A HISTORY OF
THE AMERICAN PEOPLE
BY
WOODROW WILSON, PH.D., LITT.D., LL.D.
IN FIVE VOLUMES
VOL. III.
The Founding of the Government
[Illustration: JAMES MADISON]
A HISTORY OF
THE AMERICAN PEOPLE
BY
WOODROW WILSON, PH.D., LITT.D., LL.D.
PRESIDENT OF PRINCETON UNIVERSITY
ILLUSTRATED WITH PORTRAITS, MAPS,
PLANS, FACSIMILES, RARE PRINTS,
CONTEMPORARY VIEWS, ETC.
IN FIVE VOLUMES
VOL. III.
[Illustration]
NEW YORK AND LONDON
HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
MCMVII
Copyright, 1901, 1902, by WOODROW WILSON.
Copyright, 1901, 1902, by HARPER & BROTHERS.
_All rights reserved._
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. BETWEEN WAR AND PEACE 1
II. FOUNDING A FEDERAL GOVERNMENT 38
III. A NATION IN THE MAKING 116
IV. CRITICAL CHANGES 232
APPENDIX 293
NOTES ON ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
JAMES MADISON _Frontispiece_
SIR HENRY CLINTON.—Reproduced from an old steel engraving after
a painting by Smart 3
RODNEY TRIUMPHANT. FROM GILLRAY’S CARICATURE UPON THE OCCASION
OF SIR GEORGE RODNEY’S VICTORY OVER ADMIRAL DE GRASSE IN THE
WEST INDIES.—Reproduced from the print in the New York Public
Library (Lenox Building). This signal victory of Rodney over
de Grasse was considered the most important battle of the
century, and as a reward for his services Rodney was raised to
the peerage. The print shows Rodney trampling on the French
flag while receiving de Grasse’s sword. In the background are
sailors bringing ashore the treasure-chests, while above Rodney
is seen the Viscount’s coronet, which never reached his head 5
YALE COLLEGE AND CHAPEL, 1786.—Reproduced from an old print in
the library at Yale University, New Haven, Conn. 7
HENRY SEYMOUR CONWAY.—Reproduced from a print in the _European
Magazine_, 1782 9
NORTH SIDE OF WALL STREET, NEW YORK, 1785.—Redrawn from an old
print 10
LORD SHELBURNE.—Reproduced from an old steel engraving 11
SOUTH CAROLINA CURRENCY.—From the original in the New York
Public Library (Lenox Building) 13
GENERAL CARLETON’S RETURN OF REFUGEES.—From _The Memorial
History of New York City_ 14
SIR GUY CARLETON.—Redrawn from an engraving in the _Political
Magazine_, 1782 15
TITLE-PAGE OF BURKE’S “CONSIDERATIONS.”—Reproduced from the
original in the library of Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass. 17
COUNT DE VERGENNES.—Reproduced from an engraving by Vangelisti,
after the painting by Callet, in the New York Public Library
(Lenox Building) 19
JOHN JAY.—From a painting by Gilbert Stuart 21
RICHARD HENRY LEE.—From the painting by C. W. Peale, in
Independence Hall, Philadelphia, Pa. 23
TORY REFUGEES ON THEIR WAY TO CANADA.—From a painting by Howard
Pyle 25
MOUNT VERNON, THE HOME OF GEORGE WASHINGTON.—From a recent
photograph 27
A POLITICAL DISCUSSION.—From a painting by Howard Pyle 29
GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON’S COACH AND FOUR.—Redrawn from an old
print 30
ROBERT MORRIS.—From the painting by Gilbert Stuart 31
ALEXANDER HAMILTON.—From the portrait by Weimar, in the
Governor’s Room, New York City Hall _Facing p._ 32
FACSIMILE OF CONTINENTAL BUDGET, 1786.—From the _MS. Reports_
of the Board of Treasury, in the Emmet Collection, New York
Public Library (Lenox Building) 33
MAP OF NORTH AMERICA.—Showing the boundaries according to the
proposals of the Court of France 35
ALONG THE WATER FRONT, NEW YORK, ABOUT 1780.—From a painting by
Howard Pyle 39
THE BURIAL OF BRADDOCK.—From a painting by Howard Pyle 41
FRAUNCE’S TAVERN IN 1783.—From Wilson’s _Washington_ 43
ADDRESS OF RETURNED CITIZENS, NEW YORK, 1783.—From _The
Memorial History of the City of New York_ 44, 45
MAP OF THE UNITED STATES, 1783 47
UNFINISHED PORTRAITS OF THE SIGNERS OF THE TREATY OF PARIS,
1783.—By Benjamin West 50
FACSIMILES OF SIGNATURES TO THE TREATY OF PEACE.—From a
photograph of the original in the State Department at
Washington 52
ROYAL PROCLAMATION OF CESSATION OF HOSTILITIES.—From the
original in the Emmet Collection, New York Public Library
(Lenox Building) 55
SHAYS’S MOB IN POSSESSION OF THE COURT HOUSE.—From a painting
by Howard Pyle 57
MARQUIS DE LAFAYETTE. From an engraving by Jones 59
THOMAS SUMTER.—From an engraving after the painting by C. W.
Peale 63
COUNT DE GRASSE.—From an etching in the Emmet Collection, New
York Public Library (Lenox Building) 65
SPECIMEN OF VIRGINIA CURRENCY.—From a photograph 67
JOHN BLAIR.—From an etching in the Emmet Collection, New York
Public Library (Lenox Building) 69
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS.—From an etching in the Emmet Collection, New
York Public Library (Lenox Building) 70
RUFUS KING.—From a painting by Gilbert Stuart 73
EDMUND RANDOLPH.—From a painting in the Capitol at Richmond 75
GOVERNOR BOWDOIN’S PROCLAMATION.—From the original in the
Massachusetts Historical Society 77
SILHOUETTE OF JAMES BOWDOIN.—From Winsor’s _Narrative and
Critical History of America_ 79
JAMES BOWDOIN.—From the original painting by John Singleton
Copley, in the library at Bowdoin College, Maine 81
OLIVER ELLSWORTH.—From an engraving after a painting by J.
Herring 84
HENRY LAURENS.—From an old English engraving 86
WILLIAM PATTERSON.—From an etching in the Emmet Collection, New
York Public Library (Lenox Building) 88
THOMAS PAINE.—Redrawn from an old print 90
TITLE-PAGE OF “COMMON SENSE.”—From the original in the library
of Harvard University 92
GEORGE WASHINGTON, FROM THE BUST BY ECKSTEIN.—From Wilson’s
_Washington_ 95
JOHN MARSHALL.—From an engraving after a painting by Henry
Inman _Facing p._ 96
THOMSON, THE CLERK OF CONGRESS, ANNOUNCING TO WASHINGTON, AT
MOUNT VERNON, HIS ELECTION TO THE PRESIDENCY.—From a painting
by Howard Pyle 97
INAUGURATION OF WASHINGTON IN NEW YORK.—From a painting by
Howard Pyle 99
THE FIRST PRESIDENTIAL MANSION, AT PEARL AND CHERRY
STREETS.—Redrawn from an old print 101
HENRY KNOX.—From a painting by C. W. Peale 103
CELEBRATION IN NEW YORK ON THE NIGHT OF WASHINGTON’S
INAUGURATION.—From a painting by Howard Pyle 105
GOVERNMENT HOUSE AT THE BATTERY, NEW YORK, 1790.—From Wilson’s
_Washington_ 107
CONGRESS HALL, 1790-1800.—Redrawn from an old print 109
UNITED STATES FRIGATE, 1812.—Redrawn from an old print 111
VIEW OF BROAD STREET AND CITY HALL, NEW YORK, 1780.—Redrawn
from an old print 113
FIRST OHIO CAPITOL, 1801.—Redrawn from an old print 118
STATE CAPITAL OF KENTUCKY, 1796.—Redrawn from an old print 121
MODEL OF A CONESTOGA WAGON.—Redrawn from a print 123
TRANSPORTATION ADVERTISEMENT.—Copied from an old poster 125
A MAIL CARRIER IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.—Redrawn from an old
print 127
FIRST MILL IN OHIO, 1789.—Redrawn from an old print 129
LAND OFFICE OF THE OHIO COMPANY, MARIETTA.—Redrawn from an old
print 130
EDMOND CHARLES GENET.—From _Harper’s Monthly Magazine_ 131
INTERVIEW BETWEEN GENERAL WASHINGTON AND “CITIZEN” GENET.—From
a painting by Howard Pyle 133
A BANQUET TO GENET.—From a painting by Howard Pyle 135
FIRST PUBLIC SCHOOL IN NEW YORK.—Redrawn from an old print 139
FRENCH FORT AT ST. LOUIS.—Redrawn from an old print 141
WASHINGTON’S WRITING TABLE.—From a photograph 142
ALBERT GALLATIN.—Redrawn from an old print 144
IMPRESSMENT OF SEAMEN.—From a painting by Howard Pyle 147
PRINCE TALLEYRAND.—From an old French lithograph 149
ELIAS BOUDINOT.—Redrawn from an old print 151
ANNOUNCEMENT OF THE DEATH OF WASHINGTON.—This announcement of
the death of Washington was printed originally as the leading
editorial in the _New York Gazette and General Advertiser_ 155
ADVERTISEMENT OF FUNERAL OF LIBERTY.—From Sparks’s _The Men Who
Made the Nation_ 157
THOMAS JEFFERSON.—From a painting by Gilbert Stuart, in the Art
Gallery of Bowdoin College, Maine _Facing p._ 160
CHARLES C. PINCKNEY.—Reproduced from an etching in the Emmet
Collection, New York Public Library (Lenox Building) 162
ELI WHITNEY.—Redrawn from an old engraving 165
OLD COURT HOUSE, NEW ORLEANS.—Redrawn from a woodcut in
_Harper’s Monthly Magazine_ 167
VIEW ACROSS THE NORTH RIVER, 1796.—Redrawn from an old print 169
TITLE-PAGE OF A CAMPAIGN DOCUMENT, 1800.—One of several pamphlets
issued violently opposing the election of Thomas Jefferson to
the Presidency of the United States. A copy of this pamphlet is
in the New York Public Library (Lenox Building) 171
WHITNEY’S COTTON GIN.—From a drawing from the original model 173
TITLE-PAGE OF JEFFERSON’S INAUGURAL ADDRESS 175
WILLIAM PINKNEY.—Redrawn from an old engraving 177
THE HAMILTON-BURR DUEL.—From a painting by F. Luis Mora 179
ROBERT R. LIVINGSTON.—Redrawn from an old engraving 181
HAMILTON’S RESIDENCE. THE GRANGE.—Redrawn from an old print 184
EARLY VIEW OF WASHINGTON CITY.—From Higginson’s _History of the
United States_ 186
OLD STATE HOUSE, HARTFORD.—Redrawn from an old print 187
ARCH STREET, PHILADELPHIA, IN 1800.—Redrawn from an old print 189
NEW YORK ABOUT 1800. FROM THE NORTH.—Redrawn from an old print 191
BRYANT’S SATIRE.—From Sparks’s _The Men Who Made the Nation_ 193
NOTICE CONCERNING THE RELIEF OF SAILORS.—From Sparks’s _The Men
Who Made the Nation_ 195
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.—Reproduced from an old engraving 198
AARON BURR.—From a painting by John Vanderlyn, in the library
of the New York Historical Society 201
WESTERN COOKING UTENSILS.—Redrawn from an old print 202
PITTSBURG, 1810.—Redrawn from an old print 203
MONTICELLO. THOMAS JEFFERSON’S RESIDENCE.—From a sketch by
Benson J. Lossing in 1850 205
CINCINNATI IN 1810.—Redrawn from a print in Howe’s _History of
Ohio_ 207
TREMONT STREET, BOSTON, 1800. LOOKING NORTH.—Redrawn from an
old print 208
CINCINNATI, FROM NEWPORT, IN 1812.—From Lossing’s _Field-Book
of the War of 1812_ 209
HENRY CLAY.—From a painting by an unknown artist, in the Long
Island Historical Society 211
WILLIAM HARRIS CRAWFORD.—Redrawn from an old print 213
JOHN RANDOLPH.—From a painting by J. W. Jarvis in 1811 215
DETROIT IN 1815.—Redrawn from an old print 216
THE PORT OF BUFFALO, 1815.—Redrawn from an old print 217
JACKSON’S HEADQUARTERS, NEW ORLEANS.—Redrawn from an old print 219
OLIVER HAZARD PERRY.—Redrawn from an old print 221
BATTLE OF LAKE ERIE.—From a painting by Carlton T. Chapman 222
THOMAS MACDONOUGH.—From a painting by Gilbert Stuart, in the
library of the Century Club, New York 224
HOUSE OF AMERICAN COMMISSIONERS AT GHENT.—Redrawn from an old
print 225
IN THE AMERICAN TRENCHES. BATTLE OF NEW ORLEANS.—From a
painting by F. Luis Mora 226
FACSIMILE OF SIGNATURES TO THE TREATY AT GHENT.—From _The
Memorial History of New York City_ 228
JOSIAH QUINCY.—From a portrait by Gilbert Stuart, in the Museum
of Fine Arts, Boston, Mass. 233
DE WITT CLINTON.—From a painting by Jonathan Trumbull, in the
Chamber of Commerce, New York 235
DANIEL D. TOMPKINS.—From an engraving after a painting by J. W.
Jarvis 239
JAMES WILSON.—From a painting by Wharton after a miniature by
James Peale, in Independence Hall, Philadelphia, Pa. _Facing p._ 240
CUMBERLAND GAP, NEAR WHEELING, VIRGINIA.—From a photograph 241
CANAL BOATS CROSSING THE MOUNTAINS.—From a photograph 244
PRINCE METTERNICH.—From a French engraving 247
CHICAGO IN 1821.—Redrawn from an old print 251
JERSEY CITY IN 1820.—Redrawn from an old print 253
CUMBERLAND ROAD, NEAR WHEELING, VIRGINIA.—Drawn from a photograph 257
THE CAPITOL AT WASHINGTON, 1804.—Redrawn from an old print 259
BUST OF GEORGE CANNING.—From Green’s _History of the English
People_ 262
RICHARD RUSH.—From an engraving after a portrait painted in
London while minister to the British Court 264
REAR VIEW OF THE CAPITOL AT WASHINGTON, 1820.—Redrawn from an
old print 266
GROUND PLAN OF THE CAPITOL, 1825.—From Winsor’s _Narrative and
Critical History of America_ 267
JOHN C. CALHOUN.—Redrawn from an old engraving 269
NORTH END OF CITY HALL PARK, NEW YORK, 1825.—Redrawn from an
old print 271
THOMAS H. BENTON.—From a portrait in the library of Princeton
University 273
THE ADAMS MANSION, QUINCY, MASS.—Redrawn from an old print 275
LOCKS ON THE ERIE CANAL.—From _Harper’s Monthly Magazine_ 277
AUTOGRAPH OF INVITED GUESTS, ERIE CANAL CELEBRATION.—From _The
Memorial History of the City of New York_ 279
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.—From a painting by G. P. A. Healy, in the
Corcoran Gallery, Washington _Facing p._ 280
ST. PAUL’S CHURCH AND BROADWAY, 1831.—From an old lithograph 281
CAMPAIGN POSTER OF 1828 282
TITLE-PAGE OF CALHOUN’S “EXPOSITION.”—A copy of this political
pamphlet is in the New York Public Library (Lenox Building) 284
TITLE-PAGE OF JACKSON’S “PROCLAMATION.”—A copy of an American
issue of this pamphlet is in the New York Public Library (Lenox
Building) 286
ANDREW JACKSON’S FOREST RESIDENCE.—From a sketch by Benson J.
Lossing 288
THE HERMITAGE. RESIDENCE OF GENERAL JACKSON.—From a sketch by
Benson J. Lossing 290
LIST OF MAPS
THE UNITED STATES IN 1783.—Showing claims of the States _Facing p._ 48
MAP OF VOTES IN MIDDLE AND SOUTHERN STATES ON FEDERAL
CONSTITUTION, 1787-89.—With contour lines by Professor
O. G. Libby, of the University of Wisconsin _Facing p._ 78
MAP OF VOTES IN NEW ENGLAND STATES ON FEDERAL CONSTITUTION,
1787-88.—With contour lines by Professor O. G. Libby,
of the University of Wisconsin _Facing p._ 80
THE UNITED STATES, MARCH 4, 1801 _Facing p._ 144
THE UNITED STATES, MARCH 4, 1825 _Facing p._ 288
_The Appendix in this volume is taken by permission from Mr. Howard W.
Preston’s_ Documents Illustrative of American History.
A HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE
CHAPTER I
BETWEEN WAR AND PEACE
The surrender of the Earl of Cornwallis at Yorktown closed the career in
America of the only British general who had shown commanding gifts in
the field. It closed also the revolution itself. The southern campaign
had been undertaken at the wish and upon the plan of Cornwallis. He knew
how pronounced division of opinion was in the South, and how certain a
hold could be got there upon the sympathy of scores of men who could be
of the utmost service to an army in the field. He knew how important it
was to close the southern ports, and particularly the Chesapeake, in
order to shut out the supplies that came steadily in from over sea. He
believed that an effectual blow struck from the south at Virginia, after
the reduction of the far southern ports, would secure for the British
an almost commanding position on the continent. Had Clinton helped him
promptly, instead of grudging him aid; had he been enabled to move
rapidly and in force as he had planned, he might have accomplished his
purpose effectually, even brilliantly. Even as it was, there had been
something very striking about the manner in which he had fought his way
from the far southern coasts to Yorktown: the boldness with which he had
dared to risk all his connections to deliver a blow; the success with
which he had beat off the Americans whenever he was himself personally
in command; the comparative freedom with which he had moved in Virginia,
despite the gathering strength of the forces under Lafayette. It was the
express orders of Clinton, his superior, that had caged him at Yorktown;
and it was but seven thousand men he yielded to his fourteen thousand
besiegers and de Grasse’s fleet in the Bay. It was characteristic of
Sir Henry Clinton that he did not start from New York to bring the
long-needed aid until the very day of his comrade’s surrender. The usual
thing had happened. An incompetent commander-in-chief had dallied and
blundered with Washington at hand to take advantage of every blunder like
a master. Sir Henry had gone to succor Cornwallis as he had gone to meet
Burgoyne, when the campaign was over.
[Illustration: SIR HENRY CLINTON]
Lord North knew what the news meant when it came. He received it “as he
would have taken a ball in his breast, opening his arms and exclaiming
wildly, ‘O God! it is all over!’” But when that first moment of poignant
chagrin was past, no doubt a very distinct sense of relief ensued, to
offset the bitterness of the humiliating blow. It was imperative for
England that the American war should end. She was beset. France and
Spain had taken advantage of the revolt of the colonies once more to
attack her,—not because they loved America or sympathized with the ideals
of liberty for which she fought, but because they wished to make good
against England the threatened disaster. United, they were as strong
as she upon the seas. Louis XVI. had diligently courted peace with his
neighbors on the continent, and had spent the money of France for ships
and efficient sailors. Early in 1779 a French squadron had seized the
English possessions in Senegal and on the Gambia. That same year a
combined French and Spanish fleet swept through the Channel, no English
force daring to oppose it. His work in the Chesapeake finished, de Grasse
had returned again, upon the surrender of Cornwallis, to his attack upon
the British West Indies, and before another spring came he had reduced
every English island of the Caribbean Sea except Jamaica, Barbadoes, and
Antigua. An English fleet out of New York had attacked him at the capes
of the Chesapeake, trying to break the trap into which Cornwallis had
fallen, but had been beaten off. In May, 1781, a Spanish force had taken
Pensacola and driven the English from Florida; and in February, 1782, a
Spanish fleet captured Minorca, and a closer siege than ever was drawn
about Gibraltar.
Finding herself at war with half the world, England had claimed the right
to search neutral vessels on the high seas for goods belonging to her
enemies, and to confiscate them when found; had claimed also the right to
seize vessels trading with such of her enemies’ ports as she had declared
blockaded, whether she had actually blockaded them or not; and so had
set the rest of the world against her. The northern states of Europe,
headed by Russia, drew together in a league of “Armed Neutrality,”
determined to assert in force the doctrine that “free ships make free
goods,”—a doctrine till then unasserted,—and to make effectual denial
of the right to establish “paper blockades,” created by proclamation
and not by naval force; and the actual resistance of Dutch ships to her
attempts to subject them to search forced England, in December, 1780,
to make formal declaration of war against the Dutch Republic. Wars with
the native princes of India had been heaped upon her other burdens since
1778, and France had sent a formidable armament thither, as she had sent
an armament to America, at the moment of most critical danger, demanding
that England relinquish everything except Bengal. It was no time to
reconquer America.
[Illustration: RODNEY TRIUMPHANT, FROM GILLRAY’S CARICATURE UPON THE
OCCASION OF SIR GEORGE RODNEY’S VICTORY OVER ADMIRAL DE GRASSE IN THE
WEST INDIES]
Opinion as well as fortune had set against the further prosecution of the
war against the colonies. At first opinion had seemed to sustain it. The
nation, so far as any man could tell, believed it necessary and desirable
that the colonies should be brought to obedience. But with the progress
of the war opinion had veered. Uneasiness and disquiet had ensued, not
merely because every campaign had ended in failure, but also because of
the very fact of the war,—a war against Englishmen, and upon questions
which abode at home as well as in America. It was noteworthy that the
country seemed to grow more and more dissatisfied with Parliament and
with the subtile power of the King to rule in every turn of affairs.
There began to be, for the first time in England, an articulate “public
opinion,” which was not the opinion of the Commons but an opinion uttered
in mass meetings such as Mr. Wilkes’s friends had found out how to
assemble and make use of. A great agitation arose for a reduction of the
crown’s patronage and influence in Parliament, and for the regulation
of official emoluments, in order that corruption might be prevented.
In April, 1780, Mr. John Dunning, the Whig member for Calne, and from
the first an avowed opponent of the war against the colonies, had
actually carried through the House of Commons itself, in the teeth of the
ministers, a resolution that “the influence of the crown had increased,
was increasing, and ought to be diminished.” Sudden mobs and tumults
disturbed London with the swaying of opinion at every change of policy.
[Illustration: YALE COLLEGE AND CHAPEL, 1786]
There were some men who saw what underlay the doubts and agitations and
dismays of the time,—who saw that the success of the English armies
in America would mean such a danger to English liberty itself as they
did not care to face,—the supremacy of the crown and of an unreformed
Parliament. The Duke of Richmond had not hesitated to declare at
the very outset of the war his hope that it would end in just such a
crushing defeat as this which had now come at Yorktown. Young Pitt, great
Chatham’s son, had denounced the war while yet Cornwallis seemed to move
victorious in the South as “accursed, wicked, barbarous.” Charles Fox
clapped his hands at news of Washington’s final victory. Lord North had
himself long ago lost heart in the business. He had wished to resign ever
since the news of Burgoyne’s surrender; had kept his office against his
will and better judgment because the King so urgently commanded him to
keep it; and was heartily glad to get his release when at last the House
itself yielded to opinion out-of-doors and voted that the war should stop.
A soldier led the dissatisfied Commons in their tardy revolt,—the gentle
Conway, who from the first had stood with Burke and the Rockingham Whigs
as a champion of the cause of the Englishmen over sea. On the 27th
of February, 1782, he triumphantly carried against the ministers the
significant resolution, “That it is the opinion of this House that a
further prosecution of offensive war against America would, under present
circumstances, be the means of weakening the efforts of this country
against her European enemies, and tend to increase the mutual enmity so
fatal to the interests both of Great Britain and America,” and on the 4th
of March capped it with the still more trenchant resolution, “That the
House will consider as enemies of his Majesty those who should advise or
attempt a further prosecution of offensive war on the continent of North
America.” By the end of the month North was out, and Rockingham had once
more taken office.
[Illustration: HENRY SEYMOUR CONWAY]
With this radical change in the spirit and motive of affairs at home came
brighter news from abroad. In India the native princes had once more been
brought to submission, and France had gained no advantage. Rodney had
beaten de Grasse in the West Indies (April 12, 1782), in eleven hours of
desperate fighting which had rendered the western seas no longer tenable
for France had broken her naval power, and had made England safe of her
mastery again on those contested coasts. Before the close of the year the
combined forces of France and Spain had been obliged to abandon the siege
of Gibraltar, which Spain had begun at the very outset of hostilities. It
was, of course, no part of the personal triumph of the new ministers that
the year in which they supplanted North was also the year in which the
tide of victory turned, the year of England’s triumph over her European
enemies. It was their task to make wise use of victory, and to reform
the government which the King had corrupted and North had misused. In
that their success was singularly immediate and extensive. By a rapid
succession of measures they disqualified revenue officers from voting
at elections and government contractors from sitting in the House of
Commons, and cut in half the patronage of the crown. They were convinced,
with Mr. Dunning, that the power of the crown had too much increased and
ought to be diminished, in England no less than in America. It showed an
extraordinary alteration in the temper of the Commons that they were able
to diminish it so much.
[Illustration: NORTH SIDE OF WALL STREET, NEW YORK, 1785]
The lesson learned in America told upon the policy of the ministers
in more ways than one. It led them to concede, among other things, an
independent parliament to Ireland. There had been no soldiers to spare
for the defence of Ireland when war threatened every coast and province
of the empire; the Irish Protestants had mustered eighty thousand
volunteers for their own defence; they could not now be refused the
independent parliamentary action they had coveted.
[Illustration: LORD SHELBURNE]
But the chief fruit of the change of ministers was peace. Lord Rockingham
lived but three months to preside over the counsels of peace and
reformation he had so long wished to bring about. On the 2d of July,
1782, Lord Shelburne became the head of the government, and some of
the Rockingham Whigs refused to serve under his leadership. But the
reconstitution of the ministry did not affect either its spirit or its
policy. It had planned peace and was able to bring it about. France and
Spain had but completed their bankruptcy by the war; England’s credit was
secure. She could afford to continue the war; they could not. It was a
mere matter of terms: England could almost dictate what they should be.
Peace must have seemed to Washington and Greene and Knox in the field, to
the executive committees of the Congress at Philadelphia, to Franklin at
Paris and John Adams at The Hague, like a beneficent providence rather
than a thing earned by decisive victory. It was midsummer, 1782, before
they could thoroughly credit those who told them of its certain approach.
That supreme stroke at Yorktown having been delivered, everything fell
slack; it seemed impossible to add anything, by way of making victory
secure. There were still, it might be, some forty thousand British troops
in America, reckoning all the posts from Canada round about, west and
east, to the Gulf and the islands of the Indies. There were seventeen
thousand in New York, and nearly seven thousand facing General Greene
in the South. Having finished at Yorktown, Washington sent two thousand
men to reinforce General Greene in South Carolina, and himself went
promptly back to his post at Newburgh on the Hudson, to watch Clinton
at New York, leaving Rochambeau and four thousand French troops at
Williamsburg in Virginia, to guard the approaches of the Chesapeake. He
was deeply anxious. He knew that the country had reached a point of utter
exhaustion, lethargy, and disorganization. Not a recruit could he get.
The troops were unpaid, unfed, only half clothed. He deemed the situation
one of grave peril, and despaired presently of so much as keeping up
appearances, knowing very well that the British were as well aware of his
weakness as he was, and of the apathy and confusion of weak counsels
that had fallen on the states. Clinton sent word to the ministers that
if they would but send him ten thousand more men he would be responsible
for the reduction of the country. Rodney presently cleared the coast of
the French, and there was nothing to prevent fresh troops and supplies
being sent as fast as the ministers wished to send them,—nothing but the
ministers’ desire for peace, which Washington found it hard to credit.
[Illustration: SOUTH CAROLINA CURRENCY]
[Illustration: GENERAL CARLETON’S RETURN OF REFUGEES]
But the new year confirmed the good news. The leaders of government
in England had no doubt come to perceive very clearly how essentially
impossible it was to conquer America, now that the alienation of feeling
between the two countries was complete and final, and all thought of
submission or accommodation out of the question. Their generals had
seldom been beaten in battle, as it was. Burgoyne had won action after
action in the northern forests only to find himself helpless at last.
Howe had had his way easily enough at New York and on his expedition
against Philadelphia. Cornwallis had moved freely, almost victoriously,
into the trap at Yorktown. The unpalatable fact was, that British troops
could control only so much of the country as they actually occupied, and
that it was out of the question to occupy all of it. With Washington
always at hand, always ready to strike, and always able to make the
stroke tell, it was not safe even to attempt the maintenance of extended
lines. At any rate, England had grown weary of the unnatural business;
the House of Commons had declared against the war; the new ministers
were resolved to end it, even at the cost of granting America her
independence; and it had become only a matter of terms.
[Illustration: SIR GUY CARLETON]
In May, 1782, General Clinton was superseded at New York by General
Sir Guy Carleton, who was instructed to assure the American
commander-in-chief of the government’s determination to seek terms of
peace, and who was of the noble spirit to like his errand. On the 11th of
July the British garrison at Savannah was withdrawn and sent to New York.
In August, Washington received from Carleton definitive assurances that
the independence of the United States was to be conceded as a preliminary
of peace, and in September the French who had remained in Virginia
joined the Americans on the Hudson. In October they embarked at Boston
for France. By the close of November (November 30, 1782) a provisional
treaty of peace had been agreed upon; and on the 14th of December
Charleston was also evacuated, and the South left free of British troops.
Carleton, when he felt that peace was indeed assured, began to disband
the loyalist regiments enlisted in the British service and to despatch
many of his regulars to the West Indies, to Nova Scotia, and to England.
No one doubted any longer that the end of the bitter business had come
at last; every one waited impatiently for the treaties which were to
constitute its formal conclusion.
The actual formulation of peace, however, proved a matter of no small
difficulty. America and France were bound together by the close and
honorable ties of alliance; and France was in her turn allied with
Spain, who now felt her interests to be by no means coincident with the
interests of America. The Congress at Philadelphia explicitly commanded
its commissioners “to be guided by the wishes of the French court.” Dr.
Franklin, Mr. John Adams, and Mr. John Jay, who bore its commission, were
men of honor, and entertained, besides, a lively sense of the very deep
obligations of the United States to France, for the money and the armed
assistance in the field and upon the seas without which, apparently,
their victory would have been impossible. It proved impracticable,
nevertheless, to act with France; for she conducted herself, not as the
ingenuous friend of the United States, but only as the enemy of England,
and as first and always a subtile strategist for her own interest and
advantage. The American commissioners would not be tricked and made use
of, and came to terms separately, secretly, and for themselves with the
English, their instructions notwithstanding. They did not make peace
without their ally, but they would not accept terms of her arrangement.
[Illustration: TITLE-PAGE OF BURKE’S “CONSIDERATIONS”]
The Count de Vergennes, her astute minister, had meant to devise a
balance of power in America which might be made to redound to the
advantage of France in Europe: had meant to support England in the
exclusion of the Americans from the Newfoundland fisheries, and in her
claim that the northern boundary of the United States should be the river
Ohio, instead of the great lakes; to suggest the creation of a neutral
zone of territory between the western settlements of the American States
and the Mississippi, set apart for the Indians under the joint protection
of the United States and Spain; and to stand with Spain for the utmost
possible northward extension of the boundaries of Florida, which Spain
had taken possession of. The American commissioners ignored him and
got their own terms: The independence of the United States, a northern
boundary at the great lakes, a western boundary at the Mississippi, and
the use of the Canadian fisheries. Between the signing of the provisional
and the signing of the definitive treaty the ministry of Lord Shelburne
gave place to a coalition ministry under the Duke of Portland which
brought North once more into office; but the course of the negotiations
was not materially changed. The American commissioners got substantially
all they had contended for (September 3, 1783).
The States had at last, moreover, a common government which could accept
independence. On the 1st of March, 1781, Maryland had given her tardy
assent to the Articles of Confederation, on the understanding that the
States which had claims to territory in the west should as soon as
possible relinquish them in favor of the newly formed government. On the
14th of January, 1784, the Congress of the Confederation, not yet two
years old, ratified the treaty of peace.
[Illustration: COUNT DE VERGENNES]
A burst of heady indignation followed the publication of the terms of
the treaty. It was well enough that the United States should have their
independence, of course, and their proper boundaries, and that the
immemorial right of their people to fish in the Canadian waters should
be retained; but there were other articles in the treaty which gave
almost universal dissatisfaction. The Confederation bound itself to urge
upon the States unconditional amnesty for the loyalists and a complete
restoration of their estates and civil rights, and to prevent so far
as possible any legal obstacles being put in the way of the collection
of the debts due British merchants at the outbreak of the war. Dr.
Franklin had very candidly explained to the British commissioners that
the Congress of the Confederation had no power to enforce these articles:
that it could only advise the States, and that they would be free to
follow or to disregard its advice as they pleased; and they did disregard
it entirely and even scornfully, being bent upon vouchsafing to the
loyalists neither property nor rights of any kind, and upon virtually
wiping out all debts owed to Englishmen.
The Confederation, in fact, furnished the country with no real government
at all. The Articles explicitly reserved to each State “its sovereignty,
freedom, and independence.” The general Congress had, it is true, powers
which made it seem like a veritable government with respect to all
dealings with foreign states, in the making of war and the conclusion of
peace, in the maintenance of land and naval forces for national defence,
and in the raising of loans on the faith and credit of the United States.
It was authorized, too, to act as absolute arbiter of disputes between
the States, to establish and regulate post offices, to determine the
alloy and the value of all coin struck either by its own authority or
by the authority of the States, to fix the standard of weights and
measures, and to regulate all dealings with the Indian tribes. But it had
absolutely no power to lay taxes of any kind. It was to get its means of
support by requisition on the States,—by requests which it had no right
to transmute into commands. The Confederation had no Executive but only
its talkative Congress, in which the States big and little had an equal
voice: which could decide no important matter without the concurrence
of at least nine out of the thirteen little commonwealths which had but
just now formed the jealous partnership. Its Congress was but a board of
advice; and its advice could be ignored with impunity.
[Illustration: JOHN JAY]
The common affairs of the country had therefore to be conducted as the
revolution itself had in fact been conducted,—not by the authority or
the resolutions of the Congress, but by the extraordinary activity,
enterprise, and influence of a few of the leading men in the States who
had union and harmonious common effort at heart. The revolution may
almost be said to have been carried forward by private correspondence,—by
the impulse of conviction, the urgency of argument, the clear
interpretation of signs of the times, the ceaseless persuasion, planning,
instigating of the letters of men like Washington, Knox, Greene,
Schuyler, Hamilton, Henry, Franklin, Livingston, Madison, Jefferson,
Hancock, Morris, Jay, Gadsden, the Lees, the Adamses,—a handful of men
in each State who kept every one within reach of their letters or their
voices reminded, in season and out of season, of the happenings, the
dangers, the hopes, the difficulties, the duties of the time, stimulating
those in authority, checking those in opposition, arousing those who
were indifferent. This, rather than the work of formal committees of
correspondence, had kept action awake and made it vital.
[Illustration: RICHARD HENRY LEE]
The Congress had talked ineffectually enough, and done nothing, at
many a critical moment; had given way to the influence of petty
provincial factions and listened to unworthy intrigues, while men not
in its membership were carrying affairs forward without it. John Adams
himself had too readily joined the silly talk of that disconcerted
body when it grew impatient of Washington’s “Fabian policy” in the
face of overwhelming odds. “My toast,” he had cried, “is a short and a
violent war!” Samuel Adams, too, had seemed once and again, in that
demoralizing atmosphere of debate without action, to show only his
petty gifts of management without a touch of broad or generous temper.
Even Richard Henry Lee, of Virginia, had criticised the sorely tried
commander-in-chief’s “delays” at the very time when Washington’s letters
were being hurried through the country along more lines of power than
the Congress had ever had use of, persuading men and States to do what
the Congress vainly suggested. The impotency, the occasional sheer
imbecility, of the only common council the country yet had had been
offset and made up for by the singular assiduity and faithfulness in
personal effort of the real leaders of opinion in the States. The States
had been remiss enough, as it was, in supplying their quotas of men and
money and stores; they would have been still more remiss had not their
leading spirits cried shame upon them and excited them in some measure to
a performance of their duty.
When peace came it proved more difficult than ever to induce the States
to act, or even seriously to take counsel, in the common interest. They
had made the Confederation, but they were not interested in it. They were
engaged in setting their own affairs in order after the long disquieting
years of revolution and war which had brought such sad havoc upon their
old-time ordinances and ways of life. Passion had run hot while the
war lasted. It was not easy to put a term at once upon the license or
upon the distempers which such a time had produced so rankly. Not a
little poise, not a little of the sentiment of law, not a little of the
solidity of tradition and the steadiness of established ways of thought
and action, not a little of the conservative strength of the young
communities had gone out of the country with the loyalists,—not a little
of the training, the pride of reputation, the compulsion of class spirit,
the loyalty and honor of a class accustomed to rule and to furnish
rulers. There was an added unsteadiness in affairs because in so many
places new men, and radical, were at the front in all public business.
[Illustration: TORY REFUGEES ON THEIR WAY TO CANADA]
Those who had adhered to the old order had made their way out of the
revolted States in almost incredible numbers, as the issue of the war
approached and became certain. Throughout the latter part of 1782 and all
of 1783 they had poured out of the country in a veritable flight, knowing
themselves proscribed and ruined, and not daring to wait for the actual
evacuation of the English. Out of the southern country they made their
way in ever-increasing numbers into Spanish Florida, or took ship to
Bermuda or the British West Indies. Those who were within reach of Canada
set out northward through the forests to seek a refuge there, following
the rough, uncleared trails and the watercourses, with pack horse and
boat, as in the old days of the first settlement of the continent out
of Europe, abandoning home and property to escape contumely and the
unspeakable hardship of being outlawed and hated in the communities
of their own birth and breeding. Thousands upon thousands crowded to
New York to seek the shelter of the British arms. It was the 25th of
November, 1783, before Sir Guy Carleton could effect the final evacuation
of the city, so great and so troublesome was the pitiful company of
refugees for which he felt himself obliged in mere compassion to provide
protection and transportation. More than twenty-nine thousand refugees
(including three thousand negroes) left the State of New York alone, for
Canada, during that confused and anxious year 1783.
[Illustration: MOUNT VERNON]
Most of these had taken no active part in the struggle which had rendered
them homeless. Almost without exception they had been, in opinion, as
thoroughly opposed as their neighbors to the policy of the King and
Parliament towards the colonies. But they had not been willing to go the
ugly length of rebellion and of outright separation from England. When
it came to the final breach, some of them had become not merely passive
but active opponents of revolution and independence. The more partisan
had taken up arms for the King. First and last, during the five years of
the fighting, there had been no fewer than twenty-five thousand loyalists
enlisted in the British service. At one time (1779) they had actually
outnumbered the whole of the continental muster under the personal
command of Washington. Most of those, however, who would not join the
patriot party had been quiet non-combatants, and had been opponents
of the revolution only in opinion. When the war was over the men who
spoke the mind of the majority and who accordingly controlled policy
in the new States refused to make any distinction between those who had
taken up arms and those who had not. In their eyes they were all alike
“Tories” and traitors; and many an excess of persecution and spoliation,
many a wanton insult, many an act of mere vengeance darkened the years
which immediately followed the war;—increasing the bands of exiles and
adding in an incalculable measure to the bitterness which was throughout
generations to mark the feeling of Canadians for their southern neighbors.
