IN 1801, and throughout Jefferson’s Administration, the Cabinet
consisted of five heads of department,--the Secretaries of State, of
the Treasury, of the Army, and of the Navy, with the Attorney-General.
The law business of the government being light, the Attorney-General
was frequently absent, and, indeed, was not required to reside
permanently at Washington. Rather the official counsel of government
than a head of department, he had no clerks or office-room, and
his salary was lower than that of his colleagues. The true Cabinet
consisted of the four secretaries; and the true government rested
in still fewer hands, for it naturally fell within the control of
the officers whose responsibility was greatest,--the President, the
Secretary of State, and the Secretary of the Treasury.
Simple as such a system was, Jefferson found that months elapsed before
his new Cabinet could be organized and set at work. Although Madison
was instantly nominated and confirmed as Secretary of State, some
weeks passed before he arrived in Washington and assumed his duties.
Gallatin was supposed to be in danger of rejection by the Senate, and
his nomination as Secretary of the Treasury was therefore postponed
till the next session. This delay was not allowed to prevent his taking
charge of the office; but he was obliged first to make the long journey
to his residence on the Monongahela, in southwestern Pennsylvania,
in order to arrange his affairs and bring his family to Washington.
During the interval between the inauguration and the meeting of his
completed Cabinet, Jefferson was left without means of governing. For
Attorney-General he selected Levi Lincoln, a lawyer of Worcester County
in Massachusetts, who had been recently elected to fill a vacancy in
the House of Representatives, and, being on the spot, was useful in
acting as Secretary of State, or in any other capacity in which the
services of a secretary were required. For the War Department the
President chose Henry Dearborn, a resident of the District of Maine,
then a part of Massachusetts. With such assistance as Lincoln and
Dearborn could give, and with the aid of Samuel Dexter the Federalist
Secretary of the Treasury, and Benjamin Stoddert the Federalist
Secretary of the Navy, who consented to remain for a time, Jefferson
slowly set his Administration in motion.
The Navy Department seemed likely to baffle the President’s utmost
efforts. The appointment was intended for Robert R. Livingston of New
York, who refused; then it was offered to Samuel Smith of Maryland, a
prominent member of Congress; but General Smith was a merchant, and
declined to abandon his business. Next, the place was pressed upon
John Langdon of New Hampshire, although New England already supplied
two members of the Cabinet. Langdon refusing, the President wrote to
William Jones of Philadelphia, a member of the next Congress, who
declined. Meanwhile Benjamin Stoddert became weary of waiting, and
Samuel Smith consented to perform the duties in order to give the
President time for further search. At the end of March, Jefferson left
Washington to pass the month of April at Monticello, and on his return,
May 1, the Navy Department was still unfilled. Not until July did
General Smith succeed in escaping the burden of his temporary duties.
Then the President abandoned the attempt to place a man of public
importance in the position, and allowed Samuel Smith to substitute in
his place his brother Robert, a Baltimore lawyer, whose fitness for
naval duties was supposed to consist chiefly in the advice and aid
which Samuel would supply.
The appointment of Robert Smith, July 15, completed the Cabinet. Of its
five members, only two--Madison and Gallatin--were much known beyond
their States. Neither Dearborn nor Lincoln was so strong, either in
political or social connections or in force of character, as greatly to
affect the course of the Cabinet, and both were too honest to thwart it.
“General Dearborn is a man of strong sense, great practical
information on all the subjects connected with his department, and is
what is called a man of business. He is not, I believe, a scholar; but
I think he will make the best Secretary of War we have as yet had. Mr.
Lincoln is a good lawyer, a fine scholar, a man of great discretion
and sound judgment, and of the mildest and most amiable manners. He
has never, I should think from his manners, been out of his own State,
or mixed much with the world, except on business. Both are men of
1776, sound and decided Republicans; both are men of the strictest
integrity; and both, but Mr. Lincoln principally, have a great weight
of character to the Eastward with both parties.”[27]
Thus Gallatin, March 12, before his own appointment, estimated the
characters of his two New England colleagues. The confidence reposed
in them was justified by the result. Neither Dearborn nor Lincoln
showed remarkable powers, but the work they had to do was done without
complaint or objection. No charge of dishonesty, of intrigue, or of
selfish ambition was made against them; and they retired from office at
last with as much modesty as they showed in entering it, after serving
Jefferson faithfully and well.
