When Franklin revealed to Vergennes that, unknown to the French court, the American commissioners had agreed on a {125} draft treaty, the French minister was somewhat indignant at the trick, and communicated his displeasure to his agent in America. This induced the easily worried Congress to instruct Livingston, the Secretary for Foreign Affairs, to write a letter censuring the commissioners; but, although Jay and Adams were hotly indignant at such servility, the matter ended then and there. Vergennes's displeasure was momentary, and the French policy continued as before. The European war was, in fact, wearing to its end. Already, in April, 1782, Admiral Rodney had inflicted a sharp defeat on De Grasse, capturing five of his vessels, including the flagship with the admiral himself. This, together with the extreme inefficiency of the Spanish fleet, put an end to the hope of further French gains in the West Indies. Before Gibraltar, also, the allied fleet of forty-eight vessels did not dare to risk a general engagement with a British relieving fleet of thirty, and when in September, 1782, a final bombardment was attempted, the batteries from the fort proved too strong for their assailants. The allies felt that they had accomplished all they could hope to, and agreed to terms of peace on January 20, 1783. France gained little beyond sundry West India Islands, but Spain profited to the extent of {126} regaining Minorca and also Florida. It was at best a defeat for England, and the Whig Ministry, which carried it through, was unable to prevent such an outcome.
The American peace was made the pretext for Shelburne's fall, since a coalition of dissatisfied Whigs and Tories united in March, 1783, to censure it, thereby turning out the Ministry. But, although Fox regained control of diplomatic matters and made some slight moves toward reopening negotiations, he had no serious intention of disturbing Shelburne's work, and the provisional treaty was made definitive on September 3, 1783—the day on which the French treaty was signed. Thus the Americans technically kept to the terms of their alliance with France in agreeing not to make a separate peace, but as a matter of fact hostilities had entirely ceased in America since January, 1783, and practically since the fall of the North Ministry. The British had remained quietly in New York and Charleston, withdrawing from all other points, and Washington with his small army stood at Newburg-on-the-Hudson. In October, 1783, the last British withdrew, taking with them into exile thousands of Tories who did not dare to remain to test the value of the clauses in the treaty of peace intended to protect them. So the last traces of the long contest disappeared, {127} and the United States entered upon its career.
The treaty, as must have been foreseen by the commissioners themselves, remained a dead letter so far as the Tories were concerned. Congress performed its part and gave the promised recommendation, but the States paid no heed. The loyalists were not restored to civil or property rights. The plain provision of the treaty prohibiting further legislation against loyalists was defied in several States, and additional disqualifications were placed upon those who dared to remain in the country. The provision regarding the payment of debts remained unfulfilled, since there was no mechanism provided in the treaty through which the article could be enforced. Only from the British government could the Tories receive any recompense for their sufferings, and there they were in part relieved. Very many received grants of land in Canada, where they formed a considerable part of the population in several districts. More went to New Brunswick and Nova Scotia to receive similar grants. Others spent their days in England as unhappy pensioners, forgotten victims of a war which all Englishmen sought to bury in oblivion. Those who remained in the United States ultimately regained standing and fared better than the exiles, but not until new {128} domestic issues had arisen to obliterate the memory of revolutionary antagonisms.
With the Treaty of 1782, the mother country and the former colonies definitely started on separate paths, recognizing the fundamental differences which for fifty years had made harmonious co-operation impossible. England remained as before, aristocratic in social structure, oligarchic in government, military and naval in temper—a land of strongly fixed standards of religious and political life, a country where society looked to a narrow circle for leadership. Its commercial and economic ideals, unaltered by defeat, persisted to guide national policy in peace and war for two more generations. The sole result of the war for England was to render impossible in future any such perversion of Cabinet government as that which George III, by intimidation, fraud, and political management, had succeeded for a decade in establishing. Never again would the country tolerate royal dictation of policies and leaders. England became what it had been before 1770, a country where parliamentary groups and leaders bore the responsibility and gained the glory or discredit, while the outside public approved or protested without seeking in any other manner to control the destinies of the State. While the English thus sullenly fell back into their {129} accustomed habits, the former Colonies, now relieved from the old-time subordination, were turned adrift to solve problems of a wholly different sort.
The British colonists, who assumed independent legal existence with the adoption of Articles of Confederation in 1781, had managed to carry through a revolution and emerge into the light of peace. They were now required to learn, in the hard school of experience, those necessary facts of government which they had hitherto ignored, and which, even in the agonies of civil war, they had refused to recognize.
Probably with three-quarters of the American people, the prevailing political sentiment was that of aversion to any governmental control, coupled with a deep-rooted jealousy and distrust of all officials, even those chosen by and dependent upon themselves. Their political ideals contemplated {130} the government of each colony chiefly by the elected representatives of the voters, who should meet annually to legislate and tax, and then, having defined the duties of the few permanent officers in such a way as to leave them little or no discretion, should dissolve, leaving the community to run itself until the next annual session. Authority of any kind was to them an object of traditional dread, even when exercised by their own agents. The early State constitutions concentrated all power in the legislature, leaving the executive and judicial officials little to do but execute the laws. The only discretionary powers enjoyed by governors were in connection with military affairs.
In establishing the Articles of Confederation the statesmen of the Continental Congress had no intention of creating in any sense a governing body. All that the Congress could do was to decide upon war and peace, make treaties, decide upon a common military establishment, and determine the sums to be contributed to the common treasury. These matters, moreover, called for an affirmative vote of nine States in each case. There was no federal executive or judiciary, nor any provision for enforcing the votes of the Congress. To carry out any single thing committed by the Articles to the Congress, and duly voted, required the {131} positive co-operation of the State legislatures, who were under no other compulsion than their sense of what the situation called for and of what they could afford to do.
Things were, in short, just where the colonists would have been glad to have them before the Revolution—with the objectionable provincial executives removed, all coercive authority in the central government abolished, and the legislatures left to their own absolute discretion. In other words, the average American farmer or trader of the day felt that the Revolution had been fought to get rid of all government but one directly under the control of the individual voters of the States. Typical of such were men like Samuel Adams of Massachusetts and Patrick Henry of Virginia. They had learned their politics in the period before the Revolution, and clung to the old colonial spirit, which regarded normal politics as essentially defensive and anti-governmental.
On the other hand, there were a good many individuals in the country who recognized that the triumph of the colonial ideal was responsible for undeniable disasters. Such men were found, especially, among the army officers and among those who had tried to aid the cause in diplomatic or civil office during the Revolution. Experience made them realize that the practical abolition of all {132} executive authority and the absence of any real central government had been responsible for chronic inefficiency. The financial collapse, the lack of any power on the part of Congress to enforce its laws or resolutions, the visible danger that State legislatures might consult their own convenience in supporting the common enterprises or obligations—all these shortcomings led men like Washington, Hamilton, Madison, Webster, a pamphleteer of New England, to urge even before 1781 that a genuine government should be set up to replace the mere league. Their supporters were, however, few, and confined mainly to those merchants or capitalists who realized the necessity of general laws and a general authority. It is scarcely conceivable that the inherited prejudices of most Americans in favour of local independence could have been overborne had not the Revolution been followed by a series of public distresses, which drove to the side of the strong-government advocates—temporarily, as it proved—a great number of American voters.
