THE Bill repealing the new Judiciary Act, having passed the Senate,
February 3, was taken into consideration by the House, in Committee of
the Whole, February 4, and caused the chief debate of the session. By
common consent Giles and Bayard were accepted as the champions of the
two parties, and their speeches were taken as the official arguments
on either side. The men were equal to their tasks. For ten years
William Branch Giles had been the most active leader of the extreme
Republicans. A Virginian, born in 1762, he began his career as a Member
of Congress in 1791, by opposing the creation of a national bank. In
1793 he distinguished himself by an attack on Secretary Hamilton,
charging him with peculation. In 1796 he led the opposition to Jay’s
Treaty. After opposing Washington’s administration with consistency and
severity during six years, he retired from Congress in 1798 in order to
oppose Washington’s successor with more effect in the legislature of
Virginia. With James Madison, John Taylor of Caroline, and Wilson Cary
Nicholas, he had taken an active part in the Resolutions of 1798, and
his remarks in the debate of December, 1798, showed that he carried the
extreme conclusions of the Virginia school to their extreme practical
consequences.[61] He “said that the measures of our present government
tended to the establishment of monarchy, limited or absolute.... If
... the government were a social compact, he pronounced monarchy to be
near at hand, the symptoms and causes of which he particularly pointed
out; and concluded that the State legislatures alone, at this time,
prevented monarchy.” In language perfectly intelligible to his friends
he hinted that his party “had no arms, but they would find arms.” Even
men naturally benevolent, like Jefferson, could rarely resist the
conviction that the objects of political opponents were criminal, but
Giles exceeded every prominent partisan on either side by the severity
of his imputations. As late as June, 1801, he wrote from Richmond to
President Jefferson:[62] “The ejected party is now almost universally
considered as having been employed, in conjunction with Great Britain,
in a scheme for the total destruction of the liberties of the people.”
No man in the Union was more cordially detested by the Federalists;
and even between parties that held each other in little or no respect,
few men of so much eminence were so little respected as Giles. The
dislike and distrust were mutual. Giles’s nature was capable of no
pleasure greater than that of exasperating his Federalist opponents;
and he rarely enjoyed a better opportunity for irritation than on
Feb. 18, 1802, when, with a great majority behind him, and with the
consciousness of triumph attained, he broke into the dull debate on the
Judiciary Bill.
Both sides were weary of the narrow question whether Congress had the
power to remove Judges by legislation. Whether such a power existed
or not, every one knew that the Republican majority meant to use it,
and the Federalists were chiefly anxious to profit by the odium they
could attach to its abuse. The Federalists, in a character new to
them, posed as the defenders of the Constitution against sacrilegious
attacks; while the Republicans, for the first time in their history
as a party, made light of constitutional objections, and closed their
ears to warnings in which they had themselves hitherto found their
chief rhetorical success. With Giles’s appearance on the floor the
tedious debate started into virulence. He began by insinuating motives,
as though he were still discussing the Alien and Sedition Laws in the
Virginia legislature of 1798: “A great portion of the human mind,” he
began, “has been at all times directed toward monarchy as the best form
of government to enforce obedience and insure the general happiness;
whereas another portion of the human mind has given a preference to
the republican form as best calculated to produce the same end.” On
this difference of opinion the two parties had been founded, the
one wishing “to place in executive hands all the patronage it was
possible to create for the purpose of protecting the President against
the full force of his constitutional responsibility to the people;”
the other contending “that the doctrine of patronage was repugnant
to the opinions and feelings of the people; that it was unnecessary,
expensive, and oppressive; and that the highest energy the government
could possess would flow from the confidence of the mass of the people,
founded upon their own sense of their common interest.” Thus patronage,
or in other words the creation of partial interests for the protection
and support of government, had become the guiding principle of the
Federalists. For this purpose the debt was funded; under cover of an
Indian war, an army was created; under cover of an Algerine war, a
navy was built; to support this system, taxation was extended; and
finally, by availing itself of French depredations on commerce, the
Administration succeeded in pushing all the forms of patronage to an
extreme. When the people at last rebelled, and the Federalists saw
themselves in danger, “it was natural for them to look out for some
department of the government in which they could intrench themselves
in the event of an unsuccessful issue in the election, and continue to
support those favorite principles of irresponsibility which they could
never consent to abandon.”
