THE man who mounted the steps of the Capitol, March 4, 1801, to claim
the place of an equal between Pitt and Bonaparte, possessed a character
which showed itself in acts; but person and manner can be known only
by contemporaries, and the liveliest description was worth less than
a moment of personal contact. Jefferson was very tall, six feet
two-and-a-half inches in height; sandy-complexioned; shy in manner,
seeming cold; awkward in attitude, and with little in his bearing that
suggested command. Senator Maclay of Pennsylvania described him in
1790, when he had returned from France to become Secretary of State,
and appeared before a Committee of the Senate to answer questions about
foreign relations.
“Jefferson is a slender man,” wrote the senator;[1] “has rather the
air of stiffness in his manner. His clothes seem too small for him. He
sits in a lounging manner, on one hip commonly, and with one of his
shoulders elevated much above the other. His face has a sunny aspect.
His whole figure has a loose, shackling air. He had a rambling, vacant
look, and nothing of that firm collected deportment which I expected
would dignify the presence of a secretary or minister. I looked for
gravity, but a laxity of manner seemed shed about him. He spoke almost
without ceasing; but even his discourse partook of his personal
demeanor. It was loose and rambling; and yet he scattered information
wherever he went, and some even brilliant sentiments sparkled from
him.”
Maclay was one of the earliest members of the Republican party, and
his description was not unfriendly. Augustus Foster, Secretary of the
British Legation, described Jefferson as he appeared in 1804:[2]--
“He was a tall man, with a very red freckled face, and gray neglected
hair; his manners good-natured, frank, and rather friendly, though he
had somewhat of a cynical expression of countenance. He wore a blue
coat, a thick gray-colored hairy waistcoat, with a red under-waistcoat
lapped over it, green velveteen breeches with pearl buttons, yarn
stockings, and slippers down at the heels,--his appearance being very
much like that of a tall, large-boned farmer.”
In the middle of the seventeenth century the celebrated Cardinal de
Retz formed a judgment of the newly-elected Pope from his remark, at a
moment when minds were absorbed in his election, that he had for two
years used the same pen. “It is only a trifle,” added De Retz, “but
I have often observed that the smallest things are sometimes better
marks than the greatest.” Perhaps dress could never be considered a
trifle. One of the greatest of modern writers first made himself famous
by declaring that society was founded upon _cloth_; and Jefferson, at
moments of some interest in his career as President, seemed to regard
his peculiar style of dress as a matter of political importance,
while the Federalist newspapers never ceased ridiculing the corduroy
small-clothes, red-plush waistcoat, and sharp-toed boots with which he
expressed his contempt for fashion.
For eight years this tall, loosely built, somewhat stiff figure, in red
waistcoat and yarn stockings, slippers down at the heel, and clothes
that seemed too small for him, may be imagined as Senator Maclay
described him, sitting on one hip, with one shoulder high above the
other, talking almost without ceasing to his visitors at the White
House. His skin was thin, peeling from his face on exposure to the
sun, and giving it a tettered appearance. This sandy face, with hazel
eyes and sunny aspect; this loose, shackling person; this rambling and
often brilliant conversation, belonged to the controlling influences
of American history, more necessary to the story than three-fourths of
the official papers, which only hid the truth. Jefferson’s personality
during these eight years appeared to be the government, and impressed
itself, like that of Bonaparte, although by a different process, on
the mind of the nation. In the village simplicity of Washington he was
more than a king, for he was alone in social as well as in political
pre-eminence. Except the British Legation, no house in Washington
was open to general society; the whole mass of politicians, even
the Federalists, were dependent on Jefferson and “The Palace” for
amusement; and if they refused to go there, they “lived like bears,
brutalized and stupefied.”[3]
Jefferson showed his powers at their best in his own house, where
among friends as genial and cheerful as himself his ideas could flow
freely, and could be discussed with sympathy. Such were the men with
whom he surrounded himself by choice, and none but such were invited
to enter his Cabinet. First and oldest of his political associates was
James Madison, about to become Secretary of State, whose character also
described itself, and whose personality was as distinct as that of
his chief. A small man, quiet, somewhat precise in manner, pleasant,
fond of conversation, with a certain mixture of ease and dignity in
his address, Madison had not so much as Jefferson of the commanding
attitude which imposed respect on the world. “He has much more the
appearance of what I have imagined a Roman cardinal to be,” wrote
Senator Mills of Massachusetts in 1815.[4] An imposing presence had
much to do with political influence, and Madison labored under serious
disadvantage in the dryness of his personality. Political opponents
of course made fun of him. “As to Jemmy Madison,--oh, poor Jemmy!--he
is but a withered little apple-john,” wrote Washington Irving in 1812,
instinctively applying the Knickerbocker view of history to national
concerns.