In some respects Robert Smith was better suited than either Dearborn
or Lincoln for a seat in Jefferson’s Cabinet. The Smiths were strong
not only in Maryland, but also in Virginia, being connected by marriage
with Wilson Cary Nicholas, one of the most influential Republican
politicians of the State, whose relations with Jefferson were
intimate. Robert Smith was a Baltimore gentleman, easy and cordial,
glad to oblige and fond of power and show, popular in the navy,
yielding in the Cabinet, but as little fitted as Jefferson himself for
the task of administering with severe economy an unpopular service.
The navy was wholly Federalist in tendencies and composition. The
Republican party had always denounced this Federalist creation; and
that a navy caused more dangers than it prevented or corrected, was
one of the deepest convictions that underlay the policy of Jefferson,
Madison, and Gallatin. In theory they had no use for a sea-going navy;
at the utmost they wanted only coast and harbor defences, sloops-of-war
and gunboats. During the four years of the last Administration, of a
total expenditure averaging about $11,000,000 per annum, not less than
$2,500,000 had been annually spent on the navy. The public debt itself
required only about $4,500,000, and the army less than $3,000,000.
Economics in the debt were impossible; on the contrary, a mass of
deferred annuities was to be met, and some provision must be made for
more rapid discharge of the principal. Economies in the civil list were
equally impossible; for the Federalists had there wasted little money,
and salaries were low. The army and navy could alone be cut down; and
since the Western people required regular troops for their defence
against the Indians, the most radical reformers hardly ventured to
recommend that the army should be reduced much below an aggregate of
three thousand rank-and-file. The navy, on the other hand, was believed
to be wholly superfluous, and Jefferson was anxious to lay up all the
larger ships, especially the frigates.
“I shall really be chagrined,” he wrote from Monticello in April,[28]
“if the water in the Eastern Branch will not admit our laying up
the whole seven there in time of peace, because they would be under
the immediate eye of the department, and would require but one set
of plunderers to take care of them. As to what is to be done when
everything shall be disposed of according to law, it shall be the
subject of conversation when I return. It oppresses me by night and
by day, for I do not see my way out of the difficulty. It is the
department I understand the least, and therefore need a person whose
complete competence will justify the most entire confidence and
resignation.”
Robert Smith was certainly not such a person as Jefferson described,
and his appointment, however suitable in other respects, was not likely
to attain the object which Jefferson had at heart.
Hardly was the Navy Department thus bestowed, and the new Cabinet,
toward the middle of July, completely organized for the work that was
still to be defined, when another annoyance distracted the President’s
attention from the main objects of his policy. The government had
been, for eight years, in the hands of Federalist partisans. If, as
Jefferson declared in his Inaugural Address, “we are all Republicans,
we are all Federalists;” if differences of opinion were not differences
of principle; if he seriously wished all Americans to “restore to
social intercourse that harmony and affection without which liberty
and even life itself are but dreary things,”--he could afford to make
few removals for party reasons. On the other hand, if, as he privately
declared and as was commonly believed, the actual office-holders
were monarchists at heart, and could not be trusted to carry the new
Republican principles into practice, the public welfare required
great changes. For the first time in national experience, the use of
patronage needed some definite regulation.
The most skilful politician must have failed in the attempt to
explain that a revolution had been made which ought to satisfy every
one, by methods which no one had an excuse for opposing. Jefferson
was embarrassed, not so much by the patronage, as by the apparent
inconsistency between his professions and his acts concerning it. At
first he hoped to make few removals, and these only for misconduct or
other sufficient cause. “Of the thousands of officers in the United
States,” he wrote to Dr. Rush,[29] “a very few individuals only,
probably not twenty, will be removed; and these only for doing what
they ought not to have done.” As these removals began, the outcry of
the Federalists grew loud, until the President thought himself obliged
to defend his course. The occasion was furnished by the State of
Connecticut, where the necessity for a change in office-holders was
proved by the temper of the office-holding class. “The spirit in that
State,” wrote Madison,[30] July 10, “is so perverse that it must be
rectified by a peculiar mixture of energy and delicacy.” The spirit
of which Madison complained was illustrated, only three days before,
by an oration delivered July 7, at New Haven, by Theodore Dwight. The
government, said Dwight, which had been established under the auspices
of Washington was the sport of popular commotion, adrift without helm
or compass in a turbid and boisterous ocean.
