determined" to which of the two, Jefferson or Burr, "preference was due," but that he "could not bring himself to aid Mr. Jefferson!"

Rutledge of South Carolina, a man of extraordinarily high honor in ordinary affairs, wrote: "Should Mr. Jefferson be disposed to make (as he would term it) an improvement (and as we should deem it a subversion) of our Constitution, the attempt would be fatal to us." Now mark the conclusion, which shows the character of "subversion of our Constitution" to which Rutledge was referring: "For he [i. e., Jefferson] would begin by democratizing the people, and end with throwing everything into their hands!" (Italics and exclamation are both mine.) This was such an enormous iniquity that even an honest gentleman like Rutledge wanted it prevented by defeating the known will of the people! It shows that when once the poisonous germ of aristocratic arrogance gets into a man's head, it destroys all vestiges of a moral code in affairs of State.

Fortunately for our institutions and peace, Alexander Hamilton feared and hated Burr, more than he hated Jefferson.

But while trying to persuade all his Federalist friends -and really persuading not one-to vote for Jefferson as against Burr, he did it on the ground that Burr was "a Catiline," and all that. He exhibited neither any motive higher than one of personal choice, nor the slightest indication of a consciousness of the binding obligation on the citizen to obey the will of the nation honestly expressed in a democratic republic.

Neither then nor afterwards did he betray any

regret, or any consciousness of wrong concerning what he had connived at in Pennsylvania, and attempted to persuade John Jay and the Federalist Legislature to do in New York. He never once took the position taken even by cynical Gouverneur Morris, and much less that taken by Huger of South Carolina — who lived and died a Federalist, but a republican to wit:in Huger's words that "the people had elected" Jefferson, and that "it was for them to elect a President, and not for me," and that, therefore, he would vote to seat him, over Burr- the only constitutional choice left him being between these two.

The Federalists had their choice between three things, either to elect Burr, or confirm the people's election of Jefferson, or to continue the deadlock, and thereby leave the Government without executive head. In the last event, the plan was for the Federalist Congress to usurp the authority of "reorganizing the Government" by passing a law vesting the chief magistracy in some man of its choice - John Marshall, Secretary of State, being apparently the favorite, though the Speaker of the House, and the President pro tempore of the Senate, all three Federalists, were mentioned.

Jefferson very quietly, but resolutely, denied the right of Congress to "reorganize the government," or "any part of it"; said that no authority existed for the purpose "save in the people themselves," and that "they might authorize a convention to reorganize and even amend the machine." This suggestion of a convention was an insuperable checkmate to the CounterRevolutionists.

His constant reply to everybody who approached him was that "there were ten individuals in the House of Representatives, any one of whom by changing his vote" could not only relieve the deadlock, but do the will of the people. He said, that if the House of Representatives should elect Burr, he and his party would submit. It had a technically constitutional right to do that, although in doing it its members would commit substantial treason against the known will of the American people. But if they undertook to pass a law, to use his language, "for putting the government into the hands of an officer," that would be clearly a usurpation to which Americans could not submit, and would call for a different and more virile treatment. So, at his suggestion, he and all his friends "declared openly," that "the day such an act passed, the Middle States [meaning Virginia and Pennsylvania] would arm," and "no such usurpation, even for a single day, should be submitted to."

"This first shook them," and then they were completely alarmed at "the ultimate resort" for which Jefferson declared, to wit: "A convention to reorganize the government and to amend the Constitution." Of course, the convention once sitting would have unlimited powers, subject to State ratifications. All that was necessary was to protect it in its deliberations. Jefferson said that "the very word convention gave them the horrors, as in the present democratical spirit of America, they fear they should lose some of the favorite morsels of the Constitution." This declaration and this "ultimate resort" is what really called a first halt upon the Federalist conspiracy to remain in power

despite the election. Then they tried to get Jefferson to make terms. But here too they failed. In a letter to Monroe, of February 15th, he says: "I have declared to them unequivocally that I would not receive the government on capitulations, and that I would not go into it with my hands tied."

They had pursued the usual course of enemies of democracy and of popular liberty; they had first contemplated a clear usurpation, and that being balked- they had then attempted to prevail upon the choice of the people, in return for office and emolument, to prove traitor to his constituency by becoming the condition-bound servant of the self-asserted better element.

They thus found themselves confined to the election of Burr, hoping from his gratitude a betrayal of his constituents.

Even to do this they must make a break in the Democratic-Republican phalanx in the House. The House, when voting by States, was a tie.

Jefferson's policy throughout was not only wise and bold, but it was assured, unless some of his own party deserted him for Burr. The Federalists had not succeeded in organizing their army. John Adams's "fool peace" had balked that. The people were no longer afraid. Two great strong States — Virginia and Pennsylvania, strategically situated-had as executives two quietly-determined men, Monroe and McKean, who were mobilizing the State forces in order to protect the convention, which, if need were, would be called by the President-elect, and to which every Republican State, and the Republican voters in the other States,

would at once send delegates, with such consequence of a thorough democratization of the government as might follow. At every point of the game Jefferson had the counter-revolutionists checkmated.

In a letter to James Madison, dated February 18, 1801, he says: "The minority in the House of Representatives, after seeing the impossibility of electing Burr, the certainty that a legislative usurpation would be resisted by arms, and recourse had to a convention to reorganize and amend the Constitution," were at their wit's ends. Things were brought to an end for them when "Morris, of Vermont, withdrew, which made Lyon's vote that of his State." This was Matthew Lyon, the Jeffersonian, who had served a jail sentence under the Sedition Law.

of

This Morris was a relative — nephew, I believe Gouverneur Morris, to some extent under the influence of the latter, and probably in this particular act actually influenced by him. All the subsequent attempts of Bayard, of Delaware, to take the credit to himself of what occurred, and then to tarnish that credit by claiming that his act of withholding Delaware's vote had been conditioned upon certain promises made by Jefferson, through Smith of Maryland, all of which was denied point blank by Smith; all the claims of Hamilton's friends, that he ought to have the credit, are equally baseless. Bayard quit only when the spectre of a convention frightened him into a semi-paralyzed halt. Hamilton did want Jefferson to beat Burr, and in so far as that is creditable to him, he deserves credit.

The only other Federalist, besides Robert Morris and