Whatever amount of truth was contained in these charges against the
Federalists, they had the merit of consistency; they reaffirmed what
had been the doctrine of the party when in opposition; what Jefferson
was saying in private, and what was a sufficient argument not so
much against the circuit judges as against the Federalist Judiciary
altogether; but the position seemed needlessly broad for the support of
the technical argument by which Giles proved the power of Congress in
regard to the measure under discussion:--
“On one side it is contended that the office is the vested property
of the judge, conferred on him by his appointment, and that his good
behavior is the consideration of his compensation; so long, therefore,
as his good behavior exists, so long his office must continue in
consequence of his good behavior; and that his compensation is his
property in virtue of his office, and therefore cannot be taken away
by any authority whatever, although there may be no service for him
to perform. On the other it is contended that the good behavior
is not the consideration upon which the compensation accrues, but
services rendered for the public good; and that if the office is to
be considered as a property, it is a property held in trust for the
benefit of the people, and must therefore be held subject to that
condition of which Congress is the constitutional judge.”
Assuming that the latter view was correct, Giles gave his reasons for
holding that the new Judiciary should be abolished; and the subject led
him into a history of the circumstances under which the Act passed,
at the moment when the House of Representatives was in permanent
session, “in the highest paroxysm of party rage,” disputing over the
choice between Jefferson and Burr as President. He charged that members
of the legislature who voted for the law “were appointed to offices,
not indeed created by the law, the Constitution having wisely guarded
against an effect of that sort, but to judicial offices previously
created by the removal, or what was called the promotion, of judges
from the offices they then held to the offices newly created, and
supplying their places by members of the legislature who voted for the
creation of the new offices.” He showed that the business of the courts
“is now very much declined, and probably will decline still more.”
“Under the view of the subject thus presented, he considered the late
courts as useless and unnecessary, and the expense therefore was to
him highly objectionable. He did not consider it in the nature of
a compensation, for there was no equivalent rendition of service.
He could not help considering it as a tribute for past services; as
a tribute for the zeal displayed by these gentlemen in supporting
principles which the people had denounced.”
Such arguments, if good for the new circuit courts, were still stronger
in their application to the Supreme Court itself. Giles affirmed that
the “principles advanced in opposition ... go to the establishment of a
permanent corporation of individuals invested with ultimate censorial
and controlling power over all the departments of the government,
over legislation, execution, and decision, and irresponsible to the
people.” He believed that these principles were “in direct hostility
with the great principle of representative government.” Undoubtedly
these principles, if they existed anywhere, were strongest, not in
the circuit, but in the Supreme Court; and if any judge was to be
set aside because his appointment might be considered as a reward
for zeal displayed in supporting “principles which the people had
denounced,” Chief-Justice Marshall, the person most likely to exercise
“ultimate censorial and controlling power over all the departments of
government,” was peculiarly subject to suspicion and removal. To no man
had the last President been more indebted, and to no one had he been
more grateful.
Only incidentally, at the close of his speech, Giles advanced a final,
and in his mind fatal, objection to the new courts, “because of their
tendency to produce a gradual demolition of State Courts.” Of all
arguments this seemed to be the most legitimate, for it depended
least on the imputation of evil motives to the Congress which passed
the Act. No one need be supposed criminal for wishing, as was often
admitted, to bring justice to every man’s door; and as little need
any one be blamed for wishing to maintain or to elevate the character
of his State Judiciary. Parties might honestly and wisely differ, and
local interests might widely diverge in a matter so much depending
upon circumstances; but no argument seemed to satisfy Giles unless it
carried an implication of criminality against his opponents.