When hostilities ended, the people of the United States entered upon a period of economic confusion. In the first place, trade was disorganized, since the old West India markets were lost and the privileges formerly enjoyed under the Navigation Acts were terminated by the separation of the {133} countries. American shippers could not at once discover in French or other ports an equivalent for the former triangular trade. In the second place, British manufacturers and exporters rushed to recover their American market, and promptly put out of competition the American industries which had begun to develop during the war. Specie, plentiful for a few months, now flowed rapidly out of the country, since American merchants were no longer able to buy British goods by drawing on West India credits. At the same time, with the arrival of peace, the State courts resumed their functions, and general liquidation began; while the State legislatures, in the effort to adjust war finances, imposed what were felt to be high taxes. The result was a general complaint of hard times, poverty, and insufficient money. Some States made efforts to retaliate against Great Britain by tariffs and navigation laws, but this only damaged their own ports by driving British Trade to their neighbours'. Congress could afford no help, since it had no power of commercial regulation.
The effect upon the working of the Confederation showed that a majority of Americans had learned nothing from all their experiences, for the State legislatures declined to furnish to the central government any {134} more money than they felt to be convenient, regardless of the fact that without their regular support the United States was certain to become bankrupt. Robert Morris was appointed Financier in 1871, and took energetic steps to introduce order into the mass of loan certificates, foreign loans, certificates of indebtedness, and mountains of paper currency; but one unescapable fact stood in his way, that the States felt under no obligation to pay their quotas of expenses. In spite of his urgent appeals, backed by resolutions of Congress, the government revenues remained too scanty to pay even the interest on the debt. Morris resigned in disgust in 1784; and his successors, a committee of Congress, found themselves able to do nothing more than confess bankruptcy. The people of the States felt too poor to support their federal government, and, what was more, felt no responsibility for its fate.
Without revenue, it naturally followed that the Congress of the Confederation accomplished practically nothing. As will be shown later, it could secure no treaties of any importance, since its impotence to enforce them was patent. It managed to disband the remaining troops with great difficulty and only under the danger of mutiny, a danger so great that it took all of {135} Washington's personal influence to prevent an uprising at Newburg in March, 1783. For the rest, its leaders, men often of high ability—Hamilton, Madison, King of Massachusetts, Sherman of Connecticut—found themselves helpless. Naturally they appealed to the States for additional powers and submitted no less than three amendments: first, in 1781, a proposal to permit Congress to levy and collect a five per cent. duty on imports; then, in 1783, a plan by which certain specific duties were to be collected by State officers and turned over to the government; and finally, in 1784, a request that Congress be given power to exclude vessels of nations which would not make commercial treaties. No one of these succeeded, although the first plan failed of unanimous acceptance by one State only. The legislatures recognized the need, but dreaded to give any outside power whatever authority within their respective boundaries. While those who advocated these amendments kept reiterating the positive necessity for some means to avert national disgrace and bankruptcy, their opponents, reverting to the language of 1775, declared it incompatible with "liberty" that any authority other than the State's should be exercised in a State's territory. By 1787, it was clear that any hope of specific amendments was vain. Unanimity from {136} thirteen legislatures was not to be looked for.
On the other hand, where the States chose to act they produced important results. The cessions of western lands, which had been exacted by Maryland as her price for ratifying the Articles, were carried out by New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Virginia until the title to all territory west of Pennsylvania and north of the Ohio was with the Confederation. Then, although nothing in the Articles authorized such action, Congress, in 1787, adopted an Ordinance establishing a plan for settling the new lands. After a period of provincial government, substantially identical with that of the colonies, the region was to be divided into States and admitted into the union, under the terms of an annexed "compact" which prohibited slavery and guaranteed civil rights. But where the States did not co-operate, confusion reigned. Legislatures imposed such tariffs as they saw fit, which led to actual inter-State commercial discriminations between New York and its neighbours. Connecticut and Pennsylvania wrangled over land claims. The inhabitants of the territory west of New Hampshire set up a State government under the name of Vermont, and successfully maintained themselves against the State of New York, {137} which had a legal title to the soil, while the frontier settlers in North Carolina were prevented only by inferior numbers from carrying through a similar secession.
Finally, in the years 1785-7, the number of those who found the unrestrained self-government of the separate States another name for anarchy was enormously increased by a sudden craze for paper money, "tender" laws, and "stay" laws which swept the country. The poorer classes, especially the farmers, denounced the courts as agents of the rich, clamoured for more money to permit the easy payment of obligations, and succeeded in compelling more than half of the States to pass laws hindering the collection of debts and emitting bills of credit, which promptly depreciated. Worse remained. In New Hampshire, armed bands tried to intimidate the legislature; and in Massachusetts the rejection of such laws brought on actual insurrection. Farmers assembled under arms, courts were broken up, and a sharp little civil war, known as Shays' Rebellion, was necessary before the State government could re-establish order.
In these circumstances, a sudden strong reaction against mob rule and untrammelled democracy ran through the country, swinging all men of property and law-abiding habits powerfully in favour of the demand {138} for a new, genuinely authoritative, national government, able to compel peace and good order. So the leaders of the reform party struck; and at a meeting of Annapolis in October, 1786, summoned originally to discuss the problem of navigating the Potomac River, they issued a call for a convention of delegates from all the States to meet at Philadelphia in May, 1787, for the purpose of recommending provisions "intended to render the federal government adequate to the exigencies of the Union." This movement, reversing the current of American history, gained impetus in the winter of 1787. Congress seconded the call; and, after Virginia had shown the way by nominating its foremost men as delegates, the other States fell into line and sent representatives—all but Rhode Island, which was the scene of an orgy of paper-money tyranny, and would take no part in any such meeting.
Of the fifty-five men present at the Philadelphia convention, not more than half-a-dozen were of the old colonial type, which clung to individual State independence as the palladium of liberty. All the others felt that the time had come to lay the most thoroughgoing limitations upon the States, with the express purpose of preventing any future repetition of the existing inter-State wrangles, and especially of the financial {139} abuses of the time; and they were ready to gain this end by entrusting large powers to the central government. They divided sharply, however, on one important point, namely, whether the increased powers were to be exercised by a government similar to the existing one, or by something wholly new and far more centralized; and over this question the convention ran grave danger of breaking up.
Discussion began in June, 1787, behind closed doors, with a draft plan agreed upon by the Virginia members as the working project. This was a bold scheme, calling for the creation of a single great State, relying on the people for its authority, superior to the existing States, and able, if necessary, to coerce them; in reality, a fusion of the United States into a single commonwealth. In opposition to this, the representatives of the smaller States—Delaware, New Jersey, Maryland and Connecticut—aided by the conservative members from New York, announced that they would never consent to any plan which did not safeguard the individuality and equality of their States; and, although the Virginia plan commanded a majority of those present, its supporters were obliged to permit a compromise in order to prevent an angry dissolution of the convention. In keeping with a suggestion of the {140} Connecticut members, it was agreed that one House of the proposed legislature should contain an equal representation of the States, while the other should be based on population.
The adoption of this compromise put an end to the danger of disruption, for all but a few irreconcilables were now ready to co-operate; and in the course of a laborious session a final draft was hammered out, with patchings, changes, and additional compromises to safeguard the interests of the plantation States in the institution of slavery.
