Thomas Jefferson Part 5

Thus, at a moment's notice, and in obedience to a vital change in circ.u.mstance, Jefferson threw aside the policy of a lifetime, suppressed his liking for France and his dislike for England, and entered upon that radically new course which, as he foresaw, the interests of the United States would require.

Livingston, thus primed, began negotiations for the purchase of New Orleans; and Jefferson hastily dispatched Monroe, as a special envoy, for the same purpose, armed, it is supposed, with secret verbal instructions, to buy, if possible, not only New Orleans, but the whole of Louisiana.

Monroe had not a word in writing to show that in purchasing Louisiana-if the act should be repudiated by the nation-he did not exceed his instructions. But, as Mr. Henry Adams remarks, "Jefferson's friends always trusted him perfectly."

The moment was most propitious, for England and France were about to close in that terrific struggle which ended at Waterloo, and Napoleon was desperately in need of money. After some haggling the bargain was concluded, and, for the very moderate sum of fifteen million dollars, the United States became possessed of a territory which more than doubled its area.

The purchase of Louisiana was confessedly an unconst.i.tutional, or at least an extra-const.i.tutional act, for the Const.i.tution gave no authority to the President to acquire new territory, or to pledge the credit of the United States in payment. Jefferson himself thought that the Const.i.tution ought to be amended in order to make the purchase legal; but in this he was overruled by his advisers.

Thus, Jefferson's first administration ended with a brilliant achievement; but this public glory was far more than outweighed by a private loss. The President's younger daughter, Mrs. Eppes, died in April, 1804; and in a letter to his old friend, John Page, he said: "Others may lose of their abundance, but I, of my wants, have, lost even the half of all I had. My evening prospects now hang on the slender thread of a single life. Perhaps I may be destined to see even this last cord of parental affection broken.

The hope with which I have looked forward to the moment when, resigning public cares to younger hands, I was to retire to that domestic comfort from which the last great step is to be taken, is fearfully blighted."

XI

SECOND PRESIDENTIAL TERM

The purchase of Louisiana increased Jefferson's popularity, and in 1805, at the age of sixty-two, he was elected to his second term as President by an overwhelming majority. Even Ma.s.sachusetts was carried by the Republicans, and the total vote in the electoral college stood: 162 for Jefferson and Clinton; 14 for C. C. Pinckney and Rufus King, the Federal candidates.

This result was due in part to the fact that Jefferson had stolen the thunder of the Federalists. His Louisiana purchase, though bitterly opposed by the leading Federalists, who were blinded by their hatred of the President, was far more consonant with Federal than with Republican principles; and in his second inaugural address Jefferson went even farther in the direction of a strong central government, for he said: "Redemption once effected, the revenue thereby liberated may, by a just repart.i.tion among the States, and a corresponding amendment of the Const.i.tution, be applied _in time of peace_ to rivers, ca.n.a.ls, roads, arts, manufactures, education, and other great objects within each State.

In time of war, ... aided by other measures reserved for that crisis, it may meet within the year all the expenses of the year without encroaching on the rights of future generations by burdening them with the debts of the past."

This proposal flatly contradicted what the President had said in his first inaugural address, and was in strange contrast with his criticism made years before upon a similar Federal scheme of public improvement, that the mines of Peru would not supply the moneys which would be wasted on this object. In later years, after his permanent retirement to Monticello, Jefferson seems to have reverted to his earlier views, and he condemned the measures of John Quincy Adams for making public improvements with national funds.

But the President was no longer to enjoy a smooth course. One domestic affair gave him much annoyance, and our foreign relations were a continual source of anxiety and mortification.

Aaron Burr had been a brilliant soldier of the Revolution, a highly successful lawyer and politician, and finally, during Mr. Jefferson's first administration, Vice-President of the United States. But in the year 1805 he found himself, owing to a complication of causes, most of which, however, could be traced to his own moral defects, a bankrupt in reputation and in purse. Such being his condition, he applied to the President for a foreign appointment; and Mr. Jefferson very properly refused it, frankly explaining that Burr, whether justly or unjustly, had lost the confidence of the public.

