President Jefferson was told from day to day of the communications that
passed between Burr and the Connecticut Federalists. Of all members
of the Government, the most active politician was Gideon Granger, the
Postmaster-General, whose “intimacy with some of those in the secret,”
as Jefferson afterward testified, gave him “opportunities of searching
into their proceedings.”[124] Every day during this period Granger
made a confidential report to the President; and at the President’s
request Granger warned De Witt Clinton of Burr’s intrigues with the
Federalists. What passed in Rufus King’s library and in Burr’s private
room seemed known at once by Granger, and was reported within a few
days to Jefferson, who received the news with his innate optimism,
warranted by experience.[125]
“It will be found in this, as in all other similar cases, that
crooked schemes will end by overwhelming their authors and
coadjutors in disgrace, and that he alone who walks strict and
upright, and who in matters of opinion will be contented that
others should be as free as himself, and acquiesce when his
opinion is fairly overruled, will attain his object in the end.”
If Jefferson and his Virginia friends in 1798, when their own opinions
were overruled, had expressed the idea of acquiescence as strongly, the
nation might perhaps have been saved the necessity of proving later the
truth of his words; but Jefferson could afford to treat with contempt
the coalition between Burr and Pickering, because, as he wisely said,
it had no cohesive force to hold it together, no common principle on
which to rest. When Burr’s defeat in April and Hamilton’s death in July
dissolved the unnatural connection, Jefferson let the secret die; he
wanted no scandal. He stood a little in awe of the extreme Federalists,
whom he called incurables, and was unwilling to exasperate them without
an object.
The Administration had every reason to rejoice that Burr’s factious
influence in the State of New York was at an end; for other causes of
anxiety gave the President more personal annoyance. The strength of the
Republican party lay in the alliance between Virginia and Pennsylvania.
So long as these two central States, with their forty members of
Congress, remained harmonious, nothing could shake Jefferson’s power;
but any discord which threatened his control of Pennsylvania caused
him anxiety. Hardly had Burr’s schism been checked in New York by a
succession of measures as energetic as De Witt Clinton could persuade
Jefferson to adopt, when a schism, that threatened greater mischief,
broke out in Pennsylvania.
In this State no social hierarchy existed such as governed New England,
nor were rich families with political followings to be found there,
as in New York; but instead, Duane’s “Aurora” shone without break or
bar over one broad democratic level. Duane was represented in Congress
by Michael Leib; while over the State Legislature his influence was
complete. In Jefferson’s Cabinet Pennsylvania was represented by
Gallatin, who had little sympathy with the “Aurora,” and began his
administration of the finances by resisting Duane’s demand for Federal
patronage.
“The thirst for offices,” to use Gallatin’s own words,[126] “too
much encouraged by Governor McKean’s first measures, created
a schism in Philadelphia as early as 1802. Leib, ambitious,
avaricious, envious, and disappointed, blew up the flame, and
watched the first opportunity to make his cause a general one.
The vanity, the nepotism, and the indiscretion of Governor
McKean afforded the opportunity. Want of mutual forbearance
among the best-intentioned and most respectable Republicans has
completed the schism. Duane, intoxicated by the persuasion that
he alone had overthrown Federalism, thought himself neither
sufficiently rewarded nor respected; and possessed of an engine
which gives him an irresistible control over public opinion, he
easily gained the victory for his friends.”
In the spring of 1803 the “Aurora” began to attack Gallatin and
Madison, under cover of devotion to the President; and from this
beginning Duane went on to quarrel with Governor McKean and Alexander
J. Dallas, the district attorney.
The impeachment of Judge Pickering in Congress followed and in some
degree imitated an impeachment by the Pennsylvania Legislature of Judge
Addison, one of the five president judges of the Common Pleas. With
the help of Dallas and Governor McKean, the Legislature in January,
1803, removed Judge Addison; then, inspired by Randolph’s attack
on Justice Chase, they turned against their Supreme Court,--at one
sweep impeaching three of the judges, and addressing the Governor for
the removal of H. H. Brackenridge, the fourth, because he insisted
on making common cause with his associates. The alleged ground of
impeachment was the arbitrary committal of a suitor for contempt of
court; the real motive seemed rather to be a wish for legal reforms
such as society was too unskilful to make for itself, and lawyers were
slow to begin. Throughout America the bar was a sort of aristocracy,
conservative to a degree that annoyed reformers of every class.
