Page images
PDF
EPUB

Insurgents, grew out of the disturbed state of our foreign relations, and are properly to be treated in connection with the scenes which marked the more troubled times of Mr. Adams. Washington's administration, in fact was, till almost its close, a continued calm. Though at no other period were the exciting causes so numerous and active, at no other was there so great freedom from party agitation. The convulsive struggle by which the old government had been cast off, was succeeded by a temporary sluggishness— by a disposition to yawn and stretch and to be not surprised at anything-and by a readiness to swallow with a good-humoured indifference inconveniences which a little while before would have been madly resisted. A successful revolution, in the nature of things, generates a contentment which leads its subject to take with perfect good nature, evils perhaps even greater than those by which the revolution itself was produced, very much in the same way that the boy who runs away from home will put up when before the mast with annoyances to which his early difficulties were trifles. Thus England in 1650, and France in 1800, crouched gently under a despotism more arbitrary than those which had just before been destroyed at such terrific cost. The same exertions which produced fatigue, generate submissiveness; and this submissiveness in its turn is the harbinger of the recovery of strength and vigour. Were it not for this torpid ductility, this self-abandonment to what Correa called "the special providence over the United States and little children," the accidents of a young government, like the accidents of a young child, would be fearfully accumulated. That indisposition to resist or struggle, which permits a drunken man to roll down stairs unhurt, where a man in full health would be bruised and broken, is the great safety-guard of a newly made government.

But even before the retirement of Washington, there were signs not to be mistaken that the season for repose was over. Within the eight years then closing, the country had acquired hardness, vigour and self-confidence; and it now felt itself ready to try its limbs. Infancy was over, and in the interval between infancy and manhood came that feverish susceptibility to external impressions, which Montesquieu ascribes to what he calls the climacteric of national puberty. The unquiet spirits who had infested the seaboard during the revolution, who had stimulated Gates to jealousy and Conway to rebellion, who had got the Pennsylvania line into a stew before the war, and after the war had got the whole nation into it, now began to peer out from their resting-place. Subdued and imprisoned, they had not been extinguished. The majestic presence before which they had quailed, while it deprived them of the capacity of doing mischief, had deprived them of a field in which mischief could be done, but that majestic presence was now withdrawn. For them, the night when Washington left office was the Walpurgis night, in which with impious triumph their liberation was to be solemnized. "Lord, let thy servant depart in peace," on the morning of the next day, exclaimed Dr. Leib, not the most turbulent of this disenthralled fraternity, in a communication to the Aurora, which excited in the sober part of the community such indignation as to compel the editor to disown it. To tempers such as these, all that was wanted was an opportunity by which sides could be taken. By Mr. Adams' advent this opportunity was given.*

In the seat of government, particularly, whence Congress naturally drew its tone, society was divided into factions which regarded each other with disgust and contempt. "Party passions are indeed bigh," exclaimed Mr. Jefferson, in a letter dated May 9, 1798. (3 Jeff. Corr. 390.) "Nobody has more reason to know it than myself. I receive daily bitter proofs of it from people who never saw me, nor knew anything of me but through Porcu. pine and Fenno. At this moment all the passions are boiling over, and one who keeps himself cool and clear of the contagion, is so far below the point of ordinary conversation, that he finds himself insulated from society."

But independently of this mere factiousness, a political schism arising from an organic difference of opinion, began now distinctly to manifest itself. The old anti-constitutional parties, it is true, were dissolved. The Constitution, as limited by successive amendments, was now a closed question; and though the nomenclature of the old parties continued, there had been a great interchange of elements. In Virginia, Mr. Henry and Mr. Madison, the great champions of the anti-federal and federal parties in the Constitutional convention, found their positions nominally reversed. In Maryland, Judge Chase and Mr. Luther Martin, by whom the anti-federal standard had been carried during the constitutional struggle, now were equally bold in the federal ranks, and this, too, without any avowed change of opinion. The truth was, that the question now was not whether the Constitution should be adopted, but being adopted, in what spirit it should be carried out. Those who thought it imposed too great a check on the people of the component states, were disposed to give it as severe a construction as possible: those who thought the check not great enough, were disposed to make that check greater by an opposite system of interpretation. "In one sense, indeed," says Mr. Macaulay, in referring to a parallel period in English history, "the distinction which then became obvious, has always existed, and always must exist; for it has its origin in diversities of temper, of understanding, and of interest, which are found in all societies, and which will be found till the human mind ceases to be drawn in opposite directions by the charm of habit, and the charm of novelty. Not only in politics, but in literature, in art, in science, in surgery and mechanics, in navigation and agriculture, nay, even in mathematics, we