Burr took this rebuff with the easy good-humor which characterized him, dined with the President a few days later, and then started westward to carry out a scheme which he had been preparing for a year. His plans were so shrouded in mystery that it is difficult to say exactly what they were, but it is certain that he contemplated an expedition against Mexico, with the intention of making himself the ruler of that country; and it is possible that he hoped to capture New Orleans, and, after dividing the United States, to annex the western half to his Mexican empire. Burr had got together a small supply of men and arms, and he floated down the Ohio, gathering recruits as he went.

Jefferson, with his usual good sense, perceived the futility of Burr's designs, which were based upon a false belief as to the want of loyalty among the western people; but he took all needful precautions. General Wilkinson was ordered to protect New Orleans, Burr's proceedings were denounced by a proclamation, and finally Burr himself was arrested in Alabama, and brought to Richmond for trial.

The trial at once became a political affair, the Federalists, to spite the President, making Burr's cause their own, though he had killed Alexander Hamilton but three years before, and pretending to regard him as an innocent man persecuted by the President for political reasons. Jefferson himself took a hand in the prosecution to the extent of writing letters to the district attorney full of advice and suggestions. It would have been more dignified had he held aloof, but the provocation which he received was very great. Burr and his counsel used every possible means of throwing odium upon the President; and in this they were a.s.sisted by Chief Justice Marshall, who presided at the trial. Marshall, though in the main a just man, was bitterly opposed to Jefferson in political affairs, and in this case he harshly blamed the executive for not procuring evidence with a celerity which, under the circ.u.mstances, was impossible. He also summoned the President into court as a witness. The President, however, declined to attend, and the matter was not pressed. Burr was acquitted, chiefly on technical grounds.

The Burr affair, however, was but a trifle compared with the difficulties arising from our relations with England. That country had always a.s.serted over the United States the right of impressment, a right, namely, to search American ships, and to take therefrom any Englishmen found among the crew. In many cases, Englishmen who had been naturalized in the United States were thus taken. This alleged right had always been denied by the United States, and British perseverance in it finally led to the war of 1812.

Another source of contention was the neutral trade. During the European wars in the early part of the century the seaport towns of the United States did an immense and profitable business in carrying goods to European ports, and from one European port to another. Great Britain, after various attempts to discourage American commerce with her enemies, undertook to put it down by confiscating vessels of the United States on the ground that their cargoes were not neutral but belligerent property,-the property, that is, of nations at war with Great Britain.

And, no doubt, in some cases this was the fact,-foreign merchandise having been imported to this country to get a neutral name for it, and thence exported to a country to which it could not have been shipped directly from its place of origin. In April, 1806, the President dispatched Mr.

Monroe to London in order, if possible, to settle these disputed matters by a treaty. Monroe, in conjunction with Mr. Pinckney, our minister to England, sent back a treaty which contained no reference whatever to the matter of impressments. It was the best treaty which they could obtain, but it was silent upon this vital point.

The situation was a perilous one; England had fought the battle of Trafalgar the year before; and was now able to carry everything before her upon the high seas. Nevertheless, the President's conduct was bold and prompt. The treaty had been negotiated mainly by his own envoy and friend, Monroe, and great pressure was exerted in favor of it,-especially by the merchants and shipowners of the east. But Jefferson refused even to lay it before the Senate, and at once sent it back to England. His position, and history has justified it, was that to accept a treaty which might be construed as tacitly admitting the right of impressment would be a disgrace to the country. The other questions at issue were more nearly legal and technical, but this one touched the national honor; and with the same right instinct which Jefferson showed in 1807, the people of the United States, five years later, fixed upon this grievance, out of the fog in which diplomacy had enveloped our relations with England, as the true and sufficient cause of the war of 1812.

Nevertheless, Jefferson treated Monroe with the greatest consideration. At this period Monroe and Madison were both candidates for the Republican nomination for the presidency. Jefferson's choice was Madison, but he remained impartial between them; and he withheld Monroe's treaty from publication at a time when to publish it would have given a fatal blow to Monroe's prospects. In every way, in fact, he exerted himself to disguise and soften Monroe's discredit.

The wisdom of Jefferson's course as to the treaty was shown before three months had elapsed by an act of British aggression, which, had the Monroe treaty been accepted, might fairly have been laid to its door. In June, 1807, the British frigate Leopard, having been refused permission to search the American frigate Chesapeake, fired upon the Chesapeake, which was totally unprepared for action, and, after killing three men and wounding eighteen, refused to accept the surrender of the ship, but carried off three alleged deserters.