Jefferson and his party raised one Republican lawyer after another
to the bench, only to find that when their professions of political
opinion were tested in legal form, the Republican judge rivalled
Marshall in the Federalist and English tendencies of his law. The
bar chose to consider the prejudice of society against their caste
unreasonable; but the bar was itself somewhat unreasonable to require
that an untrained and ill-led body of country farmers and local
politicians should say precisely what legal reform they wanted, or know
exactly what was practicable.
No sooner did the Pennsylvania Legislature begin to pull in pieces
the judicial system of the State, and persecute the legal profession,
than Dallas, McKean, and all the educated leaders of the Republican
party broke from the mass of their followers, and attempted to check
their violence. Governor McKean stopped with his veto certain measures
which the Legislature had approved, and he declined to remove Judge
Breckenridge when the Legislature asked him to do so. Dallas became
counsel for the impeached judges. Duane and Leib raged against McKean
and Dallas; a large majority of Pennsylvania Republicans followed
the “Aurora;” Gallatin lost control over his State, and saw himself
threatened, like his friend Dallas, with ostracism; while the outside
world, roused by the noise of this faction-fight, asked what it meant,
and could not understand the answer. The Federalists alone professed to
explain the mystery which perplexed people less wise than themselves;
they had said from the beginning that the democrats had neither virtue
nor understanding to carry on the government, and must bring about a
crisis at last.
After the excitement of Burr’s intrigues and Hamilton’s death subsided,
leaving the politics of New York in comparative repose, the autumn
elections in Pennsylvania began to disturb Jefferson’s temper.
“Thank Heaven!” wrote Dallas to Gallatin, in October,[127]
“our election is over! The violence of Duane has produced a
fatal division. He seems determined to destroy the Republican
standing and usefulness of every man who does not bend to his
will. He has attacked me as the author of an address which I
never saw till it was in the press. He menaces the Governor;
you have already felt his lash; and I think there is reason for
Mr. Jefferson himself to apprehend that the spirit of Callender
survives.”
A struggle took place over the re-election of Leib to Congress, which
the “Aurora” carried by a few hundred votes. Republicans of Dallas’s
kind, who would not support Leib, were nicknamed “Quids” by Duane,
after the _tertium quid_, which was worth not even a name. At
least three fourths of the Republican party followed the “Aurora,” and
left the “Quids” in the solitude of deserted leaders.
Jefferson’s social relations were wholly with Gallatin, McKean, and
Dallas, but his political strength depended on the popular vote, which
followed Duane and Leib. At one moment he wanted to reason with Duane,
but by Gallatin’s advice gave up this idea. At length he temporized,
became neutral, and left Gallatin and Dallas to their own resources.
“I see with infinite pain,” he wrote to Dr. Logan,[128] “the
bloody schism which has taken place among our friends in
Pennsylvania and New York, and will probably take place in
other States. The main body of both sections mean well, but
their good intentions will produce great public evil. The
minority, whichever section shall be the minority, will end in
coalition with the Federalists and some compromise of principle.
Republicanism will thus lose, and royalism gain, some portion of
that ground which we thought we had rescued to good government.”
The idea that “royalism” could in any case gain support among the
factions of Pennsylvania democrats was one which could have occurred
only to Jefferson, who saw monarchy, as the New Englanders saw
Antichrist, in every man who opposed him in politics. Apart from this
trick of words, Jefferson’s theory of his own duties failed to satisfy
his followers. Dallas was disgusted at the situation in which he found
himself left.