“In his dress,” said one who knew him,[5] “he was not at all eccentric
or given to dandyism, but always appeared neat and genteel, and in the
costume of a well-bred and tasty old-school gentleman. I have heard in
early life he sometimes wore light-colored clothes; but from the time
I first knew him ... never any other color than black, his coat being
cut in what is termed dress-fashion; his breeches short, with buckles
at the knees, black silk stockings, and shoes with strings, or long
fair top-boots when out in cold weather, or when he rode on horseback,
of which he was fond.... He wore powder on his hair, which was dressed
full over the ears, tied behind, and brought to a point above the
forehead, to cover in some degree his baldness, as may be noticed in
all the likenesses taken of him.”
Madison had a sense of humor, felt in his conversation, and detected
in the demure cast of his flexile lips, but leaving no trace in his
published writings. Small in stature, in deportment modest to the point
of sensitive reserve, in address simple and pleasing, in feature rather
thoughtful and benevolent than strong, he was such a man as Jefferson,
who so much disliked contentious and self-asserting manners, loved to
keep by his side. Sir Augustus Foster liked Mr. Madison, although in
1812 Madison sent him out of the country:--
“I thought Mr. Jefferson more of a statesman and man of the world than
Mr. Madison, who was rather too much the disputatious pleader; yet
the latter was better informed, and moreover a social, jovial, and
good-humored companion, full of anecdote, sometimes rather of a loose
description, but oftener of a political and historical interest. He
was a little man with small features, rather wizened when I saw him,
but occasionally lit up with a good-natured smile. He wore a black
coat, stockings with shoes buckled, and had his hair powdered, with a
tail.”
The third aristocrat in this democratic triumvirate was Albert
Gallatin, marked by circumstances even more than by the President’s
choice for the post of Secretary of the Treasury. Like the President
and the Secretary of State, Gallatin was born and bred a gentleman;
in person and manners he was well fitted for the cabinet-table over
which Jefferson presided. Gallatin possessed the personal force which
was somewhat lacking in his two friends. His appearance impressed
by-standers with a sense of strength. His complexion was dark; his
eyes were hazel and full of expression; his hair black, and like
Madison he was becoming bald. From long experience, at first among
the democrats of western Pennsylvania, and afterward as a leader in
the House of Representatives, he had lost all shyness in dealing with
men. His long prominent nose and lofty forehead showed character,
and his eyes expressed humor. A slight foreign accent betrayed his
Genevan origin. Gallatin was also one of the best talkers in America,
and perhaps the best-informed man in the country; for his laborious
mind had studied America with infinite care, and he retained so much
knowledge of European affairs as to fit him equally for the State
Department or the Treasury. Three more agreeable men than Jefferson,
Madison, and Gallatin were never collected round the dinner-table of
the White House; and their difference in age was enough to add zest to
their friendship; for Jefferson was born in 1743, Madison in 1751, and
Gallatin in 1761. While the President was nearly sixty years old, his
Secretary of the Treasury had the energy and liberality of forty.
Jefferson was the first President inaugurated at Washington, and the
ceremony, necessarily simple, was made still simpler for political
reasons. The retiring President was not present at the installation of
his successor. In Jefferson’s eyes a revolution had taken place as vast
as that of 1776; and if this was his belief, perhaps the late President
was wise to retire from a stage where everything was arranged to point
a censure upon his principles, and where he would have seemed, in his
successor’s opinion, as little in place as George III. would have
appeared at the installation of President Washington. The collapse of
government which marked the last weeks of February, 1801, had been such
as to leave of the old Cabinet only Samuel Dexter of Massachusetts,
the Secretary of the Treasury, and Benjamin Stoddert of Maryland,
the Secretary of the Navy, still in office. John Marshall, the late
Secretary of State, had been appointed, six weeks before, Chief-Justice
of the Supreme Court.
In this first appearance of John Marshall as Chief-Justice, to
administer the oath of office, lay the dramatic climax of the
inauguration. The retiring President, acting for what he supposed
to be the best interests of the country, by one of his last acts of
power, deliberately intended to perpetuate the principles of his
administration, placed at the head of the judiciary, for life, a man
as obnoxious to Jefferson as the bitterest New England Calvinist could
have been; for he belonged to that class of conservative Virginians
whose devotion to President Washington, and whose education in
the common law, caused them to hold Jefferson and his theories in
antipathy. The new President and his two Secretaries were political
philanthropists, bent on restricting the powers of the national
government in the interests of human liberty. The Chief-Justice, a
man who in grasp of mind and steadiness of purpose had no superior,
perhaps no equal, was bent on enlarging the powers of government in
the interests of justice and nationality. As they stood face to face
on this threshold of their power, each could foresee that the contest
between them would end only with life.
