MEETING OF CONGRESS--WASHINGTON'S MESSAGE--HIS VIEWS OF THE WHISKEY
INSURRECTION--DENUNCIATION OF THE DEMOCRATIC SOCIETIES--DEBATES IN
CONGRESS ON THE SUBJECT--WEAKNESS OF THE OPPOSITION--JEFFERSON'S
ANGRY LETTER TO MADISON--DECLINE OF THE DEMOCRATIC
SOCIETIES--WAYNE'S SUCCESS--END OF THE INDIAN WAR--HAMILTON AND KNOX
RETIRE FROM OFFICE--CORRESPONDENCE BETWEEN THEM AND
WASHINGTON--THEIR SUCCESSORS--CLOSE OF THE THIRD CONGRESS--A
NATIONAL UNIVERSITY PROPOSED--WASHINGTON'S VIEWS--HIS DISPOSITION OF
NAVIGATION COMPANIES' SHARES.
The members of Congress came tardily to the federal capital in the
autumn of 1794; and it was not until the nineteenth of November, sixteen
days after the time appointed for the commencement of the session, that
they were ready to listen to the president's sixth annual message. As he
had intimated to Mr. Jay that he should, Washington, in that message,
dwelt at considerable length on the subject of the late insurrection,
taking a complete outline survey of all the facts and circumstances, and
drawing conclusions therefrom.
"While there is cause to lament," he said, "that occurrences of this
nature should have disgraced the name, or interrupted the tranquillity,
of any part of our community, or should have diverted to a new
application any portion of the public resources, there are not wanting
real and substantial consolations for the misfortune. It has
demonstrated that our prosperity rests on solid foundations, by
furnishing an additional proof that my fellow-citizens understand the
true principles of government and liberty; that they feel their
inseparable union; that, notwithstanding all the devices which have been
used to sway them from their interest and duty, they are now as ready to
maintain the authority of the laws against licentious invasions, as they
were to defend their rights against usurpation. It has been a spectacle
displaying to the highest advantage the value of republican government,
to behold the most and the least wealthy of our citizens standing in the
same ranks as private soldiers, pre-eminently distinguished by being the
army of the constitution--undeterred by a march of three hundred miles
over rugged mountains, by the approach of an inclement season, or by any
other discouragement. Nor ought I to omit to acknowledge the efficacious
and patriotic co-operations which I have experienced from the chief
magistrates of the states to which my requisitions have been addressed.
"To every description of citizens, indeed, let praise be given. But let
them persevere in their affectionate vigilance over that precious
depository of American happiness, the constitution of the United States.
Let them cherish it, too, for the sake of those who, from every clime,
are daily seeking a dwelling in our land. And when, in the calm moments
of reflection, they shall have traced the origin and progress of the
insurrection, let them determine whether it has not been fomented by
combinations of men, who, careless of consequences, and disregarding the
unerring truth that those who rouse can not always appease a civil
convulsion, have disseminated, from an ignorance or perversion of facts,
suspicions, jealousies, and accusations of the whole government."
The boldness of Washington was conspicuous in thus officially denouncing
the Democratic Societies, because he well knew that his words of severe
reprobation would arouse their hottest resentment. But, conscious of his
own integrity, and well assured of the support of all good men, he
hesitated not a moment. Some democratic members of the senate, the most
prominent of whom were Burr and Jackson, showed great ill feeling; but
the majority in that body gave it their approval. In the lower house it
created a good deal of angry altercation, for the opposition were
powerful there. They exhibited their disapprobation on the first draft
of their answer to the president's message, by passing the matter over
in silence. To this draft an amendment was offered, reprobating the
"self-created societies," which, "by deceiving and inflaming the
ignorant and weak, may naturally be supposed to have stimulated the
insurrection." It then denounced them as "institutions not strictly
unlawful, yet not less fatal to good order and true liberty, and
reprehensible in the degree that our system of government approaches to
perfect political freedom."
It was this amendment that caused the debate. Those who opposed it did
so cautiously, and exhibited their sense of the waning popularity of
these societies, by taking care to disclaim their own personal
connection with them. It was contended that the term "self-created
societies" involved all voluntary associations whatever; that the right
of censure was sacred; and that the societies would retort. Others
contended that the question was not, whether the societies were legal,
but whether they were mischievous. If they were so, the representatives
of the people, presumed to be the guardians of the republic, ought to
declare it, and not, by silence, give an implied contradiction to the
president's statements.
A motion to strike out the words "self-constituted societies" elicited a
warm debate. "It has been argued," said one of the members (Sedgwick)
who traced the origin of these societies to Genet, "that to censure them
might be construed into an attack on the freedom of public discussion.