“It is obvious to me,”[129] he wrote to Gallatin soon after
the schism broke out, “that unless our Administration take
decisive measures to discountenance the factious spirit that has
appeared; unless some principle of political cohesion can be
introduced into our public councils as well as at our elections;
and unless men of character and talents can be drawn from
professional and private pursuits into the legislative bodies of
our governments, Federal and State,--the empire of Republicanism
will moulder into anarchy, and the labor and hope of our lives
will terminate in disappointment and wretchedness.... At present
we are the slaves of men whose passions are the object of all
their actions,--I mean your Duanes, Cheethams, Leibs, etc. They
have the press in their power; and though we may have virtue to
assert the liberty of the press, it is too plain that we have
not spirit enough to resist the tyranny of the printers.”
This last sharp sentence aimed at the President, who displeased Dallas
by showing too evident a wish not to offend Duane. “The duty of an
upright Administration,” Jefferson told Dr. Logan,[130] “is to pursue
its course steadily, to know nothing of these family dissensions, and
to cherish the good principles of both parties.” Had the President
followed this duty in the case of Burr, the triumph of De Witt Clinton
and Cheetham would have been more difficult than it was; but the
President feared Burr the less because Burr’s newspaper, the “Morning
Chronicle,” was respectable, while the “Aurora” was unscrupulous, and
to cherish Duane’s principles, whether good or bad, was the only way of
escaping the lash of his tongue. Jefferson chose the path of caution
in refusing to sustain Dallas and the “Quids” against the party and
the Legislature; but during the rest of his term he was forced to
endure Duane’s attachment, and to feel that Madison and Gallatin were
sacrificed to his own safety. Duane never hesitated to assert that he
was in Jefferson’s confidence and was acting in his interests,[131] and
commonly he or some of his friends could show a recent letter in the
President’s handwriting which gave color to their assertion.
The Pennsylvania schism was not serious. Governor McKean and Dallas
were alarmed when they saw the democratic system blundering in its
rude way, without taking sound advice or heeding trained lawyers; but
only the Federalists believed in a crisis. Society went undisturbed
to its daily duties in spite of Duane’s outcries and Dallas’s
grumbling. The only result of the Pennsylvania schism was to check the
aggressive energy of the democratic movement by alarming a few of the
older leaders and causing them to halt. From the day of Jefferson’s
inauguration this tendency toward reaction had begun, and it developed
in party schisms which could not fail to hurry the process. The
symptom, however unpleasant to old political leaders such as Jefferson,
McKean, and Dallas, who liked the quiet enjoyment of power, was healthy
for society at large; but no one could fail to be struck by the
contrast which in this respect was offered by the two great sections
of the country. While the mobile, many-sided, restless democracy of
New England, New York, and Pennsylvania exhibited its faults, and
succeeded, with much personal abuse, in thrusting out the elements
foreign to its character which retarded its movement, the society of
the Southern States was classically calm. Not a breath disturbed the
quiet which brooded over the tobacco and cotton fields between the
Potomac and Florida. A Presidential election was taking place, but
the South saw only one candidate. The State legislatures quietly chose
electors to vote for Jefferson and Clinton. From the St. Mary’s to the
Potomac and the Ohio, every electoral voice was given to Jefferson.
With some surprise the public learned that Maryland gave two of eleven
votes to C. C. Pinckney, who received also the three votes of Delaware.
This little State even went back on its path, repudiated Cæsar A.
Rodney, and returned to its favorite Bayard, who was sent by a handsome
majority to his old seat in the House of Representatives. Broken for an
instant only by this slight check, the tide of democratic triumph swept
over the States of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York, and burst
upon Connecticut as though Jefferson’s hope of dragging even that State
from its moorings were at length to be realized. With difficulty the
Connecticut hierarchy held its own; and with despair after the torrent
passed by, it looked about and found itself alone. Even Massachusetts
cast 29,310 votes for Jefferson, against 25,777 for Pinckney.