“The great object of Jacobinism, both in its political and moral
revolution, is to destroy every trace of civilization in the world,
and to force mankind back into a savage state.... That is, in plain
English, the greatest villain in the community is the fittest person
to make and execute the laws. Graduated by this scale, there can be no
doubt that Jacobins have the highest qualifications for rulers.... We
have now reached the consummation of democratic blessedness. We have a
country governed by blockheads and knaves; the ties of marriage with
all its felicities are severed and destroyed; our wives and daughters
are thrown into the stews; our children are cast into the world from
the breast and forgotten; filial piety is extinguished, and our
surnames, the only mark of distinction among families, are abolished.
Can the imagination paint anything more dreadful on this side hell?”
In the fervor of his representation, Dwight painted what he believed
was to happen as though it had actually come to pass. He and his
friends, at least, felt no doubt of it. Madison could hardly be blamed
for thinking this spirit perverse; and the President was as little
to be censured for wishing to rectify it. Elizur Goodrich, a person
who was quite in the same way of thinking, was Collector of New
Haven. Jefferson removed him, and appointed an old man named Bishop,
whose son had made himself conspicuous by zealous republicanism in a
community where zeal in such a cause was accounted a social crime. A
keen remonstrance was drawn up, signed by New Haven merchants, and
sent to the President. Couched, as Madison said, “in the strongest
terms that decorum would tolerate,” this vigorous paper was in effect a
challenge, for it called on the President to proclaim whether he meant
to stand by the conciliatory professions of his Inaugural Address, or
on his private convictions; and Jefferson was not slow to accept the
challenge, in order to withdraw himself from an embarrassing position
which was rapidly rousing discontent among his friends. He wrote a
reply to the New Haven remonstrants, in which, without going so far as
to assert that to the victors belonged the spoils, he contented himself
with claiming that to the victors belonged half the spoils. Without
abandoning his claim to establish harmony, he appealed to the necessity
under which he was placed by the duty of doing justice to his friends.
“If a due participation of office,” he said,[31] “is a matter of
right, how are vacancies to be obtained? Those by death are few;
by resignation, none. Can any other mode than that of removal be
proposed? This is a painful office, but it is made my duty, and I meet
it as such.”
The Federalists found much material for ridicule in these expressions,
which were certainly open to criticism; but the chief objection
was that they admitted an unwilling surrender to the demands of
office-seekers.
“It would have been to me a circumstance of great relief had I found
a moderate participation of office in the hands of the majority. I
would gladly have left to time and accident to raise them to their
just share. But their total exclusion calls for prompter corrections.
I shall correct the procedure, but that done, return with joy to that
state of things when the only questions concerning a candidate shall
be: Is he honest? Is he capable? Is he faithful to the Constitution?”
With a degree of deference to his critics which was perhaps
unnecessary, and was certainly unfortunate, Jefferson characterized the
officials who were to be first removed. “I proceed in the operation,”
he said, “with deliberation and inquiry, that it may injure the best
men least, and effect the purposes of justice and public utility with
the least private distress; that it may be thrown, as much as possible,
on delinquency, on oppression, on intolerance, on ante-Revolutionary
adherence to our enemies.” Language so mild soothed and conciliated
hundreds of voters who were glad to meet Jefferson’s advances, but at
the cost of increasing the anger felt by the great mass of Federalists
for professions which they believed to be deceptive. For this result
Jefferson was probably prepared, but he could hardly have intended that
his letter should, by a common accident of politics, serve to create
ill-feeling in his own party.
Rules which might suit New England conveyed quite another impression
elsewhere. While Jefferson professed tenderness to New England in order
to undermine a Federalist majority, nothing of the sort was needed in
other States of the Union. New York and Pennsylvania had grown used to
the abuse of political patronage, and no sooner had the Republicans
wrested these two States from Federalist hands than they rooted out all
vestige of Federalist influence. Governor McKean, in Pennsylvania, was
arbitrary enough; but when George Clinton, elected Governor of New York
in the spring of 1801, came into power, the State government showed
no disposition to imitate Jefferson’s delicacy or his professions.