He was sorry," he said, "to see a disposition to confound freedom and
licentiousness. Was there not an obvious distinction between a cool,
dispassionate, honest, and candid discussion, and a false, wicked,
seditious misrepresentation of public men and public measures? The
former was within the province of freemen; it was, indeed, their duty;
the latter was inconsistent with moral rectitude, and tended to the
destruction of freedom and to the production of every evil that could
afflict a community." The speaker then described the Democratic
Societies as "self-created, without delegation or control, not emanating
from the people, or responsible to them; not open in their
deliberations; not admitting any but those of their own political
opinions; permanent in their constitution, and of unlimited duration."
These, he said, "modestly assumed the character of popular instructors,
guardians of the people, guardians of the government. Every man in the
administration who had assented to its acts they had loaded with every
species of calumny--slanders--which they knew to be such. They had not
even spared that character supposed to have been clothed with
inviolability--not the paltry inviolability of constitutional
proscription, but an inviolability infinitely more respectable, founded
on the public gratitude, and resulting from disinterested and invaluable
services."
The motion upon which this debate arose was finally carried in committee
of the whole, but by a very small majority. The struggle was renewed
when it was reported to the house. Finally, a compromise was effected by
inserting in the address a declaration of great concern on the part of
the house, "that any misrepresentations whatever of the government and
its proceedings, either by individuals or combinations of men, should
have been made, and so far have been credited as to foment the flagrant
outrage which had been committed on the laws."
It was very evident, from the debates and the votes on this and other
questions brought up by the president's message, that the government was
growing stronger, and the opposition in Congress weaker. Jefferson, the
father of the opposition, who had declared that his retiracy from the
political world should be profound, was alarmed at these manifestations
of the declining strength of his party, and he was moved to let his
voice be heard once more. On the twenty-eighth of December he wrote to
Madison, the republican leader in the lower house, an angry letter
concerning the president's remarks about the "self-created societies,"
saying:--
"The denunciation of the Democratic Societies is one of the
extraordinary acts of boldness of which we have seen so many from
the faction of monocrats. It is wonderful indeed that the president
should have permitted himself to be the organ of such an attack on
the freedom of discussion, the freedom of writing, printing, and
publishing." After making an ungenerous attack upon the Society of
the Cincinnati, he proceeded: "I here put out of sight the persons
whose misbehavior has been taken advantage of to slander the
friends of popular rights; and I am happy to observe that, as far
as the circle of my observation and information extends, everybody
has lost sight of them, and views the abstract attempt on their
natural and constitutional rights in all its nakedness. I have
never heard, or heard of, a single expression or opinion which did
not condemn it as an inexcusable aggression."
Then, in full sympathy with the whiskey insurrectionists, he said: "And
with respect to the transactions against the excise law, it appears to
me that you are all swept away in the torrent of governmental opinions,
or that we do not know what these transactions have been. We know of
none which, according to the definitions of the law, have been anything
more than riotous. There was, indeed, a meeting to consult about a
separation. But to consult on a question does not amount to a
determination of that question in the affirmative, still less to the
acting on such a determination; but we shall see, I suppose, what the
court lawyers, and courtly judges, and would-be embassadors will make of
it. The excise law is an infernal one. The first error was to admit it
by the constitution; the second, to act on that admission; the third and
last will be, to make it the instrument of dismembering the Union, and
setting us all afloat to choose what part of it we will adhere to. The
information of our militia returned from the westward is uniform, that
though the people there let them pass quietly, they were objects of
their laughter, not of their fear; that one thousand men could have cut
off their whole force in a thousand places of the Alleghany; that their
detestation of the excise law is universal, and has now associated to it
a detestation of the government; and that separation, which perhaps was
a very distant and problematical event, is now near, and certain, and
determined in the mind of every man. I expected to have seen some
justification of arming one part of society against another; of
declaring a civil war the moment before the meeting of that body which
has the sole right of declaring war; of being so patient of the kicks
and scoffs of our enemies, and rising at a feather against our friends;
of adding a million to the public debt, and deriding us with
recommendations to pay it if we can."
But the medicines of most powerful friends could not cure the mortal
malady that now afflicted the Democratic Societies. As it happened with
Genet, their founder, so it now happened with these societies; the great
mass of the people had learned to reprobate them. The denunciations of
the president, co-operating with the downfall of the Jacobin clubs in
France--kindred societies--soon produced their dissolution. Monroe, in
an official despatch, had set in its true light the character of the
Jacobin clubs, as interfering with the government; and in the United
States, their _confréres_, the Democratic societies, soon sank into
merited obscurity.