In a letter to Governor Rutledge of about the same date, Mr. Jefferson goes still further. "You and I," he says, "have formerly seen warm debates, and high political passions. But gentlemen of different politics would then speak to each other, and separate the busi. ness of the Senate from that of society. It is not so now. Men who have been intimate all their lives, cross the street to avoid meeting, and turn their heads another way lest they should be obliged to touch their hats." (2 Tuck. Life of Jeff. 24.)

A striking instance of an overt act committed by the federal wing of the belligerents is given by Mr. Gerry's biographer, (2 Austin's Life of Gerry, 266.) "Letters anonymous or feigned, imputing his continuance in France to causes most distressing to a wife and a mother, in such forms as would give them the appearance of real correspondence, were conveyed to her by almost every post. On several occasions the morning's sun shone upon a model of a guillotine erected in the field before her window, smeared with blood, and having the effigy of a headless man. Savage yells were uttered in the night time to disturb the sleep of this family of females, and the glare of blazing fagots suddenly broke upon its darkness, to terrify them with the apprehensions of immediate conflagration." Mr. Adams relates, (Cun. Corr. 36,) that even at a much earlier period, so great was the heat that Washington's house was surrounded by an innumerable multitude, from day to day, burraing, demanding war against England, cursing Washington, and crying success to the French Patriots and virtuous republicans;" and though from a letter of the late Mr. Rawle, cited by Mr. Pickering in his review, (Pick. Rev. 104,) it appears that, so far as the innumerable multitude" is concerned, Mr. Adams' memory had failed him, yet there is no doubt that in the material point involved, the great party violence of the day, the statement was correct. How far even the courts reeled under the shock will be presently shown. The bar, certainly, was shaken.-"I appeal," said Mr. Dallas in 1799, (see post, 376), "to every man in court-I appeal to the attorney-general himself on this point: he carries a sword-cane, and so do I. There are many gentlemen in this country who, from the occasions of the times, and the combination of circumstances, also wear sword canes. There were two periods when every one wore weapons of defence from necessity. The first, when the police was so defective that robberies were constant, and self-protection became necessary through the defects of the law. The second, when political fury rose to such a height, as in 1785-6, that it no longer became a question of defence against robbers, but against political opponents." With the exception of the armistice extending from Washington's inauguration down to Jay's treaty, the temper of 1785-6 continued to 1802. By "armed associations" for the maintainance of personal rights, organized for the purpose of "taking the law into their own hands," Philadelphia was then regularly patrolled. (See Mr. Liston's letter to M. Russell, post 682.)

find this distinction. Everywhere there is a class of men who cling with fondness to whatever is ancient, and who, even when convinced by overpowering reasons, that innovation would be beneficial, consent to it with many misgivings and forebodings. We find, also, every where another class of men, sanguine in hope, bold in speculation, always pressing forward, quick to discern the imperfections of whatever exist, disposed to think lightly of the risks and inconveniences which attend improvements, and disposed to give every change credit for being an improvement."* The great point in the American Constitution which excited this kind of speculation, the only point which could be regarded as experimental, was that which recognized the will of the people as the governing power. Everything else was borrowed from England. Executive, legislative and judicial departments were established, among which the supreme authority was distributed on the same basis as in the mother country, and in proportions but slightly varied. The common law continued to be the law of the land, and with it came the organization both social and municipal through which the common law acts. But while these institutions were the same, the motive power under which they were now to act, was as much an experiment as was steam, when Fitch first attempted through its instrumentality to propel the sloop, which had been for years cutting the waters of the Delaware by means of wind and tide. Here, then, was a great problem to be solved; whether, under these new principles, government could be securely conducted. Upon one side or the other of this momentous question, parties now began to marshal themselves, and it was upon this, that a variation of temper was exhibited, much more intense, it is true, but analogous to that which divides the little senate of a kitchen, on the appearance of a newly-invented churn or cooking-range, and even produces discord in a college of philosophers on the promulgation of a new astronomical theory, or the introduction of a new mechanical element. This divergence of sentiment became more perceptible when the arc which it described, instead of as before, being confined by our own shores, was extended over the continent of Europe. In a little while the country was divided into two great parties, the one, confident of the feasibility of the Democratic principle, both here and in France, and insisting upon giving it full course; the other, doubting its virtue,† and skeptical of its success, seeking to restrain it by all

* 1 Macaul. Hist. of Eng., 91.

