JEFFERSON’S effort to suppress the scandal of Burr’s disunion
scheme had its source in motives both pure and generous. Distressed by
the factiousness of the last session, he could feel no wish more ardent
than to restore harmony to his party. The struggle for the succession
threatened to tear from his brows the hard-won laurels which were his
only pleasure, and the reward for infinite labors and mortifications.
So far as he could, he stifled discussion in regard to the coming
change.
“The question,” he wrote to Leiper of Pennsylvania,[247] “cannot
be touched without endangering the harmony of the present
session of Congress, and disturbing the tranquillity of the
nation itself prematurely and injuriously.... The present
session is important as having new and great questions to
decide, in the decision of which no schismatic views should take
any part.”
In this spirit the President shaped his acts. Reunion in a common
policy, a controlling impulse, was the motive of his gentleness toward
Randolph and the Virginia schismatics, as it was that of his blindness
to the doings of Burr.
The Annual Message of December, 1806, was intended to unite the party
on a new plane of action, and to prepare the way for Madison’s gentle
rule. Foreign affairs were to be allowed to drop from sight; France,
England, and Spain were to be forgotten; Florida was to be ignored;
political energy was to be concentrated upon the harvesting of fruits
already ripe. For six years, carrying out the policy of discharging
public debt, Gallatin had pursued his economies, in the opinion of many
good men pressing them so far as to paralyze Government. The time had
come when he could do no more. Twenty-four millions of debt had been
paid. Of the remainder about ten millions only could be dealt with;
and arrangements were made for discharging these ten millions before
Jefferson’s term should end. Meanwhile the revenue was growing; the
surplus must be disposed of, and the period of pinching economies might
cease. Henceforward Republicans, Democrats, and Federalists might agree
on some common system of expenditure.
“The question now comes forward,” said the Annual Message, “to
what other objects shall these surpluses be appropriated, and
the whole surplus of impost, after the entire discharge of
the public debt, and during those intervals when the purposes
of war shall not call for them? Shall we suppress the impost,
and give that advantage to foreign over domestic manufactures?
On a few articles of more general and necessary use the
suppression in due season will doubtless be right; but the
great mass of the articles on which impost is paid are foreign
luxuries, purchased by those only who are rich enough to afford
themselves the use of them. Their patriotism would certainly
prefer its continuance and application to the great purposes
of the public education, roads, rivers, canals, and such other
objects of public improvement as it may be thought proper to
add to the constitutional enumeration of federal powers. By
these operations new channels of communication will be opened
between the States, the lines of separation will disappear,
their interests will be identified, and their union cemented by
new and indissoluble ties. Education is here placed among the
articles of public care, not that it would be proposed to take
its ordinary branches out of the hands of private enterprise,
which manages so much better all the concerns to which it is
equal; but a public institution can alone supply those sciences
which, though rarely called for, are yet necessary to complete
the circle, all the parts of which contribute to the improvement
of the country, and some of them to its preservation.”
With an air of apology, as though his old opinions were no longer
of practical interest, the President added that an amendment to the
Constitution would be necessary in order to bring these new functions
within the enumerated objects of government; but to such an amendment
he saw no objection, nor did he apprehend difficulty in obtaining it.
A broad system of internal improvements; a national university; “a
steady, perhaps a quickened, pace in preparations for the defence of
our seaport towns and waters; an early settlement of the most exposed
and vulnerable parts of our country; a militia so organized that
its effective portions can be called to any point in the Union, or
volunteers instead of them, to serve a sufficient time,”--these were
the objects to which Congress should devote its energies, in order that
when the two remaining years of Jefferson’s power should come to an
end, the fabric of Republican government might be complete.
That Federalist and Democrat could join in accepting such a scheme of
action, and could lay aside forever their old, unprofitable disputes,
seemed no wild dream. The hope was strengthened by a paragraph of the
Message which held out the prospect of removing another serious barrier
to perfect harmony:--
“I congratulate you, fellow-citizens, on the approach
of the period at which you may interpose your authority
constitutionally to withdraw the citizens of the United States
from all further participation in those violations of human
rights which have been so long continued on the unoffending
inhabitants of Africa, and which the morality, the reputation,
and the best interests of our country have long been eager to
proscribe.”
