office as Secretary of State, he declared and believed that he had done
with politics forever. To various correspondents he wrote as follows: “I
think that I shall never take another newspaper of any sort. I find my
mind totally absorbed in my rural occupations.... No circumstances, my
dear sir, will ever more tempt me to engage in anything public.... I would
not give up my retirement for the empire of the universe.”
When Madison wrote in 1795, soliciting him to accept the Republican
nomination for the presidency, Mr. Jefferson replied: “The little spice of
ambition which I had in my younger days has long since evaporated, and I
set still less store by a posthumous than present fame. The question is
forever closed with me.” Nevertheless, within a few months Mr. Jefferson
accepted the nomination, chiefly, it is probable, because, with his usual
sagacity, he foresaw that the Republican candidate would be defeated as
President, but elected as Vice-President. It must be remembered that at
that time the candidate receiving the next to the highest number of
electoral votes was declared to be Vice-President; so that there was
always a probability that the presidential candidate of the party defeated
would be chosen to the second office.
There were several reasons why Jefferson would have been glad to receive
the office of Vice-President. It involved no disagreeable responsibility;
it called for no great expenditure of money in the way of entertainments;
it carried a good salary; it required only a few months’ residence at
Washington. “Mr. Jefferson often told me,” remarks Mr. Bacon, “that the
office of Vice-President was far preferable to that of President.”
Mr. Jefferson therefore became the Republican nominee for President, and,
as he doubtless expected, was elected Vice-President, the vote standing as
follows: Adams, 71; Jefferson, 68; Pinckney, 59; Burr, 30.
It is significant of Mr. Jefferson’s high standing in the country that
many people believed that he would not deign to accept the office of
Vice-President; and Madison wrote advising him to come to Washington on
the 4th of March, and take the oath of office, in order that this belief
might be dispelled. Jefferson accordingly did so, bringing with him the
bones of a mastodon, lately discovered, and a little manuscript book
written in his law-student days, marked “Parliamentary Pocket-Book.” This
was the basis of that careful and elaborate “Manual of Parliamentary
Practice” which Jefferson left as his legacy to the Senate.
Upon receiving news of the election Jefferson had written to Madison: “If
Mr. Adams can be induced to administer the government on its true
principles, and to relinquish his bias to an English Constitution, it is
to be considered whether it would not be, on the whole, for the public
good to come to a good understanding with him as to his future elections.
He is perhaps the only sure barrier against Hamilton’s getting in.”
Mr. Adams, indeed, at the outset of his administration, was inclined to be
confidential with Mr. Jefferson; but soon, by one of those sudden turns
not infrequent with him, he took a different course, and thenceforth
treated the Vice-President with nothing more than bare civility.
It was a time, indeed, when cordial relations between Federalist and
Republican were almost impossible. In a letter written at this period to
Mr. Edward Rutledge, Jefferson said: “You and I have formerly seen warm
debates, and high political passions. But gentlemen of different politics
would then speak to each other, and separate the business of the Senate
from that of society. It is not so now. Men who have been intimate all
their lives cross the street to avoid meeting, and turn their heads
another way, lest they should be obliged to touch their hats.”
These party feelings were intensified in the year 1798 by what is known as
the X Y Z business. Mr. Adams had sent three commissioners to Paris to
negotiate a treaty. Talleyrand, the French Minister for Foreign Affairs,
held aloof from them; but they were informed by certain mysterious agents
that a treaty could be had on three conditions, (1) that the President
should apologize for certain expressions in his recent message to
Congress; (2) that the United States should loan a large sum of money to
the French government; (3) that a _douceur_ of $25,000 should be given to
Talleyrand’s agents.
These insulting proposals were indignantly rejected by the commissioners,
and being reported in this country, they aroused a storm of popular
indignation. Preparations for war were made forthwith. General Washington,
though in failing health, was appointed commander-in-chief,—the real
command being expected to devolve upon Hamilton, who was named second; men
and supplies were voted; letters of marque were issued, and war actually
prevailed upon the high seas. The situation redounded greatly to the
advantage of the Federalists, for they were always as eager to go to war
with France as they were reluctant to go to war with England. The newly
appointed officers were drawn almost, if not quite, without exception from
the Federalist party, and Hamilton seemed to be on the verge of that
military career which he had long hoped for. He trusted, as his most
intimate friend, Gouverneur Morris, said after his death, “that in the
changes and chances of time we would be involved in some war which might
strengthen our union and nerve our executive.” So late as 1802, Hamilton
wrote to Morris, “there must be a systematic and persevering endeavor to
establish the future of a great empire on foundations much firmer than
have yet been devised.” At this very time he was negotiating with Miranda
and with the British government, his design being to use against Mexico
the army raised in expectation of a war with France.
Hamilton was not the man to overturn the government out of personal
ambition, nor even in order to set up a monarchy in place of a republic.