This event roused a storm of indignation, which never quite subsided until the insult had been effaced by the blood which was shed in the war of 1812. "For the first time in their history," says Mr. Henry Adams, "the people of the United States learned in June, 1807, the feeling of a true national emotion." "Never since the battle of Lexington," wrote Jefferson, "have I seen this country in such a state of exasperation as at present."

War might easily have been precipitated, had Jefferson been carried away by the popular excitement. He immediately dispatched a frigate to England demanding reparation, and he issued a proclamation forbidding all British men-of-war to enter the waters of the United States, unless in distress or bearing dispatches. Jefferson expected war, but he meant to delay it for a while.

To his son-in-law, John Eppes, he wrote: "Reason and the usage of civilized nations require that we should give them an opportunity of disavowal and reparation. Our own interests, too, the very means of making war, require that we should give time to our merchants to gather in their vessels and property and our seamen now afloat."

Gallatin, the Secretary of the Treasury, even criticised the President's annual message at this time as being too warlike and "not in the style of the proclamation, which has been almost universally approved at home and abroad." It cannot truly be said, therefore, that Jefferson had any unconquerable aversion to war.

Mr. Canning, the British Foreign Minister, went through the form of expressing his regrets for the Chesapeake affair, and sent a special envoy to Washington to settle the difficulty. Reparation was made at last, but not till the year 1811.

In the mean time, both Great Britain and France had given other causes of offense, which may be summarized as follows: In May, 1806, Great Britain declared the French ports from Brest to the Elbe closed to American as to all other shipping. In the following November, Napoleon retorted with a decree issued from Berlin, prohibiting all commerce with Great Britain.

That power immediately forbade the coasting trade between one port and another in the possession of her enemies. And in November, 1807, Great Britain issued the famous Orders in Council, which forbade all trade whatsoever with France and her allies, except on payment of a tribute to Great Britain, each vessel to pay according to the value of its cargo.

Then followed Napoleon's Milan decree prohibiting trade with Great Britain, and declaring that all vessels which paid the tribute demanded were lawful prizes to the French marine.

Such was the series of acts which a.s.sailed the foreign commerce of the United States, and wounded the national honor by attempting to prostrate the country at the mercy of the European powers. Diplomacy had been exhausted. The Chesapeake affair, the right of impressment, the British decrees and orders directed against our commerce,-all these causes of offense had been tangled into a complication which no man could unravel.

Retaliation on our part had become absolutely necessary. What form should it take? Jefferson rejected war, and proposed an embargo which prohibited commerce between the United States and Europe. The measure was bitterly opposed by the New England Federalists; but the President's influence was so great that Congress adopted it almost without discussion.

Jefferson's design, to use his own words, was "to introduce between nations another umpire than arms;" and he expected that England would be starved into submission. The annual British exports to the United States amounted to $50,000,000. Cutting off this trade meant the throwing out of work of thousands of British sailors and tens of thousands of British factory hands, who had no other means of livelihood. Mr. Jefferson felt confident that the starvation of this cla.s.s would bring such pressure to bear upon the English government, then engaged in a death struggle with Bonaparte, that it would be forced to repeal the laws which obstructed American commerce. It is possible that this would have been the result had the embargo been observed faithfully by all citizens of the United States.

Jefferson maintained till the day of his death that such would have been the case; and Madison, no enthusiast, long afterward a.s.serted that the American state department had proofs that the English government was on the point of yielding. The embargo pressed hardest of all upon Virginia, for it stopped the exportation of her staples,-wheat and tobacco. It brought about, by the way, the financial ruin of Jefferson himself and of his son-in-law, Colonel Randolph. But the Virginians bore it without a murmur. "They drained the poison which their own President held obstinately to their lips."

