Union and Democracy Part 7

The retrocession of Louisiana, long desired and sought by the Directory, was regarded by Talleyrand as a diplomatic triumph of first magnitude.

The price, easily paid by one who held Italy under his iron heel, was a kingdom in Tuscany for the young Duke of Parma, nephew and son-in-law of Charles IV of Spain. The gateway to this vast province was New Orleans, and the avenue of approach lay by way of Santo Domingo, once an important French colony, but now under the rule of Toussaint L'Ouverture. Before Talleyrand's dream of a revived colonial empire in the heart of the North American continent could be realized, this "gilded African" must be removed and Santo Domingo restored to its former position as the center of the French West Indies. The conquest of a negro republic surely could not be a difficult undertaking for one who had humbled Austria on the battlefields of northern Italy. In November, 1801, Napoleon dispatched Leclerc with an army of ten thousand men to recover Santo Domingo.

Jefferson was thoroughly alarmed at the news of Leclerc's expedition.

"Every eye in the United States," he wrote, "is now fixed on this affair of Louisiana. Perhaps nothing since the Revolutionary War has produced more uneasy sensations through the body of the nation." No discerning man could mistake the significance of the expedition; the French troops would proceed to Louisiana after finishing their work in Santo Domingo.

The retrocession of Louisiana, in short, as Jefferson said, completely reversed all the political relations of the United States. Hitherto, from the Republican point of view, France had been our natural friend.

Henceforth, as the possessor of New Orleans, through which three eighths of the produce of the West pa.s.sed to market, she became a natural and habitual enemy. "France placing herself in that door," wrote Jefferson to Livingston, "a.s.sumes to us the att.i.tude of defiance. The impetuosity of her temper, the energy and restlessness of her character, placed in a point of eternal friction with us, and our character, ... these circ.u.mstances render it impossible that France and the United States can continue long friends when they meet in so irritable a position.... The day that France takes possession of New Orleans fixes the sentence which is to restrain her forever within her low-water mark. It seals the union of two nations who in conjunction can maintain exclusive possession of the ocean. From that moment we must marry ourselves to the British fleet and nation."

Even as he expressed his apprehensions to Livingston, then Minister to France, Jefferson suggested ways and means for averting the clash of conflicting interests. If France was bent on possessing and holding Louisiana, might she not make concessions for the sake of retaining the friendship of the United States? Livingston was to sound the French Government to ascertain whether it would entertain the idea of ceding the Island of New Orleans and the Floridas. "We should consider New Orleans and the Floridas as equivalent for the risk of a quarrel with France produced by her vicinage," he a.s.sured Livingston.

What the Western world had to fear from the French occupation of Louisiana appeared in November, 1802, when Governor Claiborne, of the Mississippi Territory, reported that the right of deposit at New Orleans had been withdrawn. The act, to be sure, was that of the Spanish intendant, but every one believed that it had been incited by France.

The people of the Western waters, particularly in Tennessee and Kentucky, were outraged and demanded instant war against the aggressor.

Even in Congress a war party raised its head. During all this popular clamor the self-restraint of the Administration was admirable. The annual message ignored the existence of the war party and referred to the cession of Louisiana in colorless language worthy of Talleyrand.

The Administration was not, however, without a well-considered policy.

In January, at the instance of party leaders, an appropriation of two million dollars was voted by Congress "to defray any expenses in relation to the intercourse between the United States and foreign nations"; and James Monroe was appointed Minister Extraordinary to France and Spain, to aid Livingston and Pinckney in "enlarging and more effectually securing our rights and interests in the river Mississippi and in the territories eastward thereof."

Meantime, Napoleon's colonial schemes had received a decisive check. The transfer of Louisiana had been delayed by the opposition of G.o.doy, who had returned to royal favor in Spain; Leclerc's invading army had been worn away by the attrition of incessant war with the negroes; a second army had been decimated by yellow fever; and finally Leclerc himself had succ.u.mbed to the dread destroyer, leaving the remnants of the French troops to their fate. Without the most extraordinary exertions, Santo Domingo was lost; and what was Louisiana without the island which was the very heart of the projected colonial system? The First Consul was almost ready to abandon a project which after all had originated in Talleyrand's brain rather than in his own. What he sought was a fair pretext to cover his retreat from failure.

