NATIONAL PARTIES ON FOREIGN ISSUES
The Democratic clubs, which Washington scored so roundly, and so
unjustly as Jefferson thought, were simply reflexes of one phase of
the French Revolution. They serve to illustrate not only how dependent
America was upon Europe for political guidance and how strong was
European influence in America, but also that early parties were factions
along social lines of cleavage rather than divisions on national
policies.
Caste is always a relative thing. The patriots who inaugurated and led
to success the American Revolution had been, generally speaking, of
an inferior social rank to the Tories. Washington is regarded as a
striking exception. Yet his fame rested solely upon his early military
record. He was never a part of the gay life at Williamsburg. The royal
governor was at the head of the Court and set the social standard. The
patriots, being opposed to him, were placed in an inferior social
position. But when once the governors had been driven out and the
Tories had been subjugated or exiled, the patriots became the ruling
or superior class. Immediately a new inferior class arose, hostile to
the Administration. Thus it came about that Washington, Hamilton,
Adams, and Jay, the former democrats, were changed into aristocrats
in the eyes of Jefferson, Madison, and the present democrats.
The new democrats were in full sympathy with the effort made in France
to abolish the nobility, and imitated the Democratic clubs which were
established there on the basis of "liberty, equality, and fraternity."
Having no nobility to abolish in America, they declared war upon such
titles as "His Excellency the President," or "His Honour the Mayor,"
and even "Reverend" and "Esquire." These they would replace by a uniform
"Citizen." Record is to be found of some twenty-four of these local
Democratic societies, scattered from Maine to South Carolina and
westward to Kentucky. Their object, as set forth by a Vermont society,
was "the promotion of real and genuine Republicanism, unsullied and
uncontaminated with the smallest spark of monarchical or aristocratic
principles." They pledged themselves to the "utmost exertions to support
the rational and equal rights of man."
Like all movements depending upon enthusiasm, the Democratic societies
went to the bounds of extravagance. Taking offence at a tavern sign
in Philadelphia, they were not content until the proprietor had painted
a red streak about the neck of Marie Antoinette to denote the work of
the guillotine. A waxworks in the same city drew large crowds to witness
a representation of the execution of Louis XVI. According to the
advertisement, "The knife falls, the head drops, and the lips turn
blue. The whole is performed to the life by an invisible machine,
without any perceivable assistance." Children were admitted at half
price. A bust of George III., which had stood through the intense
feeling engendered by the Revolution, was now mutilated. At Democratic
banquets, a boar's head, representing the head of Louis XVI., was
passed about to be stabbed by the guests.
The resolutions adopted by the local societies frequently concerned
local grievances. The Kentucky club protested against the Spanish claim
to the exclusive control of the lower Mississippi, and a club in western
Pennsylvania paid its respects to the collection of the excise tax.
Nevertheless, it should be said that many societies in other States
deprecated the resistance to the National Government in that quarter.
In view of this fact, Jefferson thought Washington unjust in attributing
the insurrection to the encouragement of the clubs.
There was a more practical aim in the associations than the adoption
of resolutions. They hoped to unite the local bodies in a national
association which should bring the State and eventually the nation
into sympathy with France and her struggle for liberty. "France caught
the divine fire of liberty from us," said one society. "Shall we now
withhold ourselves from her?" The varying responses to this question
brought about eventually the rise of political parties in the United
States.
Three well-defined periods have marked political parties in the
Republic. The first epoch turned, as indicated above, entirely upon
the choice of sides in the war between France and England, which
followed the proclamation of the French Republic, September 21, 1792.
The second period, following the close of the War of 1812, the end of
foreign dominance, was produced by differences of opinion upon the
constitutional powers of the National Government. It was foreshadowed
by several constitutional debates in the first period. The Civil War,
by an appeal to the sword, decided the majority of these constitutional
doubts in favour of the Union. Since that time, a third phase of party
government has been developed, purely on grounds of expediency in
domestic and foreign control.