If Jefferson and his two friends were the most aristocratic of
democrats, John Marshall was of all aristocrats the most democratic in
manners and appearance.
“A tall, slender figure,” wrote Joseph Story in 1808,[6] “not graceful
or imposing, but erect and steady. His hair is black, his eyes
small and twinkling, his forehead rather low; but his features are
in general harmonious. His manners are plain yet dignified, and an
unaffected modesty diffuses itself through all his actions. His dress
is very simple yet neat; his language chaste, but hardly elegant; it
does not flow rapidly, but it seldom wants precision. In conversation
he is quite familiar, but is occasionally embarrassed by a hesitancy
and drawling.... I love his laugh,--it is too hearty for an intriguer;
and his good temper and unwearied patience are equally agreeable on
the bench and in the study.”
The unaffected simplicity of Marshall’s life was delightful to all
who knew him, for it sprang from the simplicity of his mind. Never
self-conscious, his dignity was never affected by his situation.
Bishop Meade,[7] who was proud of the Chief-Justice as one of his
flock, being in a street near Marshall’s house one morning between
daybreak and sunrise, met the Chief-Justice on horseback, with a bag of
clover-seed lying before him, which he was carrying to his little farm
at seed-time. Simple as American life was, his habits were remarkable
for modest plainness; and only the character of his mind, which seemed
to have no flaw, made his influence irresistible upon all who were
brought within its reach.
Nevertheless this great man nourished one weakness. Pure in life;
broad in mind, and the despair of bench and bar for the unswerving
certainty of his legal method; almost idolized by those who stood
nearest him, and loving warmly in return,--this excellent and amiable
man clung to one rooted prejudice: he detested Thomas Jefferson. He
regarded with quiet, unspoken, but immovable antipathy the character
and doings of the philosopher standing before him, about to take the
oath to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution. No argument or
entreaty affected his conviction that Jefferson was not an honest man.
“By weakening the office of President he will increase his personal
power,” were Marshall’s words, written at this time;[8] “the morals of
the author of the letter to Mazzei cannot be pure.” Jefferson in return
regarded Marshall with a repugnance tinged by a shade of some deeper
feeling, almost akin to fear. “The judge’s inveteracy is profound,” he
once wrote,[9] “and his mind of that gloomy malignity which will never
let him forego the opportunity of satiating it on a victim.”
Another person, with individuality not less marked, took the oath
of office the same day. When the Senate met at ten o’clock on the
morning of March 4, 1801, Aaron Burr stood at the desk, and having
duly sworn to support the Constitution, took his seat in the chair as
Vice-President. This quiet, gentlemanly, and rather dignified figure,
hardly taller than Madison, and dressed in much the same manner,
impressed with favor all who first met him. An aristocrat imbued in
the morality of Lord Chesterfield and Napoleon Bonaparte, Colonel Burr
was the chosen head of Northern democracy, idol of the wards of New
York city, and aspirant to the highest offices he could reach by means
legal or beyond the law; for as he pleased himself with saying, after
the manner of the First Consul of the French Republic, “Great souls
care little for small morals.” Among the other party leaders who have
been mentioned,--Jefferson, Madison, Gallatin, Marshall,--not one was
dishonest. The exaggerations or equivocations that Jefferson allowed
himself, which led to the deep-rooted conviction of Marshall that he
did not tell the truth and must therefore be dangerous, amounted to
nothing when compared with the dishonesty of a corrupt man. Had the
worst political charges against Jefferson been true, he would not have
been necessarily corrupt. The self-deception inherent in every struggle
for personal power was not the kind of immorality which characterized
Colonel Burr. Jefferson, if his enemies were to be believed, might
occasionally make misstatements of fact; yet he was true to the faith
of his life, and would rather have abdicated his office and foregone
his honors than have compassed even an imaginary wrong against the
principles he professed. His life, both private and public, was pure.
His associates, like Madison, Gallatin, and Monroe, were men upon whose
reputations no breath of scandal rested. The standard of morality at
Washington, both in private society and in politics, was respectable.
For this reason Colonel Burr was a new power in the government; for
being in public and in private life an adventurer of the same school as
scores who were then seeking fortune in the antechambers of Bonaparte
and Pitt, he became a loadstone for every other adventurer who
frequented New York or whom the chances of politics might throw into
office. The Vice-President wielded power, for he was the certain centre
of corruption.
Thus when the doors of the Senate chamber were thrown open, and the
new President of the United States appeared on the threshold; when
the Vice-President rose from his chair, and Jefferson sat down in it,
with Aaron Burr on his right hand and John Marshall on his left, the
assembled senators looked up at three men who profoundly disliked and
distrusted each other.
