IX

[pg 98]IXTHE TWO PARTIESWhen Jefferson at last found himself at Monticello, having resigned his office as Secretary of State, he declared and believed that he had done with politics forever. To various correspondents he wrote as follows:“I think that I shall never take another newspaper of any sort. I find my mind totally absorbed in my rural occupations.... Nocircumstances, my dear sir, will ever more tempt me to engage in anything public.... I would not give up my retirement for the empire of the universe.”When Madison wrote in 1795, soliciting him to accept the Republican nomination for the presidency, Mr. Jefferson replied:“The little spice of ambition which I had in my younger days has long since evaporated, and I set still less store by a posthumous than present fame. The question[pg 99]is forever closed with me.”Nevertheless, within a few months Mr. Jefferson accepted the nomination, chiefly, it is probable, because, with his usual sagacity, he foresaw that the Republican candidate would be defeated as President, but elected as Vice-President. It must be remembered that at that time the candidate receiving the next to the highest number of electoral votes was declared to be Vice-President; so that there was always a probability that the presidential candidate of the party defeated would be chosen to the second office.There were several reasons why Jefferson would have been glad to receive the office of Vice-President. It involved no disagreeable responsibility; it called for no great expenditure of money in the way of entertainments; it carried a good salary; it required only a few months’ residence at Washington.“Mr. Jefferson often told me,”remarks Mr. Bacon,“that the office of Vice-President was far preferable to that of President.”Mr. Jefferson therefore became the Republican nominee for President, and, as he doubt[pg 100]less expected, was elected Vice-President, the vote standing as follows: Adams, 71; Jefferson, 68; Pinckney, 59; Burr, 30.It is significant of Mr. Jefferson’s high standing in the country that many people believed that he would not deign to accept the office of Vice-President; and Madison wrote advising him to come to Washington on the 4th of March, and take the oath of office, in order that this belief might be dispelled. Jefferson accordingly did so, bringing with him the bones of a mastodon, lately discovered, and a little manuscript book written in his law-student days, marked“Parliamentary Pocket-Book.”This was the basis of that careful and elaborate“Manual of Parliamentary Practice”which Jefferson left as his legacy to the Senate.Upon receiving news of the election Jefferson had written to Madison:“If Mr. Adams can be induced to administer the government on its true principles, and to relinquish his bias to an English Constitution, it is to be considered whether it would not be, on the whole, for the public good to come to[pg 101]a good understanding with him as to his future elections. He is perhaps the only sure barrier against Hamilton’s getting in.”Mr. Adams, indeed, at the outset of his administration, was inclined to be confidential with Mr. Jefferson; but soon, by one of those sudden turns not infrequent with him, he took a different course, and thenceforth treated the Vice-President with nothing more than bare civility.It was a time, indeed, when cordial relations between Federalist and Republican were almost impossible. In a letter written at this period to Mr. Edward Rutledge, Jefferson said:“You and I have formerly seen warm debates, and high political passions. But gentlemen of different politics would then speak to each other, and separate the business of the Senate from that of society. It is not so now. Men who have been intimate all their lives cross the street to avoid meeting, and turn their heads another way, lest they should be obliged to touch their hats.”These party feelings were intensified in the year 1798 by what is known as the X Y Z[pg 102]business. Mr. Adams had sent three commissioners to Paris to negotiate a treaty. Talleyrand, the French Minister for Foreign Affairs, held aloof from them; but they were informed by certain mysterious agents that a treaty could be had on three conditions, (1) that the President should apologize for certain expressions in his recent message to Congress; (2) that the United States should loan a large sum of money to the French government; (3) that adouceurof $25,000 should be given to Talleyrand’s agents.These insulting proposals were indignantly rejected by the commissioners, and being reported in this country, they aroused a storm of popular indignation. Preparations for war were made forthwith. General Washington, though in failing health, was appointed commander-in-chief,—the real command being expected to devolve upon Hamilton, who was named second; men and supplies were voted; letters of marque were issued, and war actually prevailed upon the high seas. The situation redounded greatly to the advantage of the Federalists, for they were always as[pg 103]eager to go to war with France as they were reluctant to go to war with England. The newly appointed officers were drawn almost, if not quite, without exception from the Federalist party, and Hamilton seemed to be on the verge of that military career which he had long hoped for. He trusted, as his most intimate friend, Gouverneur Morris, said after his death,“that in the changes and chances of time we would be involved in some war which might strengthen our union and nerve our executive.”So late as 1802, Hamilton wrote to Morris,“there must be a systematic and persevering endeavor to establish the future of a great empire on foundations much firmer than have yet been devised.”At this very time he was negotiating with Miranda and with the British government, his design being to use against Mexico the army raised in expectation of a war with France.Hamilton was not the man to overturn the government out of personal ambition, nor even in order to set up a monarchy in place of a republic. But he had convinced himself that the republic must some day fall[pg 104]of its own weight. He was always anticipating a“crisis,”and this word is repeated over and over again in his correspondence. It even occurs in the crucial sentence of that pathetic document which he wrote on the eve of his fatal duel. When the“crisis”came, Hamilton meant to be on hand; and, if possible, at the head of an army.However, the X Y Z affair ended peacefully. The warlike spirit shown by the people of the United States had a wholesome effect upon the French government; and at their suggestion new envoys were sent over by the President, by whom a treaty was negotiated. This wise and patriotic act upon the part of Mr. Adams was a benefit to his country, but it aroused the bitter anger of the Federalists and ruined his position in that party.But what was Mr. Jefferson’s attitude during this business? He was not for war, and he contended that a distinction should be made between the acts of Talleyrand and his agents, and the real disposition of the French people. He wrote as follows:“Inexperienced in such manœuvres, the people[pg 105]did not permit themselves even to suspect that the turpitude of private swindlers might mingle itself unobserved, and give its own hue to the communications of the French government, of whose participation there was neither proof nor probability.”And again:“But as I view a peace between France and England the ensuing winter to be certain, I have thought it would have been better for us to have contrived to bear from France through the present summer what we have been bearing both from her and from England these four years, and still continue to bear from England, and to have required indemnification in the hour of peace, when, I firmly believe, it would have been yielded by both.”But this is bad political philosophy. A nation cannot obtain justice by submitting to wrongs or insults even for a time. Jefferson himself had written long before:“I think it is our interest to punish the first insult, because an insult unpunished is the parent of many others.”It is possible that he was misled at this juncture by his liking[pg 106]for France, and by his dislike of the Federalists and of their British proclivities. It is true that the bribe demanded by Talleyrand’s agents might be considered, to use Mr. Jefferson’s words, as“the turpitude of private swindlers;”but the demand for a loan and for a retraction could be regarded only as national acts, being acts of the French government, although the bulk of the French people might repudiate them.Whether Jefferson was right or wrong in the position which he took, he maintained it with superb self-confidence and aplomb. For the moment, the Federalists had everything their own way. They carried the election. Hamilton’s oft-anticipated“crisis”seemed to have arrived at last. But Jefferson coolly waited till the storm should blow over.“Our countrymen,”he wrote to a friend,“are essentially Republicans. They retain unadulterated the principles of ’76, and those who are conscious of no change in themselves have nothing to fear in the long run.”And so it proved. The ascendency of the Federalists was soon destroyed, and de[pg 107]stroyed forever, by the political crimes and follies which they committed; and especially by the alien and sedition laws. The reader need hardly be reminded that the alien law gave the President authority to banish from the country“all such aliens asheshould judge dangerous to the peace and safety of the United States,”—a despotic power which no king of England ever possessed. The sedition act made it a crime, punishable by fine and imprisonment, to speak or write anything“false, scandalous, and malicious,”with intent to excite against either House of Congress or against the President,“the hatred of the good people of the United States.”It can readily be seen what gross oppression was possible under this elastic law, interpreted by judges who, to a man, were members of the Federal party. Matthew Lyon, of Vermont, ventured to read aloud at a political meeting a letter which he had received expressing astonishment that the President’s recent address to the House of Representatives had not been answered by“an order to send him to a mad-house.”For this Mr.[pg 108]Lyon was fined $1,000, and imprisoned in a veritable dungeon.These unconstitutional and un-American laws were vigorously opposed by Jefferson and Madison. In October, 1798, Jefferson wrote:“For my own part I consider those laws as merely an experiment on the American mind to see how far it will bear an avowed violation of the Constitution. If this goes down, we shall immediately see attempted another act of Congress declaring that the President shall continue in office during life, reserving to another occasion the transfer of the succession to his heirs, and the establishment of the Senate for life.”Jefferson also prepared the famous Kentucky resolutions, which were adopted by the legislature of that State,—the authorship, however, being kept secret till Jefferson avowed it, twenty years later. These much-discussed resolutions have been said to have originated the doctrine of nullification, and to contain that principle of secession upon which the South acted in 1861.[pg 109]They may be summed up roughly as follows: The source of all political power is in the people. The people have, by the compact known as the Constitution, granted certain specified powers to the federal government; all other powers, if not granted to the several state governments, are retained by the people. The alien and sedition laws assume the exercise by the federal government of powers not granted to it by the Constitution. They are therefore void.Thus far there can be no question that Jefferson’s argument was sound, and its soundness would not be denied, even at the present day. But the question then arose: what next? May the laws be disregarded and disobeyed by the States or by individuals, or must they be obeyed until some competent authority has pronounced them void? and if so, what is that authority? We understand now that the Supreme Court has sole authority to decide upon the constitutionality of the acts of Congress. It was so held, for the first time, in the year 1803, in the case of Marburyv.Madison, by Chief[pg 110]Justice Marshall and his associates; and that decision, though resisted at the time, has long been accepted by the country as a whole. But this case did not arise until several years after the Kentucky Resolutions were written. Moreover, Marshall was an extreme Federalist, and his view was by no means the commonly accepted view. Jefferson scouted it. He protested all his life against the assumption that the Supreme Court, a body of men appointed for life, and thus removed from all control by the people, should have the enormous power of construing the Constitution and of passing upon the validity of national laws. In a letter written in 1804, he said:“You seem to think it devolved on the judges to decide the validity of the sedition law. But nothing in the Constitution has given them a right to decide for the executive more than the executive to decide for them. But the opinion which gives to the judges the right to decide what laws are constitutional and what not—not only for themselves in their own sphere of action, but for the legislature[pg 111]and executive also in their spheres—would make the judiciary a despotic branch.”3In the Kentucky resolutions, Jefferson argued, first, that the Constitution was a compact between the States; secondly, that no person or body had been appointed by the Constitution as a common judge in respect to questions arising under the Constitution between any one State and Congress, or between the people and Congress; and thirdly,“as in all other cases of compact among powers having no common judge, each party has an equal right to judge for itself, as well of infractions as of the mode and measure of redress.”It was open to him to take this view, because it had not yet been decided that the Supreme Court was the“common judge”appointed by the Constitution; and the Constitution itself[pg 112]was not explicit upon the point. Moreover, the laws in question had not been passed upon by the Supreme Court,—they expired by limitation before that stage was reached.It must be admitted, then, that the Kentucky resolutions do contain the principles of nullification. But at the time when they were written, nullification was a permissible doctrine, because it was not certainly excluded by the Constitution. In 1803, as we have seen, the Constitution was interpreted by the Supreme Court as excluding this doctrine; and that decision having been reaffirmed repeatedly, and having been acquiesced in by the nation for fifty years, may fairly be said to have become by the year 1861 the law of the land.Jefferson, however, by no means intended to push matters to their logical conclusion. His resolutions were intended for moral effect, as he explained in the following letter to Madison:—“I think we should distinctly affirm all the important principles they contain, so as to hold to that ground in future, and leave[pg 113]the matter in such a train that we may not be committed absolutely to push the matter to extremities, and yet may be free to push as far as events will render prudent.”As to the charge that the Kentucky Resolutions imply the doctrine of secession, as well as that of nullification, it has no basis. The two doctrines do not stand or fall together. There is nothing in the resolutions which implies the right of secession. Jefferson, like most Americans of his day, contemplated with indifference the possibility of an ultimate separation of the region beyond the Mississippi from the United States. But nobody placed a higher value than he did on what he described“as our union, the last anchor of our hope, and that alone which is to prevent this heavenly country from becoming an arena of gladiators.”[pg 114]XPRESIDENT JEFFERSONFor the presidential election of 1800, Adams was again the candidate on the Federal side, and Jefferson on the Republican side. Jefferson, by interviews, by long and numerous letters, by the commanding force of his own intellect and character, had at last welded the anti-Federal elements into a compact and disciplined Republican party. The contest was waged with the utmost bitterness, and especially with bitterness against Jefferson. For this there were several causes. Jefferson had deeply offended two powerful classes in Virginia, the old aristocratic and Tory element, and—excluding the dissenters—the religious element; the former, by the repeal of the law of entail, and the latter by the statute for freedom of religion in Virginia. These were among the most meritorious acts of his life, but they produced an[pg 115]intense enmity which lasted till his death and even beyond his death. Jefferson, also, though at times over-cautious, was at times rash and indiscreet, and the freedom of his comments upon men and measures often got him into trouble. His career will be misunderstood unless it is remembered that he was an impulsive man. His judgments were intuitive, and though usually correct, yet sometimes hasty and ill-considered.Above all, Jefferson was both for friends and foes the embodiment of Republicanism. He represented those ideas which the Federalists, and especially the New England lawyers and clergy, really believed to be subversive of law and order, of government and religion. To them he figured as“a fanatic in politics, and an atheist in religion;”and they were so disposed to believe everything bad of him that they swallowed whole the worst slanders which the political violence of the times, far exceeding that of the present day, could invent. We have seen with what tenderness Jefferson treated his widowed sister, Mrs. Carr, and her children.[pg 116]It was in reference to this very family that the Rev. Mr. Cotton Mather Smith, of Connecticut, declared that Jefferson had gained his estate by robbery, namely, by robbing a widow and her children of £10,000,“all of which can be proved.”Jefferson, as we have said, was a deist. He was a religious man and a daily reader of the Bible, far less extreme in his notions, less hostile to orthodox Christianity than John Adams. Nevertheless,—partly, perhaps, because he had procured the disestablishment of the Virginia Church, partly on account of his scientific tastes and his liking for French notions,—the Federalists had convinced themselves that he was a violent atheist and anti-Christian. It was a humorous saying of the time that the old women of New England hid their Bibles in the well when Jefferson’s election in 1800 became known.The vote was as follows:—Jefferson, 73, Burr, 73; Adams, 65; C. C. Pinckney, 64; Jay, 1. There being a tie between Jefferson and Burr, the Republican candidate for[pg 117]Vice-President, the election was thrown into the House of Representatives, voting by States. In that House the Federalists were in the majority, but they did not have a majority by States. They could not, therefore, elect Adams; but it was possible for them to make Burr President instead of Jefferson. At first, the leaders were inclined to do this, some believing that Burr’s utter want of principle was less dangerous than the pernicious principles which they ascribed to Jefferson, and others thinking that Burr, if elected by Federal votes, would pursue a Federal policy. It was feared that Jefferson would wipe out the national debt, abolish the navy, and remove every Federal officeholder in the land. He was approached from many quarters, and even President Adams desired him to give some intimation of his intended policy on these points, but Jefferson firmly refused.As to one such interview, with Gouverneur Morris, Jefferson wrote afterward:“I told him that I should leave the world to judge of the course I meant to pursue, by that[pg 118]which I had pursued hitherto, believing it to be my duty to be passive and silent during the present scene; that I should certainly make no terms; should never go into the office of President by capitulation, nor with my hands tied by any conditions which would hinder me from pursuing the measures which I should deem for the public good.”The Federalists had a characteristic plan: they proposed to pass a law devolving the Presidency upon the chairman of the Senate, in case the office of President should become vacant; and this vacancy they would be able to bring about by prolonging the election until Mr. Adams’s term of office had expired. The chairman of the Senate, a Federalist, of course, would then become President. This scheme Jefferson and his friends were prepared to resist by force.“Because,”as he afterward explained,“that precedent once set, it would be artificially reproduced, and would soon end in a dictator.”Hamilton, to his credit, be it said, strongly advocated the election of Jefferson; and finally, through the action of Mr. Bayard,[pg 119]of Delaware, a leading Federalist, who had sounded an intimate friend of Mr. Jefferson as to his views upon the points already mentioned, Mr. Jefferson was elected President, and the threatening civil war was averted.Mr. Adams, who was deeply chagrined by his defeat, did not attend the inauguration of his successor, but left Washington in his carriage, at sunrise, on the fourth of March; and Jefferson rode on horseback to the Capitol, unattended, and dismounting, fastened his horse to the fence with his own hands. The inaugural address, brief, and beautifully worded, surprised most of those who heard it by the moderation and liberality of its tone.“Let us,”said the new President,“restore to social intercourse that harmony and affection without which liberty, and even life itself, are but dreary things.”Jefferson served two terms, and he was succeeded first by Madison, and then by Monroe, both of whom were his friends and disciples, and imbued with his ideas. They, also, were reëlected. For twenty-four years, therefore, Jefferson and Jeffersonian De[pg 120]mocracy predominated in the government of the United States, and the period was an exceedingly prosperous one. Not one of the dismal forebodings of the Federalists was fulfilled; and the practicability of popular government was proved.The first problem with which Jefferson had to deal was that of appointments to office. The situation was much like that which afterward confronted President Cleveland when he entered upon his first term,—that is, every place was filled by a member of the party opposed to the new administration. The principle which Mr. Jefferson adopted closely resembles that afterward adopted by Mr. Cleveland, namely, no officeholder was to be displaced on account of his political belief; but if he acted aggressively in politics, that was to be sufficient ground for removal.