It was but human nature that it should be so. No one could wonder that
civil war had brought these too familiar things in its train. The
bitterest words of the great Washington himself were uttered against the
Tories. Even with his splendid moderation and poise of mind, he could
not find it in his heart to forgive the men who had seemed to fill every
country-side his army entered with intrigue and threat of treason to the
cause he had given his life to. The best Virginians had chosen as he had
chosen: he could not imagine how good men or true patriots anywhere could
choose otherwise. It was part of the almost universal demoralization
produced by the war that every sentiment should now exhibit its excess,
every reaction prove dangerously violent. There was everywhere a sort
of moral exhaustion; a relaxation of the very principles of just and
temperate government which the war had been fought to vindicate; a loss
of tone, an access of perilous agitation.
[Illustration: A POLITICAL DISCUSSION]
The war had brought many things in its train calculated to work distress
and to throw both morals and business into confusion. For one thing, it
had saddled the country with an almost incalculable burden of debt. The
individual States, the general Congress, towns, private persons even,
had strained their credit to the utmost to meet the engagements and
defray the expenses of a season during which business was oftentimes
quite suspended and the ordinary sources of income absolutely dried
up. The States and the Congress alike had resorted to the demoralizing
expedient of issuing paper money which they could not redeem. Its bulk
had, of course, increased from year to year, and its value had as rapidly
declined. The continental money in particular had fallen so in value
that the commodity must have been valueless indeed which fell under the
reproach of being “not worth a continental.”
[Illustration: GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON’S COACH AND FOUR]
It was the good fortune of the Confederation to have Robert Morris,
one of the most distinguished, honorable, and successful merchants of
Philadelphia, in charge of its treasury during the critical years of the
final reckonings of the war (May, 1781, to April, 1785),—a man who had
large means to pledge and who would pledge them to the last farthing to
raise a sum of money upon an exigency, as Washington had done for the
pay of his troops before Trenton. Mr. Morris had himself supplied almost
everything that was needed for the victorious campaign which culminated
at Yorktown, borrowing twenty thousand dollars in gold of Count de
Rochambeau, upon his personal credit, to do it. But even Morris, trained
merchant and financier that he was, could not make something out of
nothing. The States would not tax their people for the support of the
Confederation. It took eighteen months to collect one-fifth of the
taxes assigned them in 1783. They neglected, sometimes even bluntly
refused, to pay so much as their allotted shares of the interest on the
national debt. The Confederation could not, of course, borrow under such
circumstances. It was threatened with a mere unhonored lapse of all its
powers and even of its very existence, for want alike of respect and
support. The war had cost the Confederation more than ninety-two million
dollars, reckoned in specie. France alone had spent sixty millions for
America in loans and the support of armies. The States had added an
expenditure of quite twenty-one millions more out of their own treasuries
or their own credit. No wonder the men in responsible charge of public
affairs in America rejected with a touch of bitter passion the demand of
the treaty of peace, that they should, in addition to all this, restore
to the loyalists the property they had lost, and pay to British merchants
debts which antedated the war.
[Illustration: ROBERT MORRIS]
Trade, apparently, could not recover from the blow it had received by
reason of the long continuance of hostilities. It was likely to be worse,
indeed, now that the war was over, than it had been while the war lasted.
While the war lasted ship owners could at least use their craft as
privateers, to bring in cargoes not consigned to them. Seamen had found
infinitely more adventure and not much less profit in their profession
during those lawless years than formerly. But when peace came the ports
of the British West Indies, once open to them, became foreign ports and
were closed against them. Productive industry had too long stood still
and there was little or nothing to sell in exchange for the English goods
every one needed and all bought who could. A war of tariffs succeeded the
war of arms,—a war in which each State acted for itself. The Congress
of the Confederation could not regulate trade,—that was not one of its
powers. It could arrange no national policy. It could neither retaliate
upon foreign governments nor make bargains of reciprocity with them. Each
State studied its own interest and knew not how to advance even that
successfully. American commerce had everywhere the worst of it.
[Illustration: ALEXANDER HAMILTON]
[Illustration: FACSIMILE OF CONTINENTAL BUDGET, 1786]
It had been one of the unhappy omens of the time that the Confederation
had had to reckon the disbandment of its own army one of the most serious
difficulties attending the establishment of peace, and had had reason
to feel relieved when it had at last got rid of it. During those last
tedious months which intervened between the surrender at Yorktown and the
formal conclusion of peace the idle soldiers had felt, more keenly even
than in days of movement and war, the constant privations to which they
were subjected. There had been times when some of them had been obliged
to keep all day within their tents because absolutely without clothes to
wear in which they could decently walk abroad. Their pay was almost never
forthcoming; and they thought from time to time that they had good reason
to suspect that the Congress meant to disband them and send them home
without it. Their very idleness fostered an ill humor among them, for
there was nothing but their very bitter grievances to think about. The
neglect they suffered naturally seemed to them an intolerable indignity;
and they broke here and there into actual mutiny, their officers hardly
restraining them.
[Illustration: MAP OF NORTH AMERICA IN 1782]
Their officers, indeed, went, some of them, a little beyond mutiny, to
the borders of treason, at any rate in their wish and purpose. In the
spring of 1782 a letter from one of the most respected and trusted of his
officers had intimated to Washington the willingness of the army to make
him king, master of the country, dictator,—anything he would,—in order
that the futile government of a group of petty republics might give place
at least to order and efficiency. Washington’s reply had run hot in every
sentence with scornful indignation that any one should dare to deem him
capable of proving himself a traitor and an adventurer; but it had been
reported from his camp ere the year ended that he was steadily losing
his hold upon the affection of the army by the harshness with which he
acted against everything that looked like a breach either of law or of
discipline in bringing the army’s claims to the attention of the Congress
or of the States. In the spring of 1783 there was a movement among his
officers to force their claims upon the Congress which it required every
gift of wise control and patient persuasion he was master of to hold
back from lawlessness and open disloyalty. It was with no small sense
of relief, therefore, that the country witnessed at last the peaceful
disbandment of the troops (November 5, 1783). The Congress had, happily,
in the end been able to satisfy them, at any rate in part, in the matter
of their pay; and had not waited even for the evacuation of New York by
the British (November 25, 1783) to get them safely dispersed to their
homes.
Here our general _authorities_ are the sixth volume of Bancroft
and his _History of the Constitution_; the third volume of
Hildreth; the first volume of George Tucker’s _History of the
United States_; the fourth volume of Bryant and Gay’s _Popular
History of the United States_; John Fiske’s _Critical Period
of American History_; George Ticknor Curtis’s _History of the
Origin, Formation, and Adoption of the Constitution_, and
_The Constitution of the United States and its History_, in
the seventh volume of Winsor’s _Narrative and Critical History
of America_; Justin Winsor’s _The Confederation, 1781-1789_,
in the same volume of Winsor; the fourth volume of W. E. H.
Lecky’s _History of England in the Eighteenth Century_; the
first volume of John Bach McMaster’s _History of the People
of the United States_; James Kent’s _Commentaries on American
Law_; and Joseph Story’s _Commentaries on the Constitution of
the United States_.
The _sources_ for the period are to be found, as before,
in the published _Works_, letters, and correspondence of
the leading characters of the time on both sides the water,
especially in such intimate views of affairs as are to be found
in Thomas Jefferson’s _Notes on Virginia_ and in Madison’s
_Notes_ in the _Madison Papers_; the _Journals of Congress_
and the _Secret Journals of Congress_; Jonathan Elliot’s
_Debates on the Federal Constitution_, including the Madison
Papers; Noah Webster’s _Sketches of American Policy_; Pelatiah
Webster’s _Dissertation on the Political Union_; and Brissot
de Warville’s _Examen Critique_ (1784) and _New Travels in the
United States, performed in 1788_.
CHAPTER II
FOUNDING A FEDERAL GOVERNMENT
The army disbanded and peace made, the chief business of the
Confederation seemed concluded. The Articles which had given it a
formal constitution had done little more than impart form and explicit
sanction to the familiar functions which the Congress had for seven years
exercised without them, and the exigency and occasion for the exercise
of those functions seemed now gone by. Now that the war was over, the
Confederation seemed to lack its old-time reason for being, and yet to
have found no new reason, no new service to justify its existence and
give it authority. It was still too much like an occasional body; still
without powers suitable for seasons of peace and the ordinary courses
of government: without administrative authority, without governmental
efficacy,—a mere board of advice about things which had ceased to be
interesting. All real vigor, all quick interest and vital ambition, all
initiative and effective purpose centred in the several States. They
alone had individuality and political power. The treaty of peace gave
“the United States” vast territories which spread at large upon the map
like a great empire; but it was an empire without organization, left to
be ruled and peopled, as the States themselves had been, by the concert
and initiative of pioneers and of single individuals who knew how to
organize and how to lead. The enterprise of settlement did not lag. The
masterful advance over the mountains and out upon the great slopes and
into the fertile valleys which stretched, green and forested, to the far
Mississippi had begun before the revolution itself, and sprang forward
in trebled volume when war was done. It gave the young republic the
early growing pains by which it got its first self-consciousness and its
introduction to international difficulties. But it did not give it the
organization, the centred authority, the coherent force necessary to its
poise and conduct as a nation.
[Illustration: ALONG THE WATER FRONT, NEW YORK, ABOUT 1780]
Migration into the West had been given its first impulse by the treaty
of 1763, which closed the war with France and gave to the English
all that the French had claimed east of the Mississippi. The war for
independence had checked it for a little, but only for a little. It
thronged forward again the moment the anxious strain of the fighting was
off. Northwestward along the valleys of the Mohawk and the Delaware into
the land of the Iroquois which Sullivan had harried,—where Sir William
Johnson had reigned in days gone by over red men and white; straight
towards the heart of the West along the upper courses of the Potomac,
through the difficult country through which Braddock had gone his
blundering way, to Fort Pitt and the lands by the Ohio; through the long
forests to the fair Kentucky; down the valleys opened by the spreading
tributaries of the Tennessee, and through the forests beyond to the
Cumberland, whither the men who had ridden the passes to King’s Mountain
had shown the way; around the southern end of the great Appalachians to
the plains by the Gulf,—wherever the mountains opened or a way could
be made, ever-increasing bands of emigrants essayed the long journey
every open season, seeking new homes at the heart of the lands where
once the French had had their posts and garrisons,—until there began
to be communities beyond the mountains big enough to count in affairs:
communities in whose behalf peace and government must be provided, and a
way of intercourse and sympathy between East and West to which the great
mountain ranges should be no effectual barrier. The war itself had not
stopped this eager journeying into the West. The savage tribes upon those
borders, north and south, found themselves checked and beaten, not by any
sudden onset of armed men, but by this crowding in of the indomitable
white man, this thickening of his stubborn, ineradicable settlements upon
the western streams, the coveted hunting grounds.
[Illustration: THE BURIAL OF BRADDOCK]
Washington had seen the gates of that new world when, as a mere boy,
he had acted as surveyor of Lord Fairfax’s estates within the valley
of the Shenandoah; when, as a youth, he carried Dinwiddie’s warning to
the French at fort Le Bœuf, ere they made themselves masters at the
forks of the Ohio; and again when he went with unhappy Braddock against
Duquesne. He saw more vividly than most men what this new movement of
population meant, and must bring to pass in the future. When he had
written his farewell to the army from his headquarters at Rocky Hill
(November 2, 1783), had embraced his officers and comrades in arms in a
last, affectionate leave taking at Fraunce’s Tavern in New York (December
4th), and had delivered up his commission to the Congress sitting at
Annapolis (December 23d), he turned for a little respite to his home at
Mount Vernon, to which these long years through his thoughts had reverted
with an ever-increasing longing; but the very next year saw him over the
mountains again, observing what lands were to be had there, and studying
once more the best means of communication between East and West. The
primary object of his visit was to procure good lands for himself and for
old comrades who had made him their agent and adviser in that matter, but
his statesman’s eye apprised him of the full meaning of the new migration
now afoot along all the western border.
[Illustration: FRAUNCE’S TAVERN IN 1783]
[Illustration: ADDRESS OF RETURNED CITIZENS, NEW YORK, 1783]
For one thing, he saw how serious a situation it might prove should this
body of settlers, sure to grow greater and more masterful from year
to year, continue for very long to look back upon almost impenetrable
mountains piled between them and the eastern ports and highways. Their
natural outlet, when once the mountains were well behind them, would
be the Mississippi, their natural highways the streams which ran to
the Gulf. It was possible they might see their chief advantage in a
connection with the Spaniards at New Orleans rather than with the
wellnigh inaccessible eastern settlements on the Atlantic seaboard,—or
even with the English again by the highway of the lakes and the St.
Lawrence. “The western settlers,” he declared, “stand as it were upon a
pivot. The touch of a feather would turn them any way.” He returned home
to push again with renewed vigor the project which for now twenty years
he had had at heart, and which had in these new days of independence,
as it seemed to him, become a sheer political necessity,—the opening of
the upper reaches of the Potomac to navigation, in order that the East
might there at any rate be linked with the West, by joining the waters of
the Potomac with the streams which ran down into the Ohio. This had been
part of the plans of the old Ohio Company of which the Washington and the
Fairfaxes had been members. The revolution had interrupted its plans;
there was now added reason for renewing them.
[Illustration: MAP OF THE UNITED STATES, 1783]
In the old days the lands about the Ohio had been deemed part of
Virginia’s domain. Almost every State upon the seaboard had had at the
first a grant from the crown which read as if it had been meant to set
no boundaries at the west at all except the boundaries of the continent
itself; and Virginia’s grant was the oldest of them all. Virginia claimed
practically all the western country which lay north of her own southern
line extended, under the terms of her charter of 1609, which defined
her territory as running from her boundaries at the sea-coast “up into
the land throughout from sea to sea, west and northwest.” But the other
colonies as they were formed had also received charters which had a
straight westward outlook, practically without bound or limit this side
of the Pacific; and each laid confident claim to its own long western
strip of the continent. It was in part to quiet these conflicting claims,
in part to give herself, who had no grant at all at the west, some parity
with her partners in the Confederation, that Maryland had insisted, as
a condition precedent to her acceptance of the articles, that all the
western territory be ceded to the Confederation itself, as a joint and
common property to be held for the use and benefit of all. New York,
accordingly, had ceded her claims in 1781; and Virginia so much of hers
as lay north of the Ohio, in 1783. The other States were virtually
pledged to follow their example. The West was already practically common
property. Whatever should be done to bind it to the East would bring so
much nearer the promised dawn of a national life.
It was a noteworthy thing, too, how every one seemed to take it for
granted that the Congress of the Confederation had the right to accept
these gifts and act as a veritable sovereign in the government of a
national domain, notwithstanding the Articles vouchsafed it no grant
of power in the matter, and in everything else its authority, though
explicitly granted, had fallen into contempt. Whatever the States might
do in the administration of their own affairs and the government of their
own people, a national domain meant a national government. Its very
existence put another face upon affairs. It could not be redivided. The
States had put it, a practically impassable barrier, between them and
separation. Maryland had builded better than she knew.
[Illustration: THE UNITED STATES, 1783. SHOWING CLAIMS OF THE STATES.]
Already the western settlers were showing themselves, by not a little
heady wilfulness, to be of the same stock that had made the original
colonies first strong and then independent. In its April session, 1784,
the legislature of North Carolina had followed the example of New York
and Virginia by ceding to the general government her lands beyond the
mountains. It committed the blunder, however, of making the grant
contingent upon its acceptance by Congress, which might have been taken
for granted, and of making no specific provision in the mean time for
the government of the very flourishing and very mettlesome little group
of pioneer settlements which John Sevier and James Robertson had helped
to plant upon the upland streams which ran beyond the mountains into the
Tennessee. These promptly concluded that, if they were not governed by
North Carolina and had not yet been taken under the care and government
of the Confederation, they were their own masters, and proceeded to erect
for themselves an independent State, which they called “Franklin,” after
the genial wit and philosopher at Philadelphia. When North Carolina
thereupon rescinded her act of cession, in order to win them back to her
dominion, they refused to be reannexed. It was a sign of the times, a
taste of that western quality which the nation’s affairs were often to
smack of.
[Illustration: UNFINISHED PORTRAITS OF THE SIGNERS OF THE TREATY OF
PARIS, 1783]
The whole country caught the flavor of that quality when Mr. Jay proposed
to relinquish the navigation of the Mississippi for a generation to
Spain, in return for certain commercial advantages greatly desired at the
Atlantic seaports. Spain had already shown an ugly temper with regard
to the use of the river, whose outlet she controlled. She had seized
merchandise passing down towards its mouth. She had instigated Indian
raids against the new-made settlements on the Cumberland, which crowded
too near its course. Mr. Jay had been one of the commissioners through
whom the United States had got their western boundary at the Mississippi
and their grant of the right to use the great stream, at the making of
the treaties of peace; and he knew how difficult a thing it had been to
force Spain backward to that boundary. But he had not seen that rising
tide of emigration now pouring into the West; had not imagined the empire
making there, the homes already established, the toil and success already
achieved. He thought that there would probably be no occasion to use the
Mississippi for twenty-five or thirty years yet to come. He proposed,
therefore, in 1785, when Congress had made him its Secretary of Foreign
Affairs and had bidden him negotiate a treaty of commerce with Don Diego
Gardoqui, the newly arrived representative of Spain, to surrender the
navigation of the lower Mississippi, which he thought was not needed, for
a term of twenty-five years in exchange for commercial advantages which
would redound to the profit of the merchants of the shipping colonies,
together with certain concessions with regard to land claims in the West
which were likely to please the people of the South. The instant cry of
hot protest that came out of the West apprised eastern politicians of the
new world a-making there, the new frontiers of the nation. The proposed
treaty was not adopted.
It was hard for men in the East to realize how fast settlers were
multiplying and their settlements growing to the stature of States
beyond the mountains, where only the other day there had been nothing
but unbroken wilderness,—faster a great deal than the original colonies
themselves had grown. So early as 1784 the settlers in the Kentucky
country deemed themselves numerous and independent enough to be detached
from Virginia and set up as one of the States of the Confederation. When
rumors reached them of what Mr. Jay proposed some of the bolder spirits
among them negotiated in their own behoof a private treaty of commerce
with the Spanish at New Orleans. When Virginia interposed delays and
difficulties in the way of their plan to become a State, they listened
very indulgently to certain lawless men who proposed that they make some
stroke for entire independence. There was talk of the British at the
North helping them to seize Spain’s possessions beyond the river by force
of arms and drive Spain from the continent. No man knew what might happen
there, should counsels of revolution prevail.
[Illustration: FACSIMILES OF SIGNATURES TO TREATY OF PEACE]
No disquieting rumor or untoward prospect of new wars for independence
in the West at all restrained the steady flood of emigration the while.
In March, 1786, a new Ohio Company was formed in Boston for the active
furtherance of the settlement of the western country. Soldiers of the
revolution officered it and in large part made up its membership. The
money script of the Confederation was bought up and used for the purchase
of land in the new public domain. Subscriptions and systematic corporate
action began to make the settlement of the Ohio country an enterprise
of forethought and associated effort, like the settlement of the first
colonies themselves.
The whole country was witness, the while, to the need for a real
government, instead of a mere advisory Congress, to bind the inchoate
nation together in a more than makeshift union. Every disorder, every
difficulty but made this need the more pressing and the more painfully
evident; and difficulties and disorders multiplied fast enough,—in
the East as well as in the West. No hope of national achievement, no
ideal of independence or of power could be fulfilled while the very
organization of the nation stood thus formless and dissolved. “There is
scarcely anything that can wound the pride or degrade the character of an
independent nation,” cried Mr. Hamilton, “which we do not experience.”
Efforts were made to secure for the Congress the right to lay and collect
taxes, in order that at least its existence and such powers as it already
had should not be at every turn dependent upon the attitude and action
of the several States; but the States were not willing to increase its
authority so much. In 1786 they were asked to intrust to the Congress
at least the collection and use of a revenue laid upon imports; and so
plain had both the necessity and the propriety of such an addition to
its efficiency by that time become that all of the States except New
York consented. But it required the unanimous consent of the States to
amend the Articles of Confederation, and New York’s refusal set even
this aside. New York had no mind to relinquish the duties which she
collected for herself at her great port,—not only upon foreign commerce
but also upon goods brought out of the other States, her neighbors:
on farm produce and garden-truck from New Jersey and firewood from
Connecticut,—making her spreading harbor a veritable toll-gate.
[Illustration: ROYAL PROCLAMATION OF CESSATION OF HOSTILITIES]
There was in all this one of the most serious signs of the times. The
States indulged to the top of their bent a petty hostility towards
each other. New York was by no means the only State that laid duties
on merchandise brought in from the farms and shops of her neighbors.
There was everywhere the same jealous spirit, the same striving for
every paltry advantage, the same alert and aggressive selfishness; and
the more the States deemed their interests antagonistic the more like a
mere rope of sand did the Confederation become. “We are either a united
people, or we are not,” exclaimed Washington. “If the former, let us
in all matters of general concern act as a nation which has a national
character to support; if we are not, let us no longer act a farce by
pretending to it.” England, apparently, expected the weak structure
presently to fall to pieces. She would not withdraw her troops from the
western posts because the debts of British merchants were not paid and
the property rights of the exiled Tories were not restored. Neither would
she send a diplomatic representative to America, seeming to regard the
Confederation as of no international importance. France and Spain and
Holland, seeing the Confederation utterly unable to repay the moneys they
had loaned it, scarcely able to pay so much as the interest on its debts,
alternated between anger and contempt in their treatment of it; and
confidently expected to see it very soon in ruinous collapse and final
disintegration. France and Spain were somewhat hopefully wondering, it
was evident, what the spoils and plunder of the wreck would be, and to
whom it would fall to do the plundering.
[Illustration: SHAYS’S MOB IN POSSESSION OF THE COURT HOUSE]
Each year seemed to emphasize by new disorders the increasing need for
the wholesome restraints and discipline of a common government. In the
autumn of 1786 actual armed rebellion capped Massachusetts’ struggles
against slack trade, heavy taxes, burdensome debts, and discontented
farmers,—a debtors’ rebellion. Captain Daniel Shays, a veteran of the
fight at Bunker Hill, a captain of the revolutionary army, was its
foremost figure. Mobs in the inland counties, of the State and in the
towns by the Connecticut closed the courts, to prevent the collection of
debts. Local conventions, called to discuss the grievous circumstances
and distresses of the time, broke up in riot. By the time winter had come
Captain Shays had not scrupled to put himself at the head of a riotous
muster which had the proportions of a veritable army. James Bowdoin was
governor of Massachusetts, a man of probity who knew his duty and did
not disrelish the performance of it. There was no mistaking the issue.
“My boys,” one of the leaders of the insurrection had cried, “you are
going to fight for liberty. If you wish to know what liberty is, I will
tell you. It is for every man to do what he pleases, to make other
folks do as you please to have them, and to keep folks from serving the
devil.” It was flat anarchy. The treasury of the State was empty, but a
hastily equipped force of militia under General Lincoln, paid for by a
temporary loan raised by a few patriotic citizens, dispersed the rebels
and restored the authority of the government. It was an ominous thing,
nevertheless, to see how the people of the State sympathized with the
rebels. They would not have Bowdoin for governor again, deeming him too
harsh. Rhode Island passed resolutions of sympathy for the rebels and
Vermont offered them refuge. Leaders of the rebel force were captured
and convicted, but no one dreamed of venturing to execute upon them the
penalty denounced by the law against what they had done. The rebellion
had plainly been a symptom, not an isolated or singular thing. It had
been extraordinary only in its violence.
[Illustration: LAFAYETTE]
Disorders like these were for the mass of men, who did not see the
significance of signs less gross and tangible, the best possible evidence
of the sore straits the country was in to maintain even so much as its
local governments and its respect for law. But it was not violence of
this sort so much as the subtle, all-pervasive air of uneasiness, of
rivalry, and even hostility between the States, of commercial enmity and
a universal unneighborly spirit of reprisal which moved the thoughtful
and masterful spirits of the country most deeply, and led them to bestir
themselves while yet there was time to forestall disaster. It made them
fear the worst, too, for the honor and very life of the country to see
how debt demoralized the States: how they yielded upon every side to
the temptation to repudiate their obligations by some new evasion, and
encouraged individuals to practise a like dishonesty by passing stay
laws against the collection of private debts and making legal tender of
paper money issued without limit, whose value dropped with every week it
was in use. Business as well as government seemed about to go to pieces,
bankruptcy to go hand in hand with virtual anarchy.
It was Washington’s scheme of making the West accessible through the
valley of the Potomac which, after all, as it turned out, opened the way
for statesmanlike measures of union. There was but one method by which
to save the Confederation now, as there had been but one method by which
to concert and carry forward the revolution. It had to be done, if done
at all, by bringing the leading minds of the country to some sort of
agreement: by correspondence, by individual effort; by personal appeals
to individuals and to legislatures on the part of men who could gain a
hearing because they had approved themselves by service. An infinite deal
of letter writing: letters handed about from hand to hand which were like
state papers for thoroughness, for sobriety of argument, for cogency
and quiet power; personal interviews; persuasion that soaked slowly
through from group to group in the simple society of the scattered towns
and hamlets and plantations,—such was the machinery of reform, whether
in opinion or in affairs; and Washington, with his quick conscience and
steady competency in every matter that called for action, was the natural
centre alike of counsel and of performance.
By the spring of 1785 the Potomac Company, pushed forward in its business
by men like Washington, had developed plans serious and definite enough
to engage the attention of the legislatures of Maryland and Virginia.
The Potomac ran with Maryland on the one bank and Virginia on the other:
it was necessary that the two States should agree upon plans for its use
and navigation. They united, therefore, in appointing commissioners to
meet at Alexandria in March, 1785, to consult upon this matter not only,
but also upon the general commercial relations of the two commonwealths
which this matter touched and which there was no general government
to regulate. Washington invited the commissioners to adjourn to Mount
Vernon, near by, as his guests; and there, though not of their number,
he was freely admitted to their counsels. They did not report to their
legislatures all the hopes and questions to which their thoughts had
broadened as they talked, but they set forth matters significant enough
for the present. The Potomac, they pointed out, could not be connected
with the western waters without affecting Pennsylvania, as well as
Maryland and Virginia; they recommended, therefore, that she also be
called into conference before that business was carried further. The
rest of their task, which concerned common commercial regulations,
uniform duties on imports, and joint rules touching the currency, they
completed. The Maryland legislature, when it received their report,
happily read it in as liberal a spirit as any statesman could have wished
for. If Pennsylvania was to be drawn into conference about the Potomac,
why should not Delaware also be consulted, with a view to carrying a
straight watercourse, by canal, from Chesapeake Bay to the Delaware
River? And if Pennsylvania and Delaware might be asked to confer about
these specific things, what was to prevent a general conference of the
States, in which all the uncomfortable questions of their intercourse
with one another might be frankly discussed? Governor Bowdoin, of
Massachusetts, had that very year urged his legislature to invite the
States to such a general convention, in the interests of amicable trade,
and it might be that it would meet with universal approbation.
Virginia was willing. There were men in her legislature to whom such
suggestions seemed full of hope and good counsel. Under their influence,
therefore, the Burgesses (January, 1786) asked all the States of the
Confederation to send delegates to a convention to be held at Annapolis
on the first Monday of September, to consider the questions of trade and
common intercourse which were disturbing the whole country. The response
was disappointing. Connecticut, South Carolina, and Georgia ignored the
call altogether. Even Maryland fell suddenly indifferent and failed to
act, though the plan was her own. New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode
Island, and North Carolina appointed delegates, but when the conference
had assembled it was found that they had not taken the trouble to attend.
Only Virginia, Pennsylvania, Delaware, New Jersey, and New York were
represented; and their delegates did not feel that, alone, they could do
anything. They could only urge another and fuller conference.
[Illustration: THOMAS SUMTER]
New Jersey had taken a very lively interest in these new plans of
consultation and co-operation. She felt very keenly the serious
commercial and political disadvantage at which she was placed by a
geographical position which made the much more powerful States of New
York and Pennsylvania her jealous rivals at either outlet to the sea, and
along every mile of her border to the westward. She had, accordingly,
given her delegates a broader commission than the others bore. She had
bidden them “consider how far a uniform system in their commercial
regulations _and other important matters_ might be necessary to the
common interest and permanent harmony of the several States”; and Mr.
Hamilton, one of the delegates sent from New York, being a statesman and
no partisan, induced the conference to make a like suggestion in asking
for another and fuller convention of the States. Alexander Hamilton had
been born, and bred as a lad, in the West Indies. He had established
himself while yet a very young man in New York; but he had taken no color
from the place; had kept a mind detached from merely local interests
and provincial prejudices; had served under Washington in the field, as
his aide and confidant; and had learned to see as clearly as any of his
elders in affairs the needs and dangers of the country. He lacked still
several months of being thirty; but he had been quickened to a singular
maturity in that time of stress. He proposed an address to the States
in which they should be asked to come together at Philadelphia, on the
second Monday of the following May, not merely for the consideration of
questions of trade, but also for the purpose of devising “such further
provisions as should appear to them necessary to render the constitution
of the federal government adequate to the exigencies of the Union,” and
of reporting to the Congress “such an act as would effectually provide
for the same”; and the conference, being in earnest, adopted the paper as
he had drawn it.
[Illustration: COUNT DE GRASSE]
Again the States would have been indifferent and conference of no avail,
had not the winter which followed been darkened and made very ominous
indeed by Shays’s rebellion. Every one of the little commonwealths felt
the threat of unmanageable disorder and the upsetting of government
itself which that spoke. “You talk, my good sir,” wrote Washington to
Harry Lee, in Congress, “of employing influence to appease the present
tumults in Massachusetts. I know not where that influence is to be
found, or, if attainable, that it would be a proper remedy for the
disorders. _Influence_ is no _government_. Let us have one by which our
lives, liberties, and properties will be secured, or let us know the
worst.” There was the same feeling everywhere. Government was too slack,
order too uncertain. The authority of law could nowhere be stronger
than each individual State was prepared to make it. There was no common
power, no effectual combination, no aggregate force to render it beyond
peradventure firm and lasting. The object-lesson had come in good season.
The Congress of the Confederation had heretofore been opposed to a
general conference; it now sanctioned and advised it. The States were at
last effectually shaken from their indifference, and appointed delegates
to attend at Philadelphia in May, to take part in the new Continental
Congress.
It proved a notable assembly,—more notable than the Congress of 1774;
for its business was not protest but the reconstruction of a government,
and it proved equal to the task. A certain very noticeable anxiety
attended the opening of its sessions. The delegates came very slowly
and tardily in. A full week had gone by after the day set for convening
before so many as seven States were represented. The delegates from New
Hampshire were two months late in arriving. It was evident at first
that the members were nervous and set about their work of conference
and debate with a touch of reluctance and apprehension. They knew that
their business was critically important. It might be that the breaking
up of their Union, or its consolidation, the setting in or the happy and
final preclusion of civil war, would follow upon the completion of their
labors. Affairs, and opinion, too, hung at a perilous poise, and might
easily be turned this way or that by their success or failure.
[Illustration: SPECIMEN OF VIRGINIA CURRENCY]
They gathered confidence, however, as they got hold of their task
and gained knowledge of one another. There were fifty-five delegates
in attendance at last: every State except Rhode Island had sent
commissioners. Many of the more famous figures of the revolutionary time
were missing. Samuel Adams had declared himself opposed to “a general
revision of the Confederation.” John Adams was in England. Jefferson was
in France. Patrick Henry declined to attend. The men who had organized
the Continental Congress and the Congress of the Confederation had in
large part given place to others. Younger men had come forward, and were
speaking with authority: men like James Madison, of Virginia, who was but
just turned of thirty-six, and Alexander Hamilton, of New York, who was
only thirty. But older men were there also, and it was reassuring to find
how carefully the States had picked their representatives. Robert Morris
was there, the experienced financier of the revolution; Roger Sherman was
there, whose practical good sense had steadied the early counsels of the
Continental Congress; and John Rutledge, whom South Carolina had made a
sort of dictator in her affairs while the revolution held; and Benjamin
Franklin, in his eighty-second year. Virginia had sent seasoned jurists
past middle life, like John Blair, who had been president of her council,
and George Wythe, who had drafted her protest against the Stamp Act; and
had added George Mason, her best type of conservative country gentleman,
and General Washington, as of course, as well as handsome Edmund Randolph
and studious Mr. Madison, still in their thirties.
Every day’s debates gave strength and confidence to the counsels of
the conference. There were many sharp differences of opinion among
its members; but they held together, and a sound practical sagacity
prevailed. Leadership among them fell to Madison, whose quiet suggestions
always smacked of moderation and of a real knowledge of the subject
in hand; to James Wilson, of Pennsylvania, whose shrewd Scots sense
and thorough knowledge of law,—the law of nations and of governmental
structure as well as the law every lawyer could talk of,—enabled him
to clarify and strengthen every topic he touched; to Roger Sherman,
of Connecticut, rugged, practical, hard-headed; to Dr. Franklin, who
could utter the mellow wisdom of age, and utter it in sentences men
could remember; to Gouverneur Morris or Rufus King, who knew how to
cast propositions for a vote,—to the men who could think steadily and
see things whole, or who could strike out practicable lines of definite
action.
[Illustration: JOHN BLAIR]
The convention wisely sat with closed doors. It sat all the summer
through, and until September was more than half gone; let no one know
what it debated or had its doubts and its sharp differences of opinion
about; merely published its work when finished, and went home to press
it for acceptance. It gave it great dignity that Washington had presided
over its counsels and was heart and soul for the adoption of the measures
it proposed. His name and quiet force had steadied the convention on
many an anxious day when disagreement threatened hopeless breach. His
fame and influence infinitely strengthened also the measures proposed,
now that they were completed. He supported them because they were
thorough-going and courageous and cut to the root of the difficulties
under which the country was laboring. Issue had been joined now, as he
had wished to see it joined, between government or no government, and the
country was to know at last where it stood in the most essential matters
of its life.
[Illustration: GOUVERNEUR MORRIS]
The convention had drafted nothing less than a new constitution,—no
mere amendment or series of amendments to the Articles of Confederation;
a radically new scheme of government and of union, which must stand or
fall upon its own merits. It was recalled, many years afterwards, how
General Washington had stood in the midst of a little group of delegates,
during the anxious first days at Philadelphia, while they waited for
commissioners enough to justify them in effecting an organization, and
had cried, “Let us raise a standard to which the wise and honest can
repair. The event is in the hand of God.” It was in that spirit that the
convention had acted. They had not taken measures to please, but measures
to save the country. The constitution which they proposed showed by its
very simplicity and directness the statesmanlike vigor, definiteness,
and consistency of purpose with which it had been conceived and drafted.
It conferred upon the federal government powers which would make it at
once strong and independent: the power to tax, the exclusive power to
coin money, the power to maintain an army and a navy,—the powers, within
its sphere, of a supreme and sovereign government. Its laws were to be,
not advisory, but imperative, and were to operate, not upon the States,
but directly upon individuals, like the laws of any sovereign. It was
provided with the executive the Confederation had lacked: a president in
whose authority should be concentrated the whole administrative force of
its government. It was to have its own courts, and in those courts, not
in the courts of the States, were its powers to be finally determined,
whenever challenged. The very equality of the States, that cardinal
principle,—that cardinal defect,—of the Confederation, was in large part
to be done away with. The legislature of the new government, which
was to be no confederation, but a veritable State built upon a federal
principle, was to consist of two houses. In one, the Senate, the States
were to be equally represented; but in the other and larger house, the
House of Representatives, the people were to be represented directly,
by number,—one representative for every thirty thousand,—counting them
within their States, indeed, but not as if they constituted separate
commonwealths. The new government was to regulate commerce, both with
foreign nations and among the States. The States were to be forbidden
to enter into any treaty, alliance, or confederation; to emit bills of
credit; to pass any law impairing the obligation of contracts; and to lay
any imposts or duties on imports or exports, unless permitted to do so
by the Congress of the United States. All foreign affairs, all questions
between State and State, all common interests were to be controlled by
the federal government; and it was to act directly, of its own will and
initiative, through its own officers and its own tribunals.
[Illustration: RUFUS KING]
In brief, every salient feature of the existing Confederation was in
this new instrument of government condemned and rejected:—the absolute
equality of the States, the dependence of the general government upon
them for the execution of the laws and for its very support, its lack
of an executive and of executive powers, its futile function of mere
advice. Even so, the changes proposed did not satisfy Mr. Hamilton. He
had been a member of the convention, had signed the document now sent
forth, and meant to devote himself very heartily indeed to advocating
its adoption; but he had taken very little part in its formulation,
because, as he had frankly told his fellow members, he himself desired
something very different, which he knew he could not get. He had very
little faith, he said, in federal government, or even in republican
government, which it seemed to him impracticable to establish over
so extensive a country as the United States. He could wish, he said,
that the state governments, as independent political bodies, might be
extinguished, or at any rate entirely subordinated; that the general
government might be given “complete sovereignty”; that the new executive
of the nation might hold for life, and at least one house of the national
legislature for a like term, “or at least during good behavior.” His
breeding was not of the colonies, his thinking marked him of the culture
that belonged on the other side of the sea. He hated anarchy, and saw
the country drifting into it. He believed that nothing short of a
centralized government could be certainly relied upon to check and kill
it. He was for efficiency rather than for sentiment. But he was above
all a statesman, and contented himself, and that right heartily, with
the minimum of what he desired,—with the government the convention had
devised. He knew, as every one did who had been admitted to the counsels
of the convention, by how sharp a struggle, by how delicate and difficult
a series of compromises, the constitution as it stood had been obtained
amidst the conflict of interests and of views disclosed in debate.
The smaller States had assented to it only because the Senate was to
preserve for them the old-time equality of the States in legislation.
The slave-holding States of the South had assented only when it was
agreed that three out of every five of their slaves were to be counted in
reckoning population as a basis of representation in the lower house. A
compromise had ended every serious divergence of opinion. The wonder was,
not that so little, but that so much concentration and invigoration of
authority had been agreed upon where counsel and interest differed by the
width of the poles.
[Illustration: EDMUND RANDOLPH]
So far as the country at large was concerned, the new constitution was
startling and radical enough as it stood. Patrick Henry, of Virginia,
had refused to attend the convention because he had foreseen and feared
just such revolutionary proposals. George Mason and Edmund Randolph, of
Virginia, and Robert Yates and John Lansing, Hamilton’s colleagues from
New York, had refused to sign the constitution which it proposed. The
new document was most revolutionary in the method which it proposed for
its adoption by the States. There was but one way by which the Articles
of Confederation, the existing federal law for which this was to be a
substitute, could legally be amended: by the unanimous assent of the
States. The convention proposed, nevertheless, that the new constitution
should go into effect if adopted by nine out of the thirteen; and the
Congress, seeing change probably impossible otherwise, sanctioned the
proposal.
