Inquiry Into the Origin and Course of Political Parties in the United States
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Title: Inquiry Into the Origin and Course of Political Parties in the United States
Author: Martin Van Buren
Editor: Abraham Van Buren
John Van Buren
Release date: April 22, 2011 [eBook #35932]
Language: English
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[Illustration: M Van Buren]
INQUIRY
INTO
THE ORIGIN AND COURSE
OF
POLITICAL PARTIES
IN THE
UNITED STATES.
BY THE LATE EX-PRESIDENT
MARTIN VAN BUREN.
Nam quis nescit primam esse historiæ legem ne quid falsi dicere
audeat? deinde, ne quid veri non audeat? Ne qua suspicio gratiæ
sit in scribendo? Ne qua simultatis? CICERO. _De Orat._ Lib. II.
EDITED BY HIS SONS.
NEW YORK:
PUBLISHED BY HURD AND HOUGHTON.
1867.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1867, by
SMITH T. VAN BUREN,
in the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the Southern District of
New York.
RIVERSIDE, CAMBRIDGE:
STEREOTYPED AND PRINTED BY
H. O. HOUGHTON AND COMPANY.
INTRODUCTION.
The following pages originally formed part of a much larger work, from
the general course and design of which they constituted a digression. It
seems therefore proper to preface them by a few words of explanation,
relating chiefly to the work from which they are now separated.
Mr. Van Buren, eighth President of the United States, on the expiration
of his term of office, in the year 1841, retired to a country residence
near Kinderhook, (the place of his birth,) in the State of New York,
which he had then recently purchased, and to which he gave the name of
Lindenwald. Here, with infrequent and brief interruptions, he continued
to reside for some twenty years, or until his death, which occurred in
July, 1862. Although numbering nearly sixty years of age,--two-thirds of
which had been years of almost incessant activity and excitement,
professional, political, and social,--at the period of his withdrawal to
the tranquil scenes and occupations of rural life, he embraced the
latter with an ardor and a relish that surprised not a little the
friends who had known him only as prominent in, and apparently engrossed
by, the public service, but which were happy results of early
predilections, an even and cheerful temper, fitting him for and
constantly inclining him to the enjoyment of domestic intercourse, a
hearty love of Nature, and a sound constitution of mind and body. After
twelve years of the period of his retirement had passed, happily and
contentedly, he began to apply a portion of his "large leisure" to a
written review of his previous life, and to recording his recollections
of his contemporaries and of his times. To this work, as he intimates in
its opening paragraphs, he was mainly induced by the solicitations of
life-long friends, who, (it may be here added,) knowing the importance
and interest of the scenes and incidents of his extended public career,
and the extraordinary influence he had exerted upon public men and
questions of his time, and perceiving the tenaciousness of his memory
and the charm of his conversation unimpaired by the lapse of seventy
years, confidently anticipated a work of much interest in such a record
as they urged upon him to make.
But although Mr. Van Buren so far complied with these suggestions as to
set about writing his memoirs, he was not inclined to pursue the
employment as a task, or to devote more of his time to it than could be
easily spared from other occupations in which he was interested, and in
order to keep himself from every temptation to exceed this limitation,
he resolved, at the start, that no part of what he might write should be
published in his lifetime. The work which he had commenced, was thus
exposed to frequent interruption, even by unimportant accidents, and at
length was altogether arrested by the serious illness of a member of his
family, and by the failure of his own health, which rapidly supervened.
It resulted that the recorded memoirs of his life and times closed
abruptly when he had brought them down to the date of 1833-34, and that
he never revised for publication what he had written. There is evidence
that he contemplated such a revision when he should reach a convenient
stage of his progress, but from the circumstances under which he wrote
(which have been alluded to) as well as from his comparatively small
interest in the mere graces of composition, the _labor limæ_ was
continually postponed, and the "flighty purpose" was never o'ertaken.
When, after his death, the subject of the disposition of these memoirs
was presented to his sons, to whom his papers had been intrusted, they
were embarrassed by questions as to the manner and form in which it was
their duty to give them the publicity intended by their author. Should
they, notwithstanding unaffected distrust of their qualifications, and a
deep sense of special unfitness arising from natural partiality,
undertake to continue the history of their father's life from the point
at which his own account had ceased, to supply, as far as they could,
the gaps in the previous narrative which had been left by him for
further examination or after-construction, and to give to the work the
extensive revision which, in the state in which it came to their hands,
it seemed to require? Or should they publish the unfinished and
unrevised memoirs, as they were left, _as a fragment_ and a
contribution, so far as they might go, to the history of the country?
Would one or the other of these be such a history of the life of a
statesman who had filled a large space in the observation of his
countrymen, and who had exerted a controlling influence in the
Government during interesting and critical periods, as would answer a
natural and just public expectation, or satisfy the many warm friends
who survived him? While occupied with the consideration of these
questions, they received a note from Charles H. Hunt, Esq., informing
them that he felt strongly inclined to write a Biography of Mr. Van
Buren, and requesting the use for that purpose of any materials within
their power to furnish. An additional paragraph of Mr. Hunt's note,
referring to the rumor of writings left by Mr. Van Buren, showed that he
had been entirely misinformed as to the nature and extent of those
writings; he, in effect, supposing them to consist solely of
disquisitions on various political questions.
The communication of Mr. Hunt not only superseded the necessity of
deciding between the alternative propositions mentioned, but afforded
them in all respects great satisfaction. His ripe and graceful
scholarship, sound judgment, and pure taste were widely known, and
especially to all who, like themselves, enjoyed familiar acquaintance
with him. He had, moreover, recently advanced by a single step to the
first rank among American biographers--a position readily accorded by
recognized authority in the republic of letters, at home and abroad, to
the author of the "Life of Edward Livingston." To such hands they could
not hesitate to commit the work proposed, so far as they were able to
control it, feeling assured that, while Mr. Hunt would bring to its
performance the disinterestedness and impartiality indispensable to give
it value as a history, and which are with difficulty maintained in
family memorials, his inclination to undertake it was evidence of a
general sympathy with, or at least respect for, Mr. Van Buren's
character and public career sufficient to authorize the relinquishment
to him of the materials in their possession. Accordingly the fragmentary
memoirs, with all the correspondence and other manuscripts applicable to
his purpose, and within their reach, were committed to Mr. Hunt, by Mr.
Van Buren's representatives, with entire satisfaction and confidence
that they will be used with fidelity and skill in the construction of
the work he has undertaken,--a confidence that will be shared by Mr. Van
Buren's surviving friends and by the public.
The main body of manuscripts left by Mr. Van Buren having been thus
applied, some question remained in regard to that portion now published.
Begun as an episode, the subject grew on the author's hands (as he
explains in a note) to such proportions as to seem to stand more
properly as a distinct production, and although, like the principal
work, incomplete, it had been nevertheless carried forward to the point,
chronologically speaking, that had been proposed, and that was in fact
its natural termination. For this reason, and because it had no such
connection with the memoirs as required that they should be printed
together, it has been thought best to publish it without further delay
in the form in which it was left by the writer. The subject is of
peculiar interest at this time when our country, having suffered the
rude shock and disorder of civil war, and our free and popular
institutions having sustained with admirable firmness and substantial
triumph a more fearful trial than any to which they had before been
subjected, the sacred and momentous duty is devolved on patriots and
good citizens throughout our borders to reconstruct whatever valuable
parts have been thrown down, to restore what may have been injured or
defaced in our political system and in the principles on which it rests;
and the occasion seems auspicious for recalling the attention of our
people to the study of the lives and doctrines--the grounds and motives
of action--of the great men by whom the foundations of their government
were laid.
The work of editing this volume has been inconsiderable, the sum of it
having been to correct a few manifest inadvertencies, to divide it into
chapters, with indexical heads, to furnish the whole with a title, and
to add one or two foot-notes that appeared to be proper. Otherwise the
aim has been to preserve the form and substance of the original. The
citation from Cicero on the title-page was found on Mr. Van Buren's
table, in his library, extracted in his own handwriting; whether only as
a terse declaration of the law by the spirit of which his pen was
guided, or as a possible motto for his complete work, is not known. The
letter from Mr. Jefferson, forming an Appendix, was intended by Mr. Van
Buren to be printed with whatever of his own might reach publication,
and is spoken of in the present volume as "accompanying this work." It
is now printed for the first time from the original manuscript letter,
and a few errors in the edition published (probably from the draft) by
the Library Committees of Congress are corrected.
The portrait fronting this book is engraved from Brady's imperial
photograph, by Ritchie, and must be pronounced a very favorable specimen
of his art. It represents Mr. Van Buren in the seventy-fifth year of his
age.
EDGEHILL, FISHKILL-ON-HUDSON, N. Y.,
_February, 1867_.
POLITICAL PARTIES
IN THE
UNITED STATES.
CHAPTER I.
Gratifying Period in our History embraced by Administrations of
Jefferson and Madison--The Caucus System and its Abandonment--The
System useful to the Republican or Democratic Party, but not so to
the Federalists--Questions proposed--Difficulties of the
Subject--Two great Parties, under changing Names, have always
divided the Country--Few and imperfect Attempts heretofore made to
trace the Origin and Principles of those Parties--This the first
Attempt with that object on the Republican or Democratic Side--The
Sources of Differences in Opinion and Feeling which gave rise to our
Political Divisions, and _punctum temporis_ of their
Rise--Principles established by the English Revolution of
1688--Application of those Principles to the Colonies--Grounds of
the American Revolution--Abstract Opinions regain their Influence
after the Settlement of the practical Questions involved in the
Revolution--Diverse Character and Feelings of Emigrants to the
different Colonies--Effect of that Diversity on Principles of
Government and Administration in the New Governments--Repugnance of
the People to any Revival of the System overthrown by the
Revolution--Popular Reluctance to create an Executive Branch of the
Government--Confederacy of the United Colonies of New England in
1643--Dr. Franklin's Plan of Union in 1755--The Sentiments of the
Colonists those of the Whigs of the
Revolution--Exceptions--Discordant Materials, in certain Respects,
of which the Revolutionary Brotherhood was composed--Effects of that
Discordance upon the subsequent Organization of Political
Parties--The Confederation, and Parties for and against
it--Perversion of Party Names--Conflicts and Questions in
Controversy between Federalists and Anti-Federalists--The
Constitutional Convention of 1787--Different Plans proposed before
it--Motives and Views of the Authors of those Plans--The Views which
determined Congress and the People to acquiesce in the Results of
the Convention--Adoption of the Constitution and Extinction of the
Anti-Federal Party as such.
There has been no period in our history, since the establishment of our
Independence, to which the sincere friend of free institutions can turn
with more unalloyed satisfaction, than to that embraced by the
administrations of Jefferson and Madison, moved as they were by a common
impulse. Mr. Jefferson commenced the discharge of his official duties by
an act which, though one of form, involved matter of the highest moment.
I allude to the decision and facility with which, in his intercourse
with the other branches of the Government, he suppressed the observance
of empty ceremonies which had been borrowed from foreign courts by
officers who took an interest in such matters, and were reluctantly
tolerated by Washington, who was himself above them. Instead of
proceeding in state to the capitol to deliver a speech to the
legislature, according to the custom of monarchs, he performed his
constitutional duty by means of a message in writing, sent to each House
by the hands of his private secretary, and they performed theirs by a
reference of its contents to appropriate committees. The Executive
procession, instead of marking the intercourse between the different
branches of the Government, was reserved for the Inauguration, when the
President appeared before the people themselves, and in their presence
took the oath of office.
A step so appropriate and so much in harmony with our institutions, was
naturally followed by efforts for the abolition of offices and official
establishments not necessary to the public service, the reduction of the
public expenses, and the repeal of odious internal taxes. To these he
added the influence of his individual example to keep the organization
and action of the Federal Government upon that simple and economical
footing which is consistent with the Republican system. In this branch
of his official conduct he established precedents of great value, from
some of which his successors have not ventured to depart.
With the single exception of his approval of the Bank of the United
States, the administration of Mr. Madison was one of great merit, and
was made especially illustrious by conducting the country through a war
imperishably honorable for its military achievements and the consequent
elevation of our national character.
Jefferson and Madison were brought forward by caucus nominations; they,
throughout, recognized and adhered to the political party that elected
them; and they left it united and powerful, when, at the close of public
life, they carried into their retirement, and always enjoyed, the
respect, esteem, and confidence of all their countrymen.
Mr. Monroe's administration did not introduce any very disturbing public
questions. The protective policy was, toward its close, generally
acquiesced in at the North and West, and no part of the South as yet
even contemplated the resistance which was subsequently attempted. The
agitation in regard to internal improvements was yet for the most part
speculative and too far in advance of any contemplated action to stir
the public mind. The Bank of the United States was having its own way
without question on the part of the Government, and with but little if
any suspicion on the part of the people. No very embarrassing questions
had arisen in our foreign relations; yet the first year of Mr. Monroe's
second term had scarcely passed away before the political atmosphere
became inflamed to an unprecedented extent. The Republican party, so
long in the ascendant, and apparently so omnipotent, was literally
shattered into fragments, and we had no fewer than five Republican
Presidential candidates in the field.
In the place of two great parties arrayed against each other in a fair
and open contest for the establishment of principles in the
administration of Government which they respectively believed most
conducive to the public interest, the country was overrun with personal
factions. These having few higher motives for the selection of their
candidates or stronger incentives to action than individual preferences
or antipathies, moved the bitter waters of political agitation to their
lowest depths.
The occurrence of scenes discreditable to all had for a long time been
prevented by a steady adherence on the part of the Republican party to
the caucus system; and if Mr. Monroe's views and feelings upon the
subject had been the same as were those of Jefferson and Madison, the
results to which I have alluded, and which were soon sincerely
deprecated, might have been prevented by the same means. There was no
difference in the political condition of the country between 1816--when
Mr. Monroe received a caucus nomination, on a close vote between Mr.
Crawford and himself, and was elected--and 1824, when the caucus system
was appealed to by the supporters of Mr. Crawford, which called for its
abandonment. The Federal party were on both occasions incapable of
successfully resisting a candidate in whose favor the Republicans were
united, and they were on each sufficiently strong to control the
election when the support of their opponents was divided amongst
several. Mr. Monroe and a majority of his cabinet were unfortunately
influenced by different views, and pursued a course well designed to
weaken the influence of the caucus system, and to cause its abandonment.
Mr. Crawford was the only candidate who, it was believed, could be
benefited by adhering to it, and the friends of all the others sustained
the policy of the administration. Those of Jackson, Adams, Clay, and
Calhoun, united in an address to the people condemning the practice of
caucus nominations, and announcing their determination to disregard
them. Already weakened through the adverse influence of the
administration, the agency which had so long preserved the unity of the
Republican party did not retain sufficient strength to resist the
combined assault that was made upon it, and was overthrown. Mr. Crawford
and his friends adhered to it to the last, and fell with it.
It is a striking fact in our political history that the sagacious
leaders of the Federal party, as well under that name as under others by
which it has at different times been known, have always been desirous to
bring every usage or plan designed to secure party unity into disrepute
with the people, and in proportion to their success in that has been
their success in the elections. When they have found such usage too
strong to be overthrown for the time being, they have adopted it
themselves, but only to return to their denunciations of it after every
defeat. It would, on first impression, seem that a practice which is
good for one political party must be good for another; but when the
matter is more closely looked into, it will be discovered that the
policy of the Federal leaders referred to, like most of the acts of
those far-seeing men, rested upon substantial foundations. It
originated, beyond doubt, in the conviction, on the part of the early
Federalists, that a political organization in support of the particular
principles which they advocated, and to which they intended to adhere,
did not stand as much in need of extraneous means to secure harmony in
its ranks as did that of their opponents.
The results of general elections for more than half a century have
served to confirm this opinion. With the exception of a single instance,
susceptible of easy explanation, the Republican, now Democratic party,
whenever it has been wise enough to employ the caucus or convention
system, and to use in good faith the influence it is capable of
imparting to the popular cause, has been successful, and it has been
defeated whenever that system has been laid aside or employed unfairly.
With the Federal party and its successors the results have been widely
different; with or without the caucus system they have generally found
no difficulty in uniting whenever union promised success.
Why is it that a system or practice open to both parties, occasionally
used by both, and apparently equally useful to both, is in fact so much
less necessary to one than to the other? If this consequence springs
from a corresponding difference in the principles for the defense and
spread of which they have respectively been formed, what are those
principles, whence are they derived, and what is their history?
These are grave questions, which have often presented themselves to the
minds of our public men, and to answer which satisfactorily is neither
an easy nor a short task.
Histories of struggles for power between individual men or families,
long involved in obscurity, are becoming more frequent than they were,
and far more satisfactory. Aided by a comparatively free access to
public and private papers,--a privilege formerly sturdily refused, but
which the liberal spirit of the age has now made common,--the literary
men of most countries, with improved capacities to weigh conflicting
statements as well as to narrate the results of their researches with
simplicity and perspicuity, are probing the most hidden recesses of the
past, and describing with reliable accuracy transactions of great
interest, the causes and particular circumstances of which have been
hitherto little or not at all understood. But to define the origin and
trace the history of national parties is an undertaking of extraordinary
difficulty; one from which, in view of the embarrassments that surround
it in the case of our own political divisions, I have more than once
retired in despair, and on which I now enter with only slight hopes of
success. Yet it is due as well to the memories of the past as to actual
interests, that a subject which has exerted so great an influence and
which may be made so instructive, should be made plain, if that be
practicable, to the understandings of the present and succeeding
generations; and if my imperfect effort shall have a tendency to turn
stronger minds and abler pens in that direction it will not have been
made in vain.
The two great parties of this country, with occasional changes in their
names only, have, for the principal part of a century, occupied
antagonistic positions upon all important political questions. They have
maintained an unbroken succession, and have, throughout, been composed
respectively of men agreeing in their party passions and preferences,
and entertaining, with rare exceptions, similar general views on the
subjects of government and its administration. Sons have generally
followed in the footsteps of their fathers, and families originally
differing have in regular succession received, maintained, and
transmitted this opposition. Neither the influences of marriage
connections, nor of sectarian prejudices, nor any of the strong motives
which often determine the ordinary actions of men, have, with limited
exceptions, been sufficient to override the bias of party organization
and sympathy, devotion to which has, on both sides, as a rule, been a
master-passion of their members.