“Electioneering activity”was the phrase used in Mr. Jefferson’s time, and“offensive partisanship”in Mr. Cleveland’s.The following letter from President Jefferson to the Secretary of the Treasury will show how the rule was construed by him:—[pg 121]“The allegations against Pope [collector] of New Bedford are insufficient. Although meddling in political caucuses is no part of that freedom of personal suffrage which ought to be allowed him, yet his mere presence at a caucus does not necessarily involve an active and official influence in opposition to the government which employs him.”There were some lapses, but, on the whole, Mr. Jefferson’s rule was adhered to; and it is difficult to say whether he received more abuse from the Federalists on account of the removals which he did make, or from a faction in his own party on account of the removals which he refused to make.His principle was thus stated in a letter:“If a due participation of office is a matter of right, how are vacancies to be obtained? Those by death are few; by resignation, none.... It would have been to me a circumstance of great relief, had I found a moderate participation of office in the hands of the majority. I should gladly have left to time and accident to raise them to their[pg 122]just share. But their total exclusion calls for prompter corrections. I shall correct the procedure; but that done, disdain to follow it. I shall return with joy to that state of things when the only questions concerning a candidate shall be, Is he honest? Is he capable? Is he faithful to the Constitution?”The ascendency of Jefferson and of the Republican party produced a great change in the government and in national feeling, but it was a change the most important part of which was intangible, and is therefore hard to describe. It was such a change as takes place in the career of an individual, when he shakes off some controlling force, and sets up in life for himself. The common people felt an independence, a pride, an élan, which sent a thrill of vigor through every department of industry and adventure.The simplicity of the forms which President Jefferson adopted were a symbol to the national imagination of the change which had taken place. He gave up the royal custom of levees; he stopped the celebration[pg 123]of the President’s birthday; he substituted a written message for the speech to Congress delivered in person at the Capitol, and the reply by Congress, delivered in person at the White House. The President’s residence ceased to be called the Palace. He cut down the army and navy. He introduced economy in all the departments of the government, and paid off thirty-three millions of the national debt. He procured the abolition of internal taxes and the repeal of the bankruptcy law—two measures which greatly decreased his own patronage, and which called forth John Randolph’s encomium long afterward:“I have never seen but one administration which seriously and in good faith was disposed to give up its patronage, and was willing to go farther than Congress or even the people themselves ... desired; and that was the first administration of Thomas Jefferson.”The two most important measures of the first administration were, however, the repression of the Barbary pirates and the acquisition of Louisiana. Mr. Jefferson’s[pg 124]ineffectual efforts, while he was minister to France, to put down by force Mediterranean piracy have already been rehearsed. During Mr. Adams’s term, two million dollars were expended in bribing the bucaneers. One item in the account was as follows,“A frigate to carry thirty-six guns for the Dey of Algiers;”and this frigate went crammed with a hundred thousand dollars’ worth of powder, lead, timber, rope, canvas, and other means of piracy. One hundred and twenty-two captives came home in that year, 1796, of whom ten had been held in slavery for eleven years.Jefferson’s first important act as President was to dispatch to the Mediterranean three frigates and a sloop-of-war to overawe the pirates, and to cruise in protection of American commerce. Thus began that series of events which finally rendered the commerce of the world as safe from piracy in the Mediterranean as it was in the British channel. How brilliantly Decatur and his gallant comrades carried out this policy, and how at last the tardy naval powers of Europe fol[pg 125]lowed an example which they ought to have set, every one is supposed to know.The second important event was the acquisition of Louisiana. Louisiana meant the whole territory from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean, embracing about one million square miles. All this region belonged to Spain by right of discovery; and early in the year 1801 news came from the American minister at Paris that Spain had ceded or was about to cede it to France. The Spanish ownership of the mouth of the Mississippi had long been a source of annoyance to the settlers on the Mississippi River; and it had begun to be felt that the United States must control New Orleans at least. If this vast territory should come into the hands of France, and Napoleon should colonize it, as was said to be his intention,—France then being the greatest power in Europe,—the United States would have a powerful rival on its borders, and in control of a seaport absolutely necessary for its commerce. We can see this now plainly enough, but even so able a man as Mr. Livingston, the American[pg 126]minister at Paris, did not see it then. On the contrary, he wrote to the government at Washington:“... I have, however, on all occasions, declared that as long as France conforms to the existing treaty between us and Spain, the government of the United States does not consider itself as having any interest in opposing the exchange.”Mr. Jefferson’s very different view was expressed in the following letter to Mr. Livingston:“... France, placing herself in that door, assumes to us the attitude of defiance. Spain might have retained it quietly for years. Her pacific disposition, her feeble state would induce her to increase our facilities there.... Not so can it ever be in the hands of France; the impetuosity of her temper, the energy and restlessness of her character, placed in a point of eternal friction with us and our character, which, though quiet and loving peace and the pursuit of wealth, is high-minded, despising wealth in competition with insult or injury, enterprising and energetic as any nation on earth,—these circumstances render it im[pg 127]possible 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.... From that moment we must marry ourselves to the British fleet and nation.”Thus, at a moment’s notice, and in obedience to a vital change in circumstance, Jefferson threw aside the policy of a lifetime, suppressed his liking for France and his dislike for England, and entered upon that radically new course which, as he foresaw, the interests of the United States would require.Livingston, thus primed, began negotiations for the purchase of New Orleans; and Jefferson hastily dispatched Monroe, as a special envoy, for the same purpose, armed, it is supposed, with secret verbal instructions, to buy, if possible, not only New Orleans, but the whole of Louisiana. Monroe had not a word in writing to show that in purchasing Louisiana—if the act should be[pg 128]repudiated by the nation—he did not exceed his instructions. But, as Mr. Henry Adams remarks,“Jefferson’s friends always trusted him perfectly.”The moment was most propitious, for England and France were about to close in that terrific struggle which ended at Waterloo, and Napoleon was desperately in need of money. After some haggling the bargain was concluded, and, for the very moderate sum of fifteen million dollars, the United States became possessed of a territory which more than doubled its area.The purchase of Louisiana was confessedly an unconstitutional, or at least an extra-constitutional act, for the Constitution gave no authority to the President to acquire new territory, or to pledge the credit of the United States in payment. Jefferson himself thought that the Constitution ought to be amended in order to make the purchase legal; but in this he was overruled by his advisers.Thus, Jefferson’s first administration ended with a brilliant achievement; but this public[pg 129]glory was far more than outweighed by a private loss. The President’s younger daughter, Mrs. Eppes, died in April, 1804; and in a letter to his old friend, John Page, he said:“Others may lose of their abundance, but I, of my wants, have, lost even the half of all I had. My evening prospects now hang on the slender thread of a single life. Perhaps I may be destined to see even this last cord of parental affection broken. The hope with which I have looked forward to the moment when, resigning public cares to younger hands, I was to retire to that domestic comfort from which the last great step is to be taken, is fearfully blighted.”[pg 130]XISECOND PRESIDENTIAL TERMThe purchase of Louisiana increased Jefferson’s popularity, and in 1805, at the age of sixty-two, he was elected to his second term as President by an overwhelming majority. Even Massachusetts was carried by the Republicans, and the total vote in the electoral college stood: 162 for Jefferson and Clinton; 14 for C. C. Pinckney and Rufus King, the Federal candidates.This result was due in part to the fact that Jefferson had stolen the thunder of the Federalists. His Louisiana purchase, though bitterly opposed by the leading Federalists, who were blinded by their hatred of the President, was far more consonant with Federal than with Republican principles; and in his second inaugural address Jefferson went even farther in the direction of a strong central government, for he said:“Redemption[pg 131]once effected, the revenue thereby liberated may, by a just repartition among the States, and a corresponding amendment of the Constitution, be appliedin time of peaceto rivers, canals, roads, arts, manufactures, education, and other great objects within each State. In time of war, ... aided by other measures reserved for that crisis, it may meet within the year all the expenses of the year without encroaching on the rights of future generations by burdening them with the debts of the past.”This proposal flatly contradicted what the President had said in his first inaugural address, and was in strange contrast with his criticism made years before upon a similar Federal scheme of public improvement, that the mines of Peru would not supply the moneys which would be wasted on this object. In later years, after his permanent retirement to Monticello, Jefferson seems to have reverted to his earlier views, and he condemned the measures of John Quincy Adams for making public improvements with national funds.[pg 132]But the President was no longer to enjoy a smooth course. One domestic affair gave him much annoyance, and our foreign relations were a continual source of anxiety and mortification.Aaron Burr had been a brilliant soldier of the Revolution, a highly successful lawyer and politician, and finally, during Mr. Jefferson’s first administration, Vice-President of the United States. But in the year 1805 he found himself, owing to a complication of causes, most of which, however, could be traced to his own moral defects, a bankrupt in reputation and in purse. Such being his condition, he applied to the President for a foreign appointment; and Mr. Jefferson very properly refused it, frankly explaining that Burr, whether justly or unjustly, had lost the confidence of the public.Burr took this rebuff with the easy good-humor which characterized him, dined with the President a few days later, and then started westward to carry out a scheme which he had been preparing for a year. His plans were so shrouded in mystery that it is diffi[pg 133]cult to say exactly what they were, but it is certain that he contemplated an expedition against Mexico, with the intention of making himself the ruler of that country; and it is possible that he hoped to capture New Orleans, and, after dividing the United States, to annex the western half to his Mexican empire. Burr had got together a small supply of men and arms, and he floated down the Ohio, gathering recruits as he went.Jefferson, with his usual good sense, perceived the futility of Burr’s designs, which were based upon a false belief as to the want of loyalty among the western people; but he took all needful precautions. General Wilkinson was ordered to protect New Orleans, Burr’s proceedings were denounced by a proclamation, and finally Burr himself was arrested in Alabama, and brought to Richmond for trial.The trial at once became a political affair, the Federalists, to spite the President, making Burr’s cause their own, though he had killed Alexander Hamilton but three years before, and pretending to regard him as an[pg 134]innocent man persecuted by the President for political reasons. Jefferson himself took a hand in the prosecution to the extent of writing letters to the district attorney full of advice and suggestions. It would have been more dignified had he held aloof, but the provocation which he received was very great. Burr and his counsel used every possible means of throwing odium upon the President; and in this they were assisted by Chief Justice Marshall, who presided at the trial. Marshall, though in the main a just man, was bitterly opposed to Jefferson in political affairs, and in this case he harshly blamed the executive for not procuring evidence with a celerity which, under the circumstances, was impossible. He also summoned the President into court as a witness. The President, however, declined to attend, and the matter was not pressed. Burr was acquitted, chiefly on technical grounds.The Burr affair, however, was but a trifle compared with the difficulties arising from our relations with England. That country had always asserted over the United States[pg 135]the right of impressment, a right, namely, to search American ships, and to take therefrom any Englishmen found among the crew. In many cases, Englishmen who had been naturalized in the United States were thus taken. This alleged right had always been denied by the United States, and British perseverance in it finally led to the war of 1812.Another source of contention was the neutral trade. During the European wars in the early part of the century the seaport towns of the United States did an immense and profitable business in carrying goods to European ports, and from one European port to another. Great Britain, after various attempts to discourage American commerce with her enemies, undertook to put it down by confiscating vessels of the United States on the ground that their cargoes were not neutral but belligerent property,—the property, that is, of nations at war with Great Britain. And, no doubt, in some cases this was the fact,—foreign merchandise having been imported to this country to get a neutral name for it, and thence exported to a[pg 136]country to which it could not have been shipped directly from its place of origin. In April, 1806, the President dispatched Mr. Monroe to London in order, if possible, to settle these disputed matters by a treaty. Monroe, in conjunction with Mr. Pinckney, our minister to England, sent back a treaty which contained no reference whatever to the matter of impressments. It was the best treaty which they could obtain, but it was silent upon this vital point.The situation was a perilous one; England had fought the battle of Trafalgar the year before; and was now able to carry everything before her upon the high seas. Nevertheless, the President’s conduct was bold and prompt. The treaty had been negotiated mainly by his own envoy and friend, Monroe, and great pressure was exerted in favor of it,—especially by the merchants and shipowners of the east. But Jefferson refused even to lay it before the Senate, and at once sent it back to England. His position, and history has justified it, was that to accept a treaty which might be con[pg 137]strued as tacitly admitting the right of impressment would be a disgrace to the country. The other questions at issue were more nearly legal and technical, but this one touched the national honor; and with the same right instinct which Jefferson showed in 1807, the people of the United States, five years later, fixed upon this grievance, out of the fog in which diplomacy had enveloped our relations with England, as the true and sufficient cause of the war of 1812.Nevertheless, Jefferson treated Monroe with the greatest consideration. At this period Monroe and Madison were both candidates for the Republican nomination for the presidency. Jefferson’s choice was Madison, but he remained impartial between them; and he withheld Monroe’s treaty from publication at a time when to publish it would have given a fatal blow to Monroe’s prospects. In every way, in fact, he exerted himself to disguise and soften Monroe’s discredit.The wisdom of Jefferson’s course as to the treaty was shown before three months had elapsed by an act of British aggression, which,[pg 138]had the Monroe treaty been accepted, might fairly have been laid to its door. In June, 1807, the British frigate Leopard, having been refused permission to search the American frigate Chesapeake, fired upon the Chesapeake, which was totally unprepared for action, and, after killing three men and wounding eighteen, refused to accept the surrender of the ship, but carried off three alleged deserters.This event roused a storm of indignation, which never quite subsided until the insult had been effaced by the blood which was shed in the war of 1812.“For the first time in their history,”says Mr. Henry Adams,“the people of the United States learned in June, 1807, the feeling of a true national emotion.”“Never since the battle of Lexington,”wrote Jefferson,“have I seen this country in such a state of exasperation as at present.”War might easily have been precipitated, had Jefferson been carried away by the popular excitement. He immediately dispatched a frigate to England demanding reparation,[pg 139]and he issued a proclamation forbidding all British men-of-war to enter the waters of the United States, unless in distress or bearing dispatches. Jefferson expected war, but he meant to delay it for a while.To his son-in-law, John Eppes, he wrote:“Reason and the usage of civilized nations require that we should give them an opportunity of disavowal and reparation. Our own interests, too, the very means of making war, require that we should give time to our merchants to gather in their vessels and property and our seamen now afloat.”Gallatin, the Secretary of the Treasury, even criticised the President’s annual message at this time as being too warlike and“not in the style of the proclamation, which has been almost universally approved at home and abroad.”It cannot truly be said, therefore, that Jefferson had any unconquerable aversion to war.Mr. Canning, the British Foreign Minister, went through the form of expressing his regrets for the Chesapeake affair, and sent a special envoy to Washington to settle the[pg 140]difficulty. Reparation was made at last, but not till the year 1811.In the mean time, both Great Britain and France had given other causes of offense, which may be summarized as follows: In May, 1806, Great Britain declared the French ports from Brest to the Elbe closed to American as to all other shipping. In the following November, Napoleon retorted with a decree issued from Berlin, prohibiting all commerce with Great Britain. That power immediately forbade the coasting trade between one port and another in the possession of her enemies. And in November, 1807, Great Britain issued the famous Orders in Council, which forbade all trade whatsoever with France and her allies, except on payment of a tribute to Great Britain, each vessel to pay according to the value of its cargo. Then followed Napoleon’s Milan decree prohibiting trade with Great Britain, and declaring that all vessels which paid the tribute demanded were lawful prizes to the French marine.Such was the series of acts which assailed the foreign commerce of the United States,[pg 141]and wounded the national honor by attempting to prostrate the country at the mercy of the European powers. Diplomacy had been exhausted. The Chesapeake affair, the right of impressment, the British decrees and orders directed against our commerce,—all these causes of offense had been tangled into a complication which no man could unravel. Retaliation on our part had become absolutely necessary. What form should it take? Jefferson rejected war, and proposed an embargo which prohibited commerce between the United States and Europe. The measure was bitterly opposed by the New England Federalists; but the President’s influence was so great that Congress adopted it almost without discussion.Jefferson’s design, to use his own words, was“to introduce between nations another umpire than arms;”and he expected that England would be starved into submission. The annual British exports to the United States amounted to $50,000,000. Cutting off this trade meant the throwing out of work of thousands of British sailors and tens[pg 142]of thousands of British factory hands, who had no other means of livelihood. Mr. Jefferson felt confident that the starvation of this class would bring such pressure to bear upon the English government, then engaged in a death struggle with Bonaparte, that it would be forced to repeal the laws which obstructed American commerce. It is possible that this would have been the result had the embargo been observed faithfully by all citizens of the United States. Jefferson maintained till the day of his death that such would have been the case; and Madison, no enthusiast, long afterward asserted that the American state department had proofs that the English government was on the point of yielding. The embargo pressed hardest of all upon Virginia, for it stopped the exportation of her staples,—wheat and tobacco. It brought about, by the way, the financial ruin of Jefferson himself and of his son-in-law, Colonel Randolph. But the Virginians bore it without a murmur.“They drained the poison which their own President held obstinately to their lips.”[pg 143]It was otherwise in New England. There the disastrous effect of the embargo was not only indirect but direct. The New England farmers, it is true, could at least exist upon the produce of their farms; but the mariners, the sea-captains, and the merchants of the coast towns, saw a total suspension of the industry by which they lived. New England evaded the embargo by smuggling, and resisted it tooth and nail. Some of the Federal leaders in that section believing, or pretending to believe, that it was a pro-French measure, were in secret correspondence with the British government, and meditated a secession of the eastern States from the rest of the country. They went so far, in private conversation at least, as to maintain the British right of impressment; and even the Orders in Council were defended by Gardenier, a leading Federalist, and a member of Congress.The present generation has witnessed a similar exhibition of anglomania, when, upon the assertion of the Monroe doctrine in respect to Venezuela, by President Cleveland,[pg 144]his attitude was criticised more severely by a group in New York and Boston than it was by the English themselves.Jefferson’s effort to enforce the embargo and his calm resistance to New England fury showed extraordinary firmness of will and tenacity of purpose. In August, 1808, he wrote to General Dearborn, Secretary of War, who was then in Maine:“The Tories of Boston openly threaten insurrection if their importation of flour is stopped. The next post will stop it.”Blood was soon shed; but Jefferson did not shrink. The army was stationed along the Canadian frontier, to prevent smuggling; gunboats and frigates patrolled the coast. The embargo failed; but Mr. Henry Adams, the ablest and fairest historian of this period, declares that it“was an experiment in politics well worth making. In the scheme of President Jefferson, non-intercourse was the substitute for war.... Failure of the embargo meant in his mind not only a recurrence to the practice of war, but to every political and social evil that war had always[pg 145]brought in its train. In such a case the crimes and corruptions of Europe, which had been the object of his political fears, must, as he believed, sooner or later, teem in the fat soil of America. To avert a disaster so vast was a proper motive for statesmanship, and justified disregard for smaller interests.”Mr. Parton observes, with almost as much truth as humor, that the embargo was approved by the two highest authorities in Europe, namely, Napoleon Bonaparte and the“Edinburgh Review.”Perhaps the fundamental error in Jefferson’s theory was that nations are governed mainly by motives of self-interest. He thought that England would cease to legislate against American commerce, when it was once made plain that such a course was prejudicial to her own interests. But nations, like individuals, are influenced in their relations to others far more by pride and patriotism, and even by prejudice, than by material self-interest. The only way in which America could win respect and fair treatment from Europe was by fighting, or[pg 146]at least by showing a perfect readiness to fight. This she did by the war of 1812.The embargo was an academic policy,—the policy of a philosopher rather than that of a practical man of affairs. Turreau, the French ambassador, wrote to Talleyrand, in May, 1806, that the President“has little energy and still less of that audacity which is indispensable in a place so eminent, whatever may be the form of government. The slightest event makes him lose his balance, and he does not even know how to disguise the impression which he receives.... He has made himself ill, and has grown ten years older.”Jefferson had energy and audacity,—but he was energetic and audacious only by fits and starts. He was too sensitive, too full of ideas, too far-sighted, too conscious of all possible results for a man of action. During the last three months of his term he made no attempt to settle the difficulties in which the country was involved, declaring that he felt bound to do nothing which might embarrass his successor. But it may be doubted[pg 147]if he did not unconsciously decline the task rather from its difficulty than because he felt precluded from undertaking it. Self-knowledge was never Mr. Jefferson’s strong point.But he had done his best, and if his scheme had failed, the failure was not an ignoble one. He was still the most beloved, as well as the best hated man in the United States; and he could have had a third term, if he would have taken it.He retired, permanently, as it proved, to Monticello, wearied and harassed, but glad to be back on his farm, in the bosom of his family, and among his neighbors. His fellow-citizens of Albemarle County desired to meet the returning President, and escort him to his home; but Mr. Jefferson, characteristically, avoided this demonstration, and received instead an address, to which he made a reply that closed in a fit and pathetic manner his public career.“... The part which I have acted on the theatre of public life has been before them [his countrymen], and to their sentence I submit it;[pg 148]but the testimony of my native county, of the individuals who have known me in private life, to my conduct in its various duties and relations, is the more grateful as proceeding from eyewitnesses and observers, from triers of the vicinage. Of you, then, my neighbors, I may ask in the face of the world,‘whose ox have I taken, or whom have I defrauded? Whom have I oppressed, or of whose hand have I received a bribe to blind mine eyes therewith?’On your verdict I rest with conscious security.”