Fortunately, there was nothing novel in the details of the government
proposed. Every practical provision in it, almost without exception,
had been borrowed from the experience of the colonies themselves,
or from English experience equally familiar:—the single governor,
the two legislative houses, the supreme court, the partial equality
of the States, the representation of the people, popular elections,
brief terms of office, definite, chartered powers. Even the electoral
college which was to choose the President, had its prototype in the
electoral body through which Maryland chose the members of the upper
house of her legislature. The convention had showed its conservative
temper in every provision it touched; and not much of what it had done
had to be elaborately explained. Many of the States were ready to
accept the constitution at once. Delaware ratified it on the 7th of
December, but a little more than three months after the adjournment of
the convention; Pennsylvania followed her example on the 12th, and New
Jersey on the 18th. By the 1st of June, 1788, eight States had given
their assent,—Massachusetts among them, though she had hesitated,—but
New York and Virginia still held off. Massachusetts had waited until Mr.
John Hancock and Mr. Samuel Adams declared themselves willing to accept
the constitution and had suffered their choice to shift the balance of
opinion. New York held off, as she had held off from granting additional
powers to the Congress of the Confederation, because she did not wish
to yield her commercial independence; and Virginia because men whom she
loved, like Mr. Henry, and men whom she had been accustomed to trust in
counsel, like Mr. Mason, feared to see so powerful a central government
set up.
[Illustration: GOVERNOR BOWDOIN’S PROCLAMATION]
New York yielded at last (July 26th), by a majority of only two votes
out of fifty-seven, because Mr. Hamilton and the men who stood with him
pressed every advantage of argument, influence, and persuasion,—and
because news came that New Hampshire had accepted the constitution, the
ninth State (June 21st), and that therefore the new government was quite
certain to be tried without her. In Virginia the arguments of Madison and
Randolph and Marshall and the personal influence of Washington prevailed
at last (June 25th), notwithstanding the opposition of Lee and Henry
and Mason. It was said in her convention that there were no safeguards
in the new constitution sufficient to withhold the powerful government
about to be set up from encroaching alike upon individual rights and upon
the undoubted powers of the several States; and the opposition would
have prevailed had not the ratification been coupled with resolutions
which urged amendments which should constitute a sort of bill of
rights,—amendments which the new government afterwards accepted.
[Illustration: MAP OF VOTES IN MIDDLE & SOUTHERN STATES ON FEDERAL
CONSTITUTION 1787-89.
WITH CONTOUR LINES BY O. G. LIBBY. COPYRIGHT 1902.
BORMAY & CO., N. Y.]
[Illustration: SILHOUETTE OF JAMES BOWDOIN]
“The opinion of General Washington was of such weight,” said Count
Moustier, the French minister to the United States, “that it alone
contributed more than any other measure to cause the present constitution
to be adopted.” No doubt the country did feel, throughout, the compulsion
of loyal sentiment that went with his name. No doubt it felt, too, the
mastery of the men who stood with him to lead, and yielded, in part,
to their tact, their quick concert, their energy, their infectious
enthusiasm, their ardor of unhesitating conviction. But it was interest
and the pressure of affairs which told most decisively in the vote.
Each State had uttered its choice with regard to the adoption of the
constitution through a convention chosen for the purpose; and it was
noteworthy how the delegates stood divided. Those from the larger
towns and the districts where hamlets and homes lay thickest, where
commerce moved upon the rivers and to the sea; those from the farming
regions which lay by tide-water or near the long rivers which crossed
the boundaries of States and floated produce to markets within another
jurisdiction; those who came from exposed frontiers where there was
nothing to hope for from independence and much to hope for from a
protecting common government:—all who felt the wide movements of trade
or the need for free markets or the too sharp pinch of rivalry between
State and State or the imminent threat of division and disorder, to the
unsettling of property and the upsetting of their lives, voted for the
constitution. It was opposed by the men who lived remote from the centres
of population and the stronger currents of trade, whose lives had no wide
connections and sufficed them; by men who were more likely to be debtors
than to be creditors and wished their States left at liberty to legalize
a depreciated currency; by men whose homes were upon the western rivers
which ran towards Spanish territory, not towards the ports of the East,
and who doubted their real connection of interest with the seaboard; by
the great land-owners of New York, whose estates shut free farmers out,
who had been masters of the State hitherto and wished to keep intact her
right to collect duties at her great port, her power to put her neighbors
at a disadvantage; by conservative men who feared to see one group of
States take advantage of their majority to obtain commercial ascendency
over another group. “Tories” voted for the constitution because they
hoped to be safer under it; many extreme “Whigs” voted against it because
they thought that they would be a little freer without it. Those who
admired a centred and efficient government like that of England and
regretted separation, were its advocates; those who ardently preferred
their own little commonwealths and looked upon them as their best field
of prosperity or of personal ambition were its opponents. Men voted for
it because they hated anarchy and confusion of authority and wished
to see a nation created in America, as Mr. Hamilton did; and against
it because they thought that where anarchy was impossible liberty was
insecure. No doubt, could there have been a counting of heads the country
through, a majority would have been found opposed to the constitution;
but the men who were its active and efficient advocates lived at the
centres of population, had the best concert of action, filled the mails
and the public prints with their writings, were very formidable in debate
and full of tactical resources in the conventions, could win waverers,
and prevailed. North Carolina and Rhode Island alone rejected the
constitution, waiting without to see what would come of the new union.
[Illustration: MAP OF VOTES IN NEW ENGLAND STATES ON FEDERAL CONSTITUTION
1787-88 WITH CONTOUR LINES BY O. G. LIBBY. COPYRIGHT 1902.
BORMAY & CO., N. Y.]
[Illustration: JAMES BOWDOIN]
It had been a notable thing to see how wide the discussion had
swung which attended the drafting and adoption of the new form of
government, through how broad a range of topics it had run, and with
how statesmanlike a tone and thorough-going a method alike of advocacy
and of opposition. It had produced pamphlets which, for sobriety
and thoroughness, might some of them have served as manuals of free
government, and for form and vigor as models of lucidity and force in
the use of English prose. At the very outset of the Revolution, at the
first touch of national feeling, America had found her voice and produced
of a sudden her school of statesmen and of writers. The strong emotions
of the time had seemed to spring easily into words,—into words that
told instantly upon men’s spirits on both sides of the sea, and made
themselves at once vehicles of power. Now a new strain, a new impulse,
the strain and impulse of those who build and make good what they have
achieved, was upon the leaders of the young States, and they spoke their
chastened thought like masters.
Very few men in America had used the pen for achievement or the
satisfaction of the force that was in them until this supreme day of
struggle came when a new nation was born and the very abstract principles
of liberty entered into their imaginations and possessed their minds,
like things that lived and had of themselves power to prevail. Men
had not often turned to the making of books during the long days of
settlement, when the colonies were a-making and every man’s fire went
into his work in the forests or upon the sea or in the conduct of
affairs. Here and there some man of thoughtful spirit, bred to his books
in old England, would turn again, for solace and relief of heart in that
wilderness, to his studies, as gentle George Sandys did, Sir Edwin’s
brother, who had quickened the heavy nights at Jamestown with coining
noble English verses out of the _Metamorphoses_ of Ovid. Once and again
some gentle woman, like Anne Bradstreet, of quick wit and thoughts that
moved uneasy amidst her narrow, pent-up life, would seek outlet of spirit
in bits of prose, that spoke her deeper moods, or verses into which she
sought to put her image of the world. Men did not always merely preach,
or speak only in town meeting, or put pen to paper only in letters of
business. William Bradford, the peasant scholar who ruled Plymouth, wrote
the moving narrative of his people’s pilgrimage and establishment in the
New World with the dignity of the true historian, minded to hand a great
story on to men of other days. Mr. John Winthrop kept daily chronicle
of what went forward in the little commonwealth in which he ruled a
generation through like one who works upon the records of a great State
and people. But there was in none of this the full breath of letters.
[Illustration: OLIVER ELLSWORTH]
Men wrote, for the most part, only to set some business forward, of
church or state. It was thus that Captain Smith had written his _True
Relation_ of the first planting of Virginia, his _Description of New
England_, and his _General History of Virginia, Summer Isles, and New
England_, and that the many books, great and small, about the planting of
the colonies had come into existence. Partisans of each enterprise set
its merits forth; opponents foredoomed it to failure; those who had tried
America and found it a bitter place to live in spoke out in ridicule,
condemnation, slander against it. It was in a like tone, as of men who
carry an enterprise forward in their words, that the governing divines
of the New England commonwealths had uttered their treatises upon the
workings of Providence and the disciplinary purposes of the established
polity among them. Mr. Hooker’s discourses rang always of man’s salvation
or of the affairs of state which must rule his conduct. Mr. Cotton’s
spoke always a purpose to govern men by the terms of his Puritan creed.
Roger Williams wrote always of some matter that touched his mission as
the founder of a free commonwealth or an evangelist among the Indians.
Cotton Mather had set down, in his rugged Tudor prose, the judgments of
God among men, as they had been revealed to him in the lives of those who
had lived about him or in the affairs of the New England churches. Even
their verses were but another engine of doctrine and reproof, when they
made verse their vehicle of utterance, as did Michael Wigglesworth, the
“little shadow of a man,” more soul than body, who through half a century
was pastor at Maldon.
[Illustration: HENRY LAURENS]
Not until that first century of initial strife and experiment had
closed and a new age had come, with broader outlooks and airs of common
enterprise, did any touch of genius lift letters to the levels of abiding
power. In Jonathan Edwards the doctrine and philosophy of the Puritan
churches found a voice which knew the full gamut of noble and effective
speech. Every thought that he touched lived. His mind wrought always
with a gift of creation. What he wrote was no longer the mere matter
of the preacher; it was always living matter of thought as well, which
searched meanings to their bottom, and was put forth to be reckoned with
by every man who pondered aught of the weightier matters of his life.
But it was spoken at the end of an age. The cool eighteenth century had
come in. Men were beginning to ask, not for counsels of righteousness,
but for common-sense maxims of conduct, for a philosophy of this world,
not of the next; and were turning away from the religion, as they were
turning away from the politics, of the age gone by. They stopped once and
again to record what that age had done. Each little commonwealth could
presently point to some quiet gentleman, like Mr. Hugh Jones and Mr.
Robert Beverley in Virginia, and Mr. Thomas Prince in Massachusetts, who
had made note of its history while yet the memory of it was fresh, its
documents safe at hand. But the passion of the older time was no longer
upon them. The spirit of another day turned men’s faces to the future,
rather than to the past. New affairs were afoot, new thoughts astir, and
men who thought, thought upon the enterprises and the principles of their
own day.
Mr. Benjamin Franklin was their typical man of letters. That he was
a man of letters seemed only an accident of his career as a man of
affairs. His plain, straightforward, manly prose seemed with him an
instrument of business. For all it had about it the flavor of his
singular individuality and had an unmistakable touch of the nice art of
speech upon it, it used everywhere the accents of the shop, the street,
the lecture room, or the council chamber, and had seldom about it the
free disengagement of letters. The homely saws and wise maxims of _Poor
Richard’s Almanack_ had the true flavor of his career, and were as close
to practical experience as he himself kept all his life through. His
passion for physical science oftentimes took him, it is true, away from
the workaday world into the realms of speculation; but science was for
him, after all, but the experimental side of practical achievement in the
arts and conveniences of life. He was a _savant_ of the people.
[Illustration: WILLIAM PATTERSON]
In the literature of the Revolution forces were released which
transformed letters into an instrument of creation and brought nothing
less than a nation into self-consciousness. It had had its beginnings
in the protest against the Stamp Act, grave state papers, the addresses
of colonial assemblies and of the Congress at New York, the arguments
of jurists, and the letters of observant men of affairs. Here was
the structure of an empire to be debated. The very scope and capital
significance of such a debate called to the best minds of the colonies
like a challenge. Pamphlets began to come from the press which showed
quiet men unexpectedly turned statesmen and masters of style to state
the case for the liberties of the colonies. Mr. Daniel Dulany’s
_Considerations on the Propriety of Imposing Taxes on the British
Colonies for the Purpose of Raising Revenue by Act of Parliament_
supplied the great Pitt with the chief grounds of his argument against
taxing America. A Maryland lawyer had turned from leading the bar of a
province to set up the true theory of the constitution of an empire,
with the dignity, the moderation, the power, the incommunicable grace
of a great thinker and genuine man of letters. Mr. Richard Bland, of
Virginia, antiquary and mere jurist though he seemed to be, published
an _Enquiry into the Rights of the British Colonies_, which put in
blunt and bitter sentences what Mr. Dulany had said with restrained and
sober eloquence,—that, and more besides. Mr. Bland did not hesitate to
speak of Virginia as a “distinct and independent state,” bound, indeed,
in allegiance to England’s king, but not bound to her Parliament; a
dominion “settled by Englishmen at their own expense, under particular
stipulations with the crown,” and entitled to deal with the crown alone.
Mr. Townsend’s Acts of 1767 called forth a series of _Letters from a
Farmer in Pennsylvania to the Inhabitants of the British Colonies_, into
which John Dickinson had put the very heart of good sense and justice,
to support the theory of liberty to which all America adhered, with an
urbanity, a simple grace, a fine, natural power of statement which gave
him instant place, on both sides of the sea, among famous Americans.
It seemed quite in the order of nature that James Otis and John Adams
in Boston should enter the lists to make themselves champions of the
people’s side in such an argument; and they wrote as they spoke, with a
point and efficacy sure to win attention. It was much more significant
that a like passion of speech should take hold of men hitherto withdrawn
from popular leadership, for whom, it seemed, principles were the
ultimate realities, not the mere play of affairs. And as the debate
broadened, so did the volume of American letters grow. Her writers were
serving their apprenticeship in the statement of the ideals by which she
was to live. From the first Continental Congress came forth an earnest
address to the King, sober memorials to the people of Great Britain and
to the people of British America, and a solemn declaration of rights
which were as firm, as moderate, as cogent in reasoning, as sagacious in
method as if they had been the state papers of an ancient parliament.
Men everywhere marvelled at their power of convincing statement, their
telling force of quiet eloquence, as coming from a people without any
writers, except Dr. Franklin, that anybody had heard of. There was here
a breeding in letters which no man could well comprehend who had not
breathed the keen airs of political inquiry moving upon the coasts of
America.
[Illustration: THOMAS PAINE]
Presently there was the air of revolution, too. Pamphlets which argued
with slow and sober power gave place to pamphlets which rang with
passionate appeals; which thrust constitutional argument upon one side
and spoke flatly for independence. One such took precedence of all
others, whether for boldness or for power, the extraordinary pamphlet
which Thomas Paine, but the other day come out of England as if upon mere
adventure, gave to the world as _Common Sense_. It came from the press in
Philadelphia early in January, 1776, the year the Congress uttered its
Declaration of Independence, and no writing ever more instantly swung
men to its humor. It was hard to resist its quick, incisive sentences,
which cut so unhesitatingly to the heart of every matter they touched;
which spoke, not the arguments of the lawyer or the calculations of the
statesman, but the absolute spirit of revolt, and were as direct and
vivid in their appeal as any sentences of Mr. Swift himself could have
been. They were cast, every one, not according to the canons of taste,
but according to the canons of force, and declared, every one, without
qualification, for independence.
[Illustration: TITLE PAGE OF “COMMON SENSE”]
Upon that, issue was joined. Men like Mr. Dickinson and Mr. Dulany drew
back, and pleaded for the peaceful ways of constitutional agitation. Men
like Joseph Galloway threw their sturdy power upon the same scale. Samuel
Seabury, “The Westchester Farmer,” had already written letters against
the extreme courses of the Congresses of 1774 and 1775 which were as
difficult to answer as those of Mr. Dickinson himself, and men drew from
them very effective weapons of controversy as affairs thickened towards
revolution. Men mustered now upon that side who were very formidable,
whether for influence or for skill and persuasiveness as advocates,—among
the rest the redoubtable Jonathan Boucher, the robust preacher who was
General Washington’s friend: who had met Washington in mid-stream of the
Potomac as he fared to the Congress at Philadelphia and had warned him
very solemnly to beware what he did to make cause against the King’s
government in England. Issue joined, passion was the more quickened.
There was vehement give and take. The sting of satire and invective was
added to the bitterness of conflicting views upon this vital matter which
must involve all men’s fortunes, and many used in ugly temper the worst
weapons of abuse. Friends parted company in hopeless alienation. Men
fought for their mere good name who resisted the rising spirit of the
revolution. It was no light matter to come under the lash of verse-makers
like Philip Freneau, whose satire burned like the flames about a stake.
It was almost as hard to face John Trumbull’s stinging jests, touched
sometimes with mirth but never with pity. These men were masters of their
weapons, and wielded them with a certain grim pleasure. Perhaps Philip
Freneau might, in some other age, have struck into the fine, sweet tones
of genuine poetry; strains came now and again from his pen which marked
him a poet with the real gift of song. But
“An age employed in pointing steel
Can no poetic rapture feel,”
and he spent his force upon bitter satire, whose voice the men of his
day welcomed and applauded. The passion of such a time could yield
nothing more gentle. Men’s ears were not waiting for music. They spoke
to give their speech efficacy as an instrument of action. The very
private letters of the time read like minor pamphlets, ran always upon
some theme of public concert in affairs, upon principles and measures,
and were grave bits of counsel. Heads of colleges, like redoubtable John
Witherspoon, of Princeton, kept the field in this fight for principles
of government; Timothy Dwight, whom Yale afterwards preferred to her
presidency, wrote its songs of war.
And so a generation was schooled for the making of a nation and the
framing of constitutions: a generation bred to the debate of polities
and the acute discrimination of principles of government; bred also
to the severest and most analytical forms of discussion, and to the
statement of political reasoning in words which told upon the mind like
a demonstration. It was such a generation that debated the setting up
and constitution of the Confederation, its weakness, the significance of
Shays’s rebellion and of the disorders, some obvious, many obscure, which
followed the war, the necessity for a new and better form of union, and
the character of the government it ought to be provided with.
[Illustration: GEORGE WASHINGTON, FROM THE BUST BY ECKSTEIN]
The chief part in the critical discussion of the constitution proposed
by the convention of 1787 fell, of course, to the leaders of the several
state conventions which met to consider its adoption or rejection. But
there came also a flood of pamphlets from the press, and the newspapers
of the seaport towns teemed with letters from men whose every line
showed how schooled they had grown in the art of assessing questions of
government. Public opinion had first to be dealt with before the state
conventions should come together. There were opponents of the new scheme
of union as ready to speak out as its advocates, and they spoke with a
certain advantage of argument on their side. They could very easily make
it seem, both to themselves and to those whom they addressed, that they
were but continuing their advocacy of the principles of the Revolution
in opposing the creation of a central government likely to command them
as they had but just now refused to be commanded by the immemorial
government of the King over sea, a government made sacred by old
allegiance. But the victory was again with those who concerted action.
The most notable papers of the whole controversy were the eighty-five
_Federalist_ letters addressed, in quick, unbroken series, to “The People
of the State of New York” from the columns of _The Independent Journal_,
_The New York Packet_, and _The Daily Advertiser_ during the weeks which
intervened between the promulgation of the text of the constitution and
the assembling of New York’s convention.
Each letter bore the signature _Publius_, but the series was in fact
written by three several authors. Those which analyzed the general
powers of the proposed government, those which sought to make clear its
historical and theoretical foundations, and many of those which expounded
its details, were the work of Mr. Madison. Mr. Hamilton examined, in
his thorough-going, unanswerable way, the defects of the existing
Confederation, such of the details of the constitutional convention’s
plan for the reconstitution of the government as Mr. Madison had not
the time to develop, and those general conceptions of government which
he handled so like a master. Mr. Jay discussed the fitness of the new
government for dealing with the foreign relations of the States. What
distinguished these papers from all the rest with which printers and
politicians were so busy was their breadth of view, their fine temper,
their range of topic, their texture woven both of fact and principle,
their candid and yet conclusive comment upon every matter that could be
drawn into controversy. They read like what they were, the utterances of
statesmen,—of statesmen drawn for the nonce out upon the general field of
the theory and practice of government. It was easy to see in reading them
how Mr. Madison had served and guided the convention at Philadelphia, and
how Mr. Hamilton might have served it, had he liked its work while in
progress as heartily as he now accepted and advocated it. These papers
were henceforth to be the chief manual of all students and historians
of the constitution. And their style, with its unfailing lucidity, its
cogency without artificial emphasis, its unmistakable distinction and
elevation of tone, matched their matter. This was the masterpiece of
letters in the sober kind bred by revolution.
[Illustration: JOHN MARSHALL]
[Illustration: THOMSON, THE CLERK OF CONGRESS, ANNOUNCING TO WASHINGTON,
AT MOUNT VERNON, HIS ELECTION TO THE PRESIDENCY]
No man could say whether argument or interest had won the fight for
the constitution; but it was at least certain that nothing had been
done hastily or in a corner to change the forms of union. These close
encounters of debate had at least made the country fully conscious of
what it did. The new constitution had been candidly put through its
public ordeal. All knew what it was, and for what purposes it was to be
set up. Opinion had made it, not force or intrigue; and it was to be
tried as a thing the whole country had shown itself willing to see put to
the test.
[Illustration: INAUGURATION OF WASHINGTON IN NEW YORK]
Fortunately, there was one “Federalist” leader whom all the country
trusted, and against whom even the bitterest opponents of the new
constitution hesitated to speak in malice or detraction. The choice
of men everywhere turned spontaneously to Washington as the one man
who ought to be first President of the United States. The constitution
provided that electors should be chosen in the several States, and that
by them a President and Vice President should be selected. Their votes
were to be sent to the Congress, to be opened and counted in a joint
session of the two houses. The 4th of March, 1789, had been set as the
day for the convening of the new Congress and the inauguration of the
government; and New York was the place appointed. But the members were
laggard and tardy, as they had been at Philadelphia when the constitution
was to be framed. It was the 6th of April before they found a quorum and
counted the electoral votes. On the 7th they sent Charles Thomson, who
had been clerk of every Congress since 1774, to Mount Vernon to inform
General Washington that he had been unanimously chosen President. By the
27th Washington was in New York, ready for his duty. He had come with
unaffected reluctance. He called himself a mere soldier, and an old man
besides; doubted his civil capacity; and coveted peace and retirement.
But he had known it his duty to come; and on the 30th he was inaugurated
President of the United States.
The first thing to be done was to give the new government dignity, vigor,
and pre-eminence, lest it should inherit the taint of contempt which
had fallen on the Confederation. It was the office and authority of the
President, rather than the increase in the powers of Congress, that
constituted the chief difference between the new government and the old.
It was to be a government which could not only make laws, but execute
them also; and Washington knew that no small part of its efficacy and
prestige must depend upon him, its Executive. “I walk,” he said, “upon
untrodden ground. There is scarcely an action the motive of which may not
be subjected to a double interpretation. There is scarcely any part of
my conduct which cannot hereafter be drawn into precedent.” He must, he
saw, mix prudence with firmness, conciliation with command, a reasonable
accommodation with the strict execution of the law; and yet not abate the
new authority. The new constitution had yet to prove itself acceptable;
the new government had yet to win respect. No sentiment attached to it.
It must be begun amidst curiosity rather than reverence; in a cool air
almost of indifference; without many warm partisans of the rank and file;
as an experiment, lacking yet for some time the dignity of an institution.
[Illustration: THE FIRST PRESIDENTIAL MANSION, AT PEARL AND CHERRY
STREETS, NEW YORK]
In such circumstances questions of etiquette assumed the importance
of questions of statecraft. The President insisted, first of all,
upon personal precedence. He would receive but not make calls, would
give invitations but not accept them; the representatives of foreign
governments must deal with him, not directly, but through the Department
of State, the country’s new foreign office; the governors of States, when
he travelled, must call first on him, not he first on them. He made a
point of visiting different parts of the country when he could, in order
that the people might everywhere have visible proof of the existence and
of the dignity of the President, the head of the nation. He practised no
foolish seclusion. It was inbred in his principles that he should serve
the people in true republican spirit, without affectation or pretension.
He walked the streets like other men; rode forth for his exercise on
horseback, as was his Virginian habit; was but little more punctilious
in dress and manner than he would have been at home. But the natural
majesty of his person, his habitual gravity, his breeding in a formal
society, the impression he made upon every one of a man of high passion
self-controlled, inevitably gave him distinction, and magnified his
office in the imagination of all who saw or dealt with him.
[Illustration: HENRY KNOX]
It was easier for him to play his own part of quiet authority and
matter-of-course precedence than to fill the new offices of federal
administration with men who could lend a like flavor to the conduct of
affairs. Ambitious men looked askance upon the new government; preferred
the service of their States, if they wished political office at all; had
to be persuaded to take federal office, and were asked to say nothing of
the offer and refusal if they declined it. Fortunately, there were not
many offices to be filled; and for these efficient men were found. The
Congress created but three administrative departments at the outset: the
Department of State, the Department of the Treasury, and the Department
of War; though it provided also for the appointment of an Attorney
General. Washington chose Thomas Jefferson to be Secretary of State,
Alexander Hamilton to be Secretary of the Treasury, General Henry Knox
to be Secretary of War, and Edmund Randolph to be Attorney General.
Mr. John Jay he made Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United
States. His strong desire was to join parties in a common support of the
general government,—join them at the outset, when their formation was but
foreshadowed, not yet hardened to a definite purpose. Alexander Hamilton
the whole country knew to be one of the chief advocates of the new and
stronger government; General Knox, too, was an avowed “Federalist,”
as well as a close personal friend of General Washington’s; but Mr.
Jefferson, who had been in France when the constitution was framed
and adopted, came rather lukewarmly to its support, and Mr. Randolph,
though he had stood for its adoption, with Mr. Madison, in the Virginian
convention, had favored it rather as a sensible politician than as an
earnest friend. Mr. Jay was known to be a Federalist.
When parties formed it would be in Congress; and the elements there
were not difficult to reckon. There were but eighty-one members, all
told: in the Senate twenty-two, in the House fifty-nine, until Rhode
Island and North Carolina should come into the Union. It gave weight to
the administration that John Adams had been chosen Vice President, and
stood with all his sturdy frankness for Federalism, and represented,
besides, distinguished national service, both at home and abroad. He
had been the first minister of the new republic at the court of St.
James, and had made himself and his country respected there, alike for
statesmanship and for integrity. He had been at Paris and at The Hague,
always alert, always serviceable, always efficient, if never quite genial
or attractive, and brought with him to his new duties in New York the
excellent traditions of his State in politics and morals.
[Illustration: CELEBRATION IN NEW YORK ON THE NIGHT OF WASHINGTON’S
INAUGURATION]
There were marked differences of opinion in the houses from the first:
some were inclined to a very liberal construction of their new powers
under the constitution; others cried a warning against it, and pressed
very earnestly for methods which should above all be conservative, and
hold all things to a moderate course. It was easy to see how parties
could form,—were forming; but as yet they revealed themselves only
vaguely, and legislation moved unembarrassed.
The task of the new Congress was nothing less than the organization of
the government. By an act of the 24th of September, 1789, it definitively
set up the Supreme Court for which the constitution had provided; giving
it a membership of six justices, of whom one should be Chief Justice.
Its statutes erected the Departments of State, War, and the Treasury;
created the office and functions of Attorney General; put the military
establishment upon a modest peace footing; and confirmed the regulations
which the Congress of the Confederation had made with regard to the
government of the Northwest Territory ceded by the States to the general
government.
[Illustration: GOVERNMENT HOUSE AT THE BATTERY, NEW YORK, 1790]
Its measures of policy affected the whole action of the government in
the matters most likely to give it strength and credit; and even the
operation of the constitution itself. Virginia was not the only State
which had given its assent to the constitution upon the virtual condition
that so soon as the government went into operation amendments should be
adopted which should explicitly safeguard the more essential rights of
individuals and of States. North Carolina, South Carolina, New York,
Massachusetts, and New Hampshire had also urged amendments; and those
who had been the chief advocates of the constitution in their several
conventions had virtually promised that amendment should be undertaken
at the earliest practicable moment. The Congress, therefore, promptly
proposed twelve amendments; and of these twelve the States accepted
ten. Eight of them ran in the phrases of Magna Charta, the Petition of
Right, the Declaration of Independence, and the Virginia Bill of Rights;
the principles they embodied had come out of the long processes of
English constitutional history, out of the precedents of English courts
and the practice of English justice; out of charters and constitutions
and ancient parliamentary protests. They made secure against federal
encroachment the rights of individuals in respect of religion, freedom
of speech, military service and the use and maintenance of armies,
search warrants, trial in accordance with fixed law and by the judgment
of juries, criminal accusations, the inflicting of punishments, and
the exaction of bail. The ninth provided that “the enumeration in the
constitution of certain rights should not be construed to deny or
disparage others retained by the people.” The tenth declared that “powers
not delegated to the United States by the constitution, nor prohibited
by it to the States, were reserved to the States respectively or to the
people.”
So much Congress did to keep faith with the country and to clear the
constitution of even the suspicion of a character unfavorable to liberty.
Its other measures were intended, not to justify or excuse the new
government, but to give it efficiency. It was by common consent the chief
business of the session to set the finances of the country effectually
to rights and to regulate commerce: to give the new Union unquestionable
standing in the markets and the banks of the world. Congress put itself
in these matters under the guidance of Hamilton. The advice given by
the young Secretary was characteristic alike of his capacity and of
the purposes which he entertained with regard to the government. And
he declared his views with characteristic candor and directness. “To
justify and preserve the confidence of the most enlightened friends of
good government; to promote the increasing respectability of the American
name; to answer the calls of justice; to restore landed property to its
due value; to furnish new resources both to agriculture and commerce; to
cement more closely the union of the States; to add to their security
against foreign attacks; to establish public order on the basis of
an upright and liberal policy; these,” he said, “are the great and
invaluable ends to be secured by a proper and adequate provision at the
present period for the support of the public credit.” In a series of
carefully considered reports in which he showed himself, as always, a
consummate master of constructive argument and of that sort of exposition
which itself convinces,—reports on the public credit, on the excise, on
the establishment of a national bank, on manufactures,—he proposed that
a tariff act be passed which should incidentally protect and encourage
domestic manufactures; that the foreign debt of the Confederation
should be assumed and paid in full; that the domestic debt of the
Confederation, also, though it had long ago fallen below par and had
largely passed into the hands of speculators at an enormous discount,
should nevertheless be paid at its face value; that even the debts which
the several States had incurred during the Revolution should be assumed
and paid by the federal treasury; and that a national bank should be
established to serve as the fiscal agent of the government. Each of these
proposals in turn Congress acted upon and adopted,—not, of course, at
once and without debate: only after severe and even bitter contests,
indeed, which ran through two annual sessions, and by majorities which
grew narrower and narrower with each vote until they dwindled and were
lost altogether, to be regained again only by an adroit parliamentary
bargain;—but adopted, nevertheless, and made the deliberate policy of the
government.
[Illustration: CONGRESS HALL, 1790-1800]
Here was more than conservative men could digest. Even Madison, who in
most things led the houses, as he had led the constitutional convention,
hesitated and drew back. Jefferson protested, with rising heat, in
the cabinet and out of it. Parties began to gather definite creed and
purpose, and divided upon lines which grew more and more fixed and clear.
It was undoubtedly Hamilton’s purpose to draw men of wealth and property
to the support of the government by means of his financial measures: to
give them definite reasons for wishing it to succeed, and for determining
to stand by it until it did succeed, building for the government a great
backing of interest; and that of itself condemned what he did in the eyes
of some. It seemed to make what he proposed legislation for a class: for
a class which did not always prefer the interests of communities to its
own. More than that, some of the measures which Congress had adopted,
notably that which established a national bank, involved a doctrine
of powers implied, as well as of powers explicitly granted, by the
constitution. The new government had looked formidable enough with the
powers explicitly granted; who should say where the elaboration of its
powers would end if still others were to be drawn forth by implication?
The constitution nowhere explicitly gave Congress the right to create
a corporation, like the new Bank of the United States. Hamilton argued
that that right was included under the clause which gave it power to
make all laws which should be “necessary and proper for carrying into
execution” the powers specifically granted; because he held that the Bank
was a necessary financial agent in the handling of the federal funds. But
whither would the country be led if men of Hamilton’s school in politics
were permitted to interpret the word “necessary”?
[Illustration: UNITED STATES FRIGATE, 1812]
Those who had opposed the constitution because under it the authority of
a common government could command the financial policy of the States,
and those who had opposed it because it subordinated the States in every
chief matter of politics and made of them fractions instead of integers
in the political life of the country, had, of course, been ready from the
first to stand against Mr. Hamilton and his policy of concentration. When
his whole plan was disclosed many Federalists also drew back, with Mr.
Madison, fearing whither they should be led by the doctrine of implied
powers which the young Secretary thus so boldly pressed at the very
outset. Many a sign of sharp reaction gave the Federalist leaders plain
warning of what they might expect, should they persist.
Mr. Jefferson became the real leader of the new party of opposition, even
before he left the cabinet: at first covertly, at last openly; giving
it the name _Democratic Republican_, which savored of the Rights of Man
and took men’s thoughts over sea to the sharp struggle for liberty then
ablaze in France; giving it also organization and the spirit of party,
like the master of men he was,—philosopher and politician in equal
compound. But Washington accepted the leadership of Hamilton, as Congress
did, and for a time nothing could withstand the purposes of those who
meant to make the new government strong, national, and permanent. When
two years had gone by (1791) a new House was chosen, and in part a new
Senate; but the Federalists still kept their ascendency in most of the
constituencies, and the first policy of the government was not stayed.
[Illustration: VIEW OF BROAD STREET AND CITY HALL, NEW YORK, 1780]
Meanwhile North Carolina (November 21, 1789) and Rhode Island (May 29,
1790) had come into the Union, and the original roster of the States
was complete again. Two more States were presently added: Vermont,—“the
New Hampshire Grants,” territory which New York and New Hampshire both
had claimed,—in March, 1791, and Kentucky, Virginia’s lusty and restive
offspring, in June, 1792. Whatever doubts of policy or contests of party
marked those opening days with threat of divided counsels, the Union
was at least established,—was already expected to last. Kentucky’s
incorporation within it showed that the hopeful West was turning to it.
Public questions touched its measures, but had already ceased to touch
its life. A veritable government had at last been set up to hold the
country together. It had been “a novelty in the history of society,” as
de Tocqueville said, “to see a great people turn a calm and scrutinizing
eye upon itself, when apprised that the wheels of government had stopped;
to see it carefully examine the extent of the evil, and patiently wait
until a remedy was discovered, which it voluntarily adopted, without
having wrung a tear or a drop of blood from mankind.” But this the people
of America had done, under the men who had called upon them to amend the
Articles of Confederation and provide themselves with a real government:
under the men who, with Washington, had set that government up and given
it immediate credit and standing in the world.
The general _authorities_ for this period are the sixth volume
of Bancroft’s History and his _History of the Constitution_;
the third volume of Hildreth; the second volume of Timothy
Pitkin’s _Political and Civil History of the United States_;
the first volume of George Tucker’s _History of the United
States_; John Fiske’s vivid _Critical Period of American
History_; George Ticknor Curtis’s _Constitutional History
of the United States_, _History of the Origin, Formation,
and Adoption of the Constitution_, and _The Constitution of
the United States and its History_, in the seventh volume of
Winsor’s _Narrative and Critical History of America_; John
B. McMaster’s _History of the People of the United States_;
Francis N. Thorpe’s _Constitutional History of the American
People_ and _Constitutional History of the United States_;
Richard Frothingham’s _Rise of the Republic of the United
States_; Judson S. Landon’s _Constitutional History and
Government of the United States_; C. Ellis Stevens’s _Sources
of the Constitution of the United States_; George Gibbs’s
_Memoirs of the Administrations of Washington and Adams_;
Edward Stanwood’s _History of the Presidency_; J. P. Gordy’s
_History of Political Parties in the United States_; and
Joseph Story’s _Commentaries on the Constitution of the United
States_. Hermann von Holst’s _Constitutional and Political
History of the United States_ and James Schouler’s _History of
the United States of America under the Constitution_ here begin
to serve us as guides and mentors.
The _sources_ are to be found in the published writings and
correspondence of the leading men of the time; the _Annals
of Congress_; Jonathan Elliot’s _Debates on the Federal
Constitution_; _The Federalist_; Thomas H. Benton’s _Abridgment
of the Debates of Congress_; the federal _Statutes at Large_;
_The American State Papers_; Niles’s _Weekly Register_; H. D.
Gilpin’s _Papers of James Madison_; Paul L. Ford’s _Pamphlets
on the Constitution of the United States_ and _Essays on the
Constitution_; Thomas Jefferson’s _Anas_; and William Maclay’s
_Journal_, covering his service in the first Senate of the
United States.
CHAPTER III
A NATION IN THE MAKING
General Washington’s first administration gave tone, direction, and
presumption of permanence to the new government. His second term
steadied it amidst its first serious difficulties, and gave the country
a wholesome taste of its vigor. The vote of the electors was unanimous
in 1792, as it had been in 1789, in choosing him President, and the
seventy-seven votes which they cast for Mr. John Adams made him Vice
President a second time by a safe majority. The congressional elections
which accompanied the choice of the electors showed, it is true, an
unmistakable reaction of opinion against the strong and systematic
measures by which the Federalists had put Mr. Hamilton’s programme into
execution. The majority in the new House of Representatives consisted of
men inclined to follow Mr. Jefferson in the formation of a distinct party
of protest, if not of opposition; though the more slowly changing Senate
showed still a preponderance of Federalists. But General Washington still
seemed to all the safest leader in affairs, the only possible guide and
mentor in those first days when all things were yet to be brought to a
stable order and a wise way of government.
It was a notable thing how a minority prevailed in all active policy
and managed to keep affairs in its own hands,—the same minority whose
sagacity and vigor and concert in action had secured the formulation
and adoption of the constitution. The war for independence had been a
democratic upheaval, and its processes had seriously discredited all
government which was not directly of the people. It had made local
committees of correspondence the real organs of opinion. Town meetings
and the people’s representatives in the provincial assemblies had
originated policy, while it lasted, with an almost sovereign freedom
of choice and had kept their sovereignty when the war closed. Almost
everywhere, except in Virginia, a majority of the leading families and
of the professional classes of the colonies had thrown their influence
against the separation and independence which the popular leaders
demanded; against the trial of an out-and-out people’s government
without king or parliament or ruling class to moderate and offset the
sway of democracy; and when the end of the struggle came those whom the
country had been accustomed to see lead in its commonwealths abandoned
it in extraordinary numbers forever, preferring Canada and the Indies
and the old country over sea, where government still kept the form and
dignity and aristocratic flavor to which they were attached. Men enough
of the classes hitherto honored and privileged remained to hand on the
old traditions of initiative and service and authority which wealth and
training and social influence had formerly secured; but the end of their
predominance was plainly at hand. Aristocratic privilege and the natural
precedence of birth and breeding were sadly discredited. The mass of
common men had put their own leaders forward, had acted for themselves in
town meetings and in voluntary organizations of their own, with regard
to matters of the greatest scope and consequence. Power had plainly been
levelled; equality had become the cardinal principle of politics, local
autonomy and direct elections the standards and models of political
organization. The central government which the constitutional convention
of 1787 had devised and to which Washington and Hamilton had given power
and authority had plainly been set up as if by reaction, to offset the
heady autonomy and turbulent democracy of the people’s commonwealths.
