In childhood he showed a love for the sea and he became a sailor
when he was twelve years old. One of his first long voyages was on a
ship which came to Virginia for a cargo of tobacco. He studied naval
history and tactics, though he remained in the merchant-service. There
he rose in rank, until he became captain of a trading-vessel. When
he was about twenty-five, his brother, who had settled in Virginia,
died and John Paul, for by this name he was still known, took charge
of his estate. He does not seem to have been a successful farmer, and
he led an uneventful life until the Revolution began. Then he offered
his services to Congress. We do not know why he cast his lot with his
adopted country instead of his native one, but he gave it faithful and
brilliant service, without pay or allowance.
From this time, however, he dropped his real name of John Paul and
chose to be known as John Paul Jones--perhaps because he did not wish
his friends and countrymen to know that he was aiding the “rebel” cause.
He was at first appointed to a subordinate position. In the early part
of 1776 the first American squadron, with Paul Jones first lieutenant
on one of its vessels, the Alfred, sailed to the Bahama Islands. Its
mission was to take the military supplies so needed by the Americans
from the forts on New Providence. The Americans were unable to enter
the harbor, and the expedition would have been a failure but for Paul
Jones. He had been informed that there was a good landing near the
harbor, and he undertook to guide the Alfred to it. He did so and the
other ships followed. They seized the military stores, including a
hundred cannon, and sailed back to America.
Soon after this Paul Jones was given charge of a little sloop and sent
to sea on a six-weeks’ cruise. He had encounters with several English
frigates and on more than one occasion his vessel was saved only by his
courage and seamanship. At the end of his cruise he returned to Newport
with sixty-six prizes. The gallant and successful captain was deprived
of command by a jealous superior officer and for several months he
was without a ship. He repeatedly asked Congress for a ship and he
requested that it might be a good one, “for I intend to go in harm’s
way,” he said--and he generally carried out his intention.
While on shore Jones gave Congress valuable advice about fitting out a
navy. He recommended that “1. Every officer should be examined before
he receives his commission. 2. The ranks in a navy should correspond
to those in an army. 3. As England has the best navy in the world, we
should copy hers.”
In June, 1777, he was put in command of the Ranger and over this he
hoisted, for the first time on the seas, the American flag, the Stars
and Stripes, lately adopted by Congress. He thought that the most
effective way to wage war was to “carry it into the enemy’s country.”
Accordingly he went to Whitehaven on the English coast, where nearly
three hundred vessels were in harbor. He took his men ashore in two
boats and ordered them to set fire to the ships, while he surprised the
two batteries and the fort and spiked their cannon. When he returned
to the harbor, he found that his orders had been disobeyed,--not one
ship had been fired. It was now day and the people were aroused, but
Paul Jones was unwilling to go without carrying out a part of his plan
and with his own hand he set fire to the largest ship.
The English made many attempts to seize the doer of this daring deed,
and at one time there were forty-two British ships on the waters
seeking to capture the bold rover. One of the ships which set out to
capture the Ranger was the Drake. Jones met it in battle and defeated
and captured the English vessel which had more guns and better-trained
and better-equipped men than his.
The Ranger was recalled to defend the coast of America, and for months
Paul Jones was in France without a ship. At last he was given an
old trading-vessel fitted out as a war-ship. He called it Bon Homme
Richard, the French name for Poor Richard in honor of his friend
Franklin’s Poor Richard of the almanac. In September, 1779, Commodore
Jones sailed toward the English coast with four small vessels. There he
met two large English war-ships that were convoying, or accompanying,
a fleet of forty merchant-vessels. The merchant-vessels took refuge on
the English coast, and the war-ships advanced to fight. The shots of
the English ship, the Serapis, inflicted so much injury on the Richard
that Captain Pearson of the Serapis thought it was sinking and asked
the American commander, “Has your ship struck?”
“I have not yet begun to fight,” was Jones’s stern reply.