Rarely was a Presidential election better calculated to turn the
head of a President, and never was a President elected who felt more
keenly the pleasure of his personal triumph. At the close of four
years of administration, all Jefferson’s hopes were fulfilled. He had
annihilated opposition. The slanders of the Federalist press helped to
show that he was the idol of four fifths of the nation. He received one
hundred and sixty-two of one hundred and seventy-six electoral votes,
while in 1801 he had but seventy-three in one hundred and thirty-eight;
and in the Ninth Congress, which was to meet in December, 1805, barely
seven out of thirty-four senators, and twenty-five out of one hundred
and forty-one representatives, would oppose his will. He described his
triumph, in language studiously modest, in a letter to Volney:[132]--
“The two parties which prevailed with so much violence when
you were here are almost wholly melted into one. At the late
Presidential election I have received one hundred and sixty-two
votes against fourteen only. Connecticut is still Federalist by
a small majority, and Delaware on a poise, as she has been since
1775, and will be till Anglomany with her yields to Americanism.
Connecticut will be with us in a short time. Though the people
in mass have joined us, their leaders had committed themselves
too far to retract. Pride keeps them hostile; they brood over
their angry passions, and give them vent in the newspapers which
they maintain. They still make as much noise as if they were the
whole nation.”
Such success might have turned the head of any philosopher that ever
sat on a throne. Easily elated, unwilling to forebode trouble, devoid
of humor, and unable to see himself in any but the heroic light,
President Jefferson basked in the sunshine of popularity and power as
though it were no passing warmth such as had led scores of kings into
disaster, but shone by virtue of some democratic law which rested
on truth that could never change. The White House was filled with an
atmosphere of adulation. Flattery, gross as any that man could ask,
was poured into the President’s ear, but was as nothing compared with
the more subtle flattery of the popular vote. No friend stopped him to
ask how such a miraculous success had been brought about. Four years
had not passed since Jefferson and his party had clamored against
attempts to give energy to government; and no one could ever forget
that they claimed and received power from the people in order to defend
State-rights, restrict Executive influence, and correct strained
constructions of the Constitution. Who upheld State-rights in 1804, and
complained of Executive influence and strained constructions? Certainly
not Jefferson or his friends, but the monarchical Federalists, who
were fit inmates for an asylum. Whenever Jefferson had occasion to
discuss the aims and opinions of the two parties, he did not allude
to the principles set forth in 1798; not a word was said of “strict
construction.” The only theories opposed to his own which he could see
in the political horizon were those of a few hundred conservatives of
the colonial epoch.
“What, in fact,” he wrote,[133] “is the difference of principle
between the two parties here? The one desires to preserve an
entire independence of the executive and legislative branches on
each other and the dependence of both on the same source,--the
free election of the people. The other party wishes to lessen
the dependence of the Executive and of one branch of the
Legislature on the people, some by making them hold for life,
some hereditary, and some even for giving the Executive an
influence by patronage or corruption over the remaining popular
branch, so as to reduce the elective franchise to its minimum.”
After nearly four years of Executive authority more complete than had
ever before been known in American history, Jefferson could see in
himself and in his principles only a negation of Executive influence.
What had become of the old radical division of parties,--the line
between men who wished the national government to exercise inherent
powers of sovereignty and those who held to a strict observance of
powers expressly delegated by the people of the States?
Jefferson said with truth that the two old parties were almost wholly
melted into one; but in this fusion his own party had shown even more
willingness than its opponents to mix its principles in a useful,
but not noble, amalgam. His own protests in regard to the Louisiana
purchase and the branch bank at New Orleans were recorded. With such
evidence on their side, the moderate Federalists who in the election of
1804 gave to Jefferson the nineteen electoral votes of Massachusetts
and the seven of New Hampshire, could claim that they had altered no
opinion they ever held; that the government had suffered no change in
principle from what it had been under President Washington; that not
a Federalist measure, not even the Alien and Sedition laws, had been
expressly repudiated; that the national debt was larger than it had
ever been before, the navy maintained and energetically employed, the
national bank preserved and its operations extended; that the powers
of the national government had been increased to a point that made
blank paper of the Constitution as heretofore interpreted by Jefferson,
while the national territory, vastly more than doubled in extent,
was despotically enlarged and still more despotically ruled by the
President and Congress, in the teeth of every political profession the
Republican party had ever made. Had this been the work of Federalists,
it would have been claimed as a splendid triumph of Federalist
principles; and the good sense of New England was never better shown
than when Massachusetts and New Hampshire flung aside their prejudices
and told Jefferson that they accepted his inaugural pledge to be a
Federalist as they were Republicans.