This low-spiritedness particularly appears in the writings of Mr. Ames, who is, so far, the only leading politician on the federal side whose letters, subsequent to 1800, have been unreservedly disclosed.

"Our fate is not foretold by signs and wonders: the meteors do not indeed glare in the form of types, and print it legibly in the sky; but our warning is as distinct and almost as awful, as if it were announced in thunder by the concussion of all the elements."-Ames' Works, 275.

"They are certainly blind who do not see that we are descending from a supposed orderly and stable republican government, into a licentious Democracy, with a progress that baffles all means to resist, and scarcely leaves leisure to deplore its celerity. The institutions and the hopes that Washington raised, are nearly prostrate; and his name and memory would perish, if the rage of his enemies had any power over history. But they have not: history will give scope to her vengeance, and posterity will not be defrauded.”—Ibid. 429.

"But as in the United States, we see less of this description of low vulgar, and as, in the essential circumstance alluded to, they are so much less manageable by their demagogues, we are to expect that our affairs will be long guided by courting the mob, before they are violently changed by employing them. While the passions of the multitude can be conciliated to confer power and to overcome all impediments to its actions, our rulers bave a plain and easy task to perform. It costs them nothing but hypocrisy. As soon, however, as rival favourites of the people may happen to contend by the practice of the same arts, we are to look for the sanguinary strife of ambition. Brissot will fall by the hand of Danton, and he will be supplanted by Robespierre. The revolution will proceed in exactly the same way, but not with so rapid a pace, as that of France."-Ibid. 437.

constitutional means. By the first, was sought a closer alliance with France; by the second, with England.*

France and England were now struggling for the mastery of the ocean, and by this gigantic contest the remotest tides were affected. The United States possessed the only carrying trade as yet unabsorbed, and presented, therefore, a surface particularly open to collision. The United States possessed the only neutral ships still afloat, as well as the only neutral seamen to man them; and to these essential staples, the contending powers looked both for sail and sailors. The one, secure in her maritime supremacy, strutted over the seas like a constable, breaking into our ships, and kidnapping their crews. The other, unable to rob in the highway, sneaked about the hedges and bushes, and sticking her flag out of the reach of the cannon of her rival, undertook upon American soil, out of American bottom and American sailors, to manufacture French privateers. The aggressions of the first could only be met, as at last they were met, by arms; the aggressions of the latter, being committed within our own jurisdiction, were the proper subjects of municipal action. It was from the efforts on the part of the American government to enforce its neutrality by this means, that a large proportion of the following prosecutions took origin.

But a mere recital of the proximate causes of these trials gives but an imperfect view of the circumstances which lent them such lively interest, and invested them with such great moment. To draw the American people from their neutrality, first by coaxing, then by bullying, had been the object of each of the belligerent powers. Provocations to war, as well as solicitations for alliance, had been given on both sides, and as alliance with both, or war with both, seemed impracticable, the question was, which to choose. Of all questions by which a country can be agitated, that as to which of two foreign alliances is to be accepted, is the most denationalizing; and to the worst type of this dangerous disease, the temperament of the American people rendered

"Federal men come from the northward to Congress, with an opinion that government is as strong as thunder; and that, by coaxing and going half way with certain southern members, they might be won. Both these opinions yield very soon to the evidence of their senses. They see government a puny thing, held up by great exertions and greater good luck, and assailed by a faction who feel an unextinguishable animosity against any debt compelling government, and whose importance sinks, as that of equal laws rises."Ibid., 477.

"My political life is ended, and I am the survivor of myself, or rather a troubled ghost of a politician, that am condemned to haunt the field of battle where I fell. Whether the government will long outlive me, is doubtful. I know it is sick, and many of the physicians say of a mortal disease. A crisis now exists the most serious I ever witnessed, and the more dangerous because it is not dreaded. Yet, I confess, if we could navigate the federal ship through this strait, and get out again into the open sea, we shall have a right to consider the chance of our government as mended. We shall have a lease for years--say four or five; not a freehold, certainly, not a fee simple."—Ibid. 481.

