CHAPTER I.

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[Illustration: M Van Buren]

INQUIRY

INTO

THE ORIGIN AND COURSE

OF

POLITICAL PARTIES

IN THE

UNITED STATES.

BY THE LATE EX-PRESIDENT

MARTIN VAN BUREN.

Nam quis nescit primam esse historiæ legem ne quid falsi dicere

audeat? deinde, ne quid veri non audeat? Ne qua suspicio gratiæ

sit in scribendo? Ne qua simultatis? CICERO. _De Orat._ Lib. II.

EDITED BY HIS SONS.

NEW YORK:

PUBLISHED BY HURD AND HOUGHTON.

1867.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1867, by

SMITH T. VAN BUREN,

in the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the Southern District of

New York.

RIVERSIDE, CAMBRIDGE:

STEREOTYPED AND PRINTED BY

H. O. HOUGHTON AND COMPANY.

INTRODUCTION.

The following pages originally formed part of a much larger work, from

the general course and design of which they constituted a digression. It

seems therefore proper to preface them by a few words of explanation,

relating chiefly to the work from which they are now separated.

Mr. Van Buren, eighth President of the United States, on the expiration

of his term of office, in the year 1841, retired to a country residence

near Kinderhook, (the place of his birth,) in the State of New York,

which he had then recently purchased, and to which he gave the name of

Lindenwald. Here, with infrequent and brief interruptions, he continued

to reside for some twenty years, or until his death, which occurred in

July, 1862. Although numbering nearly sixty years of age,--two-thirds of

which had been years of almost incessant activity and excitement,

professional, political, and social,--at the period of his withdrawal to

the tranquil scenes and occupations of rural life, he embraced the

latter with an ardor and a relish that surprised not a little the

friends who had known him only as prominent in, and apparently engrossed

by, the public service, but which were happy results of early

predilections, an even and cheerful temper, fitting him for and

constantly inclining him to the enjoyment of domestic intercourse, a

hearty love of Nature, and a sound constitution of mind and body. After

twelve years of the period of his retirement had passed, happily and

contentedly, he began to apply a portion of his "large leisure" to a

written review of his previous life, and to recording his recollections

of his contemporaries and of his times. To this work, as he intimates in

its opening paragraphs, he was mainly induced by the solicitations of

life-long friends, who, (it may be here added,) knowing the importance

and interest of the scenes and incidents of his extended public career,

and the extraordinary influence he had exerted upon public men and

questions of his time, and perceiving the tenaciousness of his memory

and the charm of his conversation unimpaired by the lapse of seventy

years, confidently anticipated a work of much interest in such a record

as they urged upon him to make.

But although Mr. Van Buren so far complied with these suggestions as to

set about writing his memoirs, he was not inclined to pursue the

employment as a task, or to devote more of his time to it than could be

easily spared from other occupations in which he was interested, and in

order to keep himself from every temptation to exceed this limitation,

he resolved, at the start, that no part of what he might write should be

published in his lifetime. The work which he had commenced, was thus

exposed to frequent interruption, even by unimportant accidents, and at

length was altogether arrested by the serious illness of a member of his

family, and by the failure of his own health, which rapidly supervened.

It resulted that the recorded memoirs of his life and times closed

abruptly when he had brought them down to the date of 1833-34, and that

he never revised for publication what he had written. There is evidence

that he contemplated such a revision when he should reach a convenient

stage of his progress, but from the circumstances under which he wrote

(which have been alluded to) as well as from his comparatively small

interest in the mere graces of composition, the _labor limæ_ was

continually postponed, and the "flighty purpose" was never o'ertaken.

When, after his death, the subject of the disposition of these memoirs

was presented to his sons, to whom his papers had been intrusted, they

were embarrassed by questions as to the manner and form in which it was

their duty to give them the publicity intended by their author. Should

they, notwithstanding unaffected distrust of their qualifications, and a

deep sense of special unfitness arising from natural partiality,

undertake to continue the history of their father's life from the point

at which his own account had ceased, to supply, as far as they could,

the gaps in the previous narrative which had been left by him for

further examination or after-construction, and to give to the work the

extensive revision which, in the state in which it came to their hands,

it seemed to require? Or should they publish the unfinished and

unrevised memoirs, as they were left, _as a fragment_ and a

contribution, so far as they might go, to the history of the country?

Would one or the other of these be such a history of the life of a

statesman who had filled a large space in the observation of his

countrymen, and who had exerted a controlling influence in the

Government during interesting and critical periods, as would answer a

natural and just public expectation, or satisfy the many warm friends

who survived him? While occupied with the consideration of these

questions, they received a note from Charles H. Hunt, Esq., informing

them that he felt strongly inclined to write a Biography of Mr. Van

Buren, and requesting the use for that purpose of any materials within

their power to furnish. An additional paragraph of Mr. Hunt's note,

referring to the rumor of writings left by Mr. Van Buren, showed that he

had been entirely misinformed as to the nature and extent of those

writings; he, in effect, supposing them to consist solely of

disquisitions on various political questions.

The communication of Mr. Hunt not only superseded the necessity of

deciding between the alternative propositions mentioned, but afforded

them in all respects great satisfaction. His ripe and graceful

scholarship, sound judgment, and pure taste were widely known, and

especially to all who, like themselves, enjoyed familiar acquaintance

with him. He had, moreover, recently advanced by a single step to the

first rank among American biographers--a position readily accorded by

recognized authority in the republic of letters, at home and abroad, to

the author of the "Life of Edward Livingston." To such hands they could

not hesitate to commit the work proposed, so far as they were able to

control it, feeling assured that, while Mr. Hunt would bring to its

performance the disinterestedness and impartiality indispensable to give

it value as a history, and which are with difficulty maintained in

family memorials, his inclination to undertake it was evidence of a

general sympathy with, or at least respect for, Mr. Van Buren's

character and public career sufficient to authorize the relinquishment

to him of the materials in their possession. Accordingly the fragmentary

memoirs, with all the correspondence and other manuscripts applicable to

his purpose, and within their reach, were committed to Mr. Hunt, by Mr.

Van Buren's representatives, with entire satisfaction and confidence

that they will be used with fidelity and skill in the construction of

the work he has undertaken,--a confidence that will be shared by Mr. Van

Buren's surviving friends and by the public.

The main body of manuscripts left by Mr. Van Buren having been thus

applied, some question remained in regard to that portion now published.

Begun as an episode, the subject grew on the author's hands (as he

explains in a note) to such proportions as to seem to stand more

properly as a distinct production, and although, like the principal

work, incomplete, it had been nevertheless carried forward to the point,

chronologically speaking, that had been proposed, and that was in fact

its natural termination. For this reason, and because it had no such

connection with the memoirs as required that they should be printed

together, it has been thought best to publish it without further delay

in the form in which it was left by the writer. The subject is of

peculiar interest at this time when our country, having suffered the

rude shock and disorder of civil war, and our free and popular

institutions having sustained with admirable firmness and substantial

triumph a more fearful trial than any to which they had before been

subjected, the sacred and momentous duty is devolved on patriots and

good citizens throughout our borders to reconstruct whatever valuable

parts have been thrown down, to restore what may have been injured or

defaced in our political system and in the principles on which it rests;

and the occasion seems auspicious for recalling the attention of our

people to the study of the lives and doctrines--the grounds and motives

of action--of the great men by whom the foundations of their government

were laid.

The work of editing this volume has been inconsiderable, the sum of it

having been to correct a few manifest inadvertencies, to divide it into

chapters, with indexical heads, to furnish the whole with a title, and

to add one or two foot-notes that appeared to be proper. Otherwise the

aim has been to preserve the form and substance of the original. The

citation from Cicero on the title-page was found on Mr. Van Buren's

table, in his library, extracted in his own handwriting; whether only as

a terse declaration of the law by the spirit of which his pen was

guided, or as a possible motto for his complete work, is not known. The

letter from Mr. Jefferson, forming an Appendix, was intended by Mr. Van

Buren to be printed with whatever of his own might reach publication,

and is spoken of in the present volume as "accompanying this work." It

is now printed for the first time from the original manuscript letter,

and a few errors in the edition published (probably from the draft) by

the Library Committees of Congress are corrected.

The portrait fronting this book is engraved from Brady's imperial

photograph, by Ritchie, and must be pronounced a very favorable specimen

of his art. It represents Mr. Van Buren in the seventy-fifth year of his

age.

EDGEHILL, FISHKILL-ON-HUDSON, N. Y.,

_February, 1867_.

POLITICAL PARTIES

IN THE

UNITED STATES.

CHAPTER I.

Gratifying Period in our History embraced by Administrations of

Jefferson and Madison--The Caucus System and its Abandonment--The

System useful to the Republican or Democratic Party, but not so to

the Federalists--Questions proposed--Difficulties of the

Subject--Two great Parties, under changing Names, have always

divided the Country--Few and imperfect Attempts heretofore made to

trace the Origin and Principles of those Parties--This the first

Attempt with that object on the Republican or Democratic Side--The

Sources of Differences in Opinion and Feeling which gave rise to our

Political Divisions, and _punctum temporis_ of their

Rise--Principles established by the English Revolution of

1688--Application of those Principles to the Colonies--Grounds of

the American Revolution--Abstract Opinions regain their Influence

after the Settlement of the practical Questions involved in the

Revolution--Diverse Character and Feelings of Emigrants to the

different Colonies--Effect of that Diversity on Principles of

Government and Administration in the New Governments--Repugnance of

the People to any Revival of the System overthrown by the

Revolution--Popular Reluctance to create an Executive Branch of the

Government--Confederacy of the United Colonies of New England in

1643--Dr. Franklin's Plan of Union in 1755--The Sentiments of the

Colonists those of the Whigs of the

Revolution--Exceptions--Discordant Materials, in certain Respects,

of which the Revolutionary Brotherhood was composed--Effects of that

Discordance upon the subsequent Organization of Political

Parties--The Confederation, and Parties for and against

it--Perversion of Party Names--Conflicts and Questions in

Controversy between Federalists and Anti-Federalists--The

Constitutional Convention of 1787--Different Plans proposed before

it--Motives and Views of the Authors of those Plans--The Views which

determined Congress and the People to acquiesce in the Results of

the Convention--Adoption of the Constitution and Extinction of the

Anti-Federal Party as such.

There has been no period in our history, since the establishment of our

Independence, to which the sincere friend of free institutions can turn

with more unalloyed satisfaction, than to that embraced by the

administrations of Jefferson and Madison, moved as they were by a common

impulse. Mr. Jefferson commenced the discharge of his official duties by

an act which, though one of form, involved matter of the highest moment.