Giles’s speech was such as an orator would select to answer, and James
Asheton Bayard could fairly claim the right to call himself an orator.
Born in Philadelphia, in 1767, Bayard was five years younger than
Giles, and had followed the opposite path in politics. Without being
an extreme Federalist, he had been since 1796 a distinguished member
of the Federalist party in Congress, and had greatly contributed to
moderate the extravagances of his friends. In the style of personality
which Giles affected, Bayard was easily a master. Virulence against
virulence, aristocracy had always the advantage over democracy; for the
aristocratic orator united distinct styles of acrimony, and the style
of social superiority was the most galling. Giles affected democratic
humility to the last, and partly for that reason never became a
master even of invective; while John Randolph, finding the attitude
of a democrat unsuited for his rhetoric, abandoned it, and seemed to
lose his mental balance in the intoxication of his recovered social
superiority. Giles’s charges, by an opposite illusion, seemed to crawl;
his contempt resembled fear; his democratic virtues crouched before the
aristocratic insolence they reproved. Bayard appeared to carry with him
the sympathy of all that was noble in human character when, taking the
floor as Giles sat down, he turned on the Virginian with a dignity of
retort which, whatever might be its value as argument, cut the deeper
because its justice could not be denied.
Jefferson’s administration was not yet a year old; the Federalists had
twelve long years abounding in mistakes and misfortunes to defend, and
Giles’s arraignment embraced the whole. Bayard accepted the challenge,
and his speech, too historical for compression, varied between long
periods of defence and brief intervals of attack. The defence belonged
to past history; the attack concerned the actual moment, and need alone
be noticed here. He began by refusing belief that Giles ever seriously
felt the fear of monarchy he expressed; he was led by other motives:--
“I pray to God I may be mistaken in the opinions I entertain as to the
designs of gentlemen to whom I am opposed. Those designs I believe
hostile to the powers of this government. State pride extinguishes
a national sentiment. Whatever power is taken from this government
is given to the States. The ruins of this government aggrandize
the States. There are States which are too proud to be controlled,
whose sense of greatness and resource renders them indifferent to
our protection, and induces a belief that if no general government
existed, their influence would be more extensive and their importance
more conspicuous. There are gentlemen who make no secret of an extreme
point of depression to which the government is to be sunk. To that
point we are rapidly progressing.”
The charge was certainly emphatic, and deserved as clear an answer from
Giles as Bayard gave to the charge of monarchical tendencies. On the
constitutional point involved in the Bill before the House, Bayard was
equally distinct:--
“The point on which I rely is that you can do no act which impairs
the independence of a judge. When gentlemen assert that the office
may be vacated notwithstanding the incumbency of a judge, do they
consider that they beg the very point which is in controversy? The
office cannot be vacated without violating the express provision of
the Constitution in relation to the tenure.... The second plain,
unequivocal provision on this subject is that the compensation of the
judge shall not be diminished during the term he continues in office.
This provision is directly levelled at the power of the legislature:
they alone could reduce the salary. Could this provision have any
other design than to place the judge out of the power of Congress? You
cannot reduce a part of the compensation, but you may extinguish the
whole. What is the sum of this notable reasoning? You cannot remove
the judge from the office, but you may take the office from the judge;
you cannot take the compensation from the judge, but you may separate
the judge from the compensation. If your Constitution cannot resist
reasoning like this, then indeed is it waste paper.”
