PARTY PRINCIPLES.
ORIGIN OF PARTIES--FEDERAL AND REPUBLICAN PECULIARITIES--JEFFERSON'S
PRINCIPLES AND RELIGION--DEMOCRACY--VIRGINIA AND MASSACHUSETTS PARTIES
--WAR WITH FRANCE--SEDITION LAW--LYMAN BEECHER--THE ALMIGHTY DOLLAR--
"HAIL COLUMBIA" AND "YANKEE DOODLE."
The Federal and Republican parties of the nation had their rise and
formation out of the two principles of government--the one descending,
as by inheritance, from the mother-country, and the other growing out
of the formation of the governments established in the early
organization of the colonies. A republican form of government was
natural to the people. It had become so from habit. They had, in each
colony, enjoyed a representative form; had made their own laws, and,
with the exception of their Governors and judicial officers, had
chosen, by ballot, all their legislative and ministerial officers. Most
of the principles and practices of a democratic form of government,
consequently, were familiar to them. The etiquette of form and ceremony
preserved by the Governors, conformed to English usage. This was only
familiar to those of the masses whose business brought them in contact
with these ministerial officers and their appendages.
These were continued, to some extent, for a time; but Jefferson saw
that they must soon cease, and yield to a sensible, simple intercourse
between the officials of the Government and the people. This was
foreshadowed in the Declaration of Independence, drafted by him.
Immediately upon the success of the Revolution, and the organization of
the General Government, he enunciated the opinions and principles now
known as Jeffersonian or democratic. It has been charged upon him, that
he borrowed his principles from the leaders of the French Revolution,
as he did his religion from Voltaire and Tom Paine.
Jefferson was an original thinker, and thought boldly on all subjects.
He had studied not only the character and history of governments, but
of religions, and from the convictions of his own judgment were formed
his opinions and his principles. His orthodoxy was his doxy, and he
cared very little for the doxy of any other man or set of men. His
genius and exalted talents gave him a light which shines in upon few
brains, and if his religious opinions were fallacious, there are few of
our day who will say that his social and political sentiments were or
are wrong. As to his correctness in the former, it is not, nor will it
ever be, given to man to demonstrate. This is the only subject about
which there is no charity for him who differs from the received dogmas
of the Church, and to-day his name is an abomination only to the
Federalists and the Church.
Jefferson was made Secretary of State by General Washington, and was at
once the head and representative man of the democracy of the country.
There was, however, no organized opposition to the Administration of
Washington. But immediately upon the election of Adams it begun to take
shape and form, under the leadership of Jefferson. The two parties were
first known as the Virginia and Massachusetts parties. Jefferson had
been elected Vice-President with Adams, and before the termination of
the first year of the Administration the opposition was formidable in
Congress. Governor Wolcott was of opinion that Adams destroyed the
Federal party by the unwise policy of his Administration. He said he
was a man of great intellect, but of capricious temper, incapable from
principle or habit of yielding to the popular will. He certainly saw
the palpable tendency of public feeling, and must have known its
strength: instead of attempting to go with it, and shape it to the
exigencies his party required, he vainly attempted to stem the current,
defy it, and control it by law. He disregarded the earnest entreaties
of his best friends, counselling only with the extremists of the
Federal party: the result was the Alien and Sedition Laws. Pickering
warned him, and he quarrelled with him. He would not conciliate, but
punish his political foes. He loved to exercise power; he did it
unscrupulously, and became exceedingly offensive to many of his own
party, and bitterly hated by his political enemies. The Alien and
Sedition Laws emanated from the extremists of the Federal party, and
were in opposition to the views of Adams himself--yet he approved them,
and determined to execute them. He knew these laws were in direct
opposition to the views and feelings of an immense majority of the
people; and with these lights before him, and when he had it in his
power to have conciliated the masses, he defied them.
Mr. Adams was unaccustomed to seek or court public favor; his
associations had never been with the masses, and he understood very
little of their feelings; when these were forced upon him, he received
their manifestations with contempt, and uniformly disregarded their
teachings. All these defects of character were seized upon by the
opposition, to render odious the Federal party.
Mr. Jefferson placed himself in active opposition, and was known at an
early day as the candidate of the opposition to succeed Adams. Our
difficulties with France, and the action of Congress in appointing
Washington commander-in-chief of the American forces, brought
Washington into contact with Adams on several occasions; and especially
when Washington made his acceptance of the office conditional upon the
appointment of Hamilton as second in command, Adams thought he had not
been respectfully treated, either by Congress or Washington; and there
were some pretty sharp letters written by Washington in relation to the
course of Adams.
