JEFFERSONIAN REFORMS
The society over whose political destiny Thomas Jefferson was to preside
for eight years was for the most part still rural and primitive.
Evidences of a higher culture were wanting outside of communities like
Philadelphia, Boston, and Charleston. Even in Philadelphia, the literary
as well as the social and political capital, the poet Moore could find
only a sacred few whom "'twas bliss to live with, and 'twas pain to
leave." American life had not yet created an atmosphere in which poetry,
or even science, could thrive. The scientific curiosity of the younger
generation does not seem to have been whetted in the least by the
startling experiments of Franklin; and the figure of Philip Freneau
stands almost alone, though Connecticut, to be sure, boasted of her
Dwight, her Trumbull, and her Barlow. The "Connecticut wits" are
interesting personalities; but the society which could read, with
anything akin to pleasure, Dwight's _Conquest of Canaan_--an epic in
eleven books with nearly ten thousand lines--was more admirable for its
physical endurance than for its poetical intuitions. Latrobe was quite
right when he wrote that in America the labor of the hand took
precedence over that of the mind.
The American people were still engaged almost exclusively in agriculture
and commerce. Manufacturing was in its infancy. In his report on
manufactures in 1791, Hamilton had named seventeen industries which had
made notable progress, but most of these were household crafts. In 1790,
Samuel Slater had duplicated the inventions of Hargreaves and Arkwright,
and had, with Moses Brown, of Rhode Island, set up a successful cotton
mill at Pawtucket; but ten years later only four factories were in
operation in the whole country.
The wars in Europe had created an unprecedented and ever-increasing
demand for American agricultural products. The price of foodstuffs like
flour and meal reached a point which made possible enormous profits.
Shipping became, therefore, the indispensable handmaid of agriculture,
as Jefferson observed. The volume of trade expanded at an astonishing
rate. The total value of exports mounted from $20,000,000 in 1790 to
$94,000,000 in the year of Jefferson's inauguration. One half of this
amount, however, represented the value of commodities like sugar,
coffee, and cocoa, which had been brought into the country for
exportation. The easy and almost certain profits of this trade attracted
capital which might otherwise have gone into manufacturing.
[Map: Distribution of Population 1800]
Shipping was stimulated also by the Navigation Act of 1789, which
imposed lower tonnage duties in American ports on vessels built or owned
by American citizens, and by the Tariff Act of the same year, which
allowed a ten per cent deduction from the customs duties levied on goods
imported in American vessels. These discriminating duties, together with
the law of 1792, which excluded foreign-built ships from American
registry, would have aided materially in the building of an American
marine, even in less prosperous times. The registered tonnage engaged in
foreign trade increased from 346,254 in 1790 to 718,549 in 1801; and in
coast trade, from 103,775 to 246,255. Yet there was an artificial
quality in this prosperity. "Temporary benefits were mistaken for
permanent advantages," writes a contemporary; "so certain were the
profits on the foreign voyages, that commerce was only pursued as an
art; ... the philosophy of commerce, if I am allowed the expression, was
totally neglected ... they [merchants] did not contemplate a period of
general peace, when each nation will carry its own productions, when
discriminations will be made in favour of domestic tonnage, when foreign
commerce will be limited to enumerated articles, and when much
circumspection will be necessary in all our commercial transactions."
It cannot be said, either, that the American farmer studied the
philosophy of agriculture. He owed his crops less to intelligent
cultivation of the soil than to provident Nature in a new and untilled
country. Both his methods and his implements were bad, and resulted in
that land spoliation which has been the bane of American industry.
"Agriculture in the South," said John Taylor, of Caroline, "does not
consist so much in cultivating land as in killing it"; and the statement
was scarcely less true when applied to the Northern farmer. The soil was
rapidly exhausted by planting the same crop year after year, for it was
easier to take up fresh land than to restore productivity to the old.