The names of these parties, like those of their predecessors in older
countries, have from time to time been changed, from suggestions of
policy or from accidental causes. Men of similar and substantially
unchanged views and principles have, at different periods of English
history, been distinguished as Cavaliers or Roundheads, as Jacobites or
Puritans and Presbyterians, as Whigs or Tories. Here, with corresponding
consistency in principle, the same men have at different periods been
known as Federalists, Federal Republicans, and Whigs, or as
Anti-Federalists, Republicans, and Democrats. But no changes of name
have indicated--certainly not until very recently, and the depth and
duration of the exception remain to be seen--a change or material
modification of the true character and principles of the parties
themselves. The difference between the old Republican and the
Anti-Federal parties, arising out of the questions in regard to the new
Constitution, was by far the greatest variation that has occurred.
Several hasty and but slightly considered attempts have been made to
define the origin, and to mark the progress, of our national parties.
But, with a single exception,--namely, that made by ex-President John
Quincy Adams, in his Jubilee Discourse before the New York Historical
Society, on the 30th of April, 1839, being the Fiftieth Anniversary of
the Inauguration of George Washington as President of the United
States,--they have not professed, so far as they have fallen under my
notice, to do more than glance at the subject.
To say that this discourse of one hundred and twenty pages was written
with Mr. Adams's accustomed ability, would be a commendation short of
its merits. It was more. The political condition of the country, and the
near approach of the memorable struggle of 1840, superadded to the
stirring considerations connected with the occasion, seem to have
persuaded that distinguished man that he was called upon to make an
extraordinary effort. A severe philippic against his and his father's
political enemies, this discourse, judged in the sense in which such
performances are naturally estimated by contemporaries imbued with
similar feelings, could not fail to be regarded as an eloquent and able
production; but I deceive myself if it can be deemed by a single
ingenuous mind either a dispassionate or an impartial review of the
origin and course of parties in the United States. Such minds will be
more likely to receive a paper, written so long after the transactions
of which it speaks, with feelings of regret at the strong evidence it
affords that the rage of party spirit, upon the assumed extinguishment
of which its author had, years before, exultingly congratulated the
people from the Presidential chair, was yet so active in his own breast.
I say this more in sorrow than in anger. Other portions of this work[1]
will, I am sure, exonerate me from the suspicion of cherishing the
slightest sentiment of unkindness toward the memory of John Quincy
Adams. When my personal acquaintance with him was but slight, and when
our political relations were unfavorable to the cultivation of friendly
feelings, my dispositions toward him were to an unusual extent free from
the prejudices commonly engendered by party differences. In the later
periods of our acquaintance, continuing to the end of his life,
I regarded him with entire personal respect and kindness; and
notwithstanding the occasional fierceness of our political collisions,
I have never heard of any unfriendly expression by him in respect to
myself personally.
[1] This refers to the Memoirs of the writer, to which the present
essay was intended to be an episode. See Introduction to this
volume. Eds.
It is not a little remarkable, though in harmony with other striking
features in the relations of our parties, that no serious attempt has
ever been made to trace their origin except by members of the same
political school with Mr. Adams. If I am right in this, mine will at
least have the weight, whatever that may be, due to the narration of one
who, from the beginning to the end of an extended political career, has
been an invariable and ardent member of the opposite school.
The author of the life of Hamilton confidently pronounces what occurred
on the appointment of Washington as Commander-in-chief of the
Revolutionary army, to be the true source of the party divisions that
have so long and so extensively prevailed in this country. President
John Quincy Adams, in his Inaugural Address, attributes them to the
conflicting prejudices and preferences of the people for and against
Great Britain and France at the commencement of the present government,
and the discontinuance of them to the effects produced by the excesses
of the French Revolution. Matthew L. Davis,--a man of much note and
cleverness, who commenced his career an active member of the old
Republican party, became the especial champion of Colonel Burr, and,
soon seceding from the party to which he was at first attached, spent
the remainder of his life in opposition to it,--in his life of Aaron
Burr, attributes the origin of our two great political parties to the
proceedings of the Federal Constitutional Convention and of the State
Conventions which passed upon the question of ratification.
These various versions of the matter I shall hereafter notice,
contenting myself, for the present, with the remark that party divisions
which have extended to every corner of a country as large as our own,
and have endured so long, could not spring from slight or even limited
causes. No differences in the views of men on isolated questions
temporary in their nature, could, it seems to me, have produced such
results. Questions of such a character are either finally settled, with
more or less satisfaction, or in time lose their interest,
notwithstanding momentary excitement, and the temporary organizations
springing from them give place in turn to others equally short-lived.
But when men are brought under one government who differ radically in
opinion as to its proper form, as to the uses for which governments
should be established, as to the spirit in which they should be
administered, as to the best way in which the happiness of those who
are subject to them can be promoted, no less than in regard to the
capacity of the people for self-government, we may well look for party
divisions and political organizations of a deeper foundation and a more
enduring existence.
Ours arose at the close of the Revolution, and the leading parties to
them were the Whigs, through whose instrumentality, under favor of
Providence, our Independence had been established. They and the Tories
constituted our entire population, and the latter had at first, for
obvious reasons, but little to do in the formation of parties, save to
throw themselves in a body into the ranks of one of them. It became at
once evident that great differences of opinion existed among the Whigs
in respect to the character of the government that should be substituted
for that which had been overthrown, and also in respect to the spirit
and principles which should control the administration of that which
might be established. These spread through the country with great
rapidity, and were respectively maintained with a zeal and determination
which proved that they were not produced by the feelings or impulses of
the moment. To ascertain the origin of those differences, and to trace
their effects, we can adopt no safer course than to look to the
antecedents of the actors in the stirring political scenes that followed
the close of the war, to the characters and opinions of their ancestors,
from whom they had naturally imbibed their first ideas of government
either directly or traditionally, and to the incidents of the memorable
struggle from which the country had just emerged.
The great principle first formally avowed by Rousseau, "that the right
to exercise sovereignty belongs inalienably to the people," sprung up
spontaneously in the hearts of the colonists, and silently influenced
all their acts from the beginning. The condition of the country in
which they settled,--a wilderness occupied besides themselves only by
savage tribes,--to which many of them were driven by the fiercest
persecutions ever known to the civilized world, and the stern
self-reliance and independent spirit which most of them had acquired in
contests with iron fortune that preceded their exile, combined to induce
the cultivation and to secure the permanent growth of such a sentiment.
Not being, however, for several generations, in a suitable condition,
and from counteracting inducements not even disposed to dispute the
pretensions of the Crown to their allegiance, they were content to look
principally to its patents and other concessions for the measure of
their rights. But their views were greatly changed, and their advance on
the road to freedom materially accelerated, by the English Revolution of
1688. The final overthrow of James II., from whose tyrannical acts, as
well in the character of Duke of York as in that of King, they had
severely suffered, was not the greatest advantage the colonists derived
from that Revolution. The principles upon which that most important of
European movements was founded, and the doctrines it consecrated, paved
the way to a result which, though not upon their tongues, or perhaps to
any great extent the subject of their meditations as immediately
practicable, was, doubtless, from that time, within their contemplation.
That Revolution, which shattered, "past all surgery," the blasphemous
and absurd dogma of the divine right of kings; which replaced the
slavish doctrine of passive obedience and non-resistance with the
principle that the authority of the monarch was no other than a trust
founded on an assumed agreement between him and his subjects that the
power conferred upon him should be used for their advantage, for the
faithful execution of which he was individually responsible, and for a
breach of which resistance to his authority, as a last resort, was a
constitutional remedy; which for the supremacy of the Crown substituted
the supremacy of Parliament; which made the King as well as his subjects
responsible to its authority, and which abrogated the right of the Crown
to govern the colonies in virtue of its prerogative, and vested that
power in Parliament, placed the colonists upon a footing widely
different from that they had theretofore occupied.
The general principle that they were, by the laws and statutes of
England, entitled to the political rights that appertained to British
subjects, could not be denied, but commercial rivalry and political
jealousies acting upon their excited feelings, soon generated questions
of the gravest import, both as to the extent of the power of Parliament
to legislate for them, and as to the participation in representation
essential to authorize the exercise of that power.
The subjects of taxation and the regulation of trade by Parliamentary
authority, excited the greatest interest on both sides of the Atlantic.
In respect to the latter, the question was not a little embarrassed by
an alleged acquiescence on the part of the colonists, and the consequent
force of precedents. This circumstance, in connection with the
consideration that, if the right to regulate the trade of the colonies
was denied to the mother country, the allegiance conceded to be due
would be paid to a barren sceptre, was calculated to deprive the cause
of the colonists of the favorable opinion of those just men in England
whose countenance and support were of so much service to them in the
sequel. Duly appreciating the obstacles to success which there was
reason to apprehend from this source, with the prudence and good sense
that belonged to their character, and without waiving any of their
rights, they placed their cause principally upon a ground that lay at
the foundation of the Revolution, and was thoroughly immovable, viz.,
that by the fundamental laws of property no taxes could be levied upon
the people but by their own consent or that of their authorized agents,
and that by consequence the connection was indissoluble between taxation
and representation.
In the justice and constitutionality of this position they were openly
sustained by Lord Chatham, Lord Camden, Burke, Fox, and others,--men who
were in their day and have since been regarded as leading minds of
England. With but little of public sentiment against them beyond what
was influenced by the inveterate hatred and the insane obstinacy of the
King, wielding at will the majority of a notoriously corrupt Parliament
and the brute force of the kingdom, the colonists appealed to the God of
Battles in defense of a sacred principle of freedom, and in resistance
to tyrannical acts of the most odious and oppressive character, and they
were victorious. It is now, and will be in all time, a source of
satisfaction to the people of these States, that the decision of the
sword is not their only nor their highest title to the liberty they
enjoy. The colonists were right in the contest. Of this no serious doubt
is now entertained in any honest and well-informed quarter. The idea of
virtual representation, and the attempt to justify one wrong by the
practice of another, namely, the taxing other British subjects without
giving them an adequate representation in Parliament,--the only replies
that were made to the claim of constitutional rights,--are now well
understood, and, it gives me pleasure to say, generally disavowed in
England. Lord Derby, the manly and highly gifted leader of what is left
of the old Tory party, not long since, in a speech delivered in the
presence of an American minister, unreservedly admitted that we were
right in the Revolutionary contest; and, if that question were now
submitted to the free judgment of the people of England, such would be
found to be the public sense of that great nation.
The only way in which the right in respect to taxation set up by the
English Parliament could have been sustained consistently with the
English Constitution, would have been by a joint government, securing to
the colonies the representation in that body to which they were entitled
as British subjects,--a plan to which both the mother country and the
colonies were equally decided in their dislike, but for very different
reasons. If a similar question were presented at this day it would,
according to the present state of public opinion in both countries, be
at once settled by an alliance of peace and friendship, substituting
fraternal relations for those of parent and children.
Well would it have been for the interests of both and of humanity if the
matter had been thus adjusted.
The immediate question upon which the Revolution turned was, of course,
forever extinguished by its results. But it has been far otherwise with
the opinions, doubtless of various shades and equally sincere, in regard
to the nature of government, the uses to which it could be properly
applied, and the manner and spirit of its application, with which the
colonists entered into the contest, and with the feelings engendered by
those opinions and developed by the war. Upon these points the
characters and successive conditions of the early emigrants exerted a
great influence. Those to Virginia were first in point of time, and
certainly not inferior to any in the elements of character adapted to
the difficulties they were destined to encounter. History, doubtless
authentic, records that the first emigration to that State was a measure
of the patriotic party in England, and sprung from a desire to make an
offering to liberty in the wilderness which the stringency of power had
prevented them from making at home. The accomplishment of that design,
whatever may have been the aid subsequently derived from its authors,
has been eminently successful. Whether as colonists, as citizens of a
free State, or as a part of our great Confederacy, the emigrants to
Virginia, their successors and descendants, have done all that men could
do to realize the anticipations and designs of the founders of that
ancient colony.
Fully equal to them in devotion to liberty, with the additional merit of
having made greater sacrifices in its defense, stood the Puritans, whose
descendants are said to constitute at this time one fifth (I believe it
is) of the people of the United States. It would be superfluous to
describe either the persecutions to which they were subjected by
arbitrary power or their fidelity to their principles. Their story is
known, and their early character understood, throughout the civilized
world.
The Huguenots entered largely into the early settlement of several of
the colonies, and their descendants now constitute numerous portions of
several of our States. Indeed, the very first European colony
established in this country was composed of Huguenots, who were
exterminated by the Spaniards,--an event which, indirectly, contributed
greatly to the emigration to Virginia under Sir Walter Raleigh.
Fugitives from the most cruel as well as the most obstinate
persecutions, hunted like wild beasts on account of their devotion to
religious freedom and the right of opinion, they fled to our shores,
detesting irresponsible power of every description, and ready to do
their utmost to prevent its re-incorporation in our virgin system.
The States General and the Dutch West India Company, although the
former were perhaps not more favorable to popular sovereignty, in our
sense of these words, than the Stuarts, and the latter altogether
mercenary, yet introduced into this country, in the colonization of New
Netherlands, emigrants especially adapted, by character and disposition,
to the scenes through which they were destined to pass. This happy
result was attributable to the peculiar conjuncture of affairs at home
when the establishment of that colony was undertaken. It was during the
continuance of the truce in their War of Independence--the first that
was granted to them by Philip II., after that barbarous contest had
already lasted forty years--that the attention of the United Provinces
was directed to this country. The revolting cruelties which Philip had
caused to be inflicted upon the Dutch, through the instrumentality of
Alva, are as notorious to the world as are those to which the Huguenots
were subjected by Charles IX. and Louis XIV.; and the spirit of
resistance to arbitrary power, whether ecclesiastical or political, was
branded as by fire upon the hearts of both.
To colonists of these descriptions were from time to time added numerous
other Protestants, who had fled to Holland, as well after the massacre
of St. Bartholomew as from other and kindred demonstrations of political
and priestly despotism in various parts of Europe, with an infusion of
descendants of the disciples of the Bohemian martyr, John Huss, who,
from the stake to which he had been doomed for his resistance to papal
tyranny, conjured his followers not to put their trust in princes.
The mass of the early colonists having been sufferers at home, as well
from social and political inequalities as from the heavy hand of power
applied to themselves, having left behind them much that they dreaded
and nothing that they approved in the management of public affairs, were
exposed to no influences that could disincline them to the
establishment of just and equal governments in the land of their
adoption. Nothing could therefore be more natural than that they and
their immediate descendants, made familiar with the wrongs and outrages
practiced on their fathers by absolute tyrants, should have been jealous
of their liberties, and disposed to be rigid in their restrictions upon
the grant and exercise of delegated authority. From this disposition
sprang the principles to which they always adhered in the administration
of public affairs, and in the defense of which they appear to have been
always ready to make any necessary sacrifice. These, on the part of by
far the largest portions of the original colonists and their
descendants, were an insurmountable opposition to hereditary political
power in any shape and under any circumstances; a suspicious
watchfulness of all official authority, proportioned to their knowledge
of its liability to be abused; a consequent indisposition to concede
more than was indispensable to good government; the establishment of a
certain, and, as they called it, a swift responsibility for the exercise
of that which was granted; an habitual distrust, exhibited on various
occasions in their history, of every offer of special privileges by
government, and an unwillingness to confer the power to grant them,--the
former springing from suspicion that they were designed to impair their
independence, and the latter from conviction, fully justified by
experience, that such a power will always end in favoritism; and an
early and strong appreciation of the value of union among themselves and
between the colonies, originating in the necessity for their protection
against the savages, and kept alive by perpetual machinations from the
mother country to weaken and restrict their freedom.
These and kindred feelings and principles were, as I have said, natural
to men whose antecedents, as well as those of their ancestors, had been
such as I have described; and they remained throughout the prevailing
features of colonial politics. They were not only the views of men
prominent in their respective communities, but the matured convictions
of the masses in respect to the line of policy necessary to their
welfare, and therefore the more likely to be perpetuated, for it has
been well and truly said, that "it is the masses alone that live." These
opinions might occasionally and for a season lie dormant, or be made to
yield to power, but neither corruption nor force could eradicate them.
With occasional but brief intermissions, they controlled the action of
the colonial legislatures; were embraced by a majority of the signers of
the Declaration of Independence; directed the course of the
Revolutionary Congress as well as that of the Government of the
Confederation subsequent to the recognition of our Independence, and
were in truth always the real sentiments of a majority of the people.
It will be hereafter seen when they were for a season rendered
powerless, and when and how their control over the action of the
government was restored.
The materials for tracing the action of the public mind, and the
proceedings of public bodies during the early periods of our history,
are, in comparison with those applicable to modern times, quite
imperfect. But aided by the facts which the historians of our day, with
great industry and in most cases with equal fidelity, have drawn from
oblivion, and still more by the recent very general publication of the
papers of eminent deceased statesmen, the work has become less
difficult.
The fidelity of the Puritans to their well-known principles in respect
to hereditary power, was soon exposed to a severe trial. During the
residence of Sir Henry Vane in the Colony of Massachusetts, several
English peers, induced by a desire to remove to that colony and to make
it their place of permanent residence, offered to do so if changes could
be effected in its government, by which the General Court should be
divided into two bodies, and their hereditary right to seats in the
upper branch allowed to them. Strong as was the wish of the colonists
for the acquisition of those distinguished men, they yet declined a
compliance with their wishes. All that they could be induced to allow
was a life-tenure, and they actually made some appointments of that
character; but of this they soon repented, and attached to the offices
held by that tenure a condition which made the concession nugatory by
making it valueless. It is perhaps not assuming too much to suppose that
the regret they experienced at this momentary forgetfulness of their
principles--a regret exhibited in various ways--had no small influence
in inducing them to limit the terms of offices in the New England States
to very short periods, as is still the custom there.
Similar conduct and feeling were disclosed by the colonists on every
occasion that presented itself for their display, but the necessity for
their exhibition was in a great measure superseded by the Declaration of
Independence and the war that succeeded, during the continuance of which
sentiments favorable to hereditary power were regarded by the country as
crimes to be punished.
Our Independence was scarcely established when a circumstance occurred
which exhibited in a very striking manner the fixed aversion of the
great body of the people to hereditary distinctions.
