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On the 1st day of March, 1805, three days before Jefferson's second inauguration, Aaron Burr rose from his chair as presiding officer of the Senate, and with ill-concealed congratulation in his voice and gesture declared the defendant "not guilty." As twenty-four of the thirty-four members of the Senate were Republicans, it was evident that Judge Chase had not been acquitted by the strength of the "Federalist faction"; and it was also evident to John Randolph that the cause of his party's infidelity and his own humiliation was the baleful influence of the Northern and Middle States on the administration. Jefferson had set on foot the impeachment proceedings, but had not been able to hold his followers in the Senate together for a verdict of condemnation. The President was shielded behind his discreet silence, while the obloquy of a public defeat rested on John Randolph of Roanoke. He was through with being the catspaw to pull Thomas Jefferson's chestnuts from the fire.

Randolph's opportunity for revenge was not long delayed. Since his excursion into the historical study of the boundaries of Louisiana during his summer rest at Monticello, Jefferson had been obsessed with the idea that Florida was rightfully ours. He came to feel that the whole glory of the Louisiana Purchase for his administration depended on the possession of Florida. But Spain interposed her stubborn refusal to give up an inch of territory

east of the Iberville and the Lakes, while Talleyrand, after having encouraged the American envoys to push the claim, blandly announced that France had not really received Florida from Spain in 1800, and hence could not have sold it to the United States in 1803. Jefferson, however, thought he knew better what Napoleon had bought and sold than Napoleon knew himself, and bent all the powers of his diplomacy to persuade the Corsican, who assumed the imperial crown of Charlemagne on December 2, 1804, to force Spain to relinquish Florida. It was the most unwise policy of Jefferson's administration. It exposed him to the triple charge of impatience, infatuation, and venality: impatience, because Jefferson himself had declared that the Floridas would come to us sooner or later through the development of our Mississippi Territory; infatuation because he thought he could exert pressure on the man who was setting out on the conquest of Europe1; and venality, because he was willing to pay again secretly through Napoleon as the "honest.

1 Little did Jefferson realize the course which the renewed war between England and Napoleon would take in Europe. He looked on it as an embarrassment to Napoleon, which would dispose him to lend a favorable ear to representations from Washington! "The present crisis," he said in a message to Congress, December 6, 1805, "is favorable for pressing such a settlement [the claim to Florida] and not a moment should be lost in availing ourselves of it." Four days before this message was read Napoleon had shattered the imperial armies of Austria and Russia at Austerlitz, and established the mastery of the Continent of Europe which was to be finally broken only on the field of Waterloo a decade later.

broker" for what he publicly insisted we had already bought.

In fact, Jefferson was in a most uncomfortable dilemma. To waive the claim to Florida would tarnish, as he believed, the most brilliant and popular act of his administration. To insist on the claim to Florida would mean war with Spain (unless Napoleon should help us), which Jefferson was more anxious to avoid than the Court of Madrid. "Why should we give up Florida without a struggle," said the Spaniards, "when all you could get as a result of a victory over our arms would be just Florida?" In this dilemma Jefferson resorted to tactics which he had practised three years before in the purchase of Louisiana. Just as he then threatened that we would "marry ourselves to the British fleet and nation" the moment the French established themselves at the mouth of the Mississippi, and at the same time instructed our minister to negotiate for the purchase of New Orleans, so now he threatened war with Spain in public, hoping to frighten her to consent to a bargain in private. The regular annual message which was sent in to Congress on December 3, 1805, was quite belligerent in tone, as it recounted the manifold offenses of Spain: her refusal to recognize the just limits of Louisiana, her depredations on our commerce at Mobile, the marauding expeditions of her subjects into our Mississippi Territory. A further communication on the subject

was promised shortly. Three days later a "confidential" message came from the President and was read behind closed doors to a House tense with the expectation of the recommendation of war. But the message proved to be as mild as any pacifist could wish. Instead of calling for the use of the army and navy against perfidious Spain, it suggested that the time was "favorable for pressing a settlement," and pledged the President to pursue with zeal the course which Congress (to whom it "belonged exclusively to yield or deny" [resist]) should determine. This cryptic message was referred to a committee of which John Randolph was chairman. When Randolph demanded in a personal interview at the White House what the President meant in plain terms, he was told that two million dollars were wanted to secure the cession of the Floridas.

Randolph had not scrupled to lend his aid to a similar negotiation for the purchase of Louisiana, but that was in the early days when he was friendly to the administration. Now Randolph, to the dismay of the President's friends, rose in his seat and opposed the appropriation of the two million dollars with all the sarcastic vehemence of his nature. What was the meaning of this double dealing of the President, he asked: a message for the public breathing dire defiance and a secret message for Congress hinting that they might choose peace and the pay

ment of tribute? Did the President wish to pose before England and Spain as a warrior bold, and shift to Congress the unpopular rôle of seeming to restrain him within the peaceful bounds which he never in his heart meant to exceed? Were we to "prostrate our national character to excite one nation [France] by money to bully another nation [Spain] out of its property?" He for one would have no part in this nefarious scheme to "deliver the public purse to the first cutthroat that demanded it."

Surprised and chagrined by this proclamation of rebellion, Jefferson saw himself obliged to choose between the harmony of his party and the maintenance of his policy. He chose the latter, and John Randolph led off his group of "Quids" in schism. They were not many. Jefferson affected a certain indifference to their defection, speaking of them a year later in a letter to W. C. Nicholas as a "little band of schismatists who will be 3 or 4 (all tongue)."” But in spite of this exaggerated depreciation Jefferson felt it keenly when twelve of the twenty-two Virginia members of the House voted against the two-million-dollar bill. He carried the measure, by the rather narrow margin of seventy-six to fifty-four, and with it a bill to prohibit American trade with the French island of Santo Domingo, which Talleyrand had declared "must stop." So far was he willing to go on the road of deference to Napoleon!

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