Almost ignoring foreign politics, Jefferson recommended Congress to
abolish the slave-trade, begin a system of national roads and canals,
found a national university, fortify the coasts, and organize the
national militia; and had Congress been able or willing to follow
promptly his advice, many difficulties would have been overcome before
the year 1810 which seemed even twenty years later to bar the path of
national progress. Congress, indeed, never succeeded in rising to the
level of Jefferson’s hopes and wishes; it realized but a small part of
the plan which he traced, and what it did was done with little system.
The slowness with which political movement lagged behind industrial and
social progress could be measured by the fate of President Jefferson’s
scheme of 1806 for crowning the fabric of Republican government. Not by
means of the government, or by virtue of wisdom in the persons trusted
with the government, were Jefferson’s objects destined at last to be
partially attained.
Notwithstanding the favor shown to internal improvements, John Randolph
exulted in the President’s Message, which he regarded as expressing his
own views. He scoffed at the Smiths, Crowninshields, and other orators
who in the last session had talked loudly of war.[248]
“The Message,” he wrote to Nicholson, “was, as you supposed,
wormwood to certain gentry. They made wry faces, but in fear
of the rod and in hopes of sugarplums swallowed it with less
apparent repugnance than I had predicted.”
General Smith and the politicians who wanted armaments were annoyed.
“We have established theories,” wrote Smith,[249] “that would
stare down any possible measures of offence or defence. Should
a man take a patriotic stand against those destructive and
seductive fine-spun follies, he will be written down very soon.
Look at the last Message! It is such that the President cannot
recommend (although he now sees the necessity) any augmentation
of the army. Nay I, even _I_, did not dare to bring forward
the measure until I had first obtained his approbation. Never
was there a time when Executive influence so completely governed
the nation!”
No man of ordinary sense could fail to feel some shame at the
recollection of what had taken place in regard to Florida, or to
wish that it might be forgotten; and the friends of Madison had
every reason for ignoring it and for welcoming Randolph’s followers
back into the party, if they would consent to come. The session took
character from this spirit of reconciliation. The first Bill adopted
by Congress suspended, at the President’s judgment, the operation of
the Non-importation Act passed in April; and Randolph did not fail
to suggest that his sarcasms against those who had urged this law
were justified by its instant suspension. The next important measure,
brought forward under the President’s patronage, was the abolition of
the duty on salt; and Randolph reminded the House that this relief from
taxation followed close upon his own strenuous efforts of the year
before. Throughout the session Randolph took the tone of a dictator;
and on most questions a majority of the House tried only to vie with
him in the race for popularity. Old subjects of dispute were laid
aside; the Yazoo claims were forgotten. In regard to the army and
navy, Randolph was allowed to have his way; in the case of Bollman and
Swartwout, he stopped the attempt to suspend the writ of habeas corpus;
in sympathy with his opinions the House cut down appropriations,
refused to fortify New York, declined to increase the army, and
reverted to the first principles of the Republican party. The session
of 1806–1807 was a perpetual effort to win back the confidence and
support of Virginia for Madison, and leave no excuse for defection to
Monroe.
General Smith thought Executive influence more powerful than ever, but
the President seemed to influence only by disguising his weakness.
Little or no attention was paid to his wishes. He would gladly have
built ships of the line, he would willingly have fortified New York,
he would have liked two more regiments to garrison the military posts;
but he could do nothing in face of the reaction which, at Randolph’s
bidding, swept the Southern Republicans back to their practices of 1801
and their professions of 1798. The force of reactionary feeling was
shown in speeches which revealed a dangerous chasm between North and
South. On the question of fortifying New York, Southern Republicans
took ground which caused New York Democrats to feel toward Virginia
a disgust as deep as ever had been felt by Burr. Nelson of Maryland
favored abandoning the cities altogether in case of attack:[250] “When
the enemy comes, let them take our towns, and let us retire into the
country.” Holland of North Carolina regarded the seaboard cities as so
many enemies:[251]
“If New York and our other cities were only tolerably fortified,
Mr. Holland was confident that we should go to war. He lamented
the consequences of that disposition that is for novelty in this
country,--a disposition that cannot be quelled. Our commercial
towns are defenceless, and that is our only safety at present. I
want to see not a single ship, or any preparation for war.”