John Davis, one of many Englishmen who were allowed by Burr to attach
themselves to him on the chance of some future benefit to be derived
from them, asserted in a book of American travels published in London
two years afterward, that he was present at the inauguration, and
that Jefferson rode on horseback to the Capitol, and after hitching
his horse to the palings, went in to take the oath. This story, being
spread by the Federalist newspapers, was accepted by the Republicans
and became a legend of the Capitol. In fact Davis was not then at
Washington, and his story was untrue. Afterward as President, Jefferson
was in the habit of going on horseback, rather than in a carriage,
wherever business called him, and the Federalists found fault with him
for doing so. “He makes it a point,” they declared,[10] “when he has
occasion to visit the Capitol to meet the representatives of the nation
on public business, to go on a single horse, which he leads into the
shed and hitches to a peg.” Davis wished to write a book that should
amuse Englishmen, and in order to give an air of truth to invention, he
added that he was himself present at the ceremony. Jefferson was then
living as Vice-President at Conrad’s boarding-house, within a stone’s
throw of the Capitol. He did not mount his horse only to ride across
the square and dismount in a crowd of observers. Doubtless he wished to
offer an example of republican simplicity, and he was not unwilling to
annoy his opponents; but the ceremony was conducted with proper form.
Edward Thornton, then in charge of the British Legation at
Washington, wrote to Lord Grenville, then Foreign Secretary in Pitt’s
administration, a despatch enclosing the new President’s Inaugural
Address, with comments upon its democratic tendencies; and after a few
remarks on this subject, he added:[11]--
“The same republican spirit which runs through this performance,
and which in many passages discovers some bitterness through all
the sentiments of conciliation and philanthropy with which it is
overcharged, Mr. Jefferson affected to display in performing the
customary ceremonies. He came from his own lodgings to the House where
the Congress convenes, and which goes by the name of the Capitol, on
foot, in his ordinary dress, escorted by a body of militia artillery
from the neighboring State, and accompanied by the Secretaries of
the Navy and the Treasury, and a number of his political friends
in the House of Representatives. He was received by Mr. Burr, the
Vice-President of the United States, who arrived a day or two ago at
the seat of government, and who was previously admitted this morning
to the chair of the Senate; and was afterward complimented at his own
lodgings by the very few foreign agents who reside at this place, by
the members of Congress, and other public officials.”
Only the north wing of the Capitol had then been so far completed
as to be occupied by the Senate, the courts, and the small library
of Congress. The centre rose not much above its foundations; and
the south wing, some twenty feet in height, contained a temporary
oval brick building, commonly called the “Oven,” in which the House
of Representatives sat in some peril of their lives, for had not
the walls been strongly shored up from without, the structure would
have crumbled to pieces. Into the north wing the new President went,
accompanied by the only remaining secretaries, Dexter and Stoddert,
and by his friends from the House. Received by Vice-President Burr,
and seated in the chair between Burr and Marshall, after a short pause
Jefferson rose, and in a somewhat inaudible voice began his Inaugural
Address.
Time, which has laid its chastening hand on many reputations, and has
given to many once famous formulas a meaning unsuspected by their
authors, has not altogether spared Jefferson’s first Inaugural Address,
although it was for a long time almost as well known as the Declaration
of Independence; yet this Address was one of the few State Papers which
should have lost little of its interest by age. As the starting-point
of a powerful political party, the first Inaugural was a standard by
which future movements were measured, and it went out of fashion only
when its principles were universally accepted or thrown aside. Even
as a literary work, it possessed a certain charm of style peculiar to
Jefferson, a flavor of Virginia thought and manners, a Jeffersonian
ideality calculated to please the ear of later generations forced to
task their utmost powers in order to carry the complex trains of their
thought.
The chief object of the Address was to quiet the passions which
had been raised by the violent agitation of the past eight years.
Every interest of the new Administration required that the extreme
Federalists should be disarmed. Their temper was such as to endanger
both Administration and Union; and their power was still formidable,
for they controlled New England and contested New York. To them,
Jefferson turned:--
“Let us unite with one heart and one mind,” he entreated; “let us
restore to social intercourse that harmony and affection without
which liberty and even life itself are but dreary things. And let
us reflect, that, having banished from our land that religious
intolerance under which mankind so long bled and suffered, we have yet
gained little if we countenance a political intolerance as despotic,
as wicked, and capable of as bitter and bloody persecutions. During
the throes and convulsions of the ancient world, during the agonizing
spasms of infuriated man, seeking through blood and slaughter his
long-lost liberty, it was not wonderful that the agitation of the
billows should reach even this distant and peaceful shore; that this
should be more felt and feared by some than by others; that this
should divide opinions as to measures of safety. But every difference
of opinion is not a difference of principle. We are all Republicans,
we are all Federalists.”
