having landed in Virginia in December, 1789, and proceeded to New York
in March, 1790, to enter on the office of Secretary of State.
Here, certainly, I found a state of things which, of all I had ever
contemplated, I the least expected. I had left France in the first
year of her revolution, in the fervor of natural rights, and zeal for
reformation. My conscientious devotion to these rights could not be
heightened, but it had been aroused and excited by daily exercise. The
President received me cordially, and my colleagues and the circle
of principal citizens, apparently with welcome. The courtesies of
dinner-parties given me, as a stranger newly arrived among them, placed
me at once in their familiar society. But I cannot describe the wonder
and mortification with which the table conversations filled me. Politics
were the chief topic, and a preference of kingly over republican
government, was evidently the favorite sentiment. An apostate I could
not be, nor yet a hypocrite; and I found myself, for the most part, the
only advocate on the republican side of the question, unless among
the guests there chanced to be some member of that party from the
legislative Houses. Hamilton’s financial system had then passed. It
had two objects; 1. as a puzzle, to exclude popular understanding and
inquiry; 2. as a machine for the corruption of the legislature: for he
avowed the opinion, that man could be governed by one of two motives
only, force or interest: force, he observed, in this country, was out of
the question, and the interests, therefore, of the members must be laid
hold of, to keep the legislature in unison with the executive. And with
grief and shame it must be acknowledged that his machine was not without
effect; that even in this, the birth of our government, some members
were found sordid enough to bend their duty, to their interests, and to
look after personal rather than public good.
It is well known that during the war, the greatest difficulty we
encountered, was the want of money or means to pay our soldiers who
fought, or our farmers, manufacturers, and merchants, who furnished the
necessary supplies of food and clothing for them. After the expedient of
paper money had exhausted itself, certificates of debt were given to the
individual creditors, with assurance of payment, so soon as the United
States should be able. But the distresses of these people often obliged
them to part with these for the half, the fifth, and even a tenth of
their value; and speculators had made a trade of cozening them from the
holders, by the most fraudulent practices, and persuasions that they
would never be paid. In the bill for funding and paying these, Hamilton
made no difference between the original holders, and the fraudulent
purchasers of this paper. Great and just repugnance arose at putting
these two classes of creditors on the same footing, and great exertions
were used to pay the former the full value, and to the latter, the price
only which they had paid, with interest. But this would have prevented
the game which was to be played, and for which the minds of greedy
members were already tutored and prepared. When the trial of strength,
on these several efforts, had indicated the form in which the bill would
finally pass, this being known within doors sooner than without, and
especially, than to those who were in distant parts of the Union,
the base scramble began. Couriers and relay-horses by land, and
swift-sailing pilot-boats by sea, were flying in all directions. Active
partners and agents were associated and employed in every State,
town, and country neighborhood, and this paper was bought up at five
shillings, and even as low as two shillings in the pound, before the
holder knew that Congress had already provided for its redemption at
par. Immense sums were thus filched from the poor and ignorant, and
fortunes accumulated by those who had themselves been poor enough
before. Men thus enriched by the dexterity of a leader, would follow of
course the chief who was leading them to fortune, and become the zealous
instruments of all his enterprises.
This game was over, and another was on the carpet at the moment of my
arrival; and to this I was most ignorantly and innocently made to hold
the candle. This fiscal manoeuvre is well known by the name of the
Assumption. Independently of the debts of Congress, the States had,
during the war, contracted separate and heavy debts; and Massachusetts
particularly, in an absurd attempt, absurdly conducted, on the British
post of Penobscot: and the more debt Hamilton could rake up, the more
plunder for his mercenaries. This money, whether wisely or foolishly
spent, was pretended to have been spent for general purposes, and ought,
therefore, to be paid from the general purse. But it was objected, that
nobody knew what these debts were, what their amount, or what their
proofs. No matter; we will guess them to be twenty millions. But of
these twenty millions, we do not know how much should be reimbursed
to one State, or how much to another. No matter; we will guess. And so
another scramble was set on foot among the several States, and some got
much, some little, some nothing. But the main object was obtained, the
phalanx of the Treasury was reinforced by additional recruits. This
measure produced the most bitter and angry contests ever known in
Congress, before or since the Union of the States. I arrived in the
midst of it. But a stranger to the ground, a stranger to the actors on
it, so long absent as to have lost all familiarity with the subject,
and as yet unaware of its object, I took no concern in it. The great and
trying question, however, was lost in the House of Representatives.
So high were the feuds excited by this subject, that on its rejection
business was suspended. Congress met and adjourned from day to day
without doing any thing, the parties being too much out of temper to
do business together. The eastern members particularly, who, with
Smith from South Carolina, were the principal gamblers in these scenes,
threatened a secession and dissolution. Hamilton was in despair. As I
was going to the President’s one day, I met him in the street. He walked
me backwards and forwards before the President’s door for half an hour.