Jefferson was opposed to the French war. The aid afforded by France in
our Revolution had made grateful the public heart, and the people were
indisposed to rush into a war with her for slight cause. The pen of
Jefferson was never idle: he knew the general feeling, and inflamed it,
and what the consequences to the country might have been, had not the
war come to an abrupt and speedy end, there are no means of knowing.
The trial and conviction of Lyon and Cooper under the Sedition Law,
aroused a burst of indignation from the people. Still it taught no
wisdom to Mr. Adams. He was urged to have their prosecutions abandoned,
but he refused. After conviction, he was seriously pressed to pardon
these men, in obedience to the popular will, but he persistently
refused, and Lyon was continued in prison until liberated by the
success of the Republican party, and the repeal of the offensive and
impolitic laws soon after.
Adams professed great veneration for the character of Washington, and
he was doubtless sincere. Yet he never lost sight of the fact that it
was he who had seconded the motion when made in Congress by Samuel
Adams to appoint Washington commander-in-chief of the armies of the
Revolution, or that it was he who suggested it to Samuel Adams, and
that he sustained the motion in a speech of burning eloquence. He felt
that this conferred an obligation and that Washington was at times
unmindful of this. He was more exacting than generous, and more
suspicious than confiding. In truth, Adams had more mind than soul;
more ambition than patriotism, and more impulse than discretion. Yet
the country owes him much. He was a great support in the cause of the
Revolution, and his folly was to charge too high for his services. The
people honored him--they have honored his family, and will yet make his
son President. He received all they could give, and his littleness
crept out in his desire for more.
General Washington's estimate of men was generally correct. He
understood Adams, Jefferson, Hamilton, and Burr. I do not think he was
personally attached to any one of them; yet he appreciated them as the
public now do. He had need of the talents of Hamilton and Jefferson.
The organization of the Government required the first minds of the
country; and Washington was the man to call them to his side. In
nothing did he show more greatness than in this. He knew Jefferson was
without principle, but he knew that he was eminently talented; he could
forget the one, and call to his aid the other. His confidence in the
integrity of Hamilton was stronger, as well as in his ability. Upon all
matters of deep concern to the country he consulted both, and these
consultations often brought these two men into antagonistical positions
before him, and upon important public matters--one of which was the
constitutionality of a United States Bank. To each of these, when the
charter of the bank was before him, he addressed a note requesting
their opinions upon its constitutionality. Jefferson replied promptly
in a short, written opinion, not well considered or ably argued, as was
his wont; denying the constitutionality of such an institution. This
opinion was handed to Hamilton, who pleaded public duties as the cause
of delay on his part, for not furnishing an opinion. It came at last,
and was able and conclusive, as to its constitutionality. But it was
terrible in its slashing and exposure of the dogmatical sophisms of
Jefferson. From that time forward there were bitter feelings between
these two eminent men.
Intellectually, Hamilton had no equal in his day. It is ridiculous to
compare him with Burr, which is often done by persons who should know
better, because they have all the evidence upon which to predicate a
conclusion. The occasion was open to both, equally, to discover to the
world what abilities they possessed. They equally filled eminent
positions before the nation, and at a time when she demanded the use of
the first abilities in the land. What each performed is before the
world.
Men having talent will always leave behind some evidence of this,
whether they pass through life in a public or private capacity.
Flippant pertness, with some wit, is too often mistaken for talent--and
a still tongue with a sage look, will sometimes pass for wisdom. But
wherever there is talent or wisdom, it makes its mark.
The evidences of Hamilton's abilities are manifested in his works. They
show a versatility of talent unequalled by any modern man. He was
conspicuous for his great genius before he was fifteen years of age; he
was chief-of-staff for General Washington before he was twenty, and
before he was thirty, was admitted to be the first mind of the country.
As a military man, every officer of the army of the Revolution
considered him the very first; as a lawyer, he had no equal of his day;
as a statesman, he ranked above all competition; as a financier, none
were his equal, and an abundance of evidence has been left by him to
sustain this reputation in every particular.