Indeed, the comments of foreign travelers at the close of the century
suggest doubts as to whether the American farmer understood the
importance of rotating his crops and of fertilizing his fields. The
farming implements in use showed little of that mechanical ingenuity
which is now characteristic of the American people. The plough was still
a clumsy affair with heavy beam and handles, and wooden mould-board. The
scythe, the sickle, and the flail were the same as their forbears had
used for centuries.
The demand of Europe for the food products of the Northern and Middle
States obscured for a time the importance of cotton as an article of
export. In 1790, South Carolina and Georgia, then the only
cotton-growing States, produced less than two million pounds of inferior
quality, none of which was exported. A decade later thirty-five million
pounds were raised, one half of which was exported; and Virginia, North
Carolina, and Tennessee had begun the cultivation. This sudden
development was due to the invention of the cotton gin by Eli Whitney,
in 1793. This machine facilitated the separation of the seed from the
fiber of the short-staple variety of cotton, which alone could be
profitably cultivated in the uplands, and thus made possible a vast
extension of the area of cotton culture.
The cotton gin came at an opportune moment for the Southern planters,
since rice and indigo were declining in importance as exports, and their
gangs of African slaves were likely to become a burden. They could now
cultivate cotton under an extensive system of agriculture with large
immediate profits. Experience proved, however, that the system was
extraordinarily wasteful, leading to a rapid exhaustion of the soil.
This ever-recurring exhaustion of the soil and demand for new land was a
potent cause of the incessant pressure of population into the virgin
lands of the Southwest, in succeeding decades.
The new President was the embodiment of the national life. Although he
was tall of stature, he was not outwardly an impressive figure. His red,
freckled face wore a frank, good-natured expression, but he lacked
dignity and poise. "His whole figure has a loose, shackling air," wrote
a contemporary. "A laxity of manner seemed shed about him ... even his
discourse partook of his personal demeanor. It was loose and rambling."
With his blue coat and red waistcoat, his green velveteen breeches, yarn
stockings, and slippers down at the heels, he seemed to an English
visitor, who saw him in 1804, "very much like a tall, large-boned
farmer." Jefferson would have been the last to resent this epithet. No
man had a more profound respect for tillers of the soil. Years before he
had written: "Generally speaking, the proportion which the aggregate of
the other classes of citizens bears in any State to that of its
husbandmen is the proportion of its sound to its healthy parts, and is a
good enough barometer whereby to measure its degree of corruption." He
rejoiced in the agricultural possibilities of America. Could he have had
his way, he would have made the republic, in the apt phrase of Mr. Henry
Adams, "an enlarged Virginia--a society to be kept pure and free by the
absence of complicated interests, by the encouragement of agriculture
and of commerce as its handmaid." He abhorred cities and factories, and
dreaded the growth of a manufacturing and capitalist class.
An agricultural society bent upon justice, Jefferson believed, could
always protect itself against the aggressions of foreign nations. "Our
commerce," he wrote soon after his inauguration, "is so valuable to
them, that they will be glad to purchase it, when the only price we ask
is to do us justice. I believe we have in our own hands the means of
peaceable coercion." In this wise the United States would set an example
to the world of a society democratically organized and capable of
unlimited moral and physical progress.
As the head of a party which had effected a revolution in government,
Jefferson's first care was to reconcile his opponents to Republican
rule. The inaugural address emphasized the principles upon which all
republican governments must be based. It is often said that these
principles might have been uttered by Washington with equal
propriety--as good Federalist doctrine. This is to mistake the
significance of the revolution which had occurred. A party had triumphed
which Federalists firmly believed inimical to all government. The
announcement that the fundamental principles to which all Americans were
attached would guide the new Administration had a meaning which it would
not have had if uttered by a Federalist President. So far did Jefferson
lean in holding out the olive branch that he ran the risk of minimizing
the revolution of 1800. To say that "every difference of opinion is not
a difference of principle. We are all Republicans, we are all
Federalists," was to contradict his often expressed conviction that his
party had saved the country from monarchy.