Every Federalist who came over and every State that joined the majority
weakened the relative influence of Virginia, and helped to dilute
the principles of the pure Virginia school. The new democrats in New
England, New York, and Ohio were Federalists in disguise, and cared
nothing for fine-spun constitutional theories of what government
might or might not do, provided government did what they wanted. They
feared no corruption in which they were to have a part. They were in
secret jealous of Virginia, and as devoted as George Cabot and Stephen
Higginson to the interests of commerce and manufactures. A majority
of the Northern democrats were men of this kind. Their dislike of
Federalists was a social rather than political feeling, for Federalist
manners seemed to them a wilful impertinence; but the Varnums and
Crowninshields of Massachusetts cared as little as De Witt Clinton
or Aaron Burr for the notions of Speaker Macon and John Randolph. As
orators and leaders the Northern democrats made a poor figure beside
the Virginians; but their votes weighed more and more heavily with
every succeeding Congress, and both Randolph and Macon were becoming
suspicious that these votes were too apt to be cast against the wishes
of Virginia.
The second session of the Eighth Congress met on the first Monday
in November, as provided by a law passed in view of Judge Chase’s
impeachment. The President’s Message, sent to Congress Nov. 8, 1804,
was as usual toned to cheerful harmony. The income had reached eleven
millions and a half of dollars; more than three million six hundred
thousand dollars of the public debt had been discharged within the
year, more than twelve millions since 1801; and the revenue was still
increasing. Difficulties had risen with foreign nations, but no
disturbance of the peace was to be expected. The Indians were quiet.
Gunboats were in course of construction. No increase of the army was
called for. Congress had only to inquire whether anything remained to
be done for the public good.
The Federalists were reduced to showing that Jefferson’s political
success had not chastened his style; for the Message contained a number
of sentences that exaggerated his peculiar faults of expression:--
“The war which was lighted up in Europe a little before our
last meeting has not yet extended its flames to other nations,
nor been marked by the calamities which sometimes stain the
footsteps of war.”
The Federalists reasonably objected to the figure of a war which
not only extended flames but also made footsteps and marked them by
calamities which stained. Jefferson went on to say that he had bought
from the Delaware Indians the country between the Wabash and the Ohio:--
“This acquisition is important not only for its extent and
fertility, but as fronting three hundred miles on the Ohio,
and near half that on the Wabash. The produce of the settled
country descending those rivers will no longer pass in view of
the Indian frontier but in a small portion, and with the cession
heretofore made by the Kaskaskias nearly consolidates our
possessions north of the Ohio in a very respectable breadth from
Lake Erie to the Mississippi.”
Produce passing in view of a frontier in a portion and consolidating
possessions in a breadth did not suit fastidious Federalists; nor were
they satisfied with the President’s closing exhortation, requesting the
Legislature to inquire “whether laws are provided in all cases where
they are wanting.” They enjoyed their jests at Jefferson’s literary
style; but with the public the matter of the Message was more weighty
than its manner. No kind of criticism had less political value than
that wasted on the style of a public document.
Yet one thing was certainly wanting in this Message. No hint was
given that Congress stood in danger of overstepping the limits of its
powers, or would do well to return within them. This silence was not
accidental; it marked the moment of separation between Jefferson and
the old Republicans of 1798. Speaker Macon, John Randolph, and Joseph
Nicholson soon showed that they meant to take no such view of their
duties.