I allude to the decision and facility with which, in his intercourse

with the other branches of the Government, he suppressed the observance

of empty ceremonies which had been borrowed from foreign courts by

officers who took an interest in such matters, and were reluctantly

tolerated by Washington, who was himself above them. Instead of

proceeding in state to the capitol to deliver a speech to the

legislature, according to the custom of monarchs, he performed his

constitutional duty by means of a message in writing, sent to each House

by the hands of his private secretary, and they performed theirs by a

reference of its contents to appropriate committees. The Executive

procession, instead of marking the intercourse between the different

branches of the Government, was reserved for the Inauguration, when the

President appeared before the people themselves, and in their presence

took the oath of office.

A step so appropriate and so much in harmony with our institutions, was

naturally followed by efforts for the abolition of offices and official

establishments not necessary to the public service, the reduction of the

public expenses, and the repeal of odious internal taxes. To these he

added the influence of his individual example to keep the organization

and action of the Federal Government upon that simple and economical

footing which is consistent with the Republican system. In this branch

of his official conduct he established precedents of great value, from

some of which his successors have not ventured to depart.

With the single exception of his approval of the Bank of the United

States, the administration of Mr. Madison was one of great merit, and

was made especially illustrious by conducting the country through a war

imperishably honorable for its military achievements and the consequent

elevation of our national character.

Jefferson and Madison were brought forward by caucus nominations; they,

throughout, recognized and adhered to the political party that elected

them; and they left it united and powerful, when, at the close of public

life, they carried into their retirement, and always enjoyed, the

respect, esteem, and confidence of all their countrymen.

Mr. Monroe's administration did not introduce any very disturbing public

questions. The protective policy was, toward its close, generally

acquiesced in at the North and West, and no part of the South as yet

even contemplated the resistance which was subsequently attempted. The

agitation in regard to internal improvements was yet for the most part

speculative and too far in advance of any contemplated action to stir

the public mind. The Bank of the United States was having its own way

without question on the part of the Government, and with but little if

any suspicion on the part of the people. No very embarrassing questions

had arisen in our foreign relations; yet the first year of Mr. Monroe's

second term had scarcely passed away before the political atmosphere

became inflamed to an unprecedented extent. The Republican party, so

long in the ascendant, and apparently so omnipotent, was literally

shattered into fragments, and we had no fewer than five Republican

Presidential candidates in the field.

In the place of two great parties arrayed against each other in a fair

and open contest for the establishment of principles in the

administration of Government which they respectively believed most

conducive to the public interest, the country was overrun with personal

factions. These having few higher motives for the selection of their

candidates or stronger incentives to action than individual preferences

or antipathies, moved the bitter waters of political agitation to their

lowest depths.

The occurrence of scenes discreditable to all had for a long time been

prevented by a steady adherence on the part of the Republican party to

the caucus system; and if Mr. Monroe's views and feelings upon the

subject had been the same as were those of Jefferson and Madison, the

results to which I have alluded, and which were soon sincerely

deprecated, might have been prevented by the same means. There was no

difference in the political condition of the country between 1816--when

Mr. Monroe received a caucus nomination, on a close vote between Mr.

Crawford and himself, and was elected--and 1824, when the caucus system

was appealed to by the supporters of Mr. Crawford, which called for its

abandonment. The Federal party were on both occasions incapable of

successfully resisting a candidate in whose favor the Republicans were

united, and they were on each sufficiently strong to control the

election when the support of their opponents was divided amongst

several. Mr. Monroe and a majority of his cabinet were unfortunately

influenced by different views, and pursued a course well designed to

weaken the influence of the caucus system, and to cause its abandonment.

Mr. Crawford was the only candidate who, it was believed, could be

benefited by adhering to it, and the friends of all the others sustained

the policy of the administration. Those of Jackson, Adams, Clay, and

Calhoun, united in an address to the people condemning the practice of

caucus nominations, and announcing their determination to disregard

them. Already weakened through the adverse influence of the

administration, the agency which had so long preserved the unity of the

Republican party did not retain sufficient strength to resist the

combined assault that was made upon it, and was overthrown. Mr. Crawford

and his friends adhered to it to the last, and fell with it.

It is a striking fact in our political history that the sagacious

leaders of the Federal party, as well under that name as under others by

which it has at different times been known, have always been desirous to

bring every usage or plan designed to secure party unity into disrepute

with the people, and in proportion to their success in that has been

their success in the elections. When they have found such usage too

strong to be overthrown for the time being, they have adopted it

themselves, but only to return to their denunciations of it after every

defeat. It would, on first impression, seem that a practice which is

good for one political party must be good for another; but when the

matter is more closely looked into, it will be discovered that the

policy of the Federal leaders referred to, like most of the acts of

those far-seeing men, rested upon substantial foundations. It

originated, beyond doubt, in the conviction, on the part of the early

Federalists, that a political organization in support of the particular

principles which they advocated, and to which they intended to adhere,

did not stand as much in need of extraneous means to secure harmony in

its ranks as did that of their opponents.

The results of general elections for more than half a century have

served to confirm this opinion. With the exception of a single instance,

susceptible of easy explanation, the Republican, now Democratic party,

whenever it has been wise enough to employ the caucus or convention

system, and to use in good faith the influence it is capable of

imparting to the popular cause, has been successful, and it has been

defeated whenever that system has been laid aside or employed unfairly.

With the Federal party and its successors the results have been widely

different; with or without the caucus system they have generally found

no difficulty in uniting whenever union promised success.

Why is it that a system or practice open to both parties, occasionally

used by both, and apparently equally useful to both, is in fact so much

less necessary to one than to the other? If this consequence springs

from a corresponding difference in the principles for the defense and

spread of which they have respectively been formed, what are those

principles, whence are they derived, and what is their history?

These are grave questions, which have often presented themselves to the

minds of our public men, and to answer which satisfactorily is neither

an easy nor a short task.

Histories of struggles for power between individual men or families,

long involved in obscurity, are becoming more frequent than they were,

and far more satisfactory. Aided by a comparatively free access to

public and private papers,--a privilege formerly sturdily refused, but

which the liberal spirit of the age has now made common,--the literary

men of most countries, with improved capacities to weigh conflicting

statements as well as to narrate the results of their researches with

simplicity and perspicuity, are probing the most hidden recesses of the

past, and describing with reliable accuracy transactions of great

interest, the causes and particular circumstances of which have been

hitherto little or not at all understood. But to define the origin and

trace the history of national parties is an undertaking of extraordinary

difficulty; one from which, in view of the embarrassments that surround

it in the case of our own political divisions, I have more than once

retired in despair, and on which I now enter with only slight hopes of

success. Yet it is due as well to the memories of the past as to actual

interests, that a subject which has exerted so great an influence and

which may be made so instructive, should be made plain, if that be

practicable, to the understandings of the present and succeeding

generations; and if my imperfect effort shall have a tendency to turn

stronger minds and abler pens in that direction it will not have been

made in vain.

The two great parties of this country, with occasional changes in their

names only, have, for the principal part of a century, occupied

antagonistic positions upon all important political questions. They have

maintained an unbroken succession, and have, throughout, been composed

respectively of men agreeing in their party passions and preferences,

and entertaining, with rare exceptions, similar general views on the

subjects of government and its administration. Sons have generally

followed in the footsteps of their fathers, and families originally

differing have in regular succession received, maintained, and

transmitted this opposition. Neither the influences of marriage

connections, nor of sectarian prejudices, nor any of the strong motives

which often determine the ordinary actions of men, have, with limited

exceptions, been sufficient to override the bias of party organization

and sympathy, devotion to which has, on both sides, as a rule, been a

master-passion of their members.

The names of these parties, like those of their predecessors in older

countries, have from time to time been changed, from suggestions of

policy or from accidental causes. Men of similar and substantially

unchanged views and principles have, at different periods of English

history, been distinguished as Cavaliers or Roundheads, as Jacobites or

Puritans and Presbyterians, as Whigs or Tories. Here, with corresponding

consistency in principle, the same men have at different periods been

known as Federalists, Federal Republicans, and Whigs, or as

Anti-Federalists, Republicans, and Democrats. But no changes of name

have indicated--certainly not until very recently, and the depth and

duration of the exception remain to be seen--a change or material

modification of the true character and principles of the parties

themselves. The difference between the old Republican and the

Anti-Federal parties, arising out of the questions in regard to the new

Constitution, was by far the greatest variation that has occurred.

Several hasty and but slightly considered attempts have been made to

define the origin, and to mark the progress, of our national parties.

But, with a single exception,--namely, that made by ex-President John

Quincy Adams, in his Jubilee Discourse before the New York Historical

Society, on the 30th of April, 1839, being the Fiftieth Anniversary of

the Inauguration of George Washington as President of the United

States,--they have not professed, so far as they have fallen under my

notice, to do more than glance at the subject.

To say that this discourse of one hundred and twenty pages was written

with Mr. Adams's accustomed ability, would be a commendation short of

its merits. It was more. The political condition of the country, and the

near approach of the memorable struggle of 1840, superadded to the

stirring considerations connected with the occasion, seem to have

persuaded that distinguished man that he was called upon to make an

extraordinary effort. A severe philippic against his and his father's

political enemies, this discourse, judged in the sense in which such

performances are naturally estimated by contemporaries imbued with

similar feelings, could not fail to be regarded as an eloquent and able

production; but I deceive myself if it can be deemed by a single

ingenuous mind either a dispassionate or an impartial review of the

origin and course of parties in the United States. Such minds will be

more likely to receive a paper, written so long after the transactions

of which it speaks, with feelings of regret at the strong evidence it

affords that the rage of party spirit, upon the assumed extinguishment

of which its author had, years before, exultingly congratulated the

people from the Presidential chair, was yet so active in his own breast.

I say this more in sorrow than in anger. Other portions of this work[1]

will, I am sure, exonerate me from the suspicion of cherishing the

slightest sentiment of unkindness toward the memory of John Quincy

Adams. When my personal acquaintance with him was but slight, and when

our political relations were unfavorable to the cultivation of friendly

feelings, my dispositions toward him were to an unusual extent free from

the prejudices commonly engendered by party differences. In the later

periods of our acquaintance, continuing to the end of his life,

I regarded him with entire personal respect and kindness; and

notwithstanding the occasional fierceness of our political collisions,

I have never heard of any unfriendly expression by him in respect to

myself personally.

[1] This refers to the Memoirs of the writer, to which the present

essay was intended to be an episode. See Introduction to this

volume. Eds.

It is not a little remarkable, though in harmony with other striking

features in the relations of our parties, that no serious attempt has

ever been made to trace their origin except by members of the same

political school with Mr. Adams. If I am right in this, mine will at

least have the weight, whatever that may be, due to the narration of one

who, from the beginning to the end of an extended political career, has

been an invariable and ardent member of the opposite school.

The author of the life of Hamilton confidently pronounces what occurred

on the appointment of Washington as Commander-in-chief of the

Revolutionary army, to be the true source of the party divisions that

have so long and so extensively prevailed in this country. President

John Quincy Adams, in his Inaugural Address, attributes them to the

conflicting prejudices and preferences of the people for and against

Great Britain and France at the commencement of the present government,

and the discontinuance of them to the effects produced by the excesses

of the French Revolution. Matthew L. Davis,--a man of much note and

cleverness, who commenced his career an active member of the old

Republican party, became the especial champion of Colonel Burr, and,

soon seceding from the party to which he was at first attached, spent

the remainder of his life in opposition to it,--in his life of Aaron

Burr, attributes the origin of our two great political parties to the

proceedings of the Federal Constitutional Convention and of the State

Conventions which passed upon the question of ratification.