Political parties, therefore, are peculiarly dependent upon public
opinion. They are creatures of sentiment. They possess no power save that
of persuasion as to the proper lines of conducting the administration.
Choosing positions on great questions largely from previous policy, they
must appeal to the people for justification and support. They live by
opposition. No party can exist alone. In their modern aspect, political
parties were unknown in Revolutionary days. Whig and Tory were simply
reflections from the parties in England supporting or opposing the
Administration. There were divisions among men, largely of a social
nature; "court and country" parties, as John Adams called them in
reminiscence. The royal governor, surrounded by his place-men and
followers, residing in the city and opposed by the rural element,
represented the monarch. The opposition became the patriotic party of the
Revolution. After a decade, the patriots themselves divided into
Federalists and Anti-Federalists upon the advisability of changing from
the Articles of Confederation to the Constitution. These divisions were
not political parties in the modern sense. Neither developed any policy of
administration or offered any candidate for office at the time.
When the Constitution was finally adopted, the Anti-Federalists ceased
their opposition. Since the impetus of adopting the new Government was
sufficient to place its supporters in power, its enemies held off and
awaited the day of failure when they should have the pleasure of saying,
"I told you so." In a few instances they made a demonstration, as when
Patrick Henry, according to Madison's belief, had Virginia redistricted
in order to keep him out of the Senate. After the new venture had
passed beyond the experimental stage under the Federalist party, the
name "Anti-Federalist" gradually passed from use. As policies of
administration were developed, an opposition was bound to be formed,
and thus modern political parties were born. A preliminary line-up was
caused by Hamilton's measure for a government bank; but the real
cleavage was produced by opposing opinions concerning the side which
the United States should take in the war between France and England.
If Great Britain, toward whom the animosity of the recent war was still
strong, had not been a monarchy, or if the revolution which changed
our Revolutionary benefactress, France, into a republic, had happened
in England, or if the French Revolution had not so closely followed
in form the change in the United States from monarchy to republicanism,
party animosity in America would have been checked instead of advanced
by the Old World contest. The same end might have been reached if John
Adams had been sent as Minister to France and Thomas Jefferson to
England. But Britain being the token of centralisation, the general
tendency of the United States toward unionism seemed to Jefferson to
be the certain road to monarchism. This he conceived to be the ultimate
aim of Hamilton, born in the British West Indies, and Adams, who had
returned from Britain with his obnoxious theory that the "well-born"
ought to rule the remainder of the people.
The attempt of France, on the contrary, to secure the rights of man,
with which Jefferson had grown familiar during his residence in that
country, appealed to him both from a national and a personal standpoint.
"I still hope," he said in one of those periods of French excess which
bade fair to ruin the whole, "that the French Revolution will issue
happily. I feel that the permanence of our own leans in some degree
on that, and that a failure there would be a powerful argument to prove
that there must be a failure here." "A struggle for liberty is in
itself respectable and glorious," said Hamilton, in giving a Cabinet
opinion that the treaty made with France in 1778 had been annulled by
the abrogation of the monarchy and the execution of Louis XVI. "But
if sullied by crimes and extravagance it loses respectability. It
appears, thus far, too probable that the pending Revolution in France
has sustained some serious blemishes." In another place he voiced the
sentiments of the anti-French by saying that thus far no proof had
come to light sufficient to establish a belief that the execution of
the King was an act of national justice. But the French sympathisers
thought otherwise. "If he was a traitor he ought to be punished as
well as another man," wrote Madison to Jefferson, quoting the sentiment
among the plain people of Virginia.