But he had convinced himself that the republic must some day fall of its
own weight. He was always anticipating a “crisis,” and this word is
repeated over and over again in his correspondence. It even occurs in the
crucial sentence of that pathetic document which he wrote on the eve of
his fatal duel. When the “crisis” came, Hamilton meant to be on hand; and,
if possible, at the head of an army.
However, the X Y Z affair ended peacefully. The warlike spirit shown by
the people of the United States had a wholesome effect upon the French
government; and at their suggestion new envoys were sent over by the
President, by whom a treaty was negotiated. This wise and patriotic act
upon the part of Mr. Adams was a benefit to his country, but it aroused
the bitter anger of the Federalists and ruined his position in that party.
But what was Mr. Jefferson’s attitude during this business? He was not for
war, and he contended that a distinction should be made between the acts
of Talleyrand and his agents, and the real disposition of the French
people. He wrote as follows: “Inexperienced in such manœuvres, the people
did not permit themselves even to suspect that the turpitude of private
swindlers might mingle itself unobserved, and give its own hue to the
communications of the French government, of whose participation there was
neither proof nor probability.” And again: “But as I view a peace between
France and England the ensuing winter to be certain, I have thought it
would have been better for us to have contrived to bear from France
through the present summer what we have been bearing both from her and
from England these four years, and still continue to bear from England,
and to have required indemnification in the hour of peace, when, I firmly
believe, it would have been yielded by both.”
But this is bad political philosophy. A nation cannot obtain justice by
submitting to wrongs or insults even for a time. Jefferson himself had
written long before: “I think it is our interest to punish the first
insult, because an insult unpunished is the parent of many others.” It is
possible that he was misled at this juncture by his liking for France, and
by his dislike of the Federalists and of their British proclivities. It is
true that the bribe demanded by Talleyrand’s agents might be considered,
to use Mr. Jefferson’s words, as “the turpitude of private swindlers;” but
the demand for a loan and for a retraction could be regarded only as
national acts, being acts of the French government, although the bulk of
the French people might repudiate them.
Whether Jefferson was right or wrong in the position which he took, he
maintained it with superb self-confidence and aplomb. For the moment, the
Federalists had everything their own way. They carried the election.
Hamilton’s oft-anticipated “crisis” seemed to have arrived at last. But
Jefferson coolly waited till the storm should blow over. “Our countrymen,”
he wrote to a friend, “are essentially Republicans. They retain
unadulterated the principles of ’76, and those who are conscious of no
change in themselves have nothing to fear in the long run.”
And so it proved. The ascendency of the Federalists was soon destroyed,
and destroyed forever, by the political crimes and follies which they
committed; and especially by the alien and sedition laws. The reader need
hardly be reminded that the alien law gave the President authority to
banish from the country “all such aliens as _he_ should judge dangerous to
the peace and safety of the United States,”—a despotic power which no king
of England ever possessed. The sedition act made it a crime, punishable by
fine and imprisonment, to speak or write anything “false, scandalous, and
malicious,” with intent to excite against either House of Congress or
against the President, “the hatred of the good people of the United
States.” It can readily be seen what gross oppression was possible under
this elastic law, interpreted by judges who, to a man, were members of the
Federal party. Matthew Lyon, of Vermont, ventured to read aloud at a
political meeting a letter which he had received expressing astonishment
that the President’s recent address to the House of Representatives had
not been answered by “an order to send him to a mad-house.” For this Mr.
Lyon was fined $1,000, and imprisoned in a veritable dungeon.
These unconstitutional and un-American laws were vigorously opposed by
Jefferson and Madison. In October, 1798, Jefferson wrote: “For my own part
I consider those laws as merely an experiment on the American mind to see
how far it will bear an avowed violation of the Constitution. If this goes
down, we shall immediately see attempted another act of Congress declaring
that the President shall continue in office during life, reserving to
another occasion the transfer of the succession to his heirs, and the
establishment of the Senate for life.”
Jefferson also prepared the famous Kentucky resolutions, which were
adopted by the legislature of that State,—the authorship, however, being
kept secret till Jefferson avowed it, twenty years later. These
much-discussed resolutions have been said to have originated the doctrine
of nullification, and to contain that principle of secession upon which
the South acted in 1861. They may be summed up roughly as follows: The
source of all political power is in the people. The people have, by the
compact known as the Constitution, granted certain specified powers to the
federal government; all other powers, if not granted to the several state
governments, are retained by the people. The alien and sedition laws
assume the exercise by the federal government of powers not granted to it
by the Constitution. They are therefore void.