When the convention adjourned, it placed before the people of America a document which was a novelty in the field of government. In part, it aimed to establish a great State, on the model of the American States, which in turn derived their features from the colonial governments. It had a Congress of two Houses, an executive with independent powers, and a judiciary authorized to enforce the laws of the United States. Congress was given full and exclusive power over commerce, currency, war and peace, and a long list of enumerated activities involving inter-State questions, and was authorized to pass all laws necessary and proper to the carrying out of any of the powers named in the constitution. Further, the constitution, the federal laws, and treaties were declared to be the supreme {141} law of the land, anything in a State law or constitution notwithstanding. In addition, the States were expressly forbidden to enter the fields reserved to the federal government, and were prohibited from infringing the rights of property. On the other hand, the new government could not exist without the co-operation of the States in providing for the election of electors,—to choose a president—of senators, and of congressmen. It was a new creation, a federal State.
There now followed a sharp and decisive contest to gain the necessary ratification by nine commonwealths. At first, the advocates of strong government, by a rapid campaign, secured the favourable votes of half-a-dozen States in quick succession; but when it came the turn of New York, Massachusetts, and Virginia, the conservative, localistic instincts of the farmers and older people were roused to make a strenuous resistance. The "Federalists," as the advocates of the new government termed themselves, had to meet charges that the proposed scheme would crush the liberties of the State, reduce them to ciphers, and set up an imitation of the British monarchy. But, by the eager urging of the foremost lawyers and most influential men of the day, the tide was turned and ratification carried, although with the utmost difficulty, and usually with {142} the recommendation of amendments to perfect the constitution. In June, 1788, the contest ended; and, although Rhode Island and North Carolina remained unreconciled, the other eleven States proceeded to set up the new government.
In the winter of 1789, in accordance with a vote of the Congress of the Confederation, the States chose electors and senators, and the people voted for representatives. But one possible candidate existed for the presidency, namely, the hero of the Revolutionary War; and accordingly Washington received the unanimous vote of the whole electoral college. With him, John Adams was chosen vice-president, by a much smaller majority. The Congress, which slowly assembled, was finally able to count and declare the votes, the two officers were inaugurated, and the new government was ready to assume its functions.
There followed a period of rapid and fundamental legislation. In the new Congress were a body of able men, by far the greater number of them zealous to establish a strong authoritative government, and to complete the victory of the Federalists. The defeated States' Rights men now stood aside, watching their conquerors carry their plan to its conclusion. Led for the most part by James Madison of the House, {143} Congress passed Acts creating executive departments with federal officials; establishing a full independent federal judiciary, resident in every State, with a supreme court above all; imposing a tariff for revenue and for protection to American industries, and appropriating money to settle the debts of the late confederation. In addition, it framed and submitted to the States a series of constitutional amendments whose object was to meet Anti-federalist criticisms by securing the individual against oppression from the federal government. When Congress adjourned in September, 1789, after its first session, it had completed a thoroughgoing political revolution. In place of a loose league of entirely independent States, there now existed a genuine national government, able to enforce its will upon individuals and to perform all the functions of any State.
That the American people, with their political inheritance, should have consented even by a small majority to abandon their traditional lax government, remains one of the most remarkable political decisions in history. It depended upon the concurrence of circumstances which, for the moment, forced all persons of property and law-abiding instincts to join together in all the States to remedy an intolerable situation. {144} The leaders, as might be expected, were a different race of statesmen, on the whole, from those who had directed events prior to 1776. Washington and Franklin favoured the change; but Richard Henry Lee and Patrick Henry were eager opponents, Samuel Adams was unfriendly, and Thomas Jefferson, in Paris, was unenthusiastic. The main work was done by Hamilton, Madison, John Marshall, Gouverneur Morris, Fisher Ames—men who were children in the days of the Stamp Act. The old agitators and revolutionists were superseded by a new type of politicians, whose interests lay in government, not opposition.
But the fundamental American instincts were not in reality changed; they had only ebbed for the moment. No sooner did Congress meet in its second session in January, 1790, and undertake the task of reorganizing the chaotic finances of the country, than political unanimity vanished, and new sectional and class antagonisms came rapidly to the front in which could be traced the return of the old-time colonial habits. The central figure was no longer Madison, but Hamilton, Secretary of the Treasury, who aspired to be a second William Pitt, and submitted an elaborate scheme for refunding the entire American debt. In addition, he called for an excise tax, and {145} later recommended the chartering of a National Bank to serve the same function in America that the Bank of England performed in Great Britain.
Daring, far-sighted, based on the methods of English financiers, Hamilton's plans bristled with points certain to arouse antagonism. He proposed to refund and pay the debt at its face value to actual holders, regardless of the fact that the nearly worthless federal stock and certificates of indebtedness had fallen into the hands of speculators; he recommended that the United States should assume, fund, and pay the war debt of the States, disregarding the fact that, while some States were heavily burdened, others had discharged their obligations. He urged an excise tax on liquors, although such an internal tax was an innovation in America and was certain to stir intense opposition; he suggested the chartering of a powerful bank, in spite of the absence of any clause in the constitution authorizing such action. Hamilton was, in fact, a great admirer of the English constitution and political system, and he definitely intended to strengthen the new government by making it the supreme financial power and enlisting in its support all the moneyed interests of the country. Property, as in England, must be the basis of government.
{146}
Against his schemes, there immediately developed a rising opposition which made itself felt in Congress, in State legislatures, in the newspapers, and finally in Washington's own Cabinet. All the farmer and debtor elements in the country disliked and dreaded the financial manipulations of the brilliant secretary; and the Virginian planters, universally borrowers, who had been the strongest single power in establishing the new constitution, now swung into opposition to the administration. Madison led the fight in the House against Hamilton's measures; and Jefferson, in the Cabinet, laid down, in a memorandum of protest against the proposed bank, the doctrine of "strict construction" of the constitution according to which the powers granted to the federal government ought to be narrowly construed in order to preserve the State governments, the source of liberty, from encroachment. He denounced the bank, accordingly, as unwarranted by the constitution, corrupt, and dangerous to the safety of the country. In the congressional contest Hamilton was successful, for all his recommendations were adopted, but at the cost of creating a lasting antagonism in the southern States and in the western regions.
In 1791, Jefferson and Madison co-operated to establish a newspaper at Philadelphia whose sole occupation consisted in denouncing {147} the corrupt and monarchical Secretary of the Treasury. Hamilton retorted by publishing letters charging Jefferson with responsibility for it; and Washington, who steadily approved Hamilton's policies, found his Cabinet splitting into two factions. By the year 1792, when the second presidential election took place, the opposition, styling itself "Republican," was sufficiently well organized to run George Clinton, formerly the Anti-federalist leader of New York, for the Vice-Presidency against the "monarchical" Adams. Washington was not opposed, but no other one of the Hamiltonian supporters escaped attack. There was, in short, the beginning of the definite formation of political parties on lines akin to those which existed in the period before 1787. Behind Jefferson and Madison were rallying all the colonial-minded voters, to whom government was at best an evil and to whom, under any circumstances, strong authority and elaborate finance were utterly abhorrent. Around Hamilton gathered the men whose interests lay in building up a genuine, powerful, national government—the merchants, shipowners, moneyed men and creditors generally in the northern States—and, of course, all Tories.