August 8, 1801, a few weeks after the New Haven letter was written,
Governor Clinton called a meeting of the Council which, under the
Constitution of New York, had charge of the State patronage. Young De
Witt Clinton and his friend Ambrose Spencer controlled this Council,
and they were not persons who affected scruple in matters of political
self-interest. They swept the Federalists out of every office even down
to that of auctioneer, and without regard to appearances, even against
the protests of the Governor, installed their own friends and family
connections in power.
Had this been all, Jefferson might have ignored it. The difficulties
he encountered in New York were caused not so much by the removal of
Federalists, as by unwillingness to appoint Republicans. Jefferson did
not like the Clintons, but he liked Aaron Burr still less.
The character of Burr was well understood by the party leaders on
both sides long before 1800. The Virginians twice refused to vote for
him as Vice-President before they were induced to do so in that year.
Jefferson himself recorded that he considered Burr as for sale between
1790 and 1800; he even added that the two parties bid against each
other in the latter year for the prize. “He was told by Dayton in 1800
he might be Secretary at War; but this bid was too late; his election
as Vice-President was then foreseen.”[32] According to this view, the
Virginians bought him; but they had no sooner done so than they prayed
to be delivered from their bargain; and De Witt Clinton undertook to
deliver them, with a tacit understanding, at least on his part, that in
1808 the Virginians must reckon with him for the debt.
Not, therefore, Federalists alone were victims of the scandal in New
York. The exhibition of selfish intrigue which centred in New York
politics was calculated to startle Jefferson from his confidence in
human nature. Burr’s overthrow was a matter of offices and public
patronage; no principle of reform or pure motive in any person
was involved in it. The New York Republicans were divided into
three factions, represented by the Clinton, Livingston, and Burr
interests; and among them was so little difference in principle or
morals, that a politician as honest and an observer as keen as Albert
Gallatin inclined to Burr as the least selfish of the three.[33]
The Vice-President was popular in the city of New York, and to some
extent in the country districts throughout the State. Bad as his
morality was understood to be, he had at that time committed no offence
that warranted ostracism; but from the moment of Governor Clinton’s
accession to power, he was pursued and persecuted by the whole Clinton
interest.
Burr, aware of the dislike and jealousy with which the Clintons
regarded him, had until then depended for a counterbalance on the
Livingston interest, of which General Armstrong in the Senate and
Edward Livingston in the House were the representatives at Washington;
in alliance with them and in accord with Gallatin, he parcelled out
the federal patronage of the State. His chief anxiety was to provide
offices for his two friends, John Swartwout and Matthew L. Davis;
and he succeeded in obtaining for the first the marshalship of New
York, for the second a promise of the supervisorship. No sooner did
the news of this arrangement reach the ears of De Witt Clinton than
he remonstrated, and in a few days drew from President Jefferson a
letter addressed to Governor Clinton, which in effect surrendered Burr
into the hands of his enemies. “The following arrangement,” wrote the
President,[34] May 17, “was agreed to by Colonel Burr and some of your
senators and representatives,--Daniel Gelston, collector; Theodorus
Bailey, naval officer; and M. L. Davis, supervisor.” Objections had
been made. Would Governor Clinton express his opinion?
In a short time Burr found that the President showed no alacrity for
the removal of Federalist officials in New York. Neither Bailey nor
Davis was appointed. Bailey, hitherto a friend of Burr, withdrew from
his candidacy under a promise, as was supposed, of the postmastership;
and Davis was pressed by Burr for the post of naval officer, then
held by a Federalist named Rogers, who was charged with adhesion to
the British during the Revolution. Within six weeks after Jefferson’s
letter to Governor Clinton, Burr caught the rumor of some secret
understanding, and wrote angrily to Gallatin,[35]--
“Strange reports are here in circulation respecting secret
machinations against Davis.... This thing has, in my opinion, gone
too far to be now defeated.... Davis is too important to be trifled
with.”