Hardly had legislation begun, when Randolph, November 26, made a
report against the remission of duties on books imported for the
use of schools and colleges. The Constitution, he said, was a grant
of limited powers for general objects; its leading feature was an
abhorrence of exclusive privileges; impost must be uniform; if Congress
could exempt one class of the people from taxes, they might exempt
other classes; and although the practice had been different, and
philosophical apparatus for the use of schools was actually exempt by
law, he believed that law to be unconstitutional. The doctrine, which
if carried to its ultimate conclusions would have left hardly a tax on
the statute-book, was accepted by the same House which had supported
Randolph in defending the Louisiana purchase by arguments that, in
President Jefferson’s opinion, left no Constitution at all. Two days
afterward Randolph repeated the lesson, and his friends Macon and
Nicholson came to his support. A Bill was before the House authorizing
the corporation of Georgetown to construct a dam or causeway from
Mason’s Island to the shore of the Potomac, in order to scour the
channel and improve navigation. Randolph affirmed that the Potomac was
the joint property of Maryland and Virginia, over which Congress had
no right to legislate; that the Bill authorized the corporation of
Georgetown to lay a tax which would be unequal and oppressive, because
all Georgetown property would not be equally benefited by deepening
the harbor; and finally, “he hoped a prompt rejection of the Bill
would serve as a general notice to the inhabitants of the District
to desist from their daily and frivolous applications to Congress.”
Macon, Nicholson, and a number of the Virginians spoke earnestly in
the same sense. “So long as I have the honor of a seat in the House,”
said Nicholson, “I will hold up my hands against any measure like the
present, which would go to affect the rights of any of the States.
If Congress have a right to interfere in the least with the free
navigation of the Potomac, they have a right to stop it altogether.”
In reply to these exhortations the House passed the Bill by a vote of
sixty-six to thirty-eight; and more than enough Republicans voted for
it to have passed it without Federalist help.
The reason for this sudden decline of Randolph’s influence was not far
to seek. He was undertaking to act without concert with the President.
While he and his friends argued on the State-rights theory at one
end of Pennsylvania Avenue, Jefferson at the other end said openly,
to Federalists and Republicans alike, that such arguments were mere
metaphysical subtleties which ought to have no weight.[134] The next
subject in debate left no longer a doubt of the cleft opening between
the old Republicans of 1798 and the Republicans of the future, with
Jefferson and Madison at their head. That Randolph had determined to
fight for control of the party and for the principles upon which it
had come into office was clear; but the reason for the suddenness and
violence of his emotion was found in the once famous story of the Yazoo
Claims, which from his youth acted on his passionate temper with the
force of a point of honor.
As already told, Congress seemed about to settle these claims as early
as April, 1802, when the six commissioners made their Report.[135]
John Randolph and his friends were then supreme. Dec. 30, 1803, a
few days before the Federalists were startled by Randolph’s demand
for the impeachment of Judge Chase, the Northern democrats and the
friends of Madison were surprised by a Resolution offered by Randolph
excluding claimants under the Georgia grants of 1795 from any share
in the proposed settlement. A few weeks later, Feb. 20, 1804,
Randolph withdrew this Resolution, in order to introduce a series of
declaratory Resolves, which, after reciting the story of the Georgia
grants, affirmed the right of Georgia to rescind them, and forbade the
appropriation of money to the settlement of claims derived from them.
March 7, 1804, he made a long and earnest speech on the subject; and
after a sharp struggle in a House nearly equally divided, he succeeded
in defeating action on the Bill. On the final vote of postponement,
March 12, 1804, he carried fifteen members of the Virginia delegation
with him. Of the three Republicans from Virginia who rejected his lead,
one was John G. Jackson, brother-in-law of the Secretary of State.
