Slight Notice so far in this Work bestowed upon the Course of the
Democratic Party, and Reasons therefor--Four great Crises in our
National Affairs, viz.: The Revolution; the Confederation; the
Struggle resulting in the Adoption of the Constitution, and
Hamilton's Attempt to pave the way for its Overthrow--Equal Merit
during the Revolution of those who afterwards formed the Federalist
and Anti-Federalist Parties--Condition of the Country under the
Confederation--During that Period and in the Struggle for the
Constitution the Measures and Conduct of the Federalists Wiser than
those of their Opponents--Culmination of the Contest of Principle
between the two great Parties during the Administration of John
Adams--The Object of this Work to give a general Account of the
Origin and Organization of Parties, and not a History of Partisan
Conflicts arising afterwards--Party Spirit, its Evils and
Benefits--Randall's "Life of Jefferson"--Leadership of Hamilton and
Jefferson--Their Character and Influence--Contrasts in their
Careers, Principles, and Aims--John Adams's Political
Principles--State of Parties in the time of Washington's
Administration as described by John Q. Adams--Character of John
Adams--His Services in the Revolution--Change in his Political
Opinions from his Residence in England--Fidelity of Jefferson,
Samuel Adams, and others to their Original Principles--Vigor and
Efficiency of the Organization of the Old Republican Party--Firm
Establishment of Popular Convictions against Monarchical
Institutions--"Sapping and Mining Policy" of Hamilton--Growing
Attachment of Republicans to the Constitution, and corresponding
Dislike of that Instrument on the part of Federalists--Issue
presented by Madison in the Legislature of Virginia--His Report a
Synopsis of Republican Doctrines--Triumph and general Success of
the Party--Lasting Effects of Hamilton's Teachings--Erroneous
Theories of the Origin of Parties--Identity of the Anti-Federal,
Republican, and Democratic Parties--Apparent Agreement of all
Parties upon Fundamental Questions after the Ratification of the
Constitution--Subsequent Controversy arose from the Efforts of the
Federalists for a Latitudinarian, and of their Opponents for a
Strict Construction of that Instrument.
It cannot have failed to strike the reader of these pages that a
comparatively slight notice has been taken of that party which has for
more than half a century, with rare and limited exceptions, administered
the Government of our country. This is easily explained. During the
first twelve years of the existence of this Government, the period
during which the two great parties of the country received that "form
and pressure" which they have never lost, the Federalists were in power,
and of course principal actors in the management of public affairs.
Expositions of their measures and of the circumstances under which they
were brought forward, and criticisms upon those measures, naturally
acquire greater prominence in a review of the period than the less
salient manifestations of the opposition permit. The resistance made by
the latter to those measures involved a succession of sacrifices and
services which it is now difficult to appreciate at their full value,
but which, when correctly estimated, reflect the highest honor upon
those engaged in it and deserve the fullest notice.
The four great crises in our national affairs were, _first_, the
Revolution; _second_, the government of the Confederation between the
recognition of our Independence and the adoption of the present
Constitution; _third_, the struggle for and the acquisition of that
instrument; and _fourth_, Hamilton's attempt to make of the Government
which had been established under it a delusion, and the Constitution a
sham, to pave the way for its overthrow and for the final introduction
of institutions more accordant with his opinions;--for, as I have
remarked, no intelligent man could have expected that the people of
America would long endure a Constitution subject to the treatment to
which he had exposed it, and to such as he had still in store for it.
In the crisis of the Revolution, the conduct of all who subsequently
composed the two great parties in the country--save the Tories, who were
soon absorbed by one of them,--was equally meritorious. The difference
between them in point of numbers was largely in favor of those who were
afterwards called Anti-Federalists, and, still later, Republicans, and
in point of talents and perhaps in social position on the side of the
Federalists.
The condition of the country, during the second important juncture, may
be not inaptly illustrated by the common figure of a strong man
struggling in a morass. Nothing was stable, and nothing which promised
substantial relief seemed for a season practicable. Of the prominent
measures brought forward by both parties to extricate the country from
its embarrassments, those proposed by the Federalists were the wisest,
and, as the result proved, well adapted to the exigences of the
occasion.
In the contest for the Constitution that party was also throughout more
useful than its opponents. In this estimate the course taken by Hamilton
is not regarded as the act of his party, except as to that portion of it
which consisted in signing the Constitution and in aiding its adoption.
The issues involved in the fourth decisive crisis in our political
fortunes were contested during the presidency of John Adams. The whole
of that administration was a political campaign, occupied by bitter and
uninterrupted struggles for predominance between the conflicting
principles of two great parties. The most important, although perhaps
not the most exciting, of the questions and measures in dispute had
arisen during the administration of President Washington; but his
presence and participation in the Government held the parties at bay.
Political alienations had then taken place, and wounds had been
inflicted which were never healed, and bitter fountains sprang up and
struggled for an outlet, but they were in a great degree restrained by
that consideration. The leading men among those who soon after
organized the first Republican, now called the old Republican, party,
made it a point to abstain from violent action, and to content
themselves with protests against measures of which they disapproved, but
which they could not defeat. Jefferson gave his opinion in the cabinet,
and Madison made his unanswerable speech in the Congress against the
bank, and the latter, with other Republicans, spoke strongly against
particular features of the funding system, but both measures were
nevertheless adopted by decisive majorities; and still, as far as
practicable, harsh invective and reproaches against those majorities
were withheld or delayed. The removal of the salient point of attack, by
the withdrawal of Hamilton from the cabinet, served also to stay
partisan outbreaks on the part of the Republicans, who were, throughout,
not unmindful of the advantages they would give to their opponents by
bringing matters to a crisis whilst Washington was at the head of the
Government. On the other hand, Hamilton evidently was discouraged by the
restrictions imposed upon him by the prudence of Washington. It is
apparent that, although by far more confided in, on the score of his
great talents, than any other member of the administration, he was yet
not allowed the latitude which he thought necessary to success. No one
can read his remarkable letter to Washington (to which I have referred
in another connection) without perceiving that he was seriously
discontented. He thought that there were men about the President who
interfered with and opposed his counsels, and he avowed his suspicions
to that effect in that letter to Washington, with the expression of a
hope that the latter would one day understand those men better. There
was, besides, as Jefferson admits, "no act of strong mark during the
remainder of his" (Washington's) "administration that excited much
complaint."
Discontents were, therefore, in a great degree, held in abeyance waiting
the succession for more active resistance and redress. The arrival of
that period--the retirement of Washington and the election of
Adams--found the field clear for the great contest for which the
materials had been gathered and the hearts of the combatants prepared.
Mr. Jefferson endeavored, as far as was proper, to prevent himself from
being regarded as a competitor with Mr. Adams, when the latter was
elected. He wrote to Mr. Madison, requesting him to withdraw his name if
there should be an equality of votes between himself and Mr. Adams,
which was not an improbable result, assigning, as a reason, that the
latter was greatly his senior in years, and had always stood in advance
of him in public life. But notwithstanding the friendly feelings that
had existed between them down to that period, their relations soon
assumed a very decided character of political opposition. Then commenced
that fierce partisan struggle which has never been equaled here and
seldom, if ever, in any country, either in respect to the gravity and
interest of the principles involved, or to the ability and firmness with
which the ground of the respective parties was sustained.