Aside from such generalities as that wise government consists in
restraining men from injuring one another and leaving them free to
regulate their own pursuits, the inaugural address contains no
declaration of purpose or policies. No such reticence marks Jefferson's
private letters, which are, indeed, the best expression of his political
philosophy. Nowhere is the governing purpose of his Administration
stated more clearly than in a letter written just before his
inauguration. "Let the general government be reduced to foreign concerns
only, and let our affairs be disentangled from those of all other
nations, except as to commerce, which the merchants will manage the
better the more they are left free to manage for themselves, and our
general government may be reduced to a very simple organization and a
very unexpensive one,--a few plain duties to be performed by a few
servants."
The first and most troublesome task of the Administration was to select
these few servants. Even in naming the heads of departments, the
President experienced some embarrassment, for, while Madison accepted
readily the Secretaryship of State and Albert Gallatin that of the
Treasury, the naval portfolio went begging. Robert Smith, of Maryland,
was finally persuaded to accept the post. Two New Englanders, Henry
Dearborn and Levi Lincoln, became Secretary of War and Attorney-General
respectively. Far more difficult was the distribution of the lesser
federal offices. Had Jefferson been free to follow his own inclination,
he would probably have made few removals, even though such a course
would have seemed somewhat inconsistent with his belief that Federalists
were monarchists at heart. He yielded slowly and reluctantly to the
demands of his partisans for their share of the offices; but he
professed to look forward with joy to that state of things when the only
questions concerning a candidate shall be, Is he honest? Is he capable?
Is he faithful to the Constitution?
The embarrassment of the President was all the greater because removals
from office were likely to defeat his policy of conciliating the
Federalists; and because the bestowal of offices was likely to alienate
some local faction, as in New York, where the Clintons and the
Livingstons were fighting the faction led by Burr. Once started on the
policy of removal, the descent was easy. The point of equilibrium
between the parties was soon passed. By the end of Jefferson's second
term of office, the civil service was as preponderatingly Republican as
it had been Federalist in 1800. It cannot be denied that Jefferson
opened the door to the spoils system; but it should be stated also that
he endeavored to make fitness a qualification for office. The charge
that offices were given indiscriminately to "wild Irishmen" and French
refugees, is not sustained by the facts. On the whole Jefferson's
appointments were not inferior in character to those of his
predecessors. The vicious aspects of the spoils system did not appear
for a generation.
As an opposition party the Republicans had always declaimed vociferously
against the powers wielded by the President. Jefferson sincerely wished
to avoid what he termed the monarchical tendencies of his predecessors;
and as an earnest of his intentions he abandoned not only levees but
also the practice of addressing Congress in a speech, since Republicans
held this custom a reprehensible imitation of the British speech from
the throne. Yet with characteristic indirection, Jefferson assigned
other reasons for substituting a written message for the usual personal
address. "I have had principal regard," said he, "to the convenience of
the Legislature, to the economy of their time, to their relief from the
embarrassment of immediate answers, on subjects not yet fully before
them, and to the benefits thence resulting to public affairs." It is
highly probable that Jefferson had his own convenience also in mind, for
he was not a ready nor an impressive speaker.
The keynote of the reforms which the President suggested tactfully to
Congress was economy. It was to effect a reduction of the debt, indeed,
that Jefferson had called Gallatin to the head of the Treasury. Eight
years later he wrote: "The discharge of the debt is vital to the
destinies of our government; we shall never see another President and
Secretary of the Treasury making all other objects subordinate to this."