When Bayard reached Giles’s favorite doctrine that patronage was a
Federalist system, and the charge that two senators who voted for
the Judiciary Act of 1801 were rewarded by the offices vacated in
consequence of promotions to circuit judgeships, he produced a true
oratorical sensation by a retort that sank deep into the public
memory:--
“The case to which I refer carries me once more to the scene of
the Presidential election. I should not have introduced it into
this debate, had it not been called up by the honorable member from
Virginia. In that scene I had my part; it was a part not barren of
incident, and which has left an impression which cannot easily depart
from my recollection. I know who were rendered important characters,
either from the possession of personal means or from the accident of
political situation. And now, Sir, let me ask the honorable member
what his reflections and belief will be when he observes that every
man on whose vote the event of the election hung has since been
distinguished by presidential favor. I fear, Sir, I shall violate
the decorum of parliamentary proceeding in the mentioning of names,
but I hope the example which has been set me will be admitted as an
excuse. Mr. Charles Pinckney of South Carolina was not a member of the
House, but he was one of the most active, efficient, and successful
promoters of the election of the present chief magistrate. It was
well ascertained that the votes of South Carolina were to turn the
equal balance of the scales. The zeal and industry of Mr. Pinckney
had no bounds; the doubtful politics of South Carolina were decided,
and her votes cast in the scale of Mr. Jefferson. Mr. Pinckney
has since been appointed Minister Plenipotentiary to the Court of
Madrid,--an appointment as high and honorable as any within the gift
of the Executive. I will not deny that this preferment is the reward
of talents and services, although, Sir, I have never yet heard of
the talents or services of Mr. Charles Pinckney. In the House of
Representatives I know what was the value of the vote of Mr. Claiborne
of Tennessee; the vote of a State was in his hands. Mr. Claiborne has
since been raised to the high dignity of Governor of the Mississippi
Territory. I know how great, and how greatly felt, was the importance
of the vote of Mr. Linn of New Jersey. The delegation of the State
consists of five members; two of the delegation were decidedly for Mr.
Jefferson, two were decidedly for Mr. Burr. Mr. Linn was considered as
inclining to one side, but still doubtful; both parties looked up to
him for the vote of New Jersey. He gave it to Mr. Jefferson; and Mr.
Linn has since had the profitable office of supervisor of his district
conferred upon him. Mr. Lion of Vermont was in this instance an
important man; he neutralized the vote of Vermont; his absence alone
would have given the vote of a State to Mr. Burr. It was too much to
give an office to Mr. Lion,--his character was low; but Mr. Lion’s
son has been handsomely provided for in one of the Executive offices.
I shall add to the catalogue but the name of one more gentleman, Mr.
Edward Livingston of New York. I knew well--full well I knew--the
consequence of this gentleman. His means were not limited to his own
vote; nay, I always considered more than the vote of New York within
his power. Mr. Livingston has been made the Attorney for the District
of New York; the road of preferment has been opened to him, and
his brother has been raised to the distinguished place of Minister
Plenipotentiary to the French Republic.”
Such charges would have caused little feeling at any subsequent period,
but the Republican party was the first opposition that gained power
in the United States, and hitherto it had believed in its own virtue.
Such a state of things could never occur again, for only a new country
could be inexperienced in politics; but the cynical indifference with
which Europe looked on while patriots were bought, was as yet unknown
to Jefferson’s friends. They were honest; they supposed themselves to
have crushed a corrupt system, and to have overthrown in especial the
influence of Executive patronage upon Congress. Men like Gallatin,
Giles, Randolph, Macon, Nicholson, Stanford, and John Taylor of
Caroline listened to Bayard’s catalogue of Executive favors as though
it were a criminal indictment. They knew that he might have said more,
had he been deeper in Executive secrets. Not only had he failed to
include all the rewards given to Jefferson’s friends, but he omitted
the punishments inflicted on those who were believed to be Jefferson’s
enemies. He did not know that Theodorus Bailey, another of Burr’s
friends who had voted for Jefferson, was soon to be made postmaster of
New York, while Burr himself was not only refused the appointment of
Matthew L. Davis, but was to be condemned without a trial.
