GIFT OF Aaucrou LIBRARY RECOLLECTIONS, HISTORICAL, POLITICAL, BIOGRAPHICAL, AND SOCIAL. CHARLES J. INGERSOLL. RECOLLECTIONS, HISTORICAL, POLITICAL, BIOGRAPHICAL, AND SOCIAL, OP CHARLES J. INGERSOLL, By Experience, Presenting Annals, with. Portraiture of Personages of this Country, from Genet s Arrival in 1792, to the Purchase of Louisiana m 1803; with which increase of the original United States, many of their great Events, Physical and Consti tutional, are supposed to be connected. I1ST T^VO VOI^TJIMKS. VOL. I. PHILADELPHIA: J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO. - 1861. Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1860, BY CHARLES J. INGERSOLL, In the Clerk s Office of the District Court of the United States for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. Bancron LIBRARY CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. Author s motives and opportunities for history of acquisition of Louis iana Fairly obtained, for peace, not by force or for power Texas, Florida, Oregon, Mexico, California, all offspring of Louisiana Immen sity of public domain Natural cohesion of American United States Genet s attempt on Louisiana His recall Proclamation of neutrality Its corollaries Blount s conspiracy European wars casting Louisiana on the United States Description of Far West African slavery by British insistance in American colonies Cotton monopoly Vast space the advantage of Washington s foresight of it And John Quincy Adams s defence of it Views of Rufus King and Alexander Hamil ton, pp. 17-55. CHAPTER II. Logan law George Logan Family, residence, and politics With Franklin at Passy Deborah Logan Her memoirs Logan s French mission Finds La Fayette near Hamburg Condition of France English politics Death of Burke Logan at Paris Talleyrand Secre tary of State Mission of Pinckney, Marshall, and Gerry Liberalism Five European Republics Democratic Pope Great reforms President Washington s consultation on Genet s reception Resolved contrary to Hamilton s objection Franklin s treaties with France suspended American parties thereupon Jefferson s resignation Monroe appointed to supersede Morris in France Monroe recalled Pinckney rejected at Paris Jay s treaty His unpublished instructions Blair McClena- chan s protest Franklin s treaties confirmed by all great powers at Paris, in 1856 Hamilton resigned, but ruling Randolph s removal Washington s welcome to Adet Retirement John Adams President His Secretaries, Timothy Pickering and Oliver Wolcott, from Washing ton s administration Congress convoked specially Resentment of 861836 VI CONTENTS. French insults and depredations French triple mission at Paris Par ticulars Bribery alleged and denied Secretary Pickering s report Public indignation Hostile measures Departure of Pinckney and Marshall Stay of Gerry But declining action Logan s active inter vention Jefferson s letter to Mazzei Schimmelpenninck Merlin Logan s prompt success France pacific United States belligerant Logan s return, pp. 56-194. CHAPTER III. Adams s administration Special session of Congress President s war speech Dispatches from the Ministers in France War measures Secretary Pickering s report Acts of Naturalization Alien Sedition Popular songs Fast-day Abercrombie s sermon Riot French treaties repealed Hamilton s quarrel with Washington Hamilton s appointment to command the army President s objection to it Wash ington s insistence Knox overlaid Pinckney s consent to Hamilton s promotion His passion for war Proposed misappropriation of secret service money Impression that war was necessary for strengthening the Federal Constitution Cabal of Miranda, Hamilton, Pickering, and King for invasion of Spanish America Resisted by President Adams Frustrated by Logan Feud between adherents of Adams and Hamilton Confidential advices from Murray, American Minister in Holland His nomination with Ellsworth and Davie as Ministers to France The Logan law Hamilton s martial ascendancy Washington called out Logan s interview with Adams and Washington Their aversion to his intervention Barlow s letter to Washington Washington s objections to La Fayette s visit to the United States Washington s decided aver sion to France Franklin s French treaties Washington s last years, death, and obituary Censures by Adams and his Ministers of themselves Discord and downfall of his administration, pp. 195-272. CHAPTER IV. Treaty of Mortefontaine France pacific United States belligerant Talleyrand s letter to Pichon Nomination of peace Ministers Con demned by Hamilton and his adherents Advent of Bonaparte His brother Joseph and other Ministers appointed to treat Negotiation at a stand Relieved by Bonaparte s preferring maritime principles to indemnities for losses His assertion of free ships free goods Treaty n Armed neutrality Pichon with French treaty at Washington Fes- 1- " tival at Mortefontaine Bonaparte s argument for neutral