Public sentiment in the United States was thus crystallising into
political parties on the policy to be pursued toward the new French
Republic. One faction was of the opinion that the people of the United
States were bound to aid the new sister not only by the sympathy of
a common struggle for liberty, but by the still stronger bonds of
gratitude for assistance in gaining their own freedom. They considered
the alliance of 1778, which France had signed at the expense of a war
with England, as still binding upon the United States. It pledged the
United States to guarantee France in the possession of her West Indies,
to admit her ships with prizes to American ports, to keep out those
of the enemy, and to prohibit the enemy from using American ports to
fit out privateers. From this last provision, some friends of France
deduced the opinion that it tacitly gave her permission to fit out
privateers by denying the right to her enemies.
Hamilton and others, who thought the French movement, begun for the
sake of liberty, was deteriorating into a frenzied propaganda
destructive of rights and property, insisted that the change of
government in France had abrogated all claims which the alliance gave
to monarchical France; that, even if this were not so, the United
States was pledged to aid her only in a defensive war, and this war
with England was entirely offensive on her part; that to give aid to
the maddened revolutionists was to identify ourselves irrevocably with
destructive fanatics, bloody regicides, and wild propagandists. These
zealots, they said, had already pledged themselves to treat as enemies
any people "who, refusing or renouncing liberty and equality, are
desirous of preserving their prince or privileged castes, or of entering
into an accommodation with them." Our forefathers had been satisfied
with securing liberty for themselves without trying to impose it on
all other nations. It was this proselyting spirit which caused their
war against Britain. Hence, the anti-French element allied itself with
England. That nation was rapidly being forced into a position where
she alone would stand between French fanaticism and the disruption of
all society. These pro-British were, in the eyes of the French
sympathisers, base ingrates, as culpable as a nation would have been
who sided with Great Britain during the Revolutionary War.
Divided into these hostile factions during this summer of 1792, the
United States reached the first parting of the ways upon her foreign
policy. Hitherto she had been of small moment to European nations,
touching them only on boundary questions connected with the New World.
But in the mighty struggle between one people bursting the bands of
centuries of repression and monarchical rule, and another nation in
authority who saw prerogative, property, and person in danger from the
deluge, the United States would become important as a place for fitting
out and as a base of food-supply. Belligerents in the heat of war are
not inclined to be over-regardful of the rights of non-combatants. To
maintain a strict neutrality had been well-nigh impossible in the
history of European nations. In nearly every war of the past, kingdom
after kingdom had become involved. The "armed neutrality," headed by
Russia during the American Revolutionary War, was formed by non-maritime
nations ostensibly to protect their commerce from the belligerents;
but in reality to gather up the fragments of trade as they were
scattered by the warring sea powers.
The United States was fortunately located for announcing and maintaining
a new idea of neutrality, a nationality based on individual development
through peaceful methods. Time alone was needed in their isolated
geographical condition to develop an industrial strength more efficient
in Europe than an armed force at that time As Washington said, just
before issuing a proclamation warning all citizens of the United States
neither to aid nor to carry contraband goods to either belligerent:
"I believe it is the sincere wish of America to have nothing to do
with the political intrigues or the squabbles of European nations;
but, on the contrary, to exchange commodities and live in peace and
amity with all the inhabitants of the earth." To another he made the
prediction that "if we are permitted to improve without interruption
the great advantages which nature and circumstances have placed within
our reach, many years will not revolve before we may be ranked, not
only among the most respectable, but among the happiest people on this
globe." Notwithstanding the demands of the French sympathisers that
the United States should anticipate the payments due on the French
debt, should allow French privateers to be fitted out in American ports
and prizes to be brought in and sold, and regardless of the insolent
demands of the French Minister, Genet, and the haughty tone of the
Republic he represented, President Washington issued the proclamation,
April 22, 1793, warning the citizens of the United States to take no
part in the war. He was aided in maintaining this neutrality by the
continued trespass of each belligerent on American rights. If either
had suddenly shown any regard for the neutral position of the young
American Republic, sentiment would have demanded immediate war upon
the other. But when England tried to cut off the supplies which France
was receiving from America, France adopted similar tactics toward
England. Each accused the other of instituting these war measures.