By laborious calculation Gallatin reached the conclusion that if
$7,300,000 were set aside each year, the debt, principal and interest,
could be discharged within sixteen years. But the party was clamoring
for the reduction of taxes. The problem before the Secretary of the
Treasury was how to accomplish these antithetical purposes. The most
unpopular tax was unquestionably the excise. If this were cut out and
the estimated appropriation for the reduction of the debt were made, the
Government would be unable to live within its income. The only
alternative was to reduce expenditures. It was at this point that
Jefferson's "chaste reformation" of the government was to begin. Under
the Federalist regime, in anticipation of war with France, the
expenditures for the army and navy had mounted to six millions of
dollars, nearly double the normal expenditure of those departments. All
good Republicans would welcome a proposal to reverse the militant policy
of the Federalists, which, indeed, the return of peace seemed to make
unnecessary. It was agreed that the expenditures for the army and navy
should be kept below two million dollars.
Notwithstanding Jefferson's wish to avoid everything savoring of
executive dictation, he could not abdicate his position as leader of his
party. Throughout his first term, at least, he was the master mind
directing the policies of the party, in ways which were not less
effective because they were personal and indirect. The leadership in the
House of Representatives, which then overshadowed the Senate, fell to
Southern rather than to Northern Republicans. In close touch with the
Speaker, Nathaniel Macon, of North Carolina, and with the chairman of
the Committee of Ways and Means, the eccentric John Randolph, of
Roanoke, the Administration scored comparatively easy victories over the
Federalists on matters of financial policy.
The repeal of the Judiciary Act of 1801 was the second task which the
President laid upon the shoulders of Congress. No act of the outgoing
Administration had given greater offense. Jefferson expressed a general
impression when he declared that the Federalists, driven from the
legislative and executive branches of the Government, had retreated into
the judiciary as their stronghold. "There the remains of federalism are
to be preserved and fed from the Treasury; and from that battery all the
works of republicanism are to be beaten down and destroyed." But no
suggestion of this animus toward the Federalist judges appeared in the
studied moderation of the President's message. The President contented
himself with presenting a record of the causes decided by the courts, in
order that Congress might "judge of the proportion which the institution
bears to the business it has to perform."
[Map: Vote on Repeal of the Judiciary Act House of
Representatives March 2, 1802]
Taking their cue from the President, the Republican leaders in Congress
urged the repeal of the Judiciary Act on the ground that the new courts
had not justified their existence. Republican economy required that
unnecessary, and therefore improper, institutions should be abolished.
Certain bolder spirits like William Giles, of Virginia, however, frankly
admitted a fear of the "ultimate censorial and controlling power" of the
courts over all the departments of the Government--a control "over
legislation, execution, and decision, and irresponsible to the people."
In the background of the active mind of this Virginian was hostility to
the new courts "because of their tendency to produce a gradual
demolition of State Courts." If this last were the real reason for the
repeal of the act, consistency should have led the Republicans to revise
the whole judiciary system from the Supreme Court down. But for such
radical action few, if any, were prepared. The repealing act passed the
House by a party vote of fifty-nine to thirty-two, and was signed by the
President on March 8, 1802.
In the course of the acrimonious debate over the judiciary, Federalists
had challenged the constitutional right and power of Congress to vacate
the judgeships, asserting that the plain intent of the Constitution is
to place the judges beyond the power of Congress by prescribing a tenure
of office during good behavior. The challenge was disquieting, for with
John Marshall on the bench of the Supreme Court, the Republican
reformation of the courts might be brought to naught by an adverse
decision. A supplementary act was therefore passed which prevented the
Supreme Court from holding its usual session. It was hoped that when the
court met in the following year, Federalist partisanship would have lost
its violence.
Two obnoxious acts of the late Administration--the Alien and the
Sedition Acts--had expired by limitation. Congress suffered the Alien
Enemies Act to remain upon the statute book, but insisted upon the
repeal of the Naturalization Act of the year 1798. The time of residence
required of aliens before they could acquire citizenship was again fixed
at five years. With these rather meager performances, the reforms of the
Republicans came to an end.