The Federalist newspapers never ceased laughing at the “spasms” so
suddenly converted into “billows,” and at the orthodoxy of Jefferson’s
Federalism; but perhaps his chief fault was to belittle the revolution
which had taken place. In no party sense was it true that all were
Republicans or all Federalists. As will appear, Jefferson himself was
far from meaning what he seemed to say. He wished to soothe the great
body of his opponents, and if possible to win them over; but he had no
idea of harmony or affection other than that which was to spring from
his own further triumph; and in representing that he was in any sense a
Federalist, he did himself a wrong.
“I know, indeed,” he continued, “that some honest men fear that a
republican government cannot be strong; that this government is not
strong enough. But would the honest patriot, in the full tide of
successful experiment, abandon a government which has so far kept
us free and firm, on the theoretic and visionary fear that this
government, the world’s best hope, may by possibility want energy to
preserve itself? I trust not. I believe this, on the contrary, the
strongest government on earth. I believe it is the only one where
every man, at the call of the laws, would fly to the standard of the
law, and would meet invasions of the public order as his own personal
concern. Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the
government of himself. Can he then be trusted with the government of
others? Or have we found angels in the forms of kings to govern him?
Let history answer this question!”
That the government, the world’s best hope, had hitherto kept the
country free and firm, in the full tide of successful experiment, was a
startling compliment to the Federalist party, coming as it did from a
man who had not been used to compliment his political opponents; but
Federalists, on the other hand, might doubt whether this government
would continue to answer the same purpose when administered for no
other avowed object than to curtail its powers. Clearly, Jefferson
credited government with strength which belonged to society; and
if he meant to practise upon this idea, by taking the tone of “the
strongest government on earth” in the face of Bonaparte and Pitt,
whose governments were strong in a different sense, he might properly
have developed this idea at more length, for it was likely to prove
deeply interesting. Moreover, history, if asked, must at that day have
answered that no form of government, whether theocratic, autocratic,
aristocratic, democratic, or mixed, had ever in Western civilization
lasted long, without change or need of change. History was not the
witness to which Republicans could with entire confidence appeal, even
against kings.
The Address next enumerated the advantages which America enjoyed, and
those which remained to be acquired:--
“With all these blessings, what more is necessary to make us a happy
and prosperous people? Still one thing more, fellow-citizens,--a
wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring
one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate
their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take
from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of
good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our
felicities.”
A government restricted to keeping the peace, which should raise no
taxes except for that purpose, seemed to be simply a judicature and
a police. Jefferson gave no development to the idea further than to
define its essential principles, and those which were to guide his
Administration. Except the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions of 1798,
this short passage was the only official gloss ever given to the
Constitution by the Republican party; and for this reason students of
American history who would understand the course of American thought
should constantly carry in mind not only the Constitutions of 1781
and of 1787, but also the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions, and the
following paragraph of Jefferson’s first Inaugural Address:--
“I will compress them,” said the President, “within the narrowest
compass they will bear, stating the general principle, but not all
its limitations. Equal and exact justice to all men, of whatever
state or persuasion, religious or political; peace, commerce, and
honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none;
the support of the State governments in all their rights, as the
most competent administrations for our domestic concerns and the
surest bulwarks against anti-republican tendencies; the preservation
of the general government in its whole Constitutional vigor, as the
sheet-anchor of our peace at home and safety abroad; a jealous care
of the right of election by the People,--a mild and safe corrective
of abuses which are lopped by the sword of revolution where peaceable
remedies are unprovided; absolute acquiescence in the decisions of
the majority,--the vital principle of republics, from which there is
no appeal but to force, the vital principle and immediate parent of
despotism; a well-disciplined militia,--our best reliance in peace
and for the first moments of war, till regulars may relieve them;
the supremacy of the civil over the military authority; economy in
the public expense, that labor may be lightly burdened; the honest
payment of our debts, and sacred preservation of the public faith;
encouragement of agriculture, and of commerce as its handmaid; the
diffusion of information, and arraignment of all abuses at the bar of
public reason; freedom of religion, freedom of the press, and freedom
of person under the protection of the _habeas corpus_; and trial
by juries impartially selected;--these principles form the bright
constellation which has gone before us and guided our steps through
an age of revolution and reformation. The wisdom of our sages and the
blood of our heroes have been devoted to their attainment; they should
be the creed of our political faith, the text of civic instruction,
the touchstone by which to try the services of those we trust; and
should we wander from them in moments of error or alarm, let us hasten
to retrace our steps and to regain the road which alone leads to
peace, liberty, and safety.”