What has Burr left? Nothing. He still lives, and what his posthumous
papers may say for him, I cannot say; but I know him well, and
consequently expect nothing. As a lawyer, he was mediocre; as a
statesman, vacillating and without any fixed principles; as an orator,
(for some had claimed him to be such,) he was turgid and
verbose--sometimes he was sarcastic, but only when the malignity of his
nature found vent in the bitterness of words. His private conduct has,
in every situation, been bad. He was one of the Lee and Gates faction
to displace Washington from the command of the army. He decried the
abilities of Washington. He violated the confidence of General Putnam,
when his aide, in seducing Margaret Moncrief, (whose father had
intrusted her to Putnam's care.) He violated his faith to the
Republican party, in lending himself to the Federal party to defeat the
known and expressed will of the people, and the Republican party, by
contesting the election before Congress of Mr. Jefferson. In the
Legislature of New York, his conduct was such as to draw on him the
suspicion of corruption, and universal condemnation. Contrast his
public services with his public and private vices, and see what he
is--the despised of the whole world, eking out a miserable existence in
hermitical seclusion with a woman of ill-fame.
There resided as minister of the Congregational Church, at that time,
in Litchfield, Lyman Beecher. He was a man of short stature; remarkable
dark complexion, with large and finely formed head; his features were
strong and irregular, with stern, ascetic expression. He was naturally
a man of great mind, and but for the bigoted character of his religion,
narrowing his mind to certain contemptible prejudices and opinions,
might have been a great man. Reared in the practice of Puritan
opinions, and associated from childhood with that strait-laced and
intolerant sect, his energies, (which were indomitable) and mind, more
so perverted as to become mischievous, instead of useful. He was a
propagandist in the broadest sense of the term--would have made an
admirable inquisitor--was without any of the charities of the
Christian; despised as heretical the creed of every sect save his own,
and had all of the intolerant bitterness and degrading superstitions of
the Puritans, and persecutors of Laud, in the Long Parliament. In
truth, he was an immediate descendant of the Puritans of the
seventeenth century, and was distinguished for the persecuting and
intolerant spirit of that people. He seemed ever casting about for
something in the principles or conduct of others to abuse, and
delighted to exhaust his genius in pouring out his venom upon those who
did not square their conduct and opinions by his rule. At this time,
1820, the admission of Missouri into the Union gave rise to the
agitation of the extension of slavery. This was a sweet morsel under
and on his tongue. He at once commenced the indulgence of his
persecuting spirit, in the abuse of slavery, and slave owners. His own
immediate people had committed no sin in the importation of the
African, and the money accumulated in the traffic was not blood-money.
The institution had been wiped out in New England, not by
enfranchisement, but by sale to the people of the South, when no longer
useful or valuable at home; and all the sin of slavery had followed the
slave, to barbarize and degrade the people of the South. The fertility
of his imagination could suggest a thousand evils growing from slavery,
which concentrating in the character of those possessing them, made
them demons upon earth, and fit heritors of hell, deserving the wrath
of God and man.
It was palpable to the scrutinizing observer, that it was not the sin
of slavery which actuated the zeal of Beecher. The South had held
control of the Government almost from its inception. The Northern, or
Federal party, had been repudiated for the talents and energy of the
South. Its principles and their professors were odious--the conduct of
its leading representatives, during the late war, had tainted New
England, and she was offensive to the nostrils of patriotism
everywhere. Her people were restless and dissatisfied under the
disgrace. They were anxious for power, not to control for the public
good the destinies of the country; but for revenge upon those who had
triumphed in their overthrow. Their people had spread over the West,
and carried with them their religion and hatred--they were ambitious of
more territory, over which to propagate their race and creed; yet
preparatory to the great end of their aims, and the agitation necessary
to the education of their people upon this subject, they must commence
in the pulpit to abolish some cursing sin which stood in their way.
They had found it, and a fit instrument, too, in Lyman Beecher, to
commence the work. It was the sin of slavery. It stood in the way of
New England progress and New England civilization. New England religion
must come to the rescue. There was nothing good which could come from
the South; all was tainted with this crying sin. New England purity,
through New England Puritanism, must permeate all the land, and effect
the good work--and none so efficient as Beecher. The students of the
law-school had a pew in his little synagogue--it was after the fashion
of a square pew, with seats all around, and to this he would direct his
eye when pouring out his anathemas upon the South, Southern habits, and
Southern institutions; four out of five of the members of the school
were from the South.
It was his habit to ascribe the origin and practice of every vice to
slavery. Debauchery of every grade, name, and character, was born of
this, and though every one of these vices, in full practice, were
reeking under his nose, and permeating every class of his own people;
when seven out of every ten of the bawds of every brothel, from Maine
to the Sabine, were from New England, they were only odious in the
South. I remember upon one occasion he was dilating extensively upon
the vice of drunkenness, and accounting it as peculiar to the South,
and the direct offshoot of slavery, he exclaimed, with his eyes fixed
upon the students' pew: "Yes, my brethren, it is peculiar to the people
who foster the accursed institution of slavery, and so common is it in
the South, that the father who yields his daughter in wedlock, never
thinks of asking if her intended is a sober man. All he asks, or seems
desirous to know, is whether he is good-natured in his cups." Before
him sat his nest of young adders, growing up to inherit his religion,
talents, and vindictive spirit. Instilled into those from their cradles
were all the dogmas of Puritanism, to stimulate the mischievous spirit
of the race to evil works. Admirably have they fulfilled their destiny.