A full account of the incidents of this four years' controversy would
carry this work far beyond the limits of my plan and of my time. My
object has been to trace the origin and first organization of our
political parties. To this full notices of the early measures out of
which they sprang were indispensable. Partisan conflicts upon questions
that arose after their organization was completed, are to be regarded as
effects rather than as causes of their existence. The spirit which
controls the action of sects and parties, in church or state, is indeed
selfish and perverse, becoming more and more characterized by those
qualities the longer they are kept on foot. When a new measure is
proposed, or doctrine announced, on either side, the problem presenting
itself for deliberation _eo instanti_ to the minds of the opposite
faction, is as to the degree of strength and credit which its
introduction and success may be expected to bring to its authors, and of
consequent damage to their own party,--degrees, of course, dependent
upon the extent of its probable advantage to the interests of religion,
in one case, or of the country, in the other,--and in such deliberation
the claims of religion and country are in great danger of being
postponed for the interests of parties, and the new doctrine or measure
of meeting with a resistance proportioned to its probable merit. It
results as a general rule that it is sufficient to induce one party to
oppose any given measure to know that it has been introduced by its
adversary. This is an unfavorable and humiliating view of a subject
which nevertheless includes great advantages in a free State, but its
truth is unhappily too obvious.
The angry contests which followed each other in rapid and uninterrupted
succession during the administration of the elder Adams, partook
strongly of this character. They sprung out of questions which arose
after the two great parties of the country--which have been
substantially kept on foot ever since--had been completely organized and
had taken the field, the one to accomplish and the other to resist a
great national reform which could only be constitutionally determined
through the medium of a struggle for the succession. Of these I have
only noticed the alien and sedition laws, and have been induced to make
that discrimination partly by a conviction of their superior influence
in settling the fate of parties, but principally from their relation to
the report upon the question of their constitutionality prepared by
Madison, under the invigorating stimulus administered by the ever
active and zealous mind of Jefferson. Of this great paper I shall speak
again.
For an account of those interesting partisan conflicts--which, in
comparison with the men and issues of the present day, I may, without, I
think, being justly reproached with overpraising the past, call a war of
giants--the reader cannot, in my judgment, be referred to a source which
is in the main more reliable than Randall's "Life of Jefferson." The
descendants of that great and good man have contributed to the
preparation of that work, apparently without reserve, a body of
information of intense interest with which they have been intrusted, and
which has never before been made public. With many of the members of
this family it has been my good fortune to become intimately acquainted;
it would be difficult to find people anywhere more unobtrusive,
notwithstanding their claims upon the respect and consideration of the
community, whilst in individual temperament and character they are
richly endowed with those amiable, truthful, disinterested, and upright
traits for which their progenitor was so greatly distinguished in the
estimation of those who knew him well, and who were disposed to do him
justice. Mr. Randall has faithfully embodied the valuable materials
furnished by them in his work, to the execution of which he has brought,
besides talent and industry, a thoroughly democratic spirit. He has
entitled himself to credit for permitting Mr. Jefferson and his
contemporaries, as well opponents as coadjutors, to speak for themselves
in respect to public questions generally. If it should be thought in any
quarter that his own commentaries betray too much warmth; and are in
some instances of too partisan a character for the right tone of
history, it should be remembered that they fall in those respects far
short of the writers of the Federal school who have treated of
Jefferson; his volumes may with truth be regarded as the first
systematic defense of that statesman's entire political career, and it
would not be an easy matter for any one, especially for one of Randall's
years, after wading through the volumes of political and personal
detraction which have been written against him, to read for the first
time vindications authentic, simple, and conclusive without being
sometimes betrayed into expressions which would not have been indulged
at moments of less excitement.
Occasional mistakes in a work of such extent, even with the best
intentions, and with what may well be regarded as the most reliable
sources of information, are still unavoidable. I have elsewhere
corrected a very important one in respect to Mr. Madison's vote on
Giles's resolution censuring the conduct of Hamilton. I dissent also
from the inferences drawn in a few instances from facts about which
there is no mistake,--such as Washington's intentions respecting the
rank of the major-generals for the provisional army, and the blame
imputed to Jefferson and Madison,--to the latter for not accepting the
office of Secretary of State when the former resigned, and to Jefferson
for declining Washington's invitation to return to it; but I have not
seen any statement in the whole work which I do not believe was intended
to be correct, or any construction of ascertained results which does not
appear to have been made in good faith.
It is conceded on all sides that Hamilton and Jefferson, during the
presidency of John Adams, were the leaders of the two great parties--the
substantial amalgamation of the old Anti-Federal and Republican parties
leaving but two. Hamilton's position was unprecedented. Although the
President and himself were, almost from the commencement of the
campaign, upon very bad terms--feeling strong personal dislike towards
each other, and holding no really friendly intercourse--he
notwithstanding directed the course of the administration, and
controlled the entire action of the Government to a greater extent than
he had done at any time during the presidency of Washington. These
extraordinary results he accomplished by means of the complete
ascendancy, to which I have heretofore alluded, which he possessed over
the three principal members of Mr. Adams's cabinet,--Pickering, Wolcott
and McHenry,--and by the peculiar influence that he was capable of
exerting over the Federal members of Congress. I have referred to
letters, state papers, briefs, and instructions for the action of those
parties establishing the truth of this position. With very limited
exceptions the control of Mr. Adams over his own administration was
little more than nominal. He served the purpose, and that was his chief
burden, of bearing the responsibility of unpopular measures--a fortunate
circumstance for the Republicans, as he excelled most men in his
capacity for adding to the odium of an obnoxious measure by the manner
of executing it.
I doubt whether, in the history of the world, another occasion can be
found when any two men were as successful as were Jefferson and Hamilton
in impressing such great numbers of intelligent people with their own
opinions and views upon the subjects of government and its proper
administration.
Acts and avowed opinions speak for themselves, but to determine the
motives of parties in the adoption of their measures no safer tests
perhaps can be employed than the characters and dispositions of those by
whom the parties themselves were founded and, in their early stages,
guided. Hamilton's character, qualifications, and views have already
occupied a large space in these pages. If they have been spoken of in
any other than a faithful and liberal spirit, I have certainly failed
to do justice to my own feelings. Of Thomas Jefferson, the founder as
well as leader of the old Republican, now Democratic, party,
comparatively little has been said. Opposed as they were in their
opinions upon almost every public question that arose after the adoption
of the Federal Constitution, there were yet occasional coincidences of
sentiment which served to illustrate the elevated character of their
minds, as there were also many features of their respective careers
which, while broadly contrasted, furnished the strongest evidence of the
sincerity and integrity of both. Not the least striking among the latter
may be found in the circumstances and conditions of life in which they
respectively started in the "race set before them," as connected with
the ideas and opinions at which they arrived, so variant from those
commonly impressed upon men by similar accidents.
Descended from a highly honored stock, it was yet Hamilton's lot to be
born poor and to be left solely dependent upon his own exertions for his
success in life. After a service of three years as clerk in a
counting-house he was sent to this country for the completion of his
education, at the expense of relatives on his mother's side. Here he
made himself acquainted with the character of our dispute with the
mother country, and took sides with the colonists in a manner and under
circumstances highly creditable to him, and after five years' military
service, in which he acquired great reputation in comparatively
subordinate stations, he retired to private life, adopting the legal
profession as his only resource for the support of his family.