Thus far there can be no question that Jefferson’s argument was sound, and
its soundness would not be denied, even at the present day. But the
question then arose: what next? May the laws be disregarded and disobeyed
by the States or by individuals, or must they be obeyed until some
competent authority has pronounced them void? and if so, what is that
authority? We understand now that the Supreme Court has sole authority to
decide upon the constitutionality of the acts of Congress. It was so held,
for the first time, in the year 1803, in the case of Marbury _v._ Madison,
by Chief Justice Marshall and his associates; and that decision, though
resisted at the time, has long been accepted by the country as a whole.
But this case did not arise until several years after the Kentucky
Resolutions were written. Moreover, Marshall was an extreme Federalist,
and his view was by no means the commonly accepted view. Jefferson scouted
it. He protested all his life against the assumption that the Supreme
Court, a body of men appointed for life, and thus removed from all control
by the people, should have the enormous power of construing the
Constitution and of passing upon the validity of national laws. In a
letter written in 1804, he said: “You seem to think it devolved on the
judges to decide the validity of the sedition law. But nothing in the
Constitution has given them a right to decide for the executive more than
the executive to decide for them. But the opinion which gives to the
judges the right to decide what laws are constitutional and what not—not
only for themselves in their own sphere of action, but for the legislature
and executive also in their spheres—would make the judiciary a despotic
branch.”(3)
In the Kentucky resolutions, Jefferson argued, first, that the
Constitution was a compact between the States; secondly, that no person or
body had been appointed by the Constitution as a common judge in respect
to questions arising under the Constitution between any one State and
Congress, or between the people and Congress; and thirdly, “as in all
other cases of compact among powers having no common judge, each party has
an equal right to judge for itself, as well of infractions as of the mode
and measure of redress.” It was open to him to take this view, because it
had not yet been decided that the Supreme Court was the “common judge”
appointed by the Constitution; and the Constitution itself was not
explicit upon the point. Moreover, the laws in question had not been
passed upon by the Supreme Court,—they expired by limitation before that
stage was reached.
It must be admitted, then, that the Kentucky resolutions do contain the
principles of nullification. But at the time when they were written,
nullification was a permissible doctrine, because it was not certainly
excluded by the Constitution. In 1803, as we have seen, the Constitution
was interpreted by the Supreme Court as excluding this doctrine; and that
decision having been reaffirmed repeatedly, and having been acquiesced in
by the nation for fifty years, may fairly be said to have become by the
year 1861 the law of the land.
Jefferson, however, by no means intended to push matters to their logical
conclusion. His resolutions were intended for moral effect, as he
explained in the following letter to Madison:—
“I think we should distinctly affirm all the important principles they
contain, so as to hold to that ground in future, and leave the matter in
such a train that we may not be committed absolutely to push the matter to
extremities, and yet may be free to push as far as events will render
prudent.”
As to the charge that the Kentucky Resolutions imply the doctrine of
secession, as well as that of nullification, it has no basis. The two
doctrines do not stand or fall together. There is nothing in the
resolutions which implies the right of secession. Jefferson, like most
Americans of his day, contemplated with indifference the possibility of an
ultimate separation of the region beyond the Mississippi from the United
States. But nobody placed a higher value than he did on what he described
“as our union, the last anchor of our hope, and that alone which is to
prevent this heavenly country from becoming an arena of gladiators.”
X
PRESIDENT JEFFERSON
For the presidential election of 1800, Adams was again the candidate on
the Federal side, and Jefferson on the Republican side. Jefferson, by
interviews, by long and numerous letters, by the commanding force of his
own intellect and character, had at last welded the anti-Federal elements
into a compact and disciplined Republican party. The contest was waged
with the utmost bitterness, and especially with bitterness against
Jefferson. For this there were several causes. Jefferson had deeply
offended two powerful classes in Virginia, the old aristocratic and Tory
element, and—excluding the dissenters—the religious element; the former,
by the repeal of the law of entail, and the latter by the statute for
freedom of religion in Virginia. These were among the most meritorious
acts of his life, but they produced an intense enmity which lasted till
his death and even beyond his death. Jefferson, also, though at times
over-cautious, was at times rash and indiscreet, and the freedom of his
comments upon men and measures often got him into trouble. His career will
be misunderstood unless it is remembered that he was an impulsive man. His
judgments were intuitive, and though usually correct, yet sometimes hasty
and ill-considered.
Above all, Jefferson was both for friends and foes the embodiment of
Republicanism. He represented those ideas which the Federalists, and
especially the New England lawyers and clergy, really believed to be
subversive of law and order, of government and religion. To them he
figured as “a fanatic in politics, and an atheist in religion;” and they
were so disposed to believe everything bad of him that they swallowed
whole the worst slanders which the political violence of the times, far
exceeding that of the present day, could invent. We have seen with what
tenderness Jefferson treated his widowed sister, Mrs. Carr, and her
children. It was in reference to this very family that the Rev. Mr. Cotton
Mather Smith, of Connecticut, declared that Jefferson had gained his
estate by robbery, namely, by robbing a widow and her children of £10,000,
“all of which can be proved.”