The acrimony which Giles’s tongue thus threw into the debate continued
to the end of the session, but had no deeper effect than to make the
majority cautious. They were content to show that the Constitution
did not expressly forbid the act they meant to perform. In truth the
legality of the act depended on the legitimacy of the motive. Of
all the root-and-branch Virginians, John Randolph was perhaps the
most extreme; and his speech of February 20 laid down an honest
principle of action. “It is not on account of the paltry expense of the
establishment that I want to put it down,” he protested; and with still
more energy he said, “I am free to declare that if the intent of this
Bill is to get rid of the judges, it is a perversion of your power to a
base purpose; it is an unconstitutional act.”
As a matter of expediency and public convenience, no one seriously
denied that the Federalists were altogether in the right. The
introduction of railways and steamboats greatly altered the problem of
judicial organization; but no system could have been better adapted
to its time and purposes than that of 1801. The only solid argument
brought against it was that it attained its object too completely,
bringing Federal justice to every man’s door, and removing every
difficulty or objection to suing in Federal courts. There was truth
in the complaint that it thus placed the State judiciaries at a
disadvantage. Beyond and above this, the controversy involved another
question of far-reaching consequences which the Republicans were too
timid to avow. A true democrat might have said openly that he wanted
an elective judiciary, or would have insisted that the whole judiciary
must be made subject to removal by the legislature. In neither of
these opinions was anything disgraceful or improper; yet such was the
dread of Federalist and conservative outcry, that although many of the
Republican speakers went to the verge of the avowal, none dared make
the issue.
Their timidity cost the Virginians dear. They knew, and never ceased
to complain, that power grew mechanically; and only their want of
experience excused them for over-confidence in the strength of their
own virtue. They saw that the only part of Federalist centralization
still remaining beyond their control was the judiciary; and they knew
that if the judiciary were allowed to escape them in their first fervor
of Republican virtue, they never could grapple with it after their own
hands had learned the use of centralized power and felt the charm of
office. Instead of acting, they temporized, threatened without daring
to strike, and were made to appear like secret conspirators, planning
what they feared to avow.
The repeal of the Judiciary Act passed the House, March 3, by a party
vote of fifty-nine to thirty-two; but the Federalists were far from
feeling themselves beaten. They had measured the strength of the
majority, and felt that the revolutionary impulse was exhausted. As the
Federalists grew bolder, the Republicans grew more timid. They passed
a supplementary Judiciary Act, to quiet complaint and to prevent the
Supreme Court from holding its customary autumn term, lest Marshall
should declare the abolition of the circuit courts unconstitutional.
The evidences of timidity were not confined to judiciary measures. On
no subject had the Republicans expressed stronger convictions than
against the navy; yet when Michael Leib of Pennsylvania, in the heat of
the judiciary debate, moved for a committee to consider the question
of abolishing the navy, his motion was allowed to lie on the table
until Roger Griswold, an extreme Connecticut Federalist, called it
up, March 5, in a spirit of defiance. The House sustained Griswold,
and took up the Resolution; whereat Leib withdrew his own motion, and
evaded the issue he had challenged. In regard to another Federalist
creation which had been the subject of Republican attacks, a similar
failure occurred. The mint cost nearly as much as the circuit courts,
and accomplished less. Since its foundation it had coined, in gold,
silver, and copper, only $3,000,000, at a cost of nearly $300,000;
while a gold or silver coin of the United States was still a rare
sight. The Republican party when in opposition had opposed the mint
as a monarchical institution,--unnecessary, expensive, and symbolic
of centralized power. Giles accordingly moved, January 29, that the
Act under which it existed should be repealed. In a speech, February
8, he avowed his hostility to the establishment from the beginning;
he thought none but self-supporting establishments should exist.
“There is a difference,” said he, “between this and other countries.