rights Their final English recognition Ratification of Treaty of Mortefontaine. pp. 273-302. CONTENTS. vil CHAPTER V. Jefferson s administration His independence of French undue influ ence Deborah Logan s profile of him, and of his conversation with . Genet His difference with Hamilton Account of Hamilton Wash ington s social superiority Jefferson a reformer Hamilton a projector Washington inflexible republican Jefferson s Secretaries Madison. Gallatin, Smith, Dearborn Lincoln Social reforms and refinements Jefferson s social superiority Success of his reforms Aaron Burr His daughter and son-in-law Macon Kandolph Other members of Con gress, pp. 303-352. CHAPTER VI. Foreign missions Robert R. Livingston Charles Pinckney Con suls Jefferson s inaugural Louisiana Rufus King s announcement of its cession by Spain to France Secretary Madison s inexplicit instruc tions to the Foreign Ministers Jefferson s letter to Livingston against free ships free goods Livingston at Paris Lord Cornwallis there to make a treaty Livingston s active and able negotiations Their diffi- culties Whether Florida a part of Louisiana King s active agency Joseph Bonaparte applied to by Livingston His depreciation of Louis iana French expedition equipped for Louisiana, first under Bernadotte, then Victor Bonaparte s determination Disastrous end of his war lust Fortunate result of Jefferson s peace passion, pp. 353-382. CHAPTER VII. Occlusion of Mississippi by Spanish Intendant Jefferson s doubtful message to Congress French early design Spanish persisting plans of exclusive possession of Mississippi Views of King and other American statesmen to possession of all the valleys of the Mississippi and St. Law rence President Washington s early anticipation of Monroe doctrine All the original statesmen, except Jay, of that opinion Large territo ries vital to republicanism Bonaparte s designs Curious anonymous h x. pamphlet on the subject Spanish Government disown occlusion of I Mississippi Proceedings in Congress on the subject Jefferson s confi dential message Vote of two millions But his inflexible abstinence from all military action or preparation Monroe appointed Special Envoy Livingston s advices differing from Jefferson s instructions , Majorities in Congress for Jefferson s abnegation Louisiana cast for tuitously on United States, pp. 383-411. Vlll CONTENTS. CHAPTER VIII. Senate Its constitution Cicero s idea of best government Senate a secret body Chronological coincidences of French revolution with American republicanism War provoked by England against French Republic First aggressions on American commerce English hostilities condemned by English historians as waged against foreign freedom Monroe s motion to make Senate open instead of secret Eenewed efforts for that change Finally effected on Martin s resolutions during the contest concerning Gallatin s seat Whether private or public ses sions best Application and leave for reporters First public debate in Senate On occlusion of the Mississippi Ross s resolutions Breck- inridge s amendments Speeches of Ross, Wright White Clinton Dayton Cocke Mason Jackson Morris Anderson Yote unan imous for insistance on right, but without force, pp. 412-458. THIS volume was printed by Mr. Ingersoll in his lifetime. The civil war, coming on, so absorbed all public interest, he did not think it best then to publish it. Mr. Ingersoll died in May, 1862. Cir cumstances have since delayed its publication. The second volume, on the subject of the Terri tories, to which he adverts in this one, though left by him in a considerable state of preparation, is hardly enough so to make its publication possible. November, 1886. ix E BEAT A. Page 33, line 17. For Alexander Jones Dallas read Alexander James Dallas. Page 66, line 3d from bottom. For Yrago read Yrujo. Page 77, line 11. For Cobentz read CobentzL Page 146, line 4th from bottom. For penetrating read permeating. Page 148, line 7. For desiring read during. Page 178, line 7. For Genet read fhuchet. Page 195, line 4. For buried read busied. Page 197. Erase eitJier from first line of second paragraph. Page 203, line 18. For 1798 read 1799. Page 265, line 14. For literalism read liberalism. Page 267, line 7th from bottom. For perfected read perfect. Page 383, line 4th from bottom. For Yrugo read Yrujo. Page 384, line 5. For proscription read prescription. Page 346, line 12. For D E/ighein read D Enghien. RECOLLECTIONS, HISTORICAL, POLITICAL, BIOGRAPHICAL, AND SOCIAL, OF CHARLES J, CHAPTER I. PREFATORY. INCHIQUIN the Jesuit s Letters, forty years ago, ventured a zealous vindication of the political, social, and literary con dition of this new country, then so much disparaged abroad and mistrusted at home that it seemed to be a desperate undertaking; noticed, however, by European liberalism there perhaps more than here. By one of those caprices of longevity of which the secret is kept from us, the