"Our country is too big for union, too sordid for patriotism, too democratic for liberty. What is to become of it, he who made it best knows. Its vice will govern it, by practising upon its folly."-Ibid. 483.

In a very lucid and ingenious article on Tucker's Life of Jefferson, published in 6 South. Lit. Mess. 642, the late lamented Judge Upshur endeavours to show the continuity of the old federal and anti federal parties, from 1780 to 1800. I think, however, the organic dif ference of opinion mentioned in the text, while it undoubtedly acted to produce the older parties, bore an equally direct relation to the latter; and that to it the federalists and republicans of from 1800 down, owed their origin much more than they did to the dissen sions as to the adoption of the federal constitution That such is Mr. Jefferson's rule, ap. pears from a letter to Lafayette, in Nov. 1823.-2 Tuck. Jeff., 464. "They," (Whigs and Tories.) exist in all countries, whether called by these names or by those of aristocrats and democrats, coté droite, coté gauche, ultras and radicals, serviles and liberals. The sickly, weak, timid man, fears the people, and is a Tory by nature. The healthy, strong and bold, cherish them, and is formed a Whig by nature." See generally M Cartney's U. S., 252.

them susceptible. This national impressibility of character was acted on by the liveliest, though most opposite sentiments. On the one side, there was a subtle, but potent attachment to England, produced in part by the business engagements so happily sketched by Mr. Jefferson in his famous letter to Mr. Gerry, and in part by that smouldering loyalty which with some had been but imperfectly choked, with others only hidden. This, with many of the older even of the active revolutionists, began to show itself in a melancholy, though powerful fondness for that country, which in childhood they had been taught to regard as their home. The approach to one end of life recalled to them the other; and like the old Swedes, at the mouth of the Schuylkill, who, when about to die, talked Swedish, though they had not heard it before for years, the twilight of life invested the landscape to them with colouring not unlike that under which they had viewed it in the dawn. Perhaps a more generous sentiment may have given its help; and the distress of the mother country may have wrought in them the same repentance as was produced in the non-juring clergy by the humiliation of James II. They could resist her in the pride of her strength, but trample on her in her necessity they could not.

These tendencies, aided by the anti-revolutionary impulse generally, were met by a current, which, if not so deep, was more vehement. The feeling that, after having set up the republican system ourselves, we were bound to see any nation safely through, who took it on our recommendation, co-operated with the enthusiastic attachment to the French people which their revolutionary aid had produced. The country was in an ecstasy of delight at the first motions of the French reformers. As long as they kept within decent bounds, there was no limit to the expressions of attachment and encouragement which arose from this side of the Atlantic. Even Washington himself dropped for a moment his grave and measured tone, in congratulating the first minister of regenerated France. It required many an insult bitterly flung-many an injury wantonly inflicted-to weaken in the American confederacy its devotion to its old European ally.

Had these sentiments spent themselves in town-meetings and newspaper articles, the country might have come out without either war or dishonour. But the irritation was now no longer of the surface only. The fever had reached the heart. The question now was not what measures we should adopt, but whose people we should become,-no longer what we should swallow, but who should swallow us. When parties divide as to which of two foreign alliances is to be taken, the danger is always that they lose themselves in the interest they espouse. Thus, the Thirty Years' war changed the German people into Austrians or Swedes; Germans being found no longer. With us, to use the language of a foreigner, quoted by Mr. Tucker,* the year 1800 found many French and many English, but few Americans. Indeed, to go back fifty years, is to cross the Atlantic. The battles of the Pyramids, of Jemappes, Lodi, and Arcola, were here re-fought, and here the cannons of Trafalgar awakened grief the most passionate, or exultation the most boisterous. Upon the American sky, through the powerful lens of popular sympathy, were cast the spectra of the Belgian and Italian campaigns. When the long procession of French victories suddenly stopped in 1798, with the hemming in of the Anglo-Russians at Alkmaer, and the landing in Ireland of the French volunteers under Humbert, the pause brought about at this very moment by the interval between the quick sailing packet that had just arrived, and the slow sailing packet that was coming, was one of fearful stillness. Between France stepping on the British Islands as a conqueror, and France beaten back upon the seas, there was in Europe scarcely a day, but with us

* 2 Tuck. Life of Jeff., 19.

« PreviousContinue »