The United States of America Part 10

The presidential election machinery had been tried a third time and had worked smoothly. Electors had been chosen in each State without the predicted revolution and bloodshed. They had cast seventy-one votes for John Adams and sixty-eight for Thomas Jefferson. The former, having received the highest number of votes, was declared President and the latter Vice-President. Perhaps some of those who had voted for Adams may have thought the Vice-Presidency a place of training for the higher office, and its inc.u.mbent in the line of promotion. But on examining the geographical distribution of the vote, one sees that sectionalism influenced the result of this third presidential election, as it did a majority of later ones. The vote for Adams came almost entirely from the Northern States; that for Jefferson from the Southern. Adams stood for Federalism, for centralisation, for a continuation of the policy of the present Administration. He and Hamilton were close friends.

They broke only when Hamilton found that he could not influence President Adams as he had President Washington. Electors who voted for Jefferson thought he stood for principles exactly opposite to those of Adams. His antipathy to Hamilton was the best guarantee against centralisation being continued under his management.

Those who had prophesied that the overwhelming majority of Washington would result in a series of re-elections during his life, or that the expiration of each term would find the country in some danger which would demand his continuance, had been silenced by a farewell address declaring his intention to retire. The pattern of two terms which he set no President has ever dared attempt to exceed. The opponents of his administration, those who had foreseen the coming royal reception in the simple levee which marked his social life, or who objected to the growing custom of celebrating his birthday as if he were a monarch, were compelled to cease their evil prophecies when he attended, as a spectator, the inauguration of his successor in the room of the House of Representatives adjacent to old Independence Hall in Philadelphia on the fourth day of March, 1797. As the incoming President wrote to his wife, the mult.i.tude was as great as the s.p.a.ce would contain and not a dry eye but Washington's. Like the formative influence of a good parent extending from generation to generation, the precedent of Washington's voluntary retirement from the Presidency has been a rich heritage to the American people. It may be safely said that it is largely the cause of the pleasing contrast which exists between the changes of administration in the United States and those in the other American republics.

CHAPTER XII

SUPPRESSING THE FRENCH SYMPATHISERS

The only cloud on the horizon the day that John Adams became President lay in the direction of France and was caused by the Jay Treaty. It seemed impossible to keep peace with both belligerents abroad or with their factions at home. Adams would probably be more scrupulous of the rights of the individual than Hamilton; yet drastic measures were likely to become necessary if the pro-British and the pro-French agitators were to be muzzled and their clamour hushed. Such a censorship of speech was a thing not to be lightly contemplated in America.

Freedom of speech and the press had been inherited as a privilege of Englishmen, wrested from those in authority by years of contest, and maintained only by constant vigilance. A guarantee that it should not be restricted by the State had been placed in many of the State const.i.tutions. A similar prohibition formed the first amendment to the Federal Const.i.tution. Freedom of movement is closely akin to freedom of speech. Not even in the heyday of State sovereignty had any serious attempt been made to prevent the movement of un.o.bjectionable free people from one State to another. The Const.i.tution guaranteed to citizens of each State all privileges and immunities of citizens of the several States. The same instrument allowed Congress to establish a uniform rule of naturalisation in making United States citizens out of foreign immigrants; but the right of declaring who should be citizens of the States, having been a.s.sumed by the State const.i.tutions, was left to them individually. State and national citizenship were thus separate from the beginning. For these reasons it could happen, as pointed out in the Dred Scott decision many years later, that a State could make an alien into a citizen of the State, ent.i.tled to all its rights and privileges, but he might still be an alien in the United States and deprived of national citizenship.

The first Congress recognised its const.i.tutional obligation to provide a uniform law for national citizenship by allowing an alien who had resided two years within its jurisdiction and one year within any State to take an oath before any court of common-law record to support the Const.i.tution and thereby become a citizen. Five years later, Congress feared that the warring powers of Europe would send undesirable aliens to the United States. "Coming from a quarter of the world so full of disorder and corruption," said a speaker in the House, "they might contaminate the purity and simplicity of the American character." A new naturalisation law was pa.s.sed, requiring an alien to give three years' notice of his intention to change his allegiance--a kind of period of repentance. The required time of residence was then raised to five years for the nation and one for the State. During that time he must maintain a good moral character, must abjure allegiance to all other sovereigns, and must renounce all hereditary t.i.tles and orders of n.o.bility. In this way one speaker said he hoped to shut out those refugees from the twenty thousand French n.o.bility, who might choose to fly to the United States. Another expected to see an equally large number of the peerage arrive from Britain, as soon as the correct principles of government should take root there.