From the metaphors in which these principles appeared as a
constellation, a creed, a text, a touchstone, and a road, the world
learned that they had already guided the American people through an age
of revolution. In fact, they were mainly the principles of President
Washington, and had they been announced by a Federalist President,
would have created little remonstrance or surprise. In Jefferson’s
mouth they sounded less familiar, and certain phrases seemed even out
of place.
Among the cardinal points of republicanism thus proclaimed to the
world was one in particular, which as a maxim of government seemed
to contradict cherished convictions and the fixed practice of the
Republican party. “Absolute acquiescence” was required “in the
decisions of the majority,--the vital principle of republics, from
which there is no appeal but to force, the vital principle and
immediate parent of despotism.” No principle was so thoroughly entwined
in the roots of Virginia republicanism as that which affirmed the
worthlessness of decisions made by a majority of the United States
either as a nation or a confederacy, in matters which concerned the
exercise of doubtful powers. Not three years had passed since Jefferson
himself penned the draft of the Kentucky Resolutions, in which he
declared[12] “that in cases of an abuse of the delegated powers,
the members of the general government being chosen by the people, a
change by the people would be the Constitutional remedy; but where
powers are assumed which have not been delegated, a nullification of
the act is the rightful remedy; that every State has a natural right,
in cases not within the compact, to nullify of their own authority
all assumptions of power by others within their limits; that without
this right they would be under the dominion, absolute and unlimited,
of whosoever might exercise this right of judgment for them.” He
went so far as to advise that every State should forbid, within its
borders, the execution of any act of the general government “not
plainly and intentionally authorized by the Constitution;” and although
the legislatures of Kentucky and Virginia softened the language,
they acted on the principle so far as to declare certain laws of the
United States unconstitutional, with the additional understanding that
whatever was unconstitutional was void. So far from accepting with
“absolute acquiescence” the decisions of the majority, Jefferson and
his followers held that freedom could be maintained only by preserving
inviolate the right of every State to judge for itself what was, and
what was not lawful for a majority to decide.
What, too, was meant by the words which pledged the new Administration
to preserve the general government “in its whole Constitutional
vigor”? The two parties were divided by a bottomless gulf in their
theories of Constitutional powers; but until the precedents established
by the Federalists should be expressly reversed, no one could deny
that those precedents, to be treated as acts of the majority with
absolute acquiescence, were a measure of the vigor which the President
pledged himself to preserve. Jefferson could not have intended such a
conclusion; for how could he promise to “preserve” the powers assumed
in the Alien and Sedition laws, which then represented the whole
vigor of the general government in fact if not in theory, when he
had himself often and bitterly denounced those powers, when he had
been a party to their nullification, and when he and his friends had
actually prepared to resist by arms their enforcement? Undoubtedly
Jefferson meant no more than to preserve the general government in
such vigor as in his opinion was Constitutional, without regard to
Federalist precedents; but his words were equivocal, and unless they
were to be defined by legislation, they identified him with the
contrary legislation of his predecessors. In history and law they did
so. Neither the Alien nor the Sedition Act, nor any other Federalist
precedent, was ever declared unconstitutional by any department of
the general government; and Jefferson’s pledge to preserve that
government in its full Constitutional vigor was actually redeemed with
no exception or limitation on the precedents established. His intention
seemed to be different; but the sweeping language of his pledge was
never afterward restricted or even more exactly defined while he
remained in power.
Hence arose a sense of disappointment for future students of the
Inaugural Address. A revolution had taken place; but the new President
seemed anxious to prove that there had been no revolution at all. A
new experiment in government was to be tried, and the philosopher
at its head began by pledging himself to follow in the footsteps of
his predecessors. Americans ended by taking him at his word, and by
assuming that there was no break of continuity between his ideas
and those of President Washington; yet even at the moment of these
assurances he was writing privately in an opposite sense. In his
eyes the past was wrong, both in method and intention; its work must
be undone and its example forgotten. His conviction of a radical
difference between himself and his predecessors was expressed in the
strongest language. His predecessors, in his opinion, had involved the
government in difficulties in order to destroy it, and to build up
a monarchy on its ruins. “The tough sides of our Argosie,” he wrote
two days after his inauguration,[13] “have been thoroughly tried. Her
strength has stood the waves into which she was steered with a view
to sink her. We shall put her on her Republican tack, and she will
now show by the beauty of her motion the skill of her builders.” “The
Federalists,” said he at one moment,[14] “wished for everything which
would approach our new government to a monarchy; the Republicans, to
preserve it essentially republican.... The real difference consisted in
their different degrees of inclination to monarchy or republicanism.”