Many of the cherished ideals of a democratic revolution seemed lost and
given up by its successful establishment; and the Federalists, with their
frank preference for the old vigor of authority, their undissembled
contempt for pure democracy, were not likely very long to maintain
themselves in the people’s favor. Mr. Jefferson found men eager to put a
check upon them and restrict the new government to a more modest scale
of power. The minority were only temporarily in the saddle. They were
permitted to rule only because of their vigor and efficiency, and the
need to employ them in order to give definite shape to the government
which they had originated.
[Illustration: FIRST OHIO CAPITOL, 1801]
It was a rural nation which had drawn together into this novel union,—a
nation without aristocratic example now that its connection with England
was cut off; with nothing but its own simple needs, naïve preferences,
and manifest convenience to consider, now that it was no longer part of
an extended and various empire. It had been obliged, because convinced
by the unanswerable arguments of tumult and of ugly reprisals of State
upon State, to set up at its centre a real government again, to take
the place of the government over sea from which it had broken away: a
government with an authority of its own which was likely to be even more
efficacious in holding them together in a co-operative union than the
authority of the King and Parliament. But, though opinion had reluctantly
consented to that, it by no means followed that it would consent to see
the new government given a scope and vigor such as Mr. Hamilton, with his
notoriously high notions of prerogative, wished to confer upon it. The
people could not, it is true, of a sudden shake off their life-long habit
of following those who had always seemed their natural leaders. Their
society was old; their commonwealths were compact of law that was rooted
deep in the past; their thoughts were stuff of old tradition. Noble
gentlemen who were of the gifts and breeding which had so long made the
chief families among them seem a sort of privileged and authoritative
class, to be looked to as of course for guidance, had endeared themselves
to them anew by their cordial espousal of the popular cause and by
their indispensable capacity in its successful promotion; had still an
unmistakable prestige in affairs. But their governments had long been in
fact democratic, and were now democratic in form also, and the privilege
of leading could not much longer be monopolized amongst them.
And that notwithstanding the prescriptions of their law. Under the
laws of the colonies only a minority of the adult male residents in
each community had been allowed to vote,—those who held some not
inconsiderable amount of property; and still fewer had been allowed to
hold office,—the ownership of a still larger amount of property being
prescribed as a qualification for candidates for political office. Most
of the one-time colonies had transformed themselves into States upon
their assumption of independence by an entire reformulation of their
fundamental law; and some had modified it still further before the new
central government over which General Washington was to preside had
been set up; but the basis of their suffrage they had in most cases
left substantially unaltered. It was still necessary that every voter
should be a freeholder, or the possessor of an estate of (say) fifty
pounds value, or at the least a tax-payer. Rhode Island and Connecticut
had kept their colonial charters as their State constitutions and left
their law substantially unchanged. There were probably not more than one
hundred and twenty thousand men who had the right to vote out of all
the four million inhabitants enumerated in the first census (1790). In
1792 Kentucky was made a State of the Union, and her constitution, with
its frontier liberality, said nothing about any qualification for the
suffrage except the qualifications of age and residence; but Tennessee,
which came into the Union as a State four years later, though no less
a frontier community than Kentucky, required by her constitution that
voters should be owners of freeholds. There were also in almost every
State property qualifications for membership in the lower House of
the State legislature; and ownership of a very considerable amount of
property was so universal a prerequisite for election to the Senates
of the States that they were looked upon as bodies which of intention
represented the propertied classes. Both by law and by ancient custom
wealth and social consideration carried with them also political
privilege.
[Illustration: STATE CAPITOL OF KENTUCKY, 1796]
But law and custom already felt in these matters the pressure of opinion.
The party that was gathering about Mr. Jefferson purposed, among other
things, the levelling of political privilege. The spirit of the rural
nation was against social distinctions. The essential simplicity of
its life made pretension ridiculous; the free movement of enterprise
throughout its borders made the individual man, with or without property,
if only he possessed energy and initiative, the real and only constant
unit of power; and the new nation was not long in showing that it wished
its government conducted with the economy, simplicity, and plainness
of the individual man. There had been a significant flurry of excited
comment when the first Congress under the constitution debated whether in
official papers it should speak of the President of the United States as
“His Highness” or “His Excellency,” or confer upon him some other title
of even greater semblance of rank and dignity. “Does the dignity of the
nation then consist,” Mr. Tucker, of South Carolina, had cried, “in the
exaltation of one man and the humiliation of all the rest?” It raised a
very storm of angry and even abusive comment when the houses voted their
first salaries Bill, which gave to the President twenty-five thousand
dollars a year, to the Vice President five thousand, to Senators and
Representatives six dollars a day during the sessions of Congress, and
to the Speaker of the House twelve dollars. It was known that General
Washington would decline to draw his salary, and that while he remained
President the salary voted to the chief magistrate would be merely
nominal; but the bill fixed the salary for subsequent incumbents of the
office, and it was very generally condemned for its wilful extravagance.
[Illustration: MODEL OF A CONESTOGA WAGON]
The Congress felt the air of opinion out-of-doors very sensitively,
and the President and his advisers sometimes found now the one house
and again the other in a singular mood of uneasiness or suspicion. The
Federalists who gathered about General Washington were watched very
narrowly to see that they formed no “court” about the President and
accumulated no private stock of privilege in their managing coteries.
Their more democratic opponents made merry over their affectations of
social preference and their manners copied from an aristocracy over sea;
and their mirth had in it oftentimes a touch of sardonic bitterness. The
prejudices of such critics were based upon their own radically simple
lives. Their fears of plots and usurpations, of aristocratic pretension
and the insidious bringing in of notions of government which would be
more suitable for a monarchy than for a democratic republic sprang
wholly from what they knew and had had taste of from a very different
world across the sea. A spectre of tyranny stalked always somewhere in
their forecasts of the future and in all their uneasy criticisms of the
present. Their governors found it necessary not only to be but also to
seem servants, not of one class or of any special interest, but of the
whole people.
No society could have been more radically and essentially democratic.
Agriculture, the northern fisheries, and the commerce of their
ports,—their crops, their timber, their fish salted for the world,
their ships showing their sails upon every coast,—summed up the chief
interests of the little country commonwealths, more forest than field,
more wilderness than plotted ground. Not a little of their clothing their
people made for themselves out of their own flax and hemp, besides felt
for hats, their own shoes, and many a pair of breeches of leather or
buckskin. But English law had forbidden the export of such goods while
they were colonists, which was but yesterday; and had made anything
beyond the necessary spinning of the household a thing useless and
unprofitable. Ships were built in every colony, but they carried only
breadstuffs or lumber or shingles or tobacco or indigo in bulk. Not until
the year of the constitutional convention (1787) had any considerable
quantity of cotton even been gathered for export. It had for long seemed
little more than an ornamental plant, a curiosity of the garden.
And even at the ports tradesmen and shippers and money-lenders and
mechanics gathered in no great numbers. There were but six cities of
noticeable size in all the country. The South, which held half the
population, had but two, Baltimore and Charleston; and the population
of these, added to the population of Philadelphia and New York and
Boston and Salem, the other four, made up a total of only one hundred
and thirty-one thousand all told. Virginia, with one-fifth of the total
population of the country, had as yet no city at all. There were only
five daily papers in the country, and these could not be sent in the
mails because of their bulk and the heavy rates of postage. There were
but seventy-five post offices the country through, and few of these saw
the weary post-rider more than twice a week.
[Illustration: TRANSPORTATION ADVERTISEMENT]
It was notable, nevertheless, how the population of the country taken
as a whole had grown, despite the wars and the doubts and hazards of
fortune which had marked the troubled time. When the war for independence
began the people of the colonies had probably not numbered more than
two millions seven hundred and forty-three thousand, counting black and
white, slave and free. When the first census under the constitution was
taken, in 1790, there were found to be very close upon four millions, an
increase of quite twelve hundred thousand within the brief space of those
fourteen troubled years. But the new men who came into the reckoning did
not swell the population of the towns at the ports. They for the more
part took up land and became freeholders in that free society, and added
their force to the power of the new democracy, making a nation which must
be governed upon principles of equal privilege or not governed at all.
The political weather held very fair until General Washington had a
second time been made President. A little jealousy; an occasional
discourtesy on the part of state officials who did not wish to yield
in any point of dignity or precedence to the officers of the new
government; a burst of hostile criticism now and again because the new
Congress seemed to go too fast in its assumptions of authority or in its
expenditures; annoying difficulties in getting men of right principle
and first-rate capacity to serve as subordinate officials of the
federal government; petty embarrassments without number beset the novel
government of the Union, because it was new and as yet had its place and
its methods to establish. But Washington’s wise way of being firm; his
striking bearing in every matter which touched authority or precedence,
half gracious, half austere, wholly commanding; his sensible moderation
in counsel and straightforward vigor in action made such things of
little consequence. The way in which the majorities necessary to carry
Mr. Hamilton’s measures for the financial support of the government had
dwindled from vote to vote in the Congress was the only sign that had
looked ominous.
[Illustration: A MAIL CARRIER IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY]
A serious crisis had in fact been reached when it came to a vote on the
proposition that the federal government should assume the war debts of
the States. The southern members resolutely opposed the measure. Some
States owed much more than others of the sum total which it was proposed
all should pay. Some had already paid a portion of what they owed, and
would lose outright what they had paid should the debts be assumed by
Congress. The southern members did not wish either to admit the inability
of their States to pay their debts or to make the federal government a
general providence for the whole country in matters financial, and a
patron and friend, besides, of the money-lenders; and their opposition
defeated the measure by the narrow majority of two votes. The northern
members were as resolutely determined that the measure should pass;
and the heat of the debates and the bitterness of those who had lost
in the vote gave to affairs for a moment almost a tone of revolution.
Mr. Hamilton cleared the storm by a sudden stroke of astute management.
The southern men were anxious that the federal district which the
constitution had directed should be secured as a site for the Union’s
capital should be laid out on the shores of the Potomac, within their
easy reach and at a safe distance alike from the importunate merchants
and money-lenders of the eastern ports and from the too philanthropic
Quakers of the middle States, with their troublesome and impracticable
agitations for the abolition of slavery. Mr. Hamilton arranged that the
two measures should be associated, the assumption of the debts and the
selection of a federal district. Two Virginian members consented to vote
for assumption if the northern members would vote for a capital on the
Potomac; and both bills were passed.
Since 1785 New York had been the seat of the federal government; and
there the new government of the Union had first been set up. It was now
decided (1790) that the government should be transferred to Philadelphia,
the seat of the first Congresses of the Revolution and of the formal
Confederation, until a capital of its own should be ready on the Potomac.
In Philadelphia, where the Confederation had been set up and the first
councils of the Revolution held, the new government also saw its first
years of stress and trial. Its sharp and trying test came the year
Washington was for a second time made President (1793); and came from
over sea,—a test alike of its motives and of its strength. That year the
French revolution came to its keen pitch and passionate crisis.
[Illustration: FIRST MILL IN OHIO, 1789]
[Illustration: LAND OFFICE OF THE OHIO COMPANY, MARIETTA]
It was the year of the Terror, and of wars which swept Europe like winds
of destiny. But the Terror came at midsummer. Early in the year men in
America knew only that France had gone the full length of revolution;
that the monarchy had been abolished, the king sent to his death, a
republic set up, and a new experiment like their own, an experiment in
human liberty, begun, with all Europe to fight in order to make it good.
No one in Europe doubted that America would cast in her lot with France
in this day of her hope and sally for freedom, if only to requite the
inestimable service France had done her in her own time of aspiration and
struggle. No one in America doubted it, either, who merely gave rein to
sympathy and thought nothing of the consequences. But Washington saw what
the consequences would be; and his was the responsibility. His cabinet
was unanimous in its agreement with him that the young republic, as yet
without assured power or established friendships in the world, its own
government still in its first stages of experiment, must stand neutral
in European wars. Even Mr. Jefferson, though chief of the party whose
passionate sympathy with the French revolutionists now stirred the quiet
country from end to end, though himself touched at every point of thought
by the speculations which were the principles of the revolution over sea,
voted with his colleagues that the United States must stand aloof. France
was at war with Prussia and Austria; with the spring news came that the
circle of the spreading conflict had reached England and Spain; through
England the flame might touch America. On the 22d of April, accordingly,
the President issued a definitive proclamation of neutrality, drawn and
signed by Jefferson himself, as Secretary of State. English troops still
held the posts on the northwestern frontiers; Spain commanded the lower
courses of the Mississippi. To go to war with England and Spain would be
to renew all the peril of the struggle for independence. No prudent man
among those who now supported Washington in his delicate task of giving
the new government form and strength and character doubted either the
wisdom or the opportuneness of the proclamation of neutrality.
[Illustration: EDMOND CHARLES GENET]
But the very day the newspapers of Philadelphia printed the significant
and imperative proclamation “Citizen” Genet reached the city, the
accredited minister of the French Republic to the United States. He had
landed from a French frigate at Charleston on the 9th of April, had
commissioned privateers and enlisted men there to prey upon English
commerce before even presenting himself for recognition at Philadelphia,
and had travelled from stage to stage of his pleasant journey northward
to meet nothing but enthusiastic welcome everywhere. He had confidently
expected to command America as his ally against the world. The governor
of South Carolina had approved of his extraordinary acts at Charleston.
Genet had commanded that English prizes should be brought into the
nearest ports of the United States, and that French consuls should
condemn them in prize court; and yet he had heard nothing but applause
until he reached the presence of Washington. Jefferson loved France and
welcomed Genet as a friend. The United States had linked themselves with
France in close treaty of alliance in the old day of their own struggle
for freedom, and Mr. Jefferson was willing to believe that the promises
of assistance then given applied now to the new France and her new wars
against Europe almost as M. Genet himself extravagantly interpreted
them. The President found himself obliged to hold his own Secretary
very sternly to his duty as the minister of a neutral state. England’s
complaints were heeded; captured English prizes brought to the ports of
the United States were released; the _exequatur_ of the French consul at
Boston, who had done as Genet bade him, was revoked; Americans who had
enlisted on the privateers fitted out at Charleston were put on trial;
and Genet’s recall was requested. His reception at the hands of the
people had gone to his weak head. He thought, because he was feasted and
fêted in Philadelphia itself, the seat of the federal government, that he
could appeal to the country against its own government, and insolently
threatened to do so, to learn too late that Washington was master. As
soon as possible he was superseded.
[Illustration: INTERVIEW BETWEEN GENERAL WASHINGTON AND “CITIZEN” GENET]
The demonstrations with which he had been received were none the less
genuine. A wave of deep feeling was sweeping over the country. The
“civic” feasts and republican banquets, the elaborate celebrations of
liberty and the Rights of Man, with which almost every town and hamlet
excited itself, would have been impossible had not a sober and unaffected
enthusiasm underlain all their extravagant charlatanry and affectation.
Some enthusiasts cooled towards France when her King went to the
guillotine as a sacrifice; more drew away when news of the bloody Terror
came; but the tide of feeling did not permanently subside. Something of a
deep, unfathomable faith remained. The firmness of the government and the
discredit of Genet did not prevent the formation everywhere of democratic
societies which established themselves upon the model of the Jacobin Club
in Paris. Their sympathy with France was but a sign and incident of the
thorough-going and undoubting democratic creed of the people themselves.
They were the nuclei of the party which meant as soon as possible to
take possession of the government and mould it to its principles,—the
party which Mr. Jefferson withdrew from the cabinet to lead when the year
was out (December 31, 1793). He knew how to estimate the real volume of
opinion now running against the policy of the administration; he shared
the principles and predilections of the men who represented it upon its
more sober and thoughtful side; and he had realized now for a long time
that in the cabinet his views could not prevail. He withdrew to form the
gathering party for its ultimate triumph when Washington should be off
the stage.
[Illustration: A BANQUET TO GENET]
Washington felt very keenly the sharp power of the hot criticism to which
his course towards France had subjected him. It was a heady current to
stem. Unmeasured abuse beat upon him. He seemed for a little the leader
of a party, and of a minority party at that, instead of the leader of
the nation. He was made to seem for a time nothing but a Federalist, the
head of a party which meant to make the federal government the people’s
master and then use its mastery to serve England, whom they hated, and to
humiliate France, whom they loved. And while the storm beat most fiercely
he was obliged to seem to confirm hostile opinion with regard to the
attitude of his party towards England.
Trouble with England had not been avoided by neutrality. She kept her
garrisons in the northwestern posts because the debts due to British
subjects before the war for independence had not been paid; and the
presence of the unfriendly garrisons there seemed to keep the Indians of
the border constantly inflamed for war. She seized and impressed American
seamen on the high seas, under the pretence of mistaking them for her own
runaway men. She seized American ships bound for French ports with corn,
and condemned them in her admiralty courts as if they were lawful prizes;
and she cut away the right of the States to trade with West Indian ports,
whether her own or those of France, by every vexatious restriction and
arbitrary interference. She would maintain no resident minister at the
seat of the federal government, as if expecting America to break her
neutrality and openly espouse the cause of France. And yet the President
held Congress back from every measure of retaliation or hostility;
commissioned Mr. Jay, the Chief Justice, to visit England and seek a
satisfactory treaty of accommodation; and kept affairs at a balance until
he should return.
And then, while the country waited, the President found himself obliged
to use the power of the federal government to carry out by force an
unpopular law. In 1791 Congress had passed, along with the rest of
Mr. Hamilton’s measures for strengthening the government, an internal
revenue bill which laid taxes on distilled spirits. The people of the far
counties of Pennsylvania, beyond the Alleghanies, where the roads were
bad and the markets far away, could make no profit on their corn unless
they converted it into whiskey; were mulcted of part of that profit by
the law; and felt the thing an intolerable burden. They therefore first
ignored and then resisted it. Washington watched what they did until
it reached the pitch of organized rebellion; then (1794) summoned the
militia of the States and moved against the rebels in force, himself
accompanying the troops till he learned that there would be no final
resistance; and the first concerted effort to discredit the authority
of the government he had been trusted to administer was crushed. “The
servile copyist of Mr. Pitt thought he must have his alarms, his
insurrections and plots against the constitution,” sneered Jefferson,
against Hamilton, the author of the law. “It aroused the favorite
purposes of strengthening the government and increasing the public debt;
and therefore an insurrection was announced and proclaimed and armed
against and marched against, and could never be found.” “The powers of
the Executive of this country are more definite and better understood,
perhaps, than those of any other country,” Washington had declared, “and
my aim has been, and will continue to be, neither to stretch nor to relax
from them in any instance whatever.” But the judgment of the Democrats
was the judgment of Jefferson. This stroke against the people of the
western counties was, in their view, an illustration of Mr. Hamilton’s
all too subtile way of strengthening the federal government.
Meanwhile the country waited for Mr. Jay. He had sailed from New York
on his mission on the 12th of May, 1794; on the 28th of May, 1795, he
returned, bringing a treaty. On the 24th of June, 1795, it was confirmed
by the Senate in secret executive session; and in July its contents were
made known to the country. The storm of dissent that greeted it shook the
country like the bitter excitements of the ominous Stamp Act time. It was
a storm, not so much of criticism, as of blind and passionate anger.
[Illustration: FIRST PUBLIC SCHOOL IN NEW YORK]
The treaty was, in fact, a statesmanlike piece of work. Mr. Jay had the
sobriety, the steadiness and largeness of view, and the high spirit of
a statesman. He had gone to England feeling that the affair he was to
engage in was not to be “a trial of diplomatic fencing, but a solemn
question of peace or war between two countries, in whose veins flowed the
blood of a common ancestry, and on whose continued good understanding
might perhaps depend the future freedom and happiness of the human race.”
Lord Grenville, with whom he had to deal, had met him in a like spirit
of accommodation, and both believed when their work was done that no
just exception could be taken to the terms of the treaty “except on the
part of those who believed the interests of Great Britain and the United
States to be in contradiction with each other, or who wished to make them
so.” It was not only a treaty of accommodation, it was also a treaty of
commerce,—the first it had proved practicable to get from England since
the war of alienation and independence which had broken the old ties
forever. It provided that the British garrisons should be withdrawn from
the northwestern posts by the 12th of June, 1796; that a commission, to
sit in Philadelphia, should determine and provide for the payment of
debts due British subjects at the outbreak of the war for independence,
and that a similar commission, to sit in London, should adjudicate
and adjust the matter of the compensation of American merchants and
ship owners for illegal captures or condemnations made during the
war between France and Great Britain; and that all pending boundary
disputes should go for settlement to a board of joint commissioners.
It defined contraband of war, regulated privateering, and declared,
to the betterment and elevation of invariable international practice
hitherto, that war between the two countries should never be made a
pretext for the confiscation of debts or the invalidation of contracts
between individuals. The door of trade between the two countries it
opened wide. Trade between America and the British East Indies also it
made free. Only the clause governing trade with the British West Indies
was unsatisfactory. It provided that no American vessel of more than
seventy tons burden should be admitted to that trade, and that no sugar,
molasses, coffee, cocoa, or cotton should ever be exported thence in
American bottoms to European ports. That clause the Senate rejected. It
was October, 1795, before better terms could be obtained and the treaty
finally completed.
Mr. Jay had not been able to induce Lord Grenville to forego the
impressment of seamen, or to pay for the hundreds of slaves taken away
with the British armies at the close of the war. Neither had he been able
to change in the least the arbitrary policy of the English ministers with
regard to neutral trade with France. He had reminded himself at every
step that his object was peace, had felt sure that he was gaining enough
to secure that, and had satisfied himself that to press for more would be
to fail. The country was angry because he had not failed. It wanted war
with England, fiercely resented accommodation, and deemed it poltroonery
and false patriotism for any one to wish it. To accept peace, above all
to seek peace, was to truckle to England and betray France and America
alike. Fishermen and ship owners, the vulgar and the well informed alike,
at Boston, had been in a very frenzy for war, feeling to the quick
their unjust losses at the hands of the British. “You cannot imagine,”
wrote John Adams, “what horror some persons are in, lest peace should
continue.” And when they knew that peace was assured by the treaty there
were no bounds to their chagrin and passionate resentment, or to the
violent expression of their passion. “Damn John Jay! Damn every one that
won’t damn John Jay! Damn every one that won’t put lights in his windows
and sit up all night damning John Jay!!!” was the vulgar explosion of
wrath to be read upon a gentleman’s fence in a public street of the staid
old town; and every town, particularly every seaport town, rang with the
same license of vituperation. The temper of the whole country seemed of
a piece with the temper of New England.
[Illustration: FRENCH FORT AT ST. LOUIS]
It was, in mere sober fact, a bitter thing for high-spirited men to
endure that Mr. Jay had been obliged to forego so much that was just
and content himself with so little of what lay at the very heart of
the matter. The treaty undoubtedly left England still free to impress
American seamen; to close the ports of France, if she could, against
ships laden with provisions, though they were neutral craft and carried
no article of war; to shut America forcibly off from trade with the
French West Indies, which France herself had declared free while the
war should last; and to confiscate all French goods found on American
vessels. “The treaty from one end to the other,” exclaimed Mr. Madison,
“must be regarded as a demonstration that the party to which the envoy
belongs is a British party, systematically aiming at an exclusive
connection with the British government, and ready to sacrifice to that
object as well the dearest interests of our commerce as the most sacred
dictates of national honor”; and many another sober man, whose sentiment
was not for France or the Rights of Man, but for the new government and
the hard-bought independence of America, echoed the painful conviction.
It was no light thing to play so humble a part. Washington himself
hesitated and earnestly sought counsel in the matter. The alternative was
war or the acceptance of the treaty. The treaty, for all England yielded
so little by it, gained something for peace and amity and trade. In case
of war the enemies of the young government, both at home and abroad,
would have their day of opportunity. There was no money, no army, no
navy. The purses of Europe would now be shut against the young republic.
Her trade was with England, and that would be ruined. There seemed no
wise choice but that which would certainly bring peace; and Washington
chose steadily and firmly, as if there had been no clamor.
[Illustration: WASHINGTON’S WRITING TABLE]
Slowly the storm blew off. The commission set up under the treaty in
London awarded American ship-owners and merchants more than ten million
dollars in damages for their losses; trade quickened at every port
because of the renewed privileges of commerce with England. The country
had obviously gained more than it had conceded, and tardily saw the
debt it owed to Mr. Jay and to the administration, whose firmness and
prudence had made his mission possible. But in the mean time things had
been said which could not be forgotten. Washington had been assailed with
unbridled license, as an enemy and a traitor to the country; had even
been charged with embezzling public moneys during the Revolution; was
madly threatened with impeachment, and even with assassination; and had
cried amidst the bitterness of it all that “he would rather be in his
grave than in the presidency.”
The country knew its real mind about him once again when the end of his
term came and it was about to lose him. He refused to stand for another
election. His farewell address, with its unmistakable tone of majesty
and its solemn force of affection and admonition, seemed an epitome of
the man’s character and achievements, and every man’s heart smote him to
think that Washington was actually gone from the nation’s counsels.
The country, moreover, had swung once again to the Federalists before
Washington withdrew,—the one man whose personal force and command upon
the country had given the party its field and opportunity. Federalist
majorities were returned to both houses of Congress in the autumn
of 1796, notwithstanding the French frenzy and the treaty; and Mr.
Adams was chosen President. There was no longer any unanimous choice.
Mr. Adams received seventy-one of the electoral votes; Mr. Jefferson
received sixty-eight and became Vice President. It was a narrow margin of
preference.
[Illustration: ALBERT GALLATIN]
When Washington gave place to his successor a certain distinction seemed
to pass from the office of President, which only he, whom all the world
knew, could give it. Mr. Adams had a national standing second to no
man’s save Washington himself; but he had not stood, as Washington
had, in the gaze of the whole world, the maker of a nation; and when
he became President affairs seemed to settle to a more workaday level,
where parties could fight upon a parity, unembarrassed by the President’s
personal prestige. Mr. Adams had shown a dignity, a capacity, and a
devotion in the public service which had marked him both at home and
abroad as a statesman of the highest principle and the most excellent
gifts; but he was still the John Adams of the Revolution, stung by
jealousies which he tried in vain to conquer, too sensitive, too
hasty, too acid in judgment, erratic, intolerant, irascible, sometimes
irresolute,—a man to trust in the long run and to stand loyal to with
steady purpose, but not a man to love or to deem above parties.
[Illustration: THE UNITED STATES, MARCH 4TH, 1801.]
His four years of office saw the questions which had darkened and
perplexed Washington’s second term mature and bear their unpalatable
fruit. War with England had been avoided, but not war with France. France
had hoped for and expected the success of the Jeffersonian Democrats
in the elections; the French minister to the United States had even so
far forgotten himself as to make a plea in the public prints for the
principles and the party of Jefferson, the friend of France, and had
uttered thinly veiled threats that the success of the Federalists in the
presidential election would lead France to regard America as virtually
an English dependency, to be treated as if as much an enemy as England
herself. The cockade of the French republic became for the nonce the
emblem of the partisans of Mr. Jefferson. The struggle for the presidency
looked for a little like a game between French and English for political
advantage. With such things in the air the success of the Federalists was
the more assured. The country’s irritation over Mr. Jay’s treaty, it is
true, had not cooled, and the Federalists seemed too much in the English
interest to please men whose patriotism was quick to be jealous and
take alarm; but the impudence of M. Adet, the French minister, and the
unblushing aggressions of the French and their partisans were for the
moment worse yet, and the Federalists kept their posts of authority.
When once the result of the election was known France put away all
pretence of friendship. Already she had declared herself released from
the treaties of commerce and alliance by which she had bound herself to
the United States in 1778,—released by the mere fact that Mr. Jay had
negotiated and the United States had accepted a treaty with England. Ever
since 1793 she had been seizing American ships and cargoes on the high
seas as she pleased, as freely and with as little regard for right as
England herself. Her depredations upon the commerce of the country had
been less serious than those of England only because her cruisers were
less numerous than the English and did not move as freely upon the seas.
Now she quickened her aggressive action, like a power at war. She even
extended her seizures, searches, and confiscations to the very waters
of the United States themselves. General Washington, during the closing
months of his term as President, had recalled Mr. Monroe, then the
minister of the United States at Paris, deeming him too much infatuated
with French principles, too sentimental a friend of the government to
which he was accredited, to act with proper vigor. The Directory of
the heady republic refused to receive any other minister in his place
until its grievances against the United States had been redressed. Its
grievances were summed up in America’s friendship for England, and
Mr. Jay’s treaty as an earnest of that friendship. Mr. Adams hurried
three ambassadors over sea to secure accommodation and avoid war: Mr.
John Marshall, Mr. Elbridge Gerry, and Mr. Charles Cotesworth Pinckney
(June, 1797). M. Talleyrand, the foreign minister of the Directory,
would not treat with them in person. His agents (MM. “X,” “Y,” and
“Z,” the ambassadors designated them in their despatches) prescribed
terms alike dishonorable and humiliating; even demanded money, “a great
deal of money,” “for the pockets of the Directory,” as the price of
accommodation; and war became inevitable. “I will never send another
minister to France,” declared Mr. Adams, in a message to Congress,
“without assurances that he will be received, respected, and honored as
the representative of a great, free, powerful, and independent nation.”
[Illustration: IMPRESSMENT OF SEAMEN]
The war was brief and of no significant consequence in itself. No formal
declaration of hostilities was made. There was only a season of sharp
retaliation. A separate navy Department was created (April 30, 1798);
existing treaties with France were declared abrogated (April 7, 1798);
American vessels of war were expressly authorized to attack French
cruisers (July 9, 1798); and active reprisals were begun. The little
navy of the country, but just now reinforced by a few new frigates of
first-rate strength, acted upon the permission to fight with spirit and
success. American cruisers and privateers alike set about preying upon
French commerce with the activity of genuine satisfaction. Measures
were taken to raise an army, and General Washington was asked to take
command of it. The publication of the extraordinary proposals of MM. X,
Y, and Z to the American commissioners had effectually silenced every
partisan of France, and war with the country’s one-time friend and ally
had become for the moment almost popular. But fortunately the exposure of
the intrigue attempted by the agents of M. Talleyrand had made a most
unfavorable impression in France itself; Talleyrand saw that he must undo
what he had done; and intimations were given early in 1799 that France
would receive a minister from the United States and discuss honorable
terms of accommodation. By the time commissioners of the United States
were ready to discuss terms at Paris (March 30, 1800) the Directory was
no longer in charge of the affairs of France. The Consulate had been set
up, and Napoleon Bonaparte was First Consul, a master of men at least,
with whom it was possible to make definite agreements, as if with a real
government.
[Illustration: PRINCE TALLEYRAND]
The terms of agreement, however, were by no means easy to decide upon.
The American commissioners were instructed to secure indemnification for
the losses France had wrongfully inflicted on American commerce; they
were also instructed to secure the formal abrogation of the treaty of
1778, which had accorded to French privateers privileges in American
ports which it was no longer wise or convenient to accord them, and which
had pledged the United States to such a defence of the French possessions
in the West Indies as they no longer felt justified in undertaking. But
they could not get both indemnification and a release from the treaties.
They were obliged to forego compensation for the French spoliations in
order to get peace and relieve themselves of the burdensome obligations
of the treaty of 1778, which, there having been no formal declaration
of war, they could not insist upon having escaped from. A twelve-year
convention, restoring amicable relations between the two countries,
securing neutral ships against search and seizure, embodying a sensible
and enlightened code of definitions with regard to the rights of
belligerents and neutrals, and adjusting minor questions of dispute, was
all that they could get. By February, 1801, such terms as could be had
were agreed upon. It was Mr. Jay’s experience repeated.
But the war had ruined the great party whose leaders had framed the
constitution and set the government afoot. At first it had seemed
its legitimate triumph, and something like the hearty support of the
country had been extorted. The Federalist majority in the House of
Representatives, doubtful of its power at the outset of Mr. Adams’s
administration, had by the elections of the autumn of 1798 been made
strong and confident. The country evidently had not been displeased to
see “France and all the world” convinced, as the President had declared
he meant to convince them, that the people of the United States were
not “a degraded people, humiliated under a colonial spirit of fear and
sense of inferiority”; and opinion seemed about to regain tone and
self-possession.
[Illustration: ELIAS BOUDINOT]
But moderate counsels forsook the ruling party in the midst of its
apparent triumph. Throughout four whole years the country had been kept
under the excitement and anxiety of the trouble with France, not knowing
whether it was at war or at peace,—from the recall of Mr. Monroe in
December, 1796, until the conclusion of the convention with France in
September, 1800. Throughout all that time a storm of bitter defamatory
criticism had beat upon the Federalists, which unsettled their temper
and broke their self-restraint at the very height and crisis of their
success. They had been intrusted with the conduct of the government
again and again by the free suffrages of the country, and yet they were
assailed with every slander and defamed from half the presses of the
towns by the republican partisans of France, who were also suffered and
encouraged to be spokesmen against them in every domestic policy. It
intensified their resentment and seemed to them a most sinister sign of
peril to the country and its government that a great many of the men
who were their bitterest enemies, and who used the public prints most
scandalously and unscrupulously against them, were foreigners,—Frenchmen
and Englishmen who were not even citizens, but mere adventurers, the
irresponsible agents of a reckless and almost revolutionary agitation,
which might jeopard the very existence of the young government, but ten
years established, over which they had been bidden to preside. They
therefore, during June and July, 1798, pressed through Congress four
drastic statutes, aimed against aliens and against all, whether aliens or
citizens, who should foster any kind of sedition. A Naturalization Act
(June 18, 1798) increased the period of residence for those who would
become citizens from five to fourteen years. An Alien Act (June 25th)
and a Sedition Act (July 14th) authorized the arrest and deportation of
turbulent and dangerous aliens at the discretion of the President, even
in time of peace, and the arrest, trial, and punishment of any one who
should either unlawfully combine with others to oppose any measure of
government or “write, print, utter, or publish” anything with intent
to defame the President or the houses of Congress, or to weaken their
authority and bring them into contempt. An act directed against alien
enemies (July 6th) authorized the President in time of war to restrain,
secure, or remove from the country, as he pleased, all subjects of a
hostile power.
Washington himself approved of these extraordinary laws, so passionately
did he love order, hate faction, and fear for the safety of the new
Union. Patrick Henry commended them, stout and consistent advocate
though he was of the pure principles of thorough democracy. But the
whole country presently knew how fatally the Federalists had blundered
in passing them. The Alien law deprived foreigners of every privilege
“without accusation, without jury, without public trial, without
confrontation of the witnesses against them, without having witnesses in
their favor, without defence, without counsel,” upon the mere suspicion
of the President. The Sedition Act cut perilously near the root of
freedom of speech and of the press. There was no telling where such
exercises of power would stop. Their only limitations and safeguards lay
in the temper and good sense of the President and the Attorney General.
Protests came from every part of the country, and grew ominously in
volume from month to month,—and petitions for repeal couched in every
form and bearing thousands of signatures. It would have been well had
the opposition stopped at petitions; but it did not. The legislatures of
Kentucky and Virginia went further, much further. Each, in a series of
resolutions, drawn in solemn form and sent through their governors to
the legislatures of all the other States, as in the days of Parliament’s
aggression, called the attention of the entire country to definitions of
constitutional right as between the people and the federal government
which were in the last degree radical and significant, and which seemed
to carry with them an air as it were of revolution.
The Kentucky Resolutions (November 8, 1798) defined the constitution of
the Union as a compact, whereby the States, the contracting parties,
had set up a federal government of definitely specified and strictly
limited powers, reserving to themselves or to the people every power
not plainly granted; and declared that every State, as a party to the
compact, had the right to judge for itself whether the fixed limits of
the constitution were observed or transcended by the federal authorities:
that it had the right to declare every unwarranted exercise of power void
and unconstitutional, and to call upon the other States, its partners in
the Union, to join with it in measures of redress. The Alien and Sedition
laws they unhesitatingly and emphatically pronounced unconstitutional
and of no legal effect. The Virginia Resolutions (December 21, 1798),
briefer and milder in tone, were yet equally express in their doctrine
that “in case of the deliberate, palpable, and dangerous exercise” by
the federal government of powers not granted “by the plain sense and
intention” of the constitution, “the States who are parties thereto have
the right, and are in duty bound, to interpose for arresting the progress
of the evil, and for maintaining within their respective limits the
authorities, rights, and liberties pertaining to them.” Mr. Jefferson
had drawn the original draft upon which the Kentucky Resolutions were
based; Mr. Madison had drafted the Virginia Resolutions,—Mr. Madison,
joint author of the _Federalist_ papers, friend and coadjutor of Hamilton
and Washington in the formation of the government of the Union,—a man
whose reaction against Federalist policy and whose slow alienation
from Washington and Hamilton might well mark for every thinking man
the measure of the Federalist mistake with regard to the temper and
inclinations of the people they were governing. Mr. Jefferson’s original
draft, used by Mr. Breckinridge in framing the Kentucky Resolutions, had
gone the length of proposing that each State should “take measures of its
own for providing that neither these acts nor any others of the general
government, not plainly and intentionally authorized by the constitution,
should be exercised within their respective territories”; and in
November, 1799, the legislature of Kentucky acted upon the suggestion
and added to its former Resolutions the even more startling declaration
“that a nullification” by the States “of all unauthorized acts done under
color” of the constitution was “the rightful remedy.”
[Illustration: ANNOUNCEMENT OF THE DEATH OF WASHINGTON]
[Illustration: ADVERTISEMENT OF FUNERAL OF LIBERTY]
The “nullification” of federal action by a single State went much beyond
the meaning Mr. Madison and Mr. Jefferson had intended the Resolutions to
speak. They meant only that, in case of an exercise of federal powers by
Congress which was obviously, palpably excessive, the methods supplied by
the constitution itself must be used to check it. “The ultimate arbiter,”
as Mr. Jefferson said, as he looked back to these things in his old age
and reassessed his principles of action, “the ultimate arbiter is the
people of the Union, assembled by their deputies in convention, at the
call of Congress, or of two-thirds of the States. Let them decide.... It
has been the peculiar wisdom and felicity of our constitution to have
provided this peaceable appeal, where that of other nations is at once to
force.” Congress must not itself be suffered to determine its own powers
unchecked. The Resolutions said nothing explicitly of constitutional
method; but they implied much, and rang out very significantly upon the
tense air of the time. Though no other legislature was willing to echo
them, men noted their outspoken doctrine of federal limitations and State
rights. The opposition recognized in them a formidable weapon of defence;
and no one doubted that it was more than a passing sign of the times that
such things should be said. There underlay all this something deeper
than the mere antagonisms of party.