Little alarm need have been felt about those members of the deposed n.o.bility of France who did arrive. They were more concerned with getting daily bread than acquiring citizenship or retaining their t.i.tles.

Prince, marquis and marquise, vicomte, and bishop, alike must keep body and soul together by turning wig-maker, baker, or milliner, until the madness of the French people should pa.s.s. By and by, the changes of fortune in France began to send over Const.i.tutionalists, Thermidorians, Fructidorians, and the like, to plot and intrigue. "They kept their eyes fixed on France," said a French volunteer, who had returned to America to secure the pay due him since Revolutionary days, "to which all expected to return sooner or later and recommence what each called his _great work_, for there were exactly the same number of political systems as there were refugees." The French sympathisers in America mingled with these _emigres_ and were more or less concerned with their plans. The press offered the opportunity to vent much of their spleen on Washington and to express their opinions of the "British United States Government," as they called it.

Added to these scribblers were certain other agitators, preachers, and writers, refugees from England and Scotland, driven out by the British Government in its effort to keep the sentiments of the French propagandists from taking root in British soil. More libel suits had been inst.i.tuted in the courts of England during a single year of the French Revolution than in any two previous decades. Among those banished was Thomas Paine, who had returned to London, after lending his pen to the American cause, and had written the famous, or infamous, as some called it, _Rights of Man_. Many of these aliens in America were scribblers who had picked up a few current phrases and lofty sentiments about liberty and equality. They were of varying ability as writers, but uniform in their venomous abuse and hatred of England and all her sympathisers. In the rapid increase of newspapers, which marked this first period of prosperity and the birth of political parties, many of these writers found precarious employment; a few found remunerative occupations. Of the two hundred newspapers published in the United States when John Adams became President, it was estimated that at least twenty-five were edited by men of alien birth.

At few later periods have political parties brought out such scurrilous abuse in the press as in these early days. Although the number of newspapers has so increased that irresponsible and vulgar men are to be found among editors, although the restraints of law upon the press have been greatly loosened, yet the tone of the leading newspapers to-day is immeasurably better than it was a century ago. As the opposition to the Administration gradually crystallised into a party, few suffered more from the pens of its writers than did the first President. The abuse, which included such grave charges as that he had murdered a French envoy near Fort DuQuesne years before, that he had taken money illegally from the United States Treasury, and that he hoped to turn his Presidency into a monarchical reign, followed him to the end of his administration. Washington's replies to the numerous addresses of societies and public meetings which had greeted his entrance to office eight years before breathed a spirit of toleration.

It was his eminent desire, as he said in one reply, to have every a.s.sociation and community make such use of the auspicious years of peace, liberty, and free inquiry, as they should hereafter rejoice in having done.

At the same time, the mind of Washington, the exclusive Virginia gentleman, could easily make a distinction between liberty and license.

He attributed the insurrection against the excise almost entirely to the unbridled utterances of the Democratic clubs, their "first formidable fruits," as he put it. Nor did he fail, in reporting the suppression of the rebellion to the next Congress, to express his opinion of these "self-created societies" who disseminated suspicions, jealousies, and accusations of the whole Government. Jefferson, still believing in the original doctrine of the rights of man, called this allusion of the President "the greatest error of his political life."

The societies would have soon died out if left alone, he said. Coercion would make them thrive. "It is wonderful," continued Jefferson to Madison, "that the President should have permitted himself to be the organ of such an attack on the freedom of discussion, freedom of writing, printing, and publishing." He p.r.o.nounced it almost incredible that the freedom of a.s.sociation and of the press should be attacked in the fifth year of the new Government, a step which England, fast advancing to an absolute monarchy, had not yet attempted.

There was small probability that this abuse from the Jacobin clubs and presses would cease with the retirement of Washington. When he gave out his farewell address, written by "the President's president," as they called Hamilton, a Vermont editor regretted that he had not retired four years before, which would have saved the country from having been so debauched by its mistress, England. The day of his departure for Mount Vernon was celebrated by a scurrilous attack in the _Aurora_, which a defender of his memory vindicated by an a.s.sault upon its editor.