He painted pathetically the temper into which the legislature had been
wrought; the disgust of those who were called the creditor States; the
danger of the secession of their members, and the separation of the
States. He observed that the members of the administration ought to act
in concert; that though this question was not of my department, yet a
common duty should make it a common concern; that the President was the
centre on which all administrative questions ultimately rested, and
that all of us should rally around him, and support, with joint efforts,
measures approved by him; and that the question having been lost by
a small majority only, it was probable that an appeal from me to the
judgment and discretion of some of my friends, might effect a change in
the vote, and the machine of government, now suspended, might be again
set into motion. I told him that I was really a stranger to the whole
subject; that not having yet informed myself of the system of finance
adopted, I knew not how far this was a necessary sequence; that
undoubtedly, if its rejection endangered a dissolution of our Union at
this incipient stage, I should deem that the most unfortunate of all
consequences, to avert which all partial and temporary evils should be
yielded. I proposed to him, however, to dine with me the next day, and I
would invite another friend or two, bring them into conference together,
and I thought it impossible that reasonable men, consulting together
coolly, could fail, by some mutual sacrifices of opinion, to form a
compromise which was to save the Union. The discussion took place.
I could take no part in it but an exhortatory one, because I was a
stranger to the circumstances which should govern it. But it was finally
agreed, that whatever importance had been attached to the rejection of
this proposition, the preservation of the Union and of concord among the
States was more important, and that therefore it would be better that
the vote of rejection should be rescinded, to effect which, some members
should change their votes. But it was observed that this pill would
be peculiarly bitter to the Southern States, and that some concomitant
measure should be adopted to sweeten it a little to them. There had
before been propositions to fix the seat of government either at
Philadelphia, or at Georgetown on the Potomac; and it was thought
that by giving it to Philadelphia for ten years, and to Georgetown
permanently afterwards, this might, as an anodyne, calm in some degree
the ferment which might be excited by the other measure alone. So two
of the Potomac members (White and Lee, but White with a revulsion of
stomach almost convulsive,) agreed to change their votes, and Hamilton
undertook to carry the other point. In doing this, the influence he had
established over the eastern members, with the agency of Robert Morris
with those of the middle States, effected his side of the engagement;
and so the Assumption was passed, and twenty millions of stock divided
among favored States, and thrown in as a pabulum to the stock-jobbing
herd. This added to the number of votaries to the Treasury, and made its
chief the master of every vote in the legislature, which might give to
the government the direction suited to his political views.
I know well, and so must be understood, that nothing like a majority in
Congress had yielded to this corruption. Far from it. But a division,
not very unequal, had already taken place in the honest part of that
body, between the parties styled republican and federal. The latter
being monarchists in principle, adhered to Hamilton of course, as their
leader in that principle, and this mercenary phalanx added to them,
insured him always a majority in both Houses: so that the whole action
of the legislature was now under the direction of the Treasury. Still
the machine was not complete. The effect of the funding system, and of
the Assumption, would be temporary; it would be lost with the loss
of the individual members whom it had enriched, and some engine of
influence more permanent must be contrived, while these myrmidons were
yet in place to carry it through all opposition. This engine was the
Bank of the United States. All that history is known, so I shall say
nothing about it. While the government remained at Philadelphia, a
selection of members of both Houses were constantly kept as directors,
who, on every question interesting to that institution, or to the views
of the federal head, voted at the will of that head; and, together with
the stock-holding members, could always make the federal vote that of
the majority. By this combination, legislative expositions were given
to the constitution, and all the administrative laws were shaped on
the model of England and so passed. And from this influence we were
not relieved, until the removal from the precincts of the bank, to
Washington. Here then was the real ground of the opposition which was
made to the course of administration. Its object was to preserve the
legislature pure and independent of the executive, to restrain, the
administration to republican forms and principles, and not permit the
constitution to be construed into a monarchy, and to be warped, in
practice, into all the principles and pollutions of their favorite
English model. Nor was this an opposition to General Washington. He
was true to the republican charge confided to him; and has solemnly and
repeatedly protested to me, in our conversations, that he would lose the
last drop of his blood in support of it; and he did this the oftener and
with the more earnestness, because he knew my suspicions of Hamilton’s
designs against it, and wished to quiet them. For he was not aware of
the drift, or of the effect of Hamilton’s schemes. Unversed in financial
projects and calculations and budgets, his approbation of them was
bottomed on his confidence in the man.
