VIOLENCE OF PARTY SPIRIT--INFLAMMATORY APPEALS TO THE
PEOPLE--WASHINGTON MENACED WITH IMPEACHMENT, AND CHARGED WITH
PLUNDERING THE TREASURY--NEWSPAPER DISCUSSIONS--HAMILTON IN DEFENCE
OF THE TREATY--JEFFERSON'S APPEAL TO MADISON TO COME TO THE
RESCUE--PROCEEDINGS IN BOSTON--RECONSTRUCTION OF THE
CABINET--ARRIVAL OF YOUNG LAFAYETTE--WASHINGTON'S FRIENDSHIP FOR
HIM--CAUTION AND EXPEDIENCY--THE EXILES AND THE CONGRESS--THEIR HOME
AT MOUNT VERNON--THEIR DEPARTURE FOR FRANCE.
The ratification of the treaty increased the violence of party spirit.
The batteries of fiercest vituperation were now opened upon the
president, and the habitual courtesy with which he had been treated was
lost sight of in the fury of party hate.
The opponents of the treaty saw only one more expedient to defeat it,
now that they had failed to intimidate Washington or cause him to
withhold his signature. They started the idea, as a forlorn hope, that
although the president might ratify, it still rested with the house of
representatives to refuse, if they chose, the pecuniary means to carry
the treaty into effect, and thus to nullify it. They, therefore,
resolved to use every effort to accomplish their purposes in this way.
The elections in the several states were not yet completed, and they
felt confident that a majority had already been chosen who were hostile
to the treaty.
The most inflammatory addresses were circulated, to influence the people
against the president and the treaty, and to form a public opinion that
should bear with potency upon the supreme legislature. "The president,"
said one of these addresses, "has thrown the gauntlet, and shame on the
coward heart that refuses to take it up. He has declared war against the
people, by treating their opinions with contempt; he has forfeited his
claim to their confidence, by acting in opposition to their will. Our
liberties are in jeopardy, and we must either rescue them from the
precipice or they will be lost for ever. One hope offers itself to us,
and a consolatory one, too--the HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE UNITED
STATES. As we have looked in vain for patriotism from the president, let
us turn our eyes toward that body; they are our immediate
representatives; they feel our wants, participate in our injuries, and
sympathize in our distresses. They never will submit to have our country
degraded; they never will be passive under the outrages upon our
constitution; they never will be the instruments of voting away the
people's rights. As our application to the president has been treated
with scorn, let us make our appeal to that body which has the power of
IMPEACHMENT, and we shall not find them step-fathers of their country. A
treaty which has bartered away their rights can not, will not, be
submitted to. Let us then, fellow-citizens, rally round our
representatives, and we may still be free!"
Such appeals had a powerful effect; and a writer in the _Aurora_ went so
far as to charge Washington with having used the public money for his
own private use! The charge was maintained with the most unblushing
effrontery. When Congress met, petitions were forwarded to the house of
representatives from all parts of the Union, bitterly denouncing the
treaty, and praying that body to stand in the breach and rescue the
country from the usurpations of the president and senate. The newspapers
discussed the subject with great warmth; and Brockholst Livingston, over
the signature of "Decius," assailed the treaty with great ability. This
aroused Hamilton, who had both spoken and written in favor of the
treaty. He came to the tournament most gallantly, and, over the
signature of "Camillus," he dealt such powerful blows with his
battle-axe of fact and logic; that "Decius" was quickly unhorsed.
Jefferson, with his eagle vision, had watched the combat with intense
interest from his eyry at Monticello; and when he saw the force of
Hamilton's reasoning, and the power it must have upon the people, he
shouted to Madison to join the lists and do battle against "Camillus,"
and a smaller champion called "Curtius." "Hamilton," he exclaimed in a
letter to Madison on the twenty-first of September, "is really a
colossus to the anti-republican party. Without numbers, he is a host
within himself. They have got themselves into a defile, where they might
be finished; but too much security on the republican part will give time
to his talents and indefatigableness to extricate them. We have had only
middling performers to oppose to him. In truth, when he comes forward,
there is nobody but yourself who can meet him. His adversaries have
begun the attack, he has the advantage of answering them, and remains
unanswered himself. A solid reply might yet completely demolish what was
too feebly attacked, and has gathered strength from the weakness of the
attack." With his usual alarm-bell notes, Jefferson then spoke of
"Hamilton, Jay," etc., as engaged "in the boldest act they ever ventured
on to undermine the government;" and exclaimed, in conclusion, "For
God's sake, take up your pen and give a fundamental reply to 'Curtius'
and 'Camillus.'"[86]
The opposition found other champions of the treaty to meet than
newspaper writers. The friends of that instrument and the government
rallied in various forms. A few days before the president signed the
ratification, the Boston Chamber of Commerce, like that of New York,
representing a large and influential class to be affected by the treaty,
passed a resolution, with only one dissenting voice, in favor of
ratification. Some violent Boston republicans, to counteract these
expressions, used the mobocratic argument and paraded an effigy of Jay
in the streets, and concluded the performance by burning it, attacking
the house of the editor of a federal paper (from which they were
repulsed by firearms), and keeping the New England capital in a
disturbed state for several days. Philadelphia merchants, on the
contrary, in large numbers, signed a memorial taking ground in favor of
the treaty. This was imitated elsewhere, and these memorials went into
the house of representatives with the denunciatory petitions.