John Adams, as Vice-President, had long been pilloried as "the dangerous Vice," for his theories upon inherited talent, a doctrine in direct contradiction to the tenets of democracy. He also appeared in the Jacobin prints as "President Crispin," the son of a shoemaker, and as "the President of three votes," alluding to the narrow majority of Adams over Jefferson in the recent election. Many went so far as to charge that the election of Adams had been accomplished by prematurely closing the polls in a Maryland election district and by the action of a Pennsylvania postmaster, who held back the returns. Franklin's recent death had plunged the people of two hemispheres into mourning.

His memory was not sacred enough to prevent an accusation that he had once pocketed the money for two hundred thousand stand of arms, which had been intended as a present to the United States from the King of France. The oft-repeated scandal of the lost million francs was freshly ventilated. Yet so precious was freedom of speech in America that even those attacked hesitated to follow British pattern in placing a censor over the press. Even Patrick Henry, being rapidly won to the support of the experiment which he had formerly opposed, declared: "Although I am a Democrat myself, I like not the late Democratic societies. As little do I like their suppression by law."

President Adams had years before placed himself on record concerning the freedom of the press. Long a fulsome contributor to the newspapers on political questions, he had said: "There is not in any nation of the world so unlimited a freedom of the press as is now established in every State of the American Union, both by law and practice. There is nothing that the people dislike that they do not attack."

Entertaining such liberal opinions, an unforgiving enemy to Britain, an admirer of the French people since first he came into contact with them, John Adams entered the Presidency prepared to save the press from the storm gathering about it. But the partisans would not stop their abuse long enough to examine his predilections or to forecast the att.i.tude he was likely to a.s.sume in his conduct of foreign affairs.

They were enraged by the advantage apparently given to Britain in the Jay Treaty, disappointed in the continued repression of every effort to aid France, and emboldened by the high tone of the French Directory after the sympathetic Monroe had been ordered home to be replaced by the Federalist, Pinckney. They sneered at Adams's inaugural address where he admitted a personal esteem for the French nation, formed during seven years spent abroad and chiefly in Paris, and expressed a sincere desire to preserve the friendship which had been so much to the honour and interest of both nations.

Notwithstanding these cordial words, President Adams, within three months, was calling together the first extra session of Congress in the history of the Government, and informing them in vigorous language that Pinckney, an American Minister, had been refused cards of hospitality by the Executive Directory at the head of the Republic of France, had been threatened by the police, and had finally been practically ordered out of the country. The right to reject an amba.s.sador was recognised by the law of nations. But "a refusal to receive him until we have acceded to their demands without discussion and without investigation," said the President, "is to treat us neither as allies nor as friends, nor as a sovereign state." The warlike message advised strengthening the army and navy, perfecting the coast defences, preventing further building of foreign cruisers in the United States, and the raising of revenue sufficient for these purposes. Although closing with a promise of continued effort toward neutrality, this hostile address from the first statesman-President forms a strong contrast with the mild messages of the first soldier-President. The granite rock of New England had been reached and it gave no evidence of yielding. The response to the defensive tone of the President varied according to foreign affiliations. Parties in America were as yet reflections of European wars. The pro-British faction, strong in all parts of the National Government except the executive, were as eager for a trial at arms with France as they had been reluctant for war with England two years before. Hamilton wrote columns for the daily press to prove that the a.s.sistance which France gave to us during our struggle for independence was based on purely selfish motives. We were bound by no ties of grat.i.tude to yield to her pique at the Jay Treaty.

"Those who can justify displeasure in France on this account," said he, "are not Americans but Frenchmen. They are not fit for being members of an independent nation."

The opponents to this att.i.tude--those whom Hamilton called "the servile minions of France, who have no sensibility to injury but when it comes from Great Britain, and who are unconscious of any rights to be protected against France," were equally clamorous for forbearance.

They asked Adams, in this crisis, to send a sympathetic man, say Jefferson, who would be acceptable to France and would soothe French pride and avert the threatened war. Although Jay had been taken by Washington from the Supreme Bench to be sent as envoy to England, Adams thought the Vice-President too dignified a person to be used in this manner. Such an action would also imperil the presidential succession.

Yet he was desirous of seeking some kind of an accommodation to preserve neutrality. Although France had "inflicted a wound in the American breast," as he put it in his message, he appointed three special envoys to renew negotiations. Their number would protect American interests and show to France the gravity of the situation. Pinckney, the rejected Minister, was made quite justly one of the three. John Marshall, the second member, like Pinckney, belonged to the anti-French faction.

Gerry, the third envoy, was a former Anti-Federalist and a sympathiser with France.