Between the two millstones, American commerce bade fair to be ground
to powder. Britain, in order to recruit her navy, revived her practice
of retaking her seamen who had deserted, wherever they might be found.
She took a large number of men from American vessels, some of whom
claimed to be American citizens instead of British deserters. This
system of impressment she continued until it resulted in the War of
1812. Her refusal to yield possession of the forts on the American
side of the boundary line remained as an additional grievance.
So strong was the hostile feeling toward England, that if the French
revolutionists had not plunged into such excesses as to compel their
most ardent admirers to pause, the firm hand of Washington could
scarcely have prevented a declaration of war against Britain instead
of the temporary embargo which was adopted. As it was, a non-intercourse
measure was killed in the Senate only by the deciding vote of
Vice-President Adams. A war at this time, when the new Government had
scarcely gotten upon its feet, when it was still obliged to borrow
money from Holland to meet its expenses, when its borders were harassed
by hostile savages and its forts occupied by the enemy, would have
been ruinous if not suicidal. A foreign war would have been fatal to
the adopted policy of a disinterested neutrality, not dependent upon
force, and to an uninterrupted home development which was to continue
for over a century. Neither the clamour nor defamation of the Democratic
clubs, nor the insinuations of the opposition press that the President
was biassed toward a monarchy because he wished eventually to transform
his office into a kingship, could drive the cool Washington from his
stand of neutrality. It was such self-control which drew from England's
Minister, Canning, many years after, the tribute: "If I wished for a
guide in a system of neutrality, I should take that laid down by America
in the days of the presidency of Washington and the secretaryship of
Jefferson."
Jefferson was worn out by the onerous duties of his office during this
period of dominant foreign politics. He was harassed by constant
complaints of impressments and seizures. He was placed in an unfortunate
position by the presumptions of Genet. Distressed by the license into
which liberty in France was plunging he received small comfort in
contemplating the British monarchical tendency in America. He was
greatly disappointed because Washington, whom he had pronounced at
first "purely and zealously republican," had been so frequently
influenced by Hamilton and Knox in the Cabinet, by John Adams in the
Senate, and by John Jay in the Supreme Court. These were all Northern
men and all in favour of effective government. Most statesmen cling
more closely to the vessel during a time of party danger, but Jefferson
chose to withdraw, believing his continuance in office useless, and
trusting, as he said, that the people could not be permanently led
away from the true principles of government. After his withdrawal,
this monarchical tendency seemed to him to have no check. The President,
instead of advising war upon Great Britain both to avenge her insults
upon us and to aid the French Republic, sent John Jay to England as
a special envoy to try to secure some concessions from her. Jay
eventually sent home a treaty, which provided for the evacuation of
the Western forts, for a commission to consider payment for the slaves
carried away upon the evacuation of New York, and for the withdrawal
of the discriminating tax on American shipping; but it purchased
commercial entrance to the British West Indies at the expense of
Southern commodities. Above all, it made no mention of impressment,
of the search of American vessels, and the hindrance of their neutral
trade.
"Further concessions," wrote Jay to his friends in America, "on the part
of Great Britain cannot, in my opinion, be attained. If this treaty
fails, I despair of another. I knew and know that no attainable
settlement or treaty would give universal satisfaction. Men are more apt
to think of what they wish to have than of what is in their power to
obtain."
Hamilton, who had followed Jefferson's example and retired from
Washington's Cabinet, yet virtually remained at the head of the party,
advised the acceptance of the Jay treaty. "It closes," said he, "and
upon the whole as reasonably as could have been expected, the
controverted points between the two countries. The terms are in no way
inconsistent with national honor."
Jefferson, Madison, and their followers believed, on the contrary,
that the adoption of the treaty would violate all national honour in
practically dissolving the French alliance of 1778 and would bind the
United States to monarchical England warring on republican France. The
proclamation of neutrality from Washington had not been so hard to
bear, since it took sides with neither belligerent; but the Jay treaty,
it was said, would array America against the cause of liberty. The
French and British factions were resolved to put the matter to the
test in the Senate. From this time may be dated the beginning of
political parties in the United States. Feeling ran high. Jay was
burned in effigy in many cities and the treaty ridiculed and villified
in the Republican prints. Hamilton was mobbed in New York, and
Vice-President John Adams armed himself against personal violence.