Up to 1793, the Federalist administration successfully maintained its ground; and, when {148} the Virginian group tried in the House to prove laxity and mismanagement against Hamilton, he was triumphantly vindicated. Had the United States been allowed to develop in tranquillity and prosperity for a generation, it is not unlikely that the Federalist party might have struck its roots so deeply as to be impervious to attacks. But it needed time, for in contrast to the Jeffersonian party, whose origin is manifestly in the old-time colonial political habits of democracy, local independence, and love of lax finance, the Federalist party was a new creation, with no traditions to fall back upon. Reflecting in some respects British views, notably in its distrust of the masses and its respect for property and wealth, it far surpassed any English party of the period, except the small group led by William Pitt, in its demand for progressive and vigorous legislation. In 1793, when matters were in this situation, the state of European and British politics suddenly brought the United States into the current of world politics, and subjected the new administration to difficulties, which were ultimately to cause its downfall.
{149}
While the United States had been undergoing the important changes of the period, 1783-1793, England had passed through an almost equally significant political transformation, in course of which the two countries entered upon a long history of difficult and unfriendly diplomatic relations. The treaty of peace ended the political union of the two communities, but it left the nature of their commercial relations to be settled; and this, for the United States, was a problem second only in importance to that of federal government. If the prosperity of the thirteen States was to be restored, the old-time trade routes of the colonial days must be re-established. The West India market for fish, grain, and lumber, the British or European market for plantation products must be replaced on a profitable basis, and the United States must be prepared to purchase these privileges by whatever concessions lay in its power to grant. It rested chiefly with England to decide whether to permit the former colonies to resume their earlier commercial system or begin a new policy, for it was with Britain and the British colonies {150} that seven-eighths of American commerce naturally was carried on.
Unfortunately for the people of the United States, and unfortunately for the harmony of the two countries, the prevailing beliefs of English merchants, shipowners, naval authorities, and, in general, the official classes were such as to render a complete resumption of the former trade relations almost impossible. According to the political and economic doctrines underlying the Acts of Trade, the moment that the two countries became separated their interests automatically became antagonistic. American shipping, formerly fostered when under the flag, now assumed the aspect of a formidable rival to the British merchant marine and, as such, ought to be prevented from taking any profit which by any device could be turned toward British ships.
The treaty of peace had scarcely been signed when there appeared a pamphlet by Lord Sheffield, early in 1783, which won instant success, passing through several editions. This announced that henceforward it was the duty of the British government to discourage and crush American navigation to the extent of its power in order to check a dangerous rival, taking especial care to reserve the West Indies for exclusive British control. At the possibility of losing the {151} profitable American market through retaliatory measures, Sheffield laughed in scorn. "We might as reasonably dread the effect of combinations among the German as among the American States," he sneered, "and deprecate the resolves of the Diet as those of Congress." There were elements, of course, to whom these arguments of Sheffield were unwelcome, particularly the West India planters themselves, and to a degree the British manufacturers, who would gladly have resumed the trade of the years before 1776; but, so far as the great majority of Englishmen was concerned, it seems impossible to doubt that Lord Sheffield was a true spokesman of their convictions.
In addition to the economic theories of the time, the temper of the British people was sullen, hostile, and contemptuous toward the former colonies. The bulk of the nation had come to condemn the policy of the North Ministry which had led to the loss of the plantations, but they did not love the Americans any the more for that. The sharp social distinctions, which prior to 1776 had rendered the nobility, the gentry, the clergy, and the professions contemptuous toward the colonists, still reigned unchecked; and the Tories and most of the ruling classes, regarding the Americans as a set of ungrateful and spiteful people, whom it was well {152} to have lost as subjects, ceased to take any interest in their existence. The United States was dropped, as an unpleasant subject is banished from conversation; and the relations of the two countries became a matter of national concern only when the interests of shipowners, merchants, or naval authorities were sufficiently strong to compel attention from the governing classes.
The Whig leaders should, of course, be excepted from this general statement, for they and their followers—both their parliamentary coterie and their middle-class adherents outside—retained a friendly attitude, and tried to treat the United States with a consideration which usually had no place in Tory manners. But Whigs as well as Tories held the prevailing conceptions of naval and economic necessities, and only scattered individuals, like William Pitt, were affected by the new doctrines of Adam Smith. Their commercial policy tended to differ only in degree from that of the more rigid Tories.
To make it certain that the United States should fail to secure favourable commercial rights, the ascendancy of the Whigs came to a sudden end within a year from its beginning. The Shelburne Ministry, which made the peace, had to meet the opposition not only of the Tories but of the group led by Fox. In the session of 1783, the Whig party {153} was thus openly split, and presently all England was scandalized to see Fox enter into a coalition with no less a person than Lord North for the purpose of obtaining office. Shelburne resigned on February 24, after the passage of a resolution of censure on the Peace; and George III, after trying every expedient to avoid what he considered a personal disgrace, was forced, on April 2, to admit Fox and North as Ministers under the nominal headship of the Duke of Portland. So Tories were restored to a share in the government, since nearly half of the coalition majority depended upon Tory votes. In December, 1783, the King, by a direct exercise of his influence, caused the Lords to throw out a Ministerial bill for the government of India and, dismissing the coalition Ministers, he appealed to William Pitt. That youthful politician, who had first entered office as Chancellor of the Exchequer under Shelburne, succeeded, after a sharp parliamentary contest, in breaking down the opposition majority in the House, and in a general election in March, 1784, won a great victory. Then, at the head of a mixed Cabinet, supported by Tories and King's Friends as well as by his own followers from among the Whigs, Pitt maintained himself, secure in the support of George III, but in no sense his agent or tool. In the {154} next few years, he made his hold secure by his skill in parliamentary leadership and his success in carrying financial and administrative reforms. This was the first peace Ministry since that of Pelham, 1746-1754, which won prestige through efficient government. It was, however, mainly Tory in temper, and as such distinctly cold and unfriendly toward America. Pitt himself was undoubtedly in favour of liberal commercial relations; but in that respect, as in the question of parliamentary reform, he followed the opinions of his supporters and of the nation.
The British policy toward the United States, under the circumstances, was dictated by a strict adherence to the principles set forth by Lord Sheffield. Pitt, while Chancellor of the Exchequer under Shelburne, introduced a very liberal Bill, which, if enacted, would have secured full commercial reciprocity, including the West India trade. This failed to pass, however, and was abandoned when Pitt left office in April, 1783. The Fox-North Ministry followed a different plan by causing Parliament to pass a Bill authorizing the Crown to regulate the trade with the West Indies. They then, by proclamation, allowed the islands to import certain articles from the United States, not including fish or lumber, and {155} only in British bottoms. It was hoped that Canada would take the place of the United States in supplying the West India colonies, and that British vessels would monopolize the carrying. In 1787 this action was ratified by Parliament, and the process of discouraging American shipping was adopted as a national policy. American vessels henceforward came under the terms of the Navigation Acts, and could take part only in the direct trade between their own country and England. When John Adams, in 1785, arrived at London as Minister, and tried to open the subject of a commercial treaty, he was unable to secure the slightest attention to the American requests and felt himself to be in an atmosphere of hostility and social contempt. The British policy proved in a few years fairly successful. It reduced American shipping trading with England, it drove American vessels from the British West Indies, and, owing to the impossibility of the States retaliating separately, it did not diminish the British market in America. Up to 1789, when the first Congress of the United States passed a navigation act and adopted discriminating duties, America remained commercially helpless. The profit went to British shipowners and merchants.