[pg 98]IXTHE TWO PARTIESWhen Jefferson at last found himself at Monticello, having resigned his office as Secretary of State, he declared and believed that he had done with politics forever. To various correspondents he wrote as follows:“I think that I shall never take another newspaper of any sort. I find my mind totally absorbed in my rural occupations.... Nocircumstances, my dear sir, will ever more tempt me to engage in anything public.... I would not give up my retirement for the empire of the universe.”When Madison wrote in 1795, soliciting him to accept the Republican nomination for the presidency, Mr. Jefferson replied:“The little spice of ambition which I had in my younger days has long since evaporated, and I set still less store by a posthumous than present fame. The question[pg 99]is forever closed with me.”Nevertheless, within a few months Mr. Jefferson accepted the nomination, chiefly, it is probable, because, with his usual sagacity, he foresaw that the Republican candidate would be defeated as President, but elected as Vice-President. It must be remembered that at that time the candidate receiving the next to the highest number of electoral votes was declared to be Vice-President; so that there was always a probability that the presidential candidate of the party defeated would be chosen to the second office.There were several reasons why Jefferson would have been glad to receive the office of Vice-President. It involved no disagreeable responsibility; it called for no great expenditure of money in the way of entertainments; it carried a good salary; it required only a few months’ residence at Washington.“Mr. Jefferson often told me,”remarks Mr. Bacon,“that the office of Vice-President was far preferable to that of President.”Mr. Jefferson therefore became the Republican nominee for President, and, as he doubt[pg 100]less expected, was elected Vice-President, the vote standing as follows: Adams, 71; Jefferson, 68; Pinckney, 59; Burr, 30.It is significant of Mr. Jefferson’s high standing in the country that many people believed that he would not deign to accept the office of Vice-President; and Madison wrote advising him to come to Washington on the 4th of March, and take the oath of office, in order that this belief might be dispelled. Jefferson accordingly did so, bringing with him the bones of a mastodon, lately discovered, and a little manuscript book written in his law-student days, marked“Parliamentary Pocket-Book.”This was the basis of that careful and elaborate“Manual of Parliamentary Practice”which Jefferson left as his legacy to the Senate.Upon receiving news of the election Jefferson had written to Madison:“If Mr. Adams can be induced to administer the government on its true principles, and to relinquish his bias to an English Constitution, it is to be considered whether it would not be, on the whole, for the public good to come to[pg 101]a good understanding with him as to his future elections. He is perhaps the only sure barrier against Hamilton’s getting in.”Mr. Adams, indeed, at the outset of his administration, was inclined to be confidential with Mr. Jefferson; but soon, by one of those sudden turns not infrequent with him, he took a different course, and thenceforth treated the Vice-President with nothing more than bare civility.It was a time, indeed, when cordial relations between Federalist and Republican were almost impossible. In a letter written at this period to Mr. Edward Rutledge, Jefferson said:“You and I have formerly seen warm debates, and high political passions. But gentlemen of different politics would then speak to each other, and separate the business of the Senate from that of society. It is not so now. Men who have been intimate all their lives cross the street to avoid meeting, and turn their heads another way, lest they should be obliged to touch their hats.”These party feelings were intensified in the year 1798 by what is known as the X Y Z[pg 102]business. Mr. Adams had sent three commissioners to Paris to negotiate a treaty. Talleyrand, the French Minister for Foreign Affairs, held aloof from them; but they were informed by certain mysterious agents that a treaty could be had on three conditions, (1) that the President should apologize for certain expressions in his recent message to Congress; (2) that the United States should loan a large sum of money to the French government; (3) that adouceurof $25,000 should be given to Talleyrand’s agents.These insulting proposals were indignantly rejected by the commissioners, and being reported in this country, they aroused a storm of popular indignation. Preparations for war were made forthwith. General Washington, though in failing health, was appointed commander-in-chief,—the real command being expected to devolve upon Hamilton, who was named second; men and supplies were voted; letters of marque were issued, and war actually prevailed upon the high seas. The situation redounded greatly to the advantage of the Federalists, for they were always as[pg 103]eager to go to war with France as they were reluctant to go to war with England. The newly appointed officers were drawn almost, if not quite, without exception from the Federalist party, and Hamilton seemed to be on the verge of that military career which he had long hoped for. He trusted, as his most intimate friend, Gouverneur Morris, said after his death,“that in the changes and chances of time we would be involved in some war which might strengthen our union and nerve our executive.”So late as 1802, Hamilton wrote to Morris,“there must be a systematic and persevering endeavor to establish the future of a great empire on foundations much firmer than have yet been devised.”At this very time he was negotiating with Miranda and with the British government, his design being to use against Mexico the army raised in expectation of a war with France.Hamilton was not the man to overturn the government out of personal ambition, nor even in order to set up a monarchy in place of a republic. But he had convinced himself that the republic must some day fall[pg 104]of its own weight. He was always anticipating a“crisis,”and this word is repeated over and over again in his correspondence. It even occurs in the crucial sentence of that pathetic document which he wrote on the eve of his fatal duel. When the“crisis”came, Hamilton meant to be on hand; and, if possible, at the head of an army.However, the X Y Z affair ended peacefully. The warlike spirit shown by the people of the United States had a wholesome effect upon the French government; and at their suggestion new envoys were sent over by the President, by whom a treaty was negotiated. This wise and patriotic act upon the part of Mr. Adams was a benefit to his country, but it aroused the bitter anger of the Federalists and ruined his position in that party.But what was Mr. Jefferson’s attitude during this business? He was not for war, and he contended that a distinction should be made between the acts of Talleyrand and his agents, and the real disposition of the French people. He wrote as follows:“Inexperienced in such manœuvres, the people[pg 105]did not permit themselves even to suspect that the turpitude of private swindlers might mingle itself unobserved, and give its own hue to the communications of the French government, of whose participation there was neither proof nor probability.”And again:“But as I view a peace between France and England the ensuing winter to be certain, I have thought it would have been better for us to have contrived to bear from France through the present summer what we have been bearing both from her and from England these four years, and still continue to bear from England, and to have required indemnification in the hour of peace, when, I firmly believe, it would have been yielded by both.”But this is bad political philosophy. A nation cannot obtain justice by submitting to wrongs or insults even for a time. Jefferson himself had written long before:“I think it is our interest to punish the first insult, because an insult unpunished is the parent of many others.”It is possible that he was misled at this juncture by his liking[pg 106]for France, and by his dislike of the Federalists and of their British proclivities. It is true that the bribe demanded by Talleyrand’s agents might be considered, to use Mr. Jefferson’s words, as“the turpitude of private swindlers;”but the demand for a loan and for a retraction could be regarded only as national acts, being acts of the French government, although the bulk of the French people might repudiate them.Whether Jefferson was right or wrong in the position which he took, he maintained it with superb self-confidence and aplomb. For the moment, the Federalists had everything their own way. They carried the election. Hamilton’s oft-anticipated“crisis”seemed to have arrived at last. But Jefferson coolly waited till the storm should blow over.“Our countrymen,”he wrote to a friend,“are essentially Republicans. They retain unadulterated the principles of ’76, and those who are conscious of no change in themselves have nothing to fear in the long run.”And so it proved. The ascendency of the Federalists was soon destroyed, and de[pg 107]stroyed forever, by the political crimes and follies which they committed; and especially by the alien and sedition laws. The reader need hardly be reminded that the alien law gave the President authority to banish from the country“all such aliens asheshould judge dangerous to the peace and safety of the United States,”—a despotic power which no king of England ever possessed. The sedition act made it a crime, punishable by fine and imprisonment, to speak or write anything“false, scandalous, and malicious,”with intent to excite against either House of Congress or against the President,“the hatred of the good people of the United States.”It can readily be seen what gross oppression was possible under this elastic law, interpreted by judges who, to a man, were members of the Federal party. Matthew Lyon, of Vermont, ventured to read aloud at a political meeting a letter which he had received expressing astonishment that the President’s recent address to the House of Representatives had not been answered by“an order to send him to a mad-house.”For this Mr.[pg 108]Lyon was fined $1,000, and imprisoned in a veritable dungeon.These unconstitutional and un-American laws were vigorously opposed by Jefferson and Madison. In October, 1798, Jefferson wrote:“For my own part I consider those laws as merely an experiment on the American mind to see how far it will bear an avowed violation of the Constitution. If this goes down, we shall immediately see attempted another act of Congress declaring that the President shall continue in office during life, reserving to another occasion the transfer of the succession to his heirs, and the establishment of the Senate for life.”Jefferson also prepared the famous Kentucky resolutions, which were adopted by the legislature of that State,—the authorship, however, being kept secret till Jefferson avowed it, twenty years later. These much-discussed resolutions have been said to have originated the doctrine of nullification, and to contain that principle of secession upon which the South acted in 1861.[pg 109]They may be summed up roughly as follows: The source of all political power is in the people. The people have, by the compact known as the Constitution, granted certain specified powers to the federal government; all other powers, if not granted to the several state governments, are retained by the people. The alien and sedition laws assume the exercise by the federal government of powers not granted to it by the Constitution. They are therefore void.Thus far there can be no question that Jefferson’s argument was sound, and its soundness would not be denied, even at the present day. But the question then arose: what next? May the laws be disregarded and disobeyed by the States or by individuals, or must they be obeyed until some competent authority has pronounced them void? and if so, what is that authority? We understand now that the Supreme Court has sole authority to decide upon the constitutionality of the acts of Congress. It was so held, for the first time, in the year 1803, in the case of Marburyv.Madison, by Chief[pg 110]Justice Marshall and his associates; and that decision, though resisted at the time, has long been accepted by the country as a whole. But this case did not arise until several years after the Kentucky Resolutions were written. Moreover, Marshall was an extreme Federalist, and his view was by no means the commonly accepted view. Jefferson scouted it. He protested all his life against the assumption that the Supreme Court, a body of men appointed for life, and thus removed from all control by the people, should have the enormous power of construing the Constitution and of passing upon the validity of national laws. In a letter written in 1804, he said:“You seem to think it devolved on the judges to decide the validity of the sedition law. But nothing in the Constitution has given them a right to decide for the executive more than the executive to decide for them. But the opinion which gives to the judges the right to decide what laws are constitutional and what not—not only for themselves in their own sphere of action, but for the legislature[pg 111]and executive also in their spheres—would make the judiciary a despotic branch.”3In the Kentucky resolutions, Jefferson argued, first, that the Constitution was a compact between the States; secondly, that no person or body had been appointed by the Constitution as a common judge in respect to questions arising under the Constitution between any one State and Congress, or between the people and Congress; and thirdly,“as in all other cases of compact among powers having no common judge, each party has an equal right to judge for itself, as well of infractions as of the mode and measure of redress.”It was open to him to take this view, because it had not yet been decided that the Supreme Court was the“common judge”appointed by the Constitution; and the Constitution itself[pg 112]was not explicit upon the point. Moreover, the laws in question had not been passed upon by the Supreme Court,—they expired by limitation before that stage was reached.It must be admitted, then, that the Kentucky resolutions do contain the principles of nullification. But at the time when they were written, nullification was a permissible doctrine, because it was not certainly excluded by the Constitution. In 1803, as we have seen, the Constitution was interpreted by the Supreme Court as excluding this doctrine; and that decision having been reaffirmed repeatedly, and having been acquiesced in by the nation for fifty years, may fairly be said to have become by the year 1861 the law of the land.Jefferson, however, by no means intended to push matters to their logical conclusion. His resolutions were intended for moral effect, as he explained in the following letter to Madison:—“I think we should distinctly affirm all the important principles they contain, so as to hold to that ground in future, and leave[pg 113]the matter in such a train that we may not be committed absolutely to push the matter to extremities, and yet may be free to push as far as events will render prudent.”As to the charge that the Kentucky Resolutions imply the doctrine of secession, as well as that of nullification, it has no basis. The two doctrines do not stand or fall together. There is nothing in the resolutions which implies the right of secession. Jefferson, like most Americans of his day, contemplated with indifference the possibility of an ultimate separation of the region beyond the Mississippi from the United States. But nobody placed a higher value than he did on what he described“as our union, the last anchor of our hope, and that alone which is to prevent this heavenly country from becoming an arena of gladiators.”[pg 114]XPRESIDENT JEFFERSONFor the presidential election of 1800, Adams was again the candidate on the Federal side, and Jefferson on the Republican side. Jefferson, by interviews, by long and numerous letters, by the commanding force of his own intellect and character, had at last welded the anti-Federal elements into a compact and disciplined Republican party. The contest was waged with the utmost bitterness, and especially with bitterness against Jefferson. For this there were several causes. Jefferson had deeply offended two powerful classes in Virginia, the old aristocratic and Tory element, and—excluding the dissenters—the religious element; the former, by the repeal of the law of entail, and the latter by the statute for freedom of religion in Virginia. These were among the most meritorious acts of his life, but they produced an[pg 115]intense enmity which lasted till his death and even beyond his death. Jefferson, also, though at times over-cautious, was at times rash and indiscreet, and the freedom of his comments upon men and measures often got him into trouble. His career will be misunderstood unless it is remembered that he was an impulsive man. His judgments were intuitive, and though usually correct, yet sometimes hasty and ill-considered.Above all, Jefferson was both for friends and foes the embodiment of Republicanism. He represented those ideas which the Federalists, and especially the New England lawyers and clergy, really believed to be subversive of law and order, of government and religion. To them he figured as“a fanatic in politics, and an atheist in religion;”and they were so disposed to believe everything bad of him that they swallowed whole the worst slanders which the political violence of the times, far exceeding that of the present day, could invent. We have seen with what tenderness Jefferson treated his widowed sister, Mrs. Carr, and her children.[pg 116]It was in reference to this very family that the Rev. Mr. Cotton Mather Smith, of Connecticut, declared that Jefferson had gained his estate by robbery, namely, by robbing a widow and her children of £10,000,“all of which can be proved.”Jefferson, as we have said, was a deist. He was a religious man and a daily reader of the Bible, far less extreme in his notions, less hostile to orthodox Christianity than John Adams. Nevertheless,—partly, perhaps, because he had procured the disestablishment of the Virginia Church, partly on account of his scientific tastes and his liking for French notions,—the Federalists had convinced themselves that he was a violent atheist and anti-Christian. It was a humorous saying of the time that the old women of New England hid their Bibles in the well when Jefferson’s election in 1800 became known.The vote was as follows:—Jefferson, 73, Burr, 73; Adams, 65; C. C. Pinckney, 64; Jay, 1. There being a tie between Jefferson and Burr, the Republican candidate for[pg 117]Vice-President, the election was thrown into the House of Representatives, voting by States. In that House the Federalists were in the majority, but they did not have a majority by States. They could not, therefore, elect Adams; but it was possible for them to make Burr President instead of Jefferson. At first, the leaders were inclined to do this, some believing that Burr’s utter want of principle was less dangerous than the pernicious principles which they ascribed to Jefferson, and others thinking that Burr, if elected by Federal votes, would pursue a Federal policy. It was feared that Jefferson would wipe out the national debt, abolish the navy, and remove every Federal officeholder in the land. He was approached from many quarters, and even President Adams desired him to give some intimation of his intended policy on these points, but Jefferson firmly refused.As to one such interview, with Gouverneur Morris, Jefferson wrote afterward:“I told him that I should leave the world to judge of the course I meant to pursue, by that[pg 118]which I had pursued hitherto, believing it to be my duty to be passive and silent during the present scene; that I should certainly make no terms; should never go into the office of President by capitulation, nor with my hands tied by any conditions which would hinder me from pursuing the measures which I should deem for the public good.”The Federalists had a characteristic plan: they proposed to pass a law devolving the Presidency upon the chairman of the Senate, in case the office of President should become vacant; and this vacancy they would be able to bring about by prolonging the election until Mr. Adams’s term of office had expired. The chairman of the Senate, a Federalist, of course, would then become President. This scheme Jefferson and his friends were prepared to resist by force.“Because,”as he afterward explained,“that precedent once set, it would be artificially reproduced, and would soon end in a dictator.”Hamilton, to his credit, be it said, strongly advocated the election of Jefferson; and finally, through the action of Mr. Bayard,[pg 119]of Delaware, a leading Federalist, who had sounded an intimate friend of Mr. Jefferson as to his views upon the points already mentioned, Mr. Jefferson was elected President, and the threatening civil war was averted.Mr. Adams, who was deeply chagrined by his defeat, did not attend the inauguration of his successor, but left Washington in his carriage, at sunrise, on the fourth of March; and Jefferson rode on horseback to the Capitol, unattended, and dismounting, fastened his horse to the fence with his own hands. The inaugural address, brief, and beautifully worded, surprised most of those who heard it by the moderation and liberality of its tone.“Let us,”said the new President,“restore to social intercourse that harmony and affection without which liberty, and even life itself, are but dreary things.”Jefferson served two terms, and he was succeeded first by Madison, and then by Monroe, both of whom were his friends and disciples, and imbued with his ideas. They, also, were reëlected. For twenty-four years, therefore, Jefferson and Jeffersonian De[pg 120]mocracy predominated in the government of the United States, and the period was an exceedingly prosperous one. Not one of the dismal forebodings of the Federalists was fulfilled; and the practicability of popular government was proved.The first problem with which Jefferson had to deal was that of appointments to office. The situation was much like that which afterward confronted President Cleveland when he entered upon his first term,—that is, every place was filled by a member of the party opposed to the new administration. The principle which Mr. Jefferson adopted closely resembles that afterward adopted by Mr. Cleveland, namely, no officeholder was to be displaced on account of his political belief; but if he acted aggressively in politics, that was to be sufficient ground for removal.“Electioneering activity”was the phrase used in Mr. Jefferson’s time, and“offensive partisanship”in Mr. Cleveland’s.The following letter from President Jefferson to the Secretary of the Treasury will show how the rule was construed by him:—[pg 121]“The allegations against Pope [collector] of New Bedford are insufficient. Although meddling in political caucuses is no part of that freedom of personal suffrage which ought to be allowed him, yet his mere presence at a caucus does not necessarily involve an active and official influence in opposition to the government which employs him.”There were some lapses, but, on the whole, Mr. Jefferson’s rule was adhered to; and it is difficult to say whether he received more abuse from the Federalists on account of the removals which he did make, or from a faction in his own party on account of the removals which he refused to make.His principle was thus stated in a letter:“If a due participation of office is a matter of right, how are vacancies to be obtained? Those by death are few; by resignation, none.... It would have been to me a circumstance of great relief, had I found a moderate participation of office in the hands of the majority. I should gladly have left to time and accident to raise them to their[pg 122]just share. But their total exclusion calls for prompter corrections. I shall correct the procedure; but that done, disdain to follow it. I shall return with joy to that state of things when the only questions concerning a candidate shall be, Is he honest? Is he capable? Is he faithful to the Constitution?”The ascendency of Jefferson and of the Republican party produced a great change in the government and in national feeling, but it was a change the most important part of which was intangible, and is therefore hard to describe. It was such a change as takes place in the career of an individual, when he shakes off some controlling force, and sets up in life for himself. The common people felt an independence, a pride, an élan, which sent a thrill of vigor through every department of industry and adventure.The simplicity of the forms which President Jefferson adopted were a symbol to the national imagination of the change which had taken place. He gave up the royal custom of levees; he stopped the celebration[pg 123]of the President’s birthday; he substituted a written message for the speech to Congress delivered in person at the Capitol, and the reply by Congress, delivered in person at the White House. The President’s residence ceased to be called the Palace. He cut down the army and navy. He introduced economy in all the departments of the government, and paid off thirty-three millions of the national debt. He procured the abolition of internal taxes and the repeal of the bankruptcy law—two measures which greatly decreased his own patronage, and which called forth John Randolph’s encomium long afterward:“I have never seen but one administration which seriously and in good faith was disposed to give up its patronage, and was willing to go farther than Congress or even the people themselves ... desired; and that was the first administration of Thomas Jefferson.”The two most important measures of the first administration were, however, the repression of the Barbary pirates and the acquisition of Louisiana. Mr. Jefferson’s[pg 124]ineffectual efforts, while he was minister to France, to put down by force Mediterranean piracy have already been rehearsed. During Mr. Adams’s term, two million dollars were expended in bribing the bucaneers. One item in the account was as follows,“A frigate to carry thirty-six guns for the Dey of Algiers;”and this frigate went crammed with a hundred thousand dollars’ worth of powder, lead, timber, rope, canvas, and other means of piracy. One hundred and twenty-two captives came home in that year, 1796, of whom ten had been held in slavery for eleven years.Jefferson’s first important act as President was to dispatch to the Mediterranean three frigates and a sloop-of-war to overawe the pirates, and to cruise in protection of American commerce. Thus began that series of events which finally rendered the commerce of the world as safe from piracy in the Mediterranean as it was in the British channel. How brilliantly Decatur and his gallant comrades carried out this policy, and how at last the tardy naval powers of Europe fol[pg 125]lowed an example which they ought to have set, every one is supposed to know.The second important event was the acquisition of Louisiana. Louisiana meant the whole territory from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean, embracing about one million square miles. All this region belonged to Spain by right of discovery; and early in the year 1801 news came from the American minister at Paris that Spain had ceded or was about to cede it to France. The Spanish ownership of the mouth of the Mississippi had long been a source of annoyance to the settlers on the Mississippi River; and it had begun to be felt that the United States must control New Orleans at least. If this vast territory should come into the hands of France, and Napoleon should colonize it, as was said to be his intention,—France then being the greatest power in Europe,—the United States would have a powerful rival on its borders, and in control of a seaport absolutely necessary for its commerce. We can see this now plainly enough, but even so able a man as Mr. Livingston, the American[pg 126]minister at Paris, did not see it then. On the contrary, he wrote to the government at Washington:“... I have, however, on all occasions, declared that as long as France conforms to the existing treaty between us and Spain, the government of the United States does not consider itself as having any interest in opposing the exchange.”Mr. Jefferson’s very different view was expressed in the following letter to Mr. Livingston:“... France, placing herself in that door, assumes to us the attitude of defiance. Spain might have retained it quietly for years. Her pacific disposition, her feeble state would induce her to increase our facilities there.... Not so can it ever be in the hands of France; the impetuosity of her temper, the energy and restlessness of her character, placed in a point of eternal friction with us and our character, which, though quiet and loving peace and the pursuit of wealth, is high-minded, despising wealth in competition with insult or injury, enterprising and energetic as any nation on earth,—these circumstances render it im[pg 127]possible 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.... From that moment we must marry ourselves to the British fleet and nation.”Thus, at a moment’s notice, and in obedience to a vital change in circumstance, Jefferson threw aside the policy of a lifetime, suppressed his liking for France and his dislike for England, and entered upon that radically new course which, as he foresaw, the interests of the United States would require.Livingston, thus primed, began negotiations for the purchase of New Orleans; and Jefferson hastily dispatched Monroe, as a special envoy, for the same purpose, armed, it is supposed, with secret verbal instructions, to buy, if possible, not only New Orleans, but the whole of Louisiana. Monroe had not a word in writing to show that in purchasing Louisiana—if the act should be[pg 128]repudiated by the nation—he did not exceed his instructions. But, as Mr. Henry Adams remarks,“Jefferson’s friends always trusted him perfectly.”The moment was most propitious, for England and France were about to close in that terrific struggle which ended at Waterloo, and Napoleon was desperately in need of money. After some haggling the bargain was concluded, and, for the very moderate sum of fifteen million dollars, the United States became possessed of a territory which more than doubled its area.The purchase of Louisiana was confessedly an unconstitutional, or at least an extra-constitutional act, for the Constitution gave no authority to the President to acquire new territory, or to pledge the credit of the United States in payment. Jefferson himself thought that the Constitution ought to be amended in order to make the purchase legal; but in this he was overruled by his advisers.Thus, Jefferson’s first administration ended with a brilliant achievement; but this public[pg 129]glory was far more than outweighed by a private loss. The President’s younger daughter, Mrs. Eppes, died in April, 1804; and in a letter to his old friend, John Page, he said:“Others may lose of their abundance, but I, of my wants, have, lost even the half of all I had. My evening prospects now hang on the slender thread of a single life. Perhaps I may be destined to see even this last cord of parental affection broken. The hope with which I have looked forward to the moment when, resigning public cares to younger hands, I was to retire to that domestic comfort from which the last great step is to be taken, is fearfully blighted.”[pg 130]XISECOND PRESIDENTIAL TERMThe purchase of Louisiana increased Jefferson’s popularity, and in 1805, at the age of sixty-two, he was elected to his second term as President by an overwhelming majority. Even Massachusetts was carried by the Republicans, and the total vote in the electoral college stood: 162 for Jefferson and Clinton; 14 for C. C. Pinckney and Rufus King, the Federal candidates.This result was due in part to the fact that Jefferson had stolen the thunder of the Federalists. His Louisiana purchase, though bitterly opposed by the leading Federalists, who were blinded by their hatred of the President, was far more consonant with Federal than with Republican principles; and in his second inaugural address Jefferson went even farther in the direction of a strong central government, for he said:“Redemption[pg 131]once effected, the revenue thereby liberated may, by a just repartition among the States, and a corresponding amendment of the Constitution, be appliedin time of peaceto rivers, canals, roads, arts, manufactures, education, and other great objects within each State. In time of war, ... aided by other measures reserved for that crisis, it may meet within the year all the expenses of the year without encroaching on the rights of future generations by burdening them with the debts of the past.”This proposal flatly contradicted what the President had said in his first inaugural address, and was in strange contrast with his criticism made years before upon a similar Federal scheme of public improvement, that the mines of Peru would not supply the moneys which would be wasted on this object. In later years, after his permanent retirement to Monticello, Jefferson seems to have reverted to his earlier views, and he condemned the measures of John Quincy Adams for making public improvements with national funds.[pg 132]But the President was no longer to enjoy a smooth course. One domestic affair gave him much annoyance, and our foreign relations were a continual source of anxiety and mortification.Aaron Burr had been a brilliant soldier of the Revolution, a highly successful lawyer and politician, and finally, during Mr. Jefferson’s first administration, Vice-President of the United States. But in the year 1805 he found himself, owing to a complication of causes, most of which, however, could be traced to his own moral defects, a bankrupt in reputation and in purse. Such being his condition, he applied to the President for a foreign appointment; and Mr. Jefferson very properly refused it, frankly explaining that Burr, whether justly or unjustly, had lost the confidence of the public.Burr took this rebuff with the easy good-humor which characterized him, dined with the President a few days later, and then started westward to carry out a scheme which he had been preparing for a year. His plans were so shrouded in mystery that it is diffi[pg 133]cult to say exactly what they were, but it is certain that he contemplated an expedition against Mexico, with the intention of making himself the ruler of that country; and it is possible that he hoped to capture New Orleans, and, after dividing the United States, to annex the western half to his Mexican empire. Burr had got together a small supply of men and arms, and he floated down the Ohio, gathering recruits as he went.Jefferson, with his usual good sense, perceived the futility of Burr’s designs, which were based upon a false belief as to the want of loyalty among the western people; but he took all needful precautions. General Wilkinson was ordered to protect New Orleans, Burr’s proceedings were denounced by a proclamation, and finally Burr himself was arrested in Alabama, and brought to Richmond for trial.The trial at once became a political affair, the Federalists, to spite the President, making Burr’s cause their own, though he had killed Alexander Hamilton but three years before, and pretending to regard him as an[pg 134]innocent man persecuted by the President for political reasons. Jefferson himself took a hand in the prosecution to the extent of writing letters to the district attorney full of advice and suggestions. It would have been more dignified had he held aloof, but the provocation which he received was very great. Burr and his counsel used every possible means of throwing odium upon the President; and in this they were assisted by Chief Justice Marshall, who presided at the trial. Marshall, though in the main a just man, was bitterly opposed to Jefferson in political affairs, and in this case he harshly blamed the executive for not procuring evidence with a celerity which, under the circumstances, was impossible. He also summoned the President into court as a witness. The President, however, declined to attend, and the matter was not pressed. Burr was acquitted, chiefly on technical grounds.The Burr affair, however, was but a trifle compared with the difficulties arising from our relations with England. That country had always asserted over the United States[pg 135]the right of impressment, a right, namely, to search American ships, and to take therefrom any Englishmen found among the crew. In many cases, Englishmen who had been naturalized in the United States were thus taken. This alleged right had always been denied by the United States, and British perseverance in it finally led to the war of 1812.Another source of contention was the neutral trade. During the European wars in the early part of the century the seaport towns of the United States did an immense and profitable business in carrying goods to European ports, and from one European port to another. Great Britain, after various attempts to discourage American commerce with her enemies, undertook to put it down by confiscating vessels of the United States on the ground that their cargoes were not neutral but belligerent property,—the property, that is, of nations at war with Great Britain. And, no doubt, in some cases this was the fact,—foreign merchandise having been imported to this country to get a neutral name for it, and thence exported to a[pg 136]country to which it could not have been shipped directly from its place of origin. In April, 1806, the President dispatched Mr. Monroe to London in order, if possible, to settle these disputed matters by a treaty. Monroe, in conjunction with Mr. Pinckney, our minister to England, sent back a treaty which contained no reference whatever to the matter of impressments. It was the best treaty which they could obtain, but it was silent upon this vital point.The situation was a perilous one; England had fought the battle of Trafalgar the year before; and was now able to carry everything before her upon the high seas. Nevertheless, the President’s conduct was bold and prompt. The treaty had been negotiated mainly by his own envoy and friend, Monroe, and great pressure was exerted in favor of it,—especially by the merchants and shipowners of the east. But Jefferson refused even to lay it before the Senate, and at once sent it back to England. His position, and history has justified it, was that to accept a treaty which might be con[pg 137]strued as tacitly admitting the right of impressment would be a disgrace to the country. The other questions at issue were more nearly legal and technical, but this one touched the national honor; and with the same right instinct which Jefferson showed in 1807, the people of the United States, five years later, fixed upon this grievance, out of the fog in which diplomacy had enveloped our relations with England, as the true and sufficient cause of the war of 1812.Nevertheless, Jefferson treated Monroe with the greatest consideration. At this period Monroe and Madison were both candidates for the Republican nomination for the presidency. Jefferson’s choice was Madison, but he remained impartial between them; and he withheld Monroe’s treaty from publication at a time when to publish it would have given a fatal blow to Monroe’s prospects. In every way, in fact, he exerted himself to disguise and soften Monroe’s discredit.The wisdom of Jefferson’s course as to the treaty was shown before three months had elapsed by an act of British aggression, which,[pg 138]had the Monroe treaty been accepted, might fairly have been laid to its door. In June, 1807, the British frigate Leopard, having been refused permission to search the American frigate Chesapeake, fired upon the Chesapeake, which was totally unprepared for action, and, after killing three men and wounding eighteen, refused to accept the surrender of the ship, but carried off three alleged deserters.This event roused a storm of indignation, which never quite subsided until the insult had been effaced by the blood which was shed in the war of 1812.“For the first time in their history,”says Mr. Henry Adams,“the people of the United States learned in June, 1807, the feeling of a true national emotion.”“Never since the battle of Lexington,”wrote Jefferson,“have I seen this country in such a state of exasperation as at present.”War might easily have been precipitated, had Jefferson been carried away by the popular excitement. He immediately dispatched a frigate to England demanding reparation,[pg 139]and he issued a proclamation forbidding all British men-of-war to enter the waters of the United States, unless in distress or bearing dispatches. Jefferson expected war, but he meant to delay it for a while.To his son-in-law, John Eppes, he wrote:“Reason and the usage of civilized nations require that we should give them an opportunity of disavowal and reparation. Our own interests, too, the very means of making war, require that we should give time to our merchants to gather in their vessels and property and our seamen now afloat.”Gallatin, the Secretary of the Treasury, even criticised the President’s annual message at this time as being too warlike and“not in the style of the proclamation, which has been almost universally approved at home and abroad.”It cannot truly be said, therefore, that Jefferson had any unconquerable aversion to war.Mr. Canning, the British Foreign Minister, went through the form of expressing his regrets for the Chesapeake affair, and sent a special envoy to Washington to settle the[pg 140]difficulty. Reparation was made at last, but not till the year 1811.In the mean time, both Great Britain and France had given other causes of offense, which may be summarized as follows: In May, 1806, Great Britain declared the French ports from Brest to the Elbe closed to American as to all other shipping. In the following November, Napoleon retorted with a decree issued from Berlin, prohibiting all commerce with Great Britain. That power immediately forbade the coasting trade between one port and another in the possession of her enemies. And in November, 1807, Great Britain issued the famous Orders in Council, which forbade all trade whatsoever with France and her allies, except on payment of a tribute to Great Britain, each vessel to pay according to the value of its cargo. Then followed Napoleon’s Milan decree prohibiting trade with Great Britain, and declaring that all vessels which paid the tribute demanded were lawful prizes to the French marine.Such was the series of acts which assailed the foreign commerce of the United States,[pg 141]and wounded the national honor by attempting to prostrate the country at the mercy of the European powers. Diplomacy had been exhausted. The Chesapeake affair, the right of impressment, the British decrees and orders directed against our commerce,—all these causes of offense had been tangled into a complication which no man could unravel. Retaliation on our part had become absolutely necessary. What form should it take? Jefferson rejected war, and proposed an embargo which prohibited commerce between the United States and Europe. The measure was bitterly opposed by the New England Federalists; but the President’s influence was so great that Congress adopted it almost without discussion.Jefferson’s design, to use his own words, was“to introduce between nations another umpire than arms;”and he expected that England would be starved into submission. The annual British exports to the United States amounted to $50,000,000. Cutting off this trade meant the throwing out of work of thousands of British sailors and tens[pg 142]of thousands of British factory hands, who had no other means of livelihood. Mr. Jefferson felt confident that the starvation of this class would bring such pressure to bear upon the English government, then engaged in a death struggle with Bonaparte, that it would be forced to repeal the laws which obstructed American commerce. It is possible that this would have been the result had the embargo been observed faithfully by all citizens of the United States. Jefferson maintained till the day of his death that such would have been the case; and Madison, no enthusiast, long afterward asserted that the American state department had proofs that the English government was on the point of yielding. The embargo pressed hardest of all upon Virginia, for it stopped the exportation of her staples,—wheat and tobacco. It brought about, by the way, the financial ruin of Jefferson himself and of his son-in-law, Colonel Randolph. But the Virginians bore it without a murmur.“They drained the poison which their own President held obstinately to their lips.”[pg 143]It was otherwise in New England. There the disastrous effect of the embargo was not only indirect but direct. The New England farmers, it is true, could at least exist upon the produce of their farms; but the mariners, the sea-captains, and the merchants of the coast towns, saw a total suspension of the industry by which they lived. New England evaded the embargo by smuggling, and resisted it tooth and nail. Some of the Federal leaders in that section believing, or pretending to believe, that it was a pro-French measure, were in secret correspondence with the British government, and meditated a secession of the eastern States from the rest of the country. They went so far, in private conversation at least, as to maintain the British right of impressment; and even the Orders in Council were defended by Gardenier, a leading Federalist, and a member of Congress.The present generation has witnessed a similar exhibition of anglomania, when, upon the assertion of the Monroe doctrine in respect to Venezuela, by President Cleveland,[pg 144]his attitude was criticised more severely by a group in New York and Boston than it was by the English themselves.Jefferson’s effort to enforce the embargo and his calm resistance to New England fury showed extraordinary firmness of will and tenacity of purpose. In August, 1808, he wrote to General Dearborn, Secretary of War, who was then in Maine:“The Tories of Boston openly threaten insurrection if their importation of flour is stopped. The next post will stop it.”Blood was soon shed; but Jefferson did not shrink. The army was stationed along the Canadian frontier, to prevent smuggling; gunboats and frigates patrolled the coast. The embargo failed; but Mr. Henry Adams, the ablest and fairest historian of this period, declares that it“was an experiment in politics well worth making. In the scheme of President Jefferson, non-intercourse was the substitute for war.... Failure of the embargo meant in his mind not only a recurrence to the practice of war, but to every political and social evil that war had always[pg 145]brought in its train. In such a case the crimes and corruptions of Europe, which had been the object of his political fears, must, as he believed, sooner or later, teem in the fat soil of America. To avert a disaster so vast was a proper motive for statesmanship, and justified disregard for smaller interests.”Mr. Parton observes, with almost as much truth as humor, that the embargo was approved by the two highest authorities in Europe, namely, Napoleon Bonaparte and the“Edinburgh Review.”Perhaps the fundamental error in Jefferson’s theory was that nations are governed mainly by motives of self-interest. He thought that England would cease to legislate against American commerce, when it was once made plain that such a course was prejudicial to her own interests. But nations, like individuals, are influenced in their relations to others far more by pride and patriotism, and even by prejudice, than by material self-interest. The only way in which America could win respect and fair treatment from Europe was by fighting, or[pg 146]at least by showing a perfect readiness to fight. This she did by the war of 1812.The embargo was an academic policy,—the policy of a philosopher rather than that of a practical man of affairs. Turreau, the French ambassador, wrote to Talleyrand, in May, 1806, that the President“has little energy and still less of that audacity which is indispensable in a place so eminent, whatever may be the form of government. The slightest event makes him lose his balance, and he does not even know how to disguise the impression which he receives.... He has made himself ill, and has grown ten years older.”Jefferson had energy and audacity,—but he was energetic and audacious only by fits and starts. He was too sensitive, too full of ideas, too far-sighted, too conscious of all possible results for a man of action. During the last three months of his term he made no attempt to settle the difficulties in which the country was involved, declaring that he felt bound to do nothing which might embarrass his successor. But it may be doubted[pg 147]if he did not unconsciously decline the task rather from its difficulty than because he felt precluded from undertaking it. Self-knowledge was never Mr. Jefferson’s strong point.But he had done his best, and if his scheme had failed, the failure was not an ignoble one. He was still the most beloved, as well as the best hated man in the United States; and he could have had a third term, if he would have taken it.He retired, permanently, as it proved, to Monticello, wearied and harassed, but glad to be back on his farm, in the bosom of his family, and among his neighbors. His fellow-citizens of Albemarle County desired to meet the returning President, and escort him to his home; but Mr. Jefferson, characteristically, avoided this demonstration, and received instead an address, to which he made a reply that closed in a fit and pathetic manner his public career.“... The part which I have acted on the theatre of public life has been before them [his countrymen], and to their sentence I submit it;[pg 148]but the testimony of my native county, of the individuals who have known me in private life, to my conduct in its various duties and relations, is the more grateful as proceeding from eyewitnesses and observers, from triers of the vicinage. Of you, then, my neighbors, I may ask in the face of the world,‘whose ox have I taken, or whom have I defrauded? Whom have I oppressed, or of whose hand have I received a bribe to blind mine eyes therewith?’On your verdict I rest with conscious security.”