The treatment which these three envoys received in France caused the tempest in a teapot commonly known as "the X Y Z affair." By discrediting the French faction, it hastened the day of their attempted suppression by the Government of the United States. With the mysterious methods current during the days of the contemptible Directory then at the head of the Government of France, certain supposed go-betweens approached the American envoys with suggestions that "money, lots of money," would be necessary to heal the wounds inflicted on the French heart by the Jay Treaty and by the recent words of President Adams.

This gold, it was said, was necessary as a pre-requisite for opening negotiations. Part of it was to const.i.tute a loan to carry on the war with England, and the rest was understood to be a _douceur_ for the pockets of the members of the Directory. "We loaned you money in your hour of need," Pinckney was told by a mysterious Frenchwoman, who figured in the affair. "Why should not you lend to us?"

[Ill.u.s.tration: A HALF PAGE OF THE X Y Z DISPATCHES. From the original in the Department of State. A close inspection will show the brackets drawn around the name of Horttinguer and the letter "X" inserted in margin on left. This was done by order of Timothy Pickering, Secretary of State, before the dispatches were published.]

In the reports of these envoys which John Adams sent to Congress as rapidly as received, the name of Hubbard, who had introduced the three to the go-betweens, was indicated by the letter "W," Horttinguer by "X," Bellamy by "Y," and Hauteval, who acted as interpreter, by "Z."

It was useless for Jefferson, Madison, and the French sympathisers in America to point out that _douceur_ meant a gift and not a bribe, and that the supposed go-betweens were discredited and their action disavowed by Talleyrand and the Directory. It was believed and is currently stated in America that an attempt was made to bribe these dignified representatives of the American people. The national spirit was aroused. Unionism received such an impulse as years of domestic relationship could not produce. The war microbe was loosed among the people. One of those sudden outbursts of national rage, as unexpected as violent, ran the length and breadth of the land. A broadside was circulated, with stanzas beginning:

"At length the Envoys deign to tell us They had to deal with scurvey fellows-- With Autun and the five-head beast And half the alphabet, at least."

For perhaps the only time in his life, John Adams tasted the sweets of a widespread popularity. His birthday, like that of his predecessor, was generally celebrated. The sympathetic French following was swept off its feet. "Exultation on one side and a certainty of victory; while the other is petrified with astonishment," was Jefferson's admission.

In reporting to Congress that Pinckney and Marshall had indignantly withdrawn from France, and that Gerry, who lingered, had been officially notified by his Government that no loans of any kind would be made, President Adams used a sentence which immediately became current: "I will never send another minister to France without a.s.surances that he will be received, respected, and honored as the representative of a great, free, powerful, and independent nation."

The British faction had at last an opportunity of crushing the French sympathisers, and they accepted it most willingly. In their intolerance, they went almost as far as the other side had gone a few years before.

A South Carolinian, visiting in New York, was a.s.saulted in the circus because he refused to take off his hat when the President of the United States entered. A "reign of terror" was inst.i.tuted against the pro-French office-holders. It was even claimed by them that a general ma.s.sacre had been arranged for the Pennsylvania fast-day, and Bache, the editor of the _Aurora_, made a show of garrisoning his house with an armed body of his friends. A Senator in debate was reported to have declared his willingness to vote for a law punishing every citizen of America who educated his children in the study of the French language.

Hamilton and those who wished to give new precedent to the National Government along lines of its foreign relations where patriotism would support strong measures, were delighted with the response on the part of the people. Theatre crowds demanded encores of the _President's March_ and hissed French airs when played. Merchants of New York and other seaports worked voluntarily on the neglected coast-defences. A song was put to the air of _True Hearts of Oak_ in order to "cheer those unused to spade and barrow, who might tire of working on the several forts." It began:

"Ye friends of your country, the summons attend, Be this your employment, your joy and your pride, Your heav'n-granted rights to preserve and defend, And the spirits of freemen your labors shall guide."

Chorus.

"Our country demands-her call we obey, Let 's work and be merry, We'll never be weary, While freedom and glory our labors repay."

Hundreds of addresses reached the President, the larger number heartily endorsing his att.i.tude toward the insulting Directory. Public opinion supported Congress at the time in pa.s.sing many war measures at this special session of 1798 and the regular session which followed. Eighteen acts were added to the Statutes at Large during the special and seventy-five at the regular session, nearly double the number of laws enacted at any prior sitting. The exportation of arms was forbidden and their importation encouraged. The navy was separated from the army and a new department created for it. The three men-of-war which const.i.tuted the United States Navy were repaired and put into commission. The construction of others was begun. Frigates, galleys, and rowboats were ordered and regiments of artillerists and engineers authorised to be recruited. A quarter of a million dollars was appropriated to the coast-defences. Over a million was voted for increasing the number and for arming the regular troops. A provisional army of ten thousand men and a marine corps were placed at the disposal of the President. From his retirement at Mt. Vernon, ex-President Washington was summoned to a.s.sume command of the provisional army.

