THE FIRST STATE PROTESTS
The autumn of 1798 marked the extreme limits to which the leaders and
party intentionally strengthening the Union were allowed to go at
present. It was the culmination of Federalist power. The critical
turning-point, the momentary pause before the backward swing of the
pendulum, was marked by popular disorders. The first heat of party
passion, the tendency toward centralisation in ten years of Federalism,
and ignorance of the extent to which the party might go, had combined
to bring the country to the verge of actual disruption. The black
cockades (English) fought with the tricoloured cockades (French) on
a public fast-day in the streets of Philadelphia. Republicans,
attempting to nail up petitions for the repeal of the Alien and Sedition
laws on the doors of Christ Church, were set upon by the Federalists
and driven away. The President received anonymous letters threatening
to burn Philadelphia. Citizens packed their valuables in readiness for
flight. Numerous incipient riots occurred in New York and other cities.
While the people of the French faction were thus expressing their
disapproval of the administration measures, their leaders were casting
about to find the most potent remedy against such abuse of the national
power. Even those who, like Madison, believed in the efficacy of the
new Government had not expected to see it turned into an agency for
the oppression of the individual. To their minds, a continuance of the
present course must mean the complete loss of individual and State
liberty, or the overthrow of the Union of States, which had been gained
only after great effort. An appeal to the ballot was one remedy; but
more than two years must elapse before a change of administration was
possible. The States, in forming the Union, had thrown about themselves
many safeguards. It was high time to test their efficiency.
In the debates on the Alien and kindred measures, the ratification
acts of the different States had been quoted by Republican members to
show that the States had granted certain powers to the Union, and that
the States alone could judge when those powers had been transcended.
The State was the natural agency for the protection of the individual
in this hour of danger. To an alarmed resident of Delaware, Jefferson
offered an asylum in the State of Virginia, where the "laws of the
land, administered by upright judges, would protect you from any
exercise of power unauthorized by the Constitution of the United States.
The _habeas corpus_ secures every man here, alien or citizen, against
everything which is not law, whatever shape it may assume."
Browbeaten, as Jefferson explained later, by a bold and overwhelming
majority in Congress, the Republicans resolved to retire from that
field, and to take a stand in their State Legislatures. The legislative,
rather than the executive or judicial branch of the States, represented
the people of the United States dwelling in the various States. The
State Legislatures had sent delegates to form the Constitution, and
the State Legislatures had called the State conventions which adopted
it. In the State Legislatures the true friends of the Union, as the
Jeffersonians called themselves, would endeavour to find an agency for
protection against the unwarranted attack of the National Government.
Four members of Congress at this time actually withdrew, forming a
striking precedent for sixty years later. Although sometimes charged
with planning a forcible resistance to the central power, the
Republicans as a whole contemplated nothing more than concerted action
in resolutions to be adopted by the State Legislatures. "I would not
do anything at this moment," advised Jefferson, who naturally assumed
the leadership, "which should commit us further, but reserve ourselves
to shape our future measures, or no measures, by the events which may
happen."
Selecting North Carolina as a strong Republican State to take the lead,
Jefferson drew up a set of resolutions setting forth the doctrine of
protest. However, chancing to meet some Kentucky politicians visiting
in Virginia, he gave the paper to them. Their State offered advantages
superior to North Carolina for inaugurating the movement. Her history
from infancy had been one continued struggle for political rights.
"Kentucky," said her governor in his message at the opening of the
session of the State Legislature following the passage of the Alien
and Sedition acts, "remote from the contaminating influences of European
politics, is steady to the principles of pure Republicanism and will
ever be the asylum of her persecuted votaries." The customary reply
of the House took the shape of nine lengthy resolutions, rewritten
from the set drawn up by Jefferson. They were adopted by both Houses
of the State Legislature, signed by the governor, and sent as an appeal
to the "co-states in the federal Union." Assuming that the States and
the Union had made a compact whereby the latter had been given certain
limited powers for definite purposes, the remaining powers being
reserved to the States, the resolutions declared that whenever the
General Government assumed undelegated powers, its acts were
unauthoritative, void, and of no force; and that, as in all cases of
compact having no common judge, each party had a right to judge of
infractions and redress. This hypothesis being assumed, the remainder
of the resolutions supports it with arguments, using generally the
ones employed by the opposition speakers in Congress to prove that the
Alien and Sedition laws were unconstitutional.