Other nations need to coin their own money; it is not with them the
general but the partial good; it is aggrandizement of individuals,
the trappings of royalty. Here, it is true, you established a mint,
you have raised armies and fleets, to create an Executive influence;
but what do the people say now? They send men here now to govern,
who shall not govern for themselves but for the people.” This was
party doctrine. John Randolph adopted it in principle, asserting that
nineteen-twentieths of the silver in circulation was Spanish-milled
dollars or their parts, and that sovereignty was no more affected by
using foreign coin than by using foreign cordage or cannon. The House
accepted these views; Giles brought in his Bill for abolishing the
mint; and after a short debate the House passed it, April 26, without a
division. On the same day the Senate, quietly, without discussion or a
call of yeas and nays, rejected it.
Perhaps the limit of Virginian influence was shown with most emphasis
in the fate of a fugitive-slave Bill reported Dec. 18, 1801, by a
committee of which Joseph Nicholson was chairman. The Bill imposed a
fine of five hundred dollars on any one who should employ a strange
negro without advertising in two newspapers a description of the man.
Every free negro in the North must under this law carry about him a
certificate of his freedom. To this sweeping exercise of a “centralized
despotism” the Northern democrats objected, and, with only half-a-dozen
exceptions, voted against it, although Bayard and several Southern
Federalists joined Giles, Michael Leib, and John Randolph in its
support. The Bill was rejected, January 18, by a vote of forty-six to
forty-three.
Before the session closed, sensible Federalists were reassured, and the
Administration was glad to repose on such triumphs as had been won.
“The President’s party in Congress,” wrote Bayard to Hamilton,[63]
“is much weaker than you would be led to judge from the printed state
of the votes. Here we plainly discern that there is no confidence,
nor the smallest attachment prevails among them. The spirit which
existed at the beginning of the session is entirely dissipated; a
more rapid and radical change could not have been anticipated. An
occasion is only wanting for Virginia to find herself abandoned by all
her auxiliaries, and she would be abandoned upon the ground of her
inimical principles to an efficient federal government.”
The general legislation of the year showed no partisan character. A
naturalization law was adopted, re-establishing the term of five years’
residence as a condition of citizenship,--a measure recommended by the
annual Message. A new apportionment Act was passed, fixing the ratio
of Congressional representation at one member for 33,000 citizens.
During the next ten years the House was to consist of one hundred and
forty-one members. The military peace establishment was fixed at three
regiments, one of artillery and two of infantry, comprising in all
about three thousand men, under one brigadier-general. By Sections
26 and 27 of the Act, approved March 16, 1802, the President was
authorized to establish a corps of engineers, to be stationed at West
Point in the State of New York, which should constitute a military
academy; and the Secretary of War was authorized to procure the
necessary apparatus for the institution. Great as the influence of
this new establishment was upon the army, its bearing on the general
education of the people was still greater, for the government thus
assumed the charge of introducing the first systematic study of science
in the United States.
Perhaps the most important legislation of the year was an Act approved
April 30, which authorized the people of Ohio to form a Constitution
and enter the Union; for not only was the admission of Ohio a
formidable increase of power to the Northern democracy, but Gallatin
inserted into the law a contract, which bound the State and nation
to set aside the proceeds of a certain portion of the public lands
for the use of schools and for the construction of roads between the
new State and the seaboard. This principle, by which education and
internal improvements were taken under the protection of Congress, was
a violation of State-rights theories, against which, in after years,
the strict constructionists protested; but in this first year of their
sway Gallatin and the Northern democrats were allowed to manage their
own affairs without interference. John Randolph would not vote for the
admission of a new State, but Giles and Nicholson gave their votes for
the bill, which passed without a murmur.