“The revolution of 1800,” he wrote many years afterward,[15] “was as
real a revolution in the principles of our government as that of 1776
was in its form.”
Not, therefore, in the Inaugural Address, with its amiable professions
of harmony, could President Jefferson’s full view of his own reforms
be discovered. Judged by his inaugural addresses and annual messages,
Jefferson’s Administration seemed a colorless continuation of
Washington’s; but when seen in the light of private correspondence, the
difference was complete. So strong was the new President’s persuasion
of the monarchical bent of his predecessors, that his joy at obtaining
the government was mingled with a shade of surprise that his enemies
should have handed to him, without question, the power they had so long
held. He shared his fears of monarchy with politicians like William
B. Giles, young John Randolph, and many Southern voters; and although
neither Madison nor Gallatin seemed to think monarchists formidable,
they gladly encouraged the President to pursue a conservative and
conciliatory path. Jefferson and his Southern friends took power
as republicans opposed to monarchists, not as democrats opposed to
oligarchy. Jefferson himself was not in a social sense a democrat, and
was called so only as a term of opprobrium. His Northern followers
were in the main democrats; but he and most of his Southern partisans
claimed to be republicans, opposed by secret monarchists.
The conflict of ideas between Southern republicanism, Northern
democracy, and Federal monarchism marked much of Jefferson’s writing;
but especially when he began his career as President his mind was
filled with the conviction that he had wrung power from monarchy, and
that in this sense he was the founder of a new republic. Henceforward,
as he hoped, republicanism was forever safe; he had but to conciliate
the misguided, and give an example to the world, for centralization
was only a monarchical principle. Nearly twenty years passed before
he woke to a doubt on this subject; but even then he did not admit a
mistake. In the tendency to centralization he still saw no democratic
instinct, but only the influence of monarchical Federalists “under the
pseudo-republican mask.”[16]
The republic which Jefferson believed himself to be founding or
securing in 1801 was an enlarged Virginia,--a society to be kept pure
and free by the absence of complicated interests, by the encouragement
of agriculture and of commerce as its handmaid, but not of industry in
a larger sense. “The agricultural capacities of our country,” he wrote
long afterward,[17] “constitute its distinguishing feature; and the
adapting our policy and pursuits to that is more likely to make us a
numerous and happy people than the mimicry of an Amsterdam, a Hamburg,
or a city of London.” He did not love mechanics or manufactures, or the
capital without which they could not exist.[18] “Banking establishments
are more dangerous than standing armies,” he said; and added, “that the
principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of
funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale.” Such theories
were republican in the Virginia sense, but not democratic; they had
nothing in common with the democracy of Pennsylvania and New England,
except their love of freedom; and Virginia freedom was not the same
conception as the democratic freedom of the North.
In 1801 this Virginia type was still the popular form of republicanism.
Although the Northern democrat had already developed a tendency toward
cities, manufactures, and “the mimicry of an Amsterdam, a Hamburg, or
a city of London,” while the republican of the South was distinguished
by his dislike of every condition except that of agriculture, the
two wings of the party had so much in common that they could afford
to disregard for a time these divergencies of interest; and if the
Virginians cared nothing for cities, banks, and manufactures, or if
the Northern democrats troubled themselves little about the dangers
of centralization, they could unite with one heart in overthrowing
monarchy, and in effecting a social revolution.
Henceforward, as Jefferson conceived, government might act directly for
the encouragement of agriculture and of commerce as its handmaid, for
the diffusion of information and the arraignment of abuses; but there
its positive functions stopped. Beyond that point only negative action
remained,--respect for States’ rights, preservation of constitutional
powers, economy, and the maintenance of a pure and simple society such
as already existed. With a political system which would not take from
the mouth of labor the bread it had earned, and which should leave men
free to follow whatever paths of industry or improvement they might
find most profitable, “the circle of felicities” was closed.
The possibility of foreign war alone disturbed this dream. President
Washington himself might have been glad to accept these ideas of
domestic politics, had not France, England, and Spain shown an
unequivocal wish to take advantage of American weakness in arms
in order to withhold rights vital to national welfare. How did
Jefferson propose to convert a government of judiciary and police
into the strongest government on earth? His answer to this question,
omitted from the Inaugural Address, was to be found in his private
correspondence and in the speeches of Gallatin and Madison as leaders
of the opposition. He meant to prevent war. He was convinced that
governments, like human beings, were on the whole controlled by their
interests, and that the interests of Europe required peace and free
commerce with America. Believing a union of European Powers to be
impossible, he was willing to trust their jealousies of each other to
secure their good treatment of the United States. Knowing that Congress
could by a single act divert a stream of wealth from one European
country to another, foreign Governments would hardly challenge the use
of such a weapon, or long resist their own overpowering interests. The
new President found in the Constitutional power “to regulate commerce
with foreign nations” the machinery for doing away with navies, armies,
and wars.