Livingston plied the French Ministers with arguments to prove that it was good policy to put the Americans in possession of the Island of Orleans. One day, while he was repeating the old story, Talleyrand suddenly asked what he would give for the whole of Louisiana. For the moment Livingston was nonplussed, and declined to make any offer.

Talleyrand repeated his question and Livingston replied that twenty millions of francs would be a fair price, if France would pay the spoliation claims of American citizens since the Treaty of 1800.

Talleyrand demurred: the sum was too small. Thereupon Livingston promised to advise with Monroe who was expected soon.

Monroe, as it happened, arrived on this very day. On the following day Livingston learned casually from Marbois, a minister who stood very close to the First Consul, that Napoleon had named a hundred million francs and the payment of the American spoliation claims as the price of Louisiana. Further conversation elicited the information that Napoleon would consider an offer of sixty million francs with claims amounting to twenty millions more. For a fortnight the two envoys, at the risk of losing everything, sought to secure better terms. But the First Consul would not abate his demands. On May 2, 1803, Livingston and Monroe set their signatures to a treaty by which Napoleon agreed to sell a province of which he was not in possession and which he had contracted never to alienate. The price to be paid was the sum last named, amounting in American figures to $11,250,000. The amount of outstanding claims which the United States agreed to a.s.sume was estimated at $3,750,000. After signing his name to the treaty, Livingston rose and shook hands with Monroe and Marbois. "We have lived long," he said with emotion, "but this is the n.o.blest work of our lives."

In less exalted moments, Livingston and Monroe may well have experienced some disquietude at what they had done. The instructions given to Monroe contemplated no more extensive purchase than New Orleans and West Florida, at a sum not exceeding $10,000,000. The envoys had set out to purchase a tract of land which controlled the delta of the Mississippi they had acquired an empire beyond the Mississippi whose limits they did not know, at a price which exceeded their allowance by $5,000,000. Besides, it was not at first believed that West Florida was included in this purchase. Livingston was keenly disappointed, until on narrower examination he found, in the words of the treaty, evidence which satisfied him that France--to quote Mr. Henry Adams--"had actually bought West Florida without knowing it and had sold it to the United States without being paid for it." The words on which he founded his theory were those which retroceded Louisiana "with the same extent as it now has in the hands of Spain, and that it had when France possessed it, and such as it should be according to the treaties subsequently entered into between Spain and the other States." Monroe soon adopted Livingston's view and pressed it upon the President.

The news of the purchase of Louisiana reached the United States in the latter part of June and occasioned much rejoicing among stanch Republicans of the Middle and Southern States. The people east of the Alleghanies were densely ignorant about this Spanish province, but they sensed in a vague way that its possession by a power like France would have dragged the United States into the maelstrom of European politics.

The Federalists of the Eastern States looked askance at this as at every act of the Administration of Thomas Jefferson, without knowing anything about this vast domain beyond the Mississippi. The President himself was not much better informed about Louisiana. In a report to Congress he undertook to put together such information as he could cull from books of travel and pick up by hearsay. His credulity led him into some amazing statements. A thousand miles up the Missouri, he stated soberly, there was a salt mountain, one hundred and eighty miles long and forty-five miles in width, composed of solid rock salt, without any trees or even shrubs on it. He would not have believed the tale but for the testimony of travelers who had shown specimens of the salt to the people of St. Louis. Federalist newspapers made merry over the President's discovery. "Can this be Lot's wife?" asked one editor.

But Jefferson had already taken steps to dispel general ignorance about the Far West. Securing from Congress an appropriation for an expedition among the Missouri Indians, ostensibly to extend the external commerce of the United States, he commissioned his private secretary, Meriwether Lewis, and William Clark, brother of George Rogers Clark, to undertake one of the most important explorations in American annals. With a body of picked men, Lewis and Clark made their way to the upper waters of the Missouri, and pa.s.sed the winter of 1804-05 among the Mandans. In the following spring and summer they crossed the Rocky Mountains to the waters of the Columbia. Here they spent a second winter, and then began their arduous return, by way of the Great Divide, the Yellowstone River, and the Missouri, to St. Louis. The journals of the members of this expedition are a remarkable record of personal adventures and scientific observations. It was not until 1814, however, that the details of this expedition were given to the public.

Meantime, Lieutenant Zebulon Montgomery Pike had won immediate fame by publishing an account of two thrilling expeditions into the Far West. On the first expedition Pike traced the upper course of the Mississippi almost to its source; on the second, begun soon after his return to St.