That a man trained in such a school, and who at the same time possessed
capacities to influence the public mind, when his efforts were properly
directed, far superior to any of his contemporaries, would, in the
condition in which he was placed, and under a government like our own,
take his political position on the popular side, was an anticipation
naturally entertained by the zealous friends of republican government.
But we have seen, on the contrary, that there was not, throughout the
wide extent of the Republic, a single man of respectable standing, more
deeply (and, let me add, more sincerely) distrustful of the judgment and
dispositions of the great body of the people, or more anxious to impose
restraints upon the popular will, and, for the accomplishment of that
object, to add to the intrinsic influence of associated wealth the
facilities for its exercise afforded by the possession of political
power. His case must not, however, be confounded with that of the
"candied tongues" found in every community which
"Lick absurd pomp,
And crook the pregnant hinges of the knee
That thrift may follow fawning."
Hamilton's mind was incapable of that condescension, or, as Mr.
Jefferson observed to me of him in connection with other matters, "he
was far above that." He participated largely as a professional man in
the favor and patronage of the commercial and manufacturing classes, but
instead of his own political course being influenced by the receipt of
such favors, he seldom failed to govern theirs. He was not a man to
mortgage his great abilities for personal benefits of any description,
and so well was his character in that respect understood that no one
would have ventured to tender him any inducement which might in the
estimation of the most prejudiced expose his personal independence to
the slightest question or suspicion. The fact, therefore, that he
pursued a course so different from what might have been naturally
expected of him by people generally--a course so much less eligible for
the gratification of ambitious views--affords high evidence of the
integrity of his motives. It proved that he acted under the influence of
opinions which had been honestly formed, and in the correctness of which
he confided to the end; opinions which he doubtless hoped would in the
sequel prove acceptable to the majority, but to which he felt it his
duty to adhere, whatever might be the consequences to himself of his
perseverance.
Mr. Jefferson, on the other hand, succeeded at the age of fourteen, in
addition to other rights of primogeniture, to an inheritance which, with
competent management, was sufficient to satisfy all his wants, and to a
social position, when he became a man, which required no pecuniary aids
to make his condition in every respect all that was desirable, and one
that could scarcely be improved by any change in the government of his
country. To an unusual extent devoid of the gift of oratory, personal
ambition was less likely to tempt him into the paths of politics.
Cherishing always a love of letters, science and the arts, blessed with
a genial temper, and in every respect well qualified to adorn and to
enjoy the social circle, he seemed destined for a life of elegant ease.
But, happily for the cause of human rights throughout the world, and for
the welfare especially of his own country, he was impressed by his Maker
with an ardent love of liberty, and a zealous devotion to the generous
and equalizing principles of republican government, which impelled him
into the political field, and placed him from the beginning in
unreserved hostility to hereditary political power in any form, to all
institutions in the State which secure to particular classes or
individuals a preference over others of equal merit, and to all power in
government, or in individuals or associations, civil or ecclesiastical,
which can be exerted to control the opinions or to coerce the
consciences of men.
Moved by such impulses, and having "sworn eternal hostility against
every form of tyranny over the mind of man," he entered, at an early
age, upon his public career, destined to be long and eventful, and
sustained throughout the character given of him on his first appearance
in Congress in 1775, by John Adams,--"prompt, frank, explicit, and
decisive"--"not even Samuel Adams was more so." From that time until the
day of his death he gave his support, never for a moment diminished in
zeal or sincerity, and varied only in its efficiency according to the
positions he occupied and the influence they afforded for the purpose,
to the great principle of "the equality of political rights" which
Hamilton well described as "the foundation of pure Republicanism."
At the age of twenty-two--a period in Hamilton's life when his already
teeming mind was meditating the establishment of institutions, and the
adoption of measures to strengthen the Government, and to enable it to
exercise what he deemed a salutary and necessary restraint upon the
popular will, institutions and measures in the working of which, from
their nature, none but moneyed men could be expected to
participate--Jefferson was as actively and constantly employed in the
Virginia House of Delegates, in concert with the earliest Revolutionary
patriots of that State, in preparing her, as well as the hearts of the
people, for the great movement then already the subject of confident
anticipation with minds like theirs. There he remained until 1775, when
he was appointed a delegate to the Continental Congress. Of his agency,
whilst a member of that body, in preparing the Declaration of
Independence, and in promoting its adoption, it is unnecessary here to
speak. As soon as that noble work had been accomplished, he resigned his
seat, accepted a reëlection to the State Legislature as the position in
which, though less exalted, he could render more useful services to the
cause, and the measures to which his exertions were there directed were
in harmony with the spirit of the Revolution, and designed, as avowed by
himself, "to eradicate every fibre of ancient or future aristocracy, and
to lay a foundation for a government truly republican." The results of
the joint labors of himself and his patriotic associates were:
1st. An act to prevent the further importation of slaves, a practice
which he had denounced in the Declaration of Independence as a
"piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers;"
2d. An act to abolish entailments;
3d. An act to abolish primogenitureship--a right which had vested in
himself;
4th. An act for religious freedom; and
5th. A bill for general education.
These were not only appropriate but indispensable steps to lay a sure
foundation for republican government, State as well as National. Most,
if not all of the States, followed her lead, but to Virginia belongs the
high merit of having been in this respect the first in the field, and to
Jefferson a large share of that merit.
Such were the men who were by common consent placed at the respective
heads of the two great parties in that national struggle which resulted
in what has ever since been known as "the Civil Revolution of Eighteen
Hundred," a name given to it by the victors on the assumption that,
although the weapons were different, the principles which were involved
in it and the spirit which achieved the triumph were akin to those which
distinguished the Revolution by the sword. The knowledge that Hamilton
preferred monarchical institutions to every other form, that John Adams,
who was at the head of the Government, sympathized very cordially with
that sentiment, and the belief that most of the leaders of the Federal
party partook largely of the same feeling, and were only prevented from
avowing the fact by their perception of its unpopularity, caused a
wide-spread and sincere alarm on the side of the Republican party for
the safety of republican government in the United States. This
apprehension imparted a graver character to the contest than any other
considerations could have produced, and called into vigorous action much
of the spirit by which the minds of the masses had been influenced in
the Revolutionary War. It served to weld the members of the old
Anti-Federal party and the Republicans--between whom a concert of action
had previously arisen--into a thorough union, which became permanent,
because it was founded on a principle in which they heartily concurred,
and which was of sufficient magnitude to absorb minor differences in
their political views.
That Hamilton's settled opinion and preference were such as I have
described is a point which has been, it is hoped, already too well
established to admit, at this day, of an honest difference of opinion.