His remonstrances fell on deaf ears. No entreaty, even from Gallatin
himself, could thenceforward induce the President to open his mouth
on the subject. After waiting two months longer, Davis resorted to
the desperate expedient of seeking a personal interview; and early in
September undertook the long journey to Monticello, furnished with a
strong letter from Gallatin, and supported by a private letter which
was stronger still:[36]--
“I dislike much,” wrote the Secretary in this remarkable paper,
“the idea of supporting a section of Republicans in New York, and
mistrusting the great majority because that section is supposed to be
hostile to Burr, and he is considered as the leader of that majority.
A great reason against such policy is that the reputed leaders of that
section,--I mean the Livingstons generally, and some broken remnants
of the Clintonian party who hate Burr,-- ... are so selfish and so
uninfluential that they never can obtain their great object, the State
government, without the assistance of what is called Burr’s party, and
will not hesitate a moment to bargain for that object with him and his
friends, granting in exchange their support for anything he or they
may want out of the State.... I do not know that there is hardly a
man who meddles with politics in New York who does not believe that
Davis’s rejection is owing to Burr’s recommendation.”
Gallatin was not in the secret. Although he was the only Cabinet
representative of the Middle States, his advice was neither asked
nor followed. Jefferson had decided to let De Witt Clinton have his
way, but he explained his intentions neither to Gallatin, Burr, nor
to Davis. In reply to Gallatin’s remonstrance, he wrote back from
Monticello:[37] “Mr. Davis is now with me. He has not opened himself.
When he does, I shall inform him that nothing is decided, nor can be
till we get together at Washington.”
That nothing had been decided was not only, as Burr called it,[38]
a “commonplace” answer, but was also incorrect. Everything had
been decided; and by the time Davis, amid the jeers of the press,
rejoined Burr in New York, the results of the Clinton intrigue had
become visible. While Jefferson withheld from Burr all sign of
support, De Witt Clinton and Ambrose Spencer, acting in unison with
the President, detached the Livingstons from Burr’s interest. The
Chancellor was already provided for. Too important to be overlooked,
he was offered and had accepted the mission to France even before the
inauguration.[39] Edward Livingston, Burr’s friend, was made mayor of
New York,--an office then in the gift of the Council, and supposed
to be worth ten thousand dollars a year.[40] He also received from
Jefferson the appointment of district attorney. The chief-justice and
two of the Supreme Court judges were of the Livingston connection. The
secretary of state was another of the family, and General Armstrong,
one of the senators in Congress, still another. In various meetings of
the Council of Appointment during the summer and autumn, the State and
city offices were taken from the Federalists and divided between the
Clintons and Livingstons, until the Livingstons were gorged; while Burr
was left to beg from Jefferson the share of national patronage which De
Witt Clinton had months before taken measures to prevent his obtaining.
That Jefferson and De Witt Clinton expected and intended to drive Burr
from the party was already clear to Burr and his friends as early as
September, 1801, when Matthew L. Davis forced himself into Jefferson’s
house at Monticello, while Burr watched the tactics of De Witt
Clinton’s Council of Appointment. On both sides the game was selfish,
and belonged rather to the intrigues of Guelfs and Ghibellines in some
Italian city of the thirteenth century than to the pure atmosphere of
Jefferson’s republicanism. The disgust of Gallatin was deep; but he
knew too well the nature of New York politics to care greatly whether
Burr or Clinton were to rule, and he was anxious only to stop the use
of federal patronage in the interests of party intrigue. The New Haven
letter had not pleased him. Within a fortnight after that letter was
written, he sent to the President[41] the draft of a Treasury Circular
which would not only have stopped the removal of inferior officers,
but would have shut them out from active politics. Jefferson declined
to approve it. He insisted that one half the tide-waiters and other
employees should be changed before he should interfere. Gallatin
replied that this had already been done. “The number of removals is not
great, but in importance they are beyond their number. The supervisors
of all the violent party States embrace all the collectors. Add to that
the intended change in the post-office, and you have in fact every man
in office out of the seaports.” Still Jefferson hung back, and declared
that it would be a poor manœuvre to revolt tried friends in order to
conciliate moderate Federalists.[42] He could not follow his true
instincts; for the pressure upon him, although trifling when compared
with what he thus helped to bring on his successors, was more than he
could bear. In New York Governor Clinton protested in vain against the
abuse of patronage, and from Pennsylvania Governor McKean wrote:[43]
“The thirst for office is immoderate; it has become an object of
serious attention, and I wish I knew how to check it.” The scandalous
proceedings of the New York Council of Appointment sharpened the tone
of Gallatin, who declared that they disgraced the Republican cause,
and sank the Administration itself to a level with its predecessor.[44]
With all this, the only removal in New York which Jefferson resolutely
resisted, was that of the supposed Revolutionary Tory whose place was
asked for Matthew L. Davis by Vice-President Burr.