[pg 98]IXTHE TWO PARTIESWhen Jefferson at last found himself at Monticello, having resigned his office as Secretary of State, he declared and believed that he had done with politics forever. To various correspondents he wrote as follows:“I think that I shall never take another newspaper of any sort. I find my mind totally absorbed in my rural occupations.... Nocircumstances, my dear sir, will ever more tempt me to engage in anything public.... I would not give up my retirement for the empire of the universe.”When Madison wrote in 1795, soliciting him to accept the Republican nomination for the presidency, Mr. Jefferson replied:“The little spice of ambition which I had in my younger days has long since evaporated, and I set still less store by a posthumous than present fame. The question[pg 99]is forever closed with me.”Nevertheless, within a few months Mr. Jefferson accepted the nomination, chiefly, it is probable, because, with his usual sagacity, he foresaw that the Republican candidate would be defeated as President, but elected as Vice-President. It must be remembered that at that time the candidate receiving the next to the highest number of electoral votes was declared to be Vice-President; so that there was always a probability that the presidential candidate of the party defeated would be chosen to the second office.There were several reasons why Jefferson would have been glad to receive the office of Vice-President. It involved no disagreeable responsibility; it called for no great expenditure of money in the way of entertainments; it carried a good salary; it required only a few months’ residence at Washington.“Mr. Jefferson often told me,”remarks Mr. Bacon,“that the office of Vice-President was far preferable to that of President.”Mr. Jefferson therefore became the Republican nominee for President, and, as he doubt[pg 100]less expected, was elected Vice-President, the vote standing as follows: Adams, 71; Jefferson, 68; Pinckney, 59; Burr, 30.It is significant of Mr. Jefferson’s high standing in the country that many people believed that he would not deign to accept the office of Vice-President; and Madison wrote advising him to come to Washington on the 4th of March, and take the oath of office, in order that this belief might be dispelled. Jefferson accordingly did so, bringing with him the bones of a mastodon, lately discovered, and a little manuscript book written in his law-student days, marked“Parliamentary Pocket-Book.”This was the basis of that careful and elaborate“Manual of Parliamentary Practice”which Jefferson left as his legacy to the Senate.Upon receiving news of the election Jefferson had written to Madison:“If Mr. Adams can be induced to administer the government on its true principles, and to relinquish his bias to an English Constitution, it is to be considered whether it would not be, on the whole, for the public good to come to[pg 101]a good understanding with him as to his future elections. He is perhaps the only sure barrier against Hamilton’s getting in.”Mr. Adams, indeed, at the outset of his administration, was inclined to be confidential with Mr. Jefferson; but soon, by one of those sudden turns not infrequent with him, he took a different course, and thenceforth treated the Vice-President with nothing more than bare civility.It was a time, indeed, when cordial relations between Federalist and Republican were almost impossible. In a letter written at this period to Mr. Edward Rutledge, Jefferson said:“You and I have formerly seen warm debates, and high political passions. But gentlemen of different politics would then speak to each other, and separate the business of the Senate from that of society. It is not so now. Men who have been intimate all their lives cross the street to avoid meeting, and turn their heads another way, lest they should be obliged to touch their hats.”These party feelings were intensified in the year 1798 by what is known as the X Y Z[pg 102]business. Mr. Adams had sent three commissioners to Paris to negotiate a treaty. Talleyrand, the French Minister for Foreign Affairs, held aloof from them; but they were informed by certain mysterious agents that a treaty could be had on three conditions, (1) that the President should apologize for certain expressions in his recent message to Congress; (2) that the United States should loan a large sum of money to the French government; (3) that adouceurof $25,000 should be given to Talleyrand’s agents.These insulting proposals were indignantly rejected by the commissioners, and being reported in this country, they aroused a storm of popular indignation. Preparations for war were made forthwith. General Washington, though in failing health, was appointed commander-in-chief,—the real command being expected to devolve upon Hamilton, who was named second; men and supplies were voted; letters of marque were issued, and war actually prevailed upon the high seas. The situation redounded greatly to the advantage of the Federalists, for they were always as[pg 103]eager to go to war with France as they were reluctant to go to war with England. The newly appointed officers were drawn almost, if not quite, without exception from the Federalist party, and Hamilton seemed to be on the verge of that military career which he had long hoped for. He trusted, as his most intimate friend, Gouverneur Morris, said after his death,“that in the changes and chances of time we would be involved in some war which might strengthen our union and nerve our executive.”So late as 1802, Hamilton wrote to Morris,“there must be a systematic and persevering endeavor to establish the future of a great empire on foundations much firmer than have yet been devised.”At this very time he was negotiating with Miranda and with the British government, his design being to use against Mexico the army raised in expectation of a war with France.Hamilton was not the man to overturn the government out of personal ambition, nor even in order to set up a monarchy in place of a republic. But he had convinced himself that the republic must some day fall[pg 104]of its own weight. He was always anticipating a“crisis,”and this word is repeated over and over again in his correspondence. It even occurs in the crucial sentence of that pathetic document which he wrote on the eve of his fatal duel. When the“crisis”came, Hamilton meant to be on hand; and, if possible, at the head of an army.However, the X Y Z affair ended peacefully. The warlike spirit shown by the people of the United States had a wholesome effect upon the French government; and at their suggestion new envoys were sent over by the President, by whom a treaty was negotiated. This wise and patriotic act upon the part of Mr. Adams was a benefit to his country, but it aroused the bitter anger of the Federalists and ruined his position in that party.But what was Mr. Jefferson’s attitude during this business? He was not for war, and he contended that a distinction should be made between the acts of Talleyrand and his agents, and the real disposition of the French people. He wrote as follows:“Inexperienced in such manœuvres, the people[pg 105]did not permit themselves even to suspect that the turpitude of private swindlers might mingle itself unobserved, and give its own hue to the communications of the French government, of whose participation there was neither proof nor probability.”And again:“But as I view a peace between France and England the ensuing winter to be certain, I have thought it would have been better for us to have contrived to bear from France through the present summer what we have been bearing both from her and from England these four years, and still continue to bear from England, and to have required indemnification in the hour of peace, when, I firmly believe, it would have been yielded by both.”But this is bad political philosophy. A nation cannot obtain justice by submitting to wrongs or insults even for a time. Jefferson himself had written long before:“I think it is our interest to punish the first insult, because an insult unpunished is the parent of many others.”It is possible that he was misled at this juncture by his liking[pg 106]for France, and by his dislike of the Federalists and of their British proclivities. It is true that the bribe demanded by Talleyrand’s agents might be considered, to use Mr. Jefferson’s words, as“the turpitude of private swindlers;”but the demand for a loan and for a retraction could be regarded only as national acts, being acts of the French government, although the bulk of the French people might repudiate them.Whether Jefferson was right or wrong in the position which he took, he maintained it with superb self-confidence and aplomb. For the moment, the Federalists had everything their own way. They carried the election. Hamilton’s oft-anticipated“crisis”seemed to have arrived at last. But Jefferson coolly waited till the storm should blow over.“Our countrymen,”he wrote to a friend,“are essentially Republicans. They retain unadulterated the principles of ’76, and those who are conscious of no change in themselves have nothing to fear in the long run.”And so it proved. The ascendency of the Federalists was soon destroyed, and de[pg 107]stroyed forever, by the political crimes and follies which they committed; and especially by the alien and sedition laws. The reader need hardly be reminded that the alien law gave the President authority to banish from the country“all such aliens asheshould judge dangerous to the peace and safety of the United States,”—a despotic power which no king of England ever possessed. The sedition act made it a crime, punishable by fine and imprisonment, to speak or write anything“false, scandalous, and malicious,”with intent to excite against either House of Congress or against the President,“the hatred of the good people of the United States.”It can readily be seen what gross oppression was possible under this elastic law, interpreted by judges who, to a man, were members of the Federal party. Matthew Lyon, of Vermont, ventured to read aloud at a political meeting a letter which he had received expressing astonishment that the President’s recent address to the House of Representatives had not been answered by“an order to send him to a mad-house.”For this Mr.[pg 108]Lyon was fined $1,000, and imprisoned in a veritable dungeon.These unconstitutional and un-American laws were vigorously opposed by Jefferson and Madison. In October, 1798, Jefferson wrote:“For my own part I consider those laws as merely an experiment on the American mind to see how far it will bear an avowed violation of the Constitution. If this goes down, we shall immediately see attempted another act of Congress declaring that the President shall continue in office during life, reserving to another occasion the transfer of the succession to his heirs, and the establishment of the Senate for life.”Jefferson also prepared the famous Kentucky resolutions, which were adopted by the legislature of that State,—the authorship, however, being kept secret till Jefferson avowed it, twenty years later. These much-discussed resolutions have been said to have originated the doctrine of nullification, and to contain that principle of secession upon which the South acted in 1861.[pg 109]They may be summed up roughly as follows: The source of all political power is in the people. The people have, by the compact known as the Constitution, granted certain specified powers to the federal government; all other powers, if not granted to the several state governments, are retained by the people. The alien and sedition laws assume the exercise by the federal government of powers not granted to it by the Constitution. They are therefore void.Thus far there can be no question that Jefferson’s argument was sound, and its soundness would not be denied, even at the present day. But the question then arose: what next? May the laws be disregarded and disobeyed by the States or by individuals, or must they be obeyed until some competent authority has pronounced them void? and if so, what is that authority? We understand now that the Supreme Court has sole authority to decide upon the constitutionality of the acts of Congress. It was so held, for the first time, in the year 1803, in the case of Marburyv.Madison, by Chief[pg 110]Justice Marshall and his associates; and that decision, though resisted at the time, has long been accepted by the country as a whole. But this case did not arise until several years after the Kentucky Resolutions were written. Moreover, Marshall was an extreme Federalist, and his view was by no means the commonly accepted view. Jefferson scouted it. He protested all his life against the assumption that the Supreme Court, a body of men appointed for life, and thus removed from all control by the people, should have the enormous power of construing the Constitution and of passing upon the validity of national laws. In a letter written in 1804, he said:“You seem to think it devolved on the judges to decide the validity of the sedition law. But nothing in the Constitution has given them a right to decide for the executive more than the executive to decide for them. But the opinion which gives to the judges the right to decide what laws are constitutional and what not—not only for themselves in their own sphere of action, but for the legislature[pg 111]and executive also in their spheres—would make the judiciary a despotic branch.”3In the Kentucky resolutions, Jefferson argued, first, that the Constitution was a compact between the States; secondly, that no person or body had been appointed by the Constitution as a common judge in respect to questions arising under the Constitution between any one State and Congress, or between the people and Congress; and thirdly,“as in all other cases of compact among powers having no common judge, each party has an equal right to judge for itself, as well of infractions as of the mode and measure of redress.”It was open to him to take this view, because it had not yet been decided that the Supreme Court was the“common judge”appointed by the Constitution; and the Constitution itself[pg 112]was not explicit upon the point. Moreover, the laws in question had not been passed upon by the Supreme Court,—they expired by limitation before that stage was reached.It must be admitted, then, that the Kentucky resolutions do contain the principles of nullification. But at the time when they were written, nullification was a permissible doctrine, because it was not certainly excluded by the Constitution. In 1803, as we have seen, the Constitution was interpreted by the Supreme Court as excluding this doctrine; and that decision having been reaffirmed repeatedly, and having been acquiesced in by the nation for fifty years, may fairly be said to have become by the year 1861 the law of the land.Jefferson, however, by no means intended to push matters to their logical conclusion. His resolutions were intended for moral effect, as he explained in the following letter to Madison:—“I think we should distinctly affirm all the important principles they contain, so as to hold to that ground in future, and leave[pg 113]the matter in such a train that we may not be committed absolutely to push the matter to extremities, and yet may be free to push as far as events will render prudent.”As to the charge that the Kentucky Resolutions imply the doctrine of secession, as well as that of nullification, it has no basis. The two doctrines do not stand or fall together. There is nothing in the resolutions which implies the right of secession. Jefferson, like most Americans of his day, contemplated with indifference the possibility of an ultimate separation of the region beyond the Mississippi from the United States. But nobody placed a higher value than he did on what he described“as our union, the last anchor of our hope, and that alone which is to prevent this heavenly country from becoming an arena of gladiators.”