In a comprehensive view of the history of the making of the Union,
these resolutions are of great importance. They form the first note
of individualistic protest against the growing power of the Union. To
them one must look for the first suggestion of the means to be employed.
Unfortunately for this purpose, they are declamatory rather than
constructive. They seek to arouse passion rather than to lay out a
definite line of resistance. The only suggestion of immediate action
is an instruction to the Kentucky Representatives to attempt to secure
the repeal of the encroaching acts at the next session of Congress and
an appeal to the other States to "concur in declaring these acts void
and of no force."
Madison was no doubt in touch with the inception of the Kentucky
Resolutions. To him was given the task of drawing up those to be adopted
in the Virginia Legislature. So critical had the times become that he
had resigned from Congress to accept a seat in his State Legislature.
Although he composed a set of resolutions, as Jefferson had requested,
he thought the proper remedy lay in a convention of delegates from the
States rather than in the State Legislatures. The Constitution had
been formed by a convention and not by the Legislatures. Therefore,
to avoid having the Legislature seem presumptious, he had used only
"general expressions," as he said, in his resolutions. "In case of a
deliberate, palpable and dangerous exercise of other powers not granted
by the said compact, the states, who are parties thereto," said his
resolutions, "have the right and are in duty bound to interpose for
arresting the progress of the evil." Upon this assumption, a protest
was made against the Alien acts, which united unconstitutionally the
legislative and judicial powers to those of the Executive; also against
the Sedition law, which imposed a punishment expressly forbidden by
one of the amendments to the Constitution.
Upon the question of a proper remedy, Madison went no farther than to
beg that the other States would take "the necessary and proper measures"
to maintain the rights and liberties reserved to the State or the
people. But he lived to see this protracted warfare between the States
and the Union reach a critical point, when it was desirable to know
precisely what early protestors had meant. Madison explained that the
resolutions advised only interposition by all the States. The plural
form was universally used, and resistance by no one of them planned.
No revolutionary action was contemplated. The legal remedies to be
found in "interposition" he enumerated as remonstrances, instructions,
elections, impeachment, amendment to the Constitution, and finally,
if the usurpations became intolerable, a recourse to the right of
revolution. Whatever hope Jefferson and Madison entertained of a united
effort on the part of State Legislatures against the Alien and Sedition
acts was dashed by the dissentient replies from all the New England
States and by the lack of replies from the Southern States. They
accounted for it by the tardiness with which State officials change,
not always representing public opinion. The ease with which they carried
all the States except seven in the ensuing election of 1800 enabled
them to give the resolutions a large share of the credit for bringing
about the victory.
In the midst of the war fever, Congress assembled in December, 1798,
in the city of Philadelphia. No such glorious pomp and circumstance
of war had ever been witnessed at the opening of a session. When
President Adams read his address from the Speaker's platform to the
assembled Houses, notifying them that France showed no inclination to
yield, there sat at his right hand George Washington, summoned from
Mount Vernon to become the Lieutenant-General and Commander-in-Chief
of the provisional army against the Republic of France. Near him sat
the new major-generals, Alexander Hamilton and Charles C. Pinckney,
the latter one of the rejected envoys to France. Soon after the opening,
Washington returned to his home, leaving Hamilton in command, an
arrangement not consented to without reluctance by Adams, and destined
to bear fruit later. The war measures were continued by the so-called
"Logan act" providing punishment for any citizen of the United States
who should, without authority, carry on communication with a foreign
government with an intent to influence any action. It was brought out
by Doctor Logan, a well-meaning Republican of Pennsylvania, who had
unofficially gone to France in an effort to avert the threatened war
and had held communication to this end with Talleyrand, Merlin, the
First Director, and others. With the suspicion common to the times,
the Federalists thought he was endeavouring to act as mediator or
plotting some league with France in the event of war. This act marked
the extreme limit, to the Republican mind, of the tyranny of the Central
Government over citizens of a State.
It might have been fortunate if matters had been put to the test in
1798 and the following year. If resistance had assumed definite shape
it would have been successful or it would have been overcome. The
history of the Union would have been put forward more than half a
century, or it would never have been written. For the time being, each
side seemed inclined to go to the extreme point. The Federalists had
taken their places in the Congress determined to ignore the scores of
petitions for the repeal of the acts. They refused to debate motions
to rescind, and came to successful votes as a "silent legislature."