No other member of the Cabinet offered active support to Gallatin in
this struggle against the use of federal patronage. Madison concurred
with the President in thinking the proposed Treasury Circular
premature.[45] Nevertheless the Secretary of State made no changes in
the bureaus of his department, although these were full of zealous
Federalists. Not even the chief clerk, Jacob Wagner, was removed, as
bitter a Federalist as any in the United States, whose presence in the
office was a disadvantage if not a danger to the Government. When Duane
came to Washington, after the New York removals had begun, and urged
sweeping measures of change, he was coldly received at the State and
Treasury departments,[46] which gave him contracts for supplying paper,
but declined to give him offices; and Duane returned to Philadelphia
bearing toward Madison and Gallatin a grudge which he never forgot,
and which, like that of Burr, was destined in due time to envenom a
party schism.
Although these disputes over patronage seemed to require more of the
President’s thoughts than were exacted by the study of general policy,
the task of government was not severe. After passing the month of April
at Monticello, Jefferson was able to rest there during the months of
August and September, leaving Washington July 30. During six months,
from April to October, he wrote less than was his custom, and his
letters gave no clear idea of what was passing in his mind. In regard
to his principles of general policy he was singularly cautious.
“I am sensible,” he wrote, March 31,[47] “how far I should fall
short of effecting all the reformation which reason could suggest
and experience approve, were I free to do whatever I thought best;
but when we reflect how difficult it is to move or inflect the great
machine of society, how impossible to advance the notions of a
whole people suddenly to ideal right, we see the wisdom of Solon’s
remark,--that no more good must be attempted than the nation can bear,
and that all will be chiefly to reform the waste of public money, and
thus drive away the vultures who prey upon it, and improve some little
on old routines.”
“Levees are done away,” he wrote to Macon;[48] “the first
communication to the next Congress will be, like all subsequent ones,
by message, to which no answer will be expected; the diplomatic
establishment in Europe will be reduced to three ministers; the
army is undergoing a chaste reformation; the navy will be reduced
to the legal establishment by the last of this month; agencies in
every department will be revised; we shall push you to the utmost in
economizing.”
His followers were not altogether pleased with his moderation of
tone. They had expected a change of system more revolutionary than
was implied by a pledge to do away with the President’s occasional
receptions and his annual speech to Congress, to cut off three
second-rate foreign missions, to chasten the army, and to execute
a Federalist law about the navy, or even to revise agencies. John
Randolph wrote, July 18, to his friend Joseph Nicholson, a member from
Maryland:[49] “In this quarter we think that the great work is only
begun, and that without a substantial reform we shall have little
reason to congratulate ourselves on the mere change of men.”
The task of devising what Randolph called a substantial reform fell
almost wholly upon Gallatin, who arrived in Washington, May 13, and set
himself to the labor of reducing to a system the theories with which he
had indoctrinated his party. Through the summer and autumn he toiled
upon this problem, which the President left in his hands. When October
arrived, and the whole Cabinet assembled at length in Washington,
under the President’s eye, to prepare business for the coming session,
Gallatin produced his scheme. First, he required common consent to the
general principle that payment of debt should take precedence of all
other expenditure. This axiom of Republicanism was a party dogma too
well settled to be disputed. Debt, taxes, wars, armies, and navies were
all pillars of corruption; but the habit of mortgaging the future to
support present waste was the most fatal to freedom and purity., Having
fixed this broad principle, which was, as Gallatin afterward declared,
the principal object of bringing him into office,[50] a harder task
remained; for if theory required prompt payment of the debt, party
interest insisted with still greater energy on reduction of taxes; and
the revenue was not sufficient to satisfy both demands. The customs
duties were already low. The highest _ad valorem_ rate was twenty per
cent; the average was but thirteen. Reduction to a lower average,
except in the specific duties on salt, coffee, and sugar, was asked
by no one; and Gallatin could not increase the rates even to relieve
taxation elsewhere. Whatever relief the party required must come from
another source.