Gallatin’s influence carried another point, more annoying to the
Southern Republicans, although less serious. After years of wrangling,
Georgia surrendered to the United States government all right and
title to the territory which was afterward to become the States of
Alabama and Mississippi. This immense region, shut from the Gulf of
Mexico by the Spaniards, who owned every river-mouth, was inhabited
by powerful Indian tribes, of whom the Georgians stood in terror. The
Creeks and Cherokees, Choctaws and Chickasaws, owned the land, and were
wards of the United States government. No one could say what was the
value of Georgia’s title, for it depended on her power to dispossess
the Indians; but however good the title might be, the State would have
been fortunate to make it a free gift to any authority strong enough to
deal with the Creeks and Cherokees alone. In the year 1795, ignoring
the claims of the national government, the Georgia Legislature sold its
rights over twenty million acres of Indian land to four land-companies
for the gross sum of five hundred thousand dollars. With one exception,
every member of the Legislature appeared to have a pecuniary interest
in the transaction; yet no one could say with certainty that the
title was worth more than half a million dollars, or indeed was worth
anything to the purchasers, unless backed by the power of the United
States government, which was not yet the case. Nevertheless, the
people of Georgia, like the people of Massachusetts and Pennsylvania,
being at the moment in the fever of land-speculation, partly because
they thought the land too cheap, partly because they believed their
representatives to have been bribed, rose in anger against their
Legislature and elected a new one, which declared the sales “null and
void,” burned the Yazoo Act, as it was called, in the public square of
Louisville, and called a State Convention which made the repealing Act
a part of the Constitution.
This series of measures completed the imbroglio. No man could say to
whom the lands belonged. President Washington interposed on the part of
the central government; the Indians quietly kept possession; hundreds
of individuals in the Eastern States who had bought land-warrants
from the Yazoo companies, claimed their land; while Georgia ignored
President Washington, the Indians, the claimants, and the law,
insisting that as a sovereign State she had the right to sell her own
land, and to repudiate that sale for proper cause. In this case the
State maintained that the sale was vitiated by fraud.
Doubtless the argument had force. If a sovereign State had not the
power to protect itself from its own agents, it had, in joining the
Union, entered into a relation different from anything hitherto
supposed. Georgia put the utmost weight on the Rescinding Act as a
measure of State-rights, and the true Virginia school made common
cause with Georgia. Republicans who believed in the principles of 1798
considered the maintenance of the Rescinding Act a vital issue.
At length Congress took the matter in hand. Madison, Gallatin, and Levi
Lincoln were appointed commissioners to make a settlement; and Senator
James Jackson, the anti-Yazoo leader, supported by his colleague
Senator Baldwin and by Governor Milledge, met them on behalf of
Georgia,--a formidable array of high officials, whose whole authority
was needed to give their decision weight. April 24, 1802, they reached
a settlement so liberal to Georgia that Jackson and his associates
took the risk of yielding more than they liked to concede. The western
boundary was fixed to please the State; an immediate cession of land
was obtained from the Indians, and the United States undertook to
extinguish at their own expense, as early as they could reasonably do
it, the Indian title to all lands within the limits of Georgia; the sum
of $1,250,000 was to be paid to the State from the first net proceeds
of land-sales; the ceded territory was to be admitted as a State,
with slavery, whenever its population should reach sixty thousand;
and in consideration for these advantages the Georgians unwillingly
agreed that five million acres should be set aside for the purpose
of compromising claims. The commissioners did not venture to affirm
the legality of the Yazoo sale, but, while expressing the opinion
that “the title of the claimants cannot be supported,” declared that
“the interest of the United States, the tranquillity of those who may
hereafter inhabit that territory, and various equitable considerations
which may be urged in favor of most of the present claimants, render
it expedient to enter into a compromise on reasonable terms.” With
this concession to the principle of State-rights, the Georgians
were appeased, and the commissioners hoped that all parties would be
satisfied. The brunt of the negotiation fell upon Gallatin; but Madison
found no difficulty in giving his support to the compromise.
These two measures greatly affected the Government and increased its
power. The admission of Ohio into the Union gave two more senators to
the Administration, and the acquisition of the southwestern territory
relieved it from an annoying conflict of authority. Jefferson was
henceforward better able to carry out his humane policy toward the
Indians,--a policy which won him praise from some of his bitterest
enemies; while Gallatin turned his energies toward developing the
public-land system, in which he had, when in opposition, taken active
interest. The machinery of government worked more easily every day.