Not alone measures of defence, but actual war measures were pa.s.sed.

The President was authorised to seize armed French vessels found near the American coast. Merchantmen were permitted to arm against the French. Thirty thousand stand of arms were distributed among the militia of the States. All treaties with France were formally dissolved, and all intercourse with her suspended until the next session of Congress.

To provide money for these unusual expenditures a loan of five million dollars for fifteen years was authorised, and a stamp-tax levied not unlike that of thirty years before, against which the colonists had rebelled.

As if they had not yet sufficiently endangered the party, the triumphant Federalist majority proceeded to vent its long acc.u.mulated wrath upon its critics, and thereby brought the story of the United States a long chapter forward. Those who had writhed under the attacks of Duane, a former resident of Ireland, but lately driven from India for violating the liberty allowed to the press, hoped for sweet revenge. Others wanted retribution against Callender, setting up at Richmond an abusive press such as had caused him to be driven from Scotland not long before.

The list of lesser offenders among the alien writers was long. As President Adams asked: "How many presses, how many newspapers have been directed by vagabonds, fugitives from a bailiff, a pillory, or a halter in Europe?"

Charges against these aliens were not confined to their political writings. The air was full of conspiracy. Some suspected a league between foreigners and the United Irishmen; others thought the aliens leagued with the Freemasons for the destruction of all social relations, private property, religion, and government. Emissaries of France were supposed to be in every republic plotting for her universal dominion.

Holland and Switzerland had already lost their liberty in this way.

Talleyrand, the French Minister of Foreign Affairs, who had spent his exile in America and had become a naturalised citizen, was in secret correspondence, so it was declared in Congress, with certain people in this country. Another Frenchman, it was said, "of a literary and intriguing character, formerly a member of the Club Breton, doubtless in the confidence of the Directory, who had for a long time lived in Pennsylvania, has recently taken flight." Should this menace be allowed to continue? Both France and England were exercising the right of self-preservation and banishing suspicious aliens. These fled to the United States and made it a common plotting-ground. They were described in the Congressional debate on this subject as "men endeavoring to spread sedition and discord; who had a.s.sisted in laying other countries prostrate; whose hands are reeking with blood and whose hearts rankle with hatred toward us. Have we not the power to shake off these firebrands?"

By a safe majority in the House and a vote of two to one in the Senate, the Federalists placed additional bars to the doors of the United States by raising the time required for national residence prior to naturalisation to fourteen years, with a residence of five years in some one State, and a declaration of intention made five years before admission. All white aliens were required to report to some official register, and get a certificate within forty-eight hours after arrival.

By a law, called the "Alien Friends act," Congress gave power to the President to order out of the United States all aliens whom he suspected of being concerned in any treasonable or secret machination against the Government. If he chose, he could give such an alien a license to remain under bond. The duration of the act was limited to two years.

A companion measure, called the "Alien Enemies act," contemplated the possibility of an immediate war with France and gave the President and the courts power to arrest, to punish, or remove natives of a hostile country after due proclamation. All courts were authorised to hear complaints against aliens, much in the style of the denunciation system of France a few years before.

The alien writers and the Republican press generally had not been afraid to attack the war measures and the bills for the restraint of foreigners as they were proposed and debated. Upon the sudden rage of naming vessels after the President, Duane in the _Aurora_ sarcastically remarked that the name would be a host of strength in itself and completely protect our extensive commerce. He thought we outstripped the British in this instance.

"In the navy of England, there is only one royal George and one Charlotte; there is to be sure the Sovereign and the Queen; but we shall certainly have, The President, the Lady Adams, or the Lady President, with Squire Quincy and Squire Charley, otherwise the navy of Columbia will be incomplete."

In other papers, the President figured as "Johnny Mola.s.ses" from the rum manufacture of Ma.s.sachusetts. The New York _Time-Piece_ p.r.o.nounced him "a person without patriotism, without philosophy, and a mock monarch who had been jostled into the chief magistracy by the ominous combination of old Tories with old opinions and old Whigs with new."

Addresses were printed begging aliens not to enlist in the provisional army if any laws should be pa.s.sed against them.