The American government naturally {156} turned to the other powers having American possessions, France and Spain, hoping to secure from them compensating advantages. So far as France was concerned, the government of Louis XVI was friendly; but its finances were in such confusion and its administration so unsteady after 1783 that Jefferson, Minister to France, could secure no important concessions save one. In 1784, as though to step into the place left vacant by the English, the French crown, by royal order, permitted direct trade between the United States and the French West Indies in vessels of less than sixty tons burden. The result was striking. In a few years the American molasses trade, driven from the British islands, took refuge at San Domingo, building up a tremendous sugar export and more than filling the place of the British trade. In 1790 the commerce of San Domingo surpassed that of all the British Islands together. Here again, French friendship shone in contrast to English antagonism. Every American shipowner felt the difference, and remembered it.
With Spain the United States was less successful. Jay, Secretary for Foreign Affairs, undertook negotiations through Diego Gardoqui, a Spaniard who, during the Revolution, had furnished many cargoes of supplies. He {157} found that country sharply dissatisfied over the boundary assigned to the United States. The British, in ceding Florida to Spain, had not turned over all of their province of 1763, but had handed that part of it north of thirty-two degrees to the United States, and, further, had granted the latter the free navigation of the Mississippi, through Spanish territory. Gardoqui offered in substance to make a commercial treaty provided the United States would surrender the claim to navigate the Mississippi for twenty years. Jay, to whose mind the interests of the seaboard shipowners and producers far outweighed the desires of the few settlers of the interior waters, was willing to make the agreement. But an angry protest went up from the southern States, whose land claims stretched to the Mississippi, and he could secure, in 1787, a vote of only seven States to five in Congress. Since all treaties required the consent of nine States, this vote killed the negotiations. Spain remained unfriendly, and continued to intrigue with the Indian tribes in the south-western United States with a view to retaining their support.
Further north, the United States found itself mortified and helpless before British antagonism. After 1783 the country had Canada on its northern border as a small but actively hostile neighbour, for there {158} thousands of proscribed and ruined Tories had taken refuge. The governors of Canada, Carlton and Simcoe, as well as the men commanding the frontier posts, had served against the Americans and regarded them as rivals. To secure the western fur trade and to retain a hold over the western Indians was recognized as the correct and necessary policy for Canada; and the British government, in response to Canadian suggestions, decided to retain their military posts along the Great Lakes within the boundaries of the United States. To justify them in so doing, they pointed with unanswerable truth to the fact that the United States had not carried out the provisions of the Treaty of 1783 regarding British debts, and that Tories, contrary to the letter and spirit of that treaty, were still proscribed by law. The State courts felt in no way bound to enforce the treaty, nor did State legislatures choose to carry it out. British debts remained uncollectible, and the British therefore retained their western posts and through them plied a lucrative trade with the Indians to the south of the Great Lakes.
In the years after the war, a steady flow of settlers entered the Ohio valley, resuming the movement begun before the Revolution, and took up land in Kentucky and the Northwest territory. By 1792 Kentucky {159} was ready to be admitted as a State, and Tennessee and Ohio were organized as territories. These settlers naturally found the Indians opposing their advance, and the years 1783-1794 are a chronicle of smouldering border warfare, broken by intermittent truces. During all this time it was the firm belief of the frontiersmen that the Indian hostility was stimulated by the British posts, and hatred of England and the English grew into an article of faith on their part. Ultimately, the new government under Washington undertook a decisive campaign. At first, in 1791, General St. Clair, invading Ohio with raw troops, was fearfully defeated, with butchery and mutilation of more than two-thirds of his force; but in 1794 General Wayne, with a more carefully drilled body, compelled the Indians to retreat. Yet with the British posts still there, a full control was impossible.
The new constitution, which gave the United States ample powers of enforcing treaties and making commercial discriminations, did not at once produce any alteration in the existing unsatisfactory situation. Spain remained steadily indifferent and unfriendly. France, undergoing the earlier stages of her own revolution, was incapable of carrying out any consistent action. The Pitt Ministry, absorbed in the game of European politics and in internal {160} legislation, sent a Minister, Hammond, but was content to let its commercial and frontier policies continue. But when, in 1792, the French Revolution took a graver character, with the overthrow of the monarchy, and when in 1793 England joined the European powers in the war against France, while all Europe watched with horror and panic the progress of the Reign of Terror in the French Republic, the situation of the United States was suddenly changed.
In the spring of 1793 there came the news of the war between England and France, and, following it by a few days only, an emissary from the French Republic, One and Indivisible, "Citizen Edmond Genet," arrived at Charleston, South Carolina, April 15. There now exploded a sudden overwhelming outburst of sympathy and enthusiasm for the French nation and the French cause. All the remembered help of the days of Yorktown, all the tradition of British oppression and ravages, all the recent irritation at the British trade discrimination and Indian policy coupled with appreciation of French concessions, swept crowds in every State and every town into a tempest of welcome to Genet. Shipowners rushed to apply for privateers' commissions, crowds adopted French democratic jargon and manners. Democratic clubs were formed on the model of the Jacobin {161} society, and "Civic Feasts," at which Genet was present, made the country resound. It looked as though the United States were certain to enter the European war as an ally of France out of sheer gratitude, democratic sympathy, and hatred for England. The French Minister, feeling the people behind him, hastened to send out privateers and acted as though the United States were already in open alliance.
It now fell to the Washington administration to decide a momentous question. Regardless of the past, regardless of the British policy since the peace, was it worth while to allow the country to become involved in war at this juncture? Decidedly not. Before Genet had presented his credentials, Washington and Jefferson had framed and issued a declaration of neutrality forbidding American citizens to violate the law of nations by giving aid to either side. It was not merely caution which led to this step. The Federalist leaders and most of their followers—men of property, standing, and law-abiding habits—were distinctly shocked at the horrors of the Reign of Terror, and felt with Burke, their old friend and defender in Revolutionary days, that such liberty as the French demanded was something altogether alien to that known in the United States or in England. And as the {162} news became more and more ghastly, the Federalists grew rapidly to regard England, with all its unfriendliness, with all its commercial selfishness, as the saving power of civilization, and France as the chief enemy on earth of God and man. The result was to precipitate the United States into a new contest, a struggle on the part of the Federalist administration, led by Hamilton and Washington, to hold back the country from being hurled into alliance with France or into war with England. In this, they had to meet the attack of the already organizing Republican party, and of many new adherents who flocked to it during the years of excitement.
The first contest was a short one. Genet, his head turned by his reception, resented the strict neutrality enforced by the administration, tried to compel it to recede, endeavoured to secure the exit of privateersmen in spite of their prohibition, and ultimately in fury appealed to the people against their government. This conduct lost him the support of even the most sanguine democrats, and, when the administration asked for his recall, he fell from his prominence unregretted. But his successor, Fauchet, a less extreme man, was warmly welcomed by the opposition leaders, including Madison and Randolph, Jefferson's {163} successor as Secretary of State, and was admitted into the inmost councils of the party.