Clearly the Federalists had gone too far. The indictment of their enemies
seemed proved,—they were the party of power, of autocratic power, and
not the party of popular privilege. While the bad impression was at its
height, moreover, a serious rift was disclosed in the counsels of the
party itself. Mr. Adams broke with Mr. Hamilton. He had continued General
Washington’s cabinet in office upon his own accession to the Presidency:
and had thus put himself in the hands of men who looked to Mr. Hamilton,
rather than to himself, for guidance, though Mr. Hamilton was himself
no longer a member of the cabinet. The President frequently found it
necessary to act without their knowledge or assent, in order to act with
independence and without embarrassing interference from outside quarters.
He had sent the embassy which concluded peace with France without their
knowledge or approbation, greatly to their chagrin and to the deep
annoyance of Hamilton, whom they deemed their party leader. Neither
Hamilton nor they had wished peace with France. At last Mr. Adams found
the friction intolerable. He dismissed his ministers, and substituted
others whose unquestioning allegiance to himself he could command,
branding the men he dismissed as “a British faction”; and so made the
breach with Hamilton complete.
There was here something more than a mere breach between men. It was a
breach which cut to the very foundations of the party itself. Hitherto
Mr. Hamilton had been the real master of Federalist policy; but he had
ruled the party through a minority in its ranks, not by persuasion or
any tact of popular force, but by sheer mastery over men, a power
in counsel, a gift of constructive statesmanship unmatched among his
contemporaries. Mr. Adams disliked most other strong-willed men, and Mr.
Hamilton had made himself almost his open enemy; but something deeper
than mere personal antagonism separated them. It was spoken out in Mr.
Adams’s angry charge that Hamilton and those who adhered to him as their
personal chief were nothing better than “a British faction.” That was
the charge of the opposition. That was the feeling of the county. It
was unjust; it was false; but it was not without foundation. It was but
a crude, undiscriminating way of interpreting the plain fact, which
Mr. Hamilton made hardly a pretence of concealing, that the men who
had hitherto led the Federalist party feared democracy, distrusted it
with an ineradicable distrust, believed a strong government necessary,
which should be intrusted to men of the older traditions of power and
of statesmanship received from over sea, deemed the English government,
if stripped of its abuses, the safest model of free institutions, and
thought England the only European power worth keeping close friendship
with in international dealings. They had not accepted the ideals of
America set up at the Revolution; had refused to acquiesce in it as a
definitive triumph of democracy. They were seeking to perpetuate the
ideals of an older world, a more ancient conception of government. It was
their lack of sympathy that the country felt. It was their unwillingness,
their inability to act wholly for America in every matter of policy,
without regard to their preferences for this alliance or that, that made
Adams fling them off as a British faction.
And Adams spoke the real preferences of the rank and file of the
Federalist party itself,—the very party which, until that day of breach,
Mr. Hamilton had led with an almost undisputed supremacy. It had doubted
and been vaguely uneasy even while it obeyed. Hamilton once out of
command and its opinions freed from his masterful domination, its ideals
in affairs showed no radical difference from those of the opponents whom
Jefferson was drilling against it. Federalist voters were not infatuated
with the French, as the men of the Democratic clubs had been; they
did not dread, as Mr. Jefferson did, the conversion of the government
of the United States under their leaders into a centralized tyranny
by the mere process of using the powers of Congress and the President
with vigor and courage and a touch of constructive statesmanship; they
relished the predominance of men who had the temper to rule; but for
the rest they were not of Mr. Hamilton’s making. They thought first of
America in their hopes for the future and their plans for the present,
dreaded democracy as little as they dreaded the tyranny of constitutional
presidents, were heartily for such measures as should give the country
independence and a free hand for its affairs, thought more of their own
interests than of handsome or seemly alliances abroad, accepted democracy
without squeamishness, and were robust believers in the happy destiny of
their institutions. Mr. Adams was much nearer their spirit and temper
than Mr. Hamilton and the group of masterful men whom he led; and his
breach with Mr. Hamilton cut to the roots of the party itself. By the
time another presidential election approached (1800) personal rivalries
and antagonisms had robbed the party of coherence and leadership; it
had lost its sense of unity; many who had voted with it felt their
sympathies transferred to the other side; and the elections brought it
humiliating defeat. Mr. Adams was personally popular enough, commended
by his sturdy character, his manifest good faith and independence, his
frankness and courage; but the section of his own party with which
he had avowed himself out of sympathy was not loyal to him. Hamilton
publicly argued that he was unfit for the office he held, egotistical,
jealous, indiscreet, and of unsound views in matters of administration;
Mr. Jefferson had at last imparted compactness and self-reliant vigor to
the Democratic Republican ranks which he led; and Mr. Adams failed of
re-election.
[Illustration: THOMAS JEFFERSON]
No one was chosen President by the electors. As the electoral clause
of the constitution then stood, each elector was directed to cast his
vote for two persons, without designating which was his preference for
President, which for Vice President; and when the votes were opened they
were found to stand: seventy-three for Mr. Jefferson, seventy-three for
Mr. Aaron Burr, Mr. Jefferson’s accomplished lieutenant in New York;
sixty-five for Mr. Adams; sixty-four for Mr. Pinckney. It was necessary
in such a case that the House of Representatives should itself select a
President, from the two leading candidates; and the Federalists still,
though for the last time, controlled the House. For a little while they
were tempted to put Mr. Burr into the Presidency, rather than endure
Mr. Jefferson; but that intrigue failed. Mr. Hamilton was too manly a
politician to give it countenance for a moment. He denounced it roundly
and induced the members of the majority to let Mr. Jefferson take the
Presidency, to which he was clearly entitled by the well-understood
preferences of the electors. But they yielded sullenly. They let Mr.
Jefferson come in, not with their votes, but without them, by refraining
from voting at all in sufficient numbers to leave his friends in a
majority, and lost credit for good temper as well as for good faith.
[Illustration: CHARLES C. PINCKNEY]
Their last acts of power confirmed the impression of their critics that
they neither trusted the people nor believed any but themselves capable
of conducting the government or ruling the country. For more than three
months after the presidential election they remained in control of
Congress. They used their majority, when the result of the election
became certainly known, to make themselves secure, as they hoped, of the
possession of at any rate the judicial branch of the government. On the
13th of February, 1801, less than three weeks before the day upon which
Mr. Jefferson was to become President, they put through Congress, by a
strictly party vote, a Judiciary Act which very considerably enlarged
the number of federal courts and judges and added some fifty thousand
dollars to the annual judicial budget, notwithstanding the fact that
the legal business of the country justified no such expansion of the
federal judicial machinery; and Mr. Adams hastened to fill the new
judgeships, as well as every other vacant place, great or small, with
staunch Federalists. On the 31st of January he had appointed Mr. John
Marshall, of Virginia, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United
States, an approved lawyer, but a tried Federalist, and but just turned
of forty-five. The government of the country passed into Mr. Jefferson’s
hands as stoutly fortified against change or misuse as a solidly
Federalist personnel in the courts could make it.
The whole face of affairs, the very aspect of the government itself,
seemed to change when Mr. Jefferson became President. For one thing,
the seat of government was transferred from Philadelphia, the busy city
and mart of trade, with its seventy thousand inhabitants, to the rural
spaces of the new federal District of Columbia. The removal had been
effected in the summer of 1800, during the closing months of Mr. Adams’s
administration, and had suitably marked the _exeunt_ of the Federalists,
the party whose rule had been planned to draw about the federal
government the support of the merchants, the bankers, the property
owners, the chief men of means and influence in society and affairs,
the men of the centres of trade, whose interests were larger than those
of any single State or neighborhood. An extensive city, to be called
“Washington,” had been plotted in the fields and woodlands which lay
upon the northeastern bank of the Potomac, on the portion of land which
Maryland had ceded for a federal district. The building of an official
residence for the President had been begun in 1792, and the corner-stone
of a capital building had been laid by General Washington in September,
1793. Some quarters for the executive departments had been erected; a
few houses had been built here and there at long intervals upon the
projected streets of the new city; and speculators had bought land there
in expectation of high prices to come. But only one wing of the Capitol
was completed when the government was at last actually transferred. The
Congress had to be temporarily housed. The President’s residence was the
only dwelling of any pretensions ready for occupancy. The streets of
the quiet place ran through bits of forest, like avenues in a wild and
wooded park, or were lost in open fields, where there was neither fence
nor dwelling. There were not houses enough in all the spreading plot
of projected avenues and squares to furnish members lodging during the
sessions of the Congress. Some had to make their way as best they could
over several miles of soft and miry road to find quarters. The stately
proportions of the White House and of the rising Capitol looked strangely
enough in such a place. Life there was a sad exchange for the comforts
and the social stir and brightness of Philadelphia; and government could
not seem there the handsome thing of etiquette and dignity and formal
show of authority that the Federalists had made it appear in a city.
[Illustration: ELI WHITNEY]
It was the more suitable place on that account for the coming in of Mr.
Jefferson, and the change of scene and atmosphere which was to come with
him. Here was a place for real democracy to be brought in, without show
or circumstance. Mr. Adams set out upon his long ride homeward early on
the morning of the 4th of March, having no stomach to wait and see Mr.
Jefferson take the Presidency. The new President, accompanied by a few
friends, and escorted by a company of Virginian artillery, as guard of
honor, walked quietly from his boarding house to the Capitol; there took
the oath of office and read his address to the people; and a new régime
was inaugurated. John Marshall, the new Chief Justice, twelve years
his junior, administered the oath; and the two men, as they stood thus
face to face, Virginians both, bred to the same principles of life and
courtesy, but opposite in every principle of politics, must have seemed
to give each his silent challenge to the future in the act.
A noteworthy and momentous thing stood revealed in the simple ceremony.
The democratic forces which had set the Revolution ablaze, and which
had operated through seven years of war and reconstruction to work a
radical change in the temper and practice of the whole country in public
affairs, now once again reasserted themselves and took possession of the
seats of government. They had been temporarily discredited during the
troubled years when the Confederation was the makeshift government of
the country,—discredited by the jealousies, the riotous disorders, the
gross turbulence and distempers of the time. The new Union had been
formed and the new constitution framed to check and govern them. The
Federalists’ twelve years’ labor of organization had been undertaken and
carried forward while the reaction lasted: to make strong the forces
of conservatism, school the people in order and self-restraint, and
make solid once more the foundations of authority. Democrats had spent
their lungs, the while, in the cries of the French Revolution and in
passionate outbursts against England and against all who parleyed with
her. They had seen no vision of national duty, no workable creed until
the Alien and Sedition laws were passed, and the Sedition law enforced
against editor and pamphleteer. Then they had had sight at last of the
constitutional principles and the domestic policy for which they must
fight. Mr. Jefferson and Mr. Madison had cleared their thought with the
strong sentences of the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions,—no programme,
but a warning cry which no man failed to hear or to understand; and the
election of 1800 disclosed, behind Mr. Jefferson, no longer a body of
agitators merely, but a national party, ready to play the sober rôle of
administering a government.
[Illustration: OLD COURT HOUSE, NEW ORLEANS]
Nothing could exceed the fine tact and gentleness with which Mr.
Jefferson gave tone of order and patriotic purpose in his inaugural
address to the new way of government his followers expected of him. “We
are all Republicans, we are all Federalists,” he exclaimed; “we are
not antagonists, but live by an absolute acquiescence in the decisions
of the majority, the vital principle of republics.” “To preserve the
peace of our fellow citizens, promote their prosperity and happiness,
reunite opinion, cultivate a spirit of candor, moderation, charity, and
forbearance towards one another,” are “objects calling for the efforts
and sacrifices of every good man and patriot.” “Let us unite with one
mind,” he urged, in tones so quiet, so sweet and sincere of accent as to
calm every mind they touched; “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.”
And what he did soon gave excellent proof of his sincerity. Mr. Jefferson
was an interesting mixture of democrat, philosopher, and patrician. In
taste and occupation and habit he touched and was familiar with the life
of the cultured and moneyed classes, the aristocracy of the young nation,
which constituted the Federalist strength. In creed and principle he was
the comrade and work-fellow of the people. By gift of insight and genius
for organization he was a leader of parties and of concerted action in
affairs. An infinite sensibility taught him moderation, lent him tact,
pointed out to him the practicable courses of persuasion and the certain
prospects of popular support. His personal charm, his high breeding
without arrogance or pretence, gave him hold upon every one with whom he
came in contact. No other man could have so moderated, or so completed, a
revolution in the spirit and conduct of the government.
[Illustration: VIEW ACROSS THE NORTH RIVER, 1796]
For a revolution it was, profound and lasting. Undoubtedly the chief
merchants, the chief men of means and of responsible trust, the chief
men of parts and learning and social influence in the country were
Federalists. They looked upon Mr. Jefferson as “an atheist in religion
and a fanatic in politics”; and they dreaded the direct thrusts of
democracy at the careful system they had reared, as likely to be little
less than the throwing down of the very props of society itself. Mr.
Hamilton, more than any other man in their ranks, spoke their purposes
and fears. It had been his wish and effort at every turn of policy in
which he had any part to make the federal government virtually master
of the affairs of the nation, fortified with an overwhelming strength
against every force, whether of the States or of individuals, that might
antagonize it. He believed, as his enemies supposed, in the maintenance
of a strong army, even in time of peace. He wished to see the States
absolutely subordinated to the general government. He thought the
opinions of the masses an unimportant and negligible thing in the choice
of policy. “No man,” he said, “has sacrificed or done more for the
present constitution than myself; and, contrary to all my anticipations
of its fate, I am still laboring to prop the frail and worthless
fabric.” Assuredly he had labored for it. He had played no small part in
establishing it also. But he had wished to have it serve as a buttress
against democracy, a safeguard against the fickle play of opinion and the
caprice of men unschooled in affairs.
[Illustration: TITLE-PAGE OF A CAMPAIGN DOCUMENT, 1800]
Mr. Jefferson’s was an opposite school of thought. “I am persuaded,”
he said, “that the good sense of the people will always be found the
best army. They may be led astray for the moment, but will soon correct
themselves.” His belief was wholly sincere, aristocrat though he was
in life and breeding and in instinctive aptitude for power; and it was
wholesome for the country that the forces he so moderately and graciously
represented should thus early gain their inevitable ascendency. It was
impossible that the ruling classes of the older days should continue to
govern the young nation now springing into life. Mere growth and change
of life had broken every bond of habit and restraint of form. The nation
of 1800 was not even the nation of 1790. Its population had grown in that
decade from 3,929,214 to 5,308,483, and had spread itself northward and
westward and northwestward, to Lake Ontario and round about to the St.
Lawrence and Lake Champlain; to Lake Erie and into the Ohio country; and
into Kentucky and Tennessee, until great communities mustered there more
than three hundred thousand strong. Vermont and Kentucky and Tennessee
had been added as States to the Union, and had brought the spirit of the
frontier with them into its counsels. It was not the cities that grew,
though they had their growth with the rest, so much as the spreading
country-sides. The great spaces of virgin land at the west were filling
in, and there stirred everywhere the air of enterprise and change.
No group of men could restrain, or measure, or even guide the quick,
expanding life of that young people, before whom all ways of conduct
and endeavor were open to be tried and made test of, in whose hands
all things were making and to be made. Their industry kept pace with
their numbers. The Parliament in England forbade any one to take out of
England any industrial machinery whatever, or even the plans of machinery
invented or perfected there; but it was impossible to keep as a secret
and monopoly what master mechanics who chose to go to America could
take away in their heads and in their trained and skilful fingers; and
slowly the carefully guarded secrets of manufacture passed over sea. By
1790 Samuel Slater had set up a cotton-spinning factory, with complete
machinery after the English models, at Pawtucket, in Rhode Island. In
1793 Eli Whitney, a Connecticut school master living in Georgia, invented
a practicable gin for clearing cotton of its tenacious seed, and the
South had no sooner realized what this new instrument meant than it
suddenly sprang into competition with India and Egypt in supplying the
world with cotton. In 1791 less than two hundred thousand pounds of
cotton had been shipped out of the country; in 1800 nearly twenty million
pounds went over sea. Everything that America produced found market,
despite all obstacles. The trouble with England while Washington was
President, the trouble with France while Mr. Adams ruled, had checked
and jeoparded trade; but trade had strengthened and increased with an
irrepressible growth, nevertheless. Nearly twice as much flour and wheat
left the ports in 1800 as had been sent out in 1791. American ships were
to be found in every sea, and carried cargoes of every sort.
[Illustration: WHITNEY’S COTTON GIN]
No class or region or single school of politicians or thinkers could keep
the mastery or determine the course of such a people, growing after such
a fashion, on such a continent. Democracy, free force, an equal footing
for all men in opinion, effort, and attainment were the very conditions
of its being: there could be no leading-strings. Mr. Jefferson spoke
the spirit of the day, its only acceptable principle in affairs. The
government had passed into the hands of the people’s party.
Its programme, as Mr. Jefferson spoke it, accorded with its origin: The
restriction of federal powers within strait constitutional limits, an
unembarrassed field for the powers of local self-government within the
several States, the payment of the public debt, the reduction of the
armed forces of the country, and consequently of the taxes, to the lowest
practicable point, and as nearly as might be free trade at the ports:
a government simple, inexpensive, unmeddlesome. Some of the latest and
most partisan acts of the Federalists the new Congress, with its working
majority of Republicans, proceeded to undo. The Judiciary Act, by which
the Federalists had called new federal courts into existence to fill them
with judges of their own party principles, was repealed, and the new
courts were abolished almost before they had been organized. The other
officials whom Mr. Adams had put into office during the closing days of
his term were dismissed, and Republicans were put in their places. A few
Federalist office-holders who had been offensively loud, partisan, and
industrious in working against Mr. Jefferson’s election, and who had
used their official power to influence the vote at the polls, were also
removed and replaced by men of the President’s party. Sixteen federal
officials were dismissed without cause assigned, in order, no doubt, to
put the public service more in accord with the views of the new head
of the government. All who were imprisoned under the odious Sedition
law were at once pardoned and released. The law itself had expired by
limitation; and Mr. Adams had not used the authority conferred upon
him by the law against aliens. The Federalist Naturalization law of
June, 1798, which required a residence of fourteen years as a condition
precedent to the acquisition of citizenship by a foreigner, was repealed,
and the old period of five years restored.
[Illustration: TITLE-PAGE OF JEFFERSON’S INAUGURAL ADDRESS]
But there the reaction stopped. The new Congress reduced the federal
taxes, and the customs duties at the ports; cut down the army and
navy establishments; retrenched expenses and lessened burdens, as had
been promised and expected; but the despondent forebodings of those
Federalists who had looked to see a fatal retrogression in the character
of the government were not fulfilled. The people’s men were not, after
all, “Jacobins and miscreants,” and Mr. Cabot was apparently not yet
justified in considering “democracy to be the government of the worst.”
Mr. Jefferson called Mr. Madison to the Secretaryship of State, a man
whom all the country knew to be a patriot and a statesman. He made Albert
Gallatin, of Pennsylvania, Secretary of the Treasury, and financiers soon
learned to trust the clear-headed Swiss for judgment and capacity almost
as much as they had trusted Mr. Hamilton himself. There was, at any rate,
no revolution in the business methods of the government.
Mr. Jefferson was too wise a politician to alienate the very men whose
suffrages had brought him into office. He knew that many thoughtful men
who had before always voted with the Federalists had in the last election
voted for the Democratic Republican electors,—not because ready to see
the government experimented with, but because they hated the taxes with
which the Federalist Congresses loaded them, disliked the new tone and
temper of the Federalist leaders, and believed that, for all they were
so radical in their talk, the leaders of the opposition would simplify
the government without weakening it or doing it damage. He knew that he
was on trial to prove his conservatism as well as to prove his capacity
for reform. He meant to prove himself no enemy of an efficient federal
government, but only an enemy of extremes.
[Illustration: WILLIAM PINKNEY]
It turned out that he had judged the temper of the country and the
posture of affairs to a nicety, and had brought in a new régime which
was to give its opponents abundant time to assess its qualities. Mr.
Jefferson remained eight years in office; and handed on the presidency
to men of his own school of political principle who kept it for sixteen
years more. He was elected for a second term (November, 1804) by an
overwhelming majority. Mr. Charles Cotesworth Pinckney and Mr. Rufus
King, the candidates of the Federalists, received only the votes of
Connecticut and Delaware, added to two of the eleven votes of Maryland.
The country had turned with a sort of mild enthusiasm to the new party,
which seemed with every year to grow more national and more typical
of the natural disposition and principles of America. The more ardent
Federalists grew very black and bitter under the sharp discipline of
such a change, and talked intemperately and with a touch of reckless
disloyalty of breaking up the Union rather than submit to the new régime.
Hamilton, more wise and more patriotic, rebuked them passionately. “You
are going to Boston,” he wrote to Colonel Trumbull. “You will see the
principal men there. Tell them from me, as my request, for God’s sake,
to cease these conversations and threatenings about a separation of the
Union.” But Mr. Hamilton’s influence was presently withdrawn. Mr. Burr,
the Vice President, stung by Hamilton’s attacks in a bitter political
quarrel, in which words ran hot and unguarded on both sides, challenged
him to a duel, which ended in a fatal tragedy (July, 1804). Mr. Hamilton
was killed, and the one commanding figure among the Federalists was
removed. They lost influence with every election, and the hands of the
Republicans were free, in the presidency and in Congress.
[Illustration: THE HAMILTON-BURR DUEL]
The new unanimity in affairs sprang, not out of the repeals,
retrenchments, and reforms of the party newly come to power, so much as
out of its popular action in national affairs. For all their professions
of an opposite set of principles in government, its leaders acted as its
more conservative supporters had expected,—very much as Washington or
Adams or Hamilton would have acted, when there was occasion to vindicate
either the authority or the interests of the Union. Mr. Jefferson was
hardly installed in office before news reached America that Spain had
re-ceded the great province of Louisiana to France. It was one thing to
have all the western bank of the Mississippi, its outlet at the Gulf,
and all the continent between the Mississippi and the Pacific controlled
by Spain, who had lost her power in the world; but it was quite another
to let it pass into the hands of France, and Bonaparte her leader. “The
cession of Louisiana and the Floridas by Spain to France,” wrote Mr.
Jefferson, the lover of peace and friend of France, to Mr. Livingston,
the American minister at Paris, “completely reverses all the political
relations of the United States, and will form a new epoch in our
political course. There is on the globe one single spot the possessor
of which is our natural and habitual enemy. It is New Orleans, through
which the produce of three eighths of our territory must pass to market.
France, placing herself in that door, assumes to us the attitude of
defiance. Spain might have retained it quietly for years.... The day
that France takes possession of New Orleans ... seals the union of two
nations, who, in conjunction, can maintain exclusive possession of the
ocean. From that moment we must marry ourselves to the British fleet and
nation.” An intense excitement spread through all the western country,
which grew to a still quicker fever when it was learned that the Spanish
governor at New Orleans had practically closed the port against the
western trade, by way of preparation for the transfer to France.
[Illustration: ROBERT R. LIVINGSTON]
Mr. Monroe was sent to join Mr. Livingston at the French court. He was
authorized to purchase Florida and a strip of the coast which should
include New Orleans. He found Bonaparte willing to sell the whole of
Louisiana or nothing. The American commissioners, therefore, exceeded
their authority and agreed to buy the whole of the vast territory for
fifteen million dollars. Bonaparte congratulated himself that he had
replenished his purse for a war with England and had turned over to the
United States lands and resources which should make them able themselves
some day to humble England, even on the high seas and in trade.
Mr. Jefferson admitted that he could find nowhere in the constitution
authority to buy foreign territory, and professed himself very anxious
about the awkward situation that had arisen. He believed that such a
purchase would be beyond the precedent even of Mr. Hamilton’s “implied
powers,” and wished a constitutional amendment passed to make good
what his representatives had done and he could not decline to accept.
“I had rather ask an enlargement of power from the _nation_, when it
is found necessary,” he said, “than to assume it by a construction
which would make our powers boundless. Our peculiar security is in the
possession of a written constitution. Let us not make it a blank paper by
construction.” But in the same breath with which he urged his scruple he
declared his readiness to abandon it. “If our friends think differently,”
he said, “certainly I shall acquiesce with satisfaction, confiding that
the good sense of our country will correct the evil of construction
when it shall produce ill effects”; and the houses agreed to the treaty
and voted the money for the purchase without so much as proposing an
amendment (1803). The President acquiesced with startling facility in
the apparent “necessity of shutting up the constitution” in such exigent
cases of imperative policy. No one but the more extreme and partisan
Federalists would patiently hear of any scruples in the matter. Nowhere
except in New England was there sharp and acrid dissent.
Mr. Jefferson had given the country its first taste of his real quality
in action. He was a Democrat, a people’s man, upon conviction, genuinely
and with a certain touch of passion; but he was no lawyer. He stickled
for a strict construction of the constitution only when he thought that
a strict construction would safeguard the rights of common men and keep
the old Federalist theories of government at arm’s-length: not because
he disliked to see the country have power as a nation, but because he
dreaded to see it put in bondage to an autocratic government. He wanted
as little governing from the federal capital as might be; but as much
progress as might be, too, and as much access of power and of opportunity
to the people as a body of free men, unshackled by any too meddling
government. It was his weakness to think it safe for the friends of the
people to make “a blank paper” of the constitution, but the very gate of
revolution for those who were not Democrats. If only Democrats led, “the
good sense of the country would correct the evil of construction when it
should produce ill effects”!
In the older and more stubborn Federalists it naturally bred a sort of
madness to see Mr. Jefferson turn loose constructionist to do the very
things which they most dreaded in their political calculations. In New
England it seemed to many who were high in the Federalist counsels a
thing not to be borne that a great field of expansion should be opened at
the very doors of the South and West, to the undoing of the East, which
had no free space in which to grow, and must lose her weight in affairs
when the West came to its power. It was this that made them talk of
disunion and of an independent Confederation to be set up at the North,
despite the protests of Mr. Hamilton, who believed the purchase to be
constitutional and knew it to be wise.
[Illustration: HAMILTON’S RESIDENCE. THE GRANGE]
But they were in a hopeless minority. Even Mr. Jefferson’s attacks upon
the judiciary, that last stronghold into which they had been driven,
failed to bring on the storm they wished for. The process of impeachment
was actively set afoot, that same year 1803, to effect the removal
of such federal judges as made themselves most obnoxious to attack.
The Democratic leaders of the House announced it as their theory of
impeachment under the constitution that it was not a criminal prosecution
but only a process of removal. Its ground, they said, need not be any
crime or legal misdemeanor. Such acts sufficed to support it as made the
judge called in question an instrument of opposition to the course of
the government. A decision declaring an act of Congress unconstitutional
would support it. It must be considered a means of keeping the courts in
reasonable harmony with the will, of the nation. Here was enough and to
spare to feed the fears and the rising anger of the Federalist leaders.
But Congress itself declined the theory. Judge Pickering was removed from
office because of gross irregularities of conduct; but Judge Chase was
acquitted, despite his violent partisanship outspoken from the bench. The
Senate would not oust merely for opinions held, and the courts were safe.
The Federalist leaders found, moreover, that their own partisans, upon
whom they had thought that they could reckon, gave them no countenance.
It was impossible to arouse or alarm them. Mr. Jefferson had proved no
monster, after all, but an amiable and attractive gentleman, graceful
in conciliation, and apparently honest in his desire to serve the whole
country, spite of what was said against him.
[Illustration: EARLY VIEW OF WASHINGTON CITY]
He had surrounded himself, besides, with capable men, whose ability and
integrity the whole country recognized. His Secretary of the Treasury was
able, so sound did his management of the finances prove, to arrange for
the payment of the fifteen millions due for the purchase of Louisiana
without asking Congress to lay an additional tax. “I greatly fear that
a separation would be no remedy,” wrote George Cabot to those who would
have led in the Northern secession. The source of our evils “is in the
political theories of our country and ourselves. We are democratic
altogether,” and can expect nothing salutary “while we retain maxims and
principles which all experience and reason pronounce to be absurd.” “It
is impossible to alarm, much less to convince, a large portion of the
Federalist party here of their danger,” explained Mr. Higginson to the
radicals in Congress. “A small part only of those called Federal are
sound in their opinions and willing to look into their real situation.
Many even of our own party have as much yet to unlearn as to learn. They
have yet much of the democratic taint about them.” Even extremists saw
that they would have no following in revolutionary courses, and would
have to wait for some grosser provocation, “which should,” as Mr. Cabot
said, “be very generally felt and distinctly understood as chargeable
to the conduct of our Southern masters, such, for example, as a war
with Great Britain manifestly provoked by our rulers.” Almost the whole
country outside their narrow coterie rejoiced in the acquisition of the
lands beyond the Mississippi. To the southerner and the westerner it
seemed a mere consummation of destiny, inevitable and not to be debated.
The President turned, with such ease of conscience as he could command,
to other things.
[Illustration: OLD STATE HOUSE, HARTFORD]
“Other things,” it turned out, were to involve still more Federalist-like
policy as affairs shifted: were to involve, in the end, a new set of
troubles with England and France which were as serious as those which
had made such mischief in Mr. Adams’s time, and which as inevitably led
straight towards war and taxes and federal activity in foreign affairs,
the pet aversions of the President and of every man who held the strict
Jeffersonian creed in politics. Had Europe been at peace, America might
have had her day of adolescence unchecked and clear of embarrassment. But
France had set all Europe afire, and America, it turned out, was to be
drawn into the storm,—was not to be suffered to be the only neutral, lest
her advantage should be Europe’s ruin.
All the world being at war, hers was the only flag under which cargoes
could make their way into European ports. It was the recognized law
of nations that every ship that carried the flag of a belligerent was
subject to be taken and made prize of by an enemy’s cruisers. England’s
merchantmen could go abroad upon the seas with impunity enough, because
England’s navy dominated the ocean waterways; but half of the ports of
the continent were closed against them. French and Dutch ships did not
venture out of port. Spain gave up her attempt to bring Mexican dollars
and the ingots of the Peruvian mines out of the south under convoy in
her own bottoms. That and all the rest of the carrying trade of the
world fell to American skippers, who were free, as neutrals, to go where
they pleased. They fetched cargoes of every kind from every quarter of
the globe; put in with them at American ports, in order that they might
there be reshipped; and took them thence to their destinations as neutral
goods in neutral bottoms. The products of both Indies poured in at the
ports of Holland, Spain, and France, without let or hindrance, if only
Yankee skippers brought them; and made their way by river and canal to
the markets of every kingdom and principality whose resources Bonaparte
was using to subdue the world. Those who fought him seemed defeated
by neutral trade, by means of what seemed to them, at that tremendous
crisis, merely war disguised,—a veritable fraud of neutral flags by which
the laws of war were annulled. Bonaparte could never be beaten unless
this uninterrupted stream running into his coffers were somehow cut off.
[Illustration: ARCH STREET PHILADELPHIA, IN 1800]
England’s only mastery was on the sea. If she could not cut off the
conquering Corsican’s resources there she could not hope to check him at
all. For a little while she observed nominal peace with him (1802-1805),
but that was soon broken. Nelson had utterly destroyed the French fleet
at the Nile (August 1, 1798); and now broke the naval power of Spain
and of France alike on the great day of Trafalgar (October 21, 1805).
But on land, apparently, the Corsican could not be beaten. England
determined that at least his coasts should be shut up and the trade of
his allied and subject states destroyed; and, since she could not make
an actual blockade of all Europe, she resolved to make a paper blockade,
and enforce it as she might by captures at sea. By a series of Orders
in Council (May, 1806–April, 1809) she virtually declared every port of
Europe and the Indies closed against neutral trade. Napoleon answered
with a series of decrees (November, 1806–August, 1810) which closed every
English port also, so far as such cruisers as France had left could
close them, or seizures in French ports make the orders good. Fine,
condemnation, even capture and confiscation were to be the penalties
imposed on all who should be caught ignoring the mandates of either
imperious leader in that desperate combat of nations.
America was not the special target of these extraordinary measures. They
were simply unprecedented acts of war in a struggle which had at last
transcended every rule and standard. But America’s trade was likely to
be cut away at the roots as effectually as if all Europe had declared
war against her. Moreover, she was helpless. Mr. Jefferson had brought
a party to power which had dismantled the navy which the Federalists
had begun. The few ships that remained were tied up at the docks out
of repair, out of commission, or lacking crews and equipment. English
cruisers overhauled American merchantmen when and where they pleased,
looked into their manifests and bills of lading, forbade them their
voyage if they chose, and took their seamen off to serve in their own
crews.
It was indisputable English law that a British subject’s allegiance
was indefeasible and could not be renounced. Many a man upon American
ships was in fact a deserter from the British navy, where the pay was
poor enough and the discipline brutal enough to make any man wish for
respite and escape. English captains were simply reclaiming runaway
Englishmen, their government said. They were fighting single-handed
against Napoleon with all Europe at his back; they could not suffer their
navy to be drained of its men at such a time as that, when liberty the
world over, it might be, was staked upon their success. Thousands of
her sailors were in fact deserting; it was notorious where they went;
and they must be found. Many of the men who were impressed could show
American naturalization papers; but no naturalization papers could avail
for their exemption from impressment if allegiance were indefeasible.
The bitter and intolerable thing was, that British officers made no
pretence of investigation; took what men they chose, American or English,
not declining negroes even; and insulted the flag of the United States
by every method they employed. Insult reached its climax when the
English cruiser _Leopard_ followed the American frigate _Chesapeake_
out of Hampton Roads, fired upon her, and took four men from her as
deserters,—the _Chesapeake_ having but a single gun ready for use (1807).
[Illustration: NEW YORK ABOUT 1800. FROM THE NORTH]
Mr. Jefferson saw the face of war in all this, but would not propose
any means of redress. The only remedy he would suggest was a fleet of
gunboats for the defence of the ports, less costly than fortifications,
less dangerous also, his creed said, to principles of self-government
and the maintenance of a modest central power, than a formidable navy.
If American seamen were not safe against attack at sea, it was best
that they should stay in port, where the country could make good their
defence. He found it impossible, indeed, to do away with sea-going
ships of war altogether. At the very outset of his administration he
had been obliged to send a squadron against the pirates of Tripoli, who
openly made war on the commerce of the United States. The six frigates
then kept in commission proved unsuitable for the service, and he was
forced to consent to the construction of a few vessels more suitable,
which promptly brought Tripoli to terms. But he did not allow even the
Tripolitan war (1802-1805) to bring a real navy into existence.
He tried negotiation with England, through Mr. Monroe and Mr. William
Pinkney, for many weary months, and through many changes of ministry over
sea, but could get nothing better than Jay’s treaty (then about to expire
by limitation), and would accept nothing less than a renunciation of the
right of search and of impressment, which England would not relinquish.
When the _Leopard_ fired on the _Chesapeake_ he ordered all British
men-of-war out of American waters and forbade them her ports; but there
was no remedy in that. At last, driven to retaliation but unalterably
opposed to war, he recommended an embargo, which should at least make
English merchants smart by cutting off their lucrative trade with the
United States.
[Illustration: BRYANT’S SATIRE]
On the 22d of December, 1807, an Embargo bill became law which absolutely
prohibited all foreign commerce, whether in foreign or in American
bottoms. A year before Congress had authorized the President to forbid
the importation of certain classes of English goods on and after a
certain date. But the date had been deferred until the eve of more
radical measures. The Embargo Act closed the ports against all nations,
and even against the exit of American ships. Even coasting vessels were
required to give bond to land their cargoes within the United States.
Such an experiment in retaliation, cried Josiah Quincy, of Massachusetts,
in the House, had “never before entered into the human imagination.
There is nothing like it in the narrations of history or in the tales of
fiction.”
“My principle,” said the President, “is that the conveniences of our
citizens shall yield reasonably, and their taste greatly, to the
importance of giving the present experiment so fair a trial that on
future occasions our legislators may know with certainty how far they may
count on it as an engine for national purposes,”—as a substitute for
war in bringing foreign nations to terms of reason; and he had his way
to the utmost. His personal influence prevailed in everything. Members
of Congress knew very well how sorely the bill would pinch, but they
never dreamed of disobeying. “All our surplus produce will rot on our
hands,” cried a member of the House. “God knows what all this means! I
cannot understand it. I see effects, but I can trace them to no cause....
Darkness and mystery overshadow this House and the whole nation. We know
nothing; we are permitted to know nothing. We sit here as mere automata;
we legislate without knowing; nay, sir, without wishing to know why or
wherefore.” The embargo was to be tried because Mr. Jefferson believed in
its efficacy.
The closing year of his presidency was darkened and distressed by its
effects. The States themselves suffered from the act more than the
nations whose trade they struck at. America’s own trade was ruined. Ships
rotted at the wharves,—the ships which had but yesterday carried the
commerce of the world. The quays were deserted. Nothing would sell any
more at its old price. The southern planters suffered even more keenly
than the New England merchants. Their tobacco and rice and cotton could
not be sold, and yet their farm hands, who were slaves, could not be
discharged and had to be maintained. The wheat and live stock of the
Middle States lost half their market. It was mere bankruptcy for the
whole country. No vigilance or compulsion could really enforce the act,
it is true. Smuggling took the place of legitimate trade, where it could.
Even within the year, too, manufactures began to show a little more as if
they would grow, to supply what importation could no longer supply. But
there was small palliation for the keen distress of the time in smuggling
or the feeble beginnings of manufacture; and before irreparable mischief
had been done the fatuous system broke down.
[Illustration: NOTICE CONCERNING THE RELIEF OF SAILORS]
It bred distress not merely, but actual disaffection as well. The
distress was universal; disaffection showed itself only in New England,
where the Federalists still kept their organization and their power. The
sea was New England’s farm, as Mr. Pickering said. To be shut out from
using it for trade and adventure was as sharp a blow at her habit and her
livelihood as that which had been dealt by Mr. Townshend’s Acts, which
had played their part, as everybody knew, in bringing on a revolution.
Exasperation could not easily be kept within bounds; and no one seemed
wise enough to restrain it. New Englanders deemed the embargo a more
open and more partisan attack upon their interests than the purchase
of Louisiana had been, and thought it significant enough that it came
from Mr. Jefferson, the Virginian, leader of the South and West. As a
matter of fact, the Act cut nearer the roots of life in Virginia than
in Massachusetts. The merchants of New England lost the profits of
trade, indeed; but British cruisers would very likely have confiscated
those in any case. Their capital at least was safe; and New England,
like Pennsylvania, found means to reimburse herself in the home markets
suddenly opened for her simple manufactures which Virginia and the
South had no opportunity to employ. It showed a singular constancy and
steadfastness in principle and in party loyalty on the part of Virginia
and her neighbor States at the south that they should thus face ruin to
support Mr. Jefferson.
The Federalist coterie in Massachusetts and Connecticut were at such
a pitch of exasperation, allowed themselves such license of bitter
and disloyal speech, seemed so stubbornly bent upon opposition to the
utmost, that even men very little given to panic fear began seriously to
apprehend the worst. Indeed, the worst was presently to be seen at hand.