The officers of the army, desirous of perpetuating the memory of the
relations of respect and friendship which had grown up among them during
the trying and momentous scenes through which they had passed,
established, in May, 1783, the "Society of the Cincinnati," and made
the honor of membership hereditary. It has not appeared that General
Washington was consulted upon the subject in the first instance, but
conscious of the purity of his own motives, and confiding fully in those
of his military associates, he allowed his name to be placed at the head
of the list of members and consented to be its president.
The principle of hereditary distinctions could not well have been placed
before the people in a less exceptionable form, and yet there were but
few occurrences during the war by which the public mind was so deeply
excited as that by which the officers intended to grace the closing
scenes of their meritorious career. The measure was assailed in all the
forms in which an offended public opinion usually finds vent. In
addition to able and eloquent attacks from American pens, the movement
was severely criticised in a pamphlet published in France and written by
Mirabeau, entitled, "Thoughts on the Order of Cincinnatus."
General Washington informed himself of the extent to which the subject
was agitating the public mind, and, justly alarmed at the consequences
it might produce, determined to do all in his power to arrest its
progress. He wrote to Mr. Jefferson in April, 1784, asking his opinion
and the probable views of Congress (of which Mr. Jefferson was a member)
upon the subject, and his advice in respect to the most eligible
measures to be adopted by the society at their next meeting, which was
to be held in the ensuing month of May. This letter does not appear in
the published writings of Washington, but an extract from it is given by
Mr. Sparks, from which and from Jefferson's reply its contents as stated
are gathered. Mr. Jefferson's answer, containing an unreserved
communication of his opinions in the matter, may be found in Vol. I. of
his Correspondence. He stated at length the objections that were made
to the society, the unfriendliness of Congress to it, and added, in
conclusion, that if, rather than decide themselves upon the best course
to be pursued, the members should, at their approaching meeting, refer
the question to Congress, such a reference would "infallibly produce a
recommendation of total discontinuance."
General Washington attended the meeting in May, and proposed several
changes in the constitution, and among them, in his own words, taken by
Mr. Sparks from memoranda in his own handwriting, "to discontinue the
hereditary part in all its connections, absolutely, without any
substitution which can be construed into concealment or a change of
ground only, for this would, in my opinion, increase rather than allay
suspicion." This amendment, and others having a similar bearing, were
adopted.
In Mr. Jefferson's letter to myself, accompanying this volume,[2] to
which, as it was prepared with great care, and avowedly designed "to
throw light on history and to recall that into the path of truth," I
shall have frequent occasion to refer, will be found a highly
interesting account of what took place between himself and General
Washington, on his way to the meeting in Philadelphia, and on his
return, in May, 1784.
[2] See Appendix.
Some of the State societies rejected these modifications _in toto_, and
others only agreed to them partially. The agitation of the subject was
thus continued for several years, and as late as 1787 no State had yet
so far yielded its prejudices as to grant the charter for which the
constitution of the society made it the duty of the State meetings to
apply. Whatever opinion may at this day be formed in regard to the
sufficiency of the reasons for the alarm which this transaction
produced, it cannot be doubted that the proceedings in regard to it
afford strong proof that there was, down to the spring of 1787, a
settled aversion in the minds of a majority of the people to any measure
or course of measures which were indicative of the slightest desire to
return in any degree to the system which they had overthrown; and that
as early as 1783 strong suspicion existed that such desires were
concealed in the minds of many who had previously stood faithfully by
the country in all its perils.
The intense hostility of the colonists and their successors to
monarchical institutions, and the recollection of the cruelties
inflicted upon them and upon their predecessors under the authority of
kings, had produced a determined repugnance on their part to the
concentration of power in the hands of single magistrates. Their minds
had become thoroughly impressed with a conviction that the disposition
to abuse power by those who were intrusted with it was not only inherent
and invariable, but incurable, and that it was therefore unwise to grant
more than was actually indispensable to the management of public
affairs. At no period anterior to the adoption of the present
Constitution, could a majority be obtained in Congress for the creation
of an executive branch of the Government, or an impression be made upon
the public mind favorable to such a measure. The inconveniences
experienced from a want of it during a protracted war, and which were
again encountered in the public service after the recognition of our
independence, were not sufficient to overcome this repugnance. The
tenacity with which they adhered to an equal representation and
influence for the colonies before, and for the States after, the
Declaration of Independence, in the confederacies and governments they
formed, sprang from like considerations. They could not be brought to
believe that a State, to which was allowed a greater power than was
reserved to its confederates, could be restrained from the ultimate
exercise of her superior power to depress her smaller confederates and
to elevate herself.
Proofs of the existence and force of these opinions are spread through
every portion of our early history.
In 1643 the New England Colonies, with the exception of those "who ran a
different course" from the Puritans, entered into a Confederacy. Its
avowed design was the better advancement of their general interests, but
its real object was to provide greater security against the savages by
whom they were menaced. It was called the "United Colonies of New
England." The plan was for a season defeated, because Massachusetts
claimed more power than she was willing to concede to the other
colonies; but it was finally established upon principles of perfect
equality, no more power or influence being conceded to Massachusetts, by
far the largest, than to New Haven, the smallest colony. The management
of affairs was intrusted to commissioners, of which each colony had two,
but no executive power was conferred upon them. They might deliberate
and recommend, but the colonies alone could carry their recommendations
into effect. This Confederacy endured for nearly half a century, and
worked well.
In 1755 a convention of delegates from the colonies was held at Albany,
under the stimulus of French encroachments, and a plan of union, drawn
up by Dr. Franklin, was agreed upon and submitted to the colonies for
their approval. The plan, as was to be expected from the character of
its author, distributed the powers of the government between the people
and the prerogatives of the Crown, much more favorably to the popular
side than it would seem the latter might, in the then condition of
things, have reasonably hoped for. Still the attachments of the
colonists to their local governments, and, above all, their distrust and
dread of a central government, which was provided for, were sufficient
to deprive the plan of their favor, and to cause its ultimate
abandonment.
The privilege of "Government within themselves," as "their undoubted
right in the sight of God and man," and "to be governed by rulers of
their own choosing and laws of their own making," were from the
beginning objects of absorbing solicitude with the colonists and their
Revolutionary successors.
The principles and sentiments I have attempted to define, which had
sprung up at the earliest period in the colonies, and had grown with
their growth and strengthened with their strength, and in explanation of
which I have referred to a few of the many illustrations with which
their history abounds, were doubtless those also of a great majority of
the Whigs of the Revolution, in whose breasts was not wanting the
feeling which rarely fails to be seen in those political divisions that
lead to civil war,--a thorough antagonism to the general opinions, as
well as to the particular policy of the power or party opposed; but it
is equally true that those were far from being the principles or
feelings of all by whose efforts the Revolution was achieved. A numerous
portion of the Whigs of the Revolution, many of them greatly
distinguished for their talents, high characters, and great public
services, neither concurred in the principles nor sympathized with the
feelings I have described, but were in a great measure driven by other
considerations to take active parts in the struggle. The number thus
influenced was, fortunately for the result of the contest, increased by
specific tyrannical acts, which a prudent government would have avoided,
but which were forced on the ministry and Parliament of the mother
country by the obstinacy and bigotry of the king. Within a year after
his accession to the throne he wound up a series of unnecessary
interferences with the administration of justice in the colonies, by
changing the tenure of office, which had till that period prevailed in
relation to the colonial judges, from that of good behavior to that of
the will and pleasure of the Crown. By thus using his prerogative to
create a distinction in different parts of the realm degrading to the
colonies, he left the colonial lawyers no other course consistent with
self-respect, to say nothing of patriotism, than to unite with those
engaged in other pursuits in an effort to overthrow a government capable
of such practices. While subjecting the legal profession to such
humiliating proofs of the royal displeasure, his government commenced
its assaults upon that portion of his subjects engaged in commerce. His
indignation against those who scouted the doctrine of the British
Constitution, "that the king can do no wrong," was intense and
unappeasable in proportion to their presumed intelligence. It was in
this spirit that he appears to have selected judges, professional men,
and merchants, as special objects of his wrath, and having exerted his
power against the first two classes, he turned his attention toward the
latter.
The Navigation Acts, as they stood at the period of his accession, had
been framed in the illiberal and selfish spirit which characterized the
legislation of the age. But though they had proved injurious to the
trade of the colonies, and humiliating to the colonial merchants, in
consequence of the extent to which they made their interests subservient
to those of the mother country, yet their prejudicial effects had in
neither respect been fully developed, in consequence of the remissness
which had prevailed in their execution. This had in a great degree been
occasioned by illicit contrivances between the colonists engaged in
trade and navigation and the officers of government stationed in the
colonies. A vigorous execution of the existing laws not only was
determined upon, but new acts were passed imposing additional
restrictions, and superadding cumulative penalties upon those who
disregarded them. To enforce this vindictive policy the Government
resorted to a measure at once the most arbitrary and odious of any that
had ever been known to the public service,--that of "Writs of
Assistance,"--and converted the army and navy into a police
establishment to aid in the detection and punishment of the colonial
offenders.
By thus giving vent to his persecuting spirit--a spirit always blind to
its own interests--this infatuated Prince drove into the front rank of
the Revolution two classes of the colonists who were, from the nature of
their pursuits, least likely to embark in popular outbreaks, and most
inclined to favor a strong government,--classes which are usually
caressed by more sagacious rulers, and which had been so here before the
reign of George III. All orders of the colonists, save a few favorites,
were by these and similar means united, as a band of brothers, in a
movement such as the world had never before, and has never since seen,
for the overthrow of a government by which they were so sorely
oppressed.
This union was in other respects composed of very discordant materials.
It consisted, on the one hand, of men and the descendants of men on
whose hearts the fires of persecution had burned a hatred of royalty too
deep to be erased and too zealous to be trifled with; of men who were at
the same time too conversant with human nature to allow themselves to
believe that the love of power and the proneness to its abuse were
confined to its hereditary possessors, and who were therefore anxious to
restrict grants of authority to their public functionaries to the lowest
point consistent with good government, and to subject what they did
grant to the most stringent responsibilities. They continued, also, to
cherish the same preference for their local organizations, and to
entertain the same distrust of an overshadowing central government, for
which the great body of the people had long been distinguished. They
were men whose highest ambition and desire for themselves and the
country was that it should have a plain, simple, and cheap government
for the management of the affairs of the Confederacy, republican in its
construction and democratic in its spirit,--a government that should, as
far as practicable, be deprived of the power of creating artificial
distinctions in society, and of corrupting and thus subverting the
independence of the people by the possession of a redundant patronage.
Such a government had long been the subject of their meditations, and
they braved the hazards and encountered the hardships of the
Revolutionary contest for the opportunity of establishing it.
The Revolutionary brotherhood by which the recognition of our
Independence was enforced, contained, on the other hand, men respectable
in numbers, and distinguished by talent, public service, and high social
position, who dissented from many (I may say from most) of these views,
and who regarded them as Utopian in themselves, or as too contracted for
the exigencies of the public service.
This difference in the opinions of men who had been engaged in such a
contest was all but unavoidable, and was never absent from any political
struggle of sufficient importance to be compared with it. It results,
besides those which have been indicated as peculiar to our own condition
and history, from simple but potent causes of universal operation, such
as diversities in social condition, in education, in the influence and
tendencies of previous pursuits, and in individual character and
temperament, producing diversities of views on such occasions.
Although an aversion to royalty and opposition to hereditary government
in any form, were sentiments that pervaded the masses and exercised a
controlling influence in the Revolution, there were not a few, of the
character I have described, who, though they doubtless did not at the
moment design the reintegration of those institutions after the
overthrow of the actual Government, could yet contemplate, without great
revulsion of feeling, their ultimate establishment in this country.
Prompt to resist tyranny in any shape, and stung by the oppressions
practiced upon the colonies by the British Government, they hesitated
not to peril their lives for its subversion here, whilst theoretically
they not only tolerated its form and constitution, but regarded them as
the best that could be devised to promote the welfare and to secure the
happiness of mankind. Of the existence of this opinion on the part of
many sincere friends and able advocates of the Revolutionary cause, in
every stage of the contest and for years after its close, we have
indubitable evidence. I will notice a few cases of this description, on
account of the influence exerted on the formation of political parties
by the knowledge of the existence of such opinions, and by the
suspicions, perhaps unjust, and in some respects certainly so, as to the
extent to which those who held them were willing to carry them out. In
so doing, it is by no means my design to cast reproach upon the memories
of the great men who entertained them, and who stood by their country in
her severest extremity, and established the highest claims to her
gratitude and favor.
No ingenuous mind can doubt that a large majority of the Whigs were
opposed to the substitution of a government similar either in form or
spirit to that from which they had emancipated themselves. Our
Revolutionary creed was, "That all men are created equal; that they are
endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among
these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure
these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just
powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of
government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the
people to alter and abolish it, and to institute a new government,
laying its foundations on such principles, and organizing its powers in
such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and
happiness."
Under such a creed all were entitled as of right to a perfect freedom of
choice in regard to the character of the new government. Neither for the
formation of their opinions, however erroneous these may have been, nor
for the maintenance of them by lawful means, did any subject themselves
to just reproach, or to other forfeiture than perhaps a loss of the
confidence of those who thought differently.
James Otis, Stephen Hopkins, John Adams, Gouverneur Morris, and
Alexander Hamilton, may be selected from many others as representatives
of the principles of that class to which I have referred as dissenting
from the popular or preponderating ideas of the time.
I select them the more readily from a desire to avoid mistakes, as they
were possessed of temperaments too sanguine and too fearless to be
deterred from advancing openly opinions they honestly entertained, by
their unpopularity.
There were certainly not many individuals, if there was one, who did
more to set the ball of the Revolution in motion than James Otis; and if
his career had not been cut short by the hand of violence he would have
taken high rank among the great and good men who survived the struggle.
His speech against the issuing of the Writs of Assistance had an effect
corresponding to those of Patrick Henry. Yet this highly gifted man,
whose patriotic spirit was sufficiently aroused by the oppressions of
the mother country, while yet in their incipiency, to induce him to
peril his life in acts of resistance, was an enthusiastic admirer of the
principles of the English system, and honestly believed, as he said,
"that the British Constitution came nearest the idea of perfection of
any that had been reduced to practice."
The patriotic Hopkins, one of the Rhode Island Representatives in the
General Congress, and a signer of the Declaration of Independence,
wrote--and that colony authoritatively published its concurrence in the
declaration--that "The glorious Constitution of Great Britain is the
best that ever existed among men."
Gouverneur Morris's unyielding hostility to democratic principles, and
his preference for aristocratic and monarchical institutions, were often
exhibited and unreservedly avowed, as well on the floor of the Federal
Convention as elsewhere, and have become familiar among his countrymen
as household words. There were not many, if indeed there was a single
one of his contemporaries, who went beyond him in hostility to the State
governments. "State attachments and State importance," said he in the
Federal Convention, "have been the bane of this country! We cannot
annihilate them, but we may, perhaps, take out the teeth of the
serpents." Such as were his principles at the commencement of his career
they remained to the close of his life.
But the opinions of John Adams and Alexander Hamilton, from their larger
agency in the politics of the country, in the administration of its
government, and in the actual formation of parties, are of still greater
importance. A full exposition of these, beyond the single point upon
which there existed the greatest jealousy at the period at which we have
now arrived,--that of their preference for the English system,--will be
best postponed until we come to consider the times and occasions which
were presented for an ampler display of them. I will, therefore, only
refer at this place to the contents of a statement prepared and signed
by Thomas Jefferson, in February, 1818, and designed to explain a
portion of his writings. In this he says, among other things: "But
Hamilton was not only a monarchist, but for a monarchy bottomed on
corruption. In proof of this I will relate an anecdote for the truth of
which I attest the God who made me. Before the President set out upon
his Southern tour, in April, 1791, he addressed a letter of the 4th of
that month, from Mount Vernon, to the Secretaries of State, Treasury,
and War, desiring that if any serious and important cases should arise
during his absence they would consult and act on them, and he requested
that the Vice-President should also be consulted. This was the only
occasion on which that officer was ever requested to take part in a
Cabinet question. Some occasion for consultation arising, I invited
those gentlemen (and the Attorney-General, as well as I remember) to
dine with me, in order to confer on the subject. After the cloth was
removed, and our question argued and dismissed, conversation began on
other matters, and by some circumstance was led to the British
Constitution, on which Mr. Adams observed,--'Purge that Constitution of
its corruption and give to its popular branch equality of
representation, and it would become the most perfect Constitution ever
devised by the wit of man.' Hamilton paused and said,--'Purge it of its
corruptions and give to its popular branch equality of representation,
and it would become an impracticable government: as it stands at
present, with all its supposed defects, it is the most perfect which
ever existed.'"
The solemn responsibility under which this statement was made, the high
character of its author, the time when it was recorded,--after one of
the principal parties had passed from earth, and the two remaining were
on the brink of the grave; when the passions excited by personal and
political rivalry had died away, and friendly relations had been
restored between the survivors,--would of themselves be sufficient to
establish its accuracy, even if its description of the opinions of Adams
and Hamilton had not been, as it will be seen that they were, abundantly
confirmed as well by the speeches and writings of the parties themselves
as by the recorded declarations of associates and friends who possessed
the best opportunities to become acquainted with their real sentiments.
The natural presumption is--and there are many facts to prove its
correctness--that opinions with which these most prominent leaders were
so deeply imbued, had, to a very considerable extent at least, been
diffused throughout the ranks of their followers.
The effects of this discordance on so many and such vital points in the
political doctrines and feelings of those by whom the Revolution had
been achieved, were postponed by the existence of the war; but when that
restraint was removed by the recognition of our Independence they broke
forth unavoidably, and were soon developed in the formation of political
parties.
The Congress of the Confederation, and--from the dependence of the
Federal Government upon the coöperation of the States for the
performance of its most important duties--the State legislatures, as
well as the public press, became the theatres for the display of these
conflicting opinions.