In his message, Washington announced that "the intelligence from the
army under the command of General Wayne was a happy presage to military
operations against the hostile Indians north of the Ohio." Wayne, as we
have seen, had succeeded St. Clair after that veteran's unfortunate
defeat in the autumn of 1791. He marched into the Indian country in
1793, and near the spot where St. Clair was surprised he built Fort
Recovery. There he was attacked by the Indians at the close of June,
1794, but without receiving much damage. General Scott arrived there not
long afterward from Kentucky, with eleven hundred volunteers, and then
Wayne advanced to the confluence of the Maumee and Au Glaize rivers,
"the grand emporium," as he called it, of the Indians. They fled
precipitately; and there Wayne built a strong stockade, for the
permanent occupation of that beautiful country, and called it Fort
Defiance.
The main body of the Indians had retired down the Maumee about thirty
miles, where they took a hostile attitude. With about three thousand
men, Wayne marched against them, and near the present Maumee City he
fought and defeated them, on the twentieth of August. He then laid waste
their country, and the trading establishment of the British agent in
their midst was burned. There seemed little doubt that he had stirred up
the savages against the Americans.
Wayne fell back to Fort Defiance three days after the battle; and at the
beginning of November, after a successful campaign of three months,
during which time he had marched three hundred miles along a road cut by
his own army, gained an important victory, driven the Indians from their
principal settlement, and left a strong post in the heart of their
country, he placed his army into winter-quarters at Greenville. The
western tribes were humbled and disheartened; and early in August, the
following year, their principal chiefs and United States' commissioners
met at Greenville and made a treaty of peace. The Indians ceded to the
United States a large tract of land in the present states of Michigan
and Indiana, and for more than ten years afterward the government had
very little trouble with the western savages.
In his message, Washington urged the adoption of some definite plan for
the redemption of the public debt. "Nothing," he said, "can more promote
the permanent welfare of the nation, and nothing would be more grateful
to our constituents." At his request, Hamilton, the secretary of the
treasury, prepared a plan, digested and arranged on the basis of the
actual revenues for the further support of the public credit. It was one
of the ablest state papers of the many that had proceeded from his pen
during his official career. It was reported on the twentieth of January,
1795, and this was Hamilton's last official act. He had, on the first of
December, immediately after his return from western Pennsylvania,
addressed the following letter to the president:--
"I have the honor to inform you that I have fixed upon the last of
January next, as the day for my resignation of my office of
secretary of the treasury. I make this communication now, that
there may be time to mature such an arrangement as shall appear to
you proper to meet the vacancy when it occurs."
Mr. Hamilton resigned his office on the thirty-first of January. It was
with deep regret, as in the case of Mr. Jefferson, that Washington found
himself deprived of the services of so able an officer. "After so long
an experience of your public services," he said in a note to Hamilton on
the second of February, "I am naturally led, at this moment of your
departure from office (which it has always been my wish to prevent), to
review them. In every relation which you have borne to me, I have found
that my confidence in your talents, exertions, and integrity, has been
well placed. I the more freely render this testimony of my approbation,
because I speak from opportunities of information which can not deceive
me, and which furnish satisfactory proof of your title to public
regard."
To this Hamilton replied on the following day, saying, "My particular
acknowledgments are due for your very kind letter of yesterday. As often
as I may recall the vexations I have endured, your approbation will be a
great and precious consolation. It was not without a struggle that I
yielded to the very urgent motives which compelled me to relinquish a
station in which I could hope to be, in any degree, instrumental in
promoting the success of an administration under your direction; a
struggle which would have been far greater had I supposed that the
prospect of future usefulness was proportioned to the sacrifices made."
Justice to a growing family was the chief cause of Hamilton's
resignation. "The penurious provision made for those who filled the high
executive departments in the American government," says Marshall,
"excluded from a long continuance in office all those whose fortunes
were moderate, and whose professional talents placed a decent
independence within their reach. While slandered as the accumulator of
thousands by illicit means, Colonel Hamilton had wasted in the public
service great part of the property acquired by his previous labors, and
had found himself compelled to decide on retiring from his political
station."[73]
Oliver Wolcott, of Connecticut, who had been the federal comptroller
under Hamilton for some time, was appointed to succeed that officer; and
General Knox, who had offered his resignation as secretary of war at the
close of the year, was succeeded by Timothy Pickering, who was at that
time the postmaster-general. "After having served my country nearly
twenty years," wrote Knox in his letter tendering his resignation on the
twenty-eighth of December, "the greatest portion of which under your
immediate auspices, it is with extreme reluctance that I find myself
constrained to withdraw from so honorable a station. But the natural
and powerful claims of a numerous family will no longer permit me to
neglect their essential interests. In whatever situation I shall be, I
shall recollect your confidence and kindness with all the fervor and
purity of affection of which a grateful heart is susceptible."