To the preaching and writings of the men and women descended from Lyman
Beecher has more misery ensued, than from any other one source, for the
last century. "Uncle Tom's Cabin" has slain its hundreds of thousands,
and the sermons of Henry Ward Beecher have made to flow an ocean of
blood.
The example of Pymm, Cromwell, Whaley, and Goff, and their fate, has
taught the Puritans no useful lesson. They seem to think to triumph in
civil war, as their ancestors did, regardless of the danger that a
reaction may bring to them, is all they can desire. The fate of these
men has no warning. Reactions sometimes come with terrible
consequences. They cannot see Cromwell's dead body hanging in chains.
They will not remember the fate of Whaley and Goff, whose bones are
mouldering in their own New Haven, after flying their country and, for
years, hiding in caves and cellars from the revengeful pursuit of
resentful enemies. The Pymms and the Praise-God-bare-bones of the
thirty-ninth Congress may and (it is to be hoped) will yet meet the
merited reward of their crimes of persecution and oppression.
At the time of which I write, there were many remaining in Connecticut
who participated in the conflicts and perils of the Revolution. These
men were all animated with strong national sentiments, and felt that
every part of the Union was their country. They idolized Washington,
and always spoke with affectionate praise of the Southern spirit, so
prominent in her troops during the war. The conduct of the South (and
especially that of Georgia toward General Greene, in donating him a
splendid plantation, with a palatial residence, upon the Savannah
River, near the city of Savannah, to which he removed, lived, and in
which he died,) was munificent, and characteristic of a noble and
generous people.
But these were passing away, and a new people were coming into their
places. The effects of a common cause, a common danger, and a united
success, were not felt by these. New interests excited new aspirations.
The nation's peril was past, and she was one of the great powers of the
earth, and acknowledged as such. She had triumphantly passed through a
second war with her unnatural mother, in which New England, as a
people, had reaped no glory. In the midst of the struggle, she had
called a convention of her people, with a view of withdrawing from the
Union. Her people had invited the enemy, with their blue-light signals,
to enter the harbor they were blockading, and where the American ships,
under the command of one of our most gallant commanders, had sought
refuge. They were sorely chagrined, and full of wrath. They hated the
South and her people. It was growing, and they were nursing it. Even
then we were a divided people, with every interest conserving to unite
us--the South producing and consuming; the North manufacturing,
carrying, and selling for, and to, the South. The harmony of commerce,
and the harmony of interest, had lost its power, and we were a divided
people. The breach widened, war followed, and ruin riots over the land.
The South was the weaker, and went down; the North was the stronger,
and triumphed--and the day of her vengeance has come.
In that remote time, the chase after the almighty dollar had commenced,
and especially in New England, where every sentiment was subordinate to
this. Patriotism was a secondary sentiment. Hypocritical pretension to
the purity of religion was used to cover the vilest practices, and to
shield from public indignation men who, praying, pressed into their
service the vilest means to make haste to be rich. The sordid parsimony
of ninety-hundredths of the population shut out every sentiment of
generosity, and rooted from the heart every emotion honorable to human
nature. Neighborhood intercourse was poisoned with selfishness, and the
effort to overreach, and make money out of, the ignorance or
necessities of these, was universal. These degrading practices crept
into every business, and petty frauds soon became designated as Yankee
tricks. There was nothing ennobling in their pursuits. The honorable
profession of law dwindled into pettifogging tricks. Commerce was
degraded in their hands by fraud and chicanery. The pernicious and
grasping nature everywhere cultivated, soon fastened upon the features.
Their eyes were pale, their features lank and hard, and the stony
nature was apparent in the icy coldness of manner, in the deceitful
grin, and lip-laugh, which the eye never shared, and which was only
affected, when interest prompted, or the started suspicions of an
intended victim warned them to be wary. The climate, and the
inhospitable and ungenerous soil, seemed to impart to the people their
own natures.