But Hamilton was not only a monarchist, but for a monarchy bottomed on
corruption. In proof of this, I will relate an anecdote, for the truth
of which I attest the God who made me. Before the President set out on
his southern tour in April, 1791, he addressed a letter of the fourth
of that month, from Mount Vernon, to the Secretaries of State, Treasury,
and War, desiring that if any serious and important cases should arise
during his absence, they would consult and act on them. And he requested
that the Vice-President should also be consulted. This was the only
occasion on which that officer was ever requested to take part in a
cabinet question. Some occasion for consultation arising, I invited
those gentlemen (and the Attorney General, as well as I remember,) to
dine with me, in order to confer on the subject. After the cloth was
removed, and our question agreed and dismissed, conversation began
on other matters, and, by some circumstance, was led to the British
constitution, on which Mr. Adams observed, ‘Purge that constitution
of its corruption, and give to its popular branch equality of
representation, and it would be the most perfect constitution ever
devised by the wit of man.’ Hamilton paused and said, ‘Purge it of its
corruption, and give to its popular branch equality of representation,
and it would become an impracticable government: as it stands at
present, with all its supposed defects, it is the most perfect
government which ever existed.’ And this was assuredly the exact line
which separated the political creeds of these two gentlemen. The one was
for two hereditary branches and an honest elective one: the other, for
an hereditary King, with a House of Lords and Commons corrupted to his
will, and standing between him and the people. Hamilton was, indeed, a
singular character. Of acute understanding, disinterested, honest, and
honorable in all private transactions, amiable in society, and duly
valuing virtue in private life, yet so bewitched and perverted by the
British example, as to be under thorough conviction that corruption was
essential to the government of a nation. Mr. Adams had originally been
a republican. The glare of royalty and nobility, during his mission to
England, had made him believe their fascination a necessary ingredient
in government; and Shays’s rebellion, not sufficiently understood where
he then was, seemed to prove that the absence of want and oppression,
was not a sufficient guarantee of order. His book on the American
Constitutions having made known his political bias, he was taken up by
the monarchical federalists in his absence, and, on his return to
the United States, he was by them made to believe that the general
disposition of our citizens was favorable to monarchy. He here wrote
his Davila, as a supplement to the former work, and his election to
the Presidency confirmed him in his errors. Innumerable addresses too,
artfully and industriously poured in upon him, deceived him into a
confidence that he was on the pinnacle of popularity, when the gulph was
yawning at his feet, which was to swallow up him and his deceivers. For
when General Washington was withdrawn, these _energumeni_ of royalism,
kept in check hitherto by the dread of his honesty, his firmness, his
patriotism, and the authority of his name, now mounted on the car of
State and free from control, like Phaeton on that of the sun, drove
headlong and wild, looking neither to right nor left, nor regarding
any thing but the objects they were driving at; until, displaying these
fully, the eyes of the nation were opened, and a general disbandment of
them from the public councils took place.
Mr. Adams, I am sure, has been long since convinced of the treacheries
with which he was surrounded during his administration. He has since
thoroughly seen, that his constituents were devoted to republican
government, and whether his judgment is resettled on its ancient basis,
or not, he is conformed as a good citizen to the will of the majority,
and would now, I am persuaded, maintain its republican structure with
the zeal and fidelity belonging to his character. For even an enemy has
said, ‘He is always an honest man, and often a great one.’ But in
the fervor of the fury and follies of those who made him their
stalking-horse, no man who did not witness it can form an idea of
their unbridled madness, and the terrorism with which they surrounded
themselves. The horrors of the French revolution, then raging, aided
them mainly, and using that as a raw-head and bloody-bones, they were
enabled by their stratagems of X. Y. Z. in which ------ was a leading
mountebank, their tales of tub-plots, ocean-massacres, bloody-buoys, and
pulpit-lyings and slanderings, and maniacal ravings of their Gardiners,
their Osgoods, and Parishes, to spread alarm into all but the firmest
breasts. Their Attorney General had the impudence to say to a republican
member, that deportation must be resorted to, of which, said he, ‘you
republicans have set the example’; thus daring to identify us with the
murderous Jacobins of France. These transactions, now recollected but
as dreams of the night, were then sad realities; and nothing rescued us
from their liberticide effect, but the unyielding opposition of those
firm spirits who sternly maintained their post in defiance of terror,
until their fellow-citizens could be aroused to their own danger, and
rally and rescue the standard of the constitution. This has been happily
done. Federalism and monarchism have languished from that moment, until
their treasonable combinations with the enemies of their country during
the late war, their plots of dismembering the Union, and their Hartford
Convention, have consigned them to the tomb of the dead: and I fondly
hope, ‘we may now truly say, We are all republicans, all federalists,’
and that the motto of the standard to which our country will for ever
rally, will be, ‘Federal union, and republican government’: and sure I
am we may say, that we are indebted for the preservation of this point
of ralliance, to that opposition of which so injurious an idea is so
artfully insinuated and excited in this history.