The Secretary began by fixing the limits of his main scheme. Assuming
four Administrations, or sixteen years, as a fair allowance of time
for extinguishing the debt, he calculated the annual sum which would
be required for the purpose, and found that $7,300,000 applied every
year to the payment of interest and principal would discharge the whole
within the year 1817. Setting aside $7,300,000 as an annual fund to be
devoted by law to this primary object, he had to deal only with such
revenue as should remain.
The net receipts from customs he calculated at $9,500,000 for the
year, and from lands and postage at $450,000; or $9,950,000 in all.
Besides this sum of less than ten million dollars, internal taxes,
and especially the tax on whiskey-stills, produced altogether about
$650,000; thus raising the income to $10,600,000, or $3,300,000 in
excess of the fund set apart for the debt.
If taxation were to be reduced at all, political reasons required that
the unpopular excise should come first in order of reduction; but if
the excise were abolished, the other internal taxes were not worth
retaining. Led by the wish to relieve government and people from the
whole system of internal taxation, Gallatin consented to sacrifice the
revenue it produced. After thus parting with internal revenue to the
amount of $650,000, and setting aside $7,300,000 for the debt, he could
offer to the other heads of departments only $2,650,000 for the entire
expenses of government. Gallatin expected the army to be supported on
$930,000, while the navy was to be satisfied with $670,000,--a charge
of less than thirty-three cents a head on the white population.
Of all standards by which the nature of Jeffersonian principles could
be gauged, none was so striking as this. The highest expenditure
of the Federalists in 1799, when preparing for war with France and
constructing a navy and an army, was six million dollars for these
two branches. Peace with France being made in 1800, the expenses of
army and navy would naturally fall to a normal average of about three
million dollars. At a time when the population was small, scattered,
and surrounded by enemies, civilized and savage; when the Mississippi
River, the Gulf region, and the Atlantic coast as far as the St. Mary’s
were in the hands of Spain, which was still a great power; when English
frigates were impressing American seamen by scores, and Napoleon
Bonaparte was suspected of having bought Louisiana; when New York might
be ransomed by any line-of-battle ship, and not a road existed by which
a light field-piece could be hauled to the Lakes or to a frontier
fort,--at such a moment, the people could hardly refuse to pay sixty
cents apiece for providing some protection against dangers which time
was to prove as serious as any one then imagined them to be. Doubtless
the republican theory required the States to protect their own coasts
and to enforce order within their own jurisdiction; but the States were
not competent to act in matters which concerned the nation, and the
immense territory, the Lakes, and the Mississippi and Mobile rivers,
belonged within the exclusive sphere of national government.
Gallatin cut down by one half the natural estimate. That he should have
done this was not surprising, for he was put in office to reduce debt
and taxation, not to manage the army and navy; but he could hardly
have expected that all his colleagues should agree with him,--yet his
estimates were accepted by the Cabinet without serious objection, and
adopted as a practical scale of governmental expenditure. Encouraged
by the announcement of peace in Europe, the Secretaries of War and of
the Navy consented to reduce their establishments to suit Gallatin’s
plans, until the entire expense of both branches for the future was
to be brought within $1,900,000; while Gallatin on his side made some
concessions which saved his estimates from error. The army bore the
brunt of these economies, and was reduced to about three thousand men.
The navy was not so great a sufferer, and its calculated reductions
were less certain.
Gallatin’s scheme partially warranted the claim which Jefferson in
his old age loved to put forward, that he had made a revolution in
the principles of the government. Yet apart from the question of its
success, its rigor was less extreme than it appeared to be. Doubtless,
such excessive economy seemed to relieve government of duties as well
as responsibilities. Congress and the Executive appeared disposed to
act as a machine for recording events, without guiding or controlling
them. The army was not large enough to hold the Indians in awe; the
navy was not strong enough to watch the coasts; and the civil service
was nearly restricted to the collection and disbursement of revenue.