He had the two vessels lashed together. Then, with his own hands
helping to work the guns, he directed the fight with dauntless
resolution. His ship was riddled with shot and on fire; still he
refused to yield; when the vessel seemed sinking, he drove his
prisoners to the pumps and made them work for life itself. One of his
ships, instead of coming to his aid, fired on him. His situation seemed
desperate. Captain Pearson called again to know if he had struck and he
answered, “No,--that if he could do no better he would sink with his
colors flying.”
After a deadly combat of three-and-a-half hours, in which the Serapis
and the Richard literally “shot each other to pieces,” the Serapis had
to yield. The king conferred on Captain Pearson the honor of knighthood
as a reward for his brave, though unsuccessful, fight. When Jones heard
of this he said that if ever he met Pearson at sea again he would make
a lord of him. After the Revolution in which he served America so
bravely and ably, Jones made his home in France. There in 1792 ended
his adventurous life in which he had, as he said, “twenty-three battles
and solemn rencounters by sea.”
Thomas Jefferson
The Author of the Declaration of Independence
Not all the work of securing American independence was done by the able
generals and the brave soldiers. The patriot cause in the Revolution
owed much to men who never served in the army. One of these was
Franklin, who secured for the colonies aid and recognition from France.
Another was Thomas Jefferson, called “the pen of the Revolution,” who
wrote the Declaration of Independence.
Thomas Jefferson was born in Virginia, in 1743; his father, a wealthy
country gentleman, died when Thomas was about fourteen years old. The
country boy divided his time between books and outdoor sports, and
his mind was well-trained and his slender frame was as active and as
tireless as an Indian’s. Then at seventeen he rode off to Williamsburg
to enter William and Mary College.
At Williamsburg was formed the friendship with Patrick Henry which
continued till after the Revolution; it was broken by differences in
political opinions. It was on a flyleaf of one of Thomas Jefferson’s
law books that Henry wrote his “resolutions.” Jefferson was one of the
audience that listened entranced to the eloquent speech against the
Stamp Act. When Jefferson was twenty-four, he was admitted to practice
law at Williamsburg. He became an able and successful lawyer, though
he had a weak voice and was never a pleasing speaker. In 1775 Jefferson
heard Patrick Henry’s eloquent appeal to the people to arm for the
inevitable conflict; Jefferson, Washington, and others were appointed
to form plans to put Virginia on a military basis.
[Illustration: THOMAS JEFFERSON]
Jefferson, who had already won reputation as author and scholar, was
sent to Philadelphia to the Continental Congress. Though one of the
youngest of its members, he was appointed to draft the Declaration
of Independence. The paper was accepted and adopted in form slightly
changed from that in which he presented it. The delegates who signed it
well knew that they were signing their death warrants if the Revolution
should prove a failure and they should fall into King George’s hands.
Hancock, the president of the Congress, said that the members must all
hang together.
“Yes,” said Franklin, “we must hang together or we shall all hang
separately.”
Four days later, the Declaration was read publicly, and its
proclamation was received with enthusiasm throughout the colonies.
Jefferson was one of the five men that the Assembly selected to revise
the Virginia laws; upon him devolved most of the work. It was due to
him that severe laws were passed against dueling, and that there was
repealed the old English law by which the eldest son inherited the
father’s estate. For nine years he and other enlightened men fought for
the repeal of the old intolerant laws about religion, and the passing
of a statute securing religious liberty. Finally, all the old laws
about tithes, compulsory worship, etc., were struck out and in their
place was substituted this statute written by Jefferson:
“No man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious
worship, ministry, or place whatsoever; nor shall he be enforced,
restrained, molested or hindered in his body or his goods; nor shall
he otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or beliefs;
but all men shall be free to profess and by argument to maintain,
their opinions in matters of religion; and the same shall in no wise
diminish, enlarge or affect their civil capacities.” We accept this as
a matter of course, but in that day it was a great step forward.