The so-called Government of the Confederation was little else than an
alliance between the States--a federal league and compact, the terms of
which were set forth in the Articles of Confederation. Besides a
control over questions of Peace and War, its powers and duties were
chiefly advisory, and dependent for their execution upon the coöperation
of the States. A federal system so defective was justly held responsible
for a large share of the public and private embarrassments that existed
at, or arose after, the termination of the Revolutionary contest. It was
also, as was natural, charged in some degree with those which were, in
truth, unavoidable consequences of a seven years' war, and which would
have existed under any system. It is not surprising, therefore, that a
party bent upon its overthrow should have arisen as soon as the public
mind was by the course of events brought to a proper state to consider
the subject. Of this party Alexander Hamilton became the leader, and its
immediate objects were, of course, very soon frankly developed. These
were in the first instance to divest the State governments of certain
powers, and to confer them upon Congress, the possession of which by the
Federal head they deemed indispensable to the exigencies of the public
service, with the intention of following up this step by an attempt to
abrogate the Articles of Confederation, and to substitute for that
system an independent and effective Federal Government, composed of
executive, legislative, and judicial departments. In respect to the
powers to be given to the new Government, and to its construction
otherwise, there doubtless existed some differences of opinion among the
members of this party; but all agreed that it should be what in the
language of the day was called a "strong government." There may not have
been entire harmony among them in regard to the expediency and
practicability of attempting it, but I do not think there is reasonable
ground to doubt that most of them desired a virtual consolidation of the
two systems--Federal and State. A few were, from an early period,
suspected by those who differed from them, and who became their
opponents, of desiring to return to the English system, and this
suspicion, doubtless, contributed to make the latter more impracticable
than they might otherwise have been.
The political feelings which lay nearest to the hearts of the great body
of the people, as well during our colonial condition as in the States
after the declaration and establishment of Independence, and of the
strength of which I have referred to such striking and oft-repeated
illustrations, were those of veneration and affection for their local
governments as safeguards of their liberties and adequate to most of
their wants; endeared to them as their refuge from the persecutions of
arbitrary power, and hallowed by the perils and triumphs of the
Revolution. Allied to these feelings, and nearly co-extensive with them
in point of duration, was a distrust, at both periods, on the part of
the masses, of what they called an overshadowing general government.
When to these sources of opposition to the views of the party which had
arrayed itself against the government of the Confederation is added the
natural and deeply seated hostility of those who dissented from its
views in respect to hereditary government in any form, and the suspicion
of a reserved preference for such, or at least for kindred institutions,
we cannot be at a loss in accounting for the origin of the first two
great parties which sprang up and divided the country so soon after the
establishment of our Independence.
But the names by which these parties were distinguished are, it must be
admitted, not so intelligible. The name of Anti-Federalists was
strangely enough given by their opponents to those who advocated the
continuance of the Union upon the principles which prevailed in its
establishment, and according to which it was regarded as a Federal
League or Alliance of Free States, upon equal terms, founded upon a
compact (the Articles of Confederation) by which its conditions were
regulated,--to be represented by a general Congress, authorized to
consider and decide all questions appertaining to the interests of the
alliance and committed to its charge, without power either to act upon
the people directly or to apply force to the States, or otherwise to
compel a compliance with its decrees, and without any guarantee for
their execution other than the good faith of the parties to the compact.
On the other hand the name of Federalists was assumed, and, what is
still more extraordinary, retained by those who desired to reduce the
State governments, by the conjunction of which the Federal Union had
been formed, to the condition of corporations to be intrusted with the
performance of those offices only for the discharge of which a new
general government might think them the appropriate functionaries; to
convert the States, not perhaps in name, but practically and
substantially, into one consolidated body politic, and to establish over
it a government which should, at the least, be rendered independent and
effective by the possession of ample powers to devise, adopt, and
execute such measures as it might deem best adapted to common defense
and general welfare.
That this was a signal perversion of the true relation between party
names and party objects can scarcely be denied. Yet we who have, in
later days, witnessed the caprices in respect to party names to which
the public mind has been occasionally subjected, and the facility with
which one party has, through its superior address or its greater
activity, succeeded in attaching to its adversary an unsuitable and
unwelcome name, have not as much reason to be surprised at that
perversion as had the men of that day who were subjected to it.
The motive which operated in thus denying to men whose principles were
federal the name which indicated them, and in giving it to their
opponents, must be looked for in the fact that federal principles were
at that time favored by the mass of the people. This was well understood
at the time, and was made still more apparent by the circumstance that
those who really adhered to them, though compelled by the superior
address of their adversaries to act under the name of Anti-Federalists,
maintained their ascendancy in the government of the Confederation to
its close.
Those who require further proof of the truth of this position beyond
what results from a mere statement of the principles contended for by
the respective parties, will find it fully sustained by definitions of
Gouverneur Morris and James Madison. (2 Madison _Papers_, pp. 747-8, and
893.) Mr. Morris explained the distinction between a _federal_ and a
_national_ supreme government,--the former being a mere compact resting
on the good faith of the parties, the latter having a complete and
_compulsive_ operation. Mr. Madison, in the debate on the propositions
of Mr. Patterson, which constituted the plan of the Anti-Federalists,
and which were rejected by a vote of seven States to three,--one
(Maryland) divided,--said: "Much stress has been laid by some gentlemen
on the want of power in the Convention to propose any other than a
_federal_ plan.... Neither of the characteristics of a federal plan
would support this objection. One characteristic was that in a _federal_
government the power was exercised, not on the people _individually_,
but on the people _collectively_, on the _States_. The other
characteristic was that a _federal_ government derived its appointments,
not immediately from the people, but from the States which they
respectively composed."
It cannot be difficult to decide which of these parties was, in truth,
_federal_, and which _anti-federal_, according to these authentic
definitions of a federal government.[3]
[3] This contradiction between names and principles was obvious even
to intelligent foreigners. The French minister Fauchet, in his
famous despatch to his government (the publication of which worked
the downfall of Edmund Randolph, Washington's Secretary of State)
alluding to political parties in America, speaks of the whimsical
contrast between their names, Federal and Anti-Federal, and their
real opinions;--the former aiming with all their power to annihilate
federalism, while the latter were striving to preserve it.
Between these parties, thenceforth distinguished by the misnomers of
Federalists and Anti-Federalists, there was, from the close of the war
to the establishment of the present government, an uninterrupted
succession of partisan conflicts, in which the whole country
participated. They grew, for the most part, out of propositions to take
from the State governments the rights of regulating commerce and of
levying and collecting impost duties, and for the call of a Convention
to revise the Articles of Confederation. The first two of these
propositions were introduced by the Federalists, and for six years
vigorously supported by their party, with Hamilton at its head; and,
although advocated by Madison whilst he was in Congress, such was the
strength of the Anti-Federal party in that body and in the States that
they were not able to carry either. Advances were occasionally made in
respect to imposts, but these were so restricted as to the officers by
whom the duties should be collected, whether State or Federal, and in
regard to the application of the money when collected, that the movers
of the principal measure considered its value so much impaired that they
declined to push it further under the existing circumstances.
A distrust of the motives of the Federal leaders, and an apprehension
that they designed to employ the powers asked for in the establishment
of a strong and absorbing general government, capable of becoming, and
which the Anti-Federalists feared would, in the progress of time,
become, disposed to practice a tyranny upon the people, as oppressive as
that from which the Revolution had relieved them, with the suspicion
already referred to, that many would not be willing to stop at that
point, were doubtless the true causes of these otherwise unaccountable
failures. The accounts which have been brought down to us of the
proceedings of public bodies, and of appeals to the people, through
different channels, abundantly sustain this assumption. These, in a work
like this, can only be glanced at.
The grounds taken by the opponents of these measures, and which, backed
by popular suspicions, made them so powerful, were that the views of the
Federalists were rather political than financial,--that they were at
least as solicitous to gratify their well-understood passion for power,
through the adoption of these propositions, as they were to maintain
public credit. Beyond all doubt the belief that the government which the
Federalists wished to create would, whatever it might be called, provide
for the greatest practical extent of irresponsible power, led the
Anti-Federalists not unfrequently to oppose measures which they would
otherwise have supported.
General Hamilton's speech, most able as it was, went far to strengthen
these impressions. The debate commenced on the 28th, and was continued
to the 30th January, 1783, and was throughout one of great power. It
resulted in the adoption, with slight amendments, of a proposition,
submitted and vigorously supported by Mr. Madison, "That it is the
opinion of Congress that the establishment of permanent and adequate
funds to operate generally throughout the United States, is
indispensably necessary for doing complete justice to the creditors of
the United States, for restoring public credit, and for providing for
the future exigencies of the war." Although this proposition finally
passed without a dissenting vote, yet when an attempt was made to carry
it into effect by an impost--the only way in which it was attempted--the
measure was defeated, as has been before remarked, by restrictions in
regard to the officers by whom it should be collected, and to the
application of the money. In the course of his speech General Hamilton
signified, as an additional reason why the impost ought to be collected
by officers under the appointment of Congress, "that as the energy of
the Federal Government was evidently short of the degree necessary for
pervading and uniting the States, it was expedient to introduce the
influence of officers deriving their emoluments from, and consequently
interested in supporting the power of Congress."
Upon this Mr. Madison, in a note, observes: "This remark was imprudent
and injudicious to the cause which it was meant to serve. This influence
was the very source of jealousy which rendered the States averse to a
revenue under the collection as well as appropriation of Congress. All
the members of Congress who concurred in any degree with the States in
this jealousy, smiled at the disclosure. Mr. Bland, and still more Mr.
Lee, who were of this number, took notice in private conversation that
Mr. Hamilton had let out the secret."[4]
[4] 1 Madison _Papers_, 291.
It is scarcely possible, at this distant day, to appreciate the terror
of irresponsible and arbitrary power which had been impressed upon the
minds of men who had themselves suffered from its excesses, or had
witnessed the cruelties it had inflicted on others, or whose fathers had
been victims of its crimes. Even Mr. Jefferson, who differed from the
Anti-Federalists in respect to these questions, as I shall hereafter
have occasion to show, though he sympathized with them in their general
feelings, in a letter to Mr. Madison in December, 1787, from Paris, upon
the subject of the Constitution, did not hesitate to say, "I own I am
not a friend to a very energetic government. It is always
oppressive."[5]
[5] 2 Jefferson's _Correspondence_, 276.
Similar feelings were exhibited by Massachusetts in 1785. That leading
State in the confederacy was, during the whole of this period, strongly
imbued with the feelings of the misnamed Anti-Federal party. This was in
no small degree owing to the talents, zeal, and activity displayed in
their behalf by Samuel Adams and John Hancock, two of the three persons
(John Adams having been the third), who were excepted by the British
Government from the offer of pardon to its rebellious subjects. Hancock
was a leading merchant and a zealous Revolutionary patriot, who had the
honor of placing his name first to the Declaration of Independence, and
the higher honor of sustaining the contest which it provoked to its
close with inflexible firmness and at unusual risks, growing out of his
large interests in commerce. Samuel Adams was equal to any man of his
day in intelligence, integrity, and patriotism. He was among the very
first who embraced the Revolution in the sense which it finally
assumed,--that of entire separation from the British Crown,--and he
supported the principles upon which it was founded, as well during the
conflict as for the residue of his long life, with great ability and
unsurpassed devotion. Whilst many of his associates, not less sincere
than himself in resistance to the despotic acts of the mother country,
could yet express their admiration of the English system and were
consequently inclined to limit their efforts to a redress of temporary
grievances, he at the earliest period avowed his hostility to kingly
government, and rallied around himself the advocates for an entire
separation, most of whom became with him early and prominent members of
the Anti-Federal party.
The legislature of Massachusetts, momentarily diverted from the
Anti-Federal track by influences which will be noticed in another place,
adopted a resolution urging Congress to recommend a convention of the
States "to revise the Confederation, and to report how far it may be
necessary in their opinion to alter and enlarge the same, in order to
secure and perpetuate the primary objects of the Union." Governor
Bowdoin, who had recommended the measure to the legislature in his
message, addressed a letter to Congress including the resolution, and
sent it to the delegates of the State to be presented by them. The
delegates suspended its delivery, and assigned their reasons for doing
so in a letter dated September 3, 1785, addressed to the Governor, with
a request that it should be laid before the legislature. From this
letter, which is ably written and occupies throughout Anti-Federal
ground, I make the following extracts:--"The great object of the
Revolution was the establishment of good government, and each of the
States, in forming their own as well as the Federal Constitution, have
adopted republican principles. Notwithstanding this, plans have been
artfully laid and vigorously pursued, which, had they been successful,
we think would have inevitably changed our republican governments into
baleful aristocracies. These plans are frustrated, but the same spirit
remains in their abettors; and the institution of Cincinnati, honorable
and beneficent as the views may have been of the officers who composed
it, we fear, if not totally abolished, will have the same tendency....
'More power in Congress,' has been the cry from all quarters, but
especially of those whose views, not being confined to a government
that will best promote the happiness of the people, are extended to one
that will afford lucrative employments, civil and military. Such a
government is an aristocracy, which would require a standing army and a
numerous train of pensioners and placemen to prop and support its
exalted administration. To recommend one's self to such an
administration would be to secure an establishment for life, and at the
same time to provide for his posterity. These are pleasing prospects
which republican governments do not afford, and it is not to be wondered
at that many persons of elevated views and idle habits in these States
are desirous of the change. We are for increasing the power of Congress
as far as it will promote the happiness of the people; but at the same
time, are clearly of opinion that every measure should be avoided which
would strengthen the hands of the enemies to free government, and that
an administration of the present Confederation, with all its
inconveniences, is preferable to the risk of general dissensions and
animosities, which may approach to anarchy and prepare the way to a
ruinous system of government."
This letter of the delegates was laid before the legislature at their
next session, and produced a vote annulling the resolution recommending
a convention. The letter was signed by Elbridge Gerry, Samuel Holton,
and Rufus King. Mr. King, in the course of the following year, married
Miss Alsop, the only child of John Alsop, a wealthy merchant of New
York, and after having represented his native State with credit in the
Federal Convention of 1787, moved to that city; was appointed one of the
first senators in Congress from the State of New York (General Schuyler
being the other); was the friend and associate of Hamilton, Gouverneur
Morris, and Jay, and became, and continued for many years, a prominent
member of the Federal party.
Every step that was taken toward a convention was regarded with
distrust,--a distrust founded on a prevalent apprehension that the
talented and, as was believed, ambitious men who would get the control
of it, would in some way defeat those republican principles for the
right to establish which the country had made such great sacrifices.
The Commercial Convention, representing five States, which originated in
Virginia and met at Annapolis, and by which the movement that resulted
in the present Constitution was commenced, permitted Hamilton to draw up
their Address to the other States, which was also to be laid before
Congress; but insisted on giving a shape to their proposition which
would confine the Federal Convention within narrow bounds. They did this
in deference to the well understood sentiment of the country, and as the
only course, in their opinion, by which a convention could be obtained;
and accordingly they proposed "That a convention should be called to
meet at Philadelphia in May next, to devise such further provisions as
should appear to them necessary to render the Constitution of the
Federal Government adequate to the exigencies of the Union, and to
report such an act for that purpose to the United States in Congress
assembled, as _when agreed to by them, and afterwards confirmed by the
legislatures of every State_, will effectually provide for the same."[6]
[6] See _Address_; 2 Madison, 698. Not more than one, if one, of the
five States was fully in favor of a Convention.
The final action of Congress upon the subject, a majority of which
entertained similar views, consisted of a resolution, introduced by the
delegates from Massachusetts, declaring it to be the opinion of Congress
that a convention should be held at the time and place named by the
Commissioners who met at Annapolis, "for _the sole and express purpose_
of revising the Articles of Confederation, and reporting to Congress and
the several legislatures such alterations and provisions therein as
shall, _when agreed to in Congress and confirmed by the States_, render
the Federal Constitution adequate to the exigencies of government and
the preservation of the Union."[7]
[7] _Journals_ of that Congress, Vol. IV. p. 724.
But for the sanction thus given to the measure by Congress no convention
would have been held--at least none at that time. Washington, as appears
from his Correspondence, would not have deemed a convention legal
without it, and would not have attended;[8] and his example, added to
the hesitation of most of the States, and the decided opposition of some
of them, would have been sufficient to put a stop to the project.
[8] Sparks's _Washington_, Vol. IX.; Notes, pp. 237-9.
It was under such circumstances that the Convention assembled. Its
proceedings have become so familiar to the public mind, from the full
publications that have been made of them, and the extent to which they
have been reviewed, as to render it unnecessary to go very far into
their details. The Anti-Federal plan was introduced by Mr. Patterson, of
New Jersey, more in obedience to the ascertained wishes of his
constituents, than in conformity with his particular views. It proposed
an amendment of the Articles of Confederation for the construction of
executive and judicial departments in the federal government; to make
its laws and treaties the supreme law of the land; to increase the
powers of Congress in several important particulars, among which were
the right to levy and collect taxes and imposts, to regulate foreign
commerce and commerce between the States, and to give to the federal
government power to enforce its requisitions upon the States when it
should become necessary,--and to leave the government in other respects
as it stood.
The plan which Hamilton desired the Convention to propose to the people
and the States, of which he left a copy with Mr. Madison as a permanent
memorial of his opinions,--now published with Mr. Madison's "Papers,"
and in the "Life of Hamilton" by his son, and agreeing with each other
in all respects,--consisted, in its most remarkable features, of the
following provisions, viz:--
_First:_ The President should hold his office during good behavior,
removable only on conviction upon impeachment for some crime or
misdemeanor; and he should have an absolute negative upon all bills,
resolutions, and acts of Congress about to be passed into a law.
_Secondly:_ The Senators should hold their offices by the same tenure,
and should have the exclusive power of declaring war.
_Thirdly:_ The General Government should have the right to appoint the
future Governors of the States, who might hold their offices during good
behavior, and who should have the power to negative all laws about to be
passed by the respective State legislatures, subject to such regulations
as Congress might prescribe, and also to appoint all the militia
officers if Congress should so direct; and,
_Fourthly:_ Congress should "have power to pass all laws which they
shall judge necessary to the common defense and general welfare of the
Union."
The first of these plans, which professed to represent the views of the
Anti-Federalists, was rejected by the Convention, after full discussion,
as has been already mentioned, by a vote of seven States to three, one
being divided. Hamilton's scheme was not brought to a vote, nor, except
by himself, made the subject of particular discussion. This course was
obviously induced, in no small degree, by motives of respect for the
feelings of its author. Every body praised his candor and independence,
but the popular opinions in respect to its provisions were too well
understood to allow of any vote, other than his own, being given in its
favor, whatever private sympathy it may have enlisted.