These various versions of the matter I shall hereafter notice,

contenting myself, for the present, with the remark that party divisions

which have extended to every corner of a country as large as our own,

and have endured so long, could not spring from slight or even limited

causes. No differences in the views of men on isolated questions

temporary in their nature, could, it seems to me, have produced such

results. Questions of such a character are either finally settled, with

more or less satisfaction, or in time lose their interest,

notwithstanding momentary excitement, and the temporary organizations

springing from them give place in turn to others equally short-lived.

But when men are brought under one government who differ radically in

opinion as to its proper form, as to the uses for which governments

should be established, as to the spirit in which they should be

administered, as to the best way in which the happiness of those who

are subject to them can be promoted, no less than in regard to the

capacity of the people for self-government, we may well look for party

divisions and political organizations of a deeper foundation and a more

enduring existence.

Ours arose at the close of the Revolution, and the leading parties to

them were the Whigs, through whose instrumentality, under favor of

Providence, our Independence had been established. They and the Tories

constituted our entire population, and the latter had at first, for

obvious reasons, but little to do in the formation of parties, save to

throw themselves in a body into the ranks of one of them. It became at

once evident that great differences of opinion existed among the Whigs

in respect to the character of the government that should be substituted

for that which had been overthrown, and also in respect to the spirit

and principles which should control the administration of that which

might be established. These spread through the country with great

rapidity, and were respectively maintained with a zeal and determination

which proved that they were not produced by the feelings or impulses of

the moment. To ascertain the origin of those differences, and to trace

their effects, we can adopt no safer course than to look to the

antecedents of the actors in the stirring political scenes that followed

the close of the war, to the characters and opinions of their ancestors,

from whom they had naturally imbibed their first ideas of government

either directly or traditionally, and to the incidents of the memorable

struggle from which the country had just emerged.

The great principle first formally avowed by Rousseau, "that the right

to exercise sovereignty belongs inalienably to the people," sprung up

spontaneously in the hearts of the colonists, and silently influenced

all their acts from the beginning. The condition of the country in

which they settled,--a wilderness occupied besides themselves only by

savage tribes,--to which many of them were driven by the fiercest

persecutions ever known to the civilized world, and the stern

self-reliance and independent spirit which most of them had acquired in

contests with iron fortune that preceded their exile, combined to induce

the cultivation and to secure the permanent growth of such a sentiment.

Not being, however, for several generations, in a suitable condition,

and from counteracting inducements not even disposed to dispute the

pretensions of the Crown to their allegiance, they were content to look

principally to its patents and other concessions for the measure of

their rights. But their views were greatly changed, and their advance on

the road to freedom materially accelerated, by the English Revolution of

1688. The final overthrow of James II., from whose tyrannical acts, as

well in the character of Duke of York as in that of King, they had

severely suffered, was not the greatest advantage the colonists derived

from that Revolution. The principles upon which that most important of

European movements was founded, and the doctrines it consecrated, paved

the way to a result which, though not upon their tongues, or perhaps to

any great extent the subject of their meditations as immediately

practicable, was, doubtless, from that time, within their contemplation.

That Revolution, which shattered, "past all surgery," the blasphemous

and absurd dogma of the divine right of kings; which replaced the

slavish doctrine of passive obedience and non-resistance with the

principle that the authority of the monarch was no other than a trust

founded on an assumed agreement between him and his subjects that the

power conferred upon him should be used for their advantage, for the

faithful execution of which he was individually responsible, and for a

breach of which resistance to his authority, as a last resort, was a

constitutional remedy; which for the supremacy of the Crown substituted

the supremacy of Parliament; which made the King as well as his subjects

responsible to its authority, and which abrogated the right of the Crown

to govern the colonies in virtue of its prerogative, and vested that

power in Parliament, placed the colonists upon a footing widely

different from that they had theretofore occupied.

The general principle that they were, by the laws and statutes of

England, entitled to the political rights that appertained to British

subjects, could not be denied, but commercial rivalry and political

jealousies acting upon their excited feelings, soon generated questions

of the gravest import, both as to the extent of the power of Parliament

to legislate for them, and as to the participation in representation

essential to authorize the exercise of that power.

The subjects of taxation and the regulation of trade by Parliamentary

authority, excited the greatest interest on both sides of the Atlantic.

In respect to the latter, the question was not a little embarrassed by

an alleged acquiescence on the part of the colonists, and the consequent

force of precedents. This circumstance, in connection with the

consideration that, if the right to regulate the trade of the colonies

was denied to the mother country, the allegiance conceded to be due

would be paid to a barren sceptre, was calculated to deprive the cause

of the colonists of the favorable opinion of those just men in England

whose countenance and support were of so much service to them in the

sequel. Duly appreciating the obstacles to success which there was

reason to apprehend from this source, with the prudence and good sense

that belonged to their character, and without waiving any of their

rights, they placed their cause principally upon a ground that lay at

the foundation of the Revolution, and was thoroughly immovable, viz.,

that by the fundamental laws of property no taxes could be levied upon

the people but by their own consent or that of their authorized agents,

and that by consequence the connection was indissoluble between taxation

and representation.

In the justice and constitutionality of this position they were openly

sustained by Lord Chatham, Lord Camden, Burke, Fox, and others,--men who

were in their day and have since been regarded as leading minds of

England. With but little of public sentiment against them beyond what

was influenced by the inveterate hatred and the insane obstinacy of the

King, wielding at will the majority of a notoriously corrupt Parliament

and the brute force of the kingdom, the colonists appealed to the God of

Battles in defense of a sacred principle of freedom, and in resistance

to tyrannical acts of the most odious and oppressive character, and they

were victorious. It is now, and will be in all time, a source of

satisfaction to the people of these States, that the decision of the

sword is not their only nor their highest title to the liberty they

enjoy. The colonists were right in the contest. Of this no serious doubt

is now entertained in any honest and well-informed quarter. The idea of

virtual representation, and the attempt to justify one wrong by the

practice of another, namely, the taxing other British subjects without

giving them an adequate representation in Parliament,--the only replies

that were made to the claim of constitutional rights,--are now well

understood, and, it gives me pleasure to say, generally disavowed in

England. Lord Derby, the manly and highly gifted leader of what is left

of the old Tory party, not long since, in a speech delivered in the

presence of an American minister, unreservedly admitted that we were

right in the Revolutionary contest; and, if that question were now

submitted to the free judgment of the people of England, such would be

found to be the public sense of that great nation.

The only way in which the right in respect to taxation set up by the

English Parliament could have been sustained consistently with the

English Constitution, would have been by a joint government, securing to

the colonies the representation in that body to which they were entitled

as British subjects,--a plan to which both the mother country and the

colonies were equally decided in their dislike, but for very different

reasons. If a similar question were presented at this day it would,

according to the present state of public opinion in both countries, be

at once settled by an alliance of peace and friendship, substituting

fraternal relations for those of parent and children.

Well would it have been for the interests of both and of humanity if the

matter had been thus adjusted.

The immediate question upon which the Revolution turned was, of course,

forever extinguished by its results. But it has been far otherwise with

the opinions, doubtless of various shades and equally sincere, in regard

to the nature of government, the uses to which it could be properly

applied, and the manner and spirit of its application, with which the

colonists entered into the contest, and with the feelings engendered by

those opinions and developed by the war. Upon these points the

characters and successive conditions of the early emigrants exerted a

great influence. Those to Virginia were first in point of time, and

certainly not inferior to any in the elements of character adapted to

the difficulties they were destined to encounter. History, doubtless

authentic, records that the first emigration to that State was a measure

of the patriotic party in England, and sprung from a desire to make an

offering to liberty in the wilderness which the stringency of power had

prevented them from making at home. The accomplishment of that design,

whatever may have been the aid subsequently derived from its authors,

has been eminently successful. Whether as colonists, as citizens of a

free State, or as a part of our great Confederacy, the emigrants to

Virginia, their successors and descendants, have done all that men could

do to realize the anticipations and designs of the founders of that

ancient colony.

Fully equal to them in devotion to liberty, with the additional merit of

having made greater sacrifices in its defense, stood the Puritans, whose

descendants are said to constitute at this time one fifth (I believe it

is) of the people of the United States. It would be superfluous to

describe either the persecutions to which they were subjected by

arbitrary power or their fidelity to their principles. Their story is

known, and their early character understood, throughout the civilized

world.

The Huguenots entered largely into the early settlement of several of

the colonies, and their descendants now constitute numerous portions of

several of our States. Indeed, the very first European colony

established in this country was composed of Huguenots, who were

exterminated by the Spaniards,--an event which, indirectly, contributed

greatly to the emigration to Virginia under Sir Walter Raleigh.

Fugitives from the most cruel as well as the most obstinate

persecutions, hunted like wild beasts on account of their devotion to

religious freedom and the right of opinion, they fled to our shores,

detesting irresponsible power of every description, and ready to do

their utmost to prevent its re-incorporation in our virgin system.

The States General and the Dutch West India Company, although the

former were perhaps not more favorable to popular sovereignty, in our

sense of these words, than the Stuarts, and the latter altogether

mercenary, yet introduced into this country, in the colonization of New

Netherlands, emigrants especially adapted, by character and disposition,

to the scenes through which they were destined to pass. This happy

result was attributable to the peculiar conjuncture of affairs at home

when the establishment of that colony was undertaken. It was during the

continuance of the truce in their War of Independence--the first that

was granted to them by Philip II., after that barbarous contest had

already lasted forty years--that the attention of the United Provinces

was directed to this country. The revolting cruelties which Philip had

caused to be inflicted upon the Dutch, through the instrumentality of

Alva, are as notorious to the world as are those to which the Huguenots

were subjected by Charles IX. and Louis XIV.; and the spirit of

resistance to arbitrary power, whether ecclesiastical or political, was

branded as by fire upon the hearts of both.

To colonists of these descriptions were from time to time added numerous

other Protestants, who had fled to Holland, as well after the massacre

of St. Bartholomew as from other and kindred demonstrations of political

and priestly despotism in various parts of Europe, with an infusion of

descendants of the disciples of the Bohemian martyr, John Huss, who,

from the stake to which he had been doomed for his resistance to papal

tyranny, conjured his followers not to put their trust in princes.