Hardly was Genet disposed of when a more dangerous crisis arose, caused by the naval policy of England. When war broke out, the British cruisers, as was their custom, fell upon French commerce, and especially upon such neutral commerce as could, under the then announced principles of international law, be held liable to capture. Consequently, American vessels, plying their lucrative trade with the French West Indies, were seized and condemned by British West India prize courts. It was a British dogma, known as the Rule of 1756, that if trade by a neutral with enemies' colonies had been prohibited in peace, it became contraband in time of war, otherwise belligerents, by simply opening their ports, could employ neutrals to do their trading for them. In this case, the trade between the French West Indies and America had not been prohibited in peace, but the seizures were made none the less, causing a roar of indignation from the entire American seacoast. Late in 1793, the British Ministry added fresh fuel to the fire by declaring provisions taken to French territory to be contraband of war. If an intention to force the United States into alliance with France had been guiding the {164} Pitt Ministry, no better steps could have been devised to accomplish the end. As a matter of fact, the Pitt Ministry thought very little about it in the press of the tremendous European cataclysm.
When Congress met in December, 1793, the old questions of Hamilton's measures and the "monarchism" of the administration were forgotten in the new crisis. Apparently a large majority in the House, led by Madison, were ready to sequester British debts, declare an embargo, build a navy, and in general prepare for a bitter contest; but by great exertions the administration managed to stave off these drastic steps by promising to send a special diplomatic mission to prevent war. During the summer the excitement grew, for it was in this year that Wayne's campaign against the western Indians took place, which was generally believed to be rendered necessary by the British retention of the posts; and also in this same summer the inhabitants of western Pennsylvania broke into insurrection against the hated excise tax. This lawlessness was attributed by the Federalists, including Washington himself, to the demoralizing influence of the French Revolution, and was therefore suppressed by no less than 15,000 militia, an action denounced by the Republicans—as Randolph confided to the French Minister—as an example of {165} despotic brutality. Men were fast coming to be incapable of cool thought on party questions.
The special mission to England was undertaken by the Chief Justice, Jay, the most experienced diplomat in America since the death of Franklin. Upon arriving in England, he found the country wild with excitement and horror over the French Revolution, and with all its interest concentrated upon the effort to carry on war by land and sea. The Pitt Ministry was now supported by all Tories, representing the land-holding classes, the clergy, and the professions, and by nearly all the aristocratic Whigs. Burke, one-time defender of the American Revolution, was exhausting his energies in eloquent and extravagant denunciations of the French. Only a handful of radicals, led by Fox, Sheridan, and Camden, and representing a few constituents, still dared to proclaim liberal principles. In all other classes of society, democracy was regarded as synonymous with bestial anarchy and infidelity. Clearly the United States, from its very nature as a republic, could hope for no favour, in spite of the noticeably English prepossessions of Hamilton's party.
Jay dealt directly and informally with William Grenville, the Secretary for Foreign Affairs, and seems rapidly to have come to {166} the conclusion that it was for the interest of the United States to get whatever it could, rather than to endeavour to haggle over details with an immovable and indifferent Ministry, thereby hazarding all success. On his part, Grenville clearly did his best to establish a practicable working arrangement, agreeing with Jay in so framing the treaty as to waive "principles" and "claims" and to include precise provisions. The up-shot was that when Jay finished his negotiations he had secured a treaty which for the first time established a definite basis for commercial dealings and removed most of the dangerous outstanding difficulties. British debts were to be adjusted by a mixed commission, and American claims for unjust seizures in the West Indies were to be dealt with in similar fashion. The British were to evacuate the north-western military posts, and, while they did not withdraw or modify the so-called "rule of 1756," they agreed to a clear definition of contraband of war. They were also ready to admit American vessels of less than seventy tons to the British West Indies, provided the United States agreed not to export West India products for ten years. Here Jay, as in his dealings with Gardoqui, showed a willingness to make a considerable sacrifice in order to gain a definite small point. On the whole, the treaty {167} comprised all that the Pitt Ministry, engaged in a desperate war with the French Republic, was likely to concede.
The treaty left England in the winter of 1795 and reached America after the adjournment of Congress. Although it fell far short of what was hoped for, it still seemed to Washington wholly advisable to accept it under the circumstances as an alternative to further wrangling and probable war. Sent under seal of secrecy to the Senate, in special session, its contents were none the less revealed by an opposition senator, and a tempest of disappointment and anger swept the country. In every seaport Jay was execrated as a fool and traitor and burned in effigy. Washington watched unmoved. The Senate voted ratification by a bare two-thirds, but struck out the West India article, preferring to retain the power of re-exporting French West India produce rather than to acquire the direct trade with the English islands. Washington added his signature, the British government accepted the amendment, and the treaty came into effect. The West India privilege was, in fact, granted by the Pitt Ministry, as in the treaty, owing to the demands of the West India planters. In America the storm blew itself out in a few weeks of noise and anger, and the country settled down to make the best of the privileges {168} gained, which, however incomplete, were well worth the effort.
So the Federalist administration kept the United States neutral, and gave it at last a definite commercial status with England. It did more, for in August, 1795, the north-western Indians, beaten in battle and deprived of the presence of their protectors, made a treaty abandoning all claims to the region south of Lake Erie. The Spanish government, on hearing of the Jay treaty, came to terms in October, 1795, agreeing to the boundaries of 1783, granting a "right of deposit" to American trades down the Mississippi at or near New Orleans, and promising to abandon Indian intrigues. The diplomatic campaign of the Federalists seemed to be crowned with general success.
But in the process the passions of the American people had become deeply stirred, and by the end of 1795 the Federalist party could no longer, as at the outset, count on the support of all the mercantile elements and all the townspeople, for, by their policy toward France and England, Washington, Hamilton, and their associates had set themselves against the underlying prejudices and beliefs of the voters. The years of the strong government reaction were at an end. The time had come to fight for party existence.
{169}
With the temporary shelving of British antagonism, the Federalist administration passed its second great crisis; but it was immediately called upon to face new and equally serious differences with France which were ultimately to prove the cause of its downfall. The fundamental difficulty in the political situation in America was that the two parties were now so bitterly opposed as to render every governmental act a test of party strength. The Republicans, who accepted the leadership of Jefferson or of Clinton of New York, comprised all who favoured democracy in any sense—whether that of human equality, or local self-government, or freedom from taxes, or sympathy with France—and all who had any grievance against the administration, from frontiersmen whose cabins had not been protected against Indians or who had been forced to pay a whisky tax, to seamen whose ships had not been protected by the Jay treaty. In short, all in whom still persisted the deep-rooted colonial traditions of opposition to strong government and dislike of any but local authorities were {170} summoned to oppose an administration on the familiar ground that it was working against their liberties by corruption, usurpation, financial burdens, and gross partisanship for England and against France.
On the other side, the Federalists were rapidly acquiring a state of mind substantially Tory in character. They were coming to dread and detest "democracy" as dangerous to the family and to society as well as to government, and to identify it with the guillotine and the blasphemies of the Worship of Reason. In the furious attacks which, after the fashion of the day, the opposition papers hurled against every act of the Federalist leaders, and which aimed as much to defile their characters as to discredit their policies, they saw a pit of anarchy yawning. Between parties so constituted, no alternative remained but a fight to a finish; and, from the moment the Federalists became genuinely anti-democratic, they were doomed. Only accident or conspicuous success on the part of their leaders could delay their destruction. A single false step on their part meant ruin.