Jefferson was elected governor of Virginia, but he resigned in 1781,
feeling that in the emergency of the time the government could best be
administered by having civil and military power in the same hands. He
was asked by Congress to go with Franklin to France as ambassador but
he refused because his wife was ill. After her death, two years later,
he went as minister to France. No other American ambassador was ever so
popular as Franklin, but Jefferson was liked and respected.
“You replace Dr. Franklin,” said a Frenchman.
“I merely succeed him; no one could replace him,” was the prompt reply.
Jefferson, like Franklin, was a many-sided man. The famous author of
the Declaration of Independence, the scholar versed in the Greek,
Latin, French, Italian, and Spanish languages, took a keen interest in
practical matters and applied science. Under great difficulties, he
procured some of the best rice of Italy and sent it to South Carolina;
from this handful came the great rice crops produced in that state.
From Europe Franklin sent to the United States the first announcement
of Watt’s steam engine which he went from Paris to London to see. He
wrote back that by it “a peck and a half of coal performs as much work
as a horse in a day.” Jefferson himself had inventive talent; among
his other inventions was a plow superior to any then in use, which in
1790 received a gold medal in France. He became the third president
of the American Philosophical Society of which Franklin was the first
president.
Jefferson returned to America in 1789 and served as Secretary of State
under Washington. He had succeeded in getting our present coinage
system adopted, urging successfully a decimal system to replace that
of England which many people wished to retain. He tried to have
introduced a system of measures founded on the same decimal plan, but
in this he did not succeed. While he was Secretary of State the mint
in Philadelphia was established by his advice; till then American money
had been coined in Europe.
In 1793 Jefferson resigned the office of Secretary of State and
returned to his beloved home, Monticello, one of the handsomest country
seats in Virginia. His overseer said that in the twenty years he lived
at Monticello, he saw Jefferson sitting unemployed only twice--both
times he was too unwell to work. “At all other times he was either
reading, writing, talking, working upon some model, or doing something
else.” Once Jefferson’s little grandsons whom he urged to “learn” and
“labor” replied that they would not need to work because they would
be rich. He answered, “Ah, those that expect to get through the world
without industry, because they are rich, will be greatly mistaken. The
people that do the work will soon get possession of all their property.”
One of his grandsons tells another incident of these days: “On riding
out with him when a lad we met a negro who bowed to us; he returned his
bow, I did not. Turning to me he asked, ‘Do you permit a negro to be
more of a gentleman than yourself?’”
The country did not permit Jefferson to remain long in retirement.
He was elected Vice President in 1796 and President in 1801. He
represented the party of the people; this was opposed to the
Federalist party led by Hamilton which was in favor of a centralized
government. The party led by Jefferson was called, first Republican,
then Democratic-Republican, then Democratic--to express the idea that
the power belonged to the people. Scholar and aristocrat as Jefferson
was, he had confidence in the “government of the people, by the people,
and for the people,” as a man of the people expressed it later.
Throughout Jefferson’s life this was his main idea, and the one for
which he always worked.
During his first administration he rendered a great service to the
country; being instrumental in 1803 in purchasing from France for
fifteen million dollars the Louisiana territory. This territory
included not only Louisiana but the territory extending to Puget
Sound. In a message to Congress, Jefferson asked for money to send an
expedition to explore this great country and he selected two brave and
hardy frontiersmen to lead it, Captain Lewis and Lieutenant Clarke.
They spent two and a half years on the expedition and brought back
information about the country and specimens of its products.
After he had served his country twice as president, Jefferson retired
to his home at Monticello and there spent his old age, still occupied
with schemes for the public welfare. He believed in America for
Americans. In a letter to President Monroe he said, “Our first and
fundamental maxim should be never to entangle ourselves in the broils
of Europe. Our second never to suffer Europe to intermeddle with
Cis-Atlantic affairs.”
He planned an educational system for Virginia which included a
comprehensive free school system, and a university. He gave years of
thought and study to planning the building, government, and course of
study of this university. In 1818 the state legislature made a grant to
establish the University of Virginia.