Eppes of Virginia, the President’s son-in-law, spoke hotly against the
doctrine of defence:--
“If there is any principle which ought to be hooted at in a
Republican government, it is the very principle laid down by the
gentleman from New York as the basis of his reasoning,--that
to preserve peace we ought to be prepared for war. Sir, it is
this very principle which is the source of all the miseries of
Europe.”
John Randolph also favored abandoning New York in case of attack:[252]--
“Suppose New York ever so well fortified, an army may land
above the city and cut off its intercourse with the country. A
fortification there would be made for the enemy. Not a man of
our army would have escaped in the last war from Long Island, if
the enemy’s general had not been treacherous to his duty; and
all the calamities of that campaign might have been avoided if
our army had retreated into the country.”
Answer to arguments like these was of course impossible. The only final
answer was to take the Southern people at their word, and to assert
as a principle the rule that seaboard cities, being entitled to no
protection from government in case of attack, should have the right to
protect themselves by inviting the enemy to occupy them. Boston and New
York had no reason to fear the operation of such a rule, if it suited
the interests of Virginia; but as an argument even this logic would
have availed nothing, because so deep was Virginian antipathy to cities
that Randolph and all his friends would have answered with one voice,
“We expect no better!”
The unwillingness of the Southern Republicans to fortify extended only
to forts and ships, not to gunboats. Randolph had not much faith in
gunboats; but his friends were willing to spend comparatively large
sums on these cheap defences. Their theory was reasonable. A coast
like that of America could not be protected by fixed fortifications
alone,--only some system of movable batteries could answer the whole
purpose; but in such a system everything depended on the effectiveness
of the battery to be selected, and no one could say that the gunboat
would prove to be effective. Most sea-going people pronounced it a
failure; and in the navy, gunboat service was never popular. The real
argument for gunboats was their assumed cheapness; but Gallatin and
the Northern Democrats, as well as the Federalists, foresaw that the
supposed economy was a delusion. A gunboat cost some ten thousand
dollars or less, and a whole flotilla of gunboats could be built for
the price of a frigate; but no one could say how much this flotilla
would cost in annual repairs or in actual service. The life of a
gunboat was short.
These doubts had no effect on the majority of the House.
“Fortifications will be of no possible service unless they are manned,”
argued Nelson,[253] “and to man them we must have a large standing
army.” He wanted to know whether the House was prepared to adopt a
system that would require the raising of above one hundred thousand
men. If forts were of no possible service unless they were always
manned,--new as the assertion was,--surely gunboats were open to the
same objection; yet Nelson wanted to spend three hundred thousand
dollars in building gunboats, and he was willing to build any number of
gunboats the navy might ask for.[254]
The Northern seaboard representatives rejected the offer of gunboats,
and allowed the Southern States to dispose of them. No appropriation
for fortifying New York could be obtained. The theory that seaboard
cities could not be defended received general assent; but many of the
members went further, and declared that no danger to those cities
existed. A policy of neglecting defence might be safe in peace,
when foreign nations had every interest to avoid a war; but nothing
could warrant the common assertion that danger of war existed only
from America herself, at a moment when France was attacking American
commerce by measures of actual warfare, when England was hesitating
whether to permit America to trade at all except with the British
Islands, and when diplomatic relations with Spain had ceased, the
ministers at Madrid and Washington had been withdrawn, and a Spanish
army was threatening New Orleans.
Willis Alston of North Carolina, chiefly known as an object of
Randolph’s peculiar contempt and personal violence, took as strong
ground as Randolph himself on these questions. On the other hand Josiah
Quincy showed in a high degree the art of irritating opponents by his
manner of expressing a low opinion of their sense and motives; and the
Southern members resented this treatment the more because Quincy was
a man well born and well educated, whose social standing could not be
questioned. In reply to his taunts Alston resorted to the well-worn
commonplaces of the Republican party. “The present Administration,”
said he, “has taken up a new system of defence,--it is that of saving
the public money. This system is new, and not known in Federal
times. We have not gone on increasing taxes, like our predecessors.”
The assertion could not be denied; but Quincy’s retort was not the
less pungent. “The Federal Administration,” he replied, “saved the
country from danger and disgrace: I wish I could say as much of their
successors.”