With the ratification of the Jay treaty, a long period of peaceful relations began between England and the United States. The American shipowners quickly adapted themselves to the situation, and were soon {171} prosperously occupied in neutral commerce. In England, American affairs dropped wholly out of public notice during the exciting and anxious years of the war of the second coalition. The Pitt Ministry ended, leaving the country under the grip of a rigid repression of all liberal thought or utterance, and was followed by the commonplace Toryism of Addington and his colleagues. Then came the Treaty of Amiens with France, the year of peace, the renewed war in 1803, and, after an interval of confused parliamentary wranglings, the return to power of Pitt in 1804, called by the voice of the nation to meet the crisis of the threatened French invasion. The United States was forgotten, diplomatic relations sank to mere routine. Such were the unquestionable benefits of the execrated treaty made by Jay and Grenville.
With France, however, American relations became suddenly strained, as a result of the same treaty. The French Republic, in the year 1795, was finally reorganized under a definite constitution as a Directorate—a republic with a plural executive of five. This government, ceasing to be merely a revolutionary body, undertook to play the game of grand politics and compelled all the neighbouring smaller States to submit to democratic revolutions, accept a constitution on the French model, and become {172} dependent allies of the French Republic. The local democratic faction, large or small, was in each case utilized to carry through this programme, which was always accompanied with corruption and plunder to swell the revenues of France and fill the pockets of the directors and their agents. Such a policy the Directorate now endeavoured, as a matter of course, to carry out with the United States, expecting to ally themselves with the Jeffersonian party and to bribe or bully the American Republic into a lucrative alliance. The way was prepared by the infatuation with which Randolph, Jefferson, Madison, and other Republican leaders had unbosomed themselves to Fauchet, and also by an unfortunate blunder which had led Washington to send James Monroe as Minister to France in 1794. This man was known to be an active sympathizer with France, and it was hoped that his influence would assist in keeping friendly relations; but his conduct was calculated to do nothing but harm. When the news of the Jay treaty came to France, the Directorate chose to regard it as an unfriendly act, and Monroe, sharing their feelings, exerted himself rather to mollify their resentment than to justify his country.
In 1796 a new Minister, Adet, was sent to the United States to remain only in case {173} the government should adopt a just policy toward France. This precipitated a party contest squarely on the issue of French relations. In the first place Congress, after a bitter struggle and by a bare majority, voted to appropriate the money to carry the Jay treaty into effect. This was a defeat for the French party. In the second place, in spite of a manifesto issued by Adet, threatening French displeasure, the presidential electors gave a majority of three votes for Adams over Jefferson to succeed Washington. The election had been a sharp party struggle, the whole theory of a deliberate choice by electors vanishing in the stress of partisan excitement. After this second defeat, the French Minister withdrew, severing diplomatic relations; and French vessels began to capture American merchantmen, to impress the country with the serious results of French irritation. The Washington administration now recalled Monroe and sent C. C. Pinckney to replace him, but the Directory, while showering compliments upon Monroe, refused to receive Pinckney at all and virtually expelled him from the country. In the midst of these annoying events, Washington's term closed, and the sorely tried man, disgusted with party abuse and what he felt to be national ingratitude, retired to his Virginia estates, no longer {174} the president of the whole country, but the leader of a faction. His Farewell Address showed, under its stately phrases, his detestation of party controversy and his fears for the future.
Washington's successor, Adams, was a man of less calmness and steadiness of soul; independent, but with a somewhat petulant habit of mind, and nervously afraid of ceasing to be independent; a man of sound sense, yet of a too great personal vanity. His treatment of the French situation showed national pride and dignity as well as an adherence to the traditional Federalist policy of avoiding war. Unfortunately, his handling of the party leaders was so deficient in tact as to assist in bringing quick and final defeat upon himself and upon them.
The relations with France rapidly developed into an international scandal. Adams, supported by his party, determined to send a mission of three, including Pinckney, in order to restore friendly relations, as well as to protest against depredations and seizures which the few French cruisers at sea were now beginning to make. In the spring of 1798, however, the commission reported that its efforts had failed, and Adams was obliged to lay its correspondence before Congress. This showed that the great obstacle in the way of carrying on {175} negotiations with the French had been the persistent demands on the part of Talleyrand—the French Minister of Foreign Affairs—for a preliminary money payment, either under the form of a so-called "loan" or as a bribe outright. Such a revelation of venality struck dumb the Republican leaders who had kept asserting their distrust of Adams's sincerity and accusing the administration of injustice toward France. It took all heart out of the opposition members of Congress, and encouraged the Federalists to commit the government to actual hostilities with the hated Democrats and Jacobins. Declaring the treaties of 1778 to be abrogated, Congress authorized naval reprisals, voted money and a loan, and so began what was called a "quasi-war," since neither side made a formal declaration. Adams, riding on the crest of a brief wave of popularity, declared in a message to Congress that he would never send another Minister to France without receiving assurances that he would be received as "befitted the representative of a great, free, powerful, and independent nation." "Millions for defence, but not a cent for tribute!" became the Federalist watch-word; and, when the little navy of a few frigates and sloops began to bring in French men-of-war and privateers as prizes, the country actually felt a thrill of pride and {176} manhood. For the moment, the United States stood side by side with England in fighting the dangerous enemy of civilization. American Federalist and British Tory were at one; Adams and Pitt were carrying on the same war.
Unfortunately for the Federalists, they failed to appreciate the fundamental differences between the situation in England and in the United States, for they went on to imitate the mother country not merely in fighting the French, but in seeking to suppress what they felt to be dangerous "Jacobinical" features of American politics. In the summer of 1798, three laws were enacted which have become synonymous with party folly. Two—the Alien Acts—authorized the President at his discretion to imprison or deport any alien, friend or enemy; the third—the Sedition Act—punished by fine and imprisonment any utterance or publication tending to cause opposition to a federal law or to bring into contempt the federal government or any of its officers. Such statutes had stood in England since 1793 and were used to suppress democratic assailants of the monarchy; but such a law in the United States could mean nothing more than the suppression by Federalist courts of criticisms upon the administration made by Republican newspapers. {177} It furnished every opposition agitator with a deadly weapon for use against the administration; and when the Sedition Law was actually enforced, and a half-dozen Republican editors were subjected to fine or imprisonment for scurrilous but scarcely dangerous utterances, the demonstration of the inherently tyrannical nature of the Federalists seemed to be complete. It was an unpardonable political blunder.
Equally damaging to the prosperity of the Federalist party was the fact that the French Republic, instead of accepting the issue, showed a complete unwillingness to fight, and protested in public that it was having a war forced upon it. Talleyrand showered upon the United States, through every channel, official or unofficial, assurances of kindly feelings, and, so soon as he learned of Adams's demand for a suitable reception for an American Minister, gave the required assurance in his exact words. Under the circumstances, the war preparations of the Federalists became visibly superfluous, especially a provisional army which Congress had authorized under Hamilton as active commander. The opposition press and speakers denounced this as a Federalist army destined to act against the liberties of the people; and the administration could point to no real danger to justify its existence.