When Jefferson at last found himself at Monticello, having resigned his office as Secretary of State, he declared and believed that he had done with politics forever. To various correspondents he wrote as follows:“I think that I shall never take another newspaper of any sort. I find my mind totally absorbed in my rural occupations.... Nocircumstances, my dear sir, will ever more tempt me to engage in anything public.... I would not give up my retirement for the empire of the universe.”

When Madison wrote in 1795, soliciting him to accept the Republican nomination for the presidency, Mr. Jefferson replied:“The little spice of ambition which I had in my younger days has long since evaporated, and I set still less store by a posthumous than present fame. The question[pg 99]is forever closed with me.”Nevertheless, within a few months Mr. Jefferson accepted the nomination, chiefly, it is probable, because, with his usual sagacity, he foresaw that the Republican candidate would be defeated as President, but elected as Vice-President. It must be remembered that at that time the candidate receiving the next to the highest number of electoral votes was declared to be Vice-President; so that there was always a probability that the presidential candidate of the party defeated would be chosen to the second office.

There were several reasons why Jefferson would have been glad to receive the office of Vice-President. It involved no disagreeable responsibility; it called for no great expenditure of money in the way of entertainments; it carried a good salary; it required only a few months’ residence at Washington.“Mr. Jefferson often told me,”remarks Mr. Bacon,“that the office of Vice-President was far preferable to that of President.”

Mr. Jefferson therefore became the Republican nominee for President, and, as he doubt[pg 100]less expected, was elected Vice-President, the vote standing as follows: Adams, 71; Jefferson, 68; Pinckney, 59; Burr, 30.

It is significant of Mr. Jefferson’s high standing in the country that many people believed that he would not deign to accept the office of Vice-President; and Madison wrote advising him to come to Washington on the 4th of March, and take the oath of office, in order that this belief might be dispelled. Jefferson accordingly did so, bringing with him the bones of a mastodon, lately discovered, and a little manuscript book written in his law-student days, marked“Parliamentary Pocket-Book.”This was the basis of that careful and elaborate“Manual of Parliamentary Practice”which Jefferson left as his legacy to the Senate.

Upon receiving news of the election Jefferson had written to Madison:“If Mr. Adams can be induced to administer the government on its true principles, and to relinquish his bias to an English Constitution, it is to be considered whether it would not be, on the whole, for the public good to come to[pg 101]a good understanding with him as to his future elections. He is perhaps the only sure barrier against Hamilton’s getting in.”

Mr. Adams, indeed, at the outset of his administration, was inclined to be confidential with Mr. Jefferson; but soon, by one of those sudden turns not infrequent with him, he took a different course, and thenceforth treated the Vice-President with nothing more than bare civility.

It was a time, indeed, when cordial relations between Federalist and Republican were almost impossible. In a letter written at this period to Mr. Edward Rutledge, Jefferson said:“You and I have formerly seen warm debates, and high political passions. But gentlemen of different politics would then speak to each other, and separate the business of the Senate from that of society. It is not so now. Men who have been intimate all their lives cross the street to avoid meeting, and turn their heads another way, lest they should be obliged to touch their hats.”

These party feelings were intensified in the year 1798 by what is known as the X Y Z[pg 102]business. Mr. Adams had sent three commissioners to Paris to negotiate a treaty. Talleyrand, the French Minister for Foreign Affairs, held aloof from them; but they were informed by certain mysterious agents that a treaty could be had on three conditions, (1) that the President should apologize for certain expressions in his recent message to Congress; (2) that the United States should loan a large sum of money to the French government; (3) that adouceurof $25,000 should be given to Talleyrand’s agents.

These insulting proposals were indignantly rejected by the commissioners, and being reported in this country, they aroused a storm of popular indignation. Preparations for war were made forthwith. General Washington, though in failing health, was appointed commander-in-chief,—the real command being expected to devolve upon Hamilton, who was named second; men and supplies were voted; letters of marque were issued, and war actually prevailed upon the high seas. The situation redounded greatly to the advantage of the Federalists, for they were always as[pg 103]eager to go to war with France as they were reluctant to go to war with England. The newly appointed officers were drawn almost, if not quite, without exception from the Federalist party, and Hamilton seemed to be on the verge of that military career which he had long hoped for. He trusted, as his most intimate friend, Gouverneur Morris, said after his death,“that in the changes and chances of time we would be involved in some war which might strengthen our union and nerve our executive.”So late as 1802, Hamilton wrote to Morris,“there must be a systematic and persevering endeavor to establish the future of a great empire on foundations much firmer than have yet been devised.”At this very time he was negotiating with Miranda and with the British government, his design being to use against Mexico the army raised in expectation of a war with France.