The whole issue lay in these short charges and counter-charges. To some
extent the President, his Cabinet, and the Senate had become converted
to Federalist views; but the influence of Randolph and of popular
prejudices peculiar to Southern society held the House stiffly to an
impracticable creed. Whatever the North and East wanted the South and
West refused. Jefferson’s wishes fared no better than the requests
of the State and city of New York; the House showed no alacrity in
taking up the subject of roads, canals, or universities. The only
innovation which made its way through Congress was the Act of Feb. 10,
1807, appropriating fifty thousand dollars for the establishment of a
coast survey, for this was an object in which the Southern States were
interested as deeply as the Northern. Even the Senate’s appropriation
for beginning the Cumberland Road was indefinitely postponed by the
House.
This jealousy of government could not without ill-temper be so severely
enforced. Randolph’s manners were unconsciously imitated by the men
who imitated his statesmanship, and the Southern Republicans treated
their Northern allies with autocratic harshness as offensive as that of
Randolph. The Federalist members, for the most part able to hold their
own and even to return such treatment with manners still more arrogant,
enjoyed the irritation of Democrats like Sloan and Smilie, Bidwell and
Varnum. If the Southern planters refused to aid in fortifying New York,
the Federalists were the stronger for the refusal; and if Virginia
was anxious not to risk her tobacco and corn for the sake of Boston,
New York, and Philadelphia, the Federalists for the most part hoped
that the Northern cities might be induced to take care of themselves.
Yet although the Federalists were not sorry to see the Pennsylvania
Democrats ground under the heel of Virginia, they were surprised to
find how rapidly the sectional spirit increased in the Southern States
when slavery was in question. The debate on the abolition of the
slave-trade startled Democrats and Federalists alike.
The paragraph in the President’s Message which related to the
slave-trade was regularly referred to a special committee. Peter Early
of Georgia was chairman, while Thomas Mann Randolph of Virginia, John
Campbell of Maryland, Thomas Keenan of North Carolina, and three
Northern representatives completed the number. Early took the subject
promptly in hand, and Dec. 15, 1806, reported a Bill, which was
referred to the House in committee, and came up two days afterward
for debate. The Bill declared the importation of negroes as slaves
unlawful; imposed a fine on the importer, with forfeiture of ship and
cargo; and authorized the President to employ the armed vessels of the
United States in enforcing the law.
Under the Act which prescribed rules for forfeiture, the cargo of
a forfeited vessel was to be sold on behalf of the United States
government. The cargo of a slave-ship consisted in negroes. Under
Early’s Bill, every negro imported thenceforth into the country became
forfeit to the United States, and must be sold by the United States
government to the highest bidder.
The Pennsylvania Democrats, imbued with Quaker principles in regard
to slavery, could scarcely be expected to approve of a policy which
made the government an owner and trader in slaves. The New Englanders,
though the slave-trade had been to a great extent a Rhode Island
interest, were little inclined to adopt a law under which any cargo
of negroes that might be driven on their coast must be sold at public
auction in the streets of Newport or Boston; and perhaps even some of
the Southern members might have admitted that the chance of collusion
between importers and buyers was a serious objection to the Bill. No
one could suppose that such a measure would pass without strenuous
opposition, and no one could have felt surprise at seeing Sloan of New
Jersey immediately rise to offer an amendment providing that every
forfeited negro should be entitled to freedom.[255]
Upon this amendment a debate began which soon became hot. Early took
the ground that without his provision for forfeiture and sale, the law
would be ineffectual; that no man in the South would inform against the
slave-dealer if his act were to turn loose a quantity of savage negroes
on the public at large.
“We must either get rid of them or they of us; there is no
alternative; and I leave it to gentlemen to be determined which
course would be pursued. There can be no doubt on this head. I
will speak out; it is not my practice to be mealy-mouthed on a
subject of importance. Not one of them would be left alive in a
year.”
The Southern members supported Early, and the Northern members knew not
what to propose. The negroes could not be returned to Africa, because
they were all brought from the interior, and the coast tribes would
re-enslave or massacre them. Pennsylvania and Ohio were little more
anxious than Virginia to receive such citizens. Binding them to masters
for a term of years was suggested, but objections were made on both
sides.
The debate was adjourned, resumed, adjourned again; and although the
Northern speakers were forbearing, the Southern members more and more
lost their temper.
“You have got into a great difficulty,” said David R. Williams
of South Carolina;[256] “you are completely hobbled. It is
so bad that you cannot go on, and you must stick where you
are. Let me ask what is the usual conduct of legislatures on
local subjects. Do they not inquire of those who are informed?