Jefferson gave practically his whole life to the service of his
country. He was in office thirty-nine years, and spent more than twenty
years revising the Virginia Statutes and laboring to establish the
University of Virginia. Thus, he said, his public services occupied
over sixty years. During this time, his private affairs were neglected.
From wealth in youth, he was reduced in old age to straitened
circumstances. He sold his library, thirteen thousand volumes, to
Congress for $23,950, about one-half of its auction value, and the
money went to his creditors.
In the summer of 1826 Jefferson was taken ill. At midnight July the
third, he was heard to murmur, “This is the fourth of July.” About
midday he died, fifty years after the Declaration of Independence was
adopted. On the same day in Massachusetts was dying John Adams who had
helped in the fight for the people’s rights. During his last hours,
his thoughts turned to his great associate and he said, “Thomas
Jefferson still lives.”
On Jefferson’s tombstone were recorded as he had requested--not
the offices he had held nor the honors he had received--but the
three things by which he wished to be remembered,--that he wrote
the Declaration of Independence, the Virginia Statute for religious
liberty, and founded the University of Virginia.
Alexander Hamilton
The Founder of the Federalist Party
The Democratic-Republican party which believed in the “power of the
masses” and the rule of the people was founded by Thomas Jefferson.
The Federalist party, which believed in a centralized government
patterned on the aristocratic one of England, was founded by Alexander
Hamilton. Little is known about the family and early life of Hamilton.
He was born in the little West India island of Nevis in January, 1757.
His father is supposed to have been a Scotch trader and his mother
a Frenchwoman. His family was poor, and it was necessary for him to
leave school in childhood and set to work. At the age of twelve, he
became a clerk in a counting-house where he remained about three years.
Every spare moment was spent in the study of mathematics, chemistry,
and history. He was so faithful in his work, however, that at the age
of thirteen or fourteen he was left in charge of business during his
employer’s absence.
[Illustration: ALEXANDER HAMILTON]
In 1772 the island of Santa Cruz was visited by a terrible hurricane;
young Hamilton wrote such a vivid and eloquent account of it that his
friends thought he ought to become a professional man and offered to
help him continue his education. Accordingly, in October, 1772, he set
sail to the colonies. Leaving the West Indies, he cut loose from his
old life; of friends and relatives there, almost nothing is heard after
this time. Young Hamilton attended a grammar school in New Jersey, and
then entered King’s College, now Columbia University, in New York. The
young West Indian came to America at a time when people were greatly
excited about political matters, and he heard much about the Stamp
Act and the oppressive taxes laid by Great Britain. At first he took
the part of the king, but in less than two years he had become an
enthusiastic patriot. It was the cause of the colonies as a whole that
appealed to him. He never developed any of the feeling for the separate
colonies which was so strong in most native-born Americans.
When he espoused the cause of the oppressed colonies, he did it
with his whole heart. The precocious, clever boy of seventeen made
patriotic addresses, and published an able pamphlet, entitled, “A Full
Vindication of the Measures of Congress from the Calumnies of their
Enemies” (1774). In this pamphlet he stated the case of the colonies
clearly and eloquently. He said, “All men have one common origin; they
participate in one common nature, and consequently have one common
right. No reason can be advanced why one man should exercise any power
or preëminence over his fellow-creatures, unless they have voluntarily
vested him with it. Since then, Americans have not by any act of their
own empowered the British Parliament to make laws for them, it follows
that they can have no just authority to do it.”
Hamilton believed in the enforcement of law and order. On one or two
occasions, when mobs had set out to attack royalists’ houses, he
persuaded them to respect private property and opinions.