During eight years of opposition the Republican party had matured its
doctrines on this subject. In 1797, in the midst of difficulties with
France, Jefferson wrote:[19]--
“If we weather the present storm, I hope we shall avail ourselves of
the calm of peace to place our foreign connections under a new and
different arrangement. We must make the interest of every nation stand
surety for their justice, and their own loss to follow injury to us,
as effect follows its cause. As to everything except commerce, we
ought to divorce ourselves from them all.”
A few months before the inauguration, he wrote in terms more
general:[20]--
“The true theory of our Constitution is surely the wisest and best,
that the States are independent as to everything within themselves,
and united as to everything respecting foreign nations. Let the
general government be reduced to foreign concerns only, and let our
affairs be disentangled from those of all other nations, except as to
commerce, which the merchants will manage the better the more they are
left free to manage for themselves, and our general government may be
reduced to a very simple organization and a very unexpensive one,--a
few plain duties to be performed by a few servants.”
Immediately after the inauguration the new President explained his
future foreign policy to correspondents, who, as he knew, would spread
his views widely throughout both continents. In a famous letter to
Thomas Paine,[21]--a letter which was in some respects a true inaugural
address,--Jefferson told the thought he had but hinted in public.
“Determined as we are to avoid, if possible, wasting the energies of
our people in war and destruction, we shall avoid implicating ourselves
with the Powers of Europe, even in support of principles which we
mean to pursue. They have so many other interests different from ours
that we must avoid being entangled in them. We believe we can enforce
those principles as to ourselves by peaceable means, now that we are
likely to have our public counsels detached from foreign views.” A few
days later, he wrote to the well-known Pennsylvania peacemaker, Dr.
Logan, and explained the process of enforcing against foreign nations
“principles as to ourselves by peaceable means.” “Our commerce,” said
he,[22] “is so valuable to them, that they will be glad to purchase it,
when the only price we ask is to do us justice. I believe we have in
our own hands the means of peaceable coercion; and that the moment they
see our government so united as that we can make use of it, they will
for their own interest be disposed to do us justice.”
To Chancellor Livingston, in September, 1801,[23] the President wrote
his views of the principles which he meant to pursue: “Yet in the
present state of things,” he added, “they are not worth a war; nor do I
believe war the most certain means of enforcing them. Those peaceable
coercions which are in the power of every nation, if undertaken in
concert and in time of peace, are more likely to produce the desired
effect.”
That these views were new as a system in government could not be
denied. In later life Jefferson frequently asserted, and took pains
to impress upon his friends, the difference between his opinions and
those of his Federalist opponents. The radical distinction lay in their
opposite conceptions of the national government. The Federalists wished
to extend its functions; Jefferson wished to exclude its influence from
domestic affairs:--
“The people,” he declared in 1821,[24] “to whom all authority belongs,
have divided the powers of government into two distinct departments,
the leading characters of which are foreign and domestic; and they
have appointed for each a distinct set of functionaries. These they
have made co-ordinate, checking and balancing each other, like the
three cardinal departments in the individual States,--each equally
supreme as to the powers delegated to itself, and neither authorized
ultimately to decide what belongs to itself or to its coparcener in
government. As independent, in fact, as different nations, a spirit
of forbearance and compromise, therefore, and not of encroachment and
usurpation, is the healing balm of such a Constitution.”
In the year 1824 Jefferson still maintained the same doctrine, and
expressed it more concisely than ever:--
“The federal is in truth our foreign government, which department
alone is taken from the sovereignty of the separate States.”[25] “I
recollect no case where a question simply between citizens of the
same State has been transferred to the foreign department, except
that of inhibiting tenders but of metallic money, and _ex post facto_
legislation.”[26]
These expressions, taken together, partly explain why Jefferson thought
his assumption of power to be “as real a revolution in the principles
of our government as that of 1776 was in its form.” His view of
governmental functions was simple and clearly expressed. The national
government, as he conceived it, was a foreign department as independent
from the domestic department, which belonged to the States, as though
they were governments of different nations. He intended that the
general government should “be reduced to foreign concerns only;” and
his theory of foreign concerns was equally simple and clear. He meant
to enforce against foreign nations such principles as national objects
required, not by war, but by “peaceful coercion” through commercial
restrictions. “Our commerce is so valuable to them that they will be
glad to purchase it, when the only price we ask is to do us justice.”
The history of his Administration will show how these principles were
applied, and what success attended the experiment.