The ratification of the Jay treaty by exactly the required two-thirds
vote in the Senate showed the relative strength of the two parties at
the time, although the Senate changes more slowly than the House. The
success of the treaty advocates allowed Washington to close his eight
years in peace with England. Pinckney, whom he had sent to Madrid at
the same time he sent Jay to London, succeeded in securing a treaty
with Spain. Nearly twenty years had been spent in gaining this first
acknowledgment from the Castilian. It provided for establishing a
permanent boundary-line between the United States and the Spanish
Floridas, arranged a control over the troublesome Indians living near
the line, and assured to American traders the privilege of using the
port of New Orleans as a place of trans-shipment for their produce.
If the port of New Orleans should be closed, another port was to be
opened to them. The Americans seemed to have succeeded, after more
than ten years' effort, in getting the privilege of using the lower
Mississippi.
This Treaty of 1795 with Spain, although overshadowed by the
contemporaneous Jay Treaty, was extremely important in American
diplomatic history. Not only did it quiet the discontent of the Western
people and terminate foreign intrigue in that quarter, but it affected,
strangely enough, the future history of the lower Mississippi. From
the time of the Pinckney Treaty, France was unceasing in her efforts
to persuade Spain to give over to her care the Louisiana province,
which embraced New Orleans, insisting that she was the only power
strong enough to check the advance of the United States and save the
rest of the Spanish possessions in America. Three years later these
arguments prevailed. Louisiana was transferred to France, and very
soon fell into the hands of the Americans.
Washington had closed some of the most troublesome foreign questions
which he had inherited from Confederation days. The new republic was
beginning to make a place for itself among the nations. Treaties of
amity and commerce had been made with all the maritime nations. American
ministers were to be seen at the principal European Courts. Britain,
France, Spain, and Holland had honoured the new power by sending
representatives to Philadelphia. The entire diplomatic horizon was
clear except in the French portion, where the Jay Treaty was bound to
give offence. Under its tacit permission, as the French sympathisers
claimed, more than three hundred American vessels were captured within
the next twelvemonth, and over one thousand American seamen impressed
by Britain. During the same period only three vessels and a few sailors
were taken by France.
In its domestic relations, also, the United States, as the time of
Washington's second term drew to a close, was exceedingly prosperous.
The new Government was in full operation. No one longer questioned its
success or its fitness for the task before it. Fears for individual
rights had been quieted by the adoption of ten amendments to the
Constitution, guaranteeing the continuance of such birthrights as
freedom of conscience, trial by jury, free possession of property, and
habeas corpus. The Union had come off victorious in its first case of
discipline. It had made practical demonstration that its laws would
be enforced and that it could use State militia regardless of State
lines in enforcing them. Its system of judges and marshals extended
over the entire domain. Its Supreme Court had sustained the claim of
a citizen of South Carolina against the State of Georgia. State
sovereignty had received a blow and national supremacy an impulse. The
Superior Court had also declared that a treaty of the United States
predominated over a State law, and that no State could confiscate a
debt owed to a British subject. According to another decision, the
United States District Courts were sustained in their admiralty
jurisdiction over the State courts. The validity and authority of a
presidential proclamation was established by the prosecution in the
circuit court at Richmond of an offender against Washington's neutrality
proclamation. But the decision during Washington's administration which
especially made for the Union was in the case of Penhallow _v_. Doane's
executors, which sustained all the actions of the old Congress both
during the Revolutionary period and under the Articles, and made its
decisions final in cases of appeal from State tribunals. Thus was the
national sovereignty, by a single decision, extended backward over
local government to the very beginnings of independency and, at the
same time, established for the future so long as the National Government
should exist.