It was a long coast to keep ships from, that which stretched all the way
from the rivers of Maine round about Spanish Florida to the rivers and
inlets of the Gulf, and before the President and his advisers had done
with the hateful Act they were driven, in order to make it effective,
to measures as arbitrary and as inquisitorial as the Alien and Sedition
laws and Mr. Townshend’s Acts to enforce the Parliament’s laws of trade.
In January, 1809, in accordance with the recommendations of a report
from Mr. Gallatin, Congress passed an Enforcing Act which authorized
the President, through the collectors of customs, to seize any goods of
American growth or manufacture that might be found in any kind of boat or
in any vehicle going towards the sea, and to hold them until heavy bonds
were given that they would not be taken out of the United States. At
that the temper of New England broke down, as the temper of Kentucky and
Virginia had broken down under the Alien and Sedition laws. A committee
of the Massachusetts senate recommended a law to protect the people
of the State against “unreasonable, arbitrary, and unconstitutional
searches.” When Mr. Dearborn, the Secretary of War, requested Governor
Trumbull, of Connecticut, to select officers of the militia of that
State to assist the collectors in enforcing the Act, he flatly refused,
and plainly declared his determination to defy the authority of the
federal government. “Conceiving, as I do, and believing it to be the
opinion of the great mass of citizens in this State,” he said, “that the
late law of Congress for a more vigorous enforcement of the embargo is
unconstitutional in many of its provisions, ... my mind has been led
to a decided and serious determination to refuse compliance with your
request, and to have no agency in the appointments which the President
has been pleased to refer to me.”
[Illustration: JOHN QUINCY ADAMS]
Already, the year before, Mr. John Quincy Adams had informed Mr.
Jefferson that there was a plan afoot in New England to nullify the
embargo and defeat the laws, and that secession, it might be, and union,
or at least alliance, with England would follow. Here was a notable
sign of the times! John Adams’s son, bred in the strictest school of
federalism, and himself senator from Massachusetts, had of a sudden left
his party, had voted for the embargo, and now, cool and distant though
he was with all men, came forward to warn and counsel Thomas Jefferson
and shield the country from the consequences of Federalist folly. Mr.
Jefferson knew at once how singular and significant a thing had happened;
knew that Mr. Adams had acted from a love of duty, not from love of him;
felt a touch of panic himself; and acted as the crisis seemed to demand.
Amidst such an accumulation of embarrassments, at home and abroad, it was
no doubt better to yield a good deal to the spirit of discontent, before
actual strife came on, than to provoke it to excesses. The end of Mr.
Jefferson’s term was at hand, his successor chosen, his party’s supremacy
secure, and concession could be made without material sacrifice. On the
1st of March, 1809, accordingly, a Non-Intercourse Act, which prohibited
trade with the ports of England and with all countries under the control
of France, but set it free again to move as it pleased so far as the rest
of the world was concerned, was substituted for the absolute embargo.
The signing of the new measure was almost the last official act of Mr.
Jefferson’s administration. On the 4th of March, with no slight sense of
relief, he handed over to Mr. Madison the responsibilities of his great
office,—a burden which increased, as he had found, from year to year.
Mr. Madison had been chosen without difficulty to the Presidency
(1808). The supremacy of his party was almost unquestioned; he was Mr.
Jefferson’s choice for the succession; the nomination was an affair
arranged by the party leaders in Congress and formally ratified in a
caucus of the Republican members of the two houses,—not without rivalries
and a show of contest, indeed, but without difficulty; and the electors
readily confirmed the choice. Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and New
Hampshire returned in the election to their Federalist allegiance; three
Federalist votes in North Carolina were added to the two which Maryland
again stood ready to give: and Mr. Pinckney and Mr. King, who were again
the nominees of the Federalists, received forty-seven electoral votes,
instead of the beggarly fourteen they had received four years before. But
Mr. Madison received one hundred and twenty-two. Mr. George Clinton, of
New York, who had been chosen Vice President with Mr. Jefferson, after
Mr. Burr’s retirement, became Vice President for a second term with Mr.
Madison. The reaction against the embargo had not touched the country at
large.
[Illustration: AARON BURR]
The country, indeed, had turned with a singular heartiness and unanimity
from the Federalists to Mr. Jefferson and the party he had made, as
if he had spoken the natural humor and inevitable principles of a new
country wishing a new life of its own. The Federalists seemed of a sudden
statesmen no longer, but a mere faction which wished accommodation with
England upon any terms, for the sake of trade and the maintenance of a
tradition. They seemed out of humor with the making of a free democratic
nation, full of wholesome but irregular force; and handed even their
one-time principles over to the Republicans: opposed them when they
magnified the federal power by the purchase of Louisiana, and echoed the
protests of the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions when they enforced the
embargo. It was evidently the tone and method of the new party rather
than its rigidity in principle or consistency in action that had taken
the fancy of the country. It used power as freely, and stretched the
constitution with as little compunction in the using, as the Federalists
before it. Though for a little while after its first elevation to
the place of government it had railed in good set terms against the
constitution itself, because it prevented the removal of obnoxious judges
by mere address of the two houses; had wished impeachment to be regarded
as a political, not as a judicial process; and had tried to use it to
subordinate the courts to the political control of the President, it
had soon forgotten that madness, and had used a very different tone in
most things. It had voted money to build a great national road through
the Cumberland Gap into the West, as readily as Federalists would have
voted it, and with almost as little doubt or scruple as to constitutional
powers. What had seemed a bit of treason against the government in the
West had been snuffed out as promptly and unhesitatingly as the whiskey
rebellion in western Pennsylvania had been snuffed out by Washington and
Hamilton in their more questionable day of authority, when, Jeffersonians
had said, a party acted and not the nation.
[Illustration: WESTERN COOKING UTENSILS]
[Illustration: PITTSBURG, 1810]
The treason, if treason it was, had been Mr. Burr’s, now a discredited,
it might be also a desperate, man. His duel with Hamilton, which
seemed like nothing less than a political murder, had rendered him of
a sudden almost a political and social outcast; the last months of his
vice presidency he had passed in bitter isolation from old friends and
associates; and he had left office (March 4, 1805) stricken in every
legitimate ambition. I am “under ostracism,” he said. “In New York I am
to be disfranchised, and in New Jersey to be hanged. Having substantial
objections to both, I shall not, for the present, hazard either, but
shall seek another country.” The forced pleasantry covered no man could
tell what purpose. His “other country”, was the West. Leaving Washington
in May, 1805, he swept in a swift journey through all the forested
country which lay upon the eastern banks of the Mississippi from Kentucky
to far New Orleans and back again, as if upon an errand. The next year he
repeated the journey; and boats, provisions, munitions of war began to
be gathered here and there on the Ohio and the Cumberland. It was said he
meant to attack Mexico; that he meant to set up an independent empire in
the West; that some great treason, or at the least some lawless scheme of
freebooting, was afoot. Nothing could be proved. Mr. Burr was indicted
and tried for treason (May-September, 1807), but there was not evidence
enough to convict him. He left the country and wandered in restless
loneliness through foreign lands, a ruined and hopeless man.
He had at least furnished proof, men felt sure, that the loyalty of
the West to the East could no longer be doubted or seriously tampered
with: for, whatever it had been that he was plotting, he had got, it was
certain, very little aid or counsel there, spite of appearances. The
reign of the new party in national affairs had, at any rate, knitted East
and West together; the makeweight of Louisiana had been added to the
national scale; and Mr. Madison had the bulk of the country back of him.
Mr. Madison loved peace, as Mr. Jefferson did, and was willing to secure
it by any slow process of law or negotiation that promised to keep war
at arm’s length. But he presently found himself caught in the tangled
network of policy which, as Secretary of State, he had woven for Mr.
Jefferson. Mr. Jefferson’s foreign dealings had turned, not merely upon
Napoleon’s decrees and the English Orders in Council against neutral
trade, but also upon his desire to add the purchase of West Florida to
the purchase of Louisiana, and so make good the dominion of the Union
to the east as well as to the west of the Mississippi. First, when he
thought England would aid him in that matter, he had played for a close
friendship with her. When England failed him and it seemed as if Napoleon
would compel Spain to make the cession if America would but turn away
from England to him, friendly dealings with England had been given up
and everything had been pulled about to please the master of France.
Napoleon’s diplomacy ran deeper than that of England. He stuck at nothing
to gain his ends; was determined that America should serve him, not the
English, in the mighty struggle he had entered upon to bring the world to
his feet; promised everything to win America away from England, and then,
having gained what he wished, repudiated his promises and did nothing.
Mr. Jefferson had become deeply entangled, beyond hope of extrication;
had become the professed friend of France, and had not gained Florida.
Mr. Madison was left to face two unfriendly powers, to the more false
and dangerous of whom it was his cue, it seemed, to play the complacent
servant.
[Illustration: MONTICELLO. THOMAS JEFFERSON’S RESIDENCE]
For a brief space affairs seemed to clear very hopefully, as if the old
tangle were about to be unravelled and dealings with England brought to
a right posture again. Mr. Erskine, the British minister at Washington,
young, sanguine, and inexperienced, agreed to a withdrawal of the Orders
in Council, and Mr. Madison gladly suspended the operation of the
Non-Intercourse Act in respect of Great Britain, as the terms of the Act
permitted. But it turned out that the young minister had acted without
authority. He was recalled, the Act was again put into force against
England (August 9, 1809), and affairs looked uglier than ever.
Then Napoleon practised anew upon the credulity of the Administration. On
May 1, 1810, Congress formally repealed the Non-Intercourse Act, which
would have expired by limitation at the close of the session without
repeal, and authorized the President, in case either Great Britain or
France should “cease to violate the neutral commerce of the United
States,” to revive and enforce non-intercourse with the other, should she
fail to do the same. Napoleon promised that his decrees against American
shipping should be revoked on the 1st of the following November, provided
England would before that date withdraw her Orders in Council. England
replied that she would rescind the Orders when informed that the Emperor
had revoked his decrees. The Emperor sent word to Mr. Madison that his
decrees were in fact revoked, and should cease to have effect after the
1st of November, if in the mean time the United States should “cause
their rights to be respected by England.”
[Illustration: CINCINNATI IN 1810. FROM HOWE’S HISTORY OF OHIO]
There was no doubt what that meant: non-intercourse with England as
the price and condition of release from the intolerable restraints of
France. And intolerable they were. Nearly every port of the continent,
whether on the Atlantic, the Mediterranean, or the Baltic, was under
the Corsican’s control; and everywhere American ships were seized and
confiscated on the pretext that they were carriers for England, whom he
meant to beat at any cost. Napoleon’s decrees, like the English Orders
in Council, had been nothing less than acts of war against the United
States from the first, though not primarily aimed at her, and would at
any time have justified a declaration of hostilities. But Mr. Madison did
not want war. The United States were not strong enough,—particularly now
that the party in power had disbanded its army, dismantled its navy, and
reduced its revenues to a minimum. The President’s principles clearly
forbade war, besides. He wished to fight only with the weapons of nominal
peace: embargoes and retaliatory restrictions. If Napoleon would yield
his decrees, so much the greater pressure could be brought to bear upon
England to yield her Orders in Council, and the vexatious game might at
last be won. The Emperor was no doubt bringing the end of it within sight.
[Illustration: TREMONT STREET, BOSTON, 1800. LOOKING NORTH]
Again too precipitate and too confiding, therefore, the President acted
as if the game were already won and the matter already settled, so far
as France was concerned. The 1st of November having come and England’s
Orders not yet being withdrawn, on the 2d he made proclamation that
intercourse with Great Britain and her dependencies would again be
suspended on and after the 2d day of February (1811) following, until
England should yield. Only after he had fully committed both himself and
the country did he learn how deeply and shamefully he had been deceived.
The seizure of American ships in continental ports did not stop. Other
decrees, other restrictions, old and new, sufficed for their condemnation
as well as the decrees said to have been revoked. The revoked decrees
themselves were still acted upon if occasion demanded. American skippers
were but lured by a false security into virtually hostile ports. Their
ships and cargoes were seized and confiscated without compunction or
subterfuge, at a loss of quite ten million dollars in a single season.
Ill feeling between England and the United States was seriously deepened,
as the astute and unscrupulous master of France had meant that it
should be; and every negotiation for an amicable settlement grew the
more confused and doubtful. Every sinister influence seemed to draw Mr.
Madison towards what he most dreaded and contemned,—towards a war of
arms, brought on by a programme of peace.
[Illustration: CINCINNATI, FROM NEWPORT, IN 1812]
Negotiations dragged very slowly then, with the coming and going of
tardy ships, which had oftentimes to steal like fugitives in or out of
port. But all through the long year 1811, though hopes and plans and
anxious fears came and went with doubtful ebb and flow, and no one knew
what either England or France would do, it grew more and more evident
that the government of the United States must do something, if only to
keep itself in countenance. It had pledged itself to believe that France
had in good faith yielded to its demands. England made no pretence of
having yielded or of intending to yield. Evidence multiplied that France
was playing a double and lying part. Mr. Madison’s mortification was
complete and very bitter; but no one deemed it possible that the United
States should fight both France and England at once. Men’s minds were
slowly made up to stomach France’s deceptions and fight England. At
least it was so with the President, who saw no way of retreat not too
humiliating to be borne; and it was so with Congress, which had passed
under the control of new leaders.
[Illustration: HENRY CLAY]
An air of radical action began to stir the moment Congress assembled
(November 4, 1811). It was the first session of the Twelfth Congress. In
the House seventy members, out of a total of one hundred and forty-one,
were new men, and for the most part young men: their leaders young men
like themselves. Most conspicuous among them was Henry Clay, a man not
yet turned thirty-five, whose tall and striking figure, easy way of
comradeship among men, free and ringing eloquence in speech, and ready
mastery in the battle of debate gave him an engaging pre-eminence, which
no man without an equal charm and power could dispute with him. There was
something in the whole make-up of the man,—his free pose, his candid
way of utterance, his dash and telling vigor,—which bespoke him the
Kentuckian, the man of the new and confident West, where the frontier
of settlement was near at hand and where the forces of irresistible
growth and initiative were abroad. And yet there was an art, a winning
persuasiveness, a reverence for old ideals, a flavor of old principles
in all that he did and said which seemed a reminiscence of his birth
in Virginia, where tradition was from of old and kept its votaries.
Scarcely less striking was John C. Calhoun, the new member from South
Carolina, a young man not yet thirty, who showed in every piece of
business he handled a maturity like that of the young statesmen of the
constitutional convention. There was the air of the scholar and student
about him. His luminous sentences, uttered in debate, shone upon every
matter they touched with singular steadiness and with a light at once
vivid and diffused, disclosing the distant view no less than the thing
at hand. A strain of passion and of quiet energy showed in him which
caught the imagination and touched the purpose of those about him. It was
inevitable that these men should lead,—these and the other men of the new
age who stood with them and were of like principle and purpose: in the
House, Langdon Cheves and William Lowndes, of South Carolina; Richard M.
Johnson, of Kentucky; Peter Buel Porter, of New York; and in the Senate,
William H. Crawford, of Georgia.
[Illustration: WILLIAM HARRIS CRAWFORD]
Mr. Clay was chosen Speaker and organizer of the House, and it proceeded
to the business which led to war. These men had made up their minds
that the country should fight. The President could not but take their
purpose, having no alternative to suggest. The tangle of French diplomacy
could not be straightened out, the stubbornness of England could not be
budged: the country, as if by hereditary choice, chose to fight England
and let France go her way for the present. The grounds of the war were
singularly uncertain. France was doing much more to injure neutral trade
than England was. That very spring (1812) a French fleet put to sea
confessedly commissioned to burn American merchantmen wherever found.
Mr. Madison urged against England the old grievance of impressment,
and no one could doubt its weight or gravity. Nearly every twelvemonth
between 1804 and the embargo close upon a thousand men a year had been
seized out of American ships. American tonnage increased seventy thousand
tons a year so long as American skippers were permitted to enjoy the
profits of neutral trade; four thousand two hundred additional men were
needed yearly to put crews into the new craft, and it was estimated
that twenty-five hundred of the new men were in fact British subjects,
no small proportion of them unquestionably deserters from his Majesty’s
navy. Every American sailor went about with a certificate of citizenship
which described his “eyes and nose and mouth and chin, the color of his
hair and complexion, and the marks and scars about his person,—like the
advertisement of a runaway slave,”—and yet was not safe. Actual outrages
often accompanied the ceaseless impressments, and only the embargo,
which kept ships in port, had thrown the matter for a little into the
background. But it had been thrown into the background. Mr. Jefferson
had let it go almost without protest since his commissioners had failed
to induce England to abandon it. It was now clearly an afterthought as
a ground for war. There was no excitement in the country; only a vague
irritation and fretfulness. But the drift had set in, and the majority
went with it, dragging the country. In April, 1812, an embargo was
enacted, preparatory to war; and on the 18th of June war was declared.
The very day before (June 17th) the English Parliament had repealed the
Orders in Council. The change of mind and of policy long looked for in
England had come at last, and the cause of the war was taken away on the
very eve of its outbreak.
[Illustration: JOHN RANDOLPH]
It was a foolhardy and reckless risk the Congress was taking. The country
had been “embargoed and non-intercoursed almost into a consumption,”
as Mr. Randolph said, very passionately. It was certainly no time for
battle. The party in power had relied on embargoes and non-intercourse
and had disbanded the army. The revenues of the government were scarcely
more than sufficient for its meagre peace establishment. The very
Congress which voted the war refused to provide for the taxes which Mr.
Gallatin told them would be necessary to carry it on. The preceding
Congress had refused to recharter the Bank of the United States, the
government’s only effective financial agency, and the currency was
already falling, as a consequence, into hopeless confusion, running
through a quick depreciation.
[Illustration: DETROIT IN 1815]
What was worse, the risk of the war was not a whit more obvious than
its deep impolicy. Napoleon was the enemy of the civilized world, had
been America’s own enemy in disguise, and had thrown off the disguise.
England was fighting him almost alone, all Europe thrown into his scale
and hers almost kicking the beam; and now America had joined the forces
of Napoleon, in fact if not in intention, as he had subtilely planned. It
was natural that the raw and rural nation should thus have seen its own
interests in isolation and indulged its own passion of resentment with
selfishness. England’s policy had cut America to the quick and had become
intolerable, and it did not lessen America’s exasperation that that
policy had been a measure of war against the Corsican, not against her.
It was a tragical but natural accident that the war should be against
England, not against France.
[Illustration: THE PORT OF BUFFALO, 1815]
It was thus that the New England Federalists saw the war; but they deemed
the accident inexcusable and pressed their opposition almost to the
verge of treason. The trade of the shipping ports had of course suffered
immensely at the hands of both England and Napoleon. But the profits
of the neutral carrier were enormous, nevertheless, in that troubled
time. Such ships as escaped seizure and made good their voyage recouped
their owners for many lost. Ship building went forward very prosperously
in America despite every order and decree of the belligerents; and so
long as there was no embargo to restrain and make them outlaws at home
merchants almost cheerfully took the risks of the sea. The embargo
which immediately preceded the war was intended, of course, to call the
shipping in for its own protection; but merchants hurried every available
vessel to sea as soon as they heard it was to be passed, in order to be
beforehand with it and take the risks Congress sought to protect them
against. Once again, when the embargo came, the opposition of New England
became factious and desperate. It spread to New York, which passed from
the control of a Republican to the control of a Federalist majority. It
threatened hopelessly to embarrass the government, if not to jeopard its
very existence.
The course of the war did little to improve matters. The government had
neither the means nor the organization to conduct it. The President was
authorized to increase the regular army from six to twenty-five thousand
men, to call for fifty thousand volunteers, and to employ one hundred
thousand men from the militia of the States. But volunteers were not to
be had for the asking; and officers were even harder to find than men.
The governors of Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Hampshire, though
they would not forbid recruiting, refused to permit the use of their
organized militia outside the limits of their States, thinking themselves
legally justified by the terms of the constitution, which authorized
Congress to provide for calling forth the militia only “to execute the
laws of the Union, suppress insurrections, and repel invasions,” and said
nothing of a war like this. The President, accordingly, withdrew all
federal garrisons from New England. The only general officers available
were either veterans of the Revolution, too old to be serviceable, or
mere politicians who claimed preferment as a political favor. The income
of the government never while the war lasted rose above ten millions a
year; but its expenses for the war turned out to be from thirty to forty
millions per annum. Loans had constantly to be resorted to; most of the
money of the country was in New England or at the great ports, where
the war was hopelessly unpopular; men were inclined to refuse to aid a
government which had already more than once ruined trade and prostrated
business,—if only to show their temper in affairs; and the credit of the
government sank lower and lower. Congress was obliged to resort at last
to the very excise taxes which all Republicans had so hotly condemned
the Federalists for imposing; to lay direct taxes on such articles of
personal use as household furniture and watches; and finally, when the
war was over but not the difficulties of finance, to re-establish the
Bank of the United States (April, 1816). A few light duties on imports
could not support the government when every principal harbor of the
country was blockaded.
[Illustration: JACKSON’S HEADQUARTERS, NEW ORLEANS]
For almost three weary years the war dragged on. It was a war upon the
borders: the long northern frontier, the defenceless coast, the easy
points of approach on the Gulf. As in the Revolution so now, the heart
of the country went untouched. Along the short lines of the Detroit,
the St. Clair, and the Niagara; on the waters and shores of the great
lakes; and up and down the line of Champlain, where Burgoyne had moved
in the wilderness, were the chief scenes of the uncertain fighting. On
the coasts English fleets swarmed thicker and thicker until almost every
important port was effectually closed. Finding no opposing force to
attack, their crews made frequent descents upon defenceless settlements,
which they burned and plundered. In August, 1814, a strong British force
landed in Chesapeake Bay, close to the capital; marched upon Washington,
which the government, knowing the place to be of no strategic importance
whatever, had not thought of providing with defences; took it without
difficulty, the officers of the government barely escaping capture;
burned the public buildings; and turned to an attack on Baltimore which
was gallantly repulsed.
The year 1814 had set England free to prosecute the war with vigor.
Napoleon was beaten. The very month Congress declared war against England
he had attacked Russia for a final triumph. Five hundred and fifty
thousand men he took against her, the combined armies of subjugated
Europe. But disaster dogged him at every step. Three hundred thousand
lives he threw away; more than a hundred thousand men he left in the
hands of the enemy. He came back with barely one hundred thousand
(December, 1812), to face a rising of the nations. Germany, Spain,
Sweden, every people in Europe roused itself to crush him. His armies
dwindled and were beaten, by Wellington in Spain, by Blücher beyond the
Rhine. By the end of March, 1814, the allies leagued against him were in
Paris; in April he was an exile in Elbe.
[Illustration: OLIVER HAZARD PERRY]
But America by that time had drilled troops and experienced officers,
trained by the hard processes of the war itself. What proved of as much
consequence, her little navy startled the world by its extraordinary
exploits. There were but seven frigates, great and small, besides a
corvette or two and a few small brigs; but her seamen were professionals,
not amateurs like her soldiers. Whenever they could elude a British fleet
watching at the harbors where they lay, and come to a reckoning with
their foes, vessel with vessel on the sea, they almost without exception
won, and won promptly, by expert seamanship and good gunnery; and British
captains were ordered to sail, not singly but in company, to be safe
against them. Little navies were created, too, on the lakes, where they
were built while the war lasted. Commodore Perry in a single gallant
action (September 10, 1813) won entire control of Lake Erie, and set a
body of troops across the lake whose decisive victory on the Thames ended
the war in the northwest. In the summer of 1814 Commodore Macdonough met
the English on Lake Champlain (September 11th) and won a victory which
once for all ended plans of invasion there.
[Illustration: BATTLE OF LAKE ERIE]
As the war progressed discipline came to the raw armies of the Union and
they began to be handled by men who understood their duty and performed
it in soldierly fashion. The war had begun with a series of defeats in
the north at once ridiculous and disgraceful; but the whole face of
affairs changed when the Americans drove the British troops from their
batteries at Lundy’s Lane (July 25, 1814) and kept their victory half the
black night through against assault after assault; and the fortunes of
the field swung measurably even after that from action to action.
The war closed in the South. There the British sent Pakenham with twelve
thousand men, veterans for the most part from the fields of Spain, to
take New Orleans, which they meant to hold for such terms as might suit
them when the war was done. There, on the 8th of January, 1815, General
Andrew Jackson received him, at the trenches the Americans had drawn
across a narrow strip of land below the city, and beat him off with half
the force: sent him back in utter rout, with twenty-five hundred men less
than he had brought. Jackson himself lost but eight killed and thirteen
wounded.
[Illustration: THOMAS MACDONOUGH]
Two weeks before that notable affair at New Orleans (December 24, 1814)
a treaty of peace had been signed at Ghent, of which the country knew
nothing. England had several months earlier made known her willingness to
treat. The war was costing her ten millions sterling a year; and she made
no real headway in it. Mr. Madison hurried commissioners over sea at the
word, and by December terms had been agreed upon. It was a mere treaty of
peace and of boundaries. The Orders in Council were long ago repealed;
impressment was not mentioned,—was, indeed, itself a matter settled well
enough by the defeat of Napoleon and by the new respect America had
gained on the seas. The war itself was no doubt sufficient guarantee that
another for a like purpose would never be necessary.
[Illustration: HOUSE OF AMERICAN COMMISSIONERS AT GHENT]
[Illustration: IN THE AMERICAN TRENCHES. BATTLE OF NEW ORLEANS]
Peace came none too soon to check the sinister influences of politics
at home. New England had contributed men and money to the war as the
law required and her means permitted. Because she was wealthy and
populous, she had, indeed, contributed more than the South and West,
whose representatives in Congress had brought the war on despite her
passionate protests. But the temper of her leading men grew more and more
impatient and insubordinate as the war advanced. In December, 1814, at
the call of the legislature of Massachusetts, a convention of delegates
from Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island met at Hartford whose
secret sessions made the whole country uneasy. There was nothing actually
revolutionary in what it did, so far as the country could learn; it had
met for consultation, no doubt, not for action. But it spoke the very
language of the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions in the papers which
it put forth; it was known to represent men who had more than once been
openly and aggressively a pro-British faction, men who Hamilton and John
Quincy Adams had feared might go the treasonable length of disunion; it
insisted upon amendments to the federal constitution which should protect
minorities of States from majorities. When the war closed a committee
of its members was in Washington to demand of the government that the
federal taxes should be divided and the New England States permitted to
retain those which their own people paid in order that they might apply
them as they pleased to their local defences. The treaty of peace sent
them home belated and derided. The Hartford convention was the end of the
Federalist party. But it had none the less been a very sinister sign of
the times.
[Illustration: FACSIMILE OF SIGNATURES TO THE TREATY AT GHENT]
If the war had done nothing else, however, it had at last made the
country quick with the spirit of nationality, and factions were
discredited. The war of the Revolution had needed a war for independence
to supplement it, as Mr. Franklin had long ago said. Until now,
notwithstanding the separation, English statesmen had deemed the United
States still in no small degree dependent upon England for their place
and privilege in the world, and America had virtually in her thought
accepted a position of dependence. The Federalists had been ashamed of
no concession or submission to England, when once their greater leaders
had fallen silent. This clumsy, foolhardy, haphazard war had at any
rate broken that temper. The country had regained its self-respect.
The government of the Union, moreover, was once more organized for
rational action. The party which controlled it had once for all given
up the theories which made it conscientiously weak and inefficient upon
principle. It was ready now upon occasion to raise armies, impose direct
taxes, avail itself of the services of banks, and serve the country by
means which should hold the nation united and self-centred against the
world.
_Authorities_: For general guidance through this period we
have the fourth, fifth, and sixth volumes of Hildreth, the
first three volumes of George Tucker’s _History of the United
States_, the second and third volumes of John Bach McMaster’s
_History of the People of the United States_, the first and
second volumes of James Schouler’s _History of the United
States of America under the Constitution_, the first volume
of Dr. Hermann E. von Holst’s _Constitutional and Political
History of the United States_, and the fourth volume of
Bryant and Gay’s _Popular History of the United States_. With
the accession of Mr. Jefferson to the presidency, Mr. Henry
Adams’s admirable _History of the United States_ during the
administrations of Jefferson and Madison becomes indispensable.
The late Mr. Alexander Johnston contributed to J. J. Lalor’s
_Cyclopaedia of Political Science, Political Economy, and
United States History_ articles on the chief topics and events
of this period, such as the purchase of Louisiana, the embargo,
and the war, which exhibit at their best the painstaking and
the judicial temper of the trained historian. For the rest,
our general authorities are John C. Hamilton’s _History of
the Republic of the United States of America as Traced in the
Writings of Alexander Hamilton and His Contemporaries_, a
voluminous work in seven volumes; Edward Stanwood’s _History of
the Presidency_; George Gibbs’s _Memoirs of the Administrations
of Washington and Adams_; William H. Trescot’s _Diplomatic
History of the Administrations of Washington and Adams_; the
first volume of J. P. Gordy’s _History of Political Parties
in the United States_; Charles Francis Adams’s _Life of John
Adams_; George Tucker’s _Life of Thomas Jefferson_; John T.
Morse’s _Life of Alexander Hamilton_; Henry Adams’s _Life of
Albert Gallatin_; William C. Rives’s _History of the Life and
Times of James Madison_; Josiah Quincy’s _Memoir of the Life of
John Quincy Adams_; Edmund Quincy’s _Life of Josiah Quincy_;
Henry Cabot Lodge’s _Life and Letters of George Cabot_; C.
W. Upham’s _Life of Timothy Pickering_; Moncure D. Conway’s
_Omitted Chapters of History, disclosed in the Life and Papers
of Edmund Randolph_; Matthew L. Davis’s _Memoirs of Aaron
Burr_; H. M. Brackenridge’s _History of the Late War_; William
Jones’s _Military Occurrences_ and _Naval Occurrences_; Charles
J. Ingersoll’s _Historical Sketch of the Second War between the
United States of America and Great Britain, 1812-1815_; Benson
J. Lossing’s _Pictorial Field Book of the War of 1812_; and
Theodore Roosevelt’s _Naval War of 1812_.
The very notable set of brief biographies known as _The
American Statesmen Series_ constitute, when put together, an
excellent history of the country from the points of view of
its several public men of chief importance. The volumes for
this period are those on Washington, John Adams, Hamilton,
Jefferson, Madison, Jay, Gallatin, Gouverneur Morris, John
Marshall, John Randolph, Clay, John Quincy Adams, and John
C. Calhoun. Having been prepared by different authors, these
volumes are necessarily unequal in authority and merit, but the
series as a whole is of remarkable excellence.
The documents and _contemporary materials_ are to be found in
the _Annals of Congress_; Thomas H. Benton’s _Abridgement of
the Debates of Congress_; the _American State Papers_; the
_Works_, _Papers_, and _Correspondence_ of the leading public
men of the time; John Marshall’s _Life of George Washington_;
John Quincy Adams’s _Memoirs_; the _Diary and Letters_ of
Gouverneur Morris; Timothy Dwight’s _Travels in New England and
New York_ (1796-1813); Rochefoucault-Liancourt’s _Voyage dans
les États-Unis_ (1795-1797); J. Weld’s _Travels through the
States_ (1795-1797); Thomas Ashe’s _Travels in America_ (1806);
John Melish’s _Travels in the United States_ (1806-1811);
John Davis’s _Travels of Five Years and a Half_ (1798-1802);
S. G. Goodrich’s _Recollections of a Lifetime_; William
Sullivan’s _Familiar Letters on Public Characters_; _Memoirs
and Letters of Dolly Madison, Wife of James Madison_; John
Randolph’s _Letters to a Young Relative_; William Cobbett’s
_Porcupine’s Works_; Henry A. Wise’s _Seven Decades of the
Union_; Timothy Dwight’s _Character of Thomas Jefferson as
exhibited in His Writings_; Henry Adams’s _Documents Relating
to New England Federalism_; James Monroe’s _View of the Conduct
of the Executive in the Foreign Affairs of the United States_;
J. Stephen’s _War in Disguise, or the Frauds of the Neutral
Flags_; Coggeshall’s _History of the American Privateers_;
Dwight’s _History of the Hartford Convention_; S. Leech’s
_Thirty Years from Home_ (upon a vessel of the United States);
and, after 1811, _Niles’s Weekly Register_.
CHAPTER IV
CRITICAL CHANGES
A critical presidential election had marked the very outset of the war.
Mr. Madison had, no doubt, been Mr. Jefferson’s lieutenant and chosen
successor, and had meant to walk in his footsteps, preserving peace at
the price of embargoes and domestic agitation, and keeping the federal
government in the background, even though it should cost it its strength
and prestige. But there had been men of his own party from the first who
earnestly objected to the succession, wishing a leader of a different
temperament and fibre. “We ask for energy,” they said, “and we are told
of his moderation; we ask for talent, and the reply is, his unassuming
merit.” The very war itself had come because Mr. Madison and his cabinet,
like Mr. Jefferson and those who counselled him, had nothing to suggest,
whatever wrong was wrought upon them,—except to withdraw from the seas,
close the ports, build gunboats to defend the harbors, and wait until
the inevitable should be at hand. While they waited every condition of
national politics shifted and was altered, and watchful men who wished
for action had grown deeply uneasy.
[Illustration: JOSIAH QUINCY]
Sixteen years of Jeffersonian supremacy had culminated in a war which
was against all Jeffersonian principles, and there had come about, while
no one planned, an unlooked for disorder of parties, a bewildering
reversal of parts in every matter of policy. In June, 1813, Mr. Josiah
Quincy, no Jeffersonian, but a Federalist, professing to be of the
school of Washington and Hamilton, had moved, in the legislature of
Massachusetts, that “in a war like the present, waged without justifiable
cause and prosecuted in a manner which indicates that conquest and
ambition are its real motives, it is not becoming a moral and religious
people to express any approbation of military or naval exploits which
are not immediately connected with the defence of our sea-coasts and
soil,”—words which rang true to the earlier tones of Jeffersonian
profession. The young leaders of the new Republican Congress, on the
other hand, Jeffersonian Republicans though they professed to be, had
pressed the war forward in the spirit, if not with the method, which had
been Washington’s and Hamilton’s. Mr. Madison was not their real party
head. Only eighty-three of the one hundred and thirty-three Republican
senators and representatives attended the congressional caucus which
gave him his nomination for a second term (May, 1812); and he won the
election only by the vote of Pennsylvania. Mr. De Witt Clinton, of New
York, Republican though he was, had put himself forward as an independent
candidate, had carried New York with him into opposition, had received
the support of the Federalists, desperate for success, and had been voted
for by the electors of every northern State except Pennsylvania and
Vermont. Mr. Madison had received the solid support of the South and the
votes of Vermont and Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania’s twenty-five electoral
votes had decided the election (128-89). Parties were breaking up, and
Mr. Madison’s personality was not strong enough to hold his own party
together. It had been a hazardous test of party allegiance with which to
begin a war.
[Illustration: DE WITT CLINTON]
And then, when the war was over and Mr. Madison’s eventful second term
at an end, there had been another choice of President which seemed to
go by rule of thumb rather than by the real preference of those who
guided affairs. Mr. Monroe received the succession,—not because of his
personal force or because of any gift of leadership discoverable in him,
but because, by long public service and by intimate association with
the leaders of his party, he had made his way into the inner group of
politicians long since gathered about Mr. Jefferson. Virginia, one of the
most populous and influential States of the Union, was the Republican
party’s centre of gravity. Her public men, with twenty-five electoral
votes behind them, dominated Republican party counsels; and Mr. Monroe
was their choice for fourth Virginian President. His nomination was
carried in caucus, it is true, only by the narrow margin of eleven
votes over Mr. Crawford, of Georgia; but, that initial victory won,
the presidency followed as of course. Mr. Madison had shown himself a
statesman rather in the framing of institutions and the formulation of
law than in the government of events. Mr. Monroe, without his studious
comprehension of principles, stood for at least a like experience in
affairs. The country, it seemed, was not yet ready for younger men, and
there was no party set against him that could defeat him. The Federalists
knew themselves discredited. What with their factious support of Mr.
Clinton, who had never avowed any principle which they could pretend
was their own, and the ugly threat of the Hartford convention,—their
loss of principle in following the men they did follow and the openly
avowed disunionist principles of the one-time leaders whom they did not
follow,—the country at large had turned from them in contempt and deep
distaste. Their electoral vote fell off to thirty-four again: the votes
of Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Delaware.
No doubt it was a fortunate choice which preferred Mr. Monroe at such
a time. A man of aggressive force and enterprising initiative would
too much have disturbed the quiet, spontaneous processes by which, in
those years of peace and yet of quick transition, parties were finding
themselves and making ready for a new age. That the new President was
no master of men had become evident enough while he was a member of Mr.
Madison’s cabinet. He had accepted the Secretaryship of State in April,
1811, with the avowed intention of extricating the country from the
entanglements into which Mr. Jefferson and Mr. Madison had suffered it to
be drawn; but the dark tide of perplexed diplomacy which swirled about
the Napoleonic wars, and which had overwhelmed Mr. Madison, had caught
him also in its fatal drift, and he had become Mr. Madison’s comrade
merely, not his guide. He lacked originative strength, but not sound
character; he fell short of the equipment of a statesman, but not of the
equipment of an upright and serviceable public officer. He was able, his
colleagues found, “to keep important matters steadily under his attention
until he had mastered them and could form his judgment accurately
concerning them”; and looked into his duties with “a mind of capital
integrity and ingenuous honesty.” Without the social gift to preside
with grace, he brought dignity and good temper to his task, and the safe
traditions of an elder school in politics.
While he steadily held the government to its accepted and established
mode of action and of growth, many things disclosed themselves in
the life of the country, and politics moved forward to a new order.
Hitherto the country had known the leadership only of New England and
the South, regions peopled straight out of the Old World: the one ruled
by a professional aristocracy of ministers and lawyers, the other by a
social and proprietary aristocracy of land owners; both governed, alike
in thought and action, by old traditions and both smacking, whatever
their professions of democratic principle upon occasion, of an old-world
taste for privilege and for the authority of a trained, experienced,
disciplined minority. But since the new century opened and Mr. Adams
gave place to Mr. Jefferson new States had come crowding faster and
faster into the Union, and came crowding still: Ohio (1802), Louisiana
(1812), Indiana (1816), Mississippi (1817), Illinois (1818), Alabama
(1819); most of them springing up in the far valley of the Mississippi,
where new communities bred a new air and the sap of a new nation was
rising. Transplantation thither seemed to create a new race,—not the mere
offspring of New England or the South, not mixed or compounded of the two
in such ways as to reproduce the East, not moulded from the Old World,
not homogeneous even, but full of racy elements united in a new and free
combination, more like New York and Pennsylvania than like Virginia or
Massachusetts, and yet different also from these, with a flavor and
spirit distinctively its own.
The country was at last in a position to feel at their full these forces
from within, and to respond to them quickly and naturally. By the mastery
of Wellington and Blücher at Waterloo (June 18, 1815) Europe had found
peace again. For the first time since the Revolution in France, since the
setting up of the federal government in America, the seas were cleared of
hostile armaments. Questions of impressment and of the rights of neutral
carriers at sea fell quietly out of sight amidst a general peace. Every
strain was eased, and the young state in the West, which the great storm
of war over sea, spreading blackly from continent to ocean till it seemed
to fill the world, had at last touched and tested, could turn to its
own affairs with a novel sense of freedom from outside influences or
interruption.
