The United States of America Part 11

All action taken thus far to ensure the perpetuity and safety of the Government against the strangers within its gates seemed to the Federalists incomplete while this seditious press remained unbridled.

The crowning measure of the session of 1798, therefore, took the shape of an addition to the early act defining crimes against the United States. It provided fine and imprisonment for conspiring to oppose measures of the Government, for advising insurrection, and for libelling the Government, either House of Congress, or the President. The duration of the act was limited to the end of the present Administration. As originally introduced into the Senate, this "sedition act" declared that giving aid or comfort to a Frenchman or to France was treason to the United States, punishable by death. It was toned down in this and several other particulars by moderate spirits before being enacted into a law.

The opposition in Congress, called "Republicans" by themselves and "Jacobins" by their enemies, had resisted these famous "alien and sedition laws" at every step. They pleaded that such police regulations had been left by the Const.i.tution to the States; that national citizenship did not exist separate from State citizenship; that Congress could pa.s.s uniform laws of naturalisation, but could not control aliens resident in a State; that adequate punishment for sedition was already provided in the laws of the various States; that the crime of treason was taken care of by the Const.i.tution and Federal laws; that existing treaties required notice to be given before foreigners could be sent away, and then only in case of war; and that a dangerous power was placed in the hands of the President. The const.i.tutional amendments guaranteeing trial by jury and freedom of speech were also quoted in vain. When a member from New York declared that the people ought not to submit to such tyrannical legislation and would deserve the chains which these measures were forging for them if they did not resist, such language was declared treasonable by the other side and productive of the insurrectionary spirit they were trying to stamp out.

An a.n.a.lysis of the distribution of the vote on the Alien bill shows that these presses, although located in the Northern and Central States, were supported by the Southern people. Perhaps the sectional tendency of the vote should be considered as indicative of the loss of the Southern States to the Administration and prophetic of the support which individualism was to receive from that section. Not a Senator north of the Mason and Dixon line opposed the measure, and only one from south of the line supported it. Of the Southern members in the House, nine voted for and thirty against sending away dangerous aliens.

In the Northern section the vote stood thirty-seven to ten in favour of the punitive action.

Jefferson, presiding over the Senate while these measures, so obnoxious to him, were being pa.s.sed, deprived of even the pleasure of casting an occasional deciding vote by the overwhelming Federal majority, quietly bided his time until this madness should die out. "War, land tax and stamp tax," said he, "are sedatives which must calm its ardour."

To his mind, the people were still essentially republican; they retained unadulterated the principles of '75; they needed only reflection and information to bring themselves and their affairs to rights.

"A little patience," he wrote to a correspondent in Virginia, who mentioned the possibility of separating that State and North Carolina from the tyrannical majority, "and we shall see the reign of the witches pa.s.s over, their spells dissolved, and the people recovering their true sight, restoring their government to its true principles. Better keep together as we are, haul off from Europe as soon as we can, and from all attachments to any portions of it."

At the same time, if war should come, he advised all to join for the defence of home on the principle that if one's house is on fire he must try to extinguish it without stopping to inquire whether it was fired from without or within.

The execution of the Alien and Sedition laws proved as unpopular and as futile as Jefferson had imagined. Callender escaped the Alien law by completing his naturalisation, but was fined and imprisoned for seditious publications. His counsel, Cooper, a lawyer-editor, suffered similar punishment. A chartered vessel carried back to France, now under more tolerant government, a large number of _emigres_ including Volney, the philosophical writer and former friend of Washington, suspected of being at the head of the conspirators in the United States.

The abusive _Time-Piece_ was abandoned, one of the editors fleeing the country and the other being under arrest. Duane was a.s.saulted in his office, his presses destroyed by a mob, and himself haled before Congress for criticising their actions. Lyon, a violent Republican who had come near being expelled from the House for a.s.saulting a fellow-member, was fined and imprisoned for commenting on certain appointments made by the President. A half-dozen or more insignificant country editors were caught in the Federalist drag-net, serving only to make the law more ridiculous.

President Adams never found a dangerous alien friend to send out of the country. The war with France was averted and the Alien Enemies act consequently never enforced. Some new issue arose to attract popular attention. The war fever pa.s.sed as quickly as it came. Only the extra taxes remained to remind the people that the French-war scare of 1798 had ever occurred. War measures are always popular at the time they are pa.s.sed. National patriotism is aroused, excitement refuses to listen to conservatism, and judgment is replaced by impulse. Measures necessary to raise the extra revenue are easily voted; but after the excitement has pa.s.sed, the extra taxes become an extra burden. Those who yesterday clamoured most loudly for national defence and "patriotic"

measures will to-morrow seek to evade payment or turn and rend the party which imposed the levies. The war is soon over; the train of taxes which follows seems endless. A political party takes small risk in fathering a war; it faces a great danger in the reaction which follows.

