war, because you have passed a foolish and
ruinous law, and are ashamed to repeal it? But our good friend, the
French emperor, stands in the way of its repeal, and we cannot go too
far in making sacrifices to him, who has given such demonstration of his
love for the Americans; we must, in point of fact, become parties to his
war. Who can be so cruel as to refuse him that favor? My imagination
shrinks from the miseries of such a connection. I call upon the House to
reflect, whether they are not about to abandon all reclamation for the
unparalleled outrages, "insults, and injuries" of the French government;
to give up our claim for plundered millions; and I ask what reparation
or atonement they can expect to obtain in hours of future dalliance,
after they shall have made a tender of their person to this great
deflowerer of the virginity of republics. We have, by our own wise (I
will not say wiseacre) measures, so increased the trade and wealth of
Montreal and Quebec, that at last we begin to cast a wistful eye at
Canada. Having done so much toward its improvement, by the exercise of
"our restrictive energies," we begin to think the laborer worthy of his
hire, and to put in a claim for our portion. Suppose it ours, are we any
nearer to our point? As his minister said to the king of Epirus, "May we
not as well take our bottle of wine before as after this exploit?" Go
march to Canada! leave the broad bosom of the Chesapeake and her hundred
tributary rivers; the whole line of sea-coast from Machias to St.
Mary's, unprotected! You have taken Quebec--have you conquered England?
Will you seek for the deep foundations of her power in the frozen
deserts of Labrador?
"Her march is on the mountain wave, Her home is on the deep!"
Will you call upon her to leave your ports and harbors untouched only
just till you can return from Canada, to defend them? The coast is to be
left defenceless, while men of the interior are revelling in conquest
and spoil. * * *
No sooner was the report laid on the table, than the vultures were
flocking around their prey--the carcass of a great military
establishment. Men of tainted reputation, of broken fortune (if they
ever had any), and of battered constitutions, "choice spirits tired of
the dull pursuits of civil life," were seeking after agencies and
commissions, willing to doze in gross stupidity over the public fire; to
light the public candle at both ends. Honorable men undoubtedly there
are ready to serve their country; but what man of spirit, or of
self-respect, will accept a commission in the present army? The
gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Grundy) addressed himself yesterday
exclusively to the "Republicans of the House." I know not whether I may
consider myself as entitled to any part of the benefit of the honorable
gentleman's discourse. It belongs not, however, to that gentleman to
decide. If we must have an exposition of the doctrines of republicanism,
I shall receive it from the fathers of the church, and not from the
junior apprentices of the law. I shall appeal to my worthy friends from
Carolina (Messrs. Macon and Stanford), "men with whom I have measured my
strength," by whose side I have fought during the reign of terror; for
it was indeed an hour of corruption, of oppression, of pollution. It was
not at all to my taste--that sort of republicanism which was supported,
on this side of the Atlantic, by the father of the sedition law, John
Adams, and by Peter Porcupine on the other. Republicanism! of John Adams
and William Cobbett! * * *