The mass of the early colonists having been sufferers at home, as well

from social and political inequalities as from the heavy hand of power

applied to themselves, having left behind them much that they dreaded

and nothing that they approved in the management of public affairs, were

exposed to no influences that could disincline them to the

establishment of just and equal governments in the land of their

adoption. Nothing could therefore be more natural than that they and

their immediate descendants, made familiar with the wrongs and outrages

practiced on their fathers by absolute tyrants, should have been jealous

of their liberties, and disposed to be rigid in their restrictions upon

the grant and exercise of delegated authority. From this disposition

sprang the principles to which they always adhered in the administration

of public affairs, and in the defense of which they appear to have been

always ready to make any necessary sacrifice. These, on the part of by

far the largest portions of the original colonists and their

descendants, were an insurmountable opposition to hereditary political

power in any shape and under any circumstances; a suspicious

watchfulness of all official authority, proportioned to their knowledge

of its liability to be abused; a consequent indisposition to concede

more than was indispensable to good government; the establishment of a

certain, and, as they called it, a swift responsibility for the exercise

of that which was granted; an habitual distrust, exhibited on various

occasions in their history, of every offer of special privileges by

government, and an unwillingness to confer the power to grant them,--the

former springing from suspicion that they were designed to impair their

independence, and the latter from conviction, fully justified by

experience, that such a power will always end in favoritism; and an

early and strong appreciation of the value of union among themselves and

between the colonies, originating in the necessity for their protection

against the savages, and kept alive by perpetual machinations from the

mother country to weaken and restrict their freedom.

These and kindred feelings and principles were, as I have said, natural

to men whose antecedents, as well as those of their ancestors, had been

such as I have described; and they remained throughout the prevailing

features of colonial politics. They were not only the views of men

prominent in their respective communities, but the matured convictions

of the masses in respect to the line of policy necessary to their

welfare, and therefore the more likely to be perpetuated, for it has

been well and truly said, that "it is the masses alone that live." These

opinions might occasionally and for a season lie dormant, or be made to

yield to power, but neither corruption nor force could eradicate them.

With occasional but brief intermissions, they controlled the action of

the colonial legislatures; were embraced by a majority of the signers of

the Declaration of Independence; directed the course of the

Revolutionary Congress as well as that of the Government of the

Confederation subsequent to the recognition of our Independence, and

were in truth always the real sentiments of a majority of the people.

It will be hereafter seen when they were for a season rendered

powerless, and when and how their control over the action of the

government was restored.

The materials for tracing the action of the public mind, and the

proceedings of public bodies during the early periods of our history,

are, in comparison with those applicable to modern times, quite

imperfect. But aided by the facts which the historians of our day, with

great industry and in most cases with equal fidelity, have drawn from

oblivion, and still more by the recent very general publication of the

papers of eminent deceased statesmen, the work has become less

difficult.

The fidelity of the Puritans to their well-known principles in respect

to hereditary power, was soon exposed to a severe trial. During the

residence of Sir Henry Vane in the Colony of Massachusetts, several

English peers, induced by a desire to remove to that colony and to make

it their place of permanent residence, offered to do so if changes could

be effected in its government, by which the General Court should be

divided into two bodies, and their hereditary right to seats in the

upper branch allowed to them. Strong as was the wish of the colonists

for the acquisition of those distinguished men, they yet declined a

compliance with their wishes. All that they could be induced to allow

was a life-tenure, and they actually made some appointments of that

character; but of this they soon repented, and attached to the offices

held by that tenure a condition which made the concession nugatory by

making it valueless. It is perhaps not assuming too much to suppose that

the regret they experienced at this momentary forgetfulness of their

principles--a regret exhibited in various ways--had no small influence

in inducing them to limit the terms of offices in the New England States

to very short periods, as is still the custom there.

Similar conduct and feeling were disclosed by the colonists on every

occasion that presented itself for their display, but the necessity for

their exhibition was in a great measure superseded by the Declaration of

Independence and the war that succeeded, during the continuance of which

sentiments favorable to hereditary power were regarded by the country as

crimes to be punished.

Our Independence was scarcely established when a circumstance occurred

which exhibited in a very striking manner the fixed aversion of the

great body of the people to hereditary distinctions.

The officers of the army, desirous of perpetuating the memory of the

relations of respect and friendship which had grown up among them during

the trying and momentous scenes through which they had passed,

established, in May, 1783, the "Society of the Cincinnati," and made

the honor of membership hereditary. It has not appeared that General

Washington was consulted upon the subject in the first instance, but

conscious of the purity of his own motives, and confiding fully in those

of his military associates, he allowed his name to be placed at the head

of the list of members and consented to be its president.

The principle of hereditary distinctions could not well have been placed

before the people in a less exceptionable form, and yet there were but

few occurrences during the war by which the public mind was so deeply

excited as that by which the officers intended to grace the closing

scenes of their meritorious career. The measure was assailed in all the

forms in which an offended public opinion usually finds vent. In

addition to able and eloquent attacks from American pens, the movement

was severely criticised in a pamphlet published in France and written by

Mirabeau, entitled, "Thoughts on the Order of Cincinnatus."

General Washington informed himself of the extent to which the subject

was agitating the public mind, and, justly alarmed at the consequences

it might produce, determined to do all in his power to arrest its

progress. He wrote to Mr. Jefferson in April, 1784, asking his opinion

and the probable views of Congress (of which Mr. Jefferson was a member)

upon the subject, and his advice in respect to the most eligible

measures to be adopted by the society at their next meeting, which was

to be held in the ensuing month of May. This letter does not appear in

the published writings of Washington, but an extract from it is given by

Mr. Sparks, from which and from Jefferson's reply its contents as stated

are gathered. Mr. Jefferson's answer, containing an unreserved

communication of his opinions in the matter, may be found in Vol. I. of

his Correspondence. He stated at length the objections that were made

to the society, the unfriendliness of Congress to it, and added, in

conclusion, that if, rather than decide themselves upon the best course

to be pursued, the members should, at their approaching meeting, refer

the question to Congress, such a reference would "infallibly produce a

recommendation of total discontinuance."

General Washington attended the meeting in May, and proposed several

changes in the constitution, and among them, in his own words, taken by

Mr. Sparks from memoranda in his own handwriting, "to discontinue the

hereditary part in all its connections, absolutely, without any

substitution which can be construed into concealment or a change of

ground only, for this would, in my opinion, increase rather than allay

suspicion." This amendment, and others having a similar bearing, were

adopted.

In Mr. Jefferson's letter to myself, accompanying this volume,[2] to

which, as it was prepared with great care, and avowedly designed "to

throw light on history and to recall that into the path of truth," I

shall have frequent occasion to refer, will be found a highly

interesting account of what took place between himself and General

Washington, on his way to the meeting in Philadelphia, and on his

return, in May, 1784.

[2] See Appendix.

Some of the State societies rejected these modifications _in toto_, and

others only agreed to them partially. The agitation of the subject was

thus continued for several years, and as late as 1787 no State had yet

so far yielded its prejudices as to grant the charter for which the

constitution of the society made it the duty of the State meetings to

apply. Whatever opinion may at this day be formed in regard to the

sufficiency of the reasons for the alarm which this transaction

produced, it cannot be doubted that the proceedings in regard to it

afford strong proof that there was, down to the spring of 1787, a

settled aversion in the minds of a majority of the people to any measure

or course of measures which were indicative of the slightest desire to

return in any degree to the system which they had overthrown; and that

as early as 1783 strong suspicion existed that such desires were

concealed in the minds of many who had previously stood faithfully by

the country in all its perils.

The intense hostility of the colonists and their successors to

monarchical institutions, and the recollection of the cruelties

inflicted upon them and upon their predecessors under the authority of

kings, had produced a determined repugnance on their part to the

concentration of power in the hands of single magistrates. Their minds

had become thoroughly impressed with a conviction that the disposition

to abuse power by those who were intrusted with it was not only inherent

and invariable, but incurable, and that it was therefore unwise to grant

more than was actually indispensable to the management of public

affairs. At no period anterior to the adoption of the present

Constitution, could a majority be obtained in Congress for the creation

of an executive branch of the Government, or an impression be made upon

the public mind favorable to such a measure. The inconveniences

experienced from a want of it during a protracted war, and which were

again encountered in the public service after the recognition of our

independence, were not sufficient to overcome this repugnance. The

tenacity with which they adhered to an equal representation and

influence for the colonies before, and for the States after, the

Declaration of Independence, in the confederacies and governments they

formed, sprang from like considerations. They could not be brought to

believe that a State, to which was allowed a greater power than was

reserved to its confederates, could be restrained from the ultimate

exercise of her superior power to depress her smaller confederates and

to elevate herself.

Proofs of the existence and force of these opinions are spread through

every portion of our early history.

In 1643 the New England Colonies, with the exception of those "who ran a

different course" from the Puritans, entered into a Confederacy. Its

avowed design was the better advancement of their general interests, but

its real object was to provide greater security against the savages by

whom they were menaced. It was called the "United Colonies of New

England." The plan was for a season defeated, because Massachusetts

claimed more power than she was willing to concede to the other

colonies; but it was finally established upon principles of perfect

equality, no more power or influence being conceded to Massachusetts, by

far the largest, than to New Haven, the smallest colony. The management

of affairs was intrusted to commissioners, of which each colony had two,

but no executive power was conferred upon them. They might deliberate

and recommend, but the colonies alone could carry their recommendations

into effect. This Confederacy endured for nearly half a century, and

worked well.

In 1755 a convention of delegates from the colonies was held at Albany,

under the stimulus of French encroachments, and a plan of union, drawn

up by Dr. Franklin, was agreed upon and submitted to the colonies for

their approval. The plan, as was to be expected from the character of

its author, distributed the powers of the government between the people

and the prerogatives of the Crown, much more favorably to the popular

side than it would seem the latter might, in the then condition of

things, have reasonably hoped for. Still the attachments of the

colonists to their local governments, and, above all, their distrust and

dread of a central government, which was provided for, were sufficient

to deprive the plan of their favor, and to cause its ultimate

abandonment.

The privilege of "Government within themselves," as "their undoubted

right in the sight of God and man," and "to be governed by rulers of

their own choosing and laws of their own making," were from the

beginning objects of absorbing solicitude with the colonists and their

Revolutionary successors.