The country was at the mercy of any Power which might choose to
rob it, and the President announced in advance that he relied for
safety upon the soundness of his theory that every foreign country
felt a vital interest in retaining American commerce and the use of
American harbors. All this was true, and the experiment might be called
revolutionary, considering the condition of the world; nevertheless
there were shades of difference in the arguments on which it rested.
Even Jefferson wavered in asserting the permanence of the system,
while Gallatin avowedly looked forward to the time when diminished
debt and increasing resources would allow wider scope of action.
Viewed from this standpoint, the system was less rigid than it seemed,
since a period of not more than five or six years was needed to obtain
Gallatin’s object.
By an unlucky chance the system never became fully established. The
first step in foreign affairs taken by the new Administration plunged
it into difficulties which soon forced Congress to reimpose taxation
to the full amount of the internal taxes. Jefferson had not been three
months in power before he found himself, by no fault of his own or of
his predecessors, at war with a country against which he was forced
to use in his own defence some of those frigates, the construction
of which had been vehemently resisted by his party, and which he was
anxious only to leave under the care of a score of marines at the
Navy Yard in the Eastern Branch of the Potomac. From time immemorial
the northern coast of Africa had been occupied by a swarm of pirates
who played a dramatic part in the politics and literature of Europe.
They figured in the story of Don Quixote as in the lies of Scapin, and
enlivened with picturesque barbarism the semi-civilization of European
habits and manners through centuries of slow growth. The four Barbary
Powers, Morocco, Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli, lived by blackmail. So
little sense of common interest had the nations of Europe, that they
submitted to the demands of these petty Mahometan despots, and paid
yearly sums of money, or an equivalent in ships, arms, or warlike
stores, in return for which the Barbary Powers permitted them to trade
with the ports on the coast and protected their ships and men. The
European consuls at Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli intrigued to impose
heavier conditions on rival commerce. Following the established custom,
the United States had bought treaties with all four Powers, and had
during the past ten years appropriated altogether more than two million
dollars for the account of ransoms, gifts, and tribute. The treaty with
Tripoli, negotiated in 1796, had been observed about three years and
a half. The Pacha received under it from the United States Government
$83,000 in cash and presents. He suddenly demanded more, and when his
demand was refused, May 14, 1801, he ordered the consular flagstaff to
be cut down, which was his formal declaration of war.
[Illustration: THE STATES OF NORTH AFRICA
From Map by S. Boulton, Published May 12th, 1800.
(Jeffery’s American Atlas, London, 1800.)]
The conduct of the Dey of Algiers was almost as threatening to
peace as that of the Pacha of Tripoli; for the Dey compelled Captain
Bainbridge to put his frigate, the “George Washington,” under Algerine
colors and carry an embassy and presents to the Grand Sultan. Rather
than take the responsibility of bringing on a war, Bainbridge and
Consul O’Brian submitted, under protest, to this indignity; and in
October, 1800, the United States flag was first seen at Constantinople
in this extraordinary company. At the same time, Algiers, Tunis, and
Morocco were clamorous for money, and gave reason to fear that they
would make common cause with Tripoli in the war which the Pacha was
declaring.
Under these circumstances, without knowing that war had actually begun,
Samuel Smith, as acting Secretary of the Navy, in May, 1801, sent out
Commodore Dale in command of a squadron of three frigates and an armed
schooner, the “Enterprise,” with orders to meet force by force. On her
way to Malta, August 1, the “Enterprise” met and destroyed a Tripolitan
corsair. Commodore Dale blockaded Tripoli; and his appearance in the
Mediterranean inspired Tunis and Algiers with so much respect as
caused them to leave the Pacha of Tripoli to his fate, and to accept
the presents which their treaties stipulated. Much injury to American
commerce was prevented; but Gallatin found a war and a navy fastened on
his resources.
That enlightened governments like those of England, France, and Spain
should rob and plunder like an Algerine pirate was in theory not
to be admitted; but even if they did so, a few frigates could not
prevent them, and therefore Jefferson, without regard to this partial
failure of his system, prepared to meet Congress with confidence in his
reforms.