The Federalists had not only authorised by their war measures a large addition to the national debt, but had imposed certain forms of direct taxes. Even more odious than either the stamp tax or the tax on slaves was that on "improvements" in property. In order to arrive at a fair conclusion of the value of dwellings, the number of windows in each was taken as a standard by the a.s.sessors. This method was not unknown to the Old World, but proved extremely obnoxious in the New. Resistance in eastern Pennsylvania took the form of the so-called '"Fries Insurrection." It offered another opportunity to the National Government to a.s.sert its authority, but rendered President Adams still more unpopular, and increased public hostility toward the Federalists.

Although Adams pardoned the leader, John Fries, he did not appease the Republicans, and he angered the Hamiltonians, who would show no clemency toward the opponents of law and order. Like some mastodon of old, the party floundered deeper into the swamp, eventually to succ.u.mb, leaving only its bones as a warning to the danger of overconfidence.

CHAPTER XIII

THE FIRST STATE PROTESTS

The autumn of 1798 marked the extreme limits to which the leaders and party intentionally strengthening the Union were allowed to go at present. It was the culmination of Federalist power. The critical turning-point, the momentary pause before the backward swing of the pendulum, was marked by popular disorders. The first heat of party pa.s.sion, the tendency toward centralisation in ten years of Federalism, and ignorance of the extent to which the party might go, had combined to bring the country to the verge of actual disruption. The black c.o.c.kades (English) fought with the tricoloured c.o.c.kades (French) on a public fast-day in the streets of Philadelphia. Republicans, attempting to nail up pet.i.tions for the repeal of the Alien and Sedition laws on the doors of Christ Church, were set upon by the Federalists and driven away. The President received anonymous letters threatening to burn Philadelphia. Citizens packed their valuables in readiness for flight. Numerous incipient riots occurred in New York and other cities.

While the people of the French faction were thus expressing their disapproval of the administration measures, their leaders were casting about to find the most potent remedy against such abuse of the national power. Even those who, like Madison, believed in the efficacy of the new Government had not expected to see it turned into an agency for the oppression of the individual. To their minds, a continuance of the present course must mean the complete loss of individual and State liberty, or the overthrow of the Union of States, which had been gained only after great effort. An appeal to the ballot was one remedy; but more than two years must elapse before a change of administration was possible. The States, in forming the Union, had thrown about themselves many safeguards. It was high time to test their efficiency.

In the debates on the Alien and kindred measures, the ratification acts of the different States had been quoted by Republican members to show that the States had granted certain powers to the Union, and that the States alone could judge when those powers had been transcended.

The State was the natural agency for the protection of the individual in this hour of danger. To an alarmed resident of Delaware, Jefferson offered an asylum in the State of Virginia, where the "laws of the land, administered by upright judges, would protect you from any exercise of power unauthorized by the Const.i.tution of the United States.

The _habeas corpus_ secures every man here, alien or citizen, against everything which is not law, whatever shape it may a.s.sume."

Browbeaten, as Jefferson explained later, by a bold and overwhelming majority in Congress, the Republicans resolved to retire from that field, and to take a stand in their State Legislatures. The legislative, rather than the executive or judicial branch of the States, represented the people of the United States dwelling in the various States. The State Legislatures had sent delegates to form the Const.i.tution, and the State Legislatures had called the State conventions which adopted it. In the State Legislatures the true friends of the Union, as the Jeffersonians called themselves, would endeavour to find an agency for protection against the unwarranted attack of the National Government.

Four members of Congress at this time actually withdrew, forming a striking precedent for sixty years later. Although sometimes charged with planning a forcible resistance to the central power, the Republicans as a whole contemplated nothing more than concerted action in resolutions to be adopted by the State Legislatures. "I would not do anything at this moment," advised Jefferson, who naturally a.s.sumed the leadership, "which should commit us further, but reserve ourselves to shape our future measures, or no measures, by the events which may happen."

Selecting North Carolina as a strong Republican State to take the lead, Jefferson drew up a set of resolutions setting forth the doctrine of protest. However, chancing to meet some Kentucky politicians visiting in Virginia, he gave the paper to them. Their State offered advantages superior to North Carolina for inaugurating the movement. Her history from infancy had been one continued struggle for political rights.