The principles and sentiments I have attempted to define, which had

sprung up at the earliest period in the colonies, and had grown with

their growth and strengthened with their strength, and in explanation of

which I have referred to a few of the many illustrations with which

their history abounds, were doubtless those also of a great majority of

the Whigs of the Revolution, in whose breasts was not wanting the

feeling which rarely fails to be seen in those political divisions that

lead to civil war,--a thorough antagonism to the general opinions, as

well as to the particular policy of the power or party opposed; but it

is equally true that those were far from being the principles or

feelings of all by whose efforts the Revolution was achieved. A numerous

portion of the Whigs of the Revolution, many of them greatly

distinguished for their talents, high characters, and great public

services, neither concurred in the principles nor sympathized with the

feelings I have described, but were in a great measure driven by other

considerations to take active parts in the struggle. The number thus

influenced was, fortunately for the result of the contest, increased by

specific tyrannical acts, which a prudent government would have avoided,

but which were forced on the ministry and Parliament of the mother

country by the obstinacy and bigotry of the king. Within a year after

his accession to the throne he wound up a series of unnecessary

interferences with the administration of justice in the colonies, by

changing the tenure of office, which had till that period prevailed in

relation to the colonial judges, from that of good behavior to that of

the will and pleasure of the Crown. By thus using his prerogative to

create a distinction in different parts of the realm degrading to the

colonies, he left the colonial lawyers no other course consistent with

self-respect, to say nothing of patriotism, than to unite with those

engaged in other pursuits in an effort to overthrow a government capable

of such practices. While subjecting the legal profession to such

humiliating proofs of the royal displeasure, his government commenced

its assaults upon that portion of his subjects engaged in commerce. His

indignation against those who scouted the doctrine of the British

Constitution, "that the king can do no wrong," was intense and

unappeasable in proportion to their presumed intelligence. It was in

this spirit that he appears to have selected judges, professional men,

and merchants, as special objects of his wrath, and having exerted his

power against the first two classes, he turned his attention toward the

latter.

The Navigation Acts, as they stood at the period of his accession, had

been framed in the illiberal and selfish spirit which characterized the

legislation of the age. But though they had proved injurious to the

trade of the colonies, and humiliating to the colonial merchants, in

consequence of the extent to which they made their interests subservient

to those of the mother country, yet their prejudicial effects had in

neither respect been fully developed, in consequence of the remissness

which had prevailed in their execution. This had in a great degree been

occasioned by illicit contrivances between the colonists engaged in

trade and navigation and the officers of government stationed in the

colonies. A vigorous execution of the existing laws not only was

determined upon, but new acts were passed imposing additional

restrictions, and superadding cumulative penalties upon those who

disregarded them. To enforce this vindictive policy the Government

resorted to a measure at once the most arbitrary and odious of any that

had ever been known to the public service,--that of "Writs of

Assistance,"--and converted the army and navy into a police

establishment to aid in the detection and punishment of the colonial

offenders.

By thus giving vent to his persecuting spirit--a spirit always blind to

its own interests--this infatuated Prince drove into the front rank of

the Revolution two classes of the colonists who were, from the nature of

their pursuits, least likely to embark in popular outbreaks, and most

inclined to favor a strong government,--classes which are usually

caressed by more sagacious rulers, and which had been so here before the

reign of George III. All orders of the colonists, save a few favorites,

were by these and similar means united, as a band of brothers, in a

movement such as the world had never before, and has never since seen,

for the overthrow of a government by which they were so sorely

oppressed.

This union was in other respects composed of very discordant materials.

It consisted, on the one hand, of men and the descendants of men on

whose hearts the fires of persecution had burned a hatred of royalty too

deep to be erased and too zealous to be trifled with; of men who were at

the same time too conversant with human nature to allow themselves to

believe that the love of power and the proneness to its abuse were

confined to its hereditary possessors, and who were therefore anxious to

restrict grants of authority to their public functionaries to the lowest

point consistent with good government, and to subject what they did

grant to the most stringent responsibilities. They continued, also, to

cherish the same preference for their local organizations, and to

entertain the same distrust of an overshadowing central government, for

which the great body of the people had long been distinguished. They

were men whose highest ambition and desire for themselves and the

country was that it should have a plain, simple, and cheap government

for the management of the affairs of the Confederacy, republican in its

construction and democratic in its spirit,--a government that should, as

far as practicable, be deprived of the power of creating artificial

distinctions in society, and of corrupting and thus subverting the

independence of the people by the possession of a redundant patronage.

Such a government had long been the subject of their meditations, and

they braved the hazards and encountered the hardships of the

Revolutionary contest for the opportunity of establishing it.

The Revolutionary brotherhood by which the recognition of our

Independence was enforced, contained, on the other hand, men respectable

in numbers, and distinguished by talent, public service, and high social

position, who dissented from many (I may say from most) of these views,

and who regarded them as Utopian in themselves, or as too contracted for

the exigencies of the public service.

This difference in the opinions of men who had been engaged in such a

contest was all but unavoidable, and was never absent from any political

struggle of sufficient importance to be compared with it. It results,

besides those which have been indicated as peculiar to our own condition

and history, from simple but potent causes of universal operation, such

as diversities in social condition, in education, in the influence and

tendencies of previous pursuits, and in individual character and

temperament, producing diversities of views on such occasions.

Although an aversion to royalty and opposition to hereditary government

in any form, were sentiments that pervaded the masses and exercised a

controlling influence in the Revolution, there were not a few, of the

character I have described, who, though they doubtless did not at the

moment design the reintegration of those institutions after the

overthrow of the actual Government, could yet contemplate, without great

revulsion of feeling, their ultimate establishment in this country.

Prompt to resist tyranny in any shape, and stung by the oppressions

practiced upon the colonies by the British Government, they hesitated

not to peril their lives for its subversion here, whilst theoretically

they not only tolerated its form and constitution, but regarded them as

the best that could be devised to promote the welfare and to secure the

happiness of mankind. Of the existence of this opinion on the part of

many sincere friends and able advocates of the Revolutionary cause, in

every stage of the contest and for years after its close, we have

indubitable evidence. I will notice a few cases of this description, on

account of the influence exerted on the formation of political parties

by the knowledge of the existence of such opinions, and by the

suspicions, perhaps unjust, and in some respects certainly so, as to the

extent to which those who held them were willing to carry them out. In

so doing, it is by no means my design to cast reproach upon the memories

of the great men who entertained them, and who stood by their country in

her severest extremity, and established the highest claims to her

gratitude and favor.

No ingenuous mind can doubt that a large majority of the Whigs were

opposed to the substitution of a government similar either in form or

spirit to that from which they had emancipated themselves. Our

Revolutionary creed was, "That all men are created equal; that they are

endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among

these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure

these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just

powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of

government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the

people to alter and abolish it, and to institute a new government,

laying its foundations on such principles, and organizing its powers in

such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and

happiness."

Under such a creed all were entitled as of right to a perfect freedom of

choice in regard to the character of the new government. Neither for the

formation of their opinions, however erroneous these may have been, nor

for the maintenance of them by lawful means, did any subject themselves

to just reproach, or to other forfeiture than perhaps a loss of the

confidence of those who thought differently.

James Otis, Stephen Hopkins, John Adams, Gouverneur Morris, and

Alexander Hamilton, may be selected from many others as representatives

of the principles of that class to which I have referred as dissenting

from the popular or preponderating ideas of the time.

I select them the more readily from a desire to avoid mistakes, as they

were possessed of temperaments too sanguine and too fearless to be

deterred from advancing openly opinions they honestly entertained, by

their unpopularity.

There were certainly not many individuals, if there was one, who did

more to set the ball of the Revolution in motion than James Otis; and if

his career had not been cut short by the hand of violence he would have

taken high rank among the great and good men who survived the struggle.

His speech against the issuing of the Writs of Assistance had an effect

corresponding to those of Patrick Henry. Yet this highly gifted man,

whose patriotic spirit was sufficiently aroused by the oppressions of

the mother country, while yet in their incipiency, to induce him to

peril his life in acts of resistance, was an enthusiastic admirer of the

principles of the English system, and honestly believed, as he said,

"that the British Constitution came nearest the idea of perfection of

any that had been reduced to practice."

The patriotic Hopkins, one of the Rhode Island Representatives in the

General Congress, and a signer of the Declaration of Independence,

wrote--and that colony authoritatively published its concurrence in the

declaration--that "The glorious Constitution of Great Britain is the

best that ever existed among men."

Gouverneur Morris's unyielding hostility to democratic principles, and

his preference for aristocratic and monarchical institutions, were often

exhibited and unreservedly avowed, as well on the floor of the Federal

Convention as elsewhere, and have become familiar among his countrymen

as household words. There were not many, if indeed there was a single

one of his contemporaries, who went beyond him in hostility to the State

governments. "State attachments and State importance," said he in the

Federal Convention, "have been the bane of this country! We cannot

annihilate them, but we may, perhaps, take out the teeth of the

serpents." Such as were his principles at the commencement of his career

they remained to the close of his life.

But the opinions of John Adams and Alexander Hamilton, from their larger

agency in the politics of the country, in the administration of its

government, and in the actual formation of parties, are of still greater

importance. A full exposition of these, beyond the single point upon

which there existed the greatest jealousy at the period at which we have

now arrived,--that of their preference for the English system,--will be

best postponed until we come to consider the times and occasions which

were presented for an ampler display of them. I will, therefore, only

refer at this place to the contents of a statement prepared and signed

by Thomas Jefferson, in February, 1818, and designed to explain a

portion of his writings. In this he says, among other things: "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 upon

his Southern tour, in April, 1791, he addressed a letter of the 4th 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 argued 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 become the most perfect Constitution ever

devised by the wit of man.' Hamilton paused and said,--'Purge it of its

corruptions 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 which

ever existed.'"

The solemn responsibility under which this statement was made, the high

character of its author, the time when it was recorded,--after one of

the principal parties had passed from earth, and the two remaining were

on the brink of the grave; when the passions excited by personal and

political rivalry had died away, and friendly relations had been

restored between the survivors,--would of themselves be sufficient to

establish its accuracy, even if its description of the opinions of Adams

and Hamilton had not been, as it will be seen that they were, abundantly

confirmed as well by the speeches and writings of the parties themselves

as by the recorded declarations of associates and friends who possessed

the best opportunities to become acquainted with their real sentiments.

The natural presumption is--and there are many facts to prove its

correctness--that opinions with which these most prominent leaders were

so deeply imbued, had, to a very considerable extent at least, been

diffused throughout the ranks of their followers.

The effects of this discordance on so many and such vital points in the

political doctrines and feelings of those by whom the Revolution had

been achieved, were postponed by the existence of the war; but when that

restraint was removed by the recognition of our Independence they broke

forth unavoidably, and were soon developed in the formation of political

parties.

The Congress of the Confederation, and--from the dependence of the

Federal Government upon the coöperation of the States for the

performance of its most important duties--the State legislatures, as

well as the public press, became the theatres for the display of these

conflicting opinions.

The so-called Government of the Confederation was little else than an

alliance between the States--a federal league and compact, the terms of

which were set forth in the Articles of Confederation. Besides a

control over questions of Peace and War, its powers and duties were

chiefly advisory, and dependent for their execution upon the coöperation

of the States. A federal system so defective was justly held responsible

for a large share of the public and private embarrassments that existed

at, or arose after, the termination of the Revolutionary contest. It was

also, as was natural, charged in some degree with those which were, in

truth, unavoidable consequences of a seven years' war, and which would

have existed under any system. It is not surprising, therefore, that a

party bent upon its overthrow should have arisen as soon as the public

mind was by the course of events brought to a proper state to consider

the subject. Of this party Alexander Hamilton became the leader, and its

immediate objects were, of course, very soon frankly developed. These

were in the first instance to divest the State governments of certain

powers, and to confer them upon Congress, the possession of which by the

Federal head they deemed indispensable to the exigencies of the public

service, with the intention of following up this step by an attempt to

abrogate the Articles of Confederation, and to substitute for that

system an independent and effective Federal Government, composed of

executive, legislative, and judicial departments. In respect to the

powers to be given to the new Government, and to its construction

otherwise, there doubtless existed some differences of opinion among the

members of this party; but all agreed that it should be what in the

language of the day was called a "strong government." There may not have

been entire harmony among them in regard to the expediency and

practicability of attempting it, but I do not think there is reasonable

ground to doubt that most of them desired a virtual consolidation of the

two systems--Federal and State. A few were, from an early period,

suspected by those who differed from them, and who became their

opponents, of desiring to return to the English system, and this

suspicion, doubtless, contributed to make the latter more impracticable

than they might otherwise have been.