{178}
So high ran party spirit that the Virginian leaders thought or affected to think it necessary to prepare for armed resistance to Federalist oppression; and Madison and Jefferson, acting through the State legislatures of Virginia and Kentucky respectively, caused the adoption of two striking series of resolutions stating the crisis in Republican phraseology. In each case, after denouncing the Alien and Sedition laws as unconstitutional, the legislatures declared that the constitution was nothing more than a compact between sovereign States; that the Federal government, the creature of the compact, was not the final judge of its powers, and that in case of a palpable usurpation of powers by the Federal government it was the duty of the States to "interpose," in the words of Madison, or to "nullify" the Federal law, as Jefferson phrased it. Such language seemed to Washington, Adams, and their party to signify that the time was coming when they must fight for national existence; but to the opposition it seemed no more than a restatement of time-hallowed American principles of government, necessary to save liberty from a reactionary faction. Party hatred now rivalled that between revolutionary Whigs and Tories.
Under these circumstances the election of 1800 took place. The Federalist party {179} leaders, feeling the ground quaking under them, clung the more desperately to the continuance of the French "quasi-war" as their sole means for rallying popular support. But at this stage President Adams, seeing the folly of perpetuating a sham war for mere party advantage, determined to reopen negotiations. This precipitated a bitter quarrel, for the members of his Cabinet and the leading congressmen still regarded Hamilton, now a private citizen in New York, as the real leader, and followed him in urging the continuance of hostilities. Adams, unable to manage his party opponents openly, took refuge in sudden, secret, and, as they felt, treacherous conduct and sent nominations for a new French mission without consulting his advisers. The Federalist Senate, raging at Adams's stupidity, could not refuse to ratify the appointments, and so in 1799 the new mission sailed, was respectfully received by Bonaparte, and was promptly admitted to negotiations.
The Federalist party now ran straight toward defeat; for, while the leaders could not avoid supporting Adams for a second term, they hated him as a blunderer and marplot. On his part, his patience exhausted, Adams dismissed two of his secretaries, in a passion, in 1800. Later, through the wiles of Aaron Burr, Republican leader in New {180} York, a pamphlet, written by Hamilton to prove Adams's utter unfitness for the Presidency, was brought to light and circulated. Against this discredited and disorganized party, the Republicans, supporting Jefferson again for the Presidency and thundering against the Sedition Law, triumphantly carried a clear majority of electoral votes in the autumn; but by a sheer oversight they gave an equal number for Jefferson and for Burr, who was only intended for Vice-president. Hence under the terms of the constitution it became necessary for the House of Representatives to make the final selection, voting by States. It fell thus to the lot of the Federalist House of 1800-1801 to choose the next President, and for a while the members showed an inclination to support Burr, as at least a Northerner, rather than Jefferson. But better judgments ruled, and finally Jefferson was awarded the place which he had in fairness won. The last weeks of Federalist rule was filled with a discreditable effort to save what was possible from the wreck. New offices were established, including a whole system of circuit judgeships; and Adams spent his time up to the last hour of his term in signing commissions, stealing away in the early morning in order not to see the inauguration of his rival.
{181}
So fell the Federalist party from power. It had a brilliant record in legislation and administration; it had created a new United States; it had shown a statesmanship never equalled before or since on the American continent; but it ruined itself by endeavouring openly to establish a system of government founded on distrust of the people, and modelled after British precedents. For a few years, England and the United States approached nearer in government and policy than at any other time. But, while in England a large part of society—the nobility, gentry, middle classes, the professions, the church, and all strong political elements—supported Pitt in suppressing free speech and individual liberty, the Federalists represented only a minority, and their social principles were abhorrent to the vast majority of the inhabitants of the United States.
The Republican party, which conquered by what Jefferson considered to be a revolution no less important than that of 1776, represented a reaction to the old ideals of government traditional in colonial times,—namely as little taxation as possible, as much local independence as could exist, and the minimum of Federal authority. Jefferson professed to believe that the conduct of foreign relations was the only important function of the central government, {182} all else properly belonging to the States. So complete was the Republican victory that the party had full power to put its principles into effect. It controlled both Houses of Congress, and was blessed with four years of peace and prosperity. Thomas Jefferson, for all his radicalism in language, was a shrewd party leader, whose actions were uniformly cautious and whose entire habit of mind favoured avoidance of any violent change. "Scientific" with the general interests of a French eighteenth-century "philosopher," he was limited in his views of public policy by his education as a Virginia planter, wholly out of sympathy with finance, commerce, or business. Under his guidance, accordingly, the United States government was subjected to what he called "a chaste reformation," rather than to a general overturning.
All expenses were cut down, chiefly at the cost of the army and navy; all appropriations were rigorously diminished, and all internal taxes were swept away. Since commerce continued active, there still remained a surplus revenue, and this Gallatin, the Secretary of the Treasury, applied to extinguishing the debt. A few of the more important Federal offices were taken from embittered Federalists and given to Republicans, but there was no general {183} proscription of office-holders. The only action at all radical in character was the repeal of the law establishing new circuit judgeships, a step which legislated a number of Federalists out of office. The repeal was denounced by fervid Federalist orators as a violation of the constitution and a death-blow to the Union; but the appointments under the law itself had been so grossly partisan that the country was unalarmed. With these steps the Republican reaction ended. Jefferson and his party carried through no alteration of the central departments; they abandoned no Federal power except that of imposing an excise; they did not even repeal the charter of the National Bank. The real change lay in the more strictly economical finances and in the general spirit of government. The Federalist opposition, criticizing every act with bitterness and continually predicting ruin, found that under the "Jacobins" the country remained contented and prosperous and was in no more danger of atheism or the guillotine than it had been under Adams. So matters went on, year after year, the Federal government playing its part quietly and the American people carrying on their vocations in peace and prosperity.
Jefferson's general theory of foreign affairs was based on the idea that diplomacy was {184} mainly a matter of bargain and sale, with national commerce as the deciding factor. He believed so firmly that national self-interest would lead all European powers to make suitable treaties with the United States that he considered the navy as wholly superfluous, and would have been glad to sell it. But when circumstances arose calling for a different sort of diplomacy, he was ready to modify his methods; and he so far recognized the unsuitability of peaceful measures in dealing with the Barbary corsairs as to permit the small American navy to carry on extensive operations during 1801-3, which ended in the submission of Tripoli and Algiers.
Simultaneously, Jefferson was brought face to face with a diplomatic crisis, arising from the peculiar actions of his old ally, France. At the outset of his administration, he found the treaty made by Adams's commissioners in 1800 ready for ratification, and thus began his career with all questions settled, thanks to his predecessor. But he had been in office only a few months when the behaviour of the Spanish officials at New Orleans gave cause for alarm; for they suddenly terminated the right of deposit, granted in 1795. It was quickly rumoured that the reason was to be found in the fact that France, now under the First Consul, Napoleon, {185} had regained Louisiana. It was, in fact, true. Bonaparte overthrew the Directory in 1799 and established himself, under the thin disguise of "First Consul," as practical military despot in France. He had immediately embraced the idea of establishing a western colonial empire, which should be based on San Domingo, now controlled by insurgent negroes, and which should include Louisiana. By a treaty of October 1, 1800, he compelled Spain to retrocede the former French province in return for a promise to establish a kingdom of "Etruria" for a Spanish prince. During 1802 large armaments sailed to San Domingo and began the process of reconquest. It needed only the completion of that task for Napoleon to be ready to take over Louisiana, and thereby to gain absolute control over the one outlet from the interior territories of the United States.