In the midst of all this storm, Washington remained calm, with his hand
firmly resting upon the helm of state, and his eye steadily fixed upon
the great compass and chart of integrity by which his course was always
determined. In a reply to a friendly letter from General Knox, who
assured him of a changing opinion in New England in favor of the treaty,
he said:--
"Next to a conscientious discharge of my public duties, to carry
along with me the approbation of my constituents would be the
highest gratification my mind is susceptible of; but, the latter
being secondary, I can not make the former yield to it, unless some
criterion more infallible than partial (if they are not party)
meetings can be discovered, as the touchstone of public sentiment.
If any power on earth could, or the great Power above would, erect
the standard of infallibility in political opinions, there is no
being that inhabits this terrestrial globe that would resort to it
with more eagerness than myself, so long as I remain a servant of
the public. But as I have found no better guide, hitherto, than
upright intentions and close investigation, I shall adhere to those
maxims while I keep the watch, leaving it to those who will come
after me to explore new ways, if they like or think them better."
During the autumn, while these public discussions were at their height,
Washington was called upon to reconstruct his cabinet on account of the
resignation of Randolph, the secretary of state, and the death of
Bradford, the attorney-general, both events having occurred in August.
The president found some difficulty in filling Randolph's place. "In the
appointment of the great officers of government," Washington wrote to
Colonel Carrington in October, "my aim has been to combine geographical
situation, and sometimes other considerations, with abilities and
fitness of _known_ characters." He had offered the place successively to
Judge Paterson, of New Jersey, Thomas Johnson, of Maryland, Charles
Cotesworth Pinckney, of South Carolina, and Patrick Henry, of Virginia;
but they all declined. In his letter to Henry, who, it was understood,
was not very well pleased with the treaty, Washington said:--
"I persuade myself, sir, it has not escaped your observation that
a crisis is approaching, that must, if it can not be arrested, soon
decide whether order and good government shall be preserved, or
anarchy and confusion ensue. I can most religiously aver, I have no
wish that is incompatible with the dignity, happiness, and true
interest of the people of this country. My ardent desire is, and my
aim has been, as far as depended upon the executive department, to
comply strictly with all our engagements, foreign and domestic; but
to keep the United States free from political connection with every
other country, to see them independent of all, and under the
influence of none. In a word, I want an _American_ character, that
the powers of Europe may be convinced we act for _ourselves_, and
not for others. This, in my judgment, is the only way to be
respected abroad and happy at home; and not, by becoming the
partisans of Great Britain or France, create dissentions, disturb
the public tranquillity, and destroy, perhaps for ever, the cement
which binds the Union."
After considerable delay, Colonel Pickering was transferred to the
department of state, and James M'Henry, of Maryland, was appointed
secretary of war. At the close of November, Charles Lee, of Virginia,
accepted the office of attorney-general, as the successor of Bradford,
and at the opening of Congress the cabinet was in working order, with
apparently harmonious elements.
It was during these political agitations that George Washington
Lafayette, a son of the marquis, arrived in the United States, to claim
an asylum at the hands of Washington. He could not have appeared at a
more inopportune moment; for political reasons rendered it inexpedient
for the president, as such, to receive him; and to place him in his
family might cause perplexities, connected with political affairs,
prejudicial to the public tranquillity.
We have already noticed the flight of Lafayette from France before the
fury of Jacobin fanaticism, and his incarceration in an Austrian
dungeon, while his family were left to be the sport of fortune. In that
dungeon the marquis was confined almost three years, in a cell three
paces broad and five and a half long, containing no other ornament than
two French verses which rhymed with the words "to suffer and to die."