Another provisional army was authorised and further additions made to
the regular army and navy. On the other hand, the Legislature of
Kentucky, rendered even more defiant by the timid assurance in the
replies of a few legislatures to her appeal and the decidedly
unfavourable answers of a large number, renewed her resolutions of the
preceding year in even stronger language. One new phrase, that "a
nullification by those sovereigns of all unauthorized acts done under
color of that instrument is the rightful remedy," was important because
of the later use made of it. Jefferson had used "nullification" in his
draft of 1798. It was no stronger than other words and phrases, yet,
thirty years later, the words "interpose" and "protest" were passed
by as too feeble, and "nullification" adopted as the proper term for
open resistance, But that Kentucky did not mean forcible resistance
is proved by her accompanying statement that she would bow to the laws
of the Union because she was a party to the Federal compact. The
Virginia Assembly reaffirmed its principles in resolutions and an
address to the people the following year.
In the midst of the warlike preparations, when the two republics seemed
determined to test the patience of each other; when the Jeffersonians
were bound hand and foot by the war craze; when Hamilton awaited the
word which would at last league his country with England against French
fanaticism and would also bring a realisation of his dream of a military
command--in the midst of all this, President Adams, in February,
suddenly sent to the Senate the nomination of the American Minister
at The Hague to be an envoy to France! The Federalists were dumfounded
at his change of position. If negotiations were renewed, peace might
follow. Peace with France would mean hostility with England, if not
a revival of the danger of absorption by French intrigue. Proud in
their strength, the Federalists had assembled only to be undone and
their warlike preparations made into an idle show by the actions of
this headstrong John Adams, who insisted upon being the President of
his own administration, and who would not take seasonable advice from
his party. He had done what the members of his Cabinet had feared,
although they now pretended to be surprised. For three months past he
had invited suggestions for envoys in case France should yield, had
drawn up a form of proposed treaty, and had ridiculed the idea of a
French invasion of the United States. "There is no more prospect of
seeing a French army here than in heaven," he said. Enforced by
Hamilton, who "chanced to be present," the members of his Cabinet had
wrestled with him for hours in a private conference at Trenton to turn
him from his purpose of conciliation rather than war. He informed them,
as he later informed Congress, that he had received assurance from
Talleyrand that if another representative should be sent to France
from the United States he would undoubtedly be received with the respect
due to the representative of a free, independent, and powerful nation,
thus using almost the precise words of Adams.
By the time the new envoys, whose appointment the Federalists did not
dare openly to oppose, reached France, the Directory had fallen and
Napoleon was First Consul. He saw the usefulness of the United States
to his plans as a friend rather than an enemy, and was ready to bury
all grievances in a treaty. The three envoys, Murray, Ellsworth, and
Davie, had no difficulty in getting the United States relieved from
the treaty obligation of 1778 and in arranging compensation for the
damages inflicted on American commerce. Thus was closed by the Treaty
of 1800 the series of events which came so near involving in war the
two nations, the allies of a few years before.
Viewed as a part of the diplomatic history of the United States, this
war of 1798 is simply an incident. In the story of the Union it plays
a greater part. Regardless of its disastrous results to the Federalists,
it undoubtedly first rallied the people to the standard of a union for
the common defence against a foreign foe. The old Revolutionary spirit
had been revived. A national respect had been created in the eyes of
its constituents. This was essential to a proper respect in the eyes
of other nations.
This national spirit, if the Administration had remained in the hands
of the Federalists, might have grown too rapidly for the maintenance
of a proper equilibrium. Hamilton, unhampered by an Adams, would have
made the United States a party to European alliances, dangerous to
American originality and American neutrality. Self-government would
have assumed some form of European imitation. Drawn into the Napoleonic
wars as allies of Britain, nothing but a miracle could have saved them
from the legitimacy-restoring Congress of Vienna. What changes in
American history might have followed! The desire of Britain for the
Louisiana country, the claim of Spain to the Mississippi below the
Ohio, silenced but not abandoned after 1783, the necessity for
neutrality as a basis for the Monroe Doctrine, and the development of
America free from the burden of a war-basis defence, must be considered
in this connection. So many are the conditions and menaces that
speculation pauses at predicting the results if the great law of
reaction had not manifested itself at this juncture.