Perhaps none of the last appointments of John Adams had so exasperated
his successor as that of John Marshall as Chief Justice of the Supreme
Court. Jefferson had an invincible repugnance for Marshall; and the
feeling was cordially reciprocated. Between these men there were
temperamental differences as wide as the ocean. Moreover, Jefferson
entertained the belief that all appointments made by Adams after the
results of the election were known were nullities, on the theory that a
retiring President might not bind his successor. Two years later, in
1803, in the famous case of _Marbury_ v. _Madison_, the Supreme Court,
speaking through the Chief Justice, took sharp issue with the President.
William Marbury had applied to the court for a _mandamus_ to compel
Madison, Secretary of State, to deliver his commission as justice of the
peace, which, it was alleged, had been duly signed and sealed, but never
delivered. The Supreme Court held that Marbury was entitled to his
commission. "To withhold his commission, therefore," said Marshall, "is
an act deemed by the Court not warranted by law, but violative of a
legal vested right." Let President Thomas Jefferson take notice of his
constitutional obligations.
The case of _Marbury_ v. _Madison_, however, has a much deeper
significance for constitutional history. Having asserted the right of
Marbury to his commission, the court disappointed expectations by
refusing to issue the writ of _mandamus_, on the ground that the power
to issue such writs was not conferred by the Constitution upon the
Supreme Court as part of its original jurisdiction. And as the Judiciary
Act of 1789 had conferred this authority, the court was impelled to
declare this provision of the act unwarranted by the Constitution and
therefore void. For the first time the Supreme Court asserted its power
to pronounce an act of Congress repugnant to the Constitution not to be
law, but void and of no effect. In substantiating its position, the
court did not inquire into the difficult question whether the framers of
the Constitution intended or expected the national judiciary to exercise
this authority. It was enough for the purposes of the court that the
Constitution was the supreme and paramount law of the land, established
by the people of the United States. The Constitution defines and limits
the powers of government it must then control any legislative act
repugnant to it. "Certainly all those who have framed written
constitutions contemplate them as forming the fundamental and paramount
law of the nation, and, consequently, the theory of every such
government must be, that an act of the legislature, repugnant to the
constitution, is void."
With equal certitude the court declared that it was the province and
duty of the judiciary to say what the law is. "Those who apply the rule
to particular cases, must of necessity expound and interpret that rule.
If two laws conflict with each other, the courts must decide on the
operation of each." So if a law stood in opposition to the Constitution,
the court must decide which of these conflicting rules governs the case.
"This is of the very essence of judicial duty." Moreover, the judges may
not shut their eyes to the Constitution and see only the law, for they
are bound by oath to administer justice not according to the laws alone,
but "agreeably to the Constitution and the laws of the United States."
"Thus, the particular phraseology of the Constitution of the United
States confirms and strengthens the principle, supposed to be essential
to all written constitutions, that a law repugnant to the Constitution
is void; and that courts, as well as other departments, are bound by
that instrument."
On two other occasions the hostility of the Republican Administration
provoked a trial of strength with the Federalist judiciary. The
impeachment in 1804 of John Pickering, District Judge in New Hampshire,
on charges of intoxication and habits unfitting him for his duties,
amounted to little short of a tragedy. When the trial opened, Judge
Pickering did not appear, but representations made by his son showed
beyond a doubt that he was and had been for two years of unsound mind.
To convict a man of misdemeanors for which he was not morally
responsible seemed a travesty on justice. Yet there was no other
constitutional device for removing him. Though Pickering never appeared
in person, the managers for the House pressed the prosecution; and
rather than leave the administration of justice to a demented judge, the
Senate pronounced the unhappy man "guilty as charged," and resolved
that he should be removed from office.
On the same day that the Senate reached this monstrous decision, March
12, 1804, the House voted to impeach Justice Samuel Chase, of the
Supreme Court. While the defiant words of Chief Justice Marshall in the
Marbury case were still rankling in Jefferson's bosom, Justice Chase had
gone out of his way to attack the Administration, in addressing a grand
jury at Baltimore. The repeal of the Judiciary Act, he had declared, had
shaken the independence of the national judiciary to its foundations.