The political feelings which lay nearest to the hearts of the great body

of the people, as well during our colonial condition as in the States

after the declaration and establishment of Independence, and of the

strength of which I have referred to such striking and oft-repeated

illustrations, were those of veneration and affection for their local

governments as safeguards of their liberties and adequate to most of

their wants; endeared to them as their refuge from the persecutions of

arbitrary power, and hallowed by the perils and triumphs of the

Revolution. Allied to these feelings, and nearly co-extensive with them

in point of duration, was a distrust, at both periods, on the part of

the masses, of what they called an overshadowing general government.

When to these sources of opposition to the views of the party which had

arrayed itself against the government of the Confederation is added the

natural and deeply seated hostility of those who dissented from its

views in respect to hereditary government in any form, and the suspicion

of a reserved preference for such, or at least for kindred institutions,

we cannot be at a loss in accounting for the origin of the first two

great parties which sprang up and divided the country so soon after the

establishment of our Independence.

But the names by which these parties were distinguished are, it must be

admitted, not so intelligible. The name of Anti-Federalists was

strangely enough given by their opponents to those who advocated the

continuance of the Union upon the principles which prevailed in its

establishment, and according to which it was regarded as a Federal

League or Alliance of Free States, upon equal terms, founded upon a

compact (the Articles of Confederation) by which its conditions were

regulated,--to be represented by a general Congress, authorized to

consider and decide all questions appertaining to the interests of the

alliance and committed to its charge, without power either to act upon

the people directly or to apply force to the States, or otherwise to

compel a compliance with its decrees, and without any guarantee for

their execution other than the good faith of the parties to the compact.

On the other hand the name of Federalists was assumed, and, what is

still more extraordinary, retained by those who desired to reduce the

State governments, by the conjunction of which the Federal Union had

been formed, to the condition of corporations to be intrusted with the

performance of those offices only for the discharge of which a new

general government might think them the appropriate functionaries; to

convert the States, not perhaps in name, but practically and

substantially, into one consolidated body politic, and to establish over

it a government which should, at the least, be rendered independent and

effective by the possession of ample powers to devise, adopt, and

execute such measures as it might deem best adapted to common defense

and general welfare.

That this was a signal perversion of the true relation between party

names and party objects can scarcely be denied. Yet we who have, in

later days, witnessed the caprices in respect to party names to which

the public mind has been occasionally subjected, and the facility with

which one party has, through its superior address or its greater

activity, succeeded in attaching to its adversary an unsuitable and

unwelcome name, have not as much reason to be surprised at that

perversion as had the men of that day who were subjected to it.

The motive which operated in thus denying to men whose principles were

federal the name which indicated them, and in giving it to their

opponents, must be looked for in the fact that federal principles were

at that time favored by the mass of the people. This was well understood

at the time, and was made still more apparent by the circumstance that

those who really adhered to them, though compelled by the superior

address of their adversaries to act under the name of Anti-Federalists,

maintained their ascendancy in the government of the Confederation to

its close.

Those who require further proof of the truth of this position beyond

what results from a mere statement of the principles contended for by

the respective parties, will find it fully sustained by definitions of

Gouverneur Morris and James Madison. (2 Madison _Papers_, pp. 747-8, and

893.) Mr. Morris explained the distinction between a _federal_ and a

_national_ supreme government,--the former being a mere compact resting

on the good faith of the parties, the latter having a complete and

_compulsive_ operation. Mr. Madison, in the debate on the propositions

of Mr. Patterson, which constituted the plan of the Anti-Federalists,

and which were rejected by a vote of seven States to three,--one

(Maryland) divided,--said: "Much stress has been laid by some gentlemen

on the want of power in the Convention to propose any other than a

_federal_ plan.... Neither of the characteristics of a federal plan

would support this objection. One characteristic was that in a _federal_

government the power was exercised, not on the people _individually_,

but on the people _collectively_, on the _States_. The other

characteristic was that a _federal_ government derived its appointments,

not immediately from the people, but from the States which they

respectively composed."

It cannot be difficult to decide which of these parties was, in truth,

_federal_, and which _anti-federal_, according to these authentic

definitions of a federal government.[3]

[3] This contradiction between names and principles was obvious even

to intelligent foreigners. The French minister Fauchet, in his

famous despatch to his government (the publication of which worked

the downfall of Edmund Randolph, Washington's Secretary of State)

alluding to political parties in America, speaks of the whimsical

contrast between their names, Federal and Anti-Federal, and their

real opinions;--the former aiming with all their power to annihilate

federalism, while the latter were striving to preserve it.

Between these parties, thenceforth distinguished by the misnomers of

Federalists and Anti-Federalists, there was, from the close of the war

to the establishment of the present government, an uninterrupted

succession of partisan conflicts, in which the whole country

participated. They grew, for the most part, out of propositions to take

from the State governments the rights of regulating commerce and of

levying and collecting impost duties, and for the call of a Convention

to revise the Articles of Confederation. The first two of these

propositions were introduced by the Federalists, and for six years

vigorously supported by their party, with Hamilton at its head; and,

although advocated by Madison whilst he was in Congress, such was the

strength of the Anti-Federal party in that body and in the States that

they were not able to carry either. Advances were occasionally made in

respect to imposts, but these were so restricted as to the officers by

whom the duties should be collected, whether State or Federal, and in

regard to the application of the money when collected, that the movers

of the principal measure considered its value so much impaired that they

declined to push it further under the existing circumstances.

A distrust of the motives of the Federal leaders, and an apprehension

that they designed to employ the powers asked for in the establishment

of a strong and absorbing general government, capable of becoming, and

which the Anti-Federalists feared would, in the progress of time,

become, disposed to practice a tyranny upon the people, as oppressive as

that from which the Revolution had relieved them, with the suspicion

already referred to, that many would not be willing to stop at that

point, were doubtless the true causes of these otherwise unaccountable

failures. The accounts which have been brought down to us of the

proceedings of public bodies, and of appeals to the people, through

different channels, abundantly sustain this assumption. These, in a work

like this, can only be glanced at.

The grounds taken by the opponents of these measures, and which, backed

by popular suspicions, made them so powerful, were that the views of the

Federalists were rather political than financial,--that they were at

least as solicitous to gratify their well-understood passion for power,

through the adoption of these propositions, as they were to maintain

public credit. Beyond all doubt the belief that the government which the

Federalists wished to create would, whatever it might be called, provide

for the greatest practical extent of irresponsible power, led the

Anti-Federalists not unfrequently to oppose measures which they would

otherwise have supported.

General Hamilton's speech, most able as it was, went far to strengthen

these impressions. The debate commenced on the 28th, and was continued

to the 30th January, 1783, and was throughout one of great power. It

resulted in the adoption, with slight amendments, of a proposition,

submitted and vigorously supported by Mr. Madison, "That it is the

opinion of Congress that the establishment of permanent and adequate

funds to operate generally throughout the United States, is

indispensably necessary for doing complete justice to the creditors of

the United States, for restoring public credit, and for providing for

the future exigencies of the war." Although this proposition finally

passed without a dissenting vote, yet when an attempt was made to carry

it into effect by an impost--the only way in which it was attempted--the

measure was defeated, as has been before remarked, by restrictions in

regard to the officers by whom it should be collected, and to the

application of the money. In the course of his speech General Hamilton

signified, as an additional reason why the impost ought to be collected

by officers under the appointment of Congress, "that as the energy of

the Federal Government was evidently short of the degree necessary for

pervading and uniting the States, it was expedient to introduce the

influence of officers deriving their emoluments from, and consequently

interested in supporting the power of Congress."

Upon this Mr. Madison, in a note, observes: "This remark was imprudent

and injudicious to the cause which it was meant to serve. This influence

was the very source of jealousy which rendered the States averse to a

revenue under the collection as well as appropriation of Congress. All

the members of Congress who concurred in any degree with the States in

this jealousy, smiled at the disclosure. Mr. Bland, and still more Mr.

Lee, who were of this number, took notice in private conversation that

Mr. Hamilton had let out the secret."[4]

[4] 1 Madison _Papers_, 291.

It is scarcely possible, at this distant day, to appreciate the terror

of irresponsible and arbitrary power which had been impressed upon the

minds of men who had themselves suffered from its excesses, or had

witnessed the cruelties it had inflicted on others, or whose fathers had

been victims of its crimes. Even Mr. Jefferson, who differed from the

Anti-Federalists in respect to these questions, as I shall hereafter

have occasion to show, though he sympathized with them in their general

feelings, in a letter to Mr. Madison in December, 1787, from Paris, upon

the subject of the Constitution, did not hesitate to say, "I own I am

not a friend to a very energetic government. It is always

oppressive."[5]

[5] 2 Jefferson's _Correspondence_, 276.

Similar feelings were exhibited by Massachusetts in 1785. That leading

State in the confederacy was, during the whole of this period, strongly

imbued with the feelings of the misnamed Anti-Federal party. This was in

no small degree owing to the talents, zeal, and activity displayed in

their behalf by Samuel Adams and John Hancock, two of the three persons

(John Adams having been the third), who were excepted by the British

Government from the offer of pardon to its rebellious subjects. Hancock

was a leading merchant and a zealous Revolutionary patriot, who had the

honor of placing his name first to the Declaration of Independence, and

the higher honor of sustaining the contest which it provoked to its

close with inflexible firmness and at unusual risks, growing out of his

large interests in commerce. Samuel Adams was equal to any man of his

day in intelligence, integrity, and patriotism. He was among the very

first who embraced the Revolution in the sense which it finally

assumed,--that of entire separation from the British Crown,--and he

supported the principles upon which it was founded, as well during the

conflict as for the residue of his long life, with great ability and

unsurpassed devotion. Whilst many of his associates, not less sincere

than himself in resistance to the despotic acts of the mother country,

could yet express their admiration of the English system and were

consequently inclined to limit their efforts to a redress of temporary

grievances, he at the earliest period avowed his hostility to kingly

government, and rallied around himself the advocates for an entire

separation, most of whom became with him early and prominent members of

the Anti-Federal party.