Are they not guided by those who are competent to judge? The
gentlemen from the South, who understand this subject, tell you
how this business must be done; but the gentlemen over the way
seem anxious now, as on a former occasion, to draw a revenue
from the blood and sweat of the miserable Africans. I will
not say that this is their motive, but their conduct certainly
justifies a suspicion that their object is to pass such a law as
will connive at the continuance of the trade for the emoluments
of their constituents.”
The discussion was further embittered by a motion made by Smilie of
Pennsylvania to make the importation of negroes a felony to be punished
by death. This proposition called out another display of Early’s
frankness.
“We have been asked,” said he,[257] “what punishment can
be considered too severe for so atrocious a crime. Without
answering the question in the abstract, it will be sufficient
to answer it by a practical view of the subject. How do people
consider the transaction? Do they consider it such an atrocious
crime? They do not.”
The Pennsylvania philanthropists had assumed that they could at least
follow Jefferson in holding slavery to be an evil and the slave-trade
to be a violation of human rights; but even these points were no longer
conceded.
“All the people in the Southern States,” continued Early,
“are concerned in slavery. It is not, then, considered as
criminal.... I will tell the truth,--a large majority of people
in the Southern States do not consider slavery as even an evil.”
The death-penalty was rejected by a vote of sixty-three to fifty-three,
almost the whole Pennsylvania delegation voting in its favor. Bidwell
of Massachusetts then moved an amendment, “that no person shall be
sold as a slave by virtue of this Act;” and the House divided, sixty
against sixty,[258] nearly all the Pennsylvanians supporting Bidwell,
while ten of the seventeen New York members showed the influence of
slavery in their State by voting with the Southern slave-owners.
Six Southern men, including the member for Delaware, joined the
Pennsylvanians and New Englanders in this protest against turning the
government into a slave-trading agency; while but two Northern men
besides the members from New York voted with the South. Macon, the
Speaker, by his casting vote threw out the amendment.
Even after this point was carried, notwithstanding the time wasted in
going over and over again the same arguments on either side, the Bill
made no progress. Men like Sloan and Smilie were not gifted with great
genius, but found infinite resources in their patient obstinacy; and no
one could fail to see that the true sympathies of the House were with
them. Their first object was to prevent the forfeiture of the negroes,
because forfeiture implied title, and the United States government
could have no title in these human beings, mere captives in war of
barbarous tribes; but on that point the House was decidedly against
them, and even Josiah Quincy insisted that they were wrong. Forced
to yield on the issue of forfeiture, they resisted with the greater
obstinacy the sale of the forfeited negroes; and their objections were
so obviously sound that in spite of adverse votes they held the Bill
in suspense, and even secured its recommittal to a select committee of
their own choice.
The Southerners, who insisted that their knowledge and experience
should guide the House on a matter which they then preferred to
consider local, chafed under the patient stolidity of Quaker
conscientiousness, but submitted, rather in defiance than in
conciliation, to throw the Bill into Northern hands. The recommittal
was ordered Jan. 8, 1807, by a vote of 76 to 46; January 20 the new
Bill was reported, and the struggle began again as at first. January
28 the Senate sent down a Bill of its own for the same purpose. The
Senate debates during the session were not reported, and those of the
House were reported only in part, and briefly; but by some means the
Senate was persuaded to introduce one rigorous provision into its
Bill, prohibiting the coastwise domestic slave-trade in vessels of
less burden than forty tons, so that small craft found at sea with
cargoes of slaves could not escape under pretence of being engaged in
the domestic slave-trade. At best, the Bill could not be effective. The
Southern members frankly said that they could frame no Bill likely to
be executed, which would prevent slave-traders from smuggling negroes
across the Florida boundary or from the West Indian Islands; but the
prohibition of the coastwise transport of negroes in small vessels
seemed necessary in order to maintain even a pretence of stopping the
trade, and the Senate saw no objection to it.
The House hesitated painfully between Pennsylvanian and Virginian
influence. Very rarely did the Pennsylvanians assert themselves, and
they did so with great moderation; but they were conscientious men, and
they had behind them not only the moral support of Jefferson, but also
the steady influence of Secretary Gallatin, whose determined hostility
to slavery and the slave-trade was proved at every moment of his public
life. When, Feb. 9, 1807, the debate was resumed in Committee of the
Whole, a majority began by voting in favor of the death-penalty.