[Illustration: DANIEL D. TOMPKINS]
She found her affairs and her life singularly altered. Peace changed
the very face of trade. American skippers no longer had the lucrative
advantage of commanding the only vessels free to pass from port to port
amidst a world at war. There was, indeed, still plenty of carrying
to be done at sea. Crops fell short in Europe after the scourge of
war, and America filled all the ships she could get with grain for the
markets over sea. English merchants poured their goods once again into
the American ports, so long shut against them by embargoes and war.
But seamen of every nation could compete for the trade, and the Yankee
skipper had no longer any advantage except such as his wit and sea-bred
fitness gave him.
[Illustration: JAMES WILSON]
The very freedom with which trade moved, besides, altered the attitude
of the country towards it. Manufactures had sprung up while the ports
were closed. The very ship owners of the trading ports had in many
instances sold their craft and put their capital into the manufacture
of such things as were most immediately needed for the home market. By
the year 1815 close upon fifty million dollars had been invested in the
manufacture of textile fabrics alone. In 1808, when feeling ran so hot
in the East over the embargo, there were but eight thousand spindles
employed in the manufacture of cotton, and only some fifteen hundred
bales of cotton per year were needed to supply them; but in 1815 there
were five hundred thousand, and ninety thousand bales of cotton were used
within the year to keep them busy. In 1814 Mr. Francis Lowell, of Boston,
had set up at Waltham the first factory ever established in which every
process in the manufacture of cotton, from the cleansing and carding of
the raw material to the weaving of the cloth, was carried through under
a single roof, each step intelligently and economically coördinated
and fitted to the next. The secret of the power loom successfully put
into operation in England in 1806 had been very jealously and carefully
guarded by its inventors, but Mr. Lowell, with the assistance of shrewd
mechanics, worked its principle out to a successful application for
himself, and the American factory system was once for all established.
The new movement did not stop with the establishment of cotton factories.
The manufacture of wool and flax and hemp and even silk was added. The
machinery which could not be bought in England was made in America.
Iron manufactures, long ago set up but tentative and feeble hitherto,
increased from hundreds of thousands to millions in value under the
stimulation of foreign trade cut off. Hides and skins were extensively
prepared; liquors were distilled and fermented from the abounding grain
and fruits of the country-sides; glass, earthenware, furniture, almost
everything that was in general use in the country, was sooner or later
added to the growing list. Industries long ago begun upon a small scale
took heart to grow, and those which Americans had hitherto not dreamed
of attempting were hardily embarked upon. Distinct manufacturing regions
began sensibly to develop in the middle States and in the East, with
interests and characteristics which statesmen could not afford to
overlook.
[Illustration: CUMBERLAND GAP, NEAR WHEELING, VIRGINIA]
It was manifestly a menace to every young industry that a flood of
English imports should continue to pour into the country at the open
ports. The remedy was a protective tariff, such as Mr. Hamilton had
wished to see at the first; and the young Republican leaders of Congress
did not hesitate to advocate and establish it (April, 22, 1816). Mr.
Madison himself favored and even urged it, as he had favored and urged
also the re-establishment of the national bank. Western members of
Congress supported it because they wanted and could get duties on flax
and hemp. Every State in the Union except Delaware and North Carolina was
represented by at least one member in the vote which established it. Men
of the most diverse views and interests united in wishing to give the
country not only political but also economic independence. Mr. Clay urged
that it ought to be put into a position to develop every resource that
could serve it or make it powerful in time of war. The duties imposed
were not high: twenty-five _per cent._ upon cotton and woollen goods, and
upon other manufactured goods in proportion. But the duties on cottons
and woollens were made very formidable, as it turned out, by a provision
that in no case should they amount to less than six and a quarter cents a
yard. At the very outset that represented a tax of more than twenty-five
per cent. on the coarse goods which the southern planters bought for the
use of their slaves; and as the processes of manufacture cheapened this
fixed minimum represented, of course, a larger and larger fraction of
the price. It was pretty sure in the end to become an effectual barrier
against all foreign competition.
The men who planned these things saw also the danger of mere development,
the risk in growth itself, unless the country, with its long coast and
scattered settlements, spreading more and more upon the unlimited spaces
of the great continent, were in some way bound together by easy means of
intercourse and union. It had been found next to impossible to handle
armies in the northern forests during the war, or in the long wilderness
which lay upon the lower Mississippi between the Atlantic settlements and
the Gulf: difficult to handle them anywhere at the heart of the country,
even amidst the oldest settlements,—for lack of roads or any open way of
transport except where rivers or the lakes themselves lay like highways.
The troops had been time and again likely to starve, not because there
was not food enough to be had upon the order of the government, but
because it could not be got to them. The commissary had infinitely more
difficult duties than the general in command. Great highways were needed,
alike for war time and for times of peace, and a system of canals cut
from watercourse to watercourse. Mr. Gallatin had outlined what ought to
be done so long ago as April, 1808, in a forcible report to Congress,
planning a whole scheme of intercommunication with all his wide-eyed,
statesmanlike sagacity in such matters; but Mr. Jefferson, though he felt
nothing less than enthusiasm for the Secretary’s plan, had demanded
first a constitutional amendment to make it legal. Mr. Gallatin’s broad
purpose of “internal improvements” upon a national scale and at the
nation’s expense slumbered, therefore, until the Congress came which the
young Republicans led who made war on England. Then (December, 1816) Mr.
Calhoun, of South Carolina, proposed that the million and a half dollars
which the new national bank had paid the government for its privileges
should be set aside as a fund “for constructing roads and canals and
improving the navigation of watercourses.” But, though the bill passed,
Mr. Madison vetoed it, entertaining Mr. Jefferson’s scruples in the
matter; and for a little while longer the plan was put aside. The federal
government did nothing but slowly push forward through the Cumberland
Gap into the West a single great road which was meant to be the nation’s
highway to the lands on the Ohio, its common estate in the far western
valleys. This road the government had begun in 1806, and from year to
year small appropriations had been made for its extension as opportunity
or money permitted. But for anything more than this the time was not yet
quite ripe.
[Illustration: CANAL BOATS CROSSING THE MOUNTAINS]
The new national principles of the Republican leaders found fuller scope
and a wider application in affairs when Mr. Monroe became President,—not
so much because of any change from the old order of thinking in Mr.
Monroe himself, as because events overruled party creeds and made their
own terms with abstract principles. Subtly, insensibly, by an alchemy
whose processes no man knew or guided, the transformations of growth were
becoming also transformations of character in the young body politic of
the Union. Young men, and men not hitherto looked to for leadership,
were pushing themselves to the front. Mr. Madison had already called Mr.
Crawford, of Georgia, one of the new group of congressional leaders, into
his cabinet, and Mr. Monroe retained him as Secretary of the Treasury.
He called Mr. Calhoun, of South Carolina, to the Secretaryship of War.
The State Department, hitherto the chief post of each administration, he
put into the hands of Mr. John Quincy Adams, whose defection from the
Federalist ranks in 1808 had shown in him the temper and the audacity of
the man who dares interpret the signs of the times and is not subject to
the discipline of parties retrogressive or gone astray.
Letters written by Mr. Jefferson and Mr. Madison from their quiet places
of retirement could not hold the country back from radical change.
Every year the mere scale of affairs, if nothing more, was enlarged and
altered,—by the tidelike movement of population into the western country,
the setting up of new States, the quick transfigurements of economic
conditions, the incalculable shiftings and variations of a society
always making and to be made. It was found when the census of 1820 came
to be taken that the total population of the country had increased from
7,215,791 to 9,638,191 within the decade. Twenty thousand immigrants
had come in at the ports the year Mr. Monroe became President (1817).
It was not merely a growth along the old lines and at the old seats of
population. The restless, unceasing, adventurous movement of the nation
made a deeper impression upon its politics than did its mere growth. The
boatman’s song on the long western rivers, the crack of the teamster’s
whip in the mountain passes, the stroke of the woodman’s axe ringing
out in the stillness of the forest, the sharp report of the rifle of
huntsman, pioneer, and scout on the fast advancing frontier, filled the
air as if with the very voices of change, and were answered by events
quick with the fulfilment of their prophecy.
Five States were admitted to the Union within the first four years of
Mr. Monroe’s administration, as many as had been admitted within the
five-and-twenty years preceding, as many as were to be admitted within
the five-and-twenty years to follow. And the list of new States was not
complete before an issue had been raised whose significance was only
too plainly of the future: not a thing to be settled at a stroke, but a
thing to be slowly tried out by the long processes of the nation’s life.
It startled him, Mr. Jefferson said, “like a fire-bell in the night.” It
arose out of the application of the Territory of Missouri to be admitted
to the Union (March 6, 1818). Missouri had been settled out of the South;
slave owners had followed the hardy first settlers thither; and now they
asked leave to come into the Union as a State with the institution of
slavery secured to them in their constitution. Here was a question which
aroused passion and challenged principle upon the instant,—an issue
between the North, which had rejected slavery, and the South, whose
industries and whose very social order were founded upon it.
[Illustration: PRINCE METTERNICH]
Southern statesmen had dominated the counsels of the ruling party of
the nation these sixteen years and more. Men out of the South were also
making and governing the West. The broad stretches of the great State of
New York, themselves but half peopled and full of fair regions inviting
to settlement, lay between New England and the far-away valleys where
new States were to be built; the unoccupied forests of Maine were near
at hand and easy of access at the north; many a tract within the borders
of New England’s own little commonwealths still awaited occupation
and development. By special effort an “Ohio Company,” organized in
Massachusetts by veterans of the Revolution, had sent bands of settlers
out of New England to lands which it had purchased and reserved upon
the northern bank of the great river the French had coveted, and little
hamlets of their making had sprung up there and flourished. Its settlers,
crowding slowly in, had played a notable part in making the young State
of Ohio ready for admission into the Union (1802). But it was not men
out of New England, or even out of Pennsylvania and New York, which lay
so close at hand, who were as yet playing the chief part in the West.
Kentucky and Tennessee, themselves but the other day built into States
by hunters, woodsmen, pioneers, adventurers, while the Revolution was
being fought out and the Union brought into existence, furnished the men
who were fittest for the first enterprises of conquest and settlement
beyond the Ohio and the Mississippi: the conquest of nature and of the
doughty tribes of red men who were still knights challengers there in the
daunting wilderness.
The Ohio poured its open flood along all the northern front of Kentucky
from northeast to southwest; the Mississippi itself was at her doors
at the west, and swept slowly down, below her, along all the western
front of Tennessee. Kentuckians had constituted the chief part of the
rough-and-ready muster which beat the English and Tecumseh’s braves,
their allies, at the Thames by Lake St. Clair, to make safe the
northwestern border in the war of 1812. Tennesseeans, under a Tennesseean
commander, had lain in the trenches at New Orleans in the mist of a
January morning in 1815, and saved the South on a famous field. Men upon
those frontiers had the initiative, the training, and the zest for every
sort of daring and endurance, and a sense of comradeship which made the
whole long border seem to them their common home and field of endeavor.
It was they who crowded first across the great streams at their front
into Indiana, of which they had been prompt to make a State in 1816; into
Illinois, presently to be admitted (December, 1818); and into Missouri,
which they now insistently asked leave to bring in. Indiana and Illinois
lay above the Ohio, and were parts of that great Northwest Territory
which Virginia and her sister States had consented to part with as a
preparation for the setting up of the Confederation. It had become, as
they intended, a national domain, for whose organization and development
the Congress of the Confederation had made well-considered plans in the
famous Ordinance of 1787. That Ordinance was still the law of the land.
It forbade slavery forever. The pioneers who had pressed across the Ohio
from the south, to make the new commonwealths now established there,
had been promptly followed by men out of the older settlements behind
them, out of Virginia and North Carolina, and out of the long-settled
neighborhoods of Kentucky and Tennessee themselves. These men had again
and again petitioned Congress for permission to own and employ slaves in
their new homes; but Congress had refused to relax the law. In Missouri
there was no such bar. Slave owners could take up lands there and put
their slaves upon them. It was a region carved out of the vast Louisiana
purchase beyond the Mississippi. Its lands stretched wide upon the open
prairies of a new region for which Congress had made no law. Institutions
might shape themselves there at will; and did shape themselves,
accordingly, to the masterful will of the aggressive men who had gone
over to possess the land.
It was, indeed, a masterful race, which the men of the East were slow
to understand or sympathize with,—a race bred to warfare and a lawless
mastery. It had made short work of overcoming nature in the wilderness,
and as short of driving the Indians with slaughter and savage force from
their hunting grounds and bits of tillage. It had meant to cross the
river and make itself free of the great province of Louisiana whether
Mr. Jefferson had bought the inviting region or not. Not content with
such trade as they could get upon the rivers at the east, its pioneers
sent caravans of white-hooded wagons across the long plains into the far
southwest, from their new seats in the Missouri country to the Spanish
settlements which lay upon the Rio Grande del Norte. Their talk was
already of a time when they should thrust the Spaniard out there also,
and have all the continent from ocean to ocean, north and south, as one
unbroken national domain.
[Illustration: CHICAGO IN 1821]
Such men were not likely to take a refusal when they asked to be admitted
to the Union, whatever their proffered state constitution contained of
institutions distasteful to politicians in the East. But their request
threw Congress and the country itself into a very fever of debate.
Here was indeed a critical choice to be made concerning the extension
of slavery. Slavery had found no suitable place in the economy of the
northern States, where free labor had from the first predominated, and
was now abolished: though it had been permitted in every one of them no
longer ago than the year of the Declaration of Independence, and had
been abolished in some but the other day. In the South, on the other
hand, it had long been habitual and of the fixed and accepted order of
society, the very foundation of an aristocratic system and way of life;
and was now about to get a new hold and enjoy a new reason for being.
In the days of the Revolution there had seemed a considerable body of
sentiment against slavery even in the South. Many a generous protest had
been uttered there against it, especially in Virginia, by men who were no
closet philosophers, but the trusted representatives and leaders of their
State; who declared that it discouraged arts and manufactures, degraded
labor, and had a most pernicious effect on manners. But such sentiments
had given way before the fact of its inveterate rootage and before the
increasing value and serviceableness of slave labor in the cotton fields,
as the crop rose from, hundreds to hundreds of thousands of bales, and
the spindles both of Old and New England waited on the bursting of the
boles. The cotton gin which Mr. Whitney had invented enabled even an
unskilful slave to cleanse a thousand pounds of cotton of its tenacious
seed in a single day. Without it he had been able to cleanse but five
or six pounds. The negro could endure the heat of the southern day in
the open field as the white man could not. His labor had become the very
sinews of the South.
[Illustration: JERSEY CITY IN 1820]
Southern men had seen already what the system must cost them. Its mere
existence meant that the North must outstrip them in population and in
wealth. White immigrants, free laborers, would not come into the South;
and manufactures could not be built up where the only laborer was the
awkward, careless, inapt slave. If the South could not keep her place
in the race for men and wealth, she must lose also her place in the
race for power. Slowly and surely, as representation was reapportioned
from decade to decade, to correspond with the changes disclosed by the
decennial census, her representation in the lower house of Congress must
grow smaller and smaller, that of the northern States larger and larger,
until she should be overwhelmed in matters of legislation by a governing
majority which could neglect her peculiar interests at pleasure.
Southern men did not doubt that such a majority would be used against
the South. Their leaders felt sensibly enough the subtle antagonisms
which radically different social standards, radically different economic
conditions, radically different interests and ways of thought made
more and more intense from year to year. Here was already, they began
to see, a nation of two disparate halves, whose interests, if indeed
irreconcilable, as they seemed, must be kept at a nice balance over
against each other,—a balance hazardous to maintain, fatal to give up.
This was the unpleasant light that shone upon the question of Missouri’s
admission to the Union with a slave constitution. What division was to
be made of the Louisiana territory as between the southern system and
the northern? East of the Mississippi all was plotted out and settled
that concerned this vexatious matter. The line of the Ohio, it had
been agreed, should mark the cleavage between free States and slave.
Mississippi and Alabama had offset Illinois and Indiana in the list of
States created this side the Louisiana purchase. If the Senate was not
to pass, like the House, entirely into the hands of a northern majority,
there must be some similar division of the Louisiana country also, which
stretched beyond the river, wide as the original domain of the Union.
The case of Missouri must turn upon fundamental questions of interest,
development, and political power.
For two years it hung doubtful, held in debate both within and without
the houses of Congress; and it was settled at last only by compromise.
It was agreed that Missouri should be admitted upon her own terms, with
slavery sanctioned in her fundamental law, but that from all the rest
of the Louisiana purchase tying north of latitude 36° 30′,—a line drawn
beyond Missouri as if straight into the west from the mouth of the
Ohio,—slavery should be forever excluded, as it was from the Northwest
Territory; and Missouri was with that understanding authorized (March 3,
1820) to organize a state government with slavery in its constitution.
At the same time a bill was passed admitting Maine, in far New England,
into the Union, as a counterpoise to the new slave State in the West. For
a time the troublesome question was quieted; but many a sinister token
of agitation and change had been brought to light in the long processes
of debate. A sense of divided interests, sectional antagonisms, bitter
personal feeling on the one side and on the other, a consciousness that
fundamental contrasts and diversities of principle underlay the apparent
agreement, wrought very seriously upon the minds of thoughtful men and
could not soon or easily be thrown off.
Meanwhile other events pushed steadily forward the process of expansion
and growth which was inevitably to hasten the solution of that and every
other question of interest or of power. In 1810 Mr. Madison had taken
possession of West Florida, the strip of coast which lay upon the Gulf
between the Mississippi and the river Perdido, with its key at Mobile:
upon the pretext that it was in fact part of the original territory
of Louisiana, and had become the property of the United States by the
cession of 1803. For seven years after that cession it had remained
in the hands of the Spaniards, who considered it an integral part of
Florida, in no way affected by Napoleon’s sale of Louisiana to the United
States. But settlers had crowded in from the States. Their self-assertion
and independence of action there and their manifest determination
to be quit as soon as possible of Spanish rule had thrown affairs
into confusion; and Mr. Madison made their interests his excuse for
interfering. It was April, 1813, before the Spanish garrison at Mobile
suffered itself to be crowded out and relinquished its post; but Congress
had not waited for it to go. It had already apportioned the territory
(1812), in part to the new State of Louisiana, that year created and
admitted to the Union, in part to the Territory of Mississippi. Spain was
in no position to resist. Napoleon’s armies had overrun her (1810); she
had become the battlefield upon which Wellington pitted himself against
the marshals of France (1811-1812); her South American colonies had
revolted against her and she was powerless to recover them; she could do
nothing while Napoleon swept Europe with his power.
The government of the United States pushed its claims upon that frontier,
accordingly, at every opportunity, and found opportunities enough in
the disorders of the ill-governed province. Early in 1811 Congress had
not scrupled to authorize the President to take “temporary possession”
of East as well as of West Florida, by a couple of resolutions which
were not made public until 1818; and only the President’s good principle
in the matter had prevented additional acts of aggression and virtual
conquest. Finally war with the restless, marauding Seminoles who were
still upon the border (1818) brought the inevitable outcome. Andrew
Jackson was in command at Mobile. When once in the field against the
red men he would not stop because they crossed the frontier into
Spanish Florida, but followed them over the border as he would have
followed them anywhither, with a vigor that never hesitated or relented.
Suspecting the Spaniards at St. Marks and Pensacola of giving shelter
and encouragement to the Indians, he incontinently seized both places
until he should have reported his business finished and learned what his
government wished to have done with them. Deeming Alexander Arbuthnot,
a Scots trader whom he found there in the Indian country, and Robert
Ambrister, an English ex-lieutenant of marines who could not give a
satisfactory account of himself, to all intents and purposes “outlaws
and pirates,” paid emissaries of the English government to keep trouble
brewing for the United States among the Indians of Florida, he hanged the
one and shot the other out of hand, British subjects though they were
and within the territory of Spain. He had understood his real errand to
be the virtual conquest of East Florida, time out of mind the refuge of
smugglers, runaway slaves, and broken and hostile tribes of Indians, and
in time of war a constant menace to all the southern border because of
the weakness or the unfriendly alliances of Spain.
[Illustration: CUMBERLAND ROAD, NEAR WHEELING, VIRGINIA]
Mr. Monroe and his cabinet were greatly shocked to learn what he had done
in his headstrong masterfulness, and promptly restored Pensacola and
St. Marks to the Spanish authorities; they saw nothing for it, however,
so long as affairs stood as they did upon the border, but to defend
their general’s course for the rest, upon the ground that he had only
pursued his Indian foes to their habitual refuge amidst the forests of
the peninsula, and performed in Spain’s stead the indispensable duties
of police in districts infinitely disturbed and an undoubted menace to
every neighbor. The Spanish government, on its part, saw clearly enough
how defenceless and how useless Florida was, thus cornered and detached
by the spreading power of the United States throughout the continent. On
February 22, 1819, therefore, the Spanish minister in Washington, acting
under new instructions from his government, signed a treaty by which
Florida was ceded entire to the United States, in consideration of the
payment by the United States of five million dollars in satisfaction of
all claims, and the relinquishment by the United States of all right to
the Texas country, where their title to possession was much better than
it had ever been in any part of Florida. The Senate confirmed the treaty
at once; the Spanish government tardily returned its ratification within
a couple of years (February, 1821); and the questionable business was at
an end.
Both Mr. Madison and Mr. Monroe addressed themselves very diligently, the
war of 1812 being over and all the world having come into a breathing
time of peace, to clearing all foreign complications away. In 1815 Mr.
Monroe, being then himself Secretary of State, had arranged with Great
Britain a tolerably satisfactory commercial convention, which opened
at any rate a part of the trade of the British West Indies to American
ships. The same year the Dey of Algiers, who had taken advantage of the
war to prey upon the commerce of the United States, was obliged upon
Commodore Decatur’s quarterdeck to sign a treaty of peace and amity
which he was not likely soon to break, having read his lesson at the
port-holes of a formidable fleet in his harbor. In 1818 Mr. John Quincy
Adams, acting under Mr. Monroe, negotiated fresh treaties with England
under which the United States gained permanent rights in the Canadian
fisheries, Great Britain gave up her claims to the navigation of the
Mississippi, and the northern boundary line of the United States was
determined from the Lake of the Woods to the Oregon country.
[Illustration: THE CAPITOL AT WASHINGTON, 1804]
Fair skies at home and abroad cheered the country ere the time for
choosing presidential electors came round again, in the autumn of 1820,
foreign difficulties having cleared away and the ill-omened Missouri
question being apparently settled; and Mr. Monroe’s re-election was
agreed upon as of course. When the electors met in their several States
to vote only a single one of their number, an elector of New Hampshire,
indulged himself in an individual choice, voting, not for Mr. Monroe,
but for Mr. John Quincy Adams. Every other vote was cast for Mr. Monroe.
Even eight Federalist electors, chosen, along with seven Republicans, in
Massachusetts, joined in the all but unanimous choice; and the election
passed as if it were hardly more than an incident, a formality, at
mid-term of the President’s eight years of office.
There was no longer any Federalist party to be reckoned with in the field
of national politics. Though Federalist views persisted, the name was a
name discredited. The manufacturers of New England had been won over to
the Republican party by the tariff of 1816; and had not cooled towards
it because the Senate rejected the still higher duties which Mr. Monroe
had recommended and the House had adopted. The rich merchants at the
eastern ports did not like the tariff, but did like the President and
the treaties of commerce and of peace he had secured. He had declared
himself opposed to “internal improvements” at the national expense,
upon which, progressive men thought, the movements and the expansion
of commerce must in no small degree depend; and in 1822, when Congress
put him to the test, he vetoed even an appropriation for the Cumberland
road; but he presently modified his views on that point, and, for the
rest, held so steady and reasonable and open a course, and was upon
occasion so spirited in defending the nation’s interests, that criticism
gathered no head against him. Politicians schemed for personal advantage
behind the scenes, not forgetting the next presidential election. Now
one group and again another essayed to gain control of affairs. To those
who read very curiously the signs of the times new parties seemed to be
perceptibly enough outlined just beneath the surface of events. But on
the surface there was a great calm, and to the country at large it seemed
an acceptable time of concord, an “era of good feeling.” The strain of
politics was eased.
With the return of peace all questions had become domestic questions, and
there seemed now, for the nonce, to be no serious differences of opinion
concerning them. Mr. Monroe took an early opportunity to domesticate,
as it were, the very foreign policy of the government, by confining its
issues to the Americas. European statesmen were putting their houses in
order after the convulsions of the Napoleonic wars: setting up thrones
which had been overturned, rehabilitating states which had been torn
asunder, reassigning territory, establishing once more the balance of
power and the rights of shaken dynasties. Finding their careful work
likely to be marred and rendered of no avail by the passion for liberty
which had spread like an unquenchable fire out of France and touched the
subjects of almost every sovereign of Europe, they drew their states
together under the leadership of Austria and her consummate Metternich
to crush every rising, silence every demand for liberal reform, and make
good the jeoparded absolutism of their kings throughout the length and
breadth of Europe. Their reactionary purposes having been accomplished
with some touch of thoroughness on the continent itself, Spain prayed
them to assist her to win the revolted colonies of South America back to
her crown, and they seemed about to accede to her prayer.
[Illustration: BUST OF GEORGE CANNING]
Mr. Canning, England’s watchful minister, saw at once the peril there
would be in that to England’s trade in the south. He knew, too, how
hearty a sympathy the people of the United States entertained for the
newly liberated peoples and the newly established republics of the
southern continent of America, and how profitable a trade American as
well as English merchants were finding in the ports which only revolution
could have opened to them. He proposed, therefore, to Mr. Rush, the
American minister in London, that the United States should join with
England in protesting against the attempt of any outside power to restore
Spain’s authority in America. Mr. Adams, the Secretary of State, did
not relish the suggestion, though he approved the object. He thought
such a course too likely to make the United States merely “a cock-boat
in the wake of the British man-of-war,” and so draw them again and at a
disadvantage into European politics; and Mr. Monroe accepted his view in
the matter. A different but no less effective step was taken. In 1822
the President had recognized the independence of the South American
republics. In his annual message of December, 1823, he told Congress and
the world what attitude he meant to take towards any attempt on the part
of the European powers “to extend their system to any portion of this
hemisphere.” He should deem such an act, he declared, dangerous to the
peace and safety of the United States. “With the existing colonies or
dependencies of any European power,” he said, “we have not interfered and
shall not interfere. But with the governments who have declared their
independence, and maintained it, and whose independence we have, on great
consideration and on just principles, acknowledged, we could not view any
interposition for the purpose of oppressing them, or controlling in any
other manner their destiny, by any European power, in any other light
than as the manifestation of an unfriendly disposition toward the United
States.” No one could mistake the meaning of the words, and Spain’s plans
in the south were given up. This Mr. Adams and Mr. Monroe meant to be
American, not European, policy.
[Illustration: RICHARD RUSH]
What had made the matter seem the more exigent and important was the
unpleasant fact that Russia was gaining a foothold in North America
itself. Russian fur traders were pushing and extending their trade
not only in Alaska, which the Russian government claimed by right of
discovery (1741), but also along the coasts to the southward, nearer and
nearer to Oregon, which England and the United States, suspending their
rival claims for the present, had agreed (1818) to occupy in common. The
Czar claimed all the coast waters of the region as his own, and forbade
seamen of any other nation (1821) to approach within one hundred miles
of the American coast north of the fifty-first parallel. Mr. Adams had
feared that, should the European coalition of which the Czar was so
influential a member interfere in the affairs of Spain at the south,
Russia might take the Spanish province of California as compensation for
her trouble, and shut the doors of the Pacific once for all against the
expanding Union. Mr. Monroe, therefore, spoke very plainly upon that
point also in his message. “The American continents,” he said, “by the
free and independent condition which they have assumed and maintain, are
henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by
any European power.” These decisive words proved sufficient. Whatever
may have been Russia’s plans, she did not care to force them now; and
in the closing months of Mr. Monroe’s administration (April, 1824) she
agreed to a treaty in which it was stipulated that the fisheries and the
navigation of the Pacific were to be open to both parties, and that the
line 54° 40′, north latitude, should divide their future settlements. The
next year she made a similar agreement with Great Britain.
In 1824 Congress passed and the President approved a bill increasing
duties on metals and on wool and hemp, in order that the protective
system might be a little strengthened; and a bill providing for extensive
surveys for a national system of canals, in order that an adequate
improvement of the means of trade and intercourse might accompany the
quickening of industry.
[Illustration: REAR VIEW OF THE CAPITOL AT WASHINGTON, 1820]
[Illustration: GROUND PLAN OF THE CAPITOL, 1825
A. House of Representatives, 96 feet radius; B. Senate Chamber, 75 feet
radius; C. Central Rotunda, 96 feet in diameter; D. Library, 96 × 34
feet; E. Eastern Portico; F. Western Portico; G. Open Areas. The eastern
front is 350 feet long.]
And then, amidst a general scramble for the presidency, the country found
how deceptive had been the political calm of the last few years. Personal
rivalries disclosed, almost of a sudden, a new cleavage of parties. It
was natural that Mr. Adams, as Secretary of State, should expect the
succession to the presidency. Mr. Madison had been Secretary of State
under Mr. Jefferson, Mr. Monroe under Mr. Madison: the Secretaryship
of State had come to be looked upon as the post to which the natural
successor of the President should be called, and twenty-four years had
given that understanding the dignity of precedent. Mr. Crawford, the
Secretary of the Treasury, however, was determined that he should not
again be passed by in the choice, and took pains to make himself, so far
as might be, the official nominee of his party through the accustomed
congressional caucus. Only a handful of his personal followers, indeed,
and of the better disciplined adherents to old practice attended the
caucus when it met: the country had already grown impatient of that
method of naming candidates, and Mr. Adams was understood, despite the
caucus, to be the real candidate of the older elements of the party,—if
party there was where all acted as if with common principles. The
legislatures of Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, Illinois, and Ohio, the
field being open, took leave to nominate Mr. Clay, the popular Speaker
and acknowledged leader of the House, through whose eloquent tongue
the new West rejoiced to hear itself given utterance. The legislature
of Tennessee and several conventions in various parts of the country
nominated Andrew Jackson, the headstrong, redoubtable Tennesseean
soldier, now, though almost unnoticed there, a member of the Senate.
The nomination of General Jackson could very well be ignored, it seemed
at first, as a mere rally of his personal friends here and there, so
much of an outsider did he seem in every circle of politicians. “He is
respected as a gallant soldier,” said the chief political newspaper of
New York, “but he stands, in the minds of the people of this State, at
an immeasurable distance from the executive chair.” The vote of the
electors, however, put a very different color on the matter. It stood,
for General Jackson, ninety-nine; for Mr. Adams, eighty-four; for Mr.
Crawford, forty-one; for Mr. Clay, thirty-seven. Over the vice presidency
there had been little contest: Mr. Calhoun was chosen, as had been
expected, by a handsome majority. No one having received a majority of
the votes for President, the election went, as the constitution provided,
to the House, whose choice was limited to the three candidates who stood
highest in the electors’ list. Voting by States, as was prescribed, the
House chose Mr. Adams, to whom Mr. Clay’s friends gave their support.
[Illustration: JOHN C. CALHOUN]
There was in this sharp and doubtful struggle for the presidency, with
its closing appeal to the managing politicians of the House, just shock
enough, just thrill and zest enough of direct challenge and open contest,
to bring the hidden lines of party to the surface. The four years of
Mr. Adams’s administration completed their disclosure, and changed the
whole face of politics. The new President was undeniably the choice of
a minority of the nation. He seemed to the impatient men of the new
generation to be holding the government arbitrarily back from the touch
of renewal and of democratization which they were eagerly waiting to give
it. Mr. Adams seemed to them to represent the traditions of the old order
which had passed, and to be a mere obstacle to the acknowledgment of the
new order which had come. His very stiffness and precision of manner, as
of the old school; his cool, unsympathetic aloofness from the men about
him, repelling intimacy or any warm confidence; the dash of acid in his
careful rectitude; his whole attitude, as of a man who administered
his great office as a purely personal trust, for which he alone was
responsible, and kept all others at arm’s length, enhanced the impression
of his separateness, his single survival out of an age gone by. John
Adams, his father, and Thomas Jefferson, whom he had first opposed and
then followed, died the next year after he came to the presidency,
passing away together on the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of
Independence (July 4, 1826), the last great figures of the nation’s first
generation of statesmen. The President seemed to have their principles
without their warmth, to stand older than his years amidst a scene
transformed.
[Illustration: NORTH END OF CITY HALL PARK, NEW YORK, 1825]
Social changes had come upon the nation thick and fast with the passing
away of that first age, in which the government had been set up and
had received its life and structure, and radical political changes had
inevitably followed in their train. In the gathering host of new States
at the west there could be nothing but levels of privilege: no special
class, trained and preferred for government, as in New England and the
South, but universal manhood suffrage; and the example of the West had
reacted powerfully upon the East. There, too, social change was touching
affairs with the touch of transformation. Airs blew everywhere out of the
West. Because its lands were open and not too far away, and every man
could betake himself thither if he chose and be his own master, those
who stayed at home in the East, whether common or gentle, had the flavor
of independence, the choice of individual initiative in their lives,
and counted, not in the mass merely, but as efficient units in every
reckoning, social or political. New industries raised new classes, to
rank with the merchants and the lawyers of the older order. The quick,
incessant initiative of individuals broke the lines between class and
class so often athwart that they became at last confused and lost.
The suffrage was inevitably widened in the East, as in the West; and
with the number of voters the number of those who played a managing
and organizing and originative part in politics also increased. Every
right, as far as might be every function of politics, was thrown open
to every man. Nine out of the fifteen States which took part in the
second election of General Washington chose their electors through their
legislatures; only six gave the people any direct part in the choice. In
the election just decided by the vote of the House, on the contrary, the
electors had been chosen by the direct vote of the people in eighteen
out of the twenty-four States of the Union. Before another presidential
election came around every State except Delaware and South Carolina had
adopted the same popular system.
It was the pulse of these changes that now beat in affairs. A new
democracy stood eager for its triumph,—now a second time, as first in
1800. It was tired of the “Virginian dynasty” that had ruled it, as if
by prescriptive privilege, since the century opened, and was infinitely
impatient of Mr. Adams as its heir and successor. Mr. Clay had seemed for
a little while the preferred spokesman of the new generation, a veritable
voice of the West and of democracy upon a new field, uttering its hearty
ardor for a policy at once continental and of the people. The new State
of Missouri had added Mr. Thomas H. Benton to the roll of Senators, to
put his mass also into the western scale, a new leader among Democrats.
But Mr. Clay lacked the unhesitating boldness and audacity loved on the
frontier; had the address of the careful politician; brought his free and
telling eloquence to the service of old ideals, merely quickened by new
affairs; was not wholly of the West. Mr. Benton was heavy with a touch of
pedantry, and had the self-assertion of the egotist, not of the leader.
The new impulse of the time craved a hero rather than a statesman. No one
knew or asked General Jackson’s opinions. His friends put him forward,
not as a thinker or even as an organizer of parties, but simply as a man,
whom the nation could trust: a man with rugged strength enough to break
the old order in politics, now grown artificial, and inaugurate a new,
under which the people, whose child and type he was, should come to their
own.
[Illustration: THOMAS H. BENTON]
That was the significance of the ninety-nine electoral votes cast
for General Jackson in 1825. It was a bitter thing to bear, his
supporters found, to see Mr. Adams preferred before him, and Mr. Clay’s
support given, out of the West itself, to the candidate of an eastern
minority,—so bitter that they protested in their anger against the
constitution itself, which made the thing possible: against any law,
though it were the fundamental law of the land, which could thus restrain
and defeat “the will of the people.” Their bitterness turned to malice
when Mr. Adams asked Mr. Clay to become Secretary of State under the
new administration and Mr. Clay consented. There was here, they said,
palpable evidence of a bargain, an office given for an office received,
a self-seeking combination to keep the people’s candidate out,—“a
coalition,” exclaimed John Randolph, with bitter jest, “unheard of
until now, of the Puritan and the blackleg.” The charge was shown to be
absolutely groundless. There had been no previous understanding whatever
between Mr. Adams and Mr. Clay. But they were facing men who in the
vehemence of their passion believed what they chose, and whose leader
was as implacable and as obstinate in error as he was honest and direct
in action.
[Illustration: THE ADAMS MANSION, QUINCY, MASS.]
General Jackson had been bred by the rough processes of the frontier; had
been his own schoolmaster and tutor; had made himself a lawyer by putting
his untaught sagacity and sense of right to the test in the actual
conduct of suits in court, as he had made himself a soldier by taking
the field in command of frontier volunteers as unschooled as himself in
discipline and tactics. There was a certain natural grace and sweetness
in the man when he was at ease, and an impressive dignity always.
“General Jackson’s manners are more presidential than those of any of the
candidates,” wrote a leading member of the House who was his opponent.
“He is grave, mild, and reserved. My wife is for him decidedly.” But
his nature was compact of passion. His prejudices, once fixed, were
ineradicable. He believed with all the terrible force that was in him,
when once engaged in any public matter, that those who were with him
were his friends and the country’s, those who were against him enemies
of the country as well as of himself. Knowing his own convictions to be
honest and formed without selfishness, he took their wisdom and their
reasonableness for granted, and believed every one who held opinions
opposed to them to be moved by some sort of public or private malice.
He had declined at first to let his name be used in connection with the
presidency, deeming himself old at fifty-four (1821), feeling ill from
the effects of the hardships he had undergone in Florida, and believing
himself unfit for the office. But, candidacy once undertaken, his passion
played along every line of emotion and conviction opened by the novel
business, as if he were again in the field with troops, and his friends
were themselves at a loss how to govern him.
It had needed such a striking personality as this to bring parties to
a head. They took form rapidly enough when he came upon the field. The
coalition between Mr. Adams and Mr. Clay had been not only incorrupt,
but an arrangement to be looked for in the nature of things. Mr. Clay
stood in all his thought for the same principles of liberal construction
in applying the constitution and for the same purposes of legislative
action in furthering national interests that Mr. Adams frankly avowed
and earnestly advocated: protective tariffs, internal improvements;
the deliberate building up and binding together of the nation. General
Jackson’s friends, on the contrary, were found for the most part among
the men who had reacted against this new programme, in which every
principle and purpose of the old Federalists seemed revived, and who
were harking back to the principles upon which the Republican party of
Mr. Jefferson had been founded: a scrupulous limitation of the powers
of the federal government, a studious regard for the separate powers
of the several States, a democratic diffusion of power throughout the
body politic. Mr. Crawford had latterly been of these principles; but
Mr. Crawford was now broken in health, and his followers had turned to
General Jackson. Whether General Jackson definitely or consciously held
their views or not they did not stop to ask. What was of moment to them
was, that he stood in the eyes of the whole nation an unmistakable type
of the unsophisticated man of the people. His instincts, they felt sure,
could be trusted to make and keep him a partisan of popular privilege and
local self-government. And so parties formed: _National_ Republicans,
as they began to call themselves, turned to Mr. Clay and Mr. Adams for
leadership, while all “Democrats” of the older type turned to those who
pressed the candidacy of General Jackson.