Hamilton was not the man to overturn the government out of personal ambition, nor even in order to set up a monarchy in place of a republic. But he had convinced himself that the republic must some day fall[pg 104]of its own weight. He was always anticipating a“crisis,”and this word is repeated over and over again in his correspondence. It even occurs in the crucial sentence of that pathetic document which he wrote on the eve of his fatal duel. When the“crisis”came, Hamilton meant to be on hand; and, if possible, at the head of an army.

However, the X Y Z affair ended peacefully. The warlike spirit shown by the people of the United States had a wholesome effect upon the French government; and at their suggestion new envoys were sent over by the President, by whom a treaty was negotiated. This wise and patriotic act upon the part of Mr. Adams was a benefit to his country, but it aroused the bitter anger of the Federalists and ruined his position in that party.

But what was Mr. Jefferson’s attitude during this business? He was not for war, and he contended that a distinction should be made between the acts of Talleyrand and his agents, and the real disposition of the French people. He wrote as follows:“Inexperienced in such manœuvres, the people[pg 105]did not permit themselves even to suspect that the turpitude of private swindlers might mingle itself unobserved, and give its own hue to the communications of the French government, of whose participation there was neither proof nor probability.”And again:“But as I view a peace between France and England the ensuing winter to be certain, I have thought it would have been better for us to have contrived to bear from France through the present summer what we have been bearing both from her and from England these four years, and still continue to bear from England, and to have required indemnification in the hour of peace, when, I firmly believe, it would have been yielded by both.”

But this is bad political philosophy. A nation cannot obtain justice by submitting to wrongs or insults even for a time. Jefferson himself had written long before:“I think it is our interest to punish the first insult, because an insult unpunished is the parent of many others.”It is possible that he was misled at this juncture by his liking[pg 106]for France, and by his dislike of the Federalists and of their British proclivities. It is true that the bribe demanded by Talleyrand’s agents might be considered, to use Mr. Jefferson’s words, as“the turpitude of private swindlers;”but the demand for a loan and for a retraction could be regarded only as national acts, being acts of the French government, although the bulk of the French people might repudiate them.

Whether Jefferson was right or wrong in the position which he took, he maintained it with superb self-confidence and aplomb. For the moment, the Federalists had everything their own way. They carried the election. Hamilton’s oft-anticipated“crisis”seemed to have arrived at last. But Jefferson coolly waited till the storm should blow over.“Our countrymen,”he wrote to a friend,“are essentially Republicans. They retain unadulterated the principles of ’76, and those who are conscious of no change in themselves have nothing to fear in the long run.”

And so it proved. The ascendency of the Federalists was soon destroyed, and de[pg 107]stroyed forever, by the political crimes and follies which they committed; and especially by the alien and sedition laws. The reader need hardly be reminded that the alien law gave the President authority to banish from the country“all such aliens asheshould judge dangerous to the peace and safety of the United States,”—a despotic power which no king of England ever possessed. The sedition act made it a crime, punishable by fine and imprisonment, to speak or write anything“false, scandalous, and malicious,”with intent to excite against either House of Congress or against the President,“the hatred of the good people of the United States.”It can readily be seen what gross oppression was possible under this elastic law, interpreted by judges who, to a man, were members of the Federal party. Matthew Lyon, of Vermont, ventured to read aloud at a political meeting a letter which he had received expressing astonishment that the President’s recent address to the House of Representatives had not been answered by“an order to send him to a mad-house.”For this Mr.[pg 108]Lyon was fined $1,000, and imprisoned in a veritable dungeon.

These unconstitutional and un-American laws were vigorously opposed by Jefferson and Madison. In October, 1798, Jefferson wrote:“For my own part I consider those laws as merely an experiment on the American mind to see how far it will bear an avowed violation of the Constitution. If this goes down, we shall immediately see attempted another act of Congress declaring that the President shall continue in office during life, reserving to another occasion the transfer of the succession to his heirs, and the establishment of the Senate for life.”

Jefferson also prepared the famous Kentucky resolutions, which were adopted by the legislature of that State,—the authorship, however, being kept secret till Jefferson avowed it, twenty years later. These much-discussed resolutions have been said to have originated the doctrine of nullification, and to contain that principle of secession upon which the South acted in 1861.[pg 109]They may be summed up roughly as follows: The source of all political power is in the people. The people have, by the compact known as the Constitution, granted certain specified powers to the federal government; all other powers, if not granted to the several state governments, are retained by the people. The alien and sedition laws assume the exercise by the federal government of powers not granted to it by the Constitution. They are therefore void.

Thus far there can be no question that Jefferson’s argument was sound, and its soundness would not be denied, even at the present day. But the question then arose: what next? May the laws be disregarded and disobeyed by the States or by individuals, or must they be obeyed until some competent authority has pronounced them void? and if so, what is that authority? We understand now that the Supreme Court has sole authority to decide upon the constitutionality of the acts of Congress. It was so held, for the first time, in the year 1803, in the case of Marburyv.Madison, by Chief[pg 110]Justice Marshall and his associates; and that decision, though resisted at the time, has long been accepted by the country as a whole. But this case did not arise until several years after the Kentucky Resolutions were written. Moreover, Marshall was an extreme Federalist, and his view was by no means the commonly accepted view. Jefferson scouted it. He protested all his life against the assumption that the Supreme Court, a body of men appointed for life, and thus removed from all control by the people, should have the enormous power of construing the Constitution and of passing upon the validity of national laws. In a letter written in 1804, he said:“You seem to think it devolved on the judges to decide the validity of the sedition law. But nothing in the Constitution has given them a right to decide for the executive more than the executive to decide for them. But the opinion which gives to the judges the right to decide what laws are constitutional and what not—not only for themselves in their own sphere of action, but for the legislature[pg 111]and executive also in their spheres—would make the judiciary a despotic branch.”3

In the Kentucky resolutions, Jefferson argued, first, that the Constitution was a compact between the States; secondly, that no person or body had been appointed by the Constitution as a common judge in respect to questions arising under the Constitution between any one State and Congress, or between the people and Congress; and thirdly,“as in all other cases of compact among powers having no common judge, each party has an equal right to judge for itself, as well of infractions as of the mode and measure of redress.”It was open to him to take this view, because it had not yet been decided that the Supreme Court was the“common judge”appointed by the Constitution; and the Constitution itself[pg 112]was not explicit upon the point. Moreover, the laws in question had not been passed upon by the Supreme Court,—they expired by limitation before that stage was reached.

It must be admitted, then, that the Kentucky resolutions do contain the principles of nullification. But at the time when they were written, nullification was a permissible doctrine, because it was not certainly excluded by the Constitution. In 1803, as we have seen, the Constitution was interpreted by the Supreme Court as excluding this doctrine; and that decision having been reaffirmed repeatedly, and having been acquiesced in by the nation for fifty years, may fairly be said to have become by the year 1861 the law of the land.

Jefferson, however, by no means intended to push matters to their logical conclusion. His resolutions were intended for moral effect, as he explained in the following letter to Madison:—

“I think we should distinctly affirm all the important principles they contain, so as to hold to that ground in future, and leave[pg 113]the matter in such a train that we may not be committed absolutely to push the matter to extremities, and yet may be free to push as far as events will render prudent.”

As to the charge that the Kentucky Resolutions imply the doctrine of secession, as well as that of nullification, it has no basis. The two doctrines do not stand or fall together. There is nothing in the resolutions which implies the right of secession. Jefferson, like most Americans of his day, contemplated with indifference the possibility of an ultimate separation of the region beyond the Mississippi from the United States. But nobody placed a higher value than he did on what he described“as our union, the last anchor of our hope, and that alone which is to prevent this heavenly country from becoming an arena of gladiators.”

[pg 114]XPRESIDENT JEFFERSONFor the presidential election of 1800, Adams was again the candidate on the Federal side, and Jefferson on the Republican side. Jefferson, by interviews, by long and numerous letters, by the commanding force of his own intellect and character, had at last welded the anti-Federal elements into a compact and disciplined Republican party. The contest was waged with the utmost bitterness, and especially with bitterness against Jefferson. For this there were several causes. Jefferson had deeply offended two powerful classes in Virginia, the old aristocratic and Tory element, and—excluding the dissenters—the religious element; the former, by the repeal of the law of entail, and the latter by the statute for freedom of religion in Virginia. These were among the most meritorious acts of his life, but they produced an[pg 115]intense enmity which lasted till his death and even beyond his death. Jefferson, also, though at times over-cautious, was at times rash and indiscreet, and the freedom of his comments upon men and measures often got him into trouble. His career will be misunderstood unless it is remembered that he was an impulsive man. His judgments were intuitive, and though usually correct, yet sometimes hasty and ill-considered.Above all, Jefferson was both for friends and foes the embodiment of Republicanism. He represented those ideas which the Federalists, and especially the New England lawyers and clergy, really believed to be subversive of law and order, of government and religion. To them he figured as“a fanatic in politics, and an atheist in religion;”and they were so disposed to believe everything bad of him that they swallowed whole the worst slanders which the political violence of the times, far exceeding that of the present day, could invent. We have seen with what tenderness Jefferson treated his widowed sister, Mrs. Carr, and her children.[pg 116]It was in reference to this very family that the Rev. Mr. Cotton Mather Smith, of Connecticut, declared that Jefferson had gained his estate by robbery, namely, by robbing a widow and her children of £10,000,“all of which can be proved.”Jefferson, as we have said, was a deist. He was a religious man and a daily reader of the Bible, far less extreme in his notions, less hostile to orthodox Christianity than John Adams. Nevertheless,—partly, perhaps, because he had procured the disestablishment of the Virginia Church, partly on account of his scientific tastes and his liking for French notions,—the Federalists had convinced themselves that he was a violent atheist and anti-Christian. It was a humorous saying of the time that the old women of New England hid their Bibles in the well when Jefferson’s election in 1800 became known.The vote was as follows:—Jefferson, 73, Burr, 73; Adams, 65; C. C. Pinckney, 64; Jay, 1. There being a tie between Jefferson and Burr, the Republican candidate for[pg 117]Vice-President, the election was thrown into the House of Representatives, voting by States. In that House the Federalists were in the majority, but they did not have a majority by States. They could not, therefore, elect Adams; but it was possible for them to make Burr President instead of Jefferson. At first, the leaders were inclined to do this, some believing that Burr’s utter want of principle was less dangerous than the pernicious principles which they ascribed to Jefferson, and others thinking that Burr, if elected by Federal votes, would pursue a Federal policy. It was feared that Jefferson would wipe out the national debt, abolish the navy, and remove every Federal officeholder in the land. He was approached from many quarters, and even President Adams desired him to give some intimation of his intended policy on these points, but Jefferson firmly refused.As to one such interview, with Gouverneur Morris, Jefferson wrote afterward:“I told him that I should leave the world to judge of the course I meant to pursue, by that[pg 118]which I had pursued hitherto, believing it to be my duty to be passive and silent during the present scene; that I should certainly make no terms; should never go into the office of President by capitulation, nor with my hands tied by any conditions which would hinder me from pursuing the measures which I should deem for the public good.”The Federalists had a characteristic plan: they proposed to pass a law devolving the Presidency upon the chairman of the Senate, in case the office of President should become vacant; and this vacancy they would be able to bring about by prolonging the election until Mr. Adams’s term of office had expired. The chairman of the Senate, a Federalist, of course, would then become President. This scheme Jefferson and his friends were prepared to resist by force.“Because,”as he afterward explained,“that precedent once set, it would be artificially reproduced, and would soon end in a dictator.”Hamilton, to his credit, be it said, strongly advocated the election of Jefferson; and finally, through the action of Mr. Bayard,[pg 119]of Delaware, a leading Federalist, who had sounded an intimate friend of Mr. Jefferson as to his views upon the points already mentioned, Mr. Jefferson was elected President, and the threatening civil war was averted.Mr. Adams, who was deeply chagrined by his defeat, did not attend the inauguration of his successor, but left Washington in his carriage, at sunrise, on the fourth of March; and Jefferson rode on horseback to the Capitol, unattended, and dismounting, fastened his horse to the fence with his own hands. The inaugural address, brief, and beautifully worded, surprised most of those who heard it by the moderation and liberality of its tone.“Let us,”said the new President,“restore to social intercourse that harmony and affection without which liberty, and even life itself, are but dreary things.”Jefferson served two terms, and he was succeeded first by Madison, and then by Monroe, both of whom were his friends and disciples, and imbued with his ideas. They, also, were reëlected. For twenty-four years, therefore, Jefferson and Jeffersonian De[pg 120]mocracy predominated in the government of the United States, and the period was an exceedingly prosperous one. Not one of the dismal forebodings of the Federalists was fulfilled; and the practicability of popular government was proved.The first problem with which Jefferson had to deal was that of appointments to office. The situation was much like that which afterward confronted President Cleveland when he entered upon his first term,—that is, every place was filled by a member of the party opposed to the new administration. The principle which Mr. Jefferson adopted closely resembles that afterward adopted by Mr. Cleveland, namely, no officeholder was to be displaced on account of his political belief; but if he acted aggressively in politics, that was to be sufficient ground for removal.“Electioneering activity”was the phrase used in Mr. Jefferson’s time, and“offensive partisanship”in Mr. Cleveland’s.The following letter from President Jefferson to the Secretary of the Treasury will show how the rule was construed by him:—[pg 121]“The allegations against Pope [collector] of New Bedford are insufficient. Although meddling in political caucuses is no part of that freedom of personal suffrage which ought to be allowed him, yet his mere presence at a caucus does not necessarily involve an active and official influence in opposition to the government which employs him.”There were some lapses, but, on the whole, Mr. Jefferson’s rule was adhered to; and it is difficult to say whether he received more abuse from the Federalists on account of the removals which he did make, or from a faction in his own party on account of the removals which he refused to make.His principle was thus stated in a letter:“If a due participation of office is a matter of right, how are vacancies to be obtained? Those by death are few; by resignation, none.... It would have been to me a circumstance of great relief, had I found a moderate participation of office in the hands of the majority. I should gladly have left to time and accident to raise them to their[pg 122]just share. But their total exclusion calls for prompter corrections. I shall correct the procedure; but that done, disdain to follow it. I shall return with joy to that state of things when the only questions concerning a candidate shall be, Is he honest? Is he capable? Is he faithful to the Constitution?”The ascendency of Jefferson and of the Republican party produced a great change in the government and in national feeling, but it was a change the most important part of which was intangible, and is therefore hard to describe. It was such a change as takes place in the career of an individual, when he shakes off some controlling force, and sets up in life for himself. The common people felt an independence, a pride, an élan, which sent a thrill of vigor through every department of industry and adventure.The simplicity of the forms which President Jefferson adopted were a symbol to the national imagination of the change which had taken place. He gave up the royal custom of levees; he stopped the celebration[pg 123]of the President’s birthday; he substituted a written message for the speech to Congress delivered in person at the Capitol, and the reply by Congress, delivered in person at the White House. The President’s residence ceased to be called the Palace. He cut down the army and navy. He introduced economy in all the departments of the government, and paid off thirty-three millions of the national debt. He procured the abolition of internal taxes and the repeal of the bankruptcy law—two measures which greatly decreased his own patronage, and which called forth John Randolph’s encomium long afterward:“I have never seen but one administration which seriously and in good faith was disposed to give up its patronage, and was willing to go farther than Congress or even the people themselves ... desired; and that was the first administration of Thomas Jefferson.”The two most important measures of the first administration were, however, the repression of the Barbary pirates and the acquisition of Louisiana. Mr. Jefferson’s[pg 124]ineffectual efforts, while he was minister to France, to put down by force Mediterranean piracy have already been rehearsed. During Mr. Adams’s term, two million dollars were expended in bribing the bucaneers. One item in the account was as follows,“A frigate to carry thirty-six guns for the Dey of Algiers;”and this frigate went crammed with a hundred thousand dollars’ worth of powder, lead, timber, rope, canvas, and other means of piracy. One hundred and twenty-two captives came home in that year, 1796, of whom ten had been held in slavery for eleven years.Jefferson’s first important act as President was to dispatch to the Mediterranean three frigates and a sloop-of-war to overawe the pirates, and to cruise in protection of American commerce. Thus began that series of events which finally rendered the commerce of the world as safe from piracy in the Mediterranean as it was in the British channel. How brilliantly Decatur and his gallant comrades carried out this policy, and how at last the tardy naval powers of Europe fol[pg 125]lowed an example which they ought to have set, every one is supposed to know.The second important event was the acquisition of Louisiana. Louisiana meant the whole territory from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean, embracing about one million square miles. All this region belonged to Spain by right of discovery; and early in the year 1801 news came from the American minister at Paris that Spain had ceded or was about to cede it to France. The Spanish ownership of the mouth of the Mississippi had long been a source of annoyance to the settlers on the Mississippi River; and it had begun to be felt that the United States must control New Orleans at least. If this vast territory should come into the hands of France, and Napoleon should colonize it, as was said to be his intention,—France then being the greatest power in Europe,—the United States would have a powerful rival on its borders, and in control of a seaport absolutely necessary for its commerce. We can see this now plainly enough, but even so able a man as Mr. Livingston, the American[pg 126]minister at Paris, did not see it then. On the contrary, he wrote to the government at Washington:“... I have, however, on all occasions, declared that as long as France conforms to the existing treaty between us and Spain, the government of the United States does not consider itself as having any interest in opposing the exchange.”Mr. Jefferson’s very different view was expressed in the following letter to Mr. Livingston:“... France, placing herself in that door, assumes to us the attitude of defiance. Spain might have retained it quietly for years. Her pacific disposition, her feeble state would induce her to increase our facilities there.... Not so can it ever be in the hands of France; the impetuosity of her temper, the energy and restlessness of her character, placed in a point of eternal friction with us and our character, which, though quiet and loving peace and the pursuit of wealth, is high-minded, despising wealth in competition with insult or injury, enterprising and energetic as any nation on earth,—these circumstances render it im[pg 127]possible 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.... From that moment we must marry ourselves to the British fleet and nation.”Thus, at a moment’s notice, and in obedience to a vital change in circumstance, Jefferson threw aside the policy of a lifetime, suppressed his liking for France and his dislike for England, and entered upon that radically new course which, as he foresaw, the interests of the United States would require.Livingston, thus primed, began negotiations for the purchase of New Orleans; and Jefferson hastily dispatched Monroe, as a special envoy, for the same purpose, armed, it is supposed, with secret verbal instructions, to buy, if possible, not only New Orleans, but the whole of Louisiana. Monroe had not a word in writing to show that in purchasing Louisiana—if the act should be[pg 128]repudiated by the nation—he did not exceed his instructions. But, as Mr. Henry Adams remarks,“Jefferson’s friends always trusted him perfectly.”The moment was most propitious, for England and France were about to close in that terrific struggle which ended at Waterloo, and Napoleon was desperately in need of money. After some haggling the bargain was concluded, and, for the very moderate sum of fifteen million dollars, the United States became possessed of a territory which more than doubled its area.The purchase of Louisiana was confessedly an unconstitutional, or at least an extra-constitutional act, for the Constitution gave no authority to the President to acquire new territory, or to pledge the credit of the United States in payment. Jefferson himself thought that the Constitution ought to be amended in order to make the purchase legal; but in this he was overruled by his advisers.Thus, Jefferson’s first administration ended with a brilliant achievement; but this public[pg 129]glory was far more than outweighed by a private loss. The President’s younger daughter, Mrs. Eppes, died in April, 1804; and in a letter to his old friend, John Page, he said:“Others may lose of their abundance, but I, of my wants, have, lost even the half of all I had. My evening prospects now hang on the slender thread of a single life. Perhaps I may be destined to see even this last cord of parental affection broken. The hope with which I have looked forward to the moment when, resigning public cares to younger hands, I was to retire to that domestic comfort from which the last great step is to be taken, is fearfully blighted.”