"Our republican Constitution," said he, "will sink into a mobocracy--the
worst of all possible governments." To appreciate the effect of this
partisan outburst upon the President, one must recall that Chase was the
judge who had presided at the trials of Fries and of Callender, and who
had left the bench to electioneer for John Adams in the campaign of
1800. Jefferson immediately wrote to Nicholson, who was managing
Pickering's impeachment, raising the question whether "this seditious
and official attack on the principles of our Constitution" ought to go
unpunished.
Such was Jefferson's way of initiating the measures of the
Administration. His supporters in the House were not over-eager to take
up the gauntlet, but as usual the wishes of the President prevailed. The
management of the impeachment of Chase fell to John Randolph, who was as
ill-fitted by temperament for the difficult task as a man could be.
Instead of impeaching Chase for his indiscretion at Baltimore, Randolph
dragged into the indictment his conduct on the bench during the trials
of Fries and of Callender, and certain errors in law which he was
alleged to have committed. The effect of these latter items was to range
all the bench on the side of Chase, for if a mere mistake in judgment
was a proper ground of impeachment, no judge was safe in his tenure.
Justice Chase secured some of the best legal talent in the country to
conduct his defense; and the trial assumed from the outset a spectacular
character from the personalities involved.
The managers of the impeachment were far from consistent in their
conception of the nature of impeachable offenses. Randolph, Campbell,
and Giles held that an impeachment was "a kind of inquest into the
conduct of an officer merely as it regards his office," rather than a
criminal prosecution. A judge, in short, might be removed for a mistake
in the administration of the law. Nicholson rejected this theory,
contending that impeachment was essentially a criminal prosecution which
aimed at not only the removal but also the punishment of the offender.
Yet the managers had not specified any offense which could be called a
"high crime" or "misdemeanor" within the meaning of the Constitution.
The counsel for Justice Chase, on the other hand, held consistently to
the position that a judge might not be impeached or removed from office
for anything short of an indictable offense, an offense indictable under
the known law of the land.
From the first, the legal counsel for the accused were more than a
match for the managers. Randolph's erratic course culminated in an
impassioned but incoherent speech which closed the argument for the
prosecution and left the outcome hardly in doubt. Not one of the
articles of impeachment received the two-thirds majority which was
necessary to convict. The eighth article, which touched upon the real
provocation for the trial,--the harangue at Baltimore,--received the
highest vote; but nearly one fourth of the Republican Senators refused
to sustain the managers. The acquittal of Chase was, therefore, a
judgment against Randolph. He never recovered his lost prestige as the
leader of his party in the House. Jefferson could accept Randolph's
downfall with equanimity, but not the failure of the impeachment. Years
afterward he wrote, bitterly that impeachment was "an impracticable
thing, a mere scarecrow." From this time on, said he, the judges held
office without any sense of responsibility, led "by a crafty chief-judge
who sophisticates the law to his mind by the turn of his own reasoning."
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
Although the general histories contain much that is important for
an understanding of the administrations of Jefferson, the
authority _par excellence_ is Henry Adams, _History of the United
States of America_ (9 vols., 1889-91). Chapters I-VI of the first
volume contain an excellent description of American society about
1800; but for the details of social and economic life the reader
will turn to McMaster. A briefer account of the Jeffersonian
regime may be found in Channing, _The Jeffersonian System,
1801-1811_ (in _The American Nation_, vol. 12, 1906). Henry Adams
has also contributed two biographies to this period: _Life of
Albert Gallatin_ (1878), and _John Randolph_(1882). The Federalist
point of view is admirably presented in S. E. Morison, _The Life
and Letters of Harrison Gray Otis_ (2 vols., 1913). The larger
biographies of Jefferson are: H. S. Randall, _Life of Thomas
Jefferson_ (3 vols., 1858), commonly referred to as the standard
biography, though exceedingly partisan; G. Tucker, _Life of Thomas
Jefferson_ (2 vols., 1837); and James Parton, _Life of Thomas
Jefferson_(1874).