And yet his great soul went out to his suffering fellow-man as free as
the air of heaven; and with a toothpick (for he was deprived of pen and
ink) he wrote to a princess, who sympathized with him, on a scrap of
paper which came to him almost miraculously, and with soot and water,
these noble words: "I know not what disposition has been made of my
plantation at Cayenne, but I hope Madame Lafayette will take care that
the negroes who cultivate it shall preserve their liberty." He had set
them all free.
The marchioness, as soon as she was allowed the privilege, hastened to
Olmutz with her daughters to share the dungeon with the husband and
father; while their son, whom they had named in honor of their
illustrious friend, came to the United States with his tutor, M.
Frestel, consigned to the fatherly care of Washington. Young Lafayette
was then about seventeen years of age.
The two exiles arrived at Boston at the close of the summer of 1795, and
they immediately sent information of the fact to the president, who was
just on the point of leaving Philadelphia for Mount Vernon. Washington's
first impulse was to take the young man to his bosom and cherish him as
a son; but, as we have observed, grave reasons of state denied him that
pleasure. After brief reflection, he sent the letters of the exiles, to
Senator Cabot, of Boston, saying:--
"To express all the sensibility which has been excited in my breast
by the receipt of young Lafayette's letter, from the recollection
of his father's merits, services and sufferings, from my friendship
for him, and from my wishes to become a friend and father to his
son, is unnecessary."[87] Let me in a few words declare that I will
be his friend; but the manner of becoming so, considering the
obnoxious light in which his father is viewed by the French
government, and my own situation as the executive of the United
States, requires more time to consider, in all its relations, than
I can bestow on it at present, the letters not having been in my
hands more than an hour, and I myself on the point of setting out
for Virginia to fetch my family back, whom I left there about the
first of August.
"The mode, which at the first view strikes me as the most eligible
to answer his purposes and to save appearances, is, first, to
administer all the consolation to the young gentleman that he can
derive from the most unequivocal assurances of my standing in the
place of, and becoming to him, a father, friend, protector, and
supporter. But, secondly, for prudential motives, as they relate to
myself, his mother and friends whom he has left behind, and to my
official character, it would be best not to make these sentiments
public; and of course it would be ineligible that he should come to
the seat of the general government, where all the foreign
characters (particularly those of his own nation) are residents,
until it is seen what opinions will be excited by his arrival;
especially, too, as I shall be necessarily absent five or six weeks
from it, on business in several places. Thirdly, considering how
important it is to avoid idleness and dissipation, to improve his
mind, and to give him all the advantages which education can
bestow, my opinion and my advice to him are, if he is qualified for
admission, that he should enter as a student in the university in
Cambridge, although it should be for a short time only; the expense
of which, as also for every other means for his support, I will
pay.... Let me pray you, my dear sir, to impress upon young
Lafayette's mind, and indeed upon that of his tutor, that the
reasons why I do not urge him to come to me have been frankly
related, and that their prudence must appreciate them with caution.
My friendship for his father, so far from being diminished, has
increased in the ratio of his misfortunes; and my inclination to
serve the son will be evidenced by my conduct."
General Knox, then in Boston, took much interest in the young
Lafayette. In a letter to Washington, on the twenty-first of September,
he said, "He goes by the name of Motier [a family name of his father],
concealing his real name, lest some injury should arise to his mother,
or to a young Mr. Russell of this town, now in France, who assisted in
his escape." Knox spoke of the exile as "a lovely young man, of
excellent morals and conduct."
Mr. Cabot readily undertook the duty solicited by Washington. He found
Lafayette and his tutor in much perplexity. The attempt at concealment
was futile. "Already M. Motier is known to too many persons," wrote Mr.
Cabot, "and a public festival announced by the French consul for Monday
next, at which all their citizens in this vicinity are expected to
attend, occasions serious embarrassments; to which is added, that some
circumstances of delicacy relative to the family in which they are
placed, make an immediate removal proper." He further informed him that
they were about to depart for New York, where they expected to be
accommodated in the country-house of a French gentleman, their friend,
where they would remain in retirement, until they should receive further
directions from Washington. Mr. Cabot gave them letters to Colonel
Wadsworth and Colonel Hamilton, and they departed.
In November, soon after his return to Philadelphia, Washington wrote an
affectionate letter to young Lafayette, in which, after telling him the
causes which rendered it necessary for them both to be circumspect, and
desiring him to repair with his tutor to Colonel Hamilton, in the city
of New York, who would see that they were well provided for, he said:--
"How long the causes which have withheld you from me may continue,
I am not able at this moment to decide; but be assured of my wishes
to embrace you, so soon as they shall have ceased, and that,
whenever the period arrives, I shall do it with fervency. In the
meantime, let me begin with fatherly advice to you to apply closely
to your studies, that the season of your youth may be improved to
the utmost, that you may be found the deserving son of a
meritorious father." To M. Frestel, Washington wrote at the same
time, after directing him to read his letter to his pupil: "To the
above I shall just add, that, as the preceptor and friend of M. de
Lafayette, I pray you to count upon my attentions and friendship,
and learn that it is my expectation that you will accompany him in
whatever situation he may be placed; and moreover that you will let
me know, at all times, what he has occasion for."