He avowed them on the floor of the Convention in the presence of the
assembled representatives, and this is equally clear, whether the sum of
that declaration is tested by the copy of the speech which he himself
delivered to Mr. Madison as a permanent record of his opinions, or by
the notes for that speech now published by his son. He announced them to
his political rival, Mr. Jefferson, in the presence of Mr. John Adams,
and reaffirmed them to the former in a conversation obviously sought for
the purpose of giving the form he desired to expressions of a less
guarded character, and which were, under that impression, immediately
reduced to writing by Mr. Jefferson, who, for the truth of his record,
"attests the God that made him." He so thoroughly impressed his
political coadjutor and most trusted friend--him to whom it was
appointed to pronounce his eulogy at his funeral--Gouverneur Morris,
with a sense of his devotion to monarchical institutions, that within
six months after his death, Morris, writing to his friend Ogden, speaks
of that devotion as "hobby" which Hamilton "bestrode to the great
annoyance of his friends, and not without injury to himself;" also to
Robert Walsh, the well-known editor of a leading Federal journal, in
answer to inquiries on the subject, that "Hamilton hated republican
government because he confounded it with democratical government, and he
detested the latter because he believed it must end in despotism, and be
in the mean time destructive to morality;" and that "he never failed on
every occasion to advocate the excellence of, and his attachment to,
monarchical government." It was in perfect keeping with the character of
Hamilton that never, throughout his life, though constantly charged with
entertaining such opinions, did he deny the imputation; he who denies it
now must assume that Hamilton either did not know his own mind upon the
subject, or that he had some motive for misrepresenting it, or that Mr.
Jefferson deliberately falsified his repeated declarations, and that
Gouverneur Morris was capable of misrepresenting his friend upon a point
of so much importance when that friend had descended to his grave.
To what lengths Hamilton would have gone to subvert the existing
government, and to substitute monarchical institutions, or under what
circumstances he would have deemed an attempt to do so justifiable, are
questions open to investigation and comment, but to discuss the fact of
his constant preference for such institutions, and desire to see them
established here, would be to trifle with the subject.
Mr. Adams, who was President, and in whose name the battle was fought,
fell but little if any thing short of General Hamilton in his partiality
for the English system. To purge the British Constitution of its
corruptions, and to give to its popular branch equality of
representation, were alone necessary, he thought, to make it "the most
perfect Constitution ever devised by the wit of man." The alterations or
amendments he suggested, sound and creditable to himself as they were,
were no more than qualifications of his general preference for the
English model. If Hamilton's admiration of that model was less qualified
than that of Adams, it must at the same time be admitted that the former
was freest from the fault of seeking to degrade and discredit republican
institutions by his writings. Without undertaking to describe the
specific design of Mr. Adams's "Defense of the Constitutions of
Government of the United States," or of his "Discourse on Davila,"--a
task, for obvious reasons, very difficult,--it may, I think, be safely
assumed that such was their manifest tendency. Hamilton at least thought
so at a time when the reciprocal prejudices which afterwards separated
them so widely had not yet acquired a strong hold upon the feelings of
either. In his interview with Mr. Jefferson on the 13th of August, 1791,
before referred to, when the conversation was turned to the writings of
Mr. Adams, Hamilton condemned them, and "most particularly Davila, as
having a tendency to weaken the present Government;" and, after other
remarks in relation to the existing Government and its chances of
success, he added,--"Whoever by his writings disturbs the present order
of things is really blamable, however pure his intentions might be, and
he was sure Mr. Adams's were pure."
The division by Mr. Adams of governments designated as republics, into
democratic republics, aristocratic republics and monarchical, or regal
republics,--embracing a minute description of each, in which the
Government of the "United Provinces of the Low Countries," whose powers
are held by the persons intrusted with them either by hereditary title
or by the selection of associates, after the manlier of close
corporations, is called a "democratic Republic," and that of England a
"monarchical, or regal Republic,"--was naturally displeasing to the
sense and feeling of those who regarded aristocratical or monarchical or
regal features as absolutely incompatible with the true idea of
republican government. The voluminous and doubtless violent attacks that
were made upon his writings were scarcely necessary to satisfy those who
had freely undergone the sufferings and sacrifices of a long and bloody
war to secure to themselves and their posterity the blessings of
republican institutions, according to their acceptation of them, that
the writings of Mr. Adams were designed, as was charged, to cause the
term "Republican Government" to mean "any thing or nothing."
The notices taken of the general subject and of these writings in
particular, by John Adams himself, by his son, John Quincy Adams, and by
his grandson, Charles Francis Adams, go far to show that if not fairly
liable to this construction, they were too much open to it to be
persisted in. In a note attached by the author, in 1812, to the
"Discourse on Davila," as published in his "Life and Works," he says:
"The work, however, powerfully operated upon his (J. A.'s) popularity.
It was urged as full proof that he was an advocate for monarchy, and
laboring to introduce a hereditary President in the United States." His
grandson, Charles F. Adams, introducing the "Discourse" in his "Life and
Works of John Adams," says: "They furnished to the partisans of the day
so much material for immediate political use in the contest then
beginning (1790), that the author thought it best to desist, and they
were left incomplete."
John Quincy Adams, in his Jubilee Address,--the occasion and character
of which have been heretofore noticed,--describes the state of parties
at the accession of General Washington to the Presidency in the
following terms: "On the other hand no small number of the Federalists,
sickened by the wretched and ignominious failure of the Articles of
Confederation to fulfill the promise of the Revolution; provoked at once
and discouraged by the violence and rancor of the opposition against
their strenuous and toilsome endeavors to raise their country from her
state of prostration; chafed and goaded by the misrepresentations of
their motives, and the reproaches of their adversaries, and imputing to
them in turn deliberate and settled purposes to dissolve the Union and
resort to anarchy for the repair of ruined fortunes,--distrusted ever
the efficacy of the Constitution itself, and with a weakened confidence
in the virtue of the people were inclined to the opinion that the only
practicable substitute for it would be a government of greater energy
than that presented by the Convention. There were among them numerous
warm admirers of the British Constitution, disposed to confide rather to
the inherent strength of the Government than to the self-evident truths
of the Declaration of Independence for the preservation of the rights of
property and perhaps of persons."
This is language which it is easy to understand, and which covers very
fairly the subject of our immediate attention. Few men enjoyed better
opportunities to possess himself of correct views in regard to the
opinions of his own political party than John Quincy Adams. He was by
nature truthful, or if at times blinded by prejudice, never, I firmly
believe, induced to swerve by sinister considerations. Accustomed from
early life to indulgence in the strong expressions (both in manner and
form) common to his race, he was apt to exaggerate under great
excitement, but was not capable of designedly falsifying facts. In the
case before us the greatest reliance may be placed upon his statements
in regard to the opinions and views of a class of men of whom he thought
well. The Federal party entered upon the first administration under the
new Constitution, of which the election had placed it in full
possession, with a weakened confidence, Mr. Adams says, in the virtue of
the people,--distrustful even of the efficacy of the Constitution
itself, and inclined to the opinion that the only practical substitute
for it would be a government of greater energy than that presented by
the Convention, and a portion of them (how large it was difficult for
manifest reasons to determine, but Mr. Adams describes it as
"numerous,") warmly admiring the British Constitution, and disposed to
confide to the inherent strength of such a government rather than to one
founded on the principles of the Declaration of Independence. In what
class or division it was the intention of Mr. Adams to place his
venerable father does not appear, nor is it very clear to which he
should be assigned. That he considered his opinions, which had been more
impugned in all respects than those of any, save perhaps of Hamilton, as
not placing him in either, is not at all probable.