The next question rose on a new section in regard to forfeitures.
The Pennsylvania Bill provided that the forfeited negroes should be
indentured for a term of years in some free State or Territory. The
proposition seemed reasonable in itself, and calculated to give no
offence to the South; but Early declared that the inhabitants of the
Southern States would resist this provision with their lives.[259] “We
want no civil wars, no rebellions, no insurrections, no resistance to
the authority of the government. Give effect, then, to this wish, and
do not pass this Bill as it now stands.”
Even Pennsylvania patience was disturbed by an outbreak so extravagant.
Smilie, who was Irish by birth, obliged Early to take back and explain
away his words; but the flash of temper answered its purpose,--Early
carried his point. Throughout the struggle the Southern representatives
took the ground that the subject belonged to them; that they were well
aware of the defects in the Bill; that they did not expect wholly to
stop the trade, although they wished to do so; but that any stronger
measure would revolt public opinion in the South, and would leave the
trade open, because no one would venture to enforce the Act. Under
such circumstances, seeing that in any case the trade would continue,
the Pennsylvanians naturally argued that if only in order to assert
a principle, the law should be made severe; but they were abandoned
by the New Englanders, and beaten. Eleven of the Pennsylvanians clung
to the death-penalty in spite of Quaker principles; while not only
Barnabas Bidwell, but even Josiah Quincy deserted them. The House ended
by leaving to each State the decision as to the fate of the forfeited
negroes; and at length, February 13, weary of the interminable dispute,
the House adopted the Senate Bill with some amendments.
Hitherto John Randolph had taken little part in the debate; he voted
steadily with the Southern representatives, but his well-known
antislavery theories kept him quiet. His silence did not last. The
Senate disagreed to one of the amendments which had passed the House;
a committee of conference reported, and the Bill came up again on
their report. In a final debate the Southern members attacked the
prohibition of the coastwise trade, the whole measure being thus in
their eyes vitiated. Early declared that the Act would not prevent the
introduction of a single slave; Randolph asserted that the coastwise
prohibition touched the right of private property:[260] “He feared
lest, at a future period, it might be made the pretext of universal
emancipation; he had rather lose the Bill, he had rather lose all the
Bills of the session, he had rather lose every Bill passed since the
establishment of the government, than agree to the provision contained
in this slave-bill. It went to blow up the Constitution in ruins.” He
prophesied that if ever the time of disunion between the States should
arrive, the line of severance would not be between Eastern and Western,
but between slaveholding and non-slaveholding States. He said that
if ever the time should come when the South should have to depend on
the North for assistance against the slaves, he should despair. “All
he asked was that the North should remain neutral; that it should not
erect itself into an abolition society.” The vehemence of the Southern
orators was in this instance natural, for the coastwise prohibition cut
far more deeply into the constitutional rights of slave-owners than
all the other provisions of the Bill which they had so obstinately and
successfully resisted; yet on the division they were beaten by the
large majority of sixty-three to forty-nine. New York, which cared
little for the slaves, cared less for the Constitution, and reversed
its former vote. The Senate Bill, Feb. 26, 1807, was sent to the
President.[261]
That Randolph and other States-rights Republicans should be deeply
irritated was a matter of course. In their effort to tone the Bill
to make it suit the opinions of slaveholding communities, they
exhausted their strength and the public patience; and they found a
precedent slipped upon them, which would warrant almost any legislative
interference with slavery. Randolph, alive to the bearings of all
legislation which touched his class interests, at once introduced a
Bill to explain and amend the Act. Josiah Quincy promptly moved its
reference. The day was February 27, and in another week the Ninth
Congress would expire. Randolph opposed the reference, and urged the
immediate passage of his Bill, but was defeated by a vote of sixty to
forty-nine. His Bill was referred to the House in committee; it was
even made an order for the next day, but it was never taken up.
Randolph declared the hope that should his Bill fail, the Virginia
delegation would wait on the President and remonstrate against his
signing the Act for Prohibiting the Slave Trade; but no such step was
taken, and March 2, 1807, President Jefferson approved this alarming
measure. He at least had no constitutional scruples, and paid no
attention to the scruples of others. The only result of the long
sectional struggle was to disgust the Southern Republicans and their
Pennsylvanian allies alike; while, so far from obtaining a law which
should suit Southern views of the slave-trade, their Act shocked the
pride and threatened the property of every slave-owner in the South.