Jefferson, as we have said, was a deist. He was a religious man and a
daily reader of the Bible, far less extreme in his notions, less hostile
to orthodox Christianity than John Adams. Nevertheless,—partly, perhaps,
because he had procured the disestablishment of the Virginia Church,
partly on account of his scientific tastes and his liking for French
notions,—the Federalists had convinced themselves that he was a violent
atheist and anti-Christian. It was a humorous saying of the time that the
old women of New England hid their Bibles in the well when Jefferson’s
election in 1800 became known.
The vote was as follows:—Jefferson, 73, Burr, 73; Adams, 65; C. C.
Pinckney, 64; Jay, 1. There being a tie between Jefferson and Burr, the
Republican candidate for Vice-President, the election was thrown into the
House of Representatives, voting by States. In that House the Federalists
were in the majority, but they did not have a majority by States. They
could not, therefore, elect Adams; but it was possible for them to make
Burr President instead of Jefferson. At first, the leaders were inclined
to do this, some believing that Burr’s utter want of principle was less
dangerous than the pernicious principles which they ascribed to Jefferson,
and others thinking that Burr, if elected by Federal votes, would pursue a
Federal policy. It was feared that Jefferson would wipe out the national
debt, abolish the navy, and remove every Federal officeholder in the land.
He was approached from many quarters, and even President Adams desired him
to give some intimation of his intended policy on these points, but
Jefferson firmly refused.
As to one such interview, with Gouverneur Morris, Jefferson wrote
afterward: “I told him that I should leave the world to judge of the
course I meant to pursue, by that which I had pursued hitherto, believing
it to be my duty to be passive and silent during the present scene; that I
should certainly make no terms; should never go into the office of
President by capitulation, nor with my hands tied by any conditions which
would hinder me from pursuing the measures which I should deem for the
public good.”
The Federalists had a characteristic plan: they proposed to pass a law
devolving the Presidency upon the chairman of the Senate, in case the
office of President should become vacant; and this vacancy they would be
able to bring about by prolonging the election until Mr. Adams’s term of
office had expired. The chairman of the Senate, a Federalist, of course,
would then become President. This scheme Jefferson and his friends were
prepared to resist by force. “Because,” as he afterward explained, “that
precedent once set, it would be artificially reproduced, and would soon
end in a dictator.”
Hamilton, to his credit, be it said, strongly advocated the election of
Jefferson; and finally, through the action of Mr. Bayard, of Delaware, a
leading Federalist, who had sounded an intimate friend of Mr. Jefferson as
to his views upon the points already mentioned, Mr. Jefferson was elected
President, and the threatening civil war was averted.
Mr. Adams, who was deeply chagrined by his defeat, did not attend the
inauguration of his successor, but left Washington in his carriage, at
sunrise, on the fourth of March; and Jefferson rode on horseback to the
Capitol, unattended, and dismounting, fastened his horse to the fence with
his own hands. The inaugural address, brief, and beautifully worded,
surprised most of those who heard it by the moderation and liberality of
its tone. “Let us,” said the new President, “restore to social intercourse
that harmony and affection without which liberty, and even life itself,
are but dreary things.”
Jefferson served two terms, and he was succeeded first by Madison, and
then by Monroe, both of whom were his friends and disciples, and imbued
with his ideas. They, also, were reëlected. For twenty-four years,
therefore, Jefferson and Jeffersonian Democracy predominated in the
government of the United States, and the period was an exceedingly
prosperous one. Not one of the dismal forebodings of the Federalists was
fulfilled; and the practicability of popular government was proved.
The first problem with which Jefferson had to deal was that of
appointments to office. The situation was much like that which afterward
confronted President Cleveland when he entered upon his first term,—that
is, every place was filled by a member of the party opposed to the new
administration. The principle which Mr. Jefferson adopted closely
resembles that afterward adopted by Mr. Cleveland, namely, no officeholder
was to be displaced on account of his political belief; but if he acted
aggressively in politics, that was to be sufficient ground for removal.
“Electioneering activity” was the phrase used in Mr. Jefferson’s time, and
“offensive partisanship” in Mr. Cleveland’s.
The following letter from President Jefferson to the Secretary of the
Treasury will show how the rule was construed by him:—
“The allegations against Pope [collector] of New Bedford are insufficient.
Although meddling in political caucuses is no part of that freedom of
personal suffrage which ought to be allowed him, yet his mere presence at
a caucus does not necessarily involve an active and official influence in
opposition to the government which employs him.”
There were some lapses, but, on the whole, Mr. Jefferson’s rule was
adhered to; and it is difficult to say whether he received more abuse from
the Federalists on account of the removals which he did make, or from a
faction in his own party on account of the removals which he refused to
make.