Louis in 1806, he followed the course of the Arkansas to the peak which bears his name. His attempt to explore the headwaters of the Rio Grande, which he mistook for the Red River, led to his capture by the Spanish authorities. After a roundabout journey through Mexico and Texas, he was released on the Louisiana frontier.

Unexpected as the acquisition of Louisiana was to the Administration, President Jefferson was quick to appreciate the vast importance of the province to the United States. "Giving us the sole dominion of the Mississippi," he wrote, "it excludes those bickerings with foreign powers, which we know of a certainty would have put us at war with France immediately: and it secures to us the course of a peaceable nation." At the same time he was equally quick to see that the acquisition would give "a handle to the malcontents." To his intimates he avowed with the utmost frankness that the Administration had exceeded its const.i.tutional powers. The Const.i.tution, he conceived, did not contemplate the acquisition of territory not included within the limits fixed by the Treaty of 1783. Yet he was firmly convinced of the practical necessity of ratifying the treaty of purchase. The only way out of the dilemma, he thought, was frankly "to rely on the nation to sanction an act done for its great good, without its previous authority."

Never doubting that so benevolent a purpose would be cordially approved, Jefferson drafted an amendment to the Const.i.tution authorizing the acquisition of Louisiana and providing for its government. To his surprise, leading Republicans received his proposal with indifference, not to say with coolness. Nicholas thought that the power to acquire territory by treaty might fairly be inferred from the Const.i.tution, and advised the President not to run the risk of turning the Senate against the treaty by raising const.i.tutional scruples. In much distress of spirit Jefferson replied that to a.s.sume by free construction the power to acquire territory was to make blank paper of the Const.i.tution. If the treaty-making power could be stretched in this fashion, then there was no limit to its extent. But finding that his party did not share his scruples, Jefferson abandoned his amendment to the Const.i.tution, "confiding that the good sense of our country will correct the evil of construction when it shall produce ill effects." Hamilton in all the pride of triumphant Federalism had never gone further than this.

The debates in Congress over the treaty are full of interest to the student of const.i.tutional law. The treaty fairly bristled with controversial points. The exigencies of politics played havoc with consistency. Parties seemed to have changed sides. Federalists borrowed state-rights arguments without a tremor; and Republicans employed the language of centralization with Federalist facility. Federalists from New England looked beyond the immediate issue and discerned the inevitable economic as well as political consequences of westward expansion. The men who would have naturally populated the vacant lands of Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont would inevitably seek this "new paradise of Louisiana," observed a New England pamphleteer. Jeffersonian Democracy rather than Federalism would become the creed of these transplanted New Englanders, if Ohio were a fair example of future Western Commonwealths. Moreover, as these new States would in all probability enter the Union as slaveholding communities, they would further impair the influence of the Eastern States in the National Government. Even the remnant of the Federalist party in the South opposed the purchase of Louisiana, fearing that the Atlantic States would be depressed in influence by the formation of great States in the West.

Upon one great const.i.tutional principle, both Federalists and Republicans were disposed to agree: that the United States had the power to acquire foreign territory, either by treaty or conquest. Senator Tracy, of Connecticut, conceded this point, but denied that the inhabitants of an acquired territory could be admitted into the Union and be made citizens by treaty. In providing that "the inhabitants of the ceded territory shall be incorporated in the Union," the Administration had exceeded its const.i.tutional authority. The consent of all the States was necessary to admit into the Union. Senator Pickering, of Ma.s.sachusetts, held the same view. "I believe the a.s.sent of each individual State to be necessary," said he, "for the admission of a foreign country as an a.s.sociate in the Union, in like manner as in a commercial house the consent of each member would be necessary to admit a new partner into the company." To this line of argument, Taylor, of Virginia, replied that the words of the treaty did not contemplate the erection of the ceded territory as a State, but its incorporation as a Territory.