Washington always loved Knox. His frankness and good nature, his eminent
integrity and unswerving faithfulness in every period of his public
career, endeared him to the president; and it was with sincere sorrow
that he experienced the official separation. "The considerations which
you have often suggested to me," Washington wrote in reply to Knox, "and
which are repeated in your letter as requiring your departure from your
present office, are such as to preclude the possibility of my urging
your continuance in it. This being the case, I can only wish it was
otherwise. I can not suffer you, however, to close your public service
without uniting with the satisfaction which must arise in your own mind
from a conscious rectitude, my most perfect persuasion that you have
deserved well of your country. My personal knowledge of your exertions,
whilst it authorizes me to hold this language, justifies the sincere
friendship which I have ever borne for you, and which will accompany you
in every situation in life."
The last session of the third Congress closed on the third of March,
1795. For a little while, Washington's mind was relieved in a degree
from the pressure of political duties, and a matter of different but
interesting nature occupied it at times. It will be remembered that the
legislature of Virginia presented to Washington, as a testimony of their
gratitude for his public services, fifty shares in the Potomac company,
and one hundred shares in the James River company--corporations created
for promoting internal navigation in Virginia--and that he accepted them
with the understanding that he should not use them for his own private
benefit, but apply them to some public purpose.
An opportunity for such application, that commended itself to
Washington's judgment, had not occurred until this time, when a plan for
the establishment of a university at the federal capital, on the
Potomac, was talked of. "It has always been a source of serious
reflection and sincere regret with me," he said in a letter to the
commissioners of the federal city on the twenty-eighth of January, "that
the youth of the United States should be sent to foreign countries for
the purpose of education. Although there are doubtless many, under these
circumstances, who escape the danger of contracting principles
unfavorable to republican government, yet we ought to deprecate the
hazard attending ardent and susceptible minds from being too strongly
and too early prepossessed in favor of other political systems, before
they are capable of appreciating their own.
"For this reason, I have greatly wished to see a plan adopted, by which
the arts, sciences, and belles-lettres, could be taught in their fullest
extent, thereby embracing all the advantages of European tuition, with
the means of acquiring the liberal knowledge which is necessary to
qualify our citizens for the exigencies of public as well as private
life; and (which with me is a consideration of great magnitude) by
assembling the youths from the different parts of this republic,
contributing, from their intercourse and interchange of information, to
the removal of prejudices, which might, perhaps, sometimes arise from
local circumstances."
Washington then suggested the federal city as the most eligible place
for such an institution; at the same time offering, in the event of the
university being established upon a scale as extensive as he described,
and the execution of it being commenced under favorable auspices in a
reasonable time, to "grant in perpetuity fifty shares in the navigation
of the Potomac river towards the endowment of it."
About four weeks after this, Washington received a letter from Mr.
Jefferson, on the subject that had a bearing upon the disposition of his
shares, the former having on some occasion asked the advice of the
latter concerning the appropriation of them. Mr. Jefferson now informed
Washington that the college at Geneva, in Switzerland, had been
destroyed, and that Mr. D'Ivernois, a Genevan scholar who had written a
history of his country, had proposed the transplanting of that college
to America. It was proposed to have the professors of the college come
over in a body, it being asserted that most of them spoke the English
language well.
Jefferson was favorable to the establishment of the proposed new college
within the state of Virginia; but Washington, with practical sagacity,
concluded that it would not be wise to have two similar institutions. He
preferred having one excellent institution, and that at the federal
capital, and gave his reasons at length for his opinion, at the same
time adding--after stating to Mr. Jefferson the fact that he had offered
the fifty shares of the Potomac company to the commissioners--"My
judgment and my wishes point equally strong to the application of the
James River shares [one hundred] to the same object at the same place;
but, considering the source from whence they were derived, I have, in a
letter I am writing to the executive of Virginia on this subject, left
the application of them to a seminary within the state, to be located by
the legislature."
In his letter to Governor Brooke, above referred to, Washington said:
"The time is come when a plan of universal education ought to be adopted
in the United States. Not only do the exigencies of public life demand
it, but, if it should be apprehended that prejudice would be entertained
in one part of the Union against another, an efficacious remedy will be
to assemble the youth from every part, under such circumstances as will,
by the freedom of intercourse and collision of sentiment, give to their
minds the direction of truth, philanthropy, and mutual conciliation." He
then expressed his preference of the proposed university at the federal
capital, as the object of his appropriation, but left the matter at the
disposal of the legislature. That body, in resolutions, approved of his
appropriation of the fifty shares in the Potomac company to the proposed
university, and requested him to appropriate the hundred shares in the
James River company "to a seminary at such place in the upper country,
as he may deem most convenient to a majority of the inhabitants
thereof."[74]
FOOTNOTES:
[73] Life of Washington, ii, 356
[74] See page 48 of this volume.