From that moment Randolph’s energies quickened in sympathy with old
Republican principles; and when he returned to Congress in November,
1804, he and his friends began at once to take extreme ground as
champions of State-rights. He lost no chance of enforcing his theories,
whether in regard to exemptions from taxes, or in denying to government
power to improve navigation within the District of Columbia, or in
reproving the people of Georgetown for proposing to lay a general tax
on their property for the betterment of their river front. He found
the Administration opposed to him. “Mere metaphysical subtleties,”
said Jefferson. The influence of Madison was strong in favor of the
Yazoo Compromise, and the Northern democrats supported the Secretary.
A struggle for supremacy was imminent, and its consequences were soon
felt. The impeachment of Judge Chase was Randolph’s measure, and
received no support from Madison. The Yazoo Compromise was Madison’s
measure, and its defeat was Randolph’s passionate wish.
The three branches of government were likely to be at variance on a
point of deep concern. No one who knew Chief-Justice Marshall could
doubt that he, and the Supreme Bench with him, would hold that the
State of Georgia was bound by its contract with the Land Companies. The
Administration had taken the ground that the State was not bound in
law, but that the United States should nevertheless make an equitable
compromise with the claimants. Randolph was bent on forcing Congress
to assert that a State had the right to repudiate its own acts where
it was evident that these acts were against common morality or public
interest; and that its decision in such a case should be final. The
conflict was embittered by the peculiarities of Randolph’s character.
In his eyes, when such questions of honor were involved, every man who
opposed him seemed base. Unfortunately the New England Mississippi
Company secured the services of Gideon Granger, the Postmaster-General,
as their agent; and Randolph’s anger became intense when, at the close
of the year 1804, he saw the Postmaster-General on the floor of the
House openly lobbying for the passage of the Bill.
At length, at the end of January, 1805, the House went into committee
on the Georgia claims, and Randolph for the first time displayed
the full violence of his temper. Hitherto as a leader he had been
at times arrogant; but from this moment he began the long series of
personal assaults which made him famous, as though he were the bully
of a race course, dispensed from regarding ordinary rules of the ring,
and ready at any sudden impulse to spring at his enemies, gouging,
biting, tearing, and rending his victims with the ferocity of a
rough-and-tumble fight. The spectacle was revolting, but terrific; and
until these tactics lost their force by repetition, few men had the
nerve and quickness to resist them with success.
“Past experience has shown,” he cried, “that this is one of those
subjects which pollution has sanctified.” He treated the majority
of the House as corruptionists, “As if animated by one spirit, they
perform all their evolutions with the most exact discipline, and
march in a firm phalanx directly up to their object. Is it that men
combined to effect some evil purpose, acting on previous pledge to
each other, are ever more in unison than those who, seeking only to
discover truth, obey the impulse of that conscience which God has
placed in their bosoms?” He fell upon Granger: “Millions of acres are
easily digested by such stomachs. Goaded by avarice, they buy only to
sell, and sell only to buy. The retail trade of fraud and imposture
yields too small and slow a profit to gratify their cupidity. They buy
and sell corruption in the gross.” He hinted that the Administration
was to blame: “Is it come to this? Are heads of executive departments
to be brought into this House, with all the influence and patronage
attached to them, to extort from us now what was refused at the last
session of Congress?” He closed by asserting that this was the spirit
of Federalism, and that Republicans who yielded to it were false to
their party: “Of what consequence is it that a man smiles in your
face, holds out his hand, and declare himself the advocate of those
political principles to which you are also attached, when you see him
acting with your adversaries upon other principles which the voice
of the nation has put down, and which I did hope were buried, never
to rise again in this section of the globe?” He maintained that the
Federalist administrations had done no act so corrupt: “If Congress
shall determine to sanction this fraud upon the public, I trust in
God we shall hear no more of the crimes and follies of the former
Administration. For one, I promise that my lips upon this subject shall
be closed in eternal silence. I should disdain to prate about the petty
larcenies of our predecessors after having given my sanction to this
atrocious public robbery.”