"Kentucky," said her governor in his message at the opening of the session of the State Legislature following the pa.s.sage of the Alien and Sedition acts, "remote from the contaminating influences of European politics, is steady to the principles of pure Republicanism and will ever be the asylum of her persecuted votaries." The customary reply of the House took the shape of nine lengthy resolutions, rewritten from the set drawn up by Jefferson. They were adopted by both Houses of the State Legislature, signed by the governor, and sent as an appeal to the "co-states in the federal Union." a.s.suming that the States and the Union had made a compact whereby the latter had been given certain limited powers for definite purposes, the remaining powers being reserved to the States, the resolutions declared that whenever the General Government a.s.sumed undelegated powers, its acts were unauthoritative, void, and of no force; and that, as in all cases of compact having no common judge, each party had a right to judge of infractions and redress. This hypothesis being a.s.sumed, the remainder of the resolutions supports it with arguments, using generally the ones employed by the opposition speakers in Congress to prove that the Alien and Sedition laws were unconst.i.tutional.

In a comprehensive view of the history of the making of the Union, these resolutions are of great importance. They form the first note of individualistic protest against the growing power of the Union. To them one must look for the first suggestion of the means to be employed.

Unfortunately for this purpose, they are declamatory rather than constructive. They seek to arouse pa.s.sion rather than to lay out a definite line of resistance. The only suggestion of immediate action is an instruction to the Kentucky Representatives to attempt to secure the repeal of the encroaching acts at the next session of Congress and an appeal to the other States to "concur in declaring these acts void and of no force."

Madison was no doubt in touch with the inception of the Kentucky Resolutions. To him was given the task of drawing up those to be adopted in the Virginia Legislature. So critical had the times become that he had resigned from Congress to accept a seat in his State Legislature.

Although he composed a set of resolutions, as Jefferson had requested, he thought the proper remedy lay in a convention of delegates from the States rather than in the State Legislatures. The Const.i.tution had been formed by a convention and not by the Legislatures. Therefore, to avoid having the Legislature seem presumptious, he had used only "general expressions," as he said, in his resolutions. "In case of a deliberate, palpable and dangerous exercise of other powers not granted by the said compact, the states, who are parties thereto," said his resolutions, "have the right and are in duty bound to interpose for arresting the progress of the evil." Upon this a.s.sumption, a protest was made against the Alien acts, which united unconst.i.tutionally the legislative and judicial powers to those of the Executive; also against the Sedition law, which imposed a punishment expressly forbidden by one of the amendments to the Const.i.tution.

Upon the question of a proper remedy, Madison went no farther than to beg that the other States would take "the necessary and proper measures"

to maintain the rights and liberties reserved to the State or the people. But he lived to see this protracted warfare between the States and the Union reach a critical point, when it was desirable to know precisely what early protestors had meant. Madison explained that the resolutions advised only interposition by all the States. The plural form was universally used, and resistance by no one of them planned.

No revolutionary action was contemplated. The legal remedies to be found in "interposition" he enumerated as remonstrances, instructions, elections, impeachment, amendment to the Const.i.tution, and finally, if the usurpations became intolerable, a recourse to the right of revolution. Whatever hope Jefferson and Madison entertained of a united effort on the part of State Legislatures against the Alien and Sedition acts was dashed by the dissentient replies from all the New England States and by the lack of replies from the Southern States. They accounted for it by the tardiness with which State officials change, not always representing public opinion. The ease with which they carried all the States except seven in the ensuing election of 1800 enabled them to give the resolutions a large share of the credit for bringing about the victory.

In the midst of the war fever, Congress a.s.sembled in December, 1798, in the city of Philadelphia. No such glorious pomp and circ.u.mstance of war had ever been witnessed at the opening of a session. When President Adams read his address from the Speaker's platform to the a.s.sembled Houses, notifying them that France showed no inclination to yield, there sat at his right hand George Washington, summoned from Mount Vernon to become the Lieutenant-General and Commander-in-Chief of the provisional army against the Republic of France. Near him sat the new major-generals, Alexander Hamilton and Charles C. Pinckney, the latter one of the rejected envoys to France. Soon after the opening, Washington returned to his home, leaving Hamilton in command, an arrangement not consented to without reluctance by Adams, and destined to bear fruit later. The war measures were continued by the so-called "Logan act" providing punishment for any citizen of the United States who should, without authority, carry on communication with a foreign government with an intent to influence any action. It was brought out by Doctor Logan, a well-meaning Republican of Pennsylvania, who had unofficially gone to France in an effort to avert the threatened war and had held communication to this end with Talleyrand, Merlin, the First Director, and others. With the suspicion common to the times, the Federalists thought he was endeavouring to act as mediator or plotting some league with France in the event of war. This act marked the extreme limit, to the Republican mind, of the tyranny of the Central Government over citizens of a State.