The opinions that young Hamilton upheld with pen he was ready to
uphold with sword. In 1776, when he was only nineteen, he was put in
charge of a company of artillery which he drilled so well that he won
the commendation and friendship first of General Greene and later of
General Washington. During the retreat through New Jersey, he managed
his company with courage and skill, and he fought bravely in the
battles of Trenton and Princeton. In 1777 he became one of Washington’s
“official family,” being made his confidential secretary. Washington
was very fond of the clever young man whom he often addressed as
“my boy.” Hamilton’s ability, too, was recognized and in 1777 he
was entrusted with a delicate and important mission. This was to
get reinforcements for Washington’s hard-pressed army from Gates’s
successful forces. As superior officer, Washington could have ordered
the troops sent to his relief, but for many reasons it was best to have
them sent on Gates’s own accord, if possible. Therefore, Washington
gave Hamilton a sealed order of command to Gates, instructing him not
to deliver it if without doing so he could persuade the general to send
the troops. Hamilton brought back the troops and he also brought back
the unopened letter. It was while he was in New York on this errand
that he met General Schuyler’s daughter whom he married in 1780.
Hamilton did not remain in the commander-in-chief’s official family.
On one occasion he failed to answer a summons promptly; General
Washington, who was a strict disciplinarian, said, “Colonel Hamilton,
you have kept me waiting for you these ten minutes. I must tell you,
sir, that you treat me with disrespect.” The hot-tempered youth
replied, “I am not conscious of it, sir, but since you have thought it
necessary to tell me so, we part.”
“Very well, sir, if that is your choice,” answered the general.
Washington was willing to overlook the occurrence, but Hamilton was
desirous to return to active service. At Yorktown he led a gallant
attack against a British redoubt which he took in ten minutes.
After the Revolution, he read law four months and then began to
practice in Albany. He put aside professional work to serve his adopted
country again. This time in Congress. The colonies which had united
in their war of defence now seemed drifting apart and the general
government had no power to hold them together. The country was in
debt and had neither money nor credit. The states, therefore, sent
representatives to Philadelphia in 1787 to form a Constitution to take
the place of the Articles of Confederation.
Hamilton was one of these delegates. He argued in favor of a strong
central government, ruled by a president, congress, and supreme court;
he thought that practically all power should be put in the hands of
the general government, and that the governors of states should be
appointed by it and should have veto power over state legislation.
To him an American state was a mere geographical division, like an
English county. Most of the people, however, clung to the independence
of the separate states, and there was heated discussion as to what
rights should be delegated to the general government and what should
be reserved by the states. At last a constitution was drawn up, in
favor of which Congress voted. It was decided that this constitution
should go into effect as soon as it should be ratified by nine states.
As yet the states “had given up none of their rights to the general
government.”
In order to present the views in favor of this constitution and to
secure its adoption, Hamilton, with some assistance from Madison and
Jay, published a series of eighty-five papers called “The Federalist.”
The constitution was adopted, and George Washington was elected first
President. When he formed his Cabinet he made Alexander Hamilton
Secretary of the Treasury. It was felt that this young man of
thirty-two could do more than any one else to establish the finances
of the country on a safe basis. He made a report “On the Public
Credit” which “laid the corner-stone of American finance under the
constitution.”
He insisted that the credit of the United States should be firmly
established and the United States should assume the war debt of
fifty-four million dollars; to secure the payment of this a national
bank was established. Hamilton suggested ways in which money might be
raised by taxing whiskey and imported articles and by the use of public
lands, the Northwest Territory ceded by Virginia, and the western
lands ceded by Maryland, New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, South
Carolina, North Carolina, and Georgia.
After some opposition Hamilton’s plan was adopted and the finances of
the country were established on a safe basis. An insurrection called
the Whiskey Rebellion was raised in Pennsylvania by people who were
unwilling to pay the tax on liquor, and Hamilton went with troops who
suppressed it.
Jefferson and others argued that under this constitution the general
government had no power to establish a national bank. Hamilton brought
forward the view, which he was the first to advance, that Congress had
“implied” powers as well as “delegated” ones. One of his chief motives
in urging national banks was that he felt they would be a “powerful
cement of union,” uniting the business interests of the country in the
support of the government. It was Hamilton, then, who originated the
“protective tariff” and “national banks,” over which political parties
are still contending.