Not only in the intangible shape of Supreme Court decisions, but in
a thousand practical particulars, the central agency was making itself
manifest to the people and gaining friends among them. The general
condition of the country was prosperous. Over ten million dollars had
been paid on the national debt. A dependable revenue was being collected
in scores of United States custom-houses scattered through the different
States. During Washington's last year in office, their receipts had
amounted to twelve and a half million dollars. The National Government
was expending a part of this money in rendering commerce safe. It was
purchasing lighthouses from the maritime States and erecting new ones.
Sites for these buildings were being ceded by the various States along
the sea-coast. Beacons, buoys, and public piers were being established
by the revenue service. Sixteen harbours within the several States
were being fortified at national expense. Plans for the improvement
of certain rivers were being considered. The Congress under the
Confederation had declared navigable waterways in the Northwest
Territory leading into the Mississippi and St. Lawrence to be free
highways, and the new Congress extended this inestimable guarantee to
all waters of the public domain. Its extension to the States would
come later from a Supreme Court decision. The improvement of these
rivers at national expense would result in time from the westward
expansion of the people.
The domain under the complete control of the Federal Government had
been increased by a cession from South Carolina. The States of Kentucky
and Tennessee had been carved out of the "territory south of the Ohio,"
and, with the State of Vermont, had been admitted to equal membership
in the Union by the sole action of the Federal Government. The national
post-routes had been extended in eight years from three thousand to
sixteen thousand miles, and the number of post-offices had been
increased to seven hundred. By severe penalties, the Government had
taught the people to respect as well as to be grateful for this branch
of its activities. It had also regulated trade with Indians not residing
within the jurisdiction of a State, and, by scattering its troops along
the border, was attempting to protect the savage from the encroachments
and debauchment of the white man, as well as to shield the white man
from the barbarity of the savage.
The presidential election machinery had been tried a third time and
had worked smoothly. Electors had been chosen in each State without
the predicted revolution and bloodshed. They had cast seventy-one votes
for John Adams and sixty-eight for Thomas Jefferson. The former, having
received the highest number of votes, was declared President and the
latter Vice-President. Perhaps some of those who had voted for Adams
may have thought the Vice-Presidency a place of training for the higher
office, and its incumbent in the line of promotion. But on examining
the geographical distribution of the vote, one sees that sectionalism
influenced the result of this third presidential election, as it did
a majority of later ones. The vote for Adams came almost entirely from
the Northern States; that for Jefferson from the Southern. Adams stood
for Federalism, for centralisation, for a continuation of the policy
of the present Administration. He and Hamilton were close friends.
They broke only when Hamilton found that he could not influence
President Adams as he had President Washington. Electors who voted for
Jefferson thought he stood for principles exactly opposite to those
of Adams. His antipathy to Hamilton was the best guarantee against
centralisation being continued under his management.
Those who had prophesied that the overwhelming majority of Washington
would result in a series of re-elections during his life, or that the
expiration of each term would find the country in some danger which
would demand his continuance, had been silenced by a farewell address
declaring his intention to retire. The pattern of two terms which he
set no President has ever dared attempt to exceed. The opponents of
his administration, those who had foreseen the coming royal reception
in the simple levee which marked his social life, or who objected to
the growing custom of celebrating his birthday as if he were a monarch,
were compelled to cease their evil prophecies when he attended, as a
spectator, the inauguration of his successor in the room of the House
of Representatives adjacent to old Independence Hall in Philadelphia
on the fourth day of March, 1797. As the incoming President wrote to
his wife, the multitude was as great as the space would contain and
not a dry eye but Washington's. Like the formative influence of a good
parent extending from generation to generation, the precedent of
Washington's voluntary retirement from the Presidency has been a rich
heritage to the American people. It may be safely said that it is
largely the cause of the pleasing contrast which exists between the
changes of administration in the United States and those in the other
American republics.