For the presidential election of 1800, Adams was again the candidate on the Federal side, and Jefferson on the Republican side. Jefferson, by interviews, by long and numerous letters, by the commanding force of his own intellect and character, had at last welded the anti-Federal elements into a compact and disciplined Republican party. The contest was waged with the utmost bitterness, and especially with bitterness against Jefferson. For this there were several causes. Jefferson had deeply offended two powerful classes in Virginia, the old aristocratic and Tory element, and—excluding the dissenters—the religious element; the former, by the repeal of the law of entail, and the latter by the statute for freedom of religion in Virginia. These were among the most meritorious acts of his life, but they produced an[pg 115]intense enmity which lasted till his death and even beyond his death. Jefferson, also, though at times over-cautious, was at times rash and indiscreet, and the freedom of his comments upon men and measures often got him into trouble. His career will be misunderstood unless it is remembered that he was an impulsive man. His judgments were intuitive, and though usually correct, yet sometimes hasty and ill-considered.

Above all, Jefferson was both for friends and foes the embodiment of Republicanism. He represented those ideas which the Federalists, and especially the New England lawyers and clergy, really believed to be subversive of law and order, of government and religion. To them he figured as“a fanatic in politics, and an atheist in religion;”and they were so disposed to believe everything bad of him that they swallowed whole the worst slanders which the political violence of the times, far exceeding that of the present day, could invent. We have seen with what tenderness Jefferson treated his widowed sister, Mrs. Carr, and her children.[pg 116]It was in reference to this very family that the Rev. Mr. Cotton Mather Smith, of Connecticut, declared that Jefferson had gained his estate by robbery, namely, by robbing a widow and her children of £10,000,“all of which can be proved.”

Jefferson, as we have said, was a deist. He was a religious man and a daily reader of the Bible, far less extreme in his notions, less hostile to orthodox Christianity than John Adams. Nevertheless,—partly, perhaps, because he had procured the disestablishment of the Virginia Church, partly on account of his scientific tastes and his liking for French notions,—the Federalists had convinced themselves that he was a violent atheist and anti-Christian. It was a humorous saying of the time that the old women of New England hid their Bibles in the well when Jefferson’s election in 1800 became known.

The vote was as follows:—Jefferson, 73, Burr, 73; Adams, 65; C. C. Pinckney, 64; Jay, 1. There being a tie between Jefferson and Burr, the Republican candidate for[pg 117]Vice-President, the election was thrown into the House of Representatives, voting by States. In that House the Federalists were in the majority, but they did not have a majority by States. They could not, therefore, elect Adams; but it was possible for them to make Burr President instead of Jefferson. At first, the leaders were inclined to do this, some believing that Burr’s utter want of principle was less dangerous than the pernicious principles which they ascribed to Jefferson, and others thinking that Burr, if elected by Federal votes, would pursue a Federal policy. It was feared that Jefferson would wipe out the national debt, abolish the navy, and remove every Federal officeholder in the land. He was approached from many quarters, and even President Adams desired him to give some intimation of his intended policy on these points, but Jefferson firmly refused.

As to one such interview, with Gouverneur Morris, Jefferson wrote afterward:“I told him that I should leave the world to judge of the course I meant to pursue, by that[pg 118]which I had pursued hitherto, believing it to be my duty to be passive and silent during the present scene; that I should certainly make no terms; should never go into the office of President by capitulation, nor with my hands tied by any conditions which would hinder me from pursuing the measures which I should deem for the public good.”

The Federalists had a characteristic plan: they proposed to pass a law devolving the Presidency upon the chairman of the Senate, in case the office of President should become vacant; and this vacancy they would be able to bring about by prolonging the election until Mr. Adams’s term of office had expired. The chairman of the Senate, a Federalist, of course, would then become President. This scheme Jefferson and his friends were prepared to resist by force.“Because,”as he afterward explained,“that precedent once set, it would be artificially reproduced, and would soon end in a dictator.”

Hamilton, to his credit, be it said, strongly advocated the election of Jefferson; and finally, through the action of Mr. Bayard,[pg 119]of Delaware, a leading Federalist, who had sounded an intimate friend of Mr. Jefferson as to his views upon the points already mentioned, Mr. Jefferson was elected President, and the threatening civil war was averted.

Mr. Adams, who was deeply chagrined by his defeat, did not attend the inauguration of his successor, but left Washington in his carriage, at sunrise, on the fourth of March; and Jefferson rode on horseback to the Capitol, unattended, and dismounting, fastened his horse to the fence with his own hands. The inaugural address, brief, and beautifully worded, surprised most of those who heard it by the moderation and liberality of its tone.“Let us,”said the new President,“restore to social intercourse that harmony and affection without which liberty, and even life itself, are but dreary things.”

Jefferson served two terms, and he was succeeded first by Madison, and then by Monroe, both of whom were his friends and disciples, and imbued with his ideas. They, also, were reëlected. For twenty-four years, therefore, Jefferson and Jeffersonian De[pg 120]mocracy predominated in the government of the United States, and the period was an exceedingly prosperous one. Not one of the dismal forebodings of the Federalists was fulfilled; and the practicability of popular government was proved.

The first problem with which Jefferson had to deal was that of appointments to office. The situation was much like that which afterward confronted President Cleveland when he entered upon his first term,—that is, every place was filled by a member of the party opposed to the new administration. The principle which Mr. Jefferson adopted closely resembles that afterward adopted by Mr. Cleveland, namely, no officeholder was to be displaced on account of his political belief; but if he acted aggressively in politics, that was to be sufficient ground for removal.“Electioneering activity”was the phrase used in Mr. Jefferson’s time, and“offensive partisanship”in Mr. Cleveland’s.

The following letter from President Jefferson to the Secretary of the Treasury will show how the rule was construed by him:—

“The allegations against Pope [collector] of New Bedford are insufficient. Although meddling in political caucuses is no part of that freedom of personal suffrage which ought to be allowed him, yet his mere presence at a caucus does not necessarily involve an active and official influence in opposition to the government which employs him.”

There were some lapses, but, on the whole, Mr. Jefferson’s rule was adhered to; and it is difficult to say whether he received more abuse from the Federalists on account of the removals which he did make, or from a faction in his own party on account of the removals which he refused to make.

His principle was thus stated in a letter:“If a due participation of office is a matter of right, how are vacancies to be obtained? Those by death are few; by resignation, none.... It would have been to me a circumstance of great relief, had I found a moderate participation of office in the hands of the majority. I should gladly have left to time and accident to raise them to their[pg 122]just share. But their total exclusion calls for prompter corrections. I shall correct the procedure; but that done, disdain to follow it. I shall return with joy to that state of things when the only questions concerning a candidate shall be, Is he honest? Is he capable? Is he faithful to the Constitution?”

The ascendency of Jefferson and of the Republican party produced a great change in the government and in national feeling, but it was a change the most important part of which was intangible, and is therefore hard to describe. It was such a change as takes place in the career of an individual, when he shakes off some controlling force, and sets up in life for himself. The common people felt an independence, a pride, an élan, which sent a thrill of vigor through every department of industry and adventure.

The simplicity of the forms which President Jefferson adopted were a symbol to the national imagination of the change which had taken place. He gave up the royal custom of levees; he stopped the celebration[pg 123]of the President’s birthday; he substituted a written message for the speech to Congress delivered in person at the Capitol, and the reply by Congress, delivered in person at the White House. The President’s residence ceased to be called the Palace. He cut down the army and navy. He introduced economy in all the departments of the government, and paid off thirty-three millions of the national debt. He procured the abolition of internal taxes and the repeal of the bankruptcy law—two measures which greatly decreased his own patronage, and which called forth John Randolph’s encomium long afterward:“I have never seen but one administration which seriously and in good faith was disposed to give up its patronage, and was willing to go farther than Congress or even the people themselves ... desired; and that was the first administration of Thomas Jefferson.”

The two most important measures of the first administration were, however, the repression of the Barbary pirates and the acquisition of Louisiana. Mr. Jefferson’s[pg 124]ineffectual efforts, while he was minister to France, to put down by force Mediterranean piracy have already been rehearsed. During Mr. Adams’s term, two million dollars were expended in bribing the bucaneers. One item in the account was as follows,“A frigate to carry thirty-six guns for the Dey of Algiers;”and this frigate went crammed with a hundred thousand dollars’ worth of powder, lead, timber, rope, canvas, and other means of piracy. One hundred and twenty-two captives came home in that year, 1796, of whom ten had been held in slavery for eleven years.

Jefferson’s first important act as President was to dispatch to the Mediterranean three frigates and a sloop-of-war to overawe the pirates, and to cruise in protection of American commerce. Thus began that series of events which finally rendered the commerce of the world as safe from piracy in the Mediterranean as it was in the British channel. How brilliantly Decatur and his gallant comrades carried out this policy, and how at last the tardy naval powers of Europe fol[pg 125]lowed an example which they ought to have set, every one is supposed to know.

The second important event was the acquisition of Louisiana. Louisiana meant the whole territory from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean, embracing about one million square miles. All this region belonged to Spain by right of discovery; and early in the year 1801 news came from the American minister at Paris that Spain had ceded or was about to cede it to France. The Spanish ownership of the mouth of the Mississippi had long been a source of annoyance to the settlers on the Mississippi River; and it had begun to be felt that the United States must control New Orleans at least. If this vast territory should come into the hands of France, and Napoleon should colonize it, as was said to be his intention,—France then being the greatest power in Europe,—the United States would have a powerful rival on its borders, and in control of a seaport absolutely necessary for its commerce. We can see this now plainly enough, but even so able a man as Mr. Livingston, the American[pg 126]minister at Paris, did not see it then. On the contrary, he wrote to the government at Washington:“... I have, however, on all occasions, declared that as long as France conforms to the existing treaty between us and Spain, the government of the United States does not consider itself as having any interest in opposing the exchange.”

Mr. Jefferson’s very different view was expressed in the following letter to Mr. Livingston:“... France, placing herself in that door, assumes to us the attitude of defiance. Spain might have retained it quietly for years. Her pacific disposition, her feeble state would induce her to increase our facilities there.... Not so can it ever be in the hands of France; the impetuosity of her temper, the energy and restlessness of her character, placed in a point of eternal friction with us and our character, which, though quiet and loving peace and the pursuit of wealth, is high-minded, despising wealth in competition with insult or injury, enterprising and energetic as any nation on earth,—these circumstances render it im[pg 127]possible 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.... From that moment we must marry ourselves to the British fleet and nation.”

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

Livingston, thus primed, began negotiations for the purchase of New Orleans; and Jefferson hastily dispatched Monroe, as a special envoy, for the same purpose, armed, it is supposed, with secret verbal instructions, to buy, if possible, not only New Orleans, but the whole of Louisiana. Monroe had not a word in writing to show that in purchasing Louisiana—if the act should be[pg 128]repudiated by the nation—he did not exceed his instructions. But, as Mr. Henry Adams remarks,“Jefferson’s friends always trusted him perfectly.”

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

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

Thus, Jefferson’s first administration ended with a brilliant achievement; but this public[pg 129]glory was far more than outweighed by a private loss. The President’s younger daughter, Mrs. Eppes, died in April, 1804; and in a letter to his old friend, John Page, he said:“Others may lose of their abundance, but I, of my wants, have, lost even the half of all I had. My evening prospects now hang on the slender thread of a single life. Perhaps I may be destined to see even this last cord of parental affection broken. The hope with which I have looked forward to the moment when, resigning public cares to younger hands, I was to retire to that domestic comfort from which the last great step is to be taken, is fearfully blighted.”