It might have been fortunate if matters had been put to the test in 1798 and the following year. If resistance had a.s.sumed definite shape it would have been successful or it would have been overcome. The history of the Union would have been put forward more than half a century, or it would never have been written. For the time being, each side seemed inclined to go to the extreme point. The Federalists had taken their places in the Congress determined to ignore the scores of pet.i.tions for the repeal of the acts. They refused to debate motions to rescind, and came to successful votes as a "silent legislature."

Another provisional army was authorised and further additions made to the regular army and navy. On the other hand, the Legislature of Kentucky, rendered even more defiant by the timid a.s.surance in the replies of a few legislatures to her appeal and the decidedly unfavourable answers of a large number, renewed her resolutions of the preceding year in even stronger language. One new phrase, that "a nullification by those sovereigns of all unauthorized acts done under color of that instrument is the rightful remedy," was important because of the later use made of it. Jefferson had used "nullification" in his draft of 1798. It was no stronger than other words and phrases, yet, thirty years later, the words "interpose" and "protest" were pa.s.sed by as too feeble, and "nullification" adopted as the proper term for open resistance, But that Kentucky did not mean forcible resistance is proved by her accompanying statement that she would bow to the laws of the Union because she was a party to the Federal compact. The Virginia a.s.sembly reaffirmed its principles in resolutions and an address to the people the following year.

In the midst of the warlike preparations, when the two republics seemed determined to test the patience of each other; when the Jeffersonians were bound hand and foot by the war craze; when Hamilton awaited the word which would at last league his country with England against French fanaticism and would also bring a realisation of his dream of a military command--in the midst of all this, President Adams, in February, suddenly sent to the Senate the nomination of the American Minister at The Hague to be an envoy to France! The Federalists were dumfounded at his change of position. If negotiations were renewed, peace might follow. Peace with France would mean hostility with England, if not a revival of the danger of absorption by French intrigue. Proud in their strength, the Federalists had a.s.sembled only to be undone and their warlike preparations made into an idle show by the actions of this headstrong John Adams, who insisted upon being the President of his own administration, and who would not take seasonable advice from his party. He had done what the members of his Cabinet had feared, although they now pretended to be surprised. For three months past he had invited suggestions for envoys in case France should yield, had drawn up a form of proposed treaty, and had ridiculed the idea of a French invasion of the United States. "There is no more prospect of seeing a French army here than in heaven," he said. Enforced by Hamilton, who "chanced to be present," the members of his Cabinet had wrestled with him for hours in a private conference at Trenton to turn him from his purpose of conciliation rather than war. He informed them, as he later informed Congress, that he had received a.s.surance from Talleyrand that if another representative should be sent to France from the United States he would undoubtedly be received with the respect due to the representative of a free, independent, and powerful nation, thus using almost the precise words of Adams.

By the time the new envoys, whose appointment the Federalists did not dare openly to oppose, reached France, the Directory had fallen and Napoleon was First Consul. He saw the usefulness of the United States to his plans as a friend rather than an enemy, and was ready to bury all grievances in a treaty. The three envoys, Murray, Ellsworth, and Davie, had no difficulty in getting the United States relieved from the treaty obligation of 1778 and in arranging compensation for the damages inflicted on American commerce. Thus was closed by the Treaty of 1800 the series of events which came so near involving in war the two nations, the allies of a few years before.

Viewed as a part of the diplomatic history of the United States, this war of 1798 is simply an incident. In the story of the Union it plays a greater part. Regardless of its disastrous results to the Federalists, it undoubtedly first rallied the people to the standard of a union for the common defence against a foreign foe. The old Revolutionary spirit had been revived. A national respect had been created in the eyes of its const.i.tuents. This was essential to a proper respect in the eyes of other nations.

This national spirit, if the Administration had remained in the hands of the Federalists, might have grown too rapidly for the maintenance of a proper equilibrium. Hamilton, unhampered by an Adams, would have made the United States a party to European alliances, dangerous to American originality and American neutrality. Self-government would have a.s.sumed some form of European imitation. Drawn into the Napoleonic wars as allies of Britain, nothing but a miracle could have saved them from the legitimacy-restoring Congress of Vienna. What changes in American history might have followed! The desire of Britain for the Louisiana country, the claim of Spain to the Mississippi below the Ohio, silenced but not abandoned after 1783, the necessity for neutrality as a basis for the Monroe Doctrine, and the development of America free from the burden of a war-basis defence, must be considered in this connection. So many are the conditions and menaces that speculation pauses at predicting the results if the great law of reaction had not manifested itself at this juncture.