Fortunately for the country at this, perhaps the most decisive period in
its history, a majority of the Convention, composed of every shade of
opinion, became thoroughly satisfied that a crisis had arrived which
demanded a liberal sacrifice of extreme views. They were convinced that
whilst, on the one hand, no system would stand the slightest chance to
be acceptable to any thing like a majority either of the States or
people, which was designed, or obnoxious to the suspicion of being
designed, to degrade the State governments, or even to impair their
capacities for the successful management of those portions of public
affairs which, under a proper distribution of the powers of government,
would be left under their control, or which was in the smallest degree
calculated to do violence to the well-known feelings of the people upon
the subjects of hereditary or irresponsible power; so, on the other,
there was no room for two opinions in respect to the ruinous
consequences that would, in the then condition of the country,
inevitably result from the failure of a convention, brought together
with so much difficulty, to remedy the manifest defects of the existing
government by suitable and effectual additions and improvements, and to
make a Constitution which would prove satisfactory both to the States
and people. Kept together by this overruling conviction, they entered
upon the construction of the present Constitution. The State governments
had been until that period, in point of fact, the ruling power. The
federal head, from the want of power to act directly upon the people,
or, in a compulsory manner, upon the State authorities, was dependent on
them for the execution of its most important decisions. Though much
depressed by the adverse current of events, it was yet in the State
governments that the pride of power stood relatively at the highest
point. Any attempt, under such circumstances, to humiliate the State
authorities, would inflame the passions of their supporters; but they
might be, perhaps, to a sufficient extent conciliated, and the
Convention prudently adopted this course. Irritating subjects were, with
that view, as far as possible, avoided. Propositions to give to the new
government a direct negative upon the legislation of the States, and to
empower it to appoint their governors and militia officers, which had
produced so much ill blood, were effectually discountenanced. The
sovereignty of the States, to which State pride was so keenly alive, was
not interfered with in respect to the powers of government which were
left in their hands. An impartial and wise division of powers was made
between them and the government proposed to be established. To remove
apprehensions which had been long entertained, and which had sunk deep
in the minds of many, the State authorities as such were allowed a
liberal participation in the first formation, and their coöperation was
made necessary to the subsequent continuance of the new government. The
manner of choosing the electors of President and Vice-President was,
with the same general view, left to the regulation of the State
legislatures exclusively; and when a failure to choose by the electors
should occur--a result then believed likely to happen frequently--the
President was to be chosen by the House of Representatives of the United
States, and, in the performance of that important duty, each State had
reserved to it the right to appear and act in its federal
character--that of a perfect equality with her sister States--whatever
might be the difference in their respective population, territory, or
wealth. The choice of the Senate of the United States was also left
exclusively to the State legislatures. The result of all these
arrangements was, that the Federal Constitution was so constructed as to
put it in the power of a bare majority of the States to bring the
government proposed by it to a peaceable end, without exposing their
citizens to the necessity of resorting to force, by simply withholding
the appointment of electors, or the choice of their Senators, or both.
No provisions could have been devised better calculated to remove
apprehension and allay jealousy in respect to the new government. They
hit the nail on the head. Although they might not avert the opposition
of excited partisans, they answered the expectations of moderate
men,--of that large class whose paramount object was the relief of the
country as well as their own private affairs from the embarrassments
under which they were suffering, and which were, as usual on such
occasions, attributed altogether to the defects of the existing system.
The question could with great propriety be put to Anti-Federal opponents
(and doubtless was put),--Are you afraid to trust a numerical majority
of the States? If not, they can at short intervals put an end to the new
government if it proves to be as bad as you apprehend.
Having already, in a spirit of devotion to duty and a hazardous
disregard of responsibility which was made necessary by the occasion,
set aside the instructions of Congress by making a new Constitution, the
Convention pursued a similar course to the end. Instead of reporting the
result of their labors to Congress for its approval and submission to
the States for their unanimous sanction, according to the Articles of
Confederation, as was proposed at Annapolis and provided by Congress in
the act of sanction to the holding of the Convention, that body sent the
instrument it had framed to Congress, not for its approval, but to be by
it submitted to the States and people in the first instance, under a
provision, prescribed by the Convention, that if it was ratified by nine
of the thirteen States it should be binding upon all,--an heroic though
perhaps a lawless act.
The dangerous condition of the country, and the general opinion that
some decided step was necessary to its safety, added to the imposing
character of the instrument itself, which, though not satisfactory to
Congress, was yet far less objectionable than had been anticipated, and
a general expectation that important amendments rendering it still more
acceptable to the people would follow its ratification, deterred the
national legislature from refusing to comply with the request of the
Convention, notwithstanding its flagrant disregard of congressional
authority. The same considerations should have induced the Anti-Federal
party to acquiesce in the ratification of the Constitution. They should
have looked upon the marked effect of that instrument upon Congress as a
prophetic warning of the danger to which they would expose themselves as
a party by opposing it. But they did not see their duty, or, perhaps,
their interests, in that light; honest in their intentions and obstinate
in their opinions, they opposed the ratification, were defeated, and, as
a party, finally overthrown.
The Anti-Federal party represented very fairly the ideas and feelings
that prevailed with the masses during the Revolution. These, as we have
described, having been deeply rooted by the persecutions suffered by
Puritan, Huguenot, Hussite, and Dutch ancestors, and, however crude and
unsystematized at first, having been gradually stimulated into maturity
and shape by the persevering injustice of the mother country, became
political opinions of the most tenacious and enduring character. At the
moment of which we are speaking, alarm in respect to the character of
the General Government about to be established, with increased
attachments to those of the States, were predominant feelings in the
Anti-Federal mind, and closed it against a dispassionate consideration
of the Constitution submitted to their choice. The local governments
were entitled to all the regard which had been cherished for them by the
Anti-Federalists and by their political predecessors under the colonial
system; neither were the dangers which threatened them overrated.
Hamilton could not tolerate the idea that they should be continued
otherwise than as corporations, with very limited powers. Morris, in his
usual rough and strong way, was for "drawing their teeth," as I have
already quoted him; and even the temperate Madison was in favor of
giving the General Government a direct negative upon all their laws,--a
proposition which, though not so humiliating as Hamilton's, or so
harshly expressed as that of Morris, would have been far more fatal to
their future usefulness. Standing now on the vantage-ground of
experience, no sensible man can fail to see that the State governments
would have perished under the treatment thus proposed for them, nor can
any such man doubt the immense advantage they have been and still are to
our system. A short reflection upon what has been accomplished through
their agency, and upon what our condition would probably have been if
they had been blotted out of the system, as was virtually desired in
most influential quarters, must satisfy candid and intelligent minds of
the fatal unsoundness of the policy proposed. The States would under it
have been governed as her numerous colonies were governed by Rome, and
a comparison of our present condition with what it must have been under
the satraps of a consolidated federal government, will cause every
patriotic heart to rejoice at our escape from the latter. For that
escape we are largely indebted to the old Anti-Federal party. They stood
out longest and strongest in behalf of the State governments, after the
establishment of our Independence; and although they failed in other
respects, they made impressions upon the public mind which have never
been effaced, and for which we owe them a debt of gratitude. Their
motives, as is usual in political collisions, were misrepresented; they
were spoken of as men of contracted views, of narrow prejudices; and
their preference for the State governments was attributed to the
preponderance they possessed in them, and to a consciousness that their
greatness and power were derived from local prejudices and from their
skill in fomenting them. Hence was inferred their hostility to an
efficient federal government, whose extensive affairs they were
incapable of managing, and in which, consequently, it was alleged that
they would not retain the influence they possessed at home.
Although I unite fully in condemning the course pursued by the
Anti-Federalists in respect as well to the Constitution as to their
refusal to grant an adequate revenue to the federal head, and the right
to regulate commerce, I regard those imputations which ascribed to them
a readiness to sacrifice the great interests of the country to merely
factious purposes, as the ebullitions of party spleen produced by party
jealousies, as unjust and unfounded as was the charge brought forward by
the old Republican party against Alexander Hamilton of a design to
plunge the country into war with France to subserve the wishes and
interests of England. I do not think there were ten in every hundred of
that party who did not believe that imputation well founded, and most
of them went to their graves without having yielded that conviction. I
came upon the political stage when this matter was only viewed in the
retrospect, and am free to say that I even believed that, if there was
any thing true in the party criminations of the preceding era, this was
so. Judge, then, of my surprise, on discovering from his papers, as well
as from those of some of his contemporaries recently published, that
there was probably no man in the country more sincerely anxious to
prevent a war with France; that he applied his great mind incessantly to
that object; that he was willing, indeed desirous, to send either Mr.
Jefferson or Mr. Madison as one of the commissioners to negotiate with
France, a proposition in respect to which he could not obtain the
concurrence of either Mr. Adams or his cabinet, the latter of whom were
sufficiently prompt to adopt his advice save when it conflicted with
their party prejudices; and that so far from acting on that occasion at
the instigation or to promote the policy of Great Britain, although
entertaining strong--in my opinion too strong--preferences for England
as between her and France, he was, in respect to every thing that
affected the interests of his own country, purely and strictly American.
Of this no man, whose mind is not debauched by prejudice, can entertain
a doubt on reading the papers referred to.
The imputations upon the motives of the Anti-Federalists were of the
same general stamp and origin. It was too soon for those who were yet
fresh from the self-sacrificing and patriotic struggle on the field of
the Revolution, where they had nobly done their duty, to fall under the
influence of such petty motives as were attributed to them. Like their
opponents, they might and did peril much of their own standing to
further political views of great magnitude which they honestly, if
erroneously, believed would promote the welfare of their country; but
base incentives and merely factious calculations are not predicable of
the times or of the men.
We should be slow to attribute narrow views to a political party to
whose principal leaders, more than to any other portion of the Whigs, we
owe the great change in the character of our Revolutionary struggle by
which the assertion of Independence was substituted for the demand of a
redress of grievances.
If the Anti-Federal party had been accused of cherishing morbid and
impracticable ideas on the subject of a general government, the charge
would have come nearer the truth. Many of them had so vivid a
recollection of cruelties practiced upon their fathers, and had
themselves seen and felt so much of the tyranny of the mother country,
as to destroy all hope on their part that political power could be
vested in remote hands, without the certainty of its being abused.
Although they may have been right in respect to the monarchical
preferences of many who were the most zealous for a convention, still
they overrated the danger that such views would be encouraged by that
body, and in their apprehensions of subsequent efforts to establish
monarchical institutions here, they did not sufficiently appreciate an
existing security against the accomplishment of such an object, the
character and adequacy of which shall be hereafter noticed. We have
every reason to believe that they regarded the project of a general
convention as involving, if successful, the fate of republican
principles in this country; and under the influence of feelings of so
sombre a character, their course, as a party, was, it must be admitted,
substantially adverse to any change, content rather to bear the ills
they had than to encounter others of which they knew not the precise
extent, but which they dreaded more. In this they fell behind the
progress of events.
If our Revolutionary contest had terminated in a compromise with the
mother country, as was for a long time expected, the existing system,
with the amendments which would then have been generally favored, might
have sufficed. It might have answered all the purposes contemplated by
that which Franklin took so much pains to establish in 1755. But when
our country had taken her position among the nations of the earth as a
sovereign and independent power, she acquired rights and incurred
obligations which could not be properly cared for by any agency short of
a well-constructed and efficient general government, and the existing
organization was neither. By an efficient government I do not mean one
capable of absorbing or neutralizing the State authorities, or not fully
responsible for the faithful exercise of the powers conferred upon it,
or possessing more power than was necessary for the discharge of all the
duties assigned to it, but one amply furnished with the ability to
discharge them by its own means. To this end it was necessary that it
should have competent and well organized executive, legislative, and
judicial departments, and at least the power requisite to raise its
necessary revenues from the people directly. To all this the
Anti-Federal party was opposed, and therein it was wrong. The risk of
having exceptionable principles incorporated into the Constitution was
one that had to be encountered at some time, and there were cogent
reasons for meeting it then. The condition of the country, in regard to
its credit and other interests, presented an argument of great urgency
for the necessity of a competent government. But above all other
considerations stood the fact that the Convention had proposed for the
approval of the people and the States a constitution which, when
interpreted according to its plain and obvious meaning, conferred on the
government proposed by it powers fully adequate to the public service,
but none from which danger could be apprehended to any interest. That
this was so is no longer an open question. Time and experience have
demonstrated the error of the Anti-Federalists, who, under the influence
of strong prejudices, although doubtless honestly, thought differently.
No one will now question the devotion of the people, for whose benefit
it was framed, and who are the best judges in the matter, to the
existing system. With full power to alter or abolish it, they have lived
under it for the greater part of a century, without making or desiring
to make any essential alterations in its structure. By the exercise of
those powers only which were plainly given by the Constitution to the
government established by its authority and expressed on its face, in
regard to which there has been no dispute, and which were at the times
of its adoption well understood by those who made and those who adopted
it, our country has prospered and grown to its present greatness. I say
by those powers only, because the spurious interpolations which have
from time to time been attempted have in no instance been productive of
good.
The Convention was held with closed doors, and the result of its labors
was not known to the public before it was communicated to Congress, nor
the particulars of its proceedings, the votes, resolutions, and
speeches, till many years afterwards. The public mind, and especially
the Anti-Federal portion of it, was impressed by those circumstances,
operating upon long entertained suspicions, with the most unfavorable
anticipations in respect to the character of the instrument that had
been agreed upon. All found it so different from what it was feared by
many that it would be, and so many received it according to its real
merits, that it carried a large preponderance of the public sentiment,
drawn from both parties, to the conclusion that it ought not to be, and
could not with safety be rejected. The reflection of this sentiment was
distinctly seen in the action of Congress. It had given its assent to
the holding of a Convention, without which that body would not have met;
but it had, as we have seen, restricted its action in two most important
points: 1st, that the Convention should limit its action to a revision
of the Articles of Confederation and to suggestions for their
improvement; and, 2d, that its doings should be reported to Congress, to
be submitted to the States, under those Articles which required the
assent of every State to any alteration. The Convention disregarded
both; it sent to Congress a new constitution, regulated its submission
to the States, and decided that the assent of nine of the thirteen
should make it binding upon all. Congress, with its resolutions and
limitations thus set at nought, and without even a protest, did what was
asked of it. Yet the leaders of the Anti-Federal party in the States
determined upon opposition. The course and character of that opposition
indicate that those who embarked in it were conscious of their
approaching defeat.
In the three largest and most strongly Anti-Federal States, in which the
power of that party, when cordially united, was irresistible, the
Constitution was ratified. It was adopted by the required number of
States, and the fate of the Anti-Federal party, as such, was forever
sealed by the result of the contest in which it had unwisely engaged.
CHAPTER II.
The Federal Party in Power under the New Constitution--Agency of
Individuals in the Formation and Ratification of the
latter--Prospects of the Opening Administration of the
Government--Unwise Course of the Federal Party--President
Washington--His Peculiar Relations with the People and with
Parties--His first Cabinet--Character of the Differences between
Jefferson and Hamilton--The latter sustained--Hamilton's Position,
Power, and Influence upon the subsequent Course of Parties--His
Monarchical Views--Various Authorities in Relation to the
latter--Fidelity of Washington to the Republican Form of
Government--Importance of correctly Understanding the Extent of
Hamilton's Influence during the Administrations of Washington and
John Adams--Personal and Official Relations between Washington and
Members of his Cabinet--Evidences of the Spread of Monarchical
Views among Officers and Public Men in Washington's Time--His
Steadfast Adherence to the last to the Republican Form--His
Permanent Hold upon the Affections of the People, even while they
repudiated certain Leading Principles of his Administration.
The period in our political history to which our inquiry has conducted
us, was one of the greatest interest. The successful effort that had
been made to compel Great Britain to acknowledge our Independence; the
government of the Confederation, and the causes that led to its
abandonment; the grave step taken in a better direction by the formation
and ratification of the new Constitution, with the hopes and fears
excited by the last great movement, were well calculated to impress
profoundly the minds of those who had been actors in such important
scenes. The success of the Federal party in the first election held
under the new Constitution was complete. For the first time since its
organization, that party possessed the unrestricted control of the
national legislature. If any thing could have been thought wanting to
insure its permanent success, that was believed to be secured by the
consent of General Washington to be the first President of the new
government about to be organized under a constitution, to the paternity
of which they had established so fair a claim. Neither the formation nor
the ratification of that instrument were altogether the work of avowed
members of that party; but as between the two parties they had clearly
the best title to be regarded as its authors. The merits of individuals
in that great work were various. Alexander Hamilton, the able and
undisputed leader of the Federal party, from its origin to his death,
did comparatively nothing either toward its formation or adoption by the
Federal Convention. His most useful services were rendered in the New
York State Convention, by which it was ratified, and in his
contributions to the numbers of "The Federalist." These were formally
declared as the measure of his services in that regard, in reply to a
direct inquiry long after Hamilton's death, by his best informed and
always devoted friend, Gouverneur Morris, as will be seen hereafter. It
was, beyond all doubt, from Madison that the Constitution derived its
greatest aid in respect as well to its construction as to its passage
through the Convention, and its ratification by the States.
The character and political career of James Madison were _sui
generis_--as much so as though far different from those of John
Randolph. Possessed of intellectual powers inferior to none, and taking
an unsurpassed interest in the course of public affairs, he seemed
invariably to bring to the discussion of public questions a thoroughly
unprejudiced mind. Whilst in the speeches of his contemporaries we
seldom fail to perceive that the argument submitted was framed to
support a foregone conclusion,--to recommend a measure for which the
speaker cherished a personal preference,--it is rare indeed, if ever,
that any such indications are to be found in those of Mr. Madison.
Whilst the former present themselves as advocates, the latter appears in
the attitude of an umpire between rival opinions, who has made it his
business to search for the truth, and is determined to abide the result
of his investigations, uninfluenced in the formation of his decision by
preferences or prejudices of any description. The most acute observer in
reviewing the writings, speeches, and votes of Mr. Madison during the
exciting periods of which we are speaking, when governments as well as
individuals were to an unusual extent in a state of transition, would
find it difficult to place his finger upon any of them in respect to
which the justice of this description would not be manifest.
Mr. John Quincy Adams, in his Jubilee Address, heretofore alluded to,
describes Mr. Madison and General Hamilton as being, at this period,
"spurred to the rowels by ambition."[9] Both of these gentlemen were,
doubtless, ambitious of the fame which is acquired by serving one's
country honestly and efficiently, and we have no sufficient reason for
assuming that Mr. Adams meant more than that. It is, nevertheless, but
justice to those truly great men to add that so far as high-reaching
ambition is indicated by abjuring unpopular opinions and assuming those
which are believed to be otherwise; by professing attachment to
principles not really cherished for their own sake, or by personal
intrigues of any description to acquire or increase popular favor, I
sincerely believe that there were no two men of their day less liable to
the imputation. Mr. Madison's course at the period of which we are
speaking and during his antecedent public life, was, to a remarkable
extent, divested of a partisan character. He supported, ably and
perseveringly, many, if not most of the propositions for the adoption of
which the Federal party was particularly solicitous, whilst representing
one of the most decided Anti-Federal States in the Confederacy, without
losing the confidence of his constituents, or even hazarding its loss.