The legislature of Massachusetts, momentarily diverted from the

Anti-Federal track by influences which will be noticed in another place,

adopted a resolution urging Congress to recommend a convention of the

States "to revise the Confederation, and to report how far it may be

necessary in their opinion to alter and enlarge the same, in order to

secure and perpetuate the primary objects of the Union." Governor

Bowdoin, who had recommended the measure to the legislature in his

message, addressed a letter to Congress including the resolution, and

sent it to the delegates of the State to be presented by them. The

delegates suspended its delivery, and assigned their reasons for doing

so in a letter dated September 3, 1785, addressed to the Governor, with

a request that it should be laid before the legislature. From this

letter, which is ably written and occupies throughout Anti-Federal

ground, I make the following extracts:--"The great object of the

Revolution was the establishment of good government, and each of the

States, in forming their own as well as the Federal Constitution, have

adopted republican principles. Notwithstanding this, plans have been

artfully laid and vigorously pursued, which, had they been successful,

we think would have inevitably changed our republican governments into

baleful aristocracies. These plans are frustrated, but the same spirit

remains in their abettors; and the institution of Cincinnati, honorable

and beneficent as the views may have been of the officers who composed

it, we fear, if not totally abolished, will have the same tendency....

'More power in Congress,' has been the cry from all quarters, but

especially of those whose views, not being confined to a government

that will best promote the happiness of the people, are extended to one

that will afford lucrative employments, civil and military. Such a

government is an aristocracy, which would require a standing army and a

numerous train of pensioners and placemen to prop and support its

exalted administration. To recommend one's self to such an

administration would be to secure an establishment for life, and at the

same time to provide for his posterity. These are pleasing prospects

which republican governments do not afford, and it is not to be wondered

at that many persons of elevated views and idle habits in these States

are desirous of the change. We are for increasing the power of Congress

as far as it will promote the happiness of the people; but at the same

time, are clearly of opinion that every measure should be avoided which

would strengthen the hands of the enemies to free government, and that

an administration of the present Confederation, with all its

inconveniences, is preferable to the risk of general dissensions and

animosities, which may approach to anarchy and prepare the way to a

ruinous system of government."

This letter of the delegates was laid before the legislature at their

next session, and produced a vote annulling the resolution recommending

a convention. The letter was signed by Elbridge Gerry, Samuel Holton,

and Rufus King. Mr. King, in the course of the following year, married

Miss Alsop, the only child of John Alsop, a wealthy merchant of New

York, and after having represented his native State with credit in the

Federal Convention of 1787, moved to that city; was appointed one of the

first senators in Congress from the State of New York (General Schuyler

being the other); was the friend and associate of Hamilton, Gouverneur

Morris, and Jay, and became, and continued for many years, a prominent

member of the Federal party.

Every step that was taken toward a convention was regarded with

distrust,--a distrust founded on a prevalent apprehension that the

talented and, as was believed, ambitious men who would get the control

of it, would in some way defeat those republican principles for the

right to establish which the country had made such great sacrifices.

The Commercial Convention, representing five States, which originated in

Virginia and met at Annapolis, and by which the movement that resulted

in the present Constitution was commenced, permitted Hamilton to draw up

their Address to the other States, which was also to be laid before

Congress; but insisted on giving a shape to their proposition which

would confine the Federal Convention within narrow bounds. They did this

in deference to the well understood sentiment of the country, and as the

only course, in their opinion, by which a convention could be obtained;

and accordingly they proposed "That a convention should be called to

meet at Philadelphia in May next, to devise such further provisions as

should appear to them necessary to render the Constitution of the

Federal Government adequate to the exigencies of the Union, and to

report such an act for that purpose to the United States in Congress

assembled, as _when agreed to by them, and afterwards confirmed by the

legislatures of every State_, will effectually provide for the same."[6]

[6] See _Address_; 2 Madison, 698. Not more than one, if one, of the

five States was fully in favor of a Convention.

The final action of Congress upon the subject, a majority of which

entertained similar views, consisted of a resolution, introduced by the

delegates from Massachusetts, declaring it to be the opinion of Congress

that a convention should be held at the time and place named by the

Commissioners who met at Annapolis, "for _the sole and express purpose_

of revising the Articles of Confederation, and reporting to Congress and

the several legislatures such alterations and provisions therein as

shall, _when agreed to in Congress and confirmed by the States_, render

the Federal Constitution adequate to the exigencies of government and

the preservation of the Union."[7]

[7] _Journals_ of that Congress, Vol. IV. p. 724.

But for the sanction thus given to the measure by Congress no convention

would have been held--at least none at that time. Washington, as appears

from his Correspondence, would not have deemed a convention legal

without it, and would not have attended;[8] and his example, added to

the hesitation of most of the States, and the decided opposition of some

of them, would have been sufficient to put a stop to the project.

[8] Sparks's _Washington_, Vol. IX.; Notes, pp. 237-9.

It was under such circumstances that the Convention assembled. Its

proceedings have become so familiar to the public mind, from the full

publications that have been made of them, and the extent to which they

have been reviewed, as to render it unnecessary to go very far into

their details. The Anti-Federal plan was introduced by Mr. Patterson, of

New Jersey, more in obedience to the ascertained wishes of his

constituents, than in conformity with his particular views. It proposed

an amendment of the Articles of Confederation for the construction of

executive and judicial departments in the federal government; to make

its laws and treaties the supreme law of the land; to increase the

powers of Congress in several important particulars, among which were

the right to levy and collect taxes and imposts, to regulate foreign

commerce and commerce between the States, and to give to the federal

government power to enforce its requisitions upon the States when it

should become necessary,--and to leave the government in other respects

as it stood.

The plan which Hamilton desired the Convention to propose to the people

and the States, of which he left a copy with Mr. Madison as a permanent

memorial of his opinions,--now published with Mr. Madison's "Papers,"

and in the "Life of Hamilton" by his son, and agreeing with each other

in all respects,--consisted, in its most remarkable features, of the

following provisions, viz:--

_First:_ The President should hold his office during good behavior,

removable only on conviction upon impeachment for some crime or

misdemeanor; and he should have an absolute negative upon all bills,

resolutions, and acts of Congress about to be passed into a law.

_Secondly:_ The Senators should hold their offices by the same tenure,

and should have the exclusive power of declaring war.

_Thirdly:_ The General Government should have the right to appoint the

future Governors of the States, who might hold their offices during good

behavior, and who should have the power to negative all laws about to be

passed by the respective State legislatures, subject to such regulations

as Congress might prescribe, and also to appoint all the militia

officers if Congress should so direct; and,

_Fourthly:_ Congress should "have power to pass all laws which they

shall judge necessary to the common defense and general welfare of the

Union."

The first of these plans, which professed to represent the views of the

Anti-Federalists, was rejected by the Convention, after full discussion,

as has been already mentioned, by a vote of seven States to three, one

being divided. Hamilton's scheme was not brought to a vote, nor, except

by himself, made the subject of particular discussion. This course was

obviously induced, in no small degree, by motives of respect for the

feelings of its author. Every body praised his candor and independence,

but the popular opinions in respect to its provisions were too well

understood to allow of any vote, other than his own, being given in its

favor, whatever private sympathy it may have enlisted.

Fortunately for the country at this, perhaps the most decisive period in

its history, a majority of the Convention, composed of every shade of

opinion, became thoroughly satisfied that a crisis had arrived which

demanded a liberal sacrifice of extreme views. They were convinced that

whilst, on the one hand, no system would stand the slightest chance to

be acceptable to any thing like a majority either of the States or

people, which was designed, or obnoxious to the suspicion of being

designed, to degrade the State governments, or even to impair their

capacities for the successful management of those portions of public

affairs which, under a proper distribution of the powers of government,

would be left under their control, or which was in the smallest degree

calculated to do violence to the well-known feelings of the people upon

the subjects of hereditary or irresponsible power; so, on the other,

there was no room for two opinions in respect to the ruinous

consequences that would, in the then condition of the country,

inevitably result from the failure of a convention, brought together

with so much difficulty, to remedy the manifest defects of the existing

government by suitable and effectual additions and improvements, and to

make a Constitution which would prove satisfactory both to the States

and people. Kept together by this overruling conviction, they entered

upon the construction of the present Constitution. The State governments

had been until that period, in point of fact, the ruling power. The

federal head, from the want of power to act directly upon the people,

or, in a compulsory manner, upon the State authorities, was dependent on

them for the execution of its most important decisions. Though much

depressed by the adverse current of events, it was yet in the State

governments that the pride of power stood relatively at the highest

point. Any attempt, under such circumstances, to humiliate the State

authorities, would inflame the passions of their supporters; but they

might be, perhaps, to a sufficient extent conciliated, and the

Convention prudently adopted this course. Irritating subjects were, with

that view, as far as possible, avoided. Propositions to give to the new

government a direct negative upon the legislation of the States, and to

empower it to appoint their governors and militia officers, which had

produced so much ill blood, were effectually discountenanced. The

sovereignty of the States, to which State pride was so keenly alive, was

not interfered with in respect to the powers of government which were

left in their hands. An impartial and wise division of powers was made

between them and the government proposed to be established. To remove

apprehensions which had been long entertained, and which had sunk deep

in the minds of many, the State authorities as such were allowed a

liberal participation in the first formation, and their coöperation was

made necessary to the subsequent continuance of the new government. The

manner of choosing the electors of President and Vice-President was,

with the same general view, left to the regulation of the State

legislatures exclusively; and when a failure to choose by the electors

should occur--a result then believed likely to happen frequently--the

President was to be chosen by the House of Representatives of the United

States, and, in the performance of that important duty, each State had

reserved to it the right to appear and act in its federal

character--that of a perfect equality with her sister States--whatever

might be the difference in their respective population, territory, or

wealth. The choice of the Senate of the United States was also left

exclusively to the State legislatures. The result of all these

arrangements was, that the Federal Constitution was so constructed as to

put it in the power of a bare majority of the States to bring the

government proposed by it to a peaceable end, without exposing their

citizens to the necessity of resorting to force, by simply withholding

the appointment of electors, or the choice of their Senators, or both.

No provisions could have been devised better calculated to remove

apprehension and allay jealousy in respect to the new government. They

hit the nail on the head. Although they might not avert the opposition

of excited partisans, they answered the expectations of moderate

men,--of that large class whose paramount object was the relief of the

country as well as their own private affairs from the embarrassments

under which they were suffering, and which were, as usual on such

occasions, attributed altogether to the defects of the existing system.

The question could with great propriety be put to Anti-Federal opponents

(and doubtless was put),--Are you afraid to trust a numerical majority

of the States? If not, they can at short intervals put an end to the new

government if it proves to be as bad as you apprehend.