The decision of John Adams to renew negotiations with France thus
became a turning-point in history, because it precipitated the
threatened schism among the Federalists, led to the downfall of the
party, and turned the National Government from centralisation toward
decentralisation. Although Adams recognised all this, he nevertheless
defended his decision as the most disinterested and meritorious action
in his life. Years after, he said that he desired no other inscription
on his gravestone than, "Here lies John Adams, who took upon himself
the responsibility of the peace with France, in 1800." At the time he
showed no spirit of yielding to his advisers, who declared his action
"the great shade on the presidential escutcheon." They said they had
been delivered to the enemy in the house of their friend. Hamilton
confessed that the news of the mission would astonish him if anything
from that quarter could astonish. Having complete mastery over the
President's Cabinet and with a large following in Congress, Hamilton
had become almost a dictator in the party during the war craze and the
enforcement of the Alien and Sedition laws. With the talent of a born
leader, he assumed charge of the War Department during the two years
that he was a major-general. Adams resented every assumption and attempt
at dictation.
"If any one entertains the idea that because I am a President of three
votes only I am in the power of a party," said he, "they shall find that
I am no more so than the Constitution forces upon me. If combinations of
senators, generals, and heads of departments shall be formed such as I
cannot resist, and measures are demanded of me that I cannot adopt, my
remedy is plain and certain."
Although not driven to resignation, as here hinted, Adams was from
this time sentenced to be cut off with one term by Hamilton and the
party. Meanwhile, Hamilton gave out what his policy would have been
in executing the Alien and Sedition laws. He would have collected a
"clever force" of the national militia and marched them toward Virginia.
There was an obvious excuse for this action in her resolutions, he
said. Then he would have measures taken by the National Government to
arrest some alien and so put Virginia to the test of resistance. To
the Speaker of the House, he outlined the steps necessary to be taken
if the Union was to be preserved. It was the swan song of extreme
centralisation. He would make the national judiciary districts much
smaller, greatly increasing the number and efficiency of the judges,
and also have national justices of the peace in every county. He would
give the Central Government power to construct roads and canals, would
increase the taxes, build a powerful navy, and make permanent the
provisional army. To reduce the dangerous power of the great States
and to curb their rivalry with the nation, he would divide them into
smaller States.
It was entirely too late for such unionising suggestions. They had
gone out of fashion for sixty years to come. Reaction had set in.
Public sentiment, frequently reproached for its fickleness, but in
reality protective in its vacillation, demanded a change. Federalism
had lost prestige. Its leaders were at enmity. Washington, its
unconscious mainstay, was dead.
"The irreparable loss of an estimable man removes a control which was
felt and was very salutary," wrote Hamilton to a foreign correspondent.
"At home, everything is in the main well; except as to the perverseness
and capriciousness of one and the spirit and faction of many. The
leading friends of the government are in a sad dilemma."
The first reaction against an enlarged and all-powerful America had
been reached in the history of parties. The drag on the chariot was
now to be felt.
The Republicans were in correspondingly high spirits over the
prospective downfall of the party which had so far perverted the
administration of the National Government from the path which it should
have taken. Republican rhymesters exhausted their wit in describing how
"Brave Hamilton, our warrior bold,
Strove Adams in the chair to hold,
By mustering sense, and spleen, and wit,
To prove him totally unfit."
Madison thought a steady adherence to the principles of prudence all
that was needed. "It would be doubly unwise," he wrote to the impatient
Monroe, now Governor of Virginia, "to depart from this course at a
moment when the party which has done the mischief is so industriously
co-operating in its own destruction." If anything was wanting to assure
the defeat of the Federalists, it was supplied in the publication of
"A Letter from Alexander Hamilton Concerning the Public Conduct and
Character of John Adams, Esq., President of the United States." The
letter laid bare most mercilessly the weakness in the nature and the
defects in the administration of John Adams. Material for the recital
had been furnished Hamilton by his tools in the Cabinet. Hamilton had
his revenge on Adams, but he paid dearly for it in the estimation of
every non-partisan American. Simply because the national structure was
not being built to his own plans he would endanger the fabric by giving
it over to those whose theories tended to weakening instead of
strengthening it.