The men were all growing sharp, and the women, cold and passionless;
the soul appeared to shrivel and sink into induration, and the whole
people were growing into a nation of cheats and dastards. Such was the
promise for the people of New England, in 1820. Has it not been
realized in the years of the recent intestine war? The incentive held
out to her people to volunteer into her armies, was the plunder of the
South. The world has never witnessed such rapacity for gain as marked
the armies of the United States in their march through the South.
Religion and humanity were lost sight of in the general scramble for
the goods and the money of the Southern people. Rings were snatched
from the fingers of ladies and torn from their ears; their wardrobes
plundered and forwarded to expectant families at home; graves were
violated for the plates of gold and silver that might be found upon the
coffins; the dead bodies of women and men were unshrouded after
exhumation, to search in the coffins and shrouds to see if valuables
were not here concealed; and, in numerous instances, the teeth were
torn from the skeleton mouths of the dead for the gold plugs, or gold
plates that might be found there. Nor was this heathenish rapacity
confined to the common soldier; the commanders and subalterns
participated with acquisitive eagerness, sharing fully with their
commands the hellish instincts of their race.
They professed to come to liberate the slave, and they uniformly robbed
or swindled him of every valuable he might possess--even little
children were stripped of their garments, as trophies of war, to be
forwarded home for the wear of embryo Puritans, as an example for them
in future. Such are the Yankees of 1863-4, and '67. They now hold
control of the nation; but her mighty heart is sore under their
oppression. She is beginning to writhe. It will not be long, before
with a mighty effort she will burst the bonds these people have tied
about her limbs, will reassert the freedom of her children, and scourge
their oppressors with a whip of scorpions.
Such men as Talmadge, Humphries, and Wolcott are no more to be found in
New England. The animus of these men is no longer with these people.
The work of change is complete. Nothing remains of their religion but
its semblance--the fanaticism of Cotton Mather, without his
sincerity--the persecuting spirit of Cotton, without the sincerity of
his motives. Every tie that once united the descendants of the Norman
with those of the Saxon is broken. They are two in interest, two in
feeling, two in blood, and two in hatred. For a time they may dwell
together, but not in unison; for they have nothing in common but
hatred. Its fruit is discord, and the day is not distant, when these
irreconcilable elements must be ruled with a power despotic as
independent, whose will must be law unto both. It is painful to look
back fifty years and contrast the harmony then pervading every class of
every section with the discord and bitterness of hate which substitutes
it to day. Then, the national airs of "Hail Columbia" and "Yankee
Doodle" thrilled home to the heart of every American. To-day, they are
only heard in one half of the Union to be cursed and execrated. To ask
a lady to play one of these airs upon the harp or piano, from the Rio
Grande to the Potomac, would be resented as an insult. The fame of
Washington and John Hancock mingled as the united nations; but the
conduct of the sons of the Puritan fathers has stolen the respect for
them from the heart of half of the nation; and now, even the once
glorious name of Daniel Webster stirs no enthusiasm in the bosoms which
once beat joyfully to his praise, as it came to them from New England.
Those who from party purposes proclaim peace and good will, only
deceive the world, not themselves, or the people of the South. Peace
there is; but good will, none. When asked to be given, memory turns to
the battle-fields upon Southern soil, the bloody graves where the
chosen spirits of the South are sleeping, and the heart burns with
indignant hatred. Generations may come and pass away, but this hatred,
this cursed memory of oppressive wrong will live on. The mothers of
to-day make for their infants a tradition of these memories, and it
will be transmitted as the highlander's cross of fire, from clan to
clan, in burning brightness, for a thousand years. The graveyards will
no more perish than the legends of the war that made them. They are in
our midst, our children, the kindred of all are there--and those who
are to come will go there--and their mothers, as Hamilcar did, will
make them upon these green graves swear eternal hatred to those who
with their vengeance filled these sacred vaults.
We are expected to love those whose hands are red with the blood of our
children; to take to our bosoms the murderers and robbers who have
slain upon the soil of their nativity our people, and who have robbed
our homes and devastated our country; who have fattened Southern soil
with Southern blood, and enriched their homes with the stolen wealth of
ours. Are we not men, and manly? Do we feel as men? and is not this
insult to manliness, and a vile mockery to the feelings of men? We can
never forget--we will never forgive, and we will wait; for when the
opportunity shall come, as come it will, we will avenge the damning
wrong.
This may be unchristian, but it is natural--nature is of God and will
assert herself. No mawkish pretension, no hypocritical cant, can
repress the natural feelings of the heart: its loves and resentments
are its strongest passions, and the love that we bore for our children
and kindred kindles to greater vigor in the hatred we bear for their
murderers.