The tirade could have no other result than a personal quarrel and
a party schism. Madison and the Administration had done nothing to
deserve the attack, and of course could not trust Randolph again. The
question whether the claimants had rights which the government would
do well to compromise was for the law to decide, and was ultimately
settled by Chief-Justice Marshall in their favor. The question of
morality, in regard to sanctioning fraud, though a much wider issue,
was not to be settled _ex parte_, but must abide by the answer
to the question of law. Only the State-rights difficulty remained;
and even on that delicate ground, although the right of Georgia to
repudiate her own pledges under the plea of her own corruption were
conceded, the State-rights theory could not insist that this act must
bind other States, or affect any sovereignty except that which was
directly involved. After the property in question had been sold to the
United States government, Georgia need not prevent the purchaser from
doing what it would with its own. Randolph could not make State-rights
serve his whole purpose in the argument, and was obliged to rely on the
charge of sanctioning corruption and fraud,--a charge irrelevant to
the claim of innocent third parties like the New Englanders, unless he
could prove their complicity, which was not in his power.
Randolph’s harangue struck at the credit of Madison; and the conduct
of the Postmaster-General in acting as claim-agent cast a shadow of
corruption over the whole government. Madison’s friends were obliged
to take up the challenge; and his brother-in-law, John G. Jackson of
Virginia, replied to Randolph in a speech which was thought to bear
evident marks of Madison’s hand. Some of Jackson’s retorts carried a
sting. Randolph had dwelt much on the silence and discipline of the
majority. “When unprincipled men,” said he, “acquire the ascendency,
they act in concert and are silent.” “Silence and concert, then,”
retorted Jackson, “are to him proofs of corrupt motive. Is this always
a correct position? Does the gentleman recollect that measures were
adopted a few years past without discussion, by my political friends in
conjunction with him, who were _silent and united_?” Throughout
Jackson’s speech ran a tone of irritating disregard for his colleague,
“whose influence in this House is equal to the rapacity of the
speculator whose gigantic grasp has been described by him as extending
from the shores of Lake Erie to the mouth of the Mobile.” Whether
Madison meant it or not, an impression prevailed in the House that in
Jackson’s speech the Secretary of State took up Randolph’s challenge
with a defiance equally strong.
Randolph returned to his charges, attacking Granger bitterly, but
not yet venturing to take the single step that remained to create
a Virginia feud; he left Jackson and Madison alone. He bore with
something like patience the retorts which his violence drew upon him,
and his self-esteem made him proof to the insults of democrats like
Matthew Lyon, who thanked his Creator “that he gave me the face of a
man, not that of an ape or a monkey, and that he gave me the heart of a
man also.” After a long and ill-tempered debate, Feb. 2, 1805, Randolph
closed by an allusion to Madison and Gallatin which implied hesitation.
“When I first read their Report, I was filled with unutterable
astonishment, finding men in whom I had and still have the highest
confidence recommend a measure which all the facts and all the reasons
they had collected opposed and unequivocally condemned.” Prudence
restrained him from making a final breach with Madison; and perhaps he
was the more cautious because he felt the danger of pressing too far
his influence over Virginia sentiment which to this point supported
his opposition. When the House divided, a majority of sixty-three to
fifty-eight sustained the compromise, and ordered the committee of
claims to report a Bill; but in the minority Randolph found by his side
every Republican member of the Virginia delegation except two, one
of whom was Jackson. Even the two sons-in-law of President Jefferson
voted against the Yazoo claims. So strong was the current of opinion
in Virginia, that Senator Giles went about Washington[136] asserting
that Jefferson himself would lose an election there if he were known
to favor the compromise, and that Jackson would certainly be defeated.
For the moment Randolph might fairly suppose that in a contest for
supremacy with the Secretary of State, his own hold on Virginia was
stronger than Madison’s. In spite of the majority against him, he
succeeded in postponing action on the Bill.
Perhaps his temper was further restrained by another motive. The trial
of Judge Chase was near at hand. Within a few days after the close of
the Yazoo debate, Randolph was to open the case for the managers before
the Senate; and he had reason to fear that the Northern democrats were
beginning to doubt the wisdom of this Virginia scheme.