On October 17, 1803, the Senate ratified the treaty by a vote of twenty-four to seven. Two const.i.tutional principles seemed, therefore, to be decided: the Government had a const.i.tutional right to acquire foreign territory; and the treaty-making power could incorporate--whatever that expression might mean--such territory into the Union. A third matter of policy had yet to be determined: what powers had Congress over the new territory? Two courses lay open, either to make Louisiana a part of the "territory" which the Const.i.tution gives Congress power to "dispose of," or to hold the province as a dependency apart from other organized Territories. The provisional act which Congress adopted pointed in this latter direction, since it authorized the President to take possession of the province and concentrated all powers, civil and military, in the hands of agents to be appointed by him. When objection was made that such despotic authority was incompatible with the Const.i.tution, Rodney, of Maryland, declared in the House of Representatives that Congress had a power in the Territories which it could not exercise in the States, and that the limitations of power found in the Const.i.tution were applicable to States and not to Territories. The Republicans were making rapid progress in learning the vocabulary of Federalism.

It is one of the ironies of history that the province over which parties battled with so much display of legal profundity was not yet in the possession of the First Consul. Six months after the ratification of the treaty, in the old Cabildo at New Orleans, Laussat received from the Spanish governor the keys of the city and took possession of the province in the name of his master. For twenty days the Tricolor floated over the Place d'Armes, emblem of the shadowy French tenure. On December 2, it, in turn, gave place to the Stars and Stripes, as Louisiana pa.s.sed into the hands of the last of its rulers, the puissant young republic.

In the following year Congress divided the province, giving to the southern part, the Territory of Orleans, which contained most of the inhabitants, a separate territorial government, and annexing the spa.r.s.ely settled upper part to the Indiana Territory. The Act of 1804 was roundly abused because it gave to the President the appointment of all officers in the Territory of Orleans, even the appointment of the legislative council of thirteen. By the treaty, it was pointed out, the inhabitants of Louisiana were guaranteed all "the rights, advantages, and immunities of citizens of the United States." Was not representative government one of these privileges? The obvious answer was the unpreparedness of the Spanish inhabitants for Anglo-American inst.i.tutions. To the Western American who floated down the Mississippi, past the cotton-fields and sugar plantations cultivated by African negroes, and who landed his cargo on the levee at New Orleans, among the motley throngs, province and city seemed like a foreign country, and the inhabitants aliens in speech and habits. From the buildings, with their many arcades and balconies and varied coloring, to the courts of law where the Code Napoleon, introduced by Laussat, added confusion to the Spanish law, the atmosphere of New Orleans was that of a city of the Old World, where one civilization was superimposed upon an older. Men bred in the traditions of the English law might reasonably doubt whether the people of Louisiana were ready for self-government.

Before the new territorial government could be organized, a remonstrance had been drawn up by the people of Louisiana and forwarded by three commissioners with all possible dispatch to Washington. In the following year (1805), Congress so far yielded to the complaints of the people of Louisiana as to authorize an elective a.s.sembly and to hold out the promise of eventual statehood.

But what were the bounds of Louisiana? No one knew with cert.i.tude. The letters of Livingston and Monroe had convinced Jefferson that Louisiana included at least West Florida, and for two years he sought by every diplomatic device to wrest from Spain a confirmation of this shadowy t.i.tle. That Spain did not intend to cede West Florida and that France had no expectation of receiving it seems clear enough from the instructions to Laussat. What he handed over to the American representative was Louisiana, with the Rio Bravo and the Iberville as boundaries. With some show of right, Jefferson might have occupied Texas; he preferred, however, to chase his phantom claim to Florida. For Texas n.o.body then cared, but the Floridas were coveted by Southern planters.

In a letter written soon after the signing of the Louisiana Treaty, Robert Livingston relates a suggestive conversation which he had with Talleyrand. "What are the eastern bounds of Louisiana?" asked Livingston rather naively. "I do not know," replied Talleyrand; "you must take it as we received it." "But what did you mean to take?" Livingston insisted. "I do not know," was the reply. "Then you mean that we shall construe it our own way?" "I can give you no direction," replied the astute Frenchman. "You have made a n.o.ble bargain for yourselves, and I suppose you will make the most of it."

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

The history of the Barbary Wars is well told by G. W. Allen, _Our Navy and the Barbary Corsairs_(1905), and by C. O. Paullin, _Commodore John Rodgers_(1910). The investigations of Henry Adams in foreign archives enabled him to treat the diplomatic history of the purchase of Louisiana with great fullness. F. A. Ogg, _The Opening of the Mississippi_(1904), and J. K. Hosmer, _The Louisiana Purchase_ (1902), contain brief accounts of the acquisition of the province. The actual route of the Lewis and Clark expedition may be traced with the aid of O. D. Wheeler, _The Trail of Lewis and Clark_, 1804-1904 (1904). The const.i.tutional aspects of the Louisiana Treaty and the subsequent legislation for the territory are discussed at length by Adams, and less satisfactorily by Schouler and Von Holst. Channing, _The Jeffersonian System, 1801-1811_ (1906), contains a good account of the whole episode. The problem of the original boundaries is discussed by F. E. Chadwick, _The Relations of the United States and Spain_(1909).