He was, throughout, in favor of giving to the federal head an
independent right to levy and collect its necessary revenue and to
regulate commerce, and was from the beginning in favor of a convention
to revise the Constitution. In that body he was one of the majority in
favor of the course I have described, and which resulted in the present
Constitution. His successful and brilliant efforts in favor of the new
system of government placed him at the head of its friends; but there
was no time when Mr. Madison can, with truth and fairness, be said to
have belonged to the Federal party; he all the time represented a State
which took the lead in opposition to that school, his political
affinities and associations were in general adverse to that
organization, and, as I have said, he never forfeited the good opinion
of his State. She seems always to have confided in his sincerity and in
the integrity of his motives, and to have been willing to allow him to
follow the dictates of his own judgment in regard to particular
measures.
[9] Mr. Van Buren, in making the above quotation from the Jubilee
Address, doubtless relied upon his memory. "Both spurred to the
rowels by rival and antagonist ambition," are the words used by Mr.
Adams; but they, in fact, refer distinctly to _Jefferson_ and
Hamilton, though Mr. Madison's name is incidentally coupled with
that of the latter in the same sentence. Eds.
The most auspicious prospects beamed upon the opening administration of
the new government, and it is fair to presume that the anticipations
thus inspired would have been triumphantly realized if those who had
been selected to conduct it, and their successors for the ensuing
twelve years, had accepted the Constitution in the sense in which it
was known to have been understood by those who framed it, and by the
people when they adopted it. A course thus right in itself, and thus
acquiescent in the popular will by men, some of whom had been long
suspected by many of their Revolutionary associates of not holding that
will in very high respect, would not have failed to conciliate large
portions of the Anti-Federal party. Their dread of the exercise of
unauthorized power by a general government, of which the responsibility
was, in their estimation, too remote to be safely trusted, and their
apprehensions for the safety of State institutions, always an object of
their greatest solicitude, might have been allayed, if not substantially
subdued. These valuable objects accomplished, the great improvements in
the condition as well of public as of individual affairs, unavoidably
flowing from the reasonably harmonious action of a government which the
Federal party had done so much to establish, and the crowning fact that
these gratifying results were brought about in the name, and with the
active coöperation of Washington, the object of universal respect and
affection, would have secured to that party through the long lapse of
time that has since intervened, at least as large a share in the control
of the government as has been possessed by a party which became its
successful rival, but which can scarcely be said to have then existed.
But the Federal party rashly turned its back upon the only course by
which these advantages might have been secured, and in doing so, showed
itself regardless of considerations which would not have escaped the
attention of more discreet, if not wiser bodies. Its influential and
leading men forgot that the administration did not, in point of fact,
represent the political opinions in respect to the proper uses and
spirit of governments in general of a majority of the people; that
their party had acquired power solely by its wise course in regard to a
single, though doubtless most important measure; and that even in
respect to that large portions of the people felt, as expressed by John
Quincy Adams, "that the Constitution itself had been extorted from the
grinding necessity of a reluctant nation." The Federal party took its
course also in momentary forgetfulness of the characters of those whose
opinions it was about to violate, whose feelings were to be offended,
and whose resentments it must incur. It overlooked what it had the
fullest reason to know, that those whom it was about to drive into
opposition were men, and the descendants of men, who had from the
beginning, and at all times, and under all circumstances, been
enthusiasts in devotion to liberty, and stern and uncompromising in
demanding stringent restrictions upon delegated authority,--as
inflexible in their opinions, and as incapable of being driven from
their support by the hand of power, or seduced by corruption, as human
nature could be made in the schools of fiery trial in which they had
been trained. The Federalists in power, or rather he who, through the
great confidence of his chief, wielded that power, did nothing, if we
except the personal efforts of Washington in favor of conciliation,
absolutely nothing to soothe the feelings of their defeated opponents,
or to allay their apprehensions, but much to exacerbate the former and
to confirm the latter.
The justice of these allegations is fully proved by the acts of the
public men of that day. From the official position of the first
President, and the part he consequently took in the management of public
affairs, a faithful survey of these cannot be made without embracing him
in the review. This is treading upon privileged ground. No American, no
good man, can approach it without feeling that it is such, or without
being embarrassed by the apprehension that, however pure his intention,
he may undesignedly outrage the sentiments of admiration and reverence
by which it is naturally and properly intrenched. General Washington
retired gracefully from his military command, with more true glory than
ever fell to the lot of man. There have, doubtless, at times, appeared
military leaders of more professional genius and science, but never one
better adapted to the high duties to which he was called; never one of
whom it could with more truth be said, to use a modern and comprehensive
expression, that he was "the right man in the right place." Certainly
without his seeking it, and doubtless against his wishes, he was
transferred to the civil service of his country by his election to the
office of President under the new Constitution. The administration, of
which he thus became the constitutional head, adopted certain measures,
proposed others, and set up claims to power under that instrument, of
which many of his countrymen and personal friends could not approve, and
which they felt themselves obliged to oppose; these, in the progress of
time and events, became organized as a political party by which those
objectionable measures and claims of power were perseveringly resisted,
but without any diminution of respect for his character, position, and
feelings. They overthrew the administration of his successor, which
claimed to act upon his principles, succeeded to the control of the
Federal Government, and have kept it ever since, with rare and limited
exceptions, attributable to special causes.
There is, notwithstanding, in this great country, no hamlet, town, city,
or place in which American citizens congregate, where the name of
Washington is ever pronounced without the profoundest reverence, or in
which there does not prevail an undying sense of gratitude for his
public services. The history of the world will be searched in vain for
a tribute of love and gratitude at all comparable to that which the
people of the United States have rendered to him who was the commander
of their armies in the war of the Revolution, and their first republican
chief magistrate--a tribute, in paying which the only contest between
political parties is as to which shall manifest the most zeal, and which
shall attain the highest success.
Was ever before so great and so gratifying reward bestowed, including in
its wide extent the noble, exalted, and well-won title of _Pater
Patriæ_! This, the highest honor that man can receive on earth, was not,
as of old, a title given to an adored chief by victorious soldiers who,
however renowned for their valor, were always open to the influence of
personal and temporary feelings; nor was it obtained through the
instrumentality of a venal senate; neither did it originate in
state-craft or priest-craft, which have in every age paid homage to the
great men of the world for selfish and sinister purposes. The high
honors paid to Washington proceeded from no such sources, nor were they
exposed to the suspicions from which such bestowments are rarely free.
They sprang from the disinterested and deliberate judgment of an
intelligent, virtuous, and free people, who felt that he had, in his
military capacity alone, done incomparably more than any other man for
the establishment of their Independence, and that in all his civil
service he had been actuated by the same upright motives which had
governed his whole previous career, and that in that sphere also, as in
every act of his life, he had placed the performance of public duties
and the advancement of public interests before all other earthly
considerations. Although many of them had differed from him in respect
to some measures which had received his sanction, they were not on that
account the less satisfied that he had, in the exercise of a rightful
discretion, been influenced only by an earnest desire to promote the
welfare of his country. So regarding his whole career, they with one
accord gave him the highest place on the roll of fame and the first in
their hearts.
This spontaneous and ample recognition of a debt of imperishable
gratitude to a public benefactor, whose modesty was equal to his
unsurpassed merit, was the act of a people often misrepresented, and as
often misunderstood, but who have never been found wanting, in the end,
in what was due to faithful public servants, to themselves, or to their
political institutions.
We are, perhaps, yet too near the period of these great transactions to
pronounce safely upon the general justice of their dealings with the
contemporaries of Washington. But when time shall have relieved the
subject more thoroughly from the adverse influences of family
connections and partisan feelings, I have not a doubt that some American
historian, loving his country and admiring the character of his
countrymen, will take pleasure in holding up to the world a picture of
the distribution of popular confidence and popular favors in their case
also, which may safely be compared with that drawn from the history of
any people.
Unbelievers may gainsay, and disappointed aspirants may rail at these
deductions, but they nevertheless do no more than justice to the
character of our people, before whom every public question and the acts
and opinions of every public man, be he whom he may, may be freely
canvassed. All that can be asked of him who seeks to vindicate and
perpetuate the truth of history, is that he shall deal justly and
candidly with his subject. From a scrutiny so conducted, no citizen will
ask or expect that any public transaction, or the course of any public
man shall be exempted.
No man could have accepted office with fewer temptations to depart from
the line of duty than offered themselves to President Washington. His
claims to the admiration of his countrymen and of the world were
complete; reasonable in all his desires and happy in his domestic
relations, he was possessed of property beyond either his wants or his
desires, and was without children to inherit his estate or to succeed to
the glories already attached to his name. The advantages to be derived
by a republican magistrate from the consciousness of occupying such a
position and of its being also appreciated by his constituents, are very
great. The confidence inspired by these considerations was also
strengthened by the fact that in the high and responsible stations in
which he had been placed he had never failed to increase the good-will
and respect of those by whom he had been appointed. But these
circumstances of encouragement did not blind his cautious mind to a
proper sense of the difficulties incident to the new duties he had
assumed and to his want of experience in regard to them. In addition to
the command of all the military force in the country in a more plenary
form than that in which he had before possessed it, he was now intrusted
with the superintendence and direction of large portions of the domestic
and of all the foreign concerns of a great people just taking their
position in the family of nations. First on the list of his responsible
duties stood that of organizing a government constructed upon new and to
a great extent untried principles, at a moment when the tendency of the
French Revolution had been sufficiently developed to threaten political
convulsions more portentous and more difficult to be dealt with than any
that the world had ever witnessed; and he was called to the performance
of this delicate task amidst party dissensions at home of the most
violent nature, which many people apprehended might extend to a
revolution in the character of the government itself. Firm in all his
purposes Washington did not shrink from the application of his
well-balanced mind to a survey of the difficulties that stood in his
way, in making which no exaggerated estimate of his own capacities
prevented him from foreseeing the embarrassments that might arise, and
to some extent must arise, from the difference in the nature of many of
the duties he was now called upon to discharge from those with which his
past public life had made him familiar; and I have always thought that,
among the great transactions of his career, there was scarcely one in
which were exhibited more strikingly the strength of his judgment and
the nobleness of his disposition, than in the formation of his first
Cabinet.
It is difficult for one not particularly conversant with such matters to
realize the obstructions which not unfrequently present themselves in
the work of forming a good cabinet. These are sometimes the consequence
of an overestimate of his own qualifications on the part of the chief
magistrate elect, and a resulting disinclination to bring into the
government men whose prominence before the country and whose great
accomplishments as statesmen may depress his own importance in the
action of the administration. This feeling, when it exists in only a
moderate degree, is certain to be encouraged by the flatteries of
friends, or more often by selfish men for the purpose of promoting their
designs upon the patronage at the disposal of the incumbent. Against the
dangerous influences of these classes President Washington was
effectually guarded by elements in his own character decidedly
unpropitious to both. But he was not so free from embarrassments arising
from another source. He was at the commencement of his government
surrounded by his fellow-soldiers, the officers of the army of the
Revolution,--veterans who had acquired high consideration by their
meritorious services, and were endeared to him by their personal
characters and their past and present sufferings. They were generally
men whose judgments he could not but respect, and who, like their class
in all countries, were not disposed to consider the aid of civilians in
the administration of public affairs as imperatively necessary. The
actual state of the country also, in regard to its party divisions and
dissensions, was, as I have already said, perhaps the greatest source of
perplexity and trouble.
Not discouraged by these difficulties, he proceeded to the formation of
his cabinet in a spirit of patriotism and good sense, manifesting an
anxious desire to allay, if he could not neutralize, the violence of
party spirit, and to enlist in the administration of the new government
and secure to the public service those of highest character and talents
who belonged to, or were disposed to sympathize with, the party which
had opposed the Constitution. With these noble views, he divided his
cabinet equally between gentlemen of that school and members of the
Federal party, and equally also between civilians and military men. For
the two most responsible, as well as most difficult offices, to which
were assigned duties least familiar to himself, he selected two
gentlemen, who from their active patriotism and distinguished talents
occupied high, if not the highest positions in the country, had already
been placed at the head of the rival and conflicting opinions which
divided it, and of whose personal uprightness and political independence
he was well assured.
Down to the period which we have now reached, President Washington had,
to a remarkable extent, kept himself aloof from partisan strife. This
was partly owing to his great self-command and to his perception of the
incompatibility of a participation in that field of action with the
positions he occupied in the public service; and possibly, to some
extent, to anticipations, not unnatural, that the future held in store
for him a fame which would soar above parties. He had seen and known too
much of men to allow himself to hope that the cabinet he had selected
would be entirely free from disunion, or from those distractions likely
to arise from the conflicting materials of which it was composed; but he
did not at first appreciate fully the extent and bearing of the
differences that existed between the opinions and public views of
Jefferson and Hamilton. Hoping that these would be confined to
particular points in the administration of affairs, he doubtless relied
upon his personal influence to soothe the asperities they might produce,
and at least to limit their adverse effect to the measures to which they
might be from time to time applied. His confidence in this regard was
well warranted by his past good fortune in removing obstacles that
threatened injury to the country, by means of the general respect that
was paid to his opinions and wishes by all classes of his countrymen.
His success in allaying the spirit of insubordination that manifested
itself among the officers of the army at Newburgh and for a season
menaced seriously the character of the army and the peace of the
country; in arresting a design which was supposed to be on foot in
Congress, to make the sufferings and consequent indignation of the
troops subservient to the promotion of the financial schemes of
civilians; and in dispersing the storm which threatened to follow the
establishment of the Cincinnati, with its hereditary honors, strikingly
justified his confidence in the efficacy of any future efforts in the
same direction.
More could not have been done, or in a better spirit, than Washington
did to preserve harmony between the two leading members of his cabinet,
and to secure their coöperation in the public service. No steps,
consistent with a proper self-respect, as it now appears, were omitted
on his part. If the differences in their views had been less radical
these friendly efforts and applications must have succeeded, received as
they were by both in the most becoming and grateful spirit.
But these commendable exertions were doomed to an unavoidable and final
disappointment. The President might as well have attempted to combine
the elements of fire and water as to secure a harmonious action in the
administration of the Government between Jefferson and Hamilton. The
antagonistic opinions of these great men upon the subjects of government
and its proper administration were too profoundly planted in their
breasts, and they were both too honest to depart from them without a
corresponding change in their convictions, which there was no reason to
anticipate, to admit of a hope for a different result.
Of the nature and extent of their differences of opinion it is my
purpose to attempt some explanation in another place; but here I will
only say, as I desire to say in advance, that I do not now believe,
whatever my impression may have been, that they originated in any
difference as to the objects at which they aimed, or that those objects,
in either case, were other than the welfare and happiness of those for
whom they were selected to act. They may have differed in opinion in
respect to the condition, social and political, in which the mass of the
people would be most likely to be prosperous and happy; they certainly
did so, and that very widely, in regard to the public measures by which
that prosperity and happiness would be promoted or diminished; and that
diversity in their opinions arose mainly from their conflicting
estimates of the capacity of the people for self-government. Upon that
point they were opposed diametrically, and that opposition produced an
unavoidable antagonism in their views of almost every public question.
In a conversation between these gentlemen in 1791, to which a more
particular reference will be made hereafter, General Hamilton thus
expressed himself:--"For that mind must be really depraved which would
not prefer the equality of political rights, which is the foundation of
pure republicanism, if it can be obtained consistently with order." This
was, I do not in the least doubt, his real sentiment; but unhappily
circumstances, to which we may hereafter recur, had impressed his mind
with a conviction, which was never removed, that the great desideratum
which he mentioned--the preservation of order--could not be secured
where the control of public affairs was largely in the hands of the
people. He very correctly regarded the security of the rights of persons
and of property as an indispensable ingredient in good government; and
distrusting the respect of the people, when acting in masses, for both,
he was adverse to that equality of rights which he truly said was "the
foundation of pure republicanism." These great objects he thought could
in no other way be secured than by a strong government, in which there
would be what he called a "stable will," independent of popular control.
This he endeavored openly, and with a candor that belonged to his
character, to obtain in the Convention, and failing there, he hoped to
realize its advantages, in some degree, by strengthening what he
described as the "organs" of the Government, through the action of a
popular President and a good administration. The most important of the
measures by which he designed to accomplish these objects Mr. Jefferson
regarded as so many violations of the Constitution, and he looked upon
the spirit in which they had their origin as evidence of disaffection
to republican government, the differences in opinion between these
master spirits of the cabinet, who engrossed a share of the attention of
the people inferior only to that paid to the President, were therefore,
not limited as Washington hoped they would be, to particular measures
but presented contradictory and irreconcilable theories for the
administration of the Government, which could not even be discussed in
the cabinet without producing interminable distractions. As was to be
expected from minds like their respective systems left no middle ground,
and required the adoption of the one or the other as a rule of action
for the Government. The unavoidable obligation to make a selection
between them devolved therefore on Washington, and he discharged it, as
he did all his duties, courteously and firmly. He gave the preference to
Hamilton, and sustained him in the measures he proposed to carry out the
policy he recommended.
Mr. Jefferson, sensible that the necessity of his retirement from the
cabinet had thus become absolute, determined to take that step in a way
as little annoying to the President and as little injurious to the
public service as possible. To this end he gave early notice that he
would resign at the expiration of the President's first term of office;
and when that time arrived he retired. This left General Hamilton
without any check from his associates in the administration, save what
might proceed from the Attorney General, Edmund Randolph, who became
Secretary of State on Jefferson's retirement, and of whom the latter
said that his habit was to give his opinions to his friends and his
votes to his opponents.
Thus, next to Washington, Alexander Hamilton became the most powerful
man in the nation, abundantly able to give to party divisions their form
and pressure, and in effect to shape the action of the Government
according to his judgment by the authority with which he was invested,
and which he exerted with less restraint than had ever before or has
ever since been encountered by any minister in this country or in
Europe.