Having already, in a spirit of devotion to duty and a hazardous

disregard of responsibility which was made necessary by the occasion,

set aside the instructions of Congress by making a new Constitution, the

Convention pursued a similar course to the end. Instead of reporting the

result of their labors to Congress for its approval and submission to

the States for their unanimous sanction, according to the Articles of

Confederation, as was proposed at Annapolis and provided by Congress in

the act of sanction to the holding of the Convention, that body sent the

instrument it had framed to Congress, not for its approval, but to be by

it submitted to the States and people in the first instance, under a

provision, prescribed by the Convention, that if it was ratified by nine

of the thirteen States it should be binding upon all,--an heroic though

perhaps a lawless act.

The dangerous condition of the country, and the general opinion that

some decided step was necessary to its safety, added to the imposing

character of the instrument itself, which, though not satisfactory to

Congress, was yet far less objectionable than had been anticipated, and

a general expectation that important amendments rendering it still more

acceptable to the people would follow its ratification, deterred the

national legislature from refusing to comply with the request of the

Convention, notwithstanding its flagrant disregard of congressional

authority. The same considerations should have induced the Anti-Federal

party to acquiesce in the ratification of the Constitution. They should

have looked upon the marked effect of that instrument upon Congress as a

prophetic warning of the danger to which they would expose themselves as

a party by opposing it. But they did not see their duty, or, perhaps,

their interests, in that light; honest in their intentions and obstinate

in their opinions, they opposed the ratification, were defeated, and, as

a party, finally overthrown.

The Anti-Federal party represented very fairly the ideas and feelings

that prevailed with the masses during the Revolution. These, as we have

described, having been deeply rooted by the persecutions suffered by

Puritan, Huguenot, Hussite, and Dutch ancestors, and, however crude and

unsystematized at first, having been gradually stimulated into maturity

and shape by the persevering injustice of the mother country, became

political opinions of the most tenacious and enduring character. At the

moment of which we are speaking, alarm in respect to the character of

the General Government about to be established, with increased

attachments to those of the States, were predominant feelings in the

Anti-Federal mind, and closed it against a dispassionate consideration

of the Constitution submitted to their choice. The local governments

were entitled to all the regard which had been cherished for them by the

Anti-Federalists and by their political predecessors under the colonial

system; neither were the dangers which threatened them overrated.

Hamilton could not tolerate the idea that they should be continued

otherwise than as corporations, with very limited powers. Morris, in his

usual rough and strong way, was for "drawing their teeth," as I have

already quoted him; and even the temperate Madison was in favor of

giving the General Government a direct negative upon all their laws,--a

proposition which, though not so humiliating as Hamilton's, or so

harshly expressed as that of Morris, would have been far more fatal to

their future usefulness. Standing now on the vantage-ground of

experience, no sensible man can fail to see that the State governments

would have perished under the treatment thus proposed for them, nor can

any such man doubt the immense advantage they have been and still are to

our system. A short reflection upon what has been accomplished through

their agency, and upon what our condition would probably have been if

they had been blotted out of the system, as was virtually desired in

most influential quarters, must satisfy candid and intelligent minds of

the fatal unsoundness of the policy proposed. The States would under it

have been governed as her numerous colonies were governed by Rome, and

a comparison of our present condition with what it must have been under

the satraps of a consolidated federal government, will cause every

patriotic heart to rejoice at our escape from the latter. For that

escape we are largely indebted to the old Anti-Federal party. They stood

out longest and strongest in behalf of the State governments, after the

establishment of our Independence; and although they failed in other

respects, they made impressions upon the public mind which have never

been effaced, and for which we owe them a debt of gratitude. Their

motives, as is usual in political collisions, were misrepresented; they

were spoken of as men of contracted views, of narrow prejudices; and

their preference for the State governments was attributed to the

preponderance they possessed in them, and to a consciousness that their

greatness and power were derived from local prejudices and from their

skill in fomenting them. Hence was inferred their hostility to an

efficient federal government, whose extensive affairs they were

incapable of managing, and in which, consequently, it was alleged that

they would not retain the influence they possessed at home.

Although I unite fully in condemning the course pursued by the

Anti-Federalists in respect as well to the Constitution as to their

refusal to grant an adequate revenue to the federal head, and the right

to regulate commerce, I regard those imputations which ascribed to them

a readiness to sacrifice the great interests of the country to merely

factious purposes, as the ebullitions of party spleen produced by party

jealousies, as unjust and unfounded as was the charge brought forward by

the old Republican party against Alexander Hamilton of a design to

plunge the country into war with France to subserve the wishes and

interests of England. I do not think there were ten in every hundred of

that party who did not believe that imputation well founded, and most

of them went to their graves without having yielded that conviction. I

came upon the political stage when this matter was only viewed in the

retrospect, and am free to say that I even believed that, if there was

any thing true in the party criminations of the preceding era, this was

so. Judge, then, of my surprise, on discovering from his papers, as well

as from those of some of his contemporaries recently published, that

there was probably no man in the country more sincerely anxious to

prevent a war with France; that he applied his great mind incessantly to

that object; that he was willing, indeed desirous, to send either Mr.

Jefferson or Mr. Madison as one of the commissioners to negotiate with

France, a proposition in respect to which he could not obtain the

concurrence of either Mr. Adams or his cabinet, the latter of whom were

sufficiently prompt to adopt his advice save when it conflicted with

their party prejudices; and that so far from acting on that occasion at

the instigation or to promote the policy of Great Britain, although

entertaining strong--in my opinion too strong--preferences for England

as between her and France, he was, in respect to every thing that

affected the interests of his own country, purely and strictly American.

Of this no man, whose mind is not debauched by prejudice, can entertain

a doubt on reading the papers referred to.

The imputations upon the motives of the Anti-Federalists were of the

same general stamp and origin. It was too soon for those who were yet

fresh from the self-sacrificing and patriotic struggle on the field of

the Revolution, where they had nobly done their duty, to fall under the

influence of such petty motives as were attributed to them. Like their

opponents, they might and did peril much of their own standing to

further political views of great magnitude which they honestly, if

erroneously, believed would promote the welfare of their country; but

base incentives and merely factious calculations are not predicable of

the times or of the men.

We should be slow to attribute narrow views to a political party to

whose principal leaders, more than to any other portion of the Whigs, we

owe the great change in the character of our Revolutionary struggle by

which the assertion of Independence was substituted for the demand of a

redress of grievances.

If the Anti-Federal party had been accused of cherishing morbid and

impracticable ideas on the subject of a general government, the charge

would have come nearer the truth. Many of them had so vivid a

recollection of cruelties practiced upon their fathers, and had

themselves seen and felt so much of the tyranny of the mother country,

as to destroy all hope on their part that political power could be

vested in remote hands, without the certainty of its being abused.

Although they may have been right in respect to the monarchical

preferences of many who were the most zealous for a convention, still

they overrated the danger that such views would be encouraged by that

body, and in their apprehensions of subsequent efforts to establish

monarchical institutions here, they did not sufficiently appreciate an

existing security against the accomplishment of such an object, the

character and adequacy of which shall be hereafter noticed. We have

every reason to believe that they regarded the project of a general

convention as involving, if successful, the fate of republican

principles in this country; and under the influence of feelings of so

sombre a character, their course, as a party, was, it must be admitted,

substantially adverse to any change, content rather to bear the ills

they had than to encounter others of which they knew not the precise

extent, but which they dreaded more. In this they fell behind the

progress of events.

If our Revolutionary contest had terminated in a compromise with the

mother country, as was for a long time expected, the existing system,

with the amendments which would then have been generally favored, might

have sufficed. It might have answered all the purposes contemplated by

that which Franklin took so much pains to establish in 1755. But when

our country had taken her position among the nations of the earth as a

sovereign and independent power, she acquired rights and incurred

obligations which could not be properly cared for by any agency short of

a well-constructed and efficient general government, and the existing

organization was neither. By an efficient government I do not mean one

capable of absorbing or neutralizing the State authorities, or not fully

responsible for the faithful exercise of the powers conferred upon it,

or possessing more power than was necessary for the discharge of all the

duties assigned to it, but one amply furnished with the ability to

discharge them by its own means. To this end it was necessary that it

should have competent and well organized executive, legislative, and

judicial departments, and at least the power requisite to raise its

necessary revenues from the people directly. To all this the

Anti-Federal party was opposed, and therein it was wrong. The risk of

having exceptionable principles incorporated into the Constitution was

one that had to be encountered at some time, and there were cogent

reasons for meeting it then. The condition of the country, in regard to

its credit and other interests, presented an argument of great urgency

for the necessity of a competent government. But above all other

considerations stood the fact that the Convention had proposed for the

approval of the people and the States a constitution which, when

interpreted according to its plain and obvious meaning, conferred on the

government proposed by it powers fully adequate to the public service,

but none from which danger could be apprehended to any interest. That

this was so is no longer an open question. Time and experience have

demonstrated the error of the Anti-Federalists, who, under the influence

of strong prejudices, although doubtless honestly, thought differently.

No one will now question the devotion of the people, for whose benefit

it was framed, and who are the best judges in the matter, to the

existing system. With full power to alter or abolish it, they have lived

under it for the greater part of a century, without making or desiring

to make any essential alterations in its structure. By the exercise of

those powers only which were plainly given by the Constitution to the

government established by its authority and expressed on its face, in

regard to which there has been no dispute, and which were at the times

of its adoption well understood by those who made and those who adopted

it, our country has prospered and grown to its present greatness. I say

by those powers only, because the spurious interpolations which have

from time to time been attempted have in no instance been productive of

good.

The Convention was held with closed doors, and the result of its labors

was not known to the public before it was communicated to Congress, nor

the particulars of its proceedings, the votes, resolutions, and

speeches, till many years afterwards. The public mind, and especially

the Anti-Federal portion of it, was impressed by those circumstances,

operating upon long entertained suspicions, with the most unfavorable

anticipations in respect to the character of the instrument that had

been agreed upon. All found it so different from what it was feared by

many that it would be, and so many received it according to its real

merits, that it carried a large preponderance of the public sentiment,

drawn from both parties, to the conclusion that it ought not to be, and

could not with safety be rejected. The reflection of this sentiment was

distinctly seen in the action of Congress. It had given its assent to

the holding of a Convention, without which that body would not have met;

but it had, as we have seen, restricted its action in two most important

points: 1st, that the Convention should limit its action to a revision

of the Articles of Confederation and to suggestions for their

improvement; and, 2d, that its doings should be reported to Congress, to

be submitted to the States, under those Articles which required the

assent of every State to any alteration. The Convention disregarded

both; it sent to Congress a new constitution, regulated its submission

to the States, and decided that the assent of nine of the thirteen

should make it binding upon all. Congress, with its resolutions and

limitations thus set at nought, and without even a protest, did what was

asked of it. Yet the leaders of the Anti-Federal party in the States

determined upon opposition. The course and character of that opposition

indicate that those who embarked in it were conscious of their

approaching defeat.

In the three largest and most strongly Anti-Federal States, in which the

power of that party, when cordially united, was irresistible, the

Constitution was ratified. It was adopted by the required number of

States, and the fate of the Anti-Federal party, as such, was forever

sealed by the result of the contest in which it had unwisely engaged.