IV. two active campaigns he resigned his commission and CHAPTER recommenced the study of the law, upon the practice of which he entered at New York shortly after its evac- 1791. uation by the British. An act had been passed by the Legislature just before the peace, and in anticipation of it, disqualifying from practice all attorneys and counselors who could not produce satisfactory certificates of Whig principles. This law remained in force for three or four years, and it enabled Burr, Hamilton, and other young advocates to obtain a run of practice which otherwise they might not have reached so early. Hamilton was indeed a very able lawyer, but Burr, though regarded as his rival, seems to have trusted more to subtleties, finesse, and nice points of technicality than to any enlarged application of more generous legal principles. He was soon elected to the state Legislature; but that post he did not long retain, having given offense to his constituents on some local question. Governor Clinton appointed him Attorney General, possibly with a view to conciliate a man whose political talent and influence were already distinguished. Clinton professed, indeed, not to be influenced in his appointments to office by personal or party considerations, to which profession he acted up with more consistency than is always displayed by those who make it. The election of Burr to the Senate of the United States was perhaps a counterbid from the Federal side. In several of the states the election of members of the House had been warmly contested, and the number of those opposed to the prevailing policy had been somewhat increased. Yet a large proportion of the old members had been rechosen: from New Hampshire, Livermore; from Massachusetts, Gerry, Ames, Goodhue, and Sedgwick; from Connecticut, Trumbull and Wadsworth; CHAPTER from New York, Lawrence and Benson; Boudinot from IV. New Jersey; Fitzsimmons, Hartley, and Frederic H. 1791. Muhlenburg from Pennsylvania; Vining from Delaware; Madison, Page, Giles-indeed, all the old members from Virginia, with a single exception; Williamson from North Carolina; Smith, Sumter, and Tucker from South Carolina; and Baldwin from Georgia. Among the new members were Artemas Ward, of Massachusetts, commander-in-chief of the Massachusetts army of 1775, and first Continental major general; William Van Murray, of Maryland; James Hillhouse, of Connecticut ; Jonathan Dayton and Abraham Clark, of New Jersey, the latter one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence; William Findley and Andrew Gregg, of Pennsylvania; and Nathaniel Macon, of North Carolina. Anthony Wayne, who had lately removed to Georgia, had been returned as one of the representatives of that state, in place of the voluble and impetuous Jackson. Jackson petitioned against the return, in which he was supported by a vote of the Georgia Assembly, who ordered proceedings forthwith against certain parties accused of malpractice in the matter, some of whom were subjected to punishment. Toward the close of the session, Wayne was unanimously deprived of his seat; but an attempt to give it to Jackson failed by the speaker's casting vote, and a new election was ordered. But Muhlenburg, the Speaker of the first Congress, was a member of this, but the chair was given to Trumbull of Connecticut, perhaps on the principle of rotation in office. The president, in his speech, congratulated Congress on the prosperity of the nation, the productiveness of the revenue, and the disposition generally evinced to submit to the new excise duties. He announced the selection of a site for the federal capital on both sides of IV. the River Potomac, on the north bank of which the new CHAFTER federal city was already laid out. The organization of the militia, the reorganization of the post-office depart- 1791. ment, the establishment of a mint, uniformity of weights. and measures, and a provision for the sale of the vacant lands of the United States, were again pressed upon the attention of Congress. The president also dwelt at length upon Indian affairs, and upon a just, impartial, and humane policy toward the Indian tribes as essential to the establishment and maintenance of peace on the frontiers. That same modification of political parties which had taken place throughout the country soon made itself apparent in the new Congress. The Federalists, from be ing mere supporters of the Federal Constitution, had become supporters of the particular scheme of policy recom mended by the Secretary of the Treasury, and carried into effect by the first Congress. The anti-Federalists, on the other hand, dropping their late objections to the Constitution, had subsided, for the most part, into opponents of Hamilton and his financial system. This party, a minority in the House, and yet more so in the Senate, found, however, an able coadjutor, and even a leader, in the very bosom of the cabinet, where a conflict of opinions upon points both theoretical and practical, not unmixed with strong personal jealousies, had already begun to show itself. Gifted by nature with a penetrating understanding, a lively fancy, and sensibilities quick and warm; endow ed with powers of pleasing, joined to a desire to please, which made him, in the private circle, when surrounded by friends and admirers, one of the most agreeable of men; exceedingly anxious to make a figure, yet far more desirous of applause than of power; fond of hypothesis, IV. CHAPTER inclined to dogmatize, little disposed to argument or con troversy, impatient of opposition, seeing every thing so 1791. highly colored by his feelings as to be quite incapable of candor or justice toward those who differed from him; adroit, supple, insinuating, and, where he had an object to accomplish, understanding well how to flatter and to captivate; led by the warmth of his feelings to lay himself open to his friends, but toward the world at large. cautious and shy; cast, both as to intellect and temper. ament, in a mold rather feminine than masculine, Jefferson had returned from France, strengthened and confirmed by his residence and associations there in those theoretical ideas of liberty and equality to which he had given utterance in the Declaration of Independence. During his residence in Europe, as well as pending the Revolutionary struggle, Jefferson's attention seems to have been almost exclusively directed toward abuses of power. Hence his political philosophy was almost entirely negative-its sum total seeming to be the reduction of the exercise of authority within the narrowest possible limits, even at the risk of depriving government of its ability for good as well as for evil; a theory extremely well suited to place him at the head of those who, for various reasons, wished to restrict, as far as might be, the authority of the new general government. Though himself separated from the mass of the people by elegance of manners, refined tastes, and especially by philosophical opinions on the subject of religion, in political affairs Jefferson was disposed to allow a controlling, indeed absolute authority to the popular judgment. The many he thought to be always more honest and disinterested, and in questions where the public interests were concerned, more wise than the few, who might always be suspected of having private purposes of their own t IV. serve. Hence he was ever ready to allow even his most CHAPTER cherished theoretical principles to drop into silence the moment he found them in conflict with the popular cur- 1791. rent. To sympathize with popular passions seemed to be his test of patriotism; to sail before the wind as a popular favorite, the great object of his ambition; and it was under the character of a condescending friend of the people that he rose first to be the head of a party, and then the chief magistrate of the nation. The two men who stood most immediately and obviously in Jefferson's way were John Adams, the vicepresident, and Hamilton, the Secretary of the Treasury; men in character, temperament, and opinions as different from him as they were from each other. By dint of untiring energy, seconded by great natural abilities, and an unextinguishable thirst for eminence which brooked no superior and hardly an equal, Adams had risen from the condition of a country lawyer, the son of a poor farmer and mechanic, through various grades of public service, to the eminence which he now held. Nor did his aspirations stop short of the highest distinction in the power of the nation to bestow. Having risen by no paltry arts of popularity or intrigue, for which he was but little fitted, nor by any captivating charm of personal manners, which he was very far from possessing, but owing every thing to the respect which his powerful talents, his unwearied labors, and his great public services had inspired, he still desired to be what he always had been, a leader rather than a follower, rather to guide public opinion than merely to sail before it. He, too, had his political theories, very different from those of Jefferson-theories which he had not hesitated to set forth with a frankness very dangerous to his popularity. Alarmed at the lev eling principles, as he esteemed them, to which the prog |