The decision of John Adams to renew negotiations with France thus became a turning-point in history, because it precipitated the threatened schism among the Federalists, led to the downfall of the party, and turned the National Government from centralisation toward decentralisation. Although Adams recognised all this, he nevertheless defended his decision as the most disinterested and meritorious action in his life. Years after, he said that he desired no other inscription on his gravestone than, "Here lies John Adams, who took upon himself the responsibility of the peace with France, in 1800." At the time he showed no spirit of yielding to his advisers, who declared his action "the great shade on the presidential escutcheon." They said they had been delivered to the enemy in the house of their friend. Hamilton confessed that the news of the mission would astonish him if anything from that quarter could astonish. Having complete mastery over the President's Cabinet and with a large following in Congress, Hamilton had become almost a dictator in the party during the war craze and the enforcement of the Alien and Sedition laws. With the talent of a born leader, he a.s.sumed charge of the War Department during the two years that he was a major-general. Adams resented every a.s.sumption and attempt at dictation.

"If any one entertains the idea that because I am a President of three votes only I am in the power of a party," said he, "they shall find that I am no more so than the Const.i.tution forces upon me. If combinations of senators, generals, and heads of departments shall be formed such as I cannot resist, and measures are demanded of me that I cannot adopt, my remedy is plain and certain."

Although not driven to resignation, as here hinted, Adams was from this time sentenced to be cut off with one term by Hamilton and the party. Meanwhile, Hamilton gave out what his policy would have been in executing the Alien and Sedition laws. He would have collected a "clever force" of the national militia and marched them toward Virginia.

There was an obvious excuse for this action in her resolutions, he said. Then he would have measures taken by the National Government to arrest some alien and so put Virginia to the test of resistance. To the Speaker of the House, he outlined the steps necessary to be taken if the Union was to be preserved. It was the swan song of extreme centralisation. He would make the national judiciary districts much smaller, greatly increasing the number and efficiency of the judges, and also have national justices of the peace in every county. He would give the Central Government power to construct roads and ca.n.a.ls, would increase the taxes, build a powerful navy, and make permanent the provisional army. To reduce the dangerous power of the great States and to curb their rivalry with the nation, he would divide them into smaller States.

It was entirely too late for such unionising suggestions. They had gone out of fashion for sixty years to come. Reaction had set in.

Public sentiment, frequently reproached for its fickleness, but in reality protective in its vacillation, demanded a change. Federalism had lost prestige. Its leaders were at enmity. Washington, its unconscious mainstay, was dead.

"The irreparable loss of an estimable man removes a control which was felt and was very salutary," wrote Hamilton to a foreign correspondent.

"At home, everything is in the main well; except as to the perverseness and capriciousness of one and the spirit and faction of many. The leading friends of the government are in a sad dilemma."

The first reaction against an enlarged and all-powerful America had been reached in the history of parties. The drag on the chariot was now to be felt.

The Republicans were in correspondingly high spirits over the prospective downfall of the party which had so far perverted the administration of the National Government from the path which it should have taken. Republican rhymesters exhausted their wit in describing how

"Brave Hamilton, our warrior bold, Strove Adams in the chair to hold, By mustering sense, and spleen, and wit, To prove him totally unfit."

Madison thought a steady adherence to the principles of prudence all that was needed. "It would be doubly unwise," he wrote to the impatient Monroe, now Governor of Virginia, "to depart from this course at a moment when the party which has done the mischief is so industriously co-operating in its own destruction." If anything was wanting to a.s.sure the defeat of the Federalists, it was supplied in the publication of "A Letter from Alexander Hamilton Concerning the Public Conduct and Character of John Adams, Esq., President of the United States." The letter laid bare most mercilessly the weakness in the nature and the defects in the administration of John Adams. Material for the recital had been furnished Hamilton by his tools in the Cabinet. Hamilton had his revenge on Adams, but he paid dearly for it in the estimation of every non-partisan American. Simply because the national structure was not being built to his own plans he would endanger the fabric by giving it over to those whose theories tended to weakening instead of strengthening it.

CHAPTER XIV

THE ADVENT OF DEMOCRACY