John Adams's "Defense" and "Discourse" were written at different periods
remote from each other, and when he himself occupied very different
situations; the former before the formation of the Federal Constitution,
when he represented his country as Minister to England, and the latter,
which was universally regarded as the most Anti-Republican of the two,
after he had been elected Vice-President. That his views were in some
degree changed by time and circumstances is not improbable. Mr.
Jefferson thought that he owed his support for the Vice-Presidency to
the Anti-Republican tendencies of the first work, and that his election
to that office and the federal sentiment that he found prevalent on his
return from England, and down to the commencement of the new government,
induced him to write the "Discourse," and to give to it a higher tone in
the same direction. The diffusive and (if that expression is not too
strong when speaking of writings of so much learning and ability) the
incoherent manner in which these works were constructed, particularly
the earlier one, makes it unsafe to venture to specify the precise
principles they were designed to sustain. His grandson was so sensible
of the deficiencies of the "Defense" in these respects that he
reconstructed and improved it in his publication, but without, as he
says, changing the sense, and I have no doubt that he has carried out
the latter idea in good faith.
That few if any American citizens went beyond John Adams in his
admiration of the British Constitution is undeniably true. In the third
chapter of the "Defense,"--(see Vol. IV. p. 358, of his "Life and
Works,") he pronounces an eulogium on that Constitution which goes far
beyond that reported by Mr. Jefferson, (in his account of the
conversation between Adams and Hamilton in April, 1791,) calling it "the
most stupendous fabric of human invention," adding, that "not the
formation of languages, not the whole art of navigation and
ship-building, does more honor to the human understanding than this
system of government." But on the very next page he commends the United
States for not having followed the English model, so far as to make
"their first magistrates or their senators hereditary"--differing
substantially in that regard from the opinion reported by Mr. Jefferson,
and showing how unsafe if not futile would be the attempt to define
exactly the principles which he favored.
It may, notwithstanding, be safely assumed, _first_, that he was
foremost among the warm admirers of the British Constitution spoken of
by his son, and _secondly_, that he deemed our Constitution defective in
omitting to provide for some depository of political power in the
government, variant in principle from its general provisions, one which
should be either not at all or only very remotely subject to popular
control, and that he stood almost at the head of those whose confidence
in the virtue of the people had been greatly weakened by occurrences
following the Revolution.
The latter assumption would seem very fully warranted by the following
citations from his "Defense:"[30]
"The proposition, that the people are the best keepers of their own
liberties, is not true; they are the worst conceivable; they are no
keepers at all; they can neither judge, act, think, or will as a
political body."
"If it is meant by our author a representative assembly, they are not
still the best keepers of the liberties of the people; at least the
majority would invade the liberty of the minority sooner and oftener
than an absolute monarchy."
"A great writer has said that a people will never oppress themselves, or
invade their own rights. This compliment, if applied to any nation or
people in being or memory, is more than has been merited."
"Aristides, Fabricius, and Cincinnatus, are always quoted, as if such
characters were always to be found in sufficient numbers to protect
liberty; and a cry and show of liberty is set up by the profligate and
abandoned, such as would sell their fathers, their country, and their
God for profit, place, and power. Hypocrisy, simulation, and finesse are
not more practiced in the courts of princes than in popular elections,
nor more encouraged by kings than people."
"The real merit of public men is rarely known and impartially
considered. When men arise who to real services add political
empiricism, conform to the errors of the people, comply with their
prejudices, gain their hearts and excite their enthusiasm, then
gratitude is a contagion--it is a whirlwind."
[30] See Randall's _Life of Jefferson_, Vol. I. p. 587.
The same volume (of Randall's Work) contains copious extracts from the
letters of Fisher Ames and a number of other leading Federalists,
derived from Hamilton's recently published papers and other sources.
They breathe in general the same spirit, hankering after
pre-revolutionary institutions and systems, though less boldly expressed
than was done by Hamilton and Adams, and the same distrust of the
sufficiency of the Constitution and above all of the capacities and
dispositions of the people, the latter exhibited in assaults upon
democracy and the democratic spirit of the country.
John Adams was in every sense a remarkable man. Nature seems to have
employed in his construction intellectual materials sufficient to have
furnished many minds respectably. It would not be easy to name men,
either of his day or of any period, whose characters present a deeper or
a stronger soil, one which during his long and somewhat boisterous
public life was thoroughly probed by his enemies without disclosing any
variation in its depths from the qualities and indications of its
surface. Still more deeply was it turned up and exposed to the light by
himself with the same result. His writings, which have been more
extensive and more various than those of any of his contemporaries, have
been given to the world apparently without reserve. These, with his
diaries and autobiography, have turned his character inside out and
shown us, without disguise of any sort, the kind of man he was: and the
representation is invariably that of the same "always honest man" that
he was three quarters of a century ago when that high praise was
accorded to him by his not too partial friend, Benjamin Franklin, in a
communication not designed to be over civil.
Whatever diversities may have arisen in the opinions of men in relation
to the merits or demerits of his after conduct, all agree in conceding
to him credit for patriotic and useful services in the times which have
been happily described as those which tried men's souls. Mr. Jefferson,
but two years before the death of both of them, on referring to that
period, and to Mr. Adams's great services, in my presence, was warmed by
the subject, and spoke of him as having been the mainmast of the
ship--the orator of the Revolution, &c. It is in all probability no
exaggeration of his merits to assume that there was no man in the United
States, (perhaps, but not without doubt, excepting Samuel Adams,) who,
before he was sent abroad in their service, did more than himself in a
civil capacity to promote the cause of the Revolution. This is a high
distinction--one which entitles his memory to the perpetual reverence of
his countrymen. No subsequent errors of opinion, nothing short of
personal dishonor and degradation, of which he was incapable, could
extinguish a claim to the enduring gratitude and respect of a nation
founded on such services.
He left our shores upon his foreign mission a noble specimen of a
republican statesman--his heart and mind filled to overflowing with
right principles, and capable of vindicating them whenever and wherever
they might stand in need of support or defense. He performed his public
duties with fidelity and honor, but in respect to his political opinions
he returned an altered man. His "Defense of the Constitutions of
Government of the United States of America," written and published in
England whilst representing his country there, notwithstanding an
imposing title, though agreeable to some excited painful emotions in
the breasts of most of his Revolutionary associates. The dissatisfaction
of the latter was not a little increased by the circumstance that
sentiments and opinions, so disparaging to a form of government which
had been the unceasing object of their desire, should have been
ostentatiously promulgated in a country and in the presence of a
government from which the right to establish it had been wrested by
arms, and on the part of which the most unfriendly feelings in respect
to our advancement were still entertained. It was, nevertheless, true
that no circumstance contributed more toward his selection by the
Federal party as their candidate for the office of Vice-President than
these very avowals. His own sense of their efficacy in that respect is
clearly to be inferred from the fact that he devoted the first moments
of his time, whilst occupying that station, to the prosecution of the
same general object, with less disguise and increased boldness, through
his "Discourses on Davila."