To no quarter, therefore, could our attention be more profitably
directed for instruction in the history and course of parties during his
political career than to the opinions and acts of that remarkable man.
The time has been, I am sensible, when, with vision distorted by
partisan prejudices, which seldom allow both sides of any question to be
seen, I could not have reviewed his course with the impartiality due to
truth and justice; but I am happy to believe that those feelings have
sufficiently lost their force to permit me, while dissenting more
thoroughly than ever from his principles, to do justice to his motives,
and to admit his sincerity and his desire to serve his country in the
very acts which I unreservedly condemn. The most obnoxious of his
opinions have here, thank God, become obsolete and exploded theories,
not at all dangerous as examples, and mainly referred to as historical
marks of our progress. Believing, as I think all liberal minds now do,
that they were honestly formed, we can speak of them without reproach to
their author, and censure them without being suspected of a design to
cast obloquy on his memory. The history of our partisan warfare has
presented, since his time, the anomalous feature of a persevering denial
in his name, by some of his followers, of the political opinions which
he not only did not affect to disclaim, but which he made it his
business on all fitting occasions to publish and advocate, believing
them to be right, and to the last moment of his life confidently
expecting that they would become, at no distant day, the general
sentiment of the country.
I have already referred to contemporaneous declarations, made in April,
1791, by John Adams and Alexander Hamilton, at an informal meeting of
General Washington's Cabinet, to which the Vice-President had been
invited, in favor of monarchical institutions according to the English
model. The terms in which those gentlemen expressed their admiration of,
and preference for, the English system of government, though differing
in particulars, were in no sense equivocal, nor can there be, at this
day, the slightest doubt of their authenticity. On the 13th of August,
in the same year, General Hamilton held another conversation with Mr.
Jefferson, of which the latter leaves the following notes:--
"I own," said Hamilton, "it is my own opinion, though I do not publish
it in Dan or Beersheba, that the present government is not that which
will answer the ends of society by giving stability and protection to
its rights, and that it will probably be found to be expedient to go
into the British form. However, since we have undertaken the experiment,
I am for giving it a fair course, whatever my expectations may be. The
success, indeed, is so far greater than I had expected, and therefore
success seems more possible than it had done heretofore, and there are
still other and other stages of improvement which, if the present does
not succeed, may be tried and ought to be tried before we give up the
republican form altogether; for that mind must be really depraved which
would not prefer the equality of political rights, which is the
foundation of pure republicanism, if it can be obtained consistently
with order. Therefore whoever by his writings disturbs the present order
of things is really blamable, however pure his intentions may be, and he
was sure Mr. Adams's were pure."
"This," Mr. Jefferson adds in his memorandum, "is the substance of a
declaration made in much more lengthy terms, and which seemed to be more
formal than usual for a private conversation between two, and as if
intended to qualify some less guarded expressions which had been dropped
on former occasions. Thomas Jefferson has committed it to writing the
moment of Alexander Hamilton's leaving the room."
The measures described by Hamilton as the stages of improvement already
adopted were doubtless the bank and funding system, and those still in
reserve were such as are recommended in his report on manufactures,
subsequently made.
In the Federal Convention which framed our present Constitution General
Hamilton submitted a series of propositions to be adopted as a basis for
the new government, which he supported in an elaborate and very able
speech. The debates of the Convention were reported by Mr. Madison, who
submitted the notes he had taken of his speech to General Hamilton,
which the latter admitted to be correct, contenting himself with a few
formal and verbal amendments. In the year 1810, before the proceedings
of the Convention were ordered to be published, the Rev. Dr. Mason,
intending to write the life of Hamilton, applied to Mr. Madison, then
President of the United States, for a copy of that speech, which was
furnished to him accompanied by the following note:--
"James Madison presents his respects to Dr. Mason with the promised
copy of Mr. Hamilton's observations in the General Convention on the
subject of a Federal Constitution, as noted at the time."
"WASHINGTON, _January 12th, 1810_."
Dr. Mason abandoned the idea of preparing the life, and a descendant of
his, a few years since, placed in my hands two of the documents
collected by his grandfather, one of which was the above note with a
copy of the speech. The following are extracts from the latter:--
"This view of the subject almost led him to despair that a republican
government could be established over a country of so great an extent. He
was sensible at the same time that it would be unwise to propose one of
any other form. In his private opinion he had no scruple in declaring,
supported as he was in the opinion of so many of the wise and the good,
that the British government was the best in the world; and he doubted
very much whether any thing short of it would do in America."
Speaking of the executive, he said: "As to the executive it seemed to be
admitted that no good one could be established on republican principles.
Was not this giving up the merits of the question, for can there be a
good government without a good executive? The English model was the only
good one on this subject. The hereditary interest of the king was so
interwoven with those of the nation, and his personal emolument so
great, that he was placed above the danger of being corrupted from
abroad," &c. Also, "their House of Lords is a most noble institution.
Having nothing to hope for by a change and a sufficient interest by
means of their property in being faithful to the national interest, they
form a permanent barrier against any pernicious innovation, whether
attempted on the part of the Crown or of the Commons."
On comparing these extracts with the speech, as published in the
"Madison Papers," I find them to accord in all respects. In the life of
Hamilton, by his son, the author indulges in harsh imputation upon the
conduct of Mr. Madison, in this connection, in the justice of which I am
deceived in the general sentiment of the country if he finds many to
agree with him; and through a fatality which often attends similar
demonstrations, he publishes in the same volume Hamilton's plan of
government, the original draft of which Dr. Mason informed Mr. Madison
was yet among the General's papers, and which is, word for word, the
same as the copy published in the "Madison Papers;" and also Hamilton's
own notes for his great speech in the Convention, which indicate the
character of the speech upon the point in question as fully as notes
ever prefigured a speech, and both of which confirm all that Mr. Madison
has said in regard to it.
The following are extracts from the notes:--
"Here I shall give my sentiments of the best form of government--not as
a thing attainable by us, but as a model which we ought to approach as
near as possible." "British Constitution best form." "There ought to be
a principle in the government capable of resisting the popular current."
"No periodical duration will come up to this." "The principle chiefly
intended to be established is this, that there must be a permanent
_will_." "A democratic assembly is to be checked by a democratic senate,
and both these by a democratic chief magistrate: the end will not be
answered; the means will not be equal to the object." "The monarch must
have proportional strength. He ought to be hereditary, and to have so
much power that it will not be his interest to risk much to acquire
more." "The advantage of a monarch is this, he is above corruption,--he
must always intend in respect to foreign nations the true interests and
glory of the people." "Republics liable to foreign corruption and
intrigue. Holland--Athens." "Effect of the British government." "A
vigorous execution of the laws, and a vigorous defense of the people
will result." "Better chance for a good government." "It is said a
republican government will not admit of a vigorous execution." "It is
therefore bad; for the goodness of a government consists in a vigorous
execution."
It thus appears that the opinions avowed to Mr. Jefferson on different
occasions, one of which seems to have been sought for the purpose, were
no more than repetitions of those he had avowed on the floor of the
Convention, and of which he knew that Mr. Madison possessed an authentic
record that would some day see the light; indeed, if such had not been
the fact he would have just as frankly repeated them, for they were the
settled convictions of his mind during his life--as fresh when they were
announced to Mr. Jefferson as when promulgated in the Convention. Nor
had he any motives for concealment of his views, if concealment had
been, as it was not, characteristic of the man, for he was equally
convinced that the government which had been established would prove a
failure, and that the wisdom of his plans and the propriety of adopting
them would thus become apparent to all.
We have here the words of General Hamilton himself--in his declarations
deliberately made and attested in the most solemn and responsible form
by Thomas Jefferson, and in his speech as reported by James Madison,
under still more specific responsibility, confirmed by his own notes for
that speech now published by his son and biographer--all going to the
same end, viz: to show that he was in principle a monarchist, and that
he preferred a monarchical to a republican form of government.
But Jefferson and Madison were politically his opponents. Let us now see
what his oldest and best friend says upon this point. Gouverneur Morris,
his coadjutor in the Convention and in politics through life, and his
eulogist at the grave, gave in 1811 an unreserved _exposé_ of Hamilton's
opinions on this very question, in a letter to Robert Walsh, then
editor of the "National Gazette," written, doubtless, in answer to
inquiries. The reader should procure this letter, and will find in it
much matter of interest. I omit, among other things, what it says in
respect to Hamilton's purity, and his frank and honorable character and
bearing in political matters, having said as much myself, and with no
less sincerity.
"General Hamilton," says Morris, "had little share in forming the
Constitution. He disliked it, believing all republican government to be
radically defective. He admired, nevertheless, the British Constitution,
which I consider an aristocracy in fact though a monarchy in name....
General Hamilton hated republican government because he confounded it
with democratical government, and he detested the latter because he
believed it must end in despotism, and be, in the mean time, destructive
to public morality.... But although General Hamilton knew these things
from the study of history, and perceived them by the intuition of
genius, he never failed on every occasion to advocate the excellence of,
and avow his attachment to monarchical government."
In another part of the letter, "one marked trait in the General's
character was the pertinacious adherence to opinions he had once
formed."[10]
[10] Sparks's _Life of Gouverneur Morris_, Vol. III. p. 260.
In a previous letter, written shortly after Hamilton's death, (December,
1804,) to Governor Aaron Ogden, Morris says: "Our poor friend Hamilton
bestrode his hobby to the great annoyance of his friends and not without
injury to himself. More a theoretic than a practical man, he was not
sufficiently convinced that a system may be good in itself and bad in
relation to particular circumstances. He well knew that his favorite
form was inadmissible unless as the result of civil war; and I suspect
that his belief in what he called _an approaching crisis_[11] arose from
a conviction that the kind of government most suitable, in his, opinion,
to this extensive country, could be established in no other way."
[11] The _italics_ are mine.
Hamilton not only cherished his preference for monarchical institutions
to the very close of his life, but we have good reason to believe that
the expectation that some crisis in the affairs of the country,
encouraged by the weakness of our political system, would yet arise and
would lead to their introduction, was equally abiding. His letters and
writings will be found to contain many intimations to that effect. I
will notice two instances. His letter to Timothy Pickering in 1803, is
the only attempt that I have ever seen, coming from himself, to explain
his course in the Convention. There may have been others, but I would be
surprised indeed by the production of any thing from his pen denying his
preference for the monarchical form of government, although such was the
standing charge of his political opponents. None such, I feel very
confident, ever existed. That letter concludes with the following very
significant remark:--
"I sincerely hope that it may not hereafter be discovered that, through
want of sufficient attention to the last idea," (that of giving adequate
energy to the Government,) "the experiment of Republican Government,
even in this country, has not been as complete, as satisfactory, and as
decisive as could be wished."
The explanation of "his conduct, motives, and views" in accepting the
challenge of Colonel Burr--probably the last paper containing any
allusion to public affairs that he ever wrote--closes with expressions,
italicized by myself, remarkably in harmony with the intimations of
Gouverneur Morris to Aaron Ogden:--
"To those who, with me, abhorring the practice of dueling, may think
that I ought on no account to add to the number of bad examples, I
answer that my relative situation, as well in public as private,
enforcing all the considerations which men of the world designate honor,
imposed on me, as I thought, a peculiar necessity not to decline the
call. The ability to be in future useful, whether in resisting mischief
or effecting good, _in those crises of our public affairs which seem
likely to happen, would probably be inseparable from a conformity with
prejudice in this particular_."
Although not so pointed in expressing it, his disposition toward the
State governments was scarcely more favorable than toward the plan of
the general government. In his letter to Pickering, at a period when
their usefulness and importance to the system were better appreciated,
he says: "Though I would have enlarged the legislative power of the
General Government, yet I never contemplated the abolition of the State
governments, but, on the contrary, they were in some particulars a
part,--constituent parts,--of my plan." But let us see what part it was
that he would have them perform. He said in the Convention: "If they
(the State governments) are extinguished, he was persuaded that great
economy might be obtained by substituting a general government. He did
not mean, however, to shock the public opinion by proposing such a
measure. _On the other hand, he saw no other necessity for declining
it._ They are not necessary for any of the great purposes of commerce,
revenue, or agriculture. Subordinate authorities, he was aware, would be
necessary. There must be district tribunals, corporations for local
purposes. But _cui bono_ the vast and expensive apparatus now
appertaining to the States?"
These were Hamilton's views in respect to the State governments, as
expressed in the Convention, according to Mr. Madison's report. In this
case it is also fortunate for the cause of truth that, from a paper
written by Hamilton just as the General Convention adjourned, and
published by his son, it appears very plainly that his views upon the
subject cannot have been greatly misreported by Mr. Madison. In this
paper he speculates upon the probable fate of the Constitution; after
saying, in confirmation of my suggestion that he doubted the
dispositions of the people in other respects than their intelligence and
capacity, that the Constitution would have in its favor "the good will
of men of property in the several States who wish a government of the
Union able to protect them against domestic violence, and the
_depredations which the democratic spirit is apt to make on property_,"
he adds: "If the Government be adopted, it is probable General
Washington will be the President of the United States. This will insure
a wise choice of men to administer the Government, and a good
administration. A good administration will conciliate the confidence and
affection of the people, and perhaps enable the Government to acquire
more consistency than the proposed Constitution seems to promise for so
great a country. _It may then triumph over the State governments and
reduce them to entire subordination, dividing the larger States into
smaller districts._ The organs of the General Government may also
acquire additional strength." The _italics_ in the above extracts are
all my own except as to the word _organs_. He would not "shock the
public opinion" by proposing to extinguish the State governments, but
there was _no other_ reason for omitting to do so. It would be well if
it were done, but it was not wise to shock the public mind upon a point
in respect to which it was known to be sensitive. But he would reduce
them to entire subordination, triumph over and consequently humiliate
them. It would be a poor compliment to Hamilton's knowledge of men and
of the effect of public measures, to assume that he did not know that
such would be the surest as well as the safest way to extinguish them in
the end.
In a letter to Gouverneur Morris, so late as in 1802, a little more than
two years before his death, and which will be found in "The Works of
Hamilton," edited by his son, (Vol. VI. p. 529,) he thus unbosoms
himself to his friend: "Mine is an odd destiny. Perhaps no man in the
United States has sacrificed or done more for the present Constitution
than myself; and contrary to all my anticipations of its fate, as you
know from the very beginning, I am still laboring to prop the frail and
worthless fabric. Yet I have the murmurs of its friends no less than the
curses of its foes for my reward. What can I do better than withdraw
from the scene? Every day proves to me more and more that this American
world was not made for me."
There would seem to be no force in evidence, however appropriate its
source or credible its character, if that we have produced is not
conclusive in regard to the opinions of General Hamilton upon certain
points. It proves, _first_, that he regarded monarchical institutions,
according to the English model, as being the most perfect government
that ever existed; _secondly_, that he would have preferred the
establishment of such a government here, and was only prevented from
advocating it by a conviction that it was made impracticable by the
adverse public opinion of the time; _thirdly_, that he thought it was
our duty, nevertheless, to approach that model with our Government as
nearly as the prejudices of the people would permit, and that he
introduced into the Convention a plan by which that object might be
reached; _fourthly_, that he regarded the present Federal Constitution,
which, as lately as two years before his death, in a free communication
to his trusted friend, he called "a frail and worthless fabric," as
inadequate to the purposes of a good government; that he had accepted it
at the time as a temporary bond of union, but believed from the
beginning that it would prove a failure and fall into contempt; that he
believed that this result would open the way to popular tumults forcing
intervention, and to convulsions through the evils of which the people
would, at no distant day, become convinced of their error, and consent
to institutions substantially similar to those he favored; and,
_fifthly_, that his preference for monarchical institutions was a fixed
and cherished sentiment; that although at times encouraged by his
success in measures he had no right to hope for under the Constitution
as he knew that instrument was intended to be, he yet invariably
returned to his first opinion adverse to the sufficiency of the
Constitution, and descended to the grave not only without a change in
his opinions, but with increased convictions of their perfect soundness.
It has been a question often mooted whether the idea of using the power
with which he was or might be clothed to overthrow the actual
government, and to introduce the system he so earnestly preferred, was
ever seriously entertained by Hamilton. Such designs were freely charged
upon him by many of the old Republicans, who, under the full influence
of partisan prejudices, doubtless believed that he waited only for a fit
opportunity to attempt them. His repeated and undisguised expressions of
a preference for monarchical institutions, to friends and foes, when the
people of the United States, whose officer he was, had established a
government which they intended should be so widely different from such
institutions, were well calculated to engender the suspicion. Plain men
naturally imagined that a man like Hamilton would do much and incur
high responsibilities for the accomplishment of an object so near his
heart. Mr. Jefferson, who was not a man of a suspicious temperament,
through the fiery and protracted contests of parties, at the head of
which they respectively stood, was evidently at times alarmed by
similar apprehensions. But toward the close of his life, when
partisan asperities had been long since forgotten, in a letter
to myself he virtually exonerated Hamilton from the charge in these
expressions:--"For Hamilton frankly avowed that he considered the
British Constitution, with all the corruptions of its administration, as
the most perfect model of government that had ever been devised by the
wit of man,--professing, however, at the same time, that the spirit of
this country was so fundamentally republican that it would be visionary
to think of introducing monarchy here, and that therefore it was the
duty of its administrators to conduct it upon the principles their
constituents had elected."[12]
[12] See Appendix.
Mr. Charles Francis Adams has placed before us, in his life of his
grandfather, John Adams, a series of facts bearing upon this point with
no ordinary significance. They are not brought forward in support of any
such charge, but as raising a question for the consideration of his
readers, whether it is not possible that in the pains he took to
increase greatly the provisional forces authorized to meet our
difficulties with France, and to convert the whole into a permanent
military establishment; in the readiness with which he fell in with the
scheme of Miranda, to conquer, through the joint operations of Great
Britain and the United States, the Floridas, Louisiana, and the South
American possessions of Spain, in case of a rupture between us and
France; and in his prompt consent to take command of the troops to be
so employed, General Hamilton was influenced by a desire to bring about
the crisis to which he had always looked as one that would present a fit
opportunity for the establishment here of the political institutions he
preferred.