CHAPTER IX

FACTION AND CONSPIRACY

Down to the end of the eighteenth century, the people of New England possessed a greater degree of social solidarity than any other section of the Union. Descended from English stock, imbued with common religious and political traditions, and bound together by the ties of a common ecclesiastical polity, they cherished, as Jefferson expressed it, "a sort of family pride" which existed nowhere else between people of different States. In New England, there were elements of political and religious dissent, to be sure, but the domination of the Congregational clergy and the magistracy was hardly less complete in the year 1800 than fifty years earlier. New England was governed by "the wise, the good, and the rich." All the forces of education, property, religion, and respectability were united in the maintenance of the established order against the a.s.saults of democracy. New England Federalism was not so much a body of political doctrines as a state of mind. Abhorrence of the forces liberated by the French Revolution was perhaps the dominating emotion. Democracy seemed an aberration of the human mind, which was bound everywhere to produce the same results in society. Jacobinism was the inevitable outcome. "The principles of democracy are everywhere what they have been in France," wrote Ames. "Democracy is a troubled spirit, fated never to rest, and whose dreams, if it sleeps, present only visions of h.e.l.l."

In 1801, New England was in bitter, irreconcilable opposition to the National Administration. The situation was fraught with grave possibilities. Jefferson himself looked forward to "an uneasy government," if the whole body of New England continued in opposition to Republican principles. Ordinary political opposition was to be expected, of course; but a sectional opposition, fortified by a social solidarity like that of New England, was a menace to the Union. From the moment when he took the oath of office, Jefferson directed his best energies to the Republican conquest of New England. It was a policy dictated not only by partisan considerations, but also by the highest instincts of statesmanship. The fair-minded historian is bound to record that the Jeffersonian party in this period of its history was, in spite of all its inconsistencies, a potent agency in the maintenance of the Union.

The first conquest of the Republicans was that of Rhode Island in the first year of the new Administration. The President was deeply gratified by what he called "the regeneration of Rhode Island," interpreting the event as "the beginning of that resurrection of the genuine spirit of New England." Vermont, he prophesied, would next emerge from under the yoke of the Federalist hierarchy; and the fall election verified his prediction. Elsewhere the contest was more stubborn and prolonged, but the Federalists noted with alarm that the Republican vote was increasing everywhere. By the end of Jefferson's first term, the number of Republican voters in New England very nearly equaled that of their opponents.

The ranks of the Republican party were recruited largely from the rural districts, where hostility to the mercantile and moneyed cla.s.ses was most bitter. It was the old alignment of the men of little or no personal property against the prosperous and well-to-do cla.s.ses. From this point of view the Republican movement was an attack upon the privileged orders, an attempt to break down the social hierarchy of New England. Closely connected with the political movement was also the struggle of the Baptists and the Methodists to secure religious freedom in Ma.s.sachusetts and Connecticut. The dissenters looked to Jefferson as their natural leader; and the bitter opposition of the Congregational clergy to the spread of democracy was due to their persistent, and no doubt sincere, belief that dissent and democracy were manifestations of the same radical and destructive spirit.

The rising tide of Republicanism and the increasing popularity of the Administration cast the Federalist leaders into the deepest gloom. The annexation of Louisiana was regarded as a mortal blow, since it imperiled the ascendency of New England in the Union, and New England was the stronghold of Federalism. At the beginning of the year 1804, most of the Federalist members of Congress from New England were agreed in thinking that a crisis was approaching. Democracy was about to triumph over the forces of law and order. The only question was how to save their section, where the ravages of Jacobinism could yet be stayed.

There was but one answer, from the point of view of Senator Timothy Pickering. The people of the Eastern States could not reconcile their habits, views, and interests with those of the South and West: therefore, let them withdraw from the Union and form a Northern Confederation. Plumer, of New Hampshire, and Tracy and Griswold, of Connecticut, were in hearty agreement with this view. Pickering then put his project before the members of the coterie of Federalists in Ma.s.sachusetts, which was generally known as the "Ess.e.x Junto." As the confederacy shaped itself in Pickering's imagination, it would of necessity include New York, which would act as a barrier to the insidious inroads of Southern Jacobinism; but Ma.s.sachusetts should initiate the movement.