Jefferson and Samuel Adams and others of their stamp, who had embarked
in the Revolution with a spirit that could neither be appalled by danger
whilst the battle raged, nor seduced by considerations of any
description after it had been fought, were not slow in perceiving that
Mr. Adams had not only deserted from the cause of free government, but
that he regarded his first success under the new system and aspired to
the still higher honor in the gift of his countrymen as fruits of his
desertion. Whilst his early and best friends felt that the fabric, the
erection of which had cost them so much labor and so many sacrifices,
had lost one of its strongest pillars by his falling off, they were
neither dismayed nor did they despair of its safety. They met his second
attempt to bring free governments into disrepute with an energy that
drove him, as he himself admits, stubborn and inflexible in his
purposes as he always had been, to discontinue, at least in that form,
assaults upon a political faith, once the object of their common
devotion. This desertion on the part of one in whom they had confided so
fully, and upon whose coöperation, in securing to them the full
enjoyment of the political rights for the acquisition of which they had
endured so many perils, they had largely depended, sank deeply into the
hearts and minds of the people. The spirit of discontent was naturally
much increased by the discovery that Hamilton, who had done himself so
much honor, and who had raised such favorable anticipations by the
chivalrous spirit and gallantry with which he had embraced and sustained
the national cause was, after all, irreconcilably hostile to that system
of republican government which they so highly prized, and upon the
ultimate enjoyment of which they had so long meditated; that his
opposition was not only open and unreserved, but that he assigned as a
reason for it their incapacity and unfitness for the support and
enjoyment of free institutions.
A sense of danger to the cause of republicanism in the United States was
widely diffused through the public mind. There were indignities to be
resented and wrongs to be redressed, besides new securities to be
devised for the safety of long-cherished principles. These were
considerations quite sufficient to rouse the lion of the Revolution from
his lair to defend its choicest fruit from further profanation. Those
classes, among the surviving patriots of that eventful day, of whom I
have spoken as pervaded by a deeper hatred of kingly government than
others among their Revolutionary associates, sprang to the rescue with
alacrity and zeal. The descendants of the devoted spirits who first
settled the ancient colony of Virginia were not unmindful of their
hereditary obligations to resist the exercise of lawless power. Neither
could the appeal fall unheeded on the ears of the representatives of the
persecuted Huguenots, who had suffered so cruelly from the exercise of
powers now sought to be revived, or of the Netherlanders of the Middle
States, or on those sons of the Puritans of the East whose zeal in
behalf of liberty had not been tempted to spend itself on trade and
manufactures by the seductive influence of Hamilton's policy, and by the
facilities they possessed for those pursuits.
Drawing its power from such sources, and sustained by a great
preponderance of the landed interest in every part of the country, the
old Republican party attained a degree of vigor and efficiency superior
to that of any partisan organization which had before or has since
appeared on the political stage. Mr. John Quincy Adams described it
truly when he said that it had acquired a head which would have enabled
it, if so disposed, "to have overthrown Washington's administration as
it did that of his successor acting upon its principles." Jefferson's
declaration to Mazzei that "we have only to awake and snap the
Lilliputian cords with which they have attempted to bind us during the
first slumbers that succeed our labors," was borne out by the result.
Although the audacious passion for monarchical government, which the
leading Federalists had ventured to revive so soon after the Revolution,
was the most exciting of the causes which inflamed the hearts and braced
the nerves of the Republicans for the conflict,[31] that was not the
first issue to be tried. The nature of the government to be substituted
was a question that would not, in the natural order of things, arise
until the fate of the existing Constitution had been settled; but as
their blood was up and their hands at work, the Republicans resolved, if
possible, to strangle the conspiracy against the new-born liberties of
the country in both its branches by the same effort. The severity and
success of the blows they directed against the restoration of the power
and influence of the Crown, in any form, is strikingly illustrated by a
comparison of the state in which that question was found and that in
which it was left by the civil revolution of 1800. Whilst at the former
period the superiority of kingly over republican government was the
prevailing and absorbing sentiment among what were called the higher
classes, as graphically described by Mr. Jefferson, and substantially
corroborated by Gouverneur Morris's letter to Rufus King, the notion
that the former would be ever practicable in this country was so
thoroughly annihilated by that great struggle as never again to have
been whispered in our politics. There is no exaggeration in the
affirmation that there has been no day within the last forty years when
a proposition for the reëstablishment of monarchy in the United States,
however seriously made, could have excited any other emotion than
ridicule or contempt, or would not have been deemed more appropriately
punished by the administration of the straight-jacket than by a trial
for treason. But there has been far greater difficulty in completing the
work of resistance to Hamilton's efforts to overthrow the Constitution
by subverting it, through the agency of his sapping and mining policy,
which was the direct issue in the election of 1800. A constitution had
been established, in the construction and ratification of which the
Federal party had performed a greater and more effectual part than the
party opposed to it. Its general provisions were fully adequate to the
support of a republican government. By a successful incorporation of the
representative system with the republican form, pure and simple, its
framers had happily qualified and adapted the instrument to our
extensive territory, and a provision for amendments furnished a remedy
against existing defects. Of the latter the omission to secure
specifically and adequately the individual natural rights of men against
the exercise of arbitrary power was the most important--a defect in
respect to which a large majority of the Anti-Federalists were, for
reasons frequently referred to, most sensitive. The Constitution was
ratified by several of the States, and amongst them by Virginia and New
York, with accompanying resolutions, some of them passed by the State
conventions with perfect unanimity, expressing opinions that it deserved
revision and required amendments. Without such resolutions the
ratification could not, we are forced to believe, have been effected. We
have seen with what reluctance the first Congress, Federal by a large
majority, consented to make any constitutional amendments, and that
nothing short of Mr. Madison's wonderful perseverance could, in all
probability, have effected their adoption; but they were obtained,
proved satisfactory to the Anti-Federalists, and made them fast friends
of the new Constitution.
[31] See _Life of Morris_, Vol. III. p. 128. "But the thing which in
my opinion has done more mischief to the Federal party is the ground
given by some of them to believe that they wish to establish a
monarchy."--_Letter from Morris to King._
From that moment that instrument ceased to be an object of solicitude
with the leaders of the Federal party, hardly retaining favor with any
of them. This result is by no means an unusual one in the history of
parties whose feelings have become to any great extent embittered. The
instances are rare indeed in which any public measure or act is at the
same time entirely acceptable to all sides. The "Independent Treasury"
is the only clear case of the kind among us that has fallen under my
observation. The letters of the leading Federalists, which have now for
the first time seen the light, prove their subsequent indifference, and,
in many instances, active hostility to the Constitution. Not a few who
imbibed Hamilton's feelings and shared in his views upon this point had
been members of the Convention, and among those to whom I have awarded
so large a share of credit for their conduct in making the Constitution
what it is. This was justly their due. It is not to be doubted that
several of them, as I have before said, participated largely in
Hamilton's objections, and would have preferred a very different
instrument; but they knew that none less favorable to the supposed
interests of the State governments, or less liberal in other respects,
would stand the slightest chance of ratification, more especially when
the circumstance of disregard to the limits and restrictions of the
authority by which they had been convened was taken into consideration.
They saw nothing but injury, vast and complicated, to the country from
their failure, and they evinced their patriotism in yielding to this
wise foresight at the sacrifice of their individual preferences.