The disasters of the Southern, or what was afterward known as the
States-rights, party were largely due to temper. The habit of command,
giving self-confidence and vigor of will, opened a boundless field for
extravagances. The strength of men like Randolph and Early was their
chief weakness; they had every sense except the sense of proportion.
The mole-hill which tripped them seemed as serious an obstacle as
the distant mountain range, where a false step would dash them to
fragments; and when at last they reached the mountain range, with its
impassable chasms, where temper was helpless, they saw in it only a
mole-hill. That men like Sloan, the butt of the house, and like Smilie
and Findley, the ordinary representatives of an intellectual mediocrity
somewhat beneath the Pennsylvanian average, should habitually end in
carrying their points, in singular and unexpected ways, against the
ablest leaders of New England Federalism and the most gifted masters of
Virginian oratory; that they should root up everything in their path,
and end by giving to the whole country the characteristics of their own
common-place existence,--was partly due, not to their energy or their
talents, but to the contempt which their want of genius inspired. Not
their own wisdom, but their antagonists’ errors decided the result,
and overthrew successively Church and State in New England and a
slave-owning oligarchy throughout half the continent. The Southern
gentry could not learn patience. John Randolph, in many respects the
most gifted man produced by the South in his generation, and certainly
the one who most exaggerated the peculiar qualities and faults of his
class, flung away the advantages of every success by attempting to
punish his opponents,--as though the hare had stopped in his race to
beat the tortoise with a whip. Punishment of Pennsylvania Democrats
was waste of time and strength; sarcasm did not affect them; social
contempt did not annihilate them; defeats made no impression upon them.
They had no leaders and no well-defined policy, but they gravitated
like inert weights to an equilibrium. What they wanted they were sure
in the end to get.
Randolph’s disappointment in regard to the slave-bill was but a single
example of a law. After domineering over the House during the whole
session, and impressing his own character upon its acts, he attempted
at the end to coerce it into a quarrel with the Senate. A Bill for
repealing the salt-tax and continuing the Mediterranean Fund was sent
to the Senate, and the Senate sent it back with an amendment which
reduced the duty on salt from twenty cents a bushel to twelve cents,
without wholly abolishing it. Usage and courtesy required that a
committee of conference should be appointed; but Randolph insisted that
the House should abruptly adhere to its original Bill, and he carried
his point by the large majority of ninety-three to twenty.[262] The
Senate accepted the challenge, and in its turn voted to adhere. The
Bill was lost; and while the salt-tax continued in force, producing
some five hundred thousand dollars, the Mediterranean Fund, producing
one million two hundred thousand dollars, must expire by limitation.
Congress reached this point February 26, the same day when the
slave-bill was passed against Randolph’s protest.
The Pennsylvania members allowed themselves to be drawn into this step;
but they had hardly given their votes before waking to their mistake.
The next day a committee was moved to reconsider the subject; and in
spite of Randolph’s remonstrances, the motion was carried by sixty to
forty, every Pennsylvanian changing his vote. Randolph, exasperated to
the last degree, attempted to block the measure by obstinacy. When the
new Bill was taken up in committee of the whole House February 28, he
consumed the day in dilatory motions, calling the yeas and nays until
he could no longer induce one fifth of the members to support him in
asking for them. The House sat until half-past one in the morning;
and when at last the Bill came to a vote, Randolph and his friends
left the House without a quorum.[263] After several counts, a quorum
was reported, and the Bill was passed; but the yeas and nays were
not taken, and many suspicions were expressed that a quorum was not
actually present. Nevertheless the Pennsylvanians won their victory;
the Bill became law at the last moment of the session. Randolph’s
conduct ended in destroying his own influence; and the Pennsylvanians
felt that the time had come when an alliance with the Democrats of New
England against the oligarchy of Virginia could no longer be postponed.
This was the situation at Washington when, on the last day of the Ninth
Congress, a messenger arrived from England bringing from Monroe and
Pinkney a treaty of commerce. The President’s attempt to unite his
party on a liberal domestic policy had not succeeded; and many years
were to pass before Congress should see another session devoted to
domestic affairs.