Much of this relation is notorious to the world; and many intimate
proofs of it will be found in these notes. From the moment where they
end, of my retiring from the administration, the federalists * got
unchecked hold of General Washington. His memory was already sensibly
impaired by age, the firm tone of mind for which he had been remarkable,
was beginning to relax, its energy was abated, a listlessness of labor,
a desire for tranquillity had crept on him, and a willingness to let
others act, and even think for him. Like the rest of mankind, he
was disgusted with atrocities of the French revolution, and was not
sufficiently aware of the difference between the rabble who were used as
instruments of their perpetration, and the steady and rational character
of the American people, in which he had not sufficient confidence. The
opposition too of the republicans to the British treaty, and the zealous
support of the federalists in that unpopular but favorite measure of
theirs, had made him all their own. Understanding, moreover, that I
disapproved of that treaty, and copiously nourished with falsehoods by
a malignant neighbor of mine, who ambitioned to be his correspondent, he
had become alienated from myself personally, as from the republican body
generally of his fellow-citizens; and he wrote the letters to Mr. Adams
and Mr. Carroll, over which, in devotion to his imperishable fame, we
must for ever weep as monuments of mortal decay.
Th: Jefferson. February 4th, 1818.
* See conversation with General Washington, of October 1,1792,
****
August the 13th, 1791. Notes of a conversation between Alexander
Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson. Th: Jefferson mentioned to him a letter
received from John Adams, disavowing Publicola, and denying that he ever
entertained a wish to bring this country under an hereditary executive,
or introduce an hereditary branch of legislature, &c. See his
letter. Alexander Hamilton condemning Mr. Adams’s writings, and
most particularly Davila, as having a tendency to weaken the present
government, declared in substance as follows: ‘I own it is my own
opinion, though I do not publish it in Dan or Beersheba, that the
present government is not that which will answer the ends of society, by
giving stability and protection to its rights, and that it will probably
be found expedient to go into the British form. However, since we have
undertaken the experiment, I am for giving it a fair course, whatever my
expectations may be. The success, indeed, so far, is greater than I had
expected, and therefore, at present, success seems more possible than
it had done heretofore, and there are still other and other stages of
improvement, which, if the present does not succeed, may be tried, and
ought to be tried, before we give up the republican form altogether; for
that mind must be really depraved, which would not prefer the equality
of political rights, which is the foundation of pure republicanism, if
it can be obtained consistently with order. Therefore, whoever by his
writings disturbs the present order of things, is really blameable,
however pure his intentions may be, and he was sure Mr. Adams’s were
pure.’ This is the substance of a declaration made in much more lengthy
terms, and which seemed to be more formal than usual for a private
conversation between two, and as if intended to qualify some less
guarded expressions which had been dropped on former occasions. Th:
Jefferson has committed it to writing in the moment of A. Hamilton’s
leaving the room.
December the 25th, 1791. Colonel Gunn (of Georgia), dining the other day
with Colonel Hamilton, said to him, with that plain freedom he is known
to use, ‘I wish, Sir, you would advise your friend King to observe some
kind of consistency in his votes. There has been scarcely a question
before the Senate on which he has not voted both ways. On the
representation bill, for instance, he first voted for the proposition
of the Representatives, and ultimately voted against it.’ ‘Why,’ says
Colonel Hamilton, ‘I ‘ll tell you as to that, Colonel Gunn, that it
never was intended that bill should pass.’ Gunn told this to Butler, who
told it to Th: Jefferson.
*****
CONVERSATIONS WITH THE PRESIDENT.
February the 28th, 1792. I was to have been with him long enough before
three o’clock (which was the hour and day he received visits) to
have opened to him a proposition for doubling the velocity of the
post-riders, who now travel about fifty miles a day, and might, without
difficulty, go one hundred, and for taking measures (by way-bills) to
know where the delay is, when there is any. I was delayed by business,
so as to have scarcely time to give him the outlines. I run over them
rapidly, and observed afterwards, that I had hitherto never spoken
to him on the subject of the post-office, not knowing whether it was
considered as a revenue law, or a law for the general accommodation of
the citizens: that the law just passed seemed to have removed the doubt,
by declaring that the whole profits of the office should be applied to
extending the posts, and that even the past profits should be refunded
by the Treasury for the same purpose: that I therefore conceived it was
now in the department of the Secretary of State: that I thought it would
be advantageous so to declare it for another reason, to wit, that the
department of the Treasury possessed already such an influence as
to swallow up the whole executive powers, and that even the future
Presidents (not supported by the weight of character which himself
possessed) would not be able to make head against this department. That
in urging this measure I had certainly no personal interest, since, if
I was supposed to have any appetite for power, yet, as my career would
certainly be exactly as short as his own, the intervening time was too
short to be an object. My real wish was to avail the public of every
occasion, during the residue of the President’s period, to place things
on a safe footing. He was now called on to attend his company, and he
desired me to come and breakfast with him the next morning.