Although many of them, doubtless, did not fully share Hamilton's
absorbing preference for monarchy, they very generally went to the
extent pointed out by John Quincy Adams in his Jubilee Address--that was
for a government of more energy than was provided for by the
Constitution presented by the Convention. This they had a right to
desire and to work for through amendments in the way appointed by the
Constitution, but in this way they knew they could not obtain what they
wanted, and they therefore yielded their ready aid to the measures he
proposed by which the Constitution was to be made to mean any thing,
substantially, which those who were intrusted with its execution might
believe would promote the general welfare. Hamilton's course in this
regard seemed to the uninitiated extremely reckless, as he appeared
desirous to select objects in respect to which the excess of authority
under the Constitution which he exerted was most obvious, and the
subjects themselves were those in respect to which the sensibilities of
his opponents were the keenest. In the whole range of measures, which,
if constitutional, might appropriately proceed from his department, he
could not have found a single one as to which the intention of the
framers of the Constitution, adverse to the power he exercised, was
better understood than a United States Bank. Mr. Jefferson brought the
facts which transpired in the Convention proving such intention to his
notice, and to that of the President, and they were not controverted by
either.
So in regard to the Sedition Law. One of the ten amendments was
especially designed to prohibit such legislation, and there were no
subjects to which the Anti-Federalists and Republicans were more alive
than to the liberty of speech and of the press. The same thing may be
said, in respect to public sensibilities, of the Alien Act. That Act
conferred a power on the President, which, though one of the
prerogatives of the Crown, no prime minister dare exercise at this day
in the sense in which the President was authorized to exercise it.
Yet it is now known that of these last measures the first was passed
upon Hamilton's suggestion, and Mr. Charles F. Adams informs us that
neither was ever made the subject of executive consultation.
But I can well conceive that these considerations, which might deter
other men, were but so many recommendations with Hamilton for the course
he pursued. From first to last he thought the Constitution inadequate to
the purposes of what he regarded as good government, and that the sooner
it was gotten rid of the better for the country. There were moments when
he allowed himself to hope that he might make it answer the purpose if
he were allowed to go on with it as he began. But these were only
momentary impressions that soon gave way to the settled convictions of
his mind, his avowals of which were uniformly the same. He declared to
Jefferson in 1792, "that the Constitution was a shilly-shally thing of
mere milk and water, and was only good as a step to something
better,"--a declaration which the latter communicated in self-defense to
Washington; and in 1802 he describes it to his friend Morris, as we have
seen, as "a frail and worthless fabric," reminding him at the same time
of his knowledge that such had been his (Hamilton's) opinion "from the
very beginning." It was, therefore, natural that a man of his
intelligence and resolution, looking with entire confidence to its
failure, should think it expedient to select the most palpable as well
as the most flagrant violations of the Constitution, while it was yet in
its infancy and feeblest condition, and thus to prepare the public mind
for the degradation he had in store for it, and to insure its speedy
overthrow.
These severe measures were rendered doubly odious by the manner in which
the Sedition Law was executed, and by the steps adopted to suppress
outbreaks of popular discontent, but which only swelled comparative
rivulets into resistless torrents and rendered the Republican cause
invaluable service by giving occasion to Madison's great Report on the
Constitutionality of the Alien and Sedition Laws. The judgment of the
country has ever been that a more able state paper never issued from the
pen of any man. It covered the entire controversy between the two
parties, traced its origin to the different views they entertained of
the construction and obligatory character of the Constitution, and
placed the republican creed in those respects upon grounds absolutely
impregnable. Hamilton was a laborious writer, but only so because his
writings were so voluminous; to write was with him a labor of love, and
there was no man of his day who devoted more time to political
disquisitions. There was scarcely any other great public question that
occupied the public mind during that period on which a publication,
offensive or defensive, is not to be found in his Works. Yet if he ever
attempted a reply to that Report, which attracted general attention and
became the flag under which the Republicans fought, I have never seen or
heard of it. I may safely assume that he never did make such attempt.
The issue was fairly presented by Mr. Madison, through the Virginia
Legislature, as depending upon the answers to the following questions:--
1. What are the true principles that should be applied to the
construction of the Constitution?
2. Are those who are elected by the people bound to execute it according
to the intention of its framers and the understanding of those who
ratified it?
3. Is it in that sense sacredly obligatory upon all who are subject to
its authority?
The charge presented against the Federal party and its representatives
was that they had trampled upon the sanctity of the Constitution by the
application to its construction of principles known to be unsound, by
setting at defiance the intentions of those who made it and for whom it
was made, and by prostituting it, and claiming the right to prostitute
it, to the promotion of their particular views of the public interests,
regardless of such intentions, however well understood.
This Report stands as a perpetual record of that issue. The Republicans
regarded its decision as involving the existence of republican
government, inasmuch as no such government could be sustained for a
moment longer than the Constitution was looked to as a sacred and
inviolable line of duty for both rulers and ruled. They triumphed in
the great contest, and they expelled from power the men who refused to
recognize that principle in the administration of the government, and
for that reason they placed in their stead those who would recognize it.
Madison's Report presented a faithful synopsis of the principles of the
old Republicans upon fundamental questions,--those which relate to the
powers of government and to the responsibilities under which they should
be exercised,--the only questions which gave rise to permanent political
parties. Whilst divisions in regard to particular measures disappear
with the falling off of interest in the subjects of them, those which I
have described as growing out of such primordial tenets are kept alive
as long as the government itself endures. So it has been in all
countries where there has been any appreciable degree of freedom of
opinion. England is almost, if not altogether, the only country whose
institutions are sufficiently analogous to ours to admit of useful
comparisons. From the time when her sovereigns traced their authority
from God, and acknowledged responsibility to Him alone for the manner of
its exercise, to the Revolution of 1688, by which absolutism was forever
abolished and government declared to be a trust for the abuse of which
the sovereign is responsible to the people, and always since, her party
divisions, regarded as national, have had relation to the powers of
government and to the degrees of responsibility under which they should
be exercised. Whether these parties were called Cavaliers and
Roundheads, Presbyterians and Jacobites, Whig and Tory, or Conservatives
and Liberals, such have always been the essential dividing points. Like
ourselves they have had a succession of exciting public questions not of
this character which have for a time divided the community, and were
earnestly contested, but which passed away without making material
inroads upon ancient party divisions, and the latter resumed their sway
when the temporary interruption ceased in much the same general array
they would have presented if it had not occurred.
I have said that Madison's report was the flag under which the
Republicans conquered. It defines the constitutional creed by which they
were influenced in the administration of the government for twenty-four
years successively, and under which the Democratic party, their
successors, have since held the reins of the Federal Government, with
infrequent exceptions--the latter never extending to two Presidential
terms, and always the result of special circumstances having little
bearing upon general politics.
But the political seed sown by Hamilton has not in other respects proved
as perishable as have his teachings in favor of monarchical
institutions. The former has never been eradicated--it seems not
susceptible of eradication. I have given the reasons why this has been
so with a description of the fruit it has continued to produce. These
results have fostered kindred doctrines in respect to constitutions,
their sanctity, their uses, and their abuses. I have also said that
these doctrines have been ever cherished and enforced when circumstances
were auspicious, and have constituted the chief element of our party
divisions. Hence it has been that those divisions have been so uniform
in their general outlines. The opposite dispositions which lead men to
take different sides upon such questions have worked to the same ends
from the close of the Revolution, and have been developed on all
occasions of a nature to call them into action. The execution of the
present Federal Constitution presented an opportunity to give them a
definite and more permanent form and classification which they have
maintained ever since. Individuals have changed from side to side under
the influence of what they have regarded as stronger inducements, and
when they have been disappointed, have generally returned to their first
bias. Questions of public policy, disconnected from considerations of
constitutional power, have arisen, been discussed, decided or abandoned
and forgotten, whilst the political parties of the country have remained
as they were.