Replying for his intimates in the Ess.e.x Junto, George Cabot put aside the project, not as in any wise morally reprehensible,--on the contrary, he thought separation desirable,--but as impracticable. The people of New England were not aware of their danger and therefore not prepared for so radical a movement. The only chance for a successful revolution, Cabot thought, would be "a war with Great Britain manifestly provoked by our rulers." Pickering and Griswold then turned to New York for support and to Aaron Burr.

The Vice-President was at this time without political influence in the Administration, and without credit, either morally or politically. In New York, the Livingstons and the Clintons, whom he had mortally offended, were determined to drive him from the party. At first, Burr was inclined to give way: he even applied to the President for an executive appointment; but this resource failing, he determined to fight his enemies to the bitter end. In February, 1804, he was nominated for governor by a group of his friends in the legislature, in opposition to the Clinton faction. It was well known that many Federalists would support his candidacy. At this crucial moment, Pickering and Griswold sought out Burr as an ally. As Governor of New York, they intimated, he would be in a strategic position and could take the lead in the secession of the Northern States. His leadership in the movement, in short, was to be the price of Federalist support at the polls. But the shifty Burr would not commit himself further than to promise an administration satisfactory to the Federalists. The conspirators had to rest content with this vague a.s.surance and to count on Burr's ambition, and his desire to be revenged upon his enemies, to bind him to their cause.

Meantime, Alexander Hamilton was straining every nerve to prevent the Federalists from indorsing the man who stood in the way of his own ambition and whom he believed to be a dangerous and unprincipled character. Some vestige of prudence kept the party from committing itself openly to Burr, but its vote was cast for him. Burr carried his old stronghold, New York City, but he was beaten elsewhere in the State.

The hopes of the Federalists were shattered; the conspirators were confounded; and the bubble of a Northern Confederacy vanished.

The immediate consequences of this political episode were personal.

Hamilton had again thwarted the ambitions and incurred the deadly enmity of an embittered political desperado. A challenge followed and was accepted. On a summer morning, July 11, 1804, at Weehawken across the Hudson, the rivals faced each other for the last time. Hamilton threw away his fire: Burr aimed with murderous intent, and Hamilton fell mortally wounded. From this moment Burr was a marked man and an outcast from respectable society in the East. The newer society of the West, less sensitive in such matters, thought none the less of a man who had shot his foe in a fair fight. Thither Burr betook himself when his term of office expired.

As the presidential election approached, the Republicans determined to prevent any recurrence of the accident which had so nearly seated Burr in the President's chair. This resolve took the form of a const.i.tutional amendment which provided that presidential electors should designate on distinct ballots the persons voted for as President and Vice-President.

To change the Const.i.tution in this wise was a delicate matter. No part of the work of the Federal Convention had been more difficult than to reconcile the small-State party to the mode provided for the election of a President. The final settlement had been accepted only in the expectation that in most cases the electoral college would fail to elect, and that a choice would then be made by the House of Representatives, where the small States would have an equal voice with the large States. To remove the chances of an election by the House was to upset the original compromise and to increase the importance of the large States in the initial election.

Another consequence would follow the proposed change. The office of Vice-President would be degraded. Roger Griswold clearly foresaw this eventuality. "The office will generally be carried into the market,"

said he, "to be exchanged for the votes of some large States for President; and the only criterion which will be regarded as a qualification for the office of Vice-President will be the temporary influence of the candidate over the electors of his State."

Notwithstanding these and many less obvious objections, the amendment was adopted by a party vote in Congress and promptly ratified by thirteen out of the sixteen States before the fall elections.

The campaign of 1804 was uneventful. The congressional caucus of the Republican party dropped Burr as a candidate and nominated George Clinton, of New York. Jefferson was the unanimous choice of his party.

The depressed Federalists supported Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, of South Carolina, and Rufus King, of New York, as their candidates.

Jefferson was triumphantly reelected with the loss of only two States, Connecticut and Delaware, and of two electoral votes in Maryland. Well might he exult at the discomfiture of his enemies. "The two parties," he wrote to Volney, "are almost melted into one."