These are grave matters, and of a nature calculated to challenge a new
and stricter examination of one of those critical periods which have
often occurred in our history, and from which we have had so many
providential deliverances. The subject is treated with becoming delicacy
and great caution by the author, whose conclusion, of which we have only
a hint, may possibly have been influenced by family traditions,
tinctured unavoidably with strong personal prejudices but never wanting
in intelligence. I will not undertake to speculate even as to what
General Hamilton might have done or have left undone if he had found
himself at the head of a large and permanent military force, and the
country convulsed by those popular outbreaks, the expectation of which
seems to have been never absent from his mind or from the minds of his
disciples. He might have mounted his "hobby"--as Morris termed his
passion for monarchical institutions--and have struck a blow in their
behalf, acting in the spirit of other "strong minds" who, as Mr. C. F.
Adams well and truly says, "seldom fail to associate with dreams of
their own glory the modes of exercising power for the good of their
fellow-men. Considering their happiness as mainly dependent upon a sense
of security from domestic convulsions, his first aim would have been to
gain that end at any rate, even if it should be done at some expense of
their liberties." But looking at the subject with no other feeling than
a sincere desire to arrive at a correct solution of the circumstances
narrated by Mr. Adams, I cannot bring my mind to the conclusion referred
to.
I can well conceive that Hamilton might have been led to avail himself
of such a state of things for a _coup de main_ of some decided character
if its existence had been brought about by others, or had been the
result of fortuitous circumstances--a contingency which his mind had
doubtless often contemplated. But I do not think that he would have
planned or contributed to bring about such a state of things involving
to so grave an extent the public order and the peace of the country.
Such a course would have been at variance with some of his most
cherished principles and inconsistent with his personal character. The
preservation of order, and a respect for the individual rights of
persons and of property, appeared always to be the objects of his
greatest solicitude. It was only because he did not think that these
could be effectually secured under any other form of government that he
preferred monarchical institutions, acknowledging at the same time that
they were at war with the principles of natural justice, and only
allowable upon that of their absolute necessity to secure society
against the occasional waywardness of a majority of its members. It was
mainly because of the very erroneous opinions he had formed of the
dispositions in this respect of a majority of his adopted countrymen
that he was induced to devote his splendid talents to hopeless efforts
to sustain principles so irreconcilable with those for which he had
periled his life in the war of the Revolution. I say erroneous, not only
because I think them such, but because experience, the only unerring
test, has so proved them. We are, at the moment when I write, a half
century from the transactions which form the subject of our
consideration, and I venture nothing in saying that there is no country
in Europe in which order has, in the interim, been better preserved, or
the rights of persons and property been more secure, than in the United
States; none in which the power of government has been more stable or
more adequate to the purposes of its institution.
But this is a wide field, for which I have neither space nor time. It
becomes me to remember, whilst occupied not without pleasure with these
retrospective investigations and meditations, that I have already passed
by several cheerful years, the allotted threescore-and-ten,--that period
of such solemn import which the undeserved favor of an always kind
Providence has permitted me to pass, not only with life but with the
means and the faculties to enjoy life,--and that if I hope to complete
the work before me I must confine myself more to the highway of my
subject, and leave its by-paths to the explorations of younger men.
I cannot, nevertheless, refrain from a brief reference to transactions
which have more than once occurred in this country, have made a greater
impression on my mind than they seem to have made on others, and which I
think have a strong bearing upon the question of the American love of
order and respect for property and its rights. Although it is not
probable that the facts of these can ever be sufficiently understood
abroad to be correctly appreciated, it is otherwise here, and they are
well worthy of our profoundest meditations. I allude to scenes which
have been presented at San Francisco, which were at the moment of such
thrilling interest, but appear already to have sunk into oblivion amid
the ceaseless bustle and never-halting progress of American life.
Look at that young but already large and flourishing city! Regard her as
she stood at the commencement of the extraordinary steps that were taken
for her relief! Think of the scenes through which she was made to pass,
and the condition to which she has been restored! An active and artful
portion of her population thoroughly steeped in corruption, vice, and
crime; her municipal authorities, the direct offspring of that
corruption, not only regardless of duty but fraternizing with criminals,
deriding the complaints of the injured, and scoffing at their prayers
for official interference; despair succeeding hope, and the opinion that
protection is at an end, and that nature may soon reassert her empire at
length ripening into conviction in the breasts of the good of all
classes; the general meeting of the citizens, and the appointment of the
Committee of Vigilance with unlimited powers and subject to
responsibility to no other tribunal than to the congregated mass of the
people from whom they derive their authority and their power; the
regular military organization adopted by the Committee and forthwith
called into the field of duty, sufficient in men, arms, and equipments
to crush resistance to the authority of the Committee in the city, and
to deter the exercise of any other authority at that remote distance
that might have a right to claim cognizance of the crimes they seek to
suppress; all legal rule superseded by that of the Committee of
Vigilance and put down on the instant of its assertion; criminals who
had been set at large by the former authorities re-arrested on charges
of capital offences, tried before the Committee, informally but honestly
and intelligently, found guilty and executed; the functionaries who had
connived at those offences arraigned at the bar of the same tribunal and
dealt with according to their deserts; crimes detected and felons
dragged from their hiding-places to meet a just punishment; men to whom
no specific offence could be traced, but who were notorious enemies of
order and abettors of crime, banished not to return under penalty of
death, and every effort made to resist or defeat the action of the
Committee crushed by an all-sufficient military force. The power of the
Committee continues in active and constant exercise for nearly three
months, when the purification of the city from crime and from criminals
being accomplished, the authority of the laws is restored, also the use
of the ballot-box which had been desecrated; this restoration is by the
order and in pursuance of the authority and power of the Committee which
are voluntarily laid down with the approbation and consent of a
community consisting of from 25,000 to 30,000 persons.
There is no good reason for saying that during the whole of that period
and in the midst of such stirring scenes the power of the Committee was
in a single instance exercised to divest any innocent man of his
property, or to oppress him in any way, or to interfere with his legal
rights further than to compel submission to the temporary supremacy of
that body, or to punish the innocent, or to enable the guilty to escape,
or to aggrandize the Committee, or to benefit its members, their
friends, or its _employées_, or to do an act of intentional injustice to
any human being. During the government of the Committee the business
concerns of the city and the vocations of its citizens were carried on
with at least as much regularity and success as ever. Since its
resignation and the consequent dispersion of its power not a banished
man has returned contrary to the terms of his expulsion, and no member
of the Committee, nor any one who acted by and within its authority, has
been called to account for his acts within the bounds either of the city
or of the State to which it belongs.
Is it probable that there is any city in Europe of equal size in which
its legally established authorities could have been suspended by the
irregular action of its own people with similar results,--in which the
substituted power could be exercised with equal wisdom and forbearance,
and laid down with so few causes for individual complaint? My
opportunities for observation, although considerable, have been less
than those of some others, and I may be wrong in thinking as I do that
such things could not be done by any other people in the world.
The remedy for the social and political crimes which called the
Committee of Vigilance into existence was a fearful one, and must be so
regarded by all thinking and virtuous minds, and it would seem
paradoxical to set up such a crowning act of disorder--that of the
subversion of all legal authority, for even the shortest period--as an
exhibition of a love of order and respect for the rights of persons and
of property on the part of the actors; but I cannot resist the belief
that the transaction afforded the strongest proof of the existence of
those great principles in their minds, and that a proper sense of them
and a determination to maintain them will seldom be wanting on the part
of those who can act as did the Committee of San Francisco and its
supporters.
But I ask pardon for this digression, and return to my subject. Many
considerations besides those suggested by Hamilton's invariable
solicitude for the preservation of order and by his constant respect for
the individual rights of persons and of property, press themselves upon
my mind against the conclusion intimated by Mr. C. F. Adams, and against
the probability that General Hamilton ever contemplated the creation of
a state of things that would justify or facilitate the employment of
force to establish institutions more congenial with his taste and
judgment than those we possessed. But I forbear to urge them, partly
because I have devoted as much time and space to the subject as I can
afford, and also because I am well satisfied that his knowledge of the
certain opposition of General Washington to any such scheme or design
would have been sufficient to deter him from undertaking either during
the lifetime of the General, even if his own disposition had pointed in
that direction.
It was at no time the intention of President Washington to give his
sanction to the opinions so generally, and as it now appears so justly,
attributed to General Hamilton. Never was man more strongly pledged to
the support of republican government, or more unchangeably determined to
maintain the responsibilities he had incurred in that regard. Embracing
with all his heart the Declaration of Independence, in which its
principles were delineated with the pencil of truth, he did more than
any other man to overthrow the government against which it was hurled,
and to open the way for the establishment of a republic in its place.
None knew better than he that such was the object of the Revolution, and
his resolution was immovable that the sufferings and sacrifices which
had been incurred in support of that object should not fail to
accomplish it through any act of omission or commission on his part.
Every important act in his eventful career shows that he regarded
himself on that point as invested by his country with a sacred trust.
When the bright prospect which he had largely contributed to open to his
countrymen for the realization of their wishes in this respect was in
danger of being obscured, if not forever blasted, by means similar to
those which have so often prevented or subverted free government, by the
violence of an exasperated soldiery, he threw himself into the breach,
and saved at the same time by his heroic and patriotic effort their
interests and the honor of his brothers-in-arms. When the minds of the
earnest and jealous friends of liberty were frenzied by an ill-advised
attempt in the same quarter to introduce hereditary distinctions amongst
us, he was again found at the post of duty; and, though feelingly
indulgent to his military companions, as well as satisfied of the
perfect purity of their intentions, he nevertheless promptly and
successfully employed the great influence he derived from their respect
for his character and their confidence in his friendship to induce them
to abandon their project.
In the full possession of such claims to the esteem, gratitude, and
trust of his countrymen, superadded to those which were due for his
military services, he closed the first great period of his splendid life
by presiding over the Federal Convention, and by assenting to, and
recommending to the favor of the people, a Constitution eminently
republican in its form, and in the principles upon which it was founded.
So far was he from encouraging the spread of opposite sentiments that
there is, on the contrary, much reason to believe that it was by making
his views of the subject known to those about him that the
anti-republican tone which Jefferson found, on his arrival from France,
so prevalent in social and political circles at the seat of government,
was kept in check until public opinion became strong enough to
extinguish it altogether. Speaking to this point, Mr. Jefferson says,
"The truth is that the Federalists, pretending to be the exclusive
friends of General Washington, have ever done what they could to sink
his character by hanging theirs on it, and by representing as the enemy
of Republicans, him who of all men is best entitled to the appellation
of the father of that Republic which they were endeavoring to subvert,
and the Republicans to maintain. They cannot deny, because the elections
proclaimed the truth, that the great body of the nation approved the
republican measures. General Washington was himself sincerely a friend
to the republican principles of the Constitution. His faith perhaps in
its duration might not have been as confident as mine; but he repeatedly
declared to me that he was determined it should have a fair chance of
success, and that he would lose the last drop of his blood in its
support against any attempt which might be made to change it from its
republican form. He made these declarations the oftener because he knew
my suspicions that Hamilton had other views, and he wished to quiet my
jealousies upon the subject."[13]
[13] See Appendix.
Independently of his principles, which were the main source, doubtless,
of the personal solicitude he often manifested upon this point, General
Washington was a man of too much sense and reflection not to know that
the world would in all future time hold him responsible for the
overthrow of the republican principle here, if its extinguishment
occurred in his day, and he was too careful of his well-earned fame, and
anticipated too correctly the elevation it was destined to reach in
connection with the history of his country, not to do all in his power
to guard it from detriment upon a point at once so delicate and so
momentous. Hamilton was the first man to whom he would make his
sentiments known, and I can find nothing in the positions which they
occupied toward each other which would induce me to entertain the
opinion that Hamilton would have ventured on an attempt to shake his
patriotic resolutions on that point through the influence he was
supposed to possess over the actions of Washington in other respects.
There is, I am quite sure, nothing more essential to a right
appreciation of many of the most important incidents in our political
history, than a correct understanding of the relations that existed
between those distinguished men. It cannot fail to shed considerable
light on much that occurred during the government of the Confederation,
and is perhaps the only touchstone by which the measures of government
and many other public transactions between 1789 and 1799--between the
organization of the new government and the death of Washington--can be
safely tested.
I will give my interpretation of the character of those relations, fully
aware of the misrepresentations and misunderstandings to which they have
been subjected, and from which no subject connected with partisan
conflicts can, it appears, be entirely free, but conscious of a single
desire to state things truly, and of an inability to do intentional
injustice to either. It will be for others to judge of my success.
Mr. Charles F. Adams, in the work to which I have referred,[14] says,
"Without much hold upon the judgment or affections of the people at
large, he (Hamilton) had yet by the effect of his undisputed abilities
and his masculine will gained great sway over the minds of the
intelligent merchants along the Atlantic border. His previous doctrines,
in unison with the feelings and interests of the most conservative
class, had drawn to him their particular confidence, whilst his position
in the first administration had facilitated the establishment by him of
a chain of influence resting for its main support on _his power over the
mind of Washington himself_, but carried equally through all the
ramifications of the executive department. _Thus it happened that even
after he ceased to be personally present his opinions continued to shape
the policy of Washington's second administration, and even that of his
successor._" This declaration extending so far would have been deemed
quite credible at the period to which it relates, and, coming from the
grandson of that "_successor_"--himself the undisguised enemy of
Hamilton--was probably called forth by the recent publication of the
private papers of the latter.
[14] _Life of John Adams._ The _italics_ are my own.
As far as Mr. Adams affirms that the policy of Washington's
administration, and also, in many very important respects, that of his
successor, were guided by the opinions of Hamilton, his declaration has
my full concurrence. No candid and intelligent man can, I think, read
the evidence which has recently appeared, in connection with facts
previously known, without acknowledging the undeniable truth of these
positions. But I do not by any means intend to concede the control of
Hamilton over the mind of Washington which is implied by the terms
employed by Mr. Adams without qualifications which limit and very
materially change its character. The policy of both administrations was
guided by the opinions of Hamilton, but those opinions received their
influence through different channels, and were enforced in very
different ways. Hamilton's opinions, when known as his, had very little
weight with the successor of Washington, save, in many cases, to secure
a bad reception for themselves; but that successor had little if any
control over, or influence with, the members of his own cabinet, and not
much with Congress or the Federal party, by whom the policy of his
administration was shaped. With them Hamilton's opinions established the
rule of action. In respect to the two latter, this arose mainly from the
sway he was capable of exerting over them by the force of his great
talents, and from a general concurrence in his views. In respect to the
prominent members of Mr. Adams's cabinet his control arose from the
power he had in part acquired over their minds whilst they were also
members of General Washington's administration. Timothy Pickering, who,
after the retirement of Mr. Jefferson and the brief term of Randolph,
was Secretary of State under both Presidents, was a remarkable man,
sincere and honest, I am willing to believe, in his political opinions,
but savagely bitter in his feelings toward his opponents. It seemed
pretty much a matter of course in him to hate those to whose political
course he was opposed, and, as is usually the case with minds thus
constituted, he was equally bigoted in his devotion to those with whom
he agreed and acted.
General Hamilton was his _beau ideal_ of a politician and statesman, and
it would not have been an easy matter in him to have dissented from any
opinion positively advanced by Hamilton, whatever his own first
impressions on the subject might have been. Mr. McHenry, Secretary of
War in both cabinets, was undoubtedly an honorable and well-disposed
gentleman. He was, in the opinion of those who had the best
opportunities for judging, including Washington and Hamilton, not
entirely competent for the duties of his office, and that circumstance
drove him the more to rely for support on Hamilton, for whom he
cherished an early and ardent friendship. His personal devotion to
Hamilton was such as to prevent Mr. Adams from longer overlooking his
incompetency, as Washington had done, and precipitated his resignation.
Oliver Wolcott, Secretary of the Treasury, the member of his cabinet
most trusted by President Adams because the least suspected, was,
notwithstanding, the one among his official advisers who went the
greatest lengths to testify his entire allegiance to Hamilton, who had
been the artificer of his political fortunes from the beginning and by
whose influence he had been advanced to the high position he occupied.
Throughout he advised with and was assisted by Hamilton in the
performance of his official duties. Such was Hamilton's "power over his
mind" that he was applied to successfully by the former for evidence of
facts to be derived from the treasury archives to sustain an attack that
Hamilton contemplated making upon the President--an attack that he did
make, although he acknowledged to Wolcott that it would not be regarded
as proper that he should have received the evidence at his hands, and
that that fact ought not therefore to be known.
No one can read the correspondence between General Hamilton and Mr.
Wolcott, as recently published with Hamilton's Works, without regretting
that the parties to it should have been so forgetful of the proprieties
due to the occasions to which it relates, or without a disposition to
excuse the strong expression of Mr. Charles F. Adams, in speaking of his
grandfather's cabinet, applied to Mr. Wolcott "as the most venomous
serpent of them all."
Mr. Charles F. Adams places Hamilton's sway over the mind of Washington
upon the same footing with that which he exerted over the executive
department, composed principally of the members of his second cabinet of
whom we have been speaking. From this view I entirely dissent. If
Hamilton possessed any power over the mind of Washington, it was of a
very different character from that which he exercised over those
members. Washington was to an unusual extent free from the weakness of
overrating his own powers; with just conceptions of his capacities for
public service he was always ready to place them at the public disposal,
but he was very far from pretending to qualifications which he did not
possess. No one was more sensible than he that the science of civil
government--the construction of constitutions and the administration of
the civil affairs of the State--were not best learned in the camp, where
so large a portion of his life had been spent. He therefore, as we have
seen, selected two of the ablest statesmen in the country, particularly
versed in those portions of the public business which he devolved upon
them. They differed irreconcilably in respect to the policy of the
administration, and in the performance of his duty he decided between
their conflicting opinions in favor of those of Hamilton. Preferring the
policy of the latter he adopted the measures he recommended to carry it
out, which happened also to appertain principally to Hamilton's
department, and sustained him in their execution. In doing so he but
sustained the measures of his administration and views which were either
originally his own or made such upon conviction. Participating in the
general opinion in favor of Hamilton's remarkable talents, having full
opportunities to judge of his character, and confiding in his integrity,
he extended to him, it is true, but with the purest motives, the degree
of countenance and trust which established his extraordinary power and
influence. Of the consequences, as well to his administration as to the
country, we will have much to say hereafter. But it would be a great
mistake to suppose that there ever was a period at which, or a
transaction between them in which, their relative positions, rights, and
duties were either forgotten or disregarded. It was well understood that
the degree of weight to be attached to Hamilton's advice would depend
upon the unbiased opinion which Washington himself should form of its
soundness, influenced as he naturally would be, and always was, by a
conviction of Hami
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