With the authentic record before us of the issue, the contest, the
result, and the efforts on the part of the defeated party to recover the
ground it had lost, the supposition seems preposterous that our party
divisions had their origin in the circumstances that occurred on the
appointment of General Washington to be Commander-in-Chief of our
Revolutionary army, as is alleged by a son of General Hamilton, in his
history of the life of his father. Of the same character, though not
quite so unreasonable, are the attempts which have been made by several
to find their origin in the Federal Convention. That body did indeed
present an occasion for the application of different opinions to the
original formation of the Federal Constitution, but those opinions grew
out of conflicting tenets which had divided the country into parties
long before, and they were not then determined either way, but
compromised upon grounds of expediency by a result which was not in
point of fact satisfactory to any side, but acquiesced in by a majority
obtained from the ranks of both. The proposition of President John
Quincy Adams in his Inaugural Address, tracing their rise to the
opposing sides taken by the people of the United States, as between
England and France, and their final discontinuance to the disastrous
career and termination of the French Revolution, would seem to be not
less wide of the mark. The continuance of the two great parties of the
country in the same state, in respect to the principles they espoused
and the characters and dispositions of those who composed them, for more
than half a century and for a quarter of a century before his address
was delivered, is not to be denied. If it was even supposed possible
that an intelligent and high spirited people like our own, with
traditions and a history so eventful, and with domestic interests so
important, could have been arrayed in hostile political opinions and
party divisions by the influence of purely foreign questions, the
continuance of those divisions in the same form and spirit for so many
years after all pretense of the operation of such an influence had
ceased would of itself be sufficient to refute the theory. But the
objections to it are too numerous, too conclusive in their character,
and too obvious to make it necessary to press them farther. The French
Revolution had sufficiently developed itself to weaken, if not
extinguish, the solicitude of the Republicans for its success, (who,
with their leader, Thomas Jefferson, regarded its excesses with
abhorrence,) before they expelled John Adams from the Presidency for the
aid and sanction which he gave to Hamilton's violations of the
Constitution, and his son, John Quincy Adams, was twenty-eight years
afterwards driven from power for the same cause and by the same party, a
party which he supposed had ceased to exist for some thirty years
previous. It was by his latitudinarian avowals in respect to the
constitutional powers of Congress,--when he began to talk of erecting
"light-houses of the skies," and of the folly of paralyzing
representatives by the will of their constituents,--that his political
destiny was sealed.
That existing political divisions among the people of the United States
induced the formation of preferences and prejudices in respect to
England and France, was, doubtless, true, but to suppose that these
constituted the foundation of their own divisions is to mistake for the
cause one of its least important effects.
The Anti-Federal, Republican, and Democratic parties have been from the
beginning composed of men entertaining the same general views in regard
to the most desirable form of government, and to the spirit in which,
and the objects for which, it should be administered. The morbid
feelings of large portions of the old Anti-Federalists produced by their
distrust of delegated power, founded on their knowledge of the extent to
which it had been everywhere abused, led to a difference between them
and the Republicans on the question of clothing the Federal Government
with power to collect its own revenues, to regulate commerce, &c., and
induced them to oppose the ratification of the new Constitution on that
account, and on account of its deficiencies in regard to proper
securities for personal rights. Their party was thereby broken down, but
Jefferson and Samuel Adams, and men like them, succeeded in satisfying
them of their error in respect to the outlines of the Constitution, and
Madison procured the adoption of amendments that obviated their other
objections and, as I have before said, a cordial and enduring union was
formed between them and the Republicans, under the latter name. Since
that period the party has undergone no change, either in its
organization, its principles, or the general political dispositions of
the individuals of which it has been composed. Its name has been changed
from Republican to Democratic, in consequence of the increasing popular
development of its course and principles, and in some degree by the
circumstance that its old opponent had assumed the name of Federal
Republican and by a natural desire to keep the line of demarcation
between them as broad and as well defined as possible.
The formation and ratification of the Federal Constitution, mainly
through Federal agency, the union of the Anti-Federalists and
Republicans and the cordial acceptance of the Constitution, after its
amendment, by both, presented, at the commencement of Washington's
administration, the fairest opportunity for a real "era of good feeling"
that the country has ever known. All controversy upon fundamental
questions having been removed, the doors seemed to be thrown open for an
amalgamation of parties like that of which so much was said, and with so
little result, during the administration of Mr. Monroe. Without any open
question affecting permanently every interest, and all the people and
all alike, as is the case with such as relate to and embrace the sources
of power and the foundations of the government, if the Constitution had
been upheld in good faith on both sides partisan contests must of
necessity have been limited to local or temporary and evanescent
measures and to popular excitements and opposing organizations as
shifting and short-lived as the subjects which gave rise to them. But
Hamilton took especial care that such halcyon days should not even dawn
on the country. He had a riveted conviction--a conviction he took no
pains to conceal--that the Constitution must prove a signal failure,
unless it could be made to bear measures little dreamed of by those who
made and had adopted it; and in his view of the welfare of the country
that question could not be too soon decided. The name and influence of
Washington was an element of strength toward the accomplishment of his
project in that regard, upon which he had expressed a strong reliance in
the letter now published by his son, without date but written between
the formation and ratification of the Constitution, and he was, of
course, desirous to bring all such questions to an early decision, as
Washington's long continuance in office was far from probable. He,
therefore, promptly seized his opportunity, and at the earliest
suitable moment after the organization of the new Government, proposed
the incorporation of a national bank. I have already said, and given my
reasons for the assertion, that in the whole range of the affairs of the
government committed to his charge, he could not have taken a single
step which would have afforded such unmistakable evidence of his
determination not to be controlled in his administration of the
government under the new Constitution by the intentions of those who
framed, or of those who ratified it; not one more likely to revive
former distrusts, and to infuse new jealousies among the
Anti-Federalists in respect to his hostility to republican principles,
or better calculated to give new strength to their energies when the
proper time arrived for the blast of the trumpet that called every man
to his tent. His old friend, Madison, was one of the first to take up
the gauntlet thus boldly thrown before the sincere friends of the
Constitution. This was done by his masterly and unanswerable speech in
Congress against the constitutionality of the bank. No one can make
himself acquainted with Mr. Madison's course, and with the state of his
feeling towards President Washington at that period, and fail to
appreciate the regret and pain he suffered from the performance of that
act of duty, not on his own account but from his extreme reluctance to
be placed in the attitude of opposition to one for whom he cherished
feelings of such unbounded respect and affection, and whose confidence
he fully enjoyed. But for the strong and audacious movements of
Hamilton, there is every reason to believe that Mr. Madison would have
coöperated very cordially in the support of President Washington's
administration throughout. In respect to mere questions of expediency,
he would have done all in his power to give them the most desirable form
and direction, and, if disappointed, would, doubtless, have been silent
as to the result.