The Congress at length took official notice of the presence of the son
of Lafayette; and on the eighteenth of March, 1796, the house of
representatives passed the following resolution and order:--
"Information having been given to this house that a son of General
Lafayette is now within the United States; _Resolved_, that a
committee be appointed to inquire into the truth of the said
information, and report thereon; and what measures it would be
proper to take if the same be true, to evince the grateful sense
entertained by the country for the services of his father.
"Ordered, that Mr. Livingston, Mr. Sherburne, and Mr. Murray, be
appointed a committee pursuant to the said resolution."
As chairman of the committee, Mr. Livingston wrote to young Lafayette as
follows:--
"SIR: Actuated by motives of gratitude to your father, and eager to
seize every opportunity of showing their sense of his important
services, the house of representatives have passed the resolution
which I have the pleasure to communicate. The committee being
directed to inquire into the fact of your arrival within the United
States, permit me to advise your immediate appearance at this
place, that the legislature of America may no longer be in doubt,
whether the son of Lafayette is under their protection, and within
the reach of their gratitude.
"I presume to give this advice as an individual personally attached
to your father, and very solicitous to be useful to any person in
whose happiness he is interested. If I should have that good
fortune on this occasion, it will afford me the greatest
satisfaction."
This letter, and the resolutions of the house of representatives, young
Lafayette forwarded to President Washington, and asked his advice as to
the course he should pursue. Washington advised him to come to
Philadelphia at the opening of the next session of Congress, occupy a
room in his house, but to avoid society as much as possible. He
complied, and remained in Philadelphia until the following spring, when
Washington, on becoming a private citizen, embraced the son of his
friend as if he had been his own child, and bore him to his home on the
Potomac. There he remained until early in October, when the joyful news
of the release of his father from confinement, and his restoration to
his country and friends, caused him to leave for the seaboard to depart
for France. He and M. Frestel sailed from New York on the twenty-sixth
of October, 1797.
As young Lafayette was about to leave Mount Vernon, Washington placed a
letter in his hands for his father, in which he said:--
"From the delicate and responsible situation in which I stood as a
public officer, but more especially from a misconception of the
manner in which your son had left France, till explained to me in a
personal interview with himself, he did not come immediately into
my family on his arrival in America, though he was assured, in the
first moments of it, of my protection and support. His conduct,
since he first set his feet on American ground, has been exemplary
in every point of view, such as has gained him the esteem,
affection, and confidence of all who have had the pleasure of his
acquaintance. His filial affection and duty, and his ardent desire
to embrace his parents and sisters in the first moments of their
release, would not allow him to wait the authentic account of this
much-desired event; but, at the same time that I suggested the
propriety of this, I could not withhold my assent to the
gratification of his wishes to fly to the arms of those whom he
holds most dear, persuaded as he is, from the information he has
received, that he shall find you all in Paris.
"M. Frestel has been a true Mentor to George. No parent could have
been more attentive to a favorite son; and he richly merits all
that can be said of his virtues, of his good sense, and of his
prudence. Both your son and he carry with them the vows and regrets
of this family and all who know them. And you may be assured that
yourself never stood higher in the affections of the people of this
country than at the present moment."[88]
FOOTNOTES:
[86] Randall's Life of Jefferson, ii, 268.
[87] The late Richard Rush relates an interesting incident, illustrative
of the feelings of Washington on account of the misfortunes of his noble
friend. Mr. Bradford, the attorney-general, who lived directly opposite
the residence of Washington, was spending an evening with the president,
when the conversation reverted to Lafayette. Washington spoke with great
seriousness, contrasted the marquis's hitherto splendid career with that
of his present forlorn and suffering condition; and at length became so
deeply affected that his eyes filled with tears, and his whole great
soul was stirred to its very depths. "Magnanimous tears they were," says
Mr. Rush, "fit for the first of heroes to shed--virtuous, honorable,
sanctified!" Mr. Bradford, who deeply sympathized with the feelings of
Washington, was much affected at the spectacle, and, retiring to his own
house, wrote some simple and touching verses, called the "Lament of
Washington." They were an impromptu effusion from his heart.
[88] See _Mount Vernon and its Associations_, pages 285-293, inclusive.