[pg 130]XISECOND PRESIDENTIAL TERMThe purchase of Louisiana increased Jefferson’s popularity, and in 1805, at the age of sixty-two, he was elected to his second term as President by an overwhelming majority. Even Massachusetts was carried by the Republicans, and the total vote in the electoral college stood: 162 for Jefferson and Clinton; 14 for C. C. Pinckney and Rufus King, the Federal candidates.This result was due in part to the fact that Jefferson had stolen the thunder of the Federalists. His Louisiana purchase, though bitterly opposed by the leading Federalists, who were blinded by their hatred of the President, was far more consonant with Federal than with Republican principles; and in his second inaugural address Jefferson went even farther in the direction of a strong central government, for he said:“Redemption[pg 131]once effected, the revenue thereby liberated may, by a just repartition among the States, and a corresponding amendment of the Constitution, be appliedin time of peaceto rivers, canals, roads, arts, manufactures, education, and other great objects within each State. In time of war, ... aided by other measures reserved for that crisis, it may meet within the year all the expenses of the year without encroaching on the rights of future generations by burdening them with the debts of the past.”This proposal flatly contradicted what the President had said in his first inaugural address, and was in strange contrast with his criticism made years before upon a similar Federal scheme of public improvement, that the mines of Peru would not supply the moneys which would be wasted on this object. In later years, after his permanent retirement to Monticello, Jefferson seems to have reverted to his earlier views, and he condemned the measures of John Quincy Adams for making public improvements with national funds.[pg 132]But the President was no longer to enjoy a smooth course. One domestic affair gave him much annoyance, and our foreign relations were a continual source of anxiety and mortification.Aaron Burr had been a brilliant soldier of the Revolution, a highly successful lawyer and politician, and finally, during Mr. Jefferson’s first administration, Vice-President of the United States. But in the year 1805 he found himself, owing to a complication of causes, most of which, however, could be traced to his own moral defects, a bankrupt in reputation and in purse. Such being his condition, he applied to the President for a foreign appointment; and Mr. Jefferson very properly refused it, frankly explaining that Burr, whether justly or unjustly, had lost the confidence of the public.Burr took this rebuff with the easy good-humor which characterized him, dined with the President a few days later, and then started westward to carry out a scheme which he had been preparing for a year. His plans were so shrouded in mystery that it is diffi[pg 133]cult to say exactly what they were, but it is certain that he contemplated an expedition against Mexico, with the intention of making himself the ruler of that country; and it is possible that he hoped to capture New Orleans, and, after dividing the United States, to annex the western half to his Mexican empire. Burr had got together a small supply of men and arms, and he floated down the Ohio, gathering recruits as he went.Jefferson, with his usual good sense, perceived the futility of Burr’s designs, which were based upon a false belief as to the want of loyalty among the western people; but he took all needful precautions. General Wilkinson was ordered to protect New Orleans, Burr’s proceedings were denounced by a proclamation, and finally Burr himself was arrested in Alabama, and brought to Richmond for trial.The trial at once became a political affair, the Federalists, to spite the President, making Burr’s cause their own, though he had killed Alexander Hamilton but three years before, and pretending to regard him as an[pg 134]innocent man persecuted by the President for political reasons. Jefferson himself took a hand in the prosecution to the extent of writing letters to the district attorney full of advice and suggestions. It would have been more dignified had he held aloof, but the provocation which he received was very great. Burr and his counsel used every possible means of throwing odium upon the President; and in this they were assisted by Chief Justice Marshall, who presided at the trial. Marshall, though in the main a just man, was bitterly opposed to Jefferson in political affairs, and in this case he harshly blamed the executive for not procuring evidence with a celerity which, under the circumstances, was impossible. He also summoned the President into court as a witness. The President, however, declined to attend, and the matter was not pressed. Burr was acquitted, chiefly on technical grounds.The Burr affair, however, was but a trifle compared with the difficulties arising from our relations with England. That country had always asserted over the United States[pg 135]the right of impressment, a right, namely, to search American ships, and to take therefrom any Englishmen found among the crew. In many cases, Englishmen who had been naturalized in the United States were thus taken. This alleged right had always been denied by the United States, and British perseverance in it finally led to the war of 1812.Another source of contention was the neutral trade. During the European wars in the early part of the century the seaport towns of the United States did an immense and profitable business in carrying goods to European ports, and from one European port to another. Great Britain, after various attempts to discourage American commerce with her enemies, undertook to put it down by confiscating vessels of the United States on the ground that their cargoes were not neutral but belligerent property,—the property, that is, of nations at war with Great Britain. And, no doubt, in some cases this was the fact,—foreign merchandise having been imported to this country to get a neutral name for it, and thence exported to a[pg 136]country to which it could not have been shipped directly from its place of origin. In April, 1806, the President dispatched Mr. Monroe to London in order, if possible, to settle these disputed matters by a treaty. Monroe, in conjunction with Mr. Pinckney, our minister to England, sent back a treaty which contained no reference whatever to the matter of impressments. It was the best treaty which they could obtain, but it was silent upon this vital point.The situation was a perilous one; England had fought the battle of Trafalgar the year before; and was now able to carry everything before her upon the high seas. Nevertheless, the President’s conduct was bold and prompt. The treaty had been negotiated mainly by his own envoy and friend, Monroe, and great pressure was exerted in favor of it,—especially by the merchants and shipowners of the east. But Jefferson refused even to lay it before the Senate, and at once sent it back to England. His position, and history has justified it, was that to accept a treaty which might be con[pg 137]strued as tacitly admitting the right of impressment would be a disgrace to the country. The other questions at issue were more nearly legal and technical, but this one touched the national honor; and with the same right instinct which Jefferson showed in 1807, the people of the United States, five years later, fixed upon this grievance, out of the fog in which diplomacy had enveloped our relations with England, as the true and sufficient cause of the war of 1812.Nevertheless, Jefferson treated Monroe with the greatest consideration. At this period Monroe and Madison were both candidates for the Republican nomination for the presidency. Jefferson’s choice was Madison, but he remained impartial between them; and he withheld Monroe’s treaty from publication at a time when to publish it would have given a fatal blow to Monroe’s prospects. In every way, in fact, he exerted himself to disguise and soften Monroe’s discredit.The wisdom of Jefferson’s course as to the treaty was shown before three months had elapsed by an act of British aggression, which,[pg 138]had the Monroe treaty been accepted, might fairly have been laid to its door. In June, 1807, the British frigate Leopard, having been refused permission to search the American frigate Chesapeake, fired upon the Chesapeake, which was totally unprepared for action, and, after killing three men and wounding eighteen, refused to accept the surrender of the ship, but carried off three alleged deserters.This event roused a storm of indignation, which never quite subsided until the insult had been effaced by the blood which was shed in the war of 1812.“For the first time in their history,”says Mr. Henry Adams,“the people of the United States learned in June, 1807, the feeling of a true national emotion.”“Never since the battle of Lexington,”wrote Jefferson,“have I seen this country in such a state of exasperation as at present.”War might easily have been precipitated, had Jefferson been carried away by the popular excitement. He immediately dispatched a frigate to England demanding reparation,[pg 139]and he issued a proclamation forbidding all British men-of-war to enter the waters of the United States, unless in distress or bearing dispatches. Jefferson expected war, but he meant to delay it for a while.To his son-in-law, John Eppes, he wrote:“Reason and the usage of civilized nations require that we should give them an opportunity of disavowal and reparation. Our own interests, too, the very means of making war, require that we should give time to our merchants to gather in their vessels and property and our seamen now afloat.”Gallatin, the Secretary of the Treasury, even criticised the President’s annual message at this time as being too warlike and“not in the style of the proclamation, which has been almost universally approved at home and abroad.”It cannot truly be said, therefore, that Jefferson had any unconquerable aversion to war.Mr. Canning, the British Foreign Minister, went through the form of expressing his regrets for the Chesapeake affair, and sent a special envoy to Washington to settle the[pg 140]difficulty. Reparation was made at last, but not till the year 1811.In the mean time, both Great Britain and France had given other causes of offense, which may be summarized as follows: In May, 1806, Great Britain declared the French ports from Brest to the Elbe closed to American as to all other shipping. In the following November, Napoleon retorted with a decree issued from Berlin, prohibiting all commerce with Great Britain. That power immediately forbade the coasting trade between one port and another in the possession of her enemies. And in November, 1807, Great Britain issued the famous Orders in Council, which forbade all trade whatsoever with France and her allies, except on payment of a tribute to Great Britain, each vessel to pay according to the value of its cargo. Then followed Napoleon’s Milan decree prohibiting trade with Great Britain, and declaring that all vessels which paid the tribute demanded were lawful prizes to the French marine.Such was the series of acts which assailed the foreign commerce of the United States,[pg 141]and wounded the national honor by attempting to prostrate the country at the mercy of the European powers. Diplomacy had been exhausted. The Chesapeake affair, the right of impressment, the British decrees and orders directed against our commerce,—all these causes of offense had been tangled into a complication which no man could unravel. Retaliation on our part had become absolutely necessary. What form should it take? Jefferson rejected war, and proposed an embargo which prohibited commerce between the United States and Europe. The measure was bitterly opposed by the New England Federalists; but the President’s influence was so great that Congress adopted it almost without discussion.Jefferson’s design, to use his own words, was“to introduce between nations another umpire than arms;”and he expected that England would be starved into submission. The annual British exports to the United States amounted to $50,000,000. Cutting off this trade meant the throwing out of work of thousands of British sailors and tens[pg 142]of thousands of British factory hands, who had no other means of livelihood. Mr. Jefferson felt confident that the starvation of this class would bring such pressure to bear upon the English government, then engaged in a death struggle with Bonaparte, that it would be forced to repeal the laws which obstructed American commerce. It is possible that this would have been the result had the embargo been observed faithfully by all citizens of the United States. Jefferson maintained till the day of his death that such would have been the case; and Madison, no enthusiast, long afterward asserted that the American state department had proofs that the English government was on the point of yielding. The embargo pressed hardest of all upon Virginia, for it stopped the exportation of her staples,—wheat and tobacco. It brought about, by the way, the financial ruin of Jefferson himself and of his son-in-law, Colonel Randolph. But the Virginians bore it without a murmur.“They drained the poison which their own President held obstinately to their lips.”[pg 143]It was otherwise in New England. There the disastrous effect of the embargo was not only indirect but direct. The New England farmers, it is true, could at least exist upon the produce of their farms; but the mariners, the sea-captains, and the merchants of the coast towns, saw a total suspension of the industry by which they lived. New England evaded the embargo by smuggling, and resisted it tooth and nail. Some of the Federal leaders in that section believing, or pretending to believe, that it was a pro-French measure, were in secret correspondence with the British government, and meditated a secession of the eastern States from the rest of the country. They went so far, in private conversation at least, as to maintain the British right of impressment; and even the Orders in Council were defended by Gardenier, a leading Federalist, and a member of Congress.The present generation has witnessed a similar exhibition of anglomania, when, upon the assertion of the Monroe doctrine in respect to Venezuela, by President Cleveland,[pg 144]his attitude was criticised more severely by a group in New York and Boston than it was by the English themselves.Jefferson’s effort to enforce the embargo and his calm resistance to New England fury showed extraordinary firmness of will and tenacity of purpose. In August, 1808, he wrote to General Dearborn, Secretary of War, who was then in Maine:“The Tories of Boston openly threaten insurrection if their importation of flour is stopped. The next post will stop it.”Blood was soon shed; but Jefferson did not shrink. The army was stationed along the Canadian frontier, to prevent smuggling; gunboats and frigates patrolled the coast. The embargo failed; but Mr. Henry Adams, the ablest and fairest historian of this period, declares that it“was an experiment in politics well worth making. In the scheme of President Jefferson, non-intercourse was the substitute for war.... Failure of the embargo meant in his mind not only a recurrence to the practice of war, but to every political and social evil that war had always[pg 145]brought in its train. In such a case the crimes and corruptions of Europe, which had been the object of his political fears, must, as he believed, sooner or later, teem in the fat soil of America. To avert a disaster so vast was a proper motive for statesmanship, and justified disregard for smaller interests.”Mr. Parton observes, with almost as much truth as humor, that the embargo was approved by the two highest authorities in Europe, namely, Napoleon Bonaparte and the“Edinburgh Review.”Perhaps the fundamental error in Jefferson’s theory was that nations are governed mainly by motives of self-interest. He thought that England would cease to legislate against American commerce, when it was once made plain that such a course was prejudicial to her own interests. But nations, like individuals, are influenced in their relations to others far more by pride and patriotism, and even by prejudice, than by material self-interest. The only way in which America could win respect and fair treatment from Europe was by fighting, or[pg 146]at least by showing a perfect readiness to fight. This she did by the war of 1812.The embargo was an academic policy,—the policy of a philosopher rather than that of a practical man of affairs. Turreau, the French ambassador, wrote to Talleyrand, in May, 1806, that the President“has little energy and still less of that audacity which is indispensable in a place so eminent, whatever may be the form of government. The slightest event makes him lose his balance, and he does not even know how to disguise the impression which he receives.... He has made himself ill, and has grown ten years older.”Jefferson had energy and audacity,—but he was energetic and audacious only by fits and starts. He was too sensitive, too full of ideas, too far-sighted, too conscious of all possible results for a man of action. During the last three months of his term he made no attempt to settle the difficulties in which the country was involved, declaring that he felt bound to do nothing which might embarrass his successor. But it may be doubted[pg 147]if he did not unconsciously decline the task rather from its difficulty than because he felt precluded from undertaking it. Self-knowledge was never Mr. Jefferson’s strong point.But he had done his best, and if his scheme had failed, the failure was not an ignoble one. He was still the most beloved, as well as the best hated man in the United States; and he could have had a third term, if he would have taken it.He retired, permanently, as it proved, to Monticello, wearied and harassed, but glad to be back on his farm, in the bosom of his family, and among his neighbors. His fellow-citizens of Albemarle County desired to meet the returning President, and escort him to his home; but Mr. Jefferson, characteristically, avoided this demonstration, and received instead an address, to which he made a reply that closed in a fit and pathetic manner his public career.“... The part which I have acted on the theatre of public life has been before them [his countrymen], and to their sentence I submit it;[pg 148]but the testimony of my native county, of the individuals who have known me in private life, to my conduct in its various duties and relations, is the more grateful as proceeding from eyewitnesses and observers, from triers of the vicinage. Of you, then, my neighbors, I may ask in the face of the world,‘whose ox have I taken, or whom have I defrauded? Whom have I oppressed, or of whose hand have I received a bribe to blind mine eyes therewith?’On your verdict I rest with conscious security.”

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

This result was due in part to the fact that Jefferson had stolen the thunder of the Federalists. His Louisiana purchase, though bitterly opposed by the leading Federalists, who were blinded by their hatred of the President, was far more consonant with Federal than with Republican principles; and in his second inaugural address Jefferson went even farther in the direction of a strong central government, for he said:“Redemption[pg 131]once effected, the revenue thereby liberated may, by a just repartition among the States, and a corresponding amendment of the Constitution, be appliedin time of peaceto rivers, canals, roads, arts, manufactures, education, and other great objects within each State. In time of war, ... aided by other measures reserved for that crisis, it may meet within the year all the expenses of the year without encroaching on the rights of future generations by burdening them with the debts of the past.”

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

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

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

Burr took this rebuff with the easy good-humor which characterized him, dined with the President a few days later, and then started westward to carry out a scheme which he had been preparing for a year. His plans were so shrouded in mystery that it is diffi[pg 133]cult to say exactly what they were, but it is certain that he contemplated an expedition against Mexico, with the intention of making himself the ruler of that country; and it is possible that he hoped to capture New Orleans, and, after dividing the United States, to annex the western half to his Mexican empire. Burr had got together a small supply of men and arms, and he floated down the Ohio, gathering recruits as he went.

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

The trial at once became a political affair, the Federalists, to spite the President, making Burr’s cause their own, though he had killed Alexander Hamilton but three years before, and pretending to regard him as an[pg 134]innocent man persecuted by the President for political reasons. Jefferson himself took a hand in the prosecution to the extent of writing letters to the district attorney full of advice and suggestions. It would have been more dignified had he held aloof, but the provocation which he received was very great. Burr and his counsel used every possible means of throwing odium upon the President; and in this they were assisted by Chief Justice Marshall, who presided at the trial. Marshall, though in the main a just man, was bitterly opposed to Jefferson in political affairs, and in this case he harshly blamed the executive for not procuring evidence with a celerity which, under the circumstances, was impossible. He also summoned the President into court as a witness. The President, however, declined to attend, and the matter was not pressed. Burr was acquitted, chiefly on technical grounds.

The Burr affair, however, was but a trifle compared with the difficulties arising from our relations with England. That country had always asserted over the United States[pg 135]the right of impressment, a right, namely, to search American ships, and to take therefrom any Englishmen found among the crew. In many cases, Englishmen who had been naturalized in the United States were thus taken. This alleged right had always been denied by the United States, and British perseverance in it finally led to the war of 1812.

Another source of contention was the neutral trade. During the European wars in the early part of the century the seaport towns of the United States did an immense and profitable business in carrying goods to European ports, and from one European port to another. Great Britain, after various attempts to discourage American commerce with her enemies, undertook to put it down by confiscating vessels of the United States on the ground that their cargoes were not neutral but belligerent property,—the property, that is, of nations at war with Great Britain. And, no doubt, in some cases this was the fact,—foreign merchandise having been imported to this country to get a neutral name for it, and thence exported to a[pg 136]country to which it could not have been shipped directly from its place of origin. In April, 1806, the President dispatched Mr. Monroe to London in order, if possible, to settle these disputed matters by a treaty. Monroe, in conjunction with Mr. Pinckney, our minister to England, sent back a treaty which contained no reference whatever to the matter of impressments. It was the best treaty which they could obtain, but it was silent upon this vital point.

The situation was a perilous one; England had fought the battle of Trafalgar the year before; and was now able to carry everything before her upon the high seas. Nevertheless, the President’s conduct was bold and prompt. The treaty had been negotiated mainly by his own envoy and friend, Monroe, and great pressure was exerted in favor of it,—especially by the merchants and shipowners of the east. But Jefferson refused even to lay it before the Senate, and at once sent it back to England. His position, and history has justified it, was that to accept a treaty which might be con[pg 137]strued as tacitly admitting the right of impressment would be a disgrace to the country. The other questions at issue were more nearly legal and technical, but this one touched the national honor; and with the same right instinct which Jefferson showed in 1807, the people of the United States, five years later, fixed upon this grievance, out of the fog in which diplomacy had enveloped our relations with England, as the true and sufficient cause of the war of 1812.

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

The wisdom of Jefferson’s course as to the treaty was shown before three months had elapsed by an act of British aggression, which,[pg 138]had the Monroe treaty been accepted, might fairly have been laid to its door. In June, 1807, the British frigate Leopard, having been refused permission to search the American frigate Chesapeake, fired upon the Chesapeake, which was totally unprepared for action, and, after killing three men and wounding eighteen, refused to accept the surrender of the ship, but carried off three alleged deserters.

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

War might easily have been precipitated, had Jefferson been carried away by the popular excitement. He immediately dispatched a frigate to England demanding reparation,[pg 139]and he issued a proclamation forbidding all British men-of-war to enter the waters of the United States, unless in distress or bearing dispatches. Jefferson expected war, but he meant to delay it for a while.

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

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

Mr. Canning, the British Foreign Minister, went through the form of expressing his regrets for the Chesapeake affair, and sent a special envoy to Washington to settle the[pg 140]difficulty. Reparation was made at last, but not till the year 1811.

In the mean time, both Great Britain and France had given other causes of offense, which may be summarized as follows: In May, 1806, Great Britain declared the French ports from Brest to the Elbe closed to American as to all other shipping. In the following November, Napoleon retorted with a decree issued from Berlin, prohibiting all commerce with Great Britain. That power immediately forbade the coasting trade between one port and another in the possession of her enemies. And in November, 1807, Great Britain issued the famous Orders in Council, which forbade all trade whatsoever with France and her allies, except on payment of a tribute to Great Britain, each vessel to pay according to the value of its cargo. Then followed Napoleon’s Milan decree prohibiting trade with Great Britain, and declaring that all vessels which paid the tribute demanded were lawful prizes to the French marine.

Such was the series of acts which assailed the foreign commerce of the United States,[pg 141]and wounded the national honor by attempting to prostrate the country at the mercy of the European powers. Diplomacy had been exhausted. The Chesapeake affair, the right of impressment, the British decrees and orders directed against our commerce,—all these causes of offense had been tangled into a complication which no man could unravel. Retaliation on our part had become absolutely necessary. What form should it take? Jefferson rejected war, and proposed an embargo which prohibited commerce between the United States and Europe. The measure was bitterly opposed by the New England Federalists; but the President’s influence was so great that Congress adopted it almost without discussion.

Jefferson’s design, to use his own words, was“to introduce between nations another umpire than arms;”and he expected that England would be starved into submission. The annual British exports to the United States amounted to $50,000,000. Cutting off this trade meant the throwing out of work of thousands of British sailors and tens[pg 142]of thousands of British factory hands, who had no other means of livelihood. Mr. Jefferson felt confident that the starvation of this class would bring such pressure to bear upon the English government, then engaged in a death struggle with Bonaparte, that it would be forced to repeal the laws which obstructed American commerce. It is possible that this would have been the result had the embargo been observed faithfully by all citizens of the United States. Jefferson maintained till the day of his death that such would have been the case; and Madison, no enthusiast, long afterward asserted that the American state department had proofs that the English government was on the point of yielding. The embargo pressed hardest of all upon Virginia, for it stopped the exportation of her staples,—wheat and tobacco. It brought about, by the way, the financial ruin of Jefferson himself and of his son-in-law, Colonel Randolph. But the Virginians bore it without a murmur.“They drained the poison which their own President held obstinately to their lips.”

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

The present generation has witnessed a similar exhibition of anglomania, when, upon the assertion of the Monroe doctrine in respect to Venezuela, by President Cleveland,[pg 144]his attitude was criticised more severely by a group in New York and Boston than it was by the English themselves.

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

Blood was soon shed; but Jefferson did not shrink. The army was stationed along the Canadian frontier, to prevent smuggling; gunboats and frigates patrolled the coast. The embargo failed; but Mr. Henry Adams, the ablest and fairest historian of this period, declares that it“was an experiment in politics well worth making. In the scheme of President Jefferson, non-intercourse was the substitute for war.... Failure of the embargo meant in his mind not only a recurrence to the practice of war, but to every political and social evil that war had always[pg 145]brought in its train. In such a case the crimes and corruptions of Europe, which had been the object of his political fears, must, as he believed, sooner or later, teem in the fat soil of America. To avert a disaster so vast was a proper motive for statesmanship, and justified disregard for smaller interests.”Mr. Parton observes, with almost as much truth as humor, that the embargo was approved by the two highest authorities in Europe, namely, Napoleon Bonaparte and the“Edinburgh Review.”

Perhaps the fundamental error in Jefferson’s theory was that nations are governed mainly by motives of self-interest. He thought that England would cease to legislate against American commerce, when it was once made plain that such a course was prejudicial to her own interests. But nations, like individuals, are influenced in their relations to others far more by pride and patriotism, and even by prejudice, than by material self-interest. The only way in which America could win respect and fair treatment from Europe was by fighting, or[pg 146]at least by showing a perfect readiness to fight. This she did by the war of 1812.

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

Jefferson had energy and audacity,—but he was energetic and audacious only by fits and starts. He was too sensitive, too full of ideas, too far-sighted, too conscious of all possible results for a man of action. During the last three months of his term he made no attempt to settle the difficulties in which the country was involved, declaring that he felt bound to do nothing which might embarrass his successor. But it may be doubted[pg 147]if he did not unconsciously decline the task rather from its difficulty than because he felt precluded from undertaking it. Self-knowledge was never Mr. Jefferson’s strong point.

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

He retired, permanently, as it proved, to Monticello, wearied and harassed, but glad to be back on his farm, in the bosom of his family, and among his neighbors. His fellow-citizens of Albemarle County desired to meet the returning President, and escort him to his home; but Mr. Jefferson, characteristically, avoided this demonstration, and received instead an address, to which he made a reply that closed in a fit and pathetic manner his public career.“... The part which I have acted on the theatre of public life has been before them [his countrymen], and to their sentence I submit it;[pg 148]but the testimony of my native county, of the individuals who have known me in private life, to my conduct in its various duties and relations, is the more grateful as proceeding from eyewitnesses and observers, from triers of the vicinage. Of you, then, my neighbors, I may ask in the face of the world,‘whose ox have I taken, or whom have I defrauded? Whom have I oppressed, or of whose hand have I received a bribe to blind mine eyes therewith?’On your verdict I rest with conscious security.”

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