It was otherwise in New England. There the disastrous effect of the embargo was not only indirect but direct. The New England farmers, it is true, could at least exist upon the produce of their farms; but the mariners, the sea-captains, and the merchants of the coast towns, saw a total suspension of the industry by which they lived. New England evaded the embargo by smuggling, and resisted it tooth and nail. Some of the Federal leaders in that section believing, or pretending to believe, that it was a pro-French measure, were in secret correspondence with the British government, and meditated a secession of the eastern States from the rest of the country. They went so far, in private conversation at least, as to maintain the British right of impressment; and even the Orders in Council were defended by Gardenier, a leading Federalist, and a member of Congress.

The present generation has witnessed a similar exhibition of anglomania, when, upon the a.s.sertion of the Monroe doctrine in respect to Venezuela, by President Cleveland, his att.i.tude was criticised more severely by a group in New York and Boston than it was by the English themselves.

Jefferson's effort to enforce the embargo and his calm resistance to New England fury showed extraordinary firmness of will and tenacity of purpose. In August, 1808, he wrote to General Dearborn, Secretary of War, who was then in Maine: "The Tories of Boston openly threaten insurrection if their importation of flour is stopped. The next post will stop it."

Blood was soon shed; but Jefferson did not shrink. The army was stationed along the Canadian frontier, to prevent smuggling; gunboats and frigates patrolled the coast. The embargo failed; but Mr. Henry Adams, the ablest and fairest historian of this period, declares that it "was an experiment in politics well worth making. In the scheme of President Jefferson, non-intercourse was the subst.i.tute for war.... Failure of the embargo meant in his mind not only a recurrence to the practice of war, but to every political and social evil that war had always brought in its train.

In such a case the crimes and corruptions of Europe, which had been the object of his political fears, must, as he believed, sooner or later, teem in the fat soil of America. To avert a disaster so vast was a proper motive for statesmanship, and justified disregard for smaller interests."

Mr. Parton observes, with almost as much truth as humor, that the embargo was approved by the two highest authorities in Europe, namely, Napoleon Bonaparte and the "Edinburgh Review."

Perhaps the fundamental error in Jefferson's theory was that nations are governed mainly by motives of self-interest. He thought that England would cease to legislate against American commerce, when it was once made plain that such a course was prejudicial to her own interests. But nations, like individuals, are influenced in their relations to others far more by pride and patriotism, and even by prejudice, than by material self-interest. The only way in which America could win respect and fair treatment from Europe was by fighting, or at least by showing a perfect readiness to fight. This she did by the war of 1812.

The embargo was an academic policy,-the policy of a philosopher rather than that of a practical man of affairs. Turreau, the French amba.s.sador, wrote to Talleyrand, in May, 1806, that the President "has little energy and still less of that audacity which is indispensable in a place so eminent, whatever may be the form of government. The slightest event makes him lose his balance, and he does not even know how to disguise the impression which he receives.... He has made himself ill, and has grown ten years older."

Jefferson had energy and audacity,-but he was energetic and audacious only by fits and starts. He was too sensitive, too full of ideas, too far-sighted, too conscious of all possible results for a man of action.

During the last three months of his term he made no attempt to settle the difficulties in which the country was involved, declaring that he felt bound to do nothing which might embarra.s.s his successor. But it may be doubted if he did not unconsciously decline the task rather from its difficulty than because he felt precluded from undertaking it.

Self-knowledge was never Mr. Jefferson's strong point.

But he had done his best, and if his scheme had failed, the failure was not an ign.o.ble one. He was still the most beloved, as well as the best hated man in the United States; and he could have had a third term, if he would have taken it.

He retired, permanently, as it proved, to Monticello, wearied and hara.s.sed, but glad to be back on his farm, in the bosom of his family, and among his neighbors. His fellow-citizens of Albemarle County desired to meet the returning President, and escort him to his home; but Mr.

Jefferson, characteristically, avoided this demonstration, and received instead an address, to which he made a reply that closed in a fit and pathetic manner his public career. "... The part which I have acted on the theatre of public life has been before them [his countrymen], and to their sentence I submit it; but the testimony of my native county, of the individuals who have known me in private life, to my conduct in its various duties and relations, is the more grateful as proceeding from eyewitnesses and observers, from triers of the vicinage. Of you, then, my neighbors, I may ask in the face of the world, 'whose ox have I taken, or whom have I defrauded? Whom have I oppressed, or of whose hand have I received a bribe to blind mine eyes therewith?' On your verdict I rest with conscious security."

XII