[Illustration: LOCKS ON THE ERIE CANAL]
Though the men who thus drew apart into the one group or the other did
not at once recognize their new comradeships in affairs as the permanent
comradeships of principle or feel at first the bonds of party in their
new association, it soon became evident enough that the election of 1825
had marked a parting of the ways, at which, consciously or unconsciously,
public men had made their individual choices upon principles which must
henceforth permanently separate them; had arrayed themselves in opposite
camps upon a set field of party contest. They awaited only Mr. Adams’s
going out to put the fight afoot.
The four years Mr. Adams was President yielded, accordingly, scarcely
a single important measure either of legislation or of policy. They
proved to be a season between times, in which the new parties got their
first drill and organization, and merely manœuvred for advantage in the
final struggle, the decisive victory and defeat, to come. Hitherto the
President had been always the real leader of the government. His messages
had in no small degree constituted the programmes of party action, in
Congress hardly less than in executive policy. Now, of a sudden, they
counted almost for nothing. Mr. Adams was treated as if he were the
leader of a faction. Congress seldom vouchsafed so much as a respectful
consideration to his suggestions. Fresh congressional elections filled
the House with his opponents. Now and again a measure passed which the
Administration was known to favor; but only, it seemed, because the
discipline of parties was not yet recast, and some men were guided, when
they chose to be, by old ties or individual preferences.
[Illustration: AUTOGRAPHS OF INVITED GUESTS, ERIE CANAL CELEBRATION]
Mr. Adams performed his duties with the diligence, the intelligence,
the high-minded regard for principle that had always characterized him.
No man of his generation was better acquainted than he with the field
of foreign policy, still here and there perplexed and ominous; and he
applied himself like a statesman to the settlement of every question that
was likely to affect either the trade or the peace of the country. His
successful treaties of commerce nearly equalled in number those of all
the preceding Administrations put together. But in the chief matter of
all he failed, and his opponents noted that alone. In 1815 Mr. Monroe,
then Secretary of State, had succeeded in obtaining from England the
right of trade with the British West Indies, in which, the ports once
open, American merchants and skippers easily gained a virtual monopoly;
but in 1825, when that agreement lapsed, England changed her policy,
opened the West Indian ports to all the world on terms which put the
United States at a disadvantage, and, because the United States did not,
within a year set, accept the new arrangement, flatly refused so much as
to open the matter again for negotiation (1826). Congress, not Mr. Adams,
had been at fault; but the country, indifferent to him at best, made no
inquiry into details: remembered only that he had failed to secure the
invaluable West Indian trade.
The party contests of those barren years of divided counsel turned
chiefly upon the tariff and upon the question of internal improvements.
Mr. Adams was an avowed advocate of internal improvements upon a national
scale, conceived and carried forward in accordance with a comprehensive
system thought out beforehand, and completed from session to session as
the resources of the Treasury permitted,—such a scheme as Mr. Gallatin
had long ago conceived and advocated and Mr. Jefferson had postponed
till the constitution could be amended. But the new “Democrats” made
that impossible. Money in very liberal sums was voted from time to time
for specific works of general or local utility, but the idea of a system
of national improvements undertaken by the federal government had to be
given up.
[Illustration: JOHN QUINCY ADAMS]
[Illustration: ST. PAUL’S CHURCH AND BROADWAY, 1831]
[Illustration: CAMPAIGN POSTER OF 1828]
The tariff was another matter. The systematic protection of domestic
industries, once undertaken, could not be kept squared with its object or
maintained in good repair without frequent alterations and adjustments.
The very system itself, moreover, was an incitement to every industry
in the country, new or old, to clamor lustily, in season and out of
season, for its share in the gainful arrangement. There was no one to
govern the competition. First, interest vied with interest in an open
field; then, rather than destroy each other, interests combined in an
ill-assorted muster, whose demands the committees of Congress could
neither reconcile nor withstand. The result was the tariff of 1828. In
July, 1827, a convention of protectionists had been held at Harrisburg,
upon the initiative and invitation of the Pennsylvania Society for the
Promotion of Manufactures and the Mechanic Arts. It had been called in
the interest of the wool growers and manufacturers, but the politic
general invitation by which it had been made up had bidden every other
industry that chose send its delegates also. Many came who recked nothing
of wool; and every industry represented put its own demands into the
petition which the convention addressed to Congress. Congress, responding
to the petition, put into its bills a like incongruous miscellany of
provisions,—protection for all who asked it. The opponents of the tariff
tried the too subtile game of discrediting the threatened legislation
by thickening at every point its confusion of contradictory items;
heightening in every possible way its absurdities and inconsistencies.
They especially counted on forcing the New England manufacturers to
vote against it by filling it with provisions which increased the cost
of their raw materials. But the game was too subtile and failed. The New
England members hardily voted for the measure as it stood,—“the Tariff of
Abominations.” It passed both houses, Mr. Adams signed it, and it became
law.
For the southern men that was a day of awakening. Only a trifle here and
there could come to them in this reckless distribution of favors. They
were obliged in any case to content themselves with the agricultural
system to which slave labor shut them in. Their prosperity depended,
therefore, most of all, upon the free movement of trade: particularly
upon a free and normal market for their cotton. Tariff measures which
strangled trade at their ports put them at a distressing disadvantage.
They got no more for their cotton than before: got less and less, indeed,
as the crop increased; and yet they paid more for almost everything they
bought. And what did they not buy? Each successive increase of duties
seemed a heavier blow than the last to them, and even Mr. Calhoun put
himself forward to stop the mischief. Many a southerner, many a South
Carolinian, in Congress and out, had cried sharp warning ere he heeded.
He yielded at last rather to the compulsion of opinion in his own State
than to his individual observation and conviction in the matter, so
thoroughly national were his instincts, so clear and imperative hitherto
had been his bent towards a statesmanship which should take the whole
country into its view. But his mind once engaged, and his passion for the
interests of the people he served, and he seemed of a sudden the leader,
almost the originator, of sectional opposition.
[Illustration: TITLE-PAGE OF CALHOUN’S “EXPOSITION”]
Assuredly, though a section, the South was making contributions to the
wealth and commerce of the country which entitled her spokesmen to a
hearing. The total value of the exports from the United States in 1829
was $55,700,193, and to this total the southern States contributed
no less than $34,072,655, in cotton, tobacco, and rice,—very nearly
three-fifths of the whole. The total value of agricultural exports for
the entire Union was $44,000,000. Of that total three-fourths came from
the South. The value of manufactured articles exported footed up but
$6,000,000, all told. The value of the cotton alone that went out at
the ports was $26,575,311. And South Carolina was entitled to speak for
her sister States. Her exports in 1829 were valued at $8,175,586. Only
Louisiana in the South and New York and Massachusetts in the North showed
a larger total.
It was the scope and precision of his mind that gave Mr. Calhoun
his instant pre-eminence. He based his opposition directly upon the
constitution itself, as his friends in South Carolina had done; but the
argument in his hands seemed new because he made it so striking; seemed
radical because he made it cut with so keen an edge of logic. It was, in
fact, the old argument of the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions, made
but a little more definite, pushed but another step towards practical
application. The southern States, Mr. Calhoun pointed out, were set
apart from the rest of the Union, and, so far as any man could see,
permanently set apart, by reason of their “soil, climate, habits, and
peculiar labor,” to be “staple States,” without diversification of
industry. In matters of commercial policy their interests could never be
wholly coincident with those of the rest of the country, and if Congress
suffered their interests, which did not change, to be sacrificed to the
interests of the rest of the country, which shifted and were new with
each generation, their case would be intolerable, and the understandings
of the federal arrangement clearly set at naught. Was it not, in truth,
the right of States put thus at a fatal disadvantage in respect of their
very means of subsistence to have recourse once again to the ultimate
authority underlying the whole structure of the government? Must they
not in such a peril take their defence into their own hands, and declare
the statutes under which they suffered null and without effect within
their borders until a convention of the States should once more have
considered the fundamental law and its meanings? Should three-fourths of
the States, upon the recommendation of such a convention, declare the
power complained of to be constitutional, protest must end, or revolution
begin: but no other power could righteously force States protesting thus
of their fundamental rights to be still and submit.
[Illustration: TITLE PAGE OF JACKSON’S “PROCLAMATION”]
Feeling had at length come to such a pitch in South Carolina that her
leaders were constrained to speak very boldly in this matter; and this
was Mr. Calhoun’s exposition of her rights, undertaken at their urgent
request. He had not acted upon his own initiative. His own thought was
still of the nation as a whole and of local interests reconciled, not set
against each other in rivalry and antagonism. He had yielded to the views
of his friends at home, where passion was astir. Men whom he trusted came
to him to be their spokesman in a matter which seemed to them to touch
the very life of the State,—to be their spokesman, not in passion, but
in the grave argument of rights. Unquestionably the most fundamental
material interests of the State seemed to be at stake; unquestionably
his own settled view of the nature of the federal arrangement and the
reserved rights of the States furnished a formidable weapon against the
tariff of abominations. He turned from his dreams of national development
to vindicate the interests of his neighbors and constituents, and,
turning, put his strength into the new task as heartily as he had put it
into the old. The manifesto, the “South Carolina Exposition,” which he
put forth rang as clear as any call to party battle could have rung; and
his friends had the spokesman they had coveted.
[Illustration: ANDREW JACKSON’S FOREST RESIDENCE]
It was a document written with the full passion of his mind. Lover of
the Union though he was, he conceived this to be its just and pristine
model: a body of States sovereign in all that they had not deliberately
relinquished for the sake of union; protected in the sovereignty which
they retained, against the federal government no less than against one
another, by inherent, inalienable rights never surrendered, never
impaired. These rights, inherent and unrelinquished, he conceived to
be as much a part of the constitution as the powers transferred to the
federal government. It was to these he would have recourse in time of
crisis, not to the crude right of revolution. He would save the Union by
an appeal to its ultimate principle: the deliberate concert of sovereign
States. In this case of the tariff he hoped that a mere assertion of
the constitutional right to a radical remedy would suffice. He had set
himself, he believed, to keep the Union pure, not to destroy it. The
government was about to change hands. It was evident to all observant
men, in the summer of 1828, while he wrote, that General Jackson was
to be the next President, and that the government was to pass out of
the hands of the party that stood for high tariffs and an aggressive
use of federal power into the hands of the new Democrats, who professed
doctrines of strict construction and purposes of moderate action in the
use of constitutional authority. South Carolina could afford to wait
for the change. In December the legislature of the State adopted Mr.
Calhoun’s exposition as its own declaration of rights and put it forth
as South Carolina’s official creed and earnest of policy; but it, too,
waited for General Jackson and a propitious change of temper in Congress,
and took no step towards action.
[Illustration: THE HERMITAGE. RESIDENCE OF GENERAL JACKSON]
Already presidential electors had been chosen (November, 1828), and it
was known that General Jackson commanded a large majority of their votes.
In due course their votes were formally cast, and were found to be, when
counted (February, 1829), one hundred and seventy-eight for General
Jackson, eighty-three for Mr. Adams. Mr. Calhoun, who had transferred
his allegiance from Mr. Adams to General Jackson, was re-elected Vice
President. In every State except South Carolina and Delaware the electors
had been chosen by popular vote: 647,276 of the people’s votes had been
cast for General Jackson, 508,064 for Mr. Adams. For four years the
astute and active men who had constituted themselves General Jackson’s
managers had been preparing this triumph. Even men whom Mr. Adams kept
in high office had openly assisted them, Mr. Adams, so punctiliously
did he judge of his duty in the matter, leaving them unmolested so long
as they performed their official tasks with faithfulness and propriety.
Their plans had covered the whole Union. Ever since October, 1825,
before Mr. Adams had met his first Congress as President, legislatures
and assemblies of every sort had been nominating General Jackson for the
presidency, one after the other, in a succession that did not flag. Now
they were satisfied. They had had their revenge for the defeat of 1824,
and had put their idolized man of the people in.
[Illustration: THE UNITED STATES, MARCH 4TH 1825.
BORMAY & CO., N. Y.]
_Authorities_: For the period covered by this chapter our
general authorities are the last volume (IX.) of Mr. Henry
Adams’s _History of the United States_, the sixth volume of
Hildreth, the fourth volume of Bryant and Gay, the fourth
and fifth volumes of McMaster’s _History of the People of
the United States_, the first volume of Hermann von Holst’s
_Constitutional and Political History of the United States_,
the second and third volumes of James Schouler’s _History of
the United States under the Constitution_, and the third volume
of George Tucker’s _History of the United States_. For accounts
of the period more personal, more particular, or more limited
in view we have Thomas H. Benton’s _Thirty Years’ View_, vol.
I., Martin Van Buren’s _Inquiry into the Origin and Growth of
Political Parties in the United States_, both of which are
also contemporary sources of information, Judson S. Landon’s
_Constitutional History and Government of the United States_,
_The Constitutional History of the United States as Seen in the
Development of American Law_, a series of lectures by Thomas
M. Cooley, Henry Hitchcock, and others, Edward Stanwood’s
_History of the Presidency_, Alden Bradford’s _History of the
Federal Government_, R. McK. Ormsby’s _History of the Whig
Party_, A. W. Young’s _The American Statesman_, James Parton’s
_Life of Andrew Jackson_, George Ticknor Curtis’s _Life of
Daniel Webster_, Daniel C. Gilman’s _James Monroe_ (in the
_American Statesmen Series_), Carl Schurz’s _Henry Clay_ (in
the same series), J. T. Morse, Jr.’s _John Quincy Adams_ (in
the same series), Henry Cabot Lodge’s _Daniel Webster_ (in
the same series), William G. Sumner’s _Andrew Jackson_ (in
the same series), the second volume of Calvin Colton’s _Life,
Correspondence, and Speeches of Henry Clay_, Henry Adams’s
_John Randolph_ (in the _American Statesmen Series_), Theodore
Roosevelt’s _Thomas H. Benton_ (in the same series), George
Ticknor Curtis’s _Life of James Buchanan_, Edward M. Shepard’s
_Martin Van Buren_ (in the _American Statesmen Series_),
Andrew C. McLaughlin’s _Lewis Cass_ (in the same series),
N. M. Butler’s _Influence of the War of 1812_ (in the fifth
volume of the _Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical
and Political Science_), H. V. Poor’s _Sketch of the Rise
and Progress of Internal Improvements_, Albert S. Bolles’s
_Financial History of the United States_, F. W. Taussig’s
_Tariff History of the United States_, and William G. Sumner’s
_History of American Currency_.
The _sources_ are to be found for the most part in _The Annals
of Congress_, Thomas H. Benton’s _Abridgment of the Debates
of Congress_, _The American State Papers_, the _Messages and
Papers of the Presidents_, Hezekiah Niles’s _Weekly Register_,
Williams’s _Statesman’s Manual_, the collected _Works_ or
_Writings_ of Clay, Calhoun, Webster, Gallatin (edited by Henry
Adams), Madison, Jay, Marshall, and Jefferson, W. W. Story’s
_Life and Letters of Joseph Story_, G. J. McRee’s _Life and
Correspondence of James Iredell_, G. M. Dallas’s _Life of A. J.
Dallas_, the _Memoirs_ of John Quincy Adams, Josiah Quincy’s
_Life of John Quincy Adams_ and _Figures of the Past_, Nathan
Sargent’s _Public Men and Events_, Richard Rush’s _Narrative
of a Residence at the Court of London_, John Taylor’s
controversial _Construction Construed and the Constitution
Vindicated_ and _Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of
the Government of the United States_, William Cobbett’s _A
Year’s Residence in the United States_ (1817-1818), Basil
Hall’s _Travels in North America_ (1827-1828), Amos Kendall’s
_Autobiography_, Henry A. Wise’s _Seven Decades of the Union_,
Clark and Hall’s _Legislative and Documentary History of the
Bank of the United States_, C. F. Dunbar’s _Laws Relating to
Finance_, F. W. Taussig’s _State Papers and Speeches on the
Tariff_, and James B. Thayer’s _Cases in Constitutional Law_.
APPENDIX
TREATY OF PEACE—1783.
DEFINITIVE TREATY OF PEACE BETWEEN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA AND HIS
BRITANNIC MAJESTY. CONCLUDED SEPTEMBER 3, 1783.
In the name of the Most Holy and Undivided Trinity.
It having pleased the Divine Providence to dispose the heart of the most
serene and most potent Prince George the Third, by the Grace of God King
of Great Britain, France and Ireland, Defender of the Faith, Duke of
Brunswick and Luneburg, Arch-Treasurer and Prince Elector of the Holy
Roman Empire, &ca., and of the United States of America, to forget all
past misunderstandings and differences that have unhappily interrupted
the good correspondence and friendship which they mutually wish to
restore; and to establish such a beneficial and satisfactory intercourse
between the two countries, upon the ground of reciprocal advantages and
mutual convenience, as may promote and secure to both perpetual peace and
harmony: And having for this desirable end already laid the foundation of
peace and reconciliation, by the provisional articles, signed at Paris
on the 30th of Nov’r, 1782, by the commissioners empowered on each part,
which articles were agreed to be inserted in and to constitute the treaty
of peace proposed to be concluded between the Crown of Great Britain
and the said United States, but which treaty was not to be concluded
until terms of peace should be agreed upon between Great Britain and
France, and His Britannic Majesty should be ready to conclude such treaty
accordingly; and the treaty between Great Britain and France having
since been concluded, His Britannic Majesty and the United States of
America, in order to carry into full effect the provisional articles
above mentioned, according to the tenor thereof, have constituted and
appointed, that is to say, His Britannic Majesty on his part, David
Hartley, esqr., member of the Parliament of Great Britain; and the said
United States on their part, John Adams, esqr., late a commissioner of
the United States of America at the Court of Versailles, late Delegate
in Congress from the State of Massachusetts, and chief justice of the
said State, and Minister Plenipotentiary of the said United States to
their High Mightinesses the States General of the United Netherlands;
Benjamin Franklin, esq’re, late Delegate in Congress, from the State
of Pennsylvania, president of the convention of the said State, and
Minister Plenipotentiary from the United States of America at the Court
of Versailles; John Jay, esq’re, late president of Congress, and chief
justice of the State of New York, and Minister Plenipotentiary from the
said United States at the Court of Madrid, to be the Plenipotentiaries
for the concluding and signing the present definitive treaty; who, after
having reciprocally communicated their respective full powers, have
agreed upon and confirmed the following articles:
ARTICLE I.
His Britannic Majesty acknowledges the said United States, viz. New
Hampshire, Massachusetts Bay, Rhode Island, and Providence Plantations,
Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland,
Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia, to be free,
sovereign and independent States; that he treats with them as such, and
for himself, his heirs and successors, relinquishes all claims to the
Government, proprietary and territorial rights of the same, and every
part thereof.
ARTICLE II.
And that all disputes which might arise in future, on the subject of the
boundaries of the United States may be prevented, it is hereby agreed and
declared, that the following are, and shall be their boundaries, viz:
From the northwest angle of Nova Scotia, viz. that angle which is formed
by a line drawn due north from the source of Saint Croix River to the
Highlands; along the said Highlands which divide those rivers that empty
themselves into the river St. Lawrence, from those which fall into the
Atlantic Ocean, to the northwesternmost head of Connecticut River; thence
down along the middle of that river, to the forty-fifth degree of north
latitude; from thence, by a line due west on the said latitude, until it
strikes the river Iroquois or Cataraquy; thence along the middle of said
river into Lake Ontario, through the middle of said lake until it strikes
the communication by water between that lake and Lake Erie; thence along
the middle of said communication into Lake Erie, through the middle of
said lake until it arrives at the water communication between that lake
and Lake Huron; thence along the middle of said water communication into
the Lake Huron; thence through the middle of said lake to the water
communication between that lake and Lake Superior; thence through Lake
Superior northward of the Isles Royal and Philipeaux, to the Long Lake;
thence through the middle of said Long Lake, and the water communication
between it and the Lake of the Woods, to the said Lake of the Woods;
thence through the said lake to the most northwestern point thereof, and
from thence on a due west course to the river Mississippi; thence by a
line to be drawn along the middle of the said river Mississippi until it
shall intersect the northernmost part of the thirty-first degree of north
latitude. South, by a line to be drawn due east from the determination
of the line last mentioned, in the latitude of thirty-one degrees north
of the Equator, to the middle of the river Apalachicola or Catahouche;
thence along the middle thereof to its junction with the Flint River;
thence strait to the head of St. Mary’s River; and thence down along the
middle of St. Mary’s River to the Atlantic Ocean. East, by a line to be
drawn along the middle of the river St. Croix, from its mouth in the
Bay of Fundy to its source, and from its source directly north to the
aforesaid Highlands, which divide the rivers that fall into the Atlantic
Ocean from those which fall into the river St. Lawrence; comprehending
all islands within twenty leagues of any part of the shores of the United
States, and lying between lines to be drawn due east from the points
where the aforesaid boundaries between Nova Scotia on the one part, and
East Florida on the other, shall respectively touch the Bay of Fundy and
the Atlantic Ocean; excepting such islands as now are, or heretofore have
been, within the limits of the said province of Nova Scotia.
ARTICLE III.
It is agreed that the people of the United States shall continue to
enjoy unmolested the right to take fish of every kind on the Grand Bank,
and on all the other banks of Newfoundland; also in the Gulph of Saint
Lawrence, and at all other places in the sea where the inhabitants of
both countries used at any time heretofore to fish. And also that the
inhabitants of the United States shall have liberty to take fish of
every kind on such part of the coast of Newfoundland as British fishermen
shall use (but not to dry or cure the same on that island) and also on
the coasts, bays, and creeks of all other of His Britannic Majesty’s
dominions in America; and that the American fishermen shall have liberty
to dry and cure fish in any of the unsettled bays, harbours, and creeks
of Nova Scotia, Magdalen Islands, and Labrador, so long as the same shall
remain unsettled; but so soon as the same or either of them shall be
settled, it shall not be lawful for the said fishermen to dry or cure
fish at such settlement, without a previous agreement for that purpose
with the inhabitants, proprietors, or possessors of the ground.
ARTICLE IV.
It is agreed that creditors on either side shall meet with no lawful
impediment to the recovery of the full value in sterling money, of all
bona fide debts heretofore contracted.
ARTICLE V.
It is agreed that the Congress shall earnestly recommend it to the
legislatures of the respective States, to provide for the restitution
of all estates, rights, and properties which have been confiscated,
belonging to real British subjects, and also of the estates, rights,
and properties of persons resident in districts in the possession of
His Majesty’s arms, and who have not borne arms against the said United
States. And that persons of any other description shall have free liberty
to go to any part or parts of any of the thirteen United States, and
therein to remain twelve months, unmolested in their endeavors to obtain
the restitution of such of their estates, rights, and properties as may
have been confiscated; and that Congress shall also earnestly recommend
to the several States a reconsideration and revision of all acts or laws
regarding the premises, so as to render the said laws or acts perfectly
consistent, not only with justice and equity but with that spirit of
conciliation which, on the return of the blessings of peace, should
universally prevail. And that Congress shall also earnestly recommend
to the several States, that the estates, rights, and properties of such
last mentioned persons, shall be restored to them, they refunding to any
persons who may be now in possession, the bona fide price (where any
has been given) which such persons may have paid on purchasing any of
the said lands, rights, or properties, since the confiscation. And it
is agreed, that all persons who have any interest in confiscated lands,
either by debts, marriage settlements, or otherwise, shall meet with no
lawful impediment in the prosecution of their just rights.
ARTICLE VI.
That there shall be no future confiscations made, nor any prosecutions
commenc’d, against any person or persons for, or by reason of the part
which he or they may have taken in the present war; and that no person
shall, on that account, suffer any future loss or damage, either in his
person, liberty or property; and that those who may be in confinement on
such charges, at the time of the ratification of the treaty in America,
shall be immediately set at liberty, and the prosecutions so commenced be
discontinued.
ARTICLE VII.
There shall be a firm and perpetual peace between His Britannic Majesty
and the said States, and between the subjects of the one and the citizens
of the other, wherefore all hostilities, both by sea and land, shall
from henceforth cease: All prisoners on both sides shall be set at
liberty, and His Britannic Majesty shall, with all convenient speed,
and without causing any destruction, or carrying away any negroes or
other property of the American inhabitants, withdraw all his armies,
garrisons, and fleets from the said United States, and from every port,
place, and harbour within the same; leaving in all fortifications the
American artillery that may be therein: And shall also order and cause
all archives, records, deeds, and papers, belonging to any of the said
States, or their citizens, which in the course of the war, may have
fallen into the hands of his officers, to be forthwith restored and
deliver’d to the proper States and persons to whom they belong.
ARTICLE VIII.
The navigation of the river Mississippi, from its source to the ocean,
shall forever remain free and open to the subjects of Great Britain, and
the citizens of the United States.
ARTICLE IX.
In case it should so happen that any place or territory belonging to
Great Britain or to the United States, should have been conquer’d by the
arms of either from the other, before the arrival of the said provisional
articles in America, it is agreed, that the same shall be restored
without difficulty, and without requiring any compensation.
ARTICLE X.
The solemn ratifications of the present treaty, expedited in good and due
form, shall be exchanged between the contracting parties, in the space
of six months, or sooner if possible, to be computed from the day of the
signature of the present treaty. In witness whereof, we the undersigned,
their Ministers Plenipotentiary, have in their name and in virtue of our
full powers, signed with our hands the present definitive treaty, and
caused the seals of our arms to be affixed thereto.
Done at Paris, this third day of September, in the year of our Lord one
thousand seven hundred and eighty-three.
D. HARTLEY. [L. S.]
JOHN ADAMS. [L. S.]
B. FRANKLIN. [L. S.]
JOHN JAY. [L. S.]
GOVERNMENT OF THE NORTHWEST TERRITORY
1787.
An Ordinance for the government of the territory of the United States
northwest of the river Ohio.
SECTION 1. _Be it ordained by the United States in Congress assembled_,
That the said Territory, for the purpose of temporary government, be one
district, subject, however, to be divided into two districts, as future
circumstances may, in the opinion of Congress, make it expedient.
SEC. 2. _Be it ordained by the authority aforesaid_, That the estates
both of resident and non-resident proprietors in the said territory,
dying intestate, shall descend to, and be distributed among, their
children and the descendants of a deceased child in equal parts, the
descendants of a deceased child or grandchild to take the share of their
deceased parent in equal parts among them; and where there shall be no
children or descendants, then in equal parts to the next of kin, in
equal degree; and among collaterals, the children of a deceased brother
or sister of the intestate shall have, in equal parts among them, their
deceased parent’s share; and there shall, in no case, be a distinction
between kindred of the whole and half blood; saving in all cases to the
widow of the intestate, her third part of the real estate for life, and
one-third part of the personal estate; and this law relative to descents
and dower, shall remain in full force until altered by the legislature
of the district. And until the governor and judges shall adopt laws as
hereinafter mentioned, estates in the said territory may be devised or
bequeathed by wills in writing, signed and sealed by him or her in whom
the estate may be, (being of full age,) and attested by three witnesses;
and real estates may be conveyed by lease and release, or bargain and
sale, signed, sealed, and delivered by the person, being of full age,
in whom the estate may be, and attested by two witnesses, provided such
wills be duly proved, and such conveyances be acknowledged, or the
execution thereof duly proved, and be recorded within one year after
proper magistrates, courts, and registers, shall be appointed for that
purpose; and personal property may be transferred by delivery, saving,
however, to the French and Canadian inhabitants, and other settlers of
the Kaskaskies, Saint Vincents, and the neighboring villages, who have
heretofore professed themselves citizens of Virginia, their laws and
customs now in force among them, relative to the descent and conveyance
of property.
SEC. 3. _Be it ordained by the authority aforesaid_, That there shall be
appointed, from time to time, by Congress, a governor, whose commission
shall continue in force for the term of three years, unless sooner
revoked by Congress; he shall reside in the district, and have a freehold
estate therein, in one thousand acres of land, while in the exercise of
his office.
SEC. 4. There shall be appointed from time to time, by Congress, a
secretary, whose commission shall continue in force for four years,
unless sooner revoked; he shall reside in the district, and have a
freehold estate therein, in five hundred acres of land, while in the
exercise of his office. It shall be his duty to keep and preserve the
acts and laws passed by the legislature, and the public records of
the district, and the proceedings of the governor in his executive
department, and transmit authentic copies of such acts and proceedings
every six months to the Secretary of Congress. There shall also be
appointed a court, to consist of three judges, any two of whom to form
a court, who shall have a common-law jurisdiction and reside in the
district, and have each therein a freehold estate, in five hundred acres
of land, while in the exercise of their offices; and their commissions
shall continue in force during good behavior.
SEC. 5. The governor and judges, or a majority of them, shall adopt and
publish in the district such laws of the original States, criminal and
civil, as may be necessary, and best suited to the circumstances of the
district, and report them to Congress from time to time, which laws
shall be in force in the district until the organization of the general
assembly therein, unless disapproved of by Congress; but afterwards the
legislature shall have authority to alter them as they shall think fit.
SEC. 6. The governor, for the time being, shall be commander-in-chief of
the militia, appoint and commission all officers in the same below the
rank of general officers; all general officers shall be appointed and
commissioned by Congress.
SEC. 7. Previous to the organization of the general assembly the governor
shall appoint such magistrates, and other civil officers, in each county
or township, as he shall find necessary for the preservation of the peace
and good order in the same. After the general assembly shall be organized
the powers and duties of magistrates and other civil officers shall be
regulated and defined by the said assembly; but all magistrates and
other civil officers, not herein otherwise directed, shall, during the
continuance of this temporary government, be appointed by the governor.
SEC. 8. For the prevention of crimes, and injuries, the laws to be
adopted or made shall have force in all parts of the district, and for
the execution of process, criminal and civil, the governor shall make
proper divisions thereof; and he shall proceed, from time to time, as
circumstances may require, to lay out the parts of the district in
which the Indian titles shall have been extinguished, into counties and
townships, subject, however, to such alterations as may thereafter be
made by the legislature.
SEC. 9. So soon as there shall be five thousand free male inhabitants,
of full age, in the district, upon giving proof thereof to the
governor, they shall receive authority, with time and place, to elect
representatives from their counties or townships, to represent them
in the general assembly: _Provided_, That for every five hundred
free male inhabitants there shall be one representative, and so on,
progressively, with the number of free male inhabitants, shall the
right of representation increase, until the number of representatives
shall amount to twenty-five; after which the number and proportion of
representatives shall be regulated by the legislature; _Provided_, That
no person be eligible or qualified to act as a representative, unless
he shall have been a citizen of one of the United States three years,
and be a resident in the district, or unless he shall have resided in
the district three years: and, in either case, shall likewise hold in
his own right, in fee-simple, two hundred acres of land within the same:
_Provided also_, That a freehold in fifty acres of land in the district,
having been a citizen of one of the States, and being resident in the
district, or the like freehold and two years’ residence in the district,
shall be necessary to qualify a man as an elector of a representative.
SEC. 10. The representatives thus elected shall serve for the term of
two years; and in case of the death of a representative, or removal from
office, the governor shall issue a writ to the county or township, for
which he was a member, to elect another in his stead, to serve for the
residue of the term.
SEC. 11. The general assembly, or legislature, shall consist of the
governor, legislative council, and a house of representatives. The
legislative council shall consist of five members, to continue in office
five years, unless sooner removed by Congress; any three of whom to be a
quorum; and the members of the council shall be nominated and appointed
in the following manner, to wit: As soon as representatives shall be
elected the governor shall appoint a time and place for them to meet
together, and when met they shall nominate ten persons, resident in the
district, and each possessed of a freehold in five hundred acres of land,
and return their names to Congress, five of whom Congress shall appoint
and commission to serve as aforesaid; and whenever a vacancy shall
happen in the council, by death or removal from office, the house of
representatives shall nominate two persons, qualified as aforesaid, for
each vacancy, and return their names to Congress, one of whom Congress
shall appoint and commission for the residue of the term; and every five
years, four months at least before the expiration of the time of service
of the members of the council, the said house shall nominate ten persons,
qualified as aforesaid, and return their names to Congress, five of whom
Congress shall appoint and commission to serve as members of the council
five years, unless sooner removed. And the governor, legislative council,
and house of representatives shall have authority to make laws in all
cases for the good government of the district, not repugnant to the
principles and articles in this ordinance established and declared. And
all bills, having passed by a majority in the house, and by a majority
in the council, shall be referred to the governor for his assent; but
no bill, or legislative act whatever, shall be of any force without his
assent. The governor shall have power to convene, prorogue, and dissolve
the general assembly when, in his opinion, it shall be expedient.
SEC. 12. The governor, judges, legislative council, secretary, and such
other officers as Congress shall appoint in the district, shall take an
oath or affirmation of fidelity, and of office; the governor before the
President of Congress, and all other officers before the governor. As
soon as a legislature shall be formed in the district, the council and
house assembled, in one room, shall have authority, by joint ballot, to
elect a delegate to Congress, who shall have a seat in Congress, with a
right of debating, but not of voting, during this temporary government.
SEC. 13. And for extending the fundamental principles of civil and
religious liberty, which form the basis whereon these republics,
their laws and constitutions, are erected; to fix and establish those
principles as the basis of all laws, constitutions, and governments,
which forever hereafter shall be formed in the said territory; to
provide, also, for the establishment of States, and permanent government
therein, and for their admission to a share in the Federal councils on
an equal footing with the original States, at as early periods as may be
consistent with the general interest:
SEC. 14. It is hereby ordained and declared, by the authority aforesaid,
that the following articles shall be considered as articles of compact,
between the original States and the people and States in the said
territory, and forever remain unalterable, unless by common consent, to
wit:
ARTICLE I.
No person, demeaning himself in a peaceable and orderly manner, shall
ever be molested on account of his mode of worship, or religious
sentiments, in the said territory.
ARTICLE II.
The inhabitants of the said territory shall always be entitled to the
benefits of the writs of _habeas corpus_, and of the trial by jury; of
a proportionate representation of the people in the legislature, and
of judicial proceedings according to the course of the common law. All
persons shall be bailable, unless for capital offences, where the proof
shall be evident, or the presumption great. All fines shall be moderate;
and no cruel or unusual punishments shall be inflicted. No man shall be
deprived of his liberty or property, but by the judgment of his peers, or
the law of the land, and should the public exigencies make it necessary,
for the common preservation, to take any person’s property, or to demand
his particular services, full compensation shall be made for the same.
And, in the just preservation of rights and property, it is understood
and declared, that no law ought ever to be made or have force in the
said territory, that shall, in any manner whatever, interfere with or
affect private contracts, or engagements, _bona fide_, and without fraud
previously formed.
ARTICLE III.
Religion, morality, and knowledge being necessary to good government
and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall
forever be encouraged. The utmost good faith shall always be observed
towards the Indians; their lands and property shall never be taken from
them without their consent; and in their property, rights, and liberty
they never shall be invaded or disturbed, unless in just and lawful wars
authorized by Congress; but laws founded in justice and humanity shall,
from time to time, be made, for preventing wrongs being done to them, and
for preserving peace and friendship with them.
ARTICLE IV.
The said territory, and the States which may be formed therein, shall
forever remain a part of this confederacy of the United States
of America, subject to the articles of Confederation, and to such
alterations therein as shall be constitutionally made; and to all
the acts and ordinances of the United States in Congress assembled,
conformable thereto. The inhabitants and settlers in the said territory
shall be subject to pay a part of the Federal debts, contracted, or to
be contracted, and a proportional part of the expenses of government
to be apportioned on them by Congress, according to the same common
rule and measure by which apportionments thereof shall be made on the
other States; and the taxes for paying their proportion shall be laid
and levied by the authority and direction of the legislatures of the
district, or districts, or new States, as in the original States, within
the time agreed upon by the United States in Congress assembled. The
legislatures of those districts, or new States, shall never interfere
with the primary disposal of the soil by the United States in Congress
assembled, nor with any regulations Congress may find necessary for
securing the title in such soil to the _bona-fide_ purchasers. No tax
shall be imposed on lands the property of the United States; and in no
case shall non-resident proprietors be taxed higher than residents. The
navigable waters leading into the Mississippi and Saint Lawrence, and the
carrying places between the same, shall be common highways, and forever
free, as well to the inhabitants of the said territory as to the citizens
of the United States, and those of any other States that may be admitted
into the confederacy, without any tax, impost, or duty therefor.
ARTICLE V.
There shall be formed in the said territory not less than three nor more
than five States; and the boundaries of the States, as soon as Virginia
shall alter her act of cession and consent to the same, shall become
fixed and established as follows, to wit: The western State, in the
said territory, shall be bounded by the Mississippi, the Ohio, and the
Wabash Rivers; a direct line drawn from the Wabash and Post Vincents, due
north, to the territorial line between the United States and Canada; and
by the said territorial line to the Lake of the Woods and Mississippi.
The middle State shall be bounded by the said direct line, the Wabash
from Post Vincents to the Ohio, by the Ohio, by a direct line drawn due
north from the mouth of the Great Miami to the said territorial line,
and by the said territorial line. The eastern State shall be bounded by
the last-mentioned direct line, the Ohio, Pennsylvania, and the said
territorial line: _Provided, however_, And it is further understood and
declared, that the boundaries of these three States shall be subject so
far to be altered, that, if Congress shall hereafter find it expedient,
they shall have authority to form one or two States in that part of the
said territory which lies north of an east and west line drawn through
the southerly bend or extreme of Lake Michigan. And whenever any of the
said States shall have sixty thousand free inhabitants therein, such
State shall be admitted by its delegates, into the Congress of the United
States, on an equal footing with the original States, in all respects
whatever; and shall be at liberty to form a permanent constitution and
State government: _Provided_, The constitution and government, so to
be formed, shall be republican, and in conformity to the principles
contained in these articles, and, so far as it can be consistent with
the general interest of the confederacy, such admission shall be allowed
at an earlier period, and when there may be a less number of free
inhabitants in the State than sixty thousand.
ARTICLE VI.
There shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in the said
territory, otherwise than in the punishment of crimes, whereof the
party shall have been duly convicted: _Provided always_, That any person
escaping into the same, from whom labor or service is lawfully claimed in
any one of the original States, such fugitive may be lawfully reclaimed,
and conveyed to the person claiming his or her labor or service as
aforesaid.
_Be it ordained by the authority aforesaid_, That the resolutions of the
23d of April, 1784, relative to the subject of this ordinance, be, and
the same are hereby, repealed, and declared null and void.
Done by the United States, in Congress assembled, the 13th day of July,
in the year of our Lord 1787, and of their sovereignty and independence
the twelfth.
CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES—1787.
WE THE PEOPLE of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect
Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquillity, provide for the
common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings
of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this
CONSTITUTION for the United States of America.
ARTICLE I.
SECTION 1. All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a
Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House
of Representatives.