premature assertor of that questionable Americanism has been allowed to witness the experiment developed in already general recognition of national power, without much denial of prosperity. If civilization and prob able duration are still gainsayed, their presentment by actual realities, neither speculative nor vainglorious, but considered historical truth, will submit facts, with deferential freedom of narrative, to the judgment of Americans, to whom alone these recollections are dedicated, without either disregard or solicit ation of that foreign verdict by which our contemporaries in other countries are said to represent posterity. Having been invited to add some account of the war with VOL. L 2 (17) 18 RECOLLECTIONS OF Mexico in 1847 to that with Britain in 1812, during both of which I was an active member of the Congress of the United States, by position there familiarized with the realities of transactions, I took part in the partial surrender of Maine, the acquisitions of Texas, Oregon, some of Mexico, and Cali fornia; I was also familiar in Europe with the purchaser of Louisiana, in 1803, which was the beginning and cause of all the other territorial acquisitions. After Rufus King, Ameri can Minister in England, performed his initiatory and im portant accessorial part in the attainment of Lousiana, I went m his diplomatic 1 family from London to Paris, in 1802; fre- qtafctiting ; the ihokpitajble mansion of Robert R. Livingston, Ame ridan Minister in France, conducting the negotiation for that territory; met there Joseph Bonaparte, who took a kind and earnest interest in the negotiation, and, during his long exile in this country, enjoyed the free disclosures of his inti mate knowledge of all European affairs, after having settled the prior treaty of 1800 with the United States. In Paris, also, I knew Barbd Marbois, the salesman of Louisiana ; was with Alexander Baring, (afterward created Lord Ashburton,) and his fellow-passenger from America to Europe, who fur nished the funds for the purchase money; returned with Mr. King from England to America, with the first intelligence of its acquisition; was honored with Mr. Madison s intimacy, who, as President Jefferson s Secretary of State, conducted the correspondence concerning the negotiation, and with Mr. Monroe s, the Special Envoy Extraordinary sent to Europe to take part in it. Thus personally familiar with all those con cerned in the transaction, and with several of them at the time on the spot, in Paris and London, I have also been inti mate with many of the confidential intimates of the only two with whom I had no personal acquaintance, President Jeffer son and first Consul Bonaparte. By such favorable opportunities encouraged to write an account of a memorable event, and the actors in it, my narra tive, without war, revolution, or other national commotion or CHARLES J. INGERSOLL. 19 historical attraction, deficient in occurrences and otherwise irksome, may be recommended to attention by profiles of statesmen and rulers, appended to political sketches, by a witness of most of the scenes, not without some actual expe rience of their performance. Fifty years of such recollections of men and things are not published until having outlived many prejudices; with the inductive philosophy of old age, and flat tering myself that, without selfish motive, the purpose of this work is candid representation of my country, and its special vindication from European misconception, so common as to have become almost American, that these United States are a restless and rapacious nation. It is not easy for contempora neous history to tell unprejudiced truth, and as no authori ties will be cited for my statements, the narrative must be allowed to step aside, foraging somewhat personally and desultorily, both for verification and enlivenment. Begin ning with Louisiana, whence came all the aggrandizement and all the unjust imputation, the truth can be easily demon strated that that region of unknown power, wealth, and pros perity, of national controversy, foreign misrepresentation, and intestine threats of disunion, was imposed, almost inflicted on the United States, if desirous of, neither seeking or expect ing it. And of that prodigious boon, Texas, Oregon, Florida, Mexico, and California were the natural offspring. All these territories were the sequence of the first; convenient and adjacent, if not indispensable and inevitable corollaries of the original problem, solved accidentally and accepted almost reluctantly; acquired by neither force or for power, but in peace and for it. Conquest bore no part in any of those spon taneous, natural, and tranquil accretions: all but California and Mexico, which likewise are paid for as purchases in defensive wars won by conquests the last inoffensive inci dents of the pacific era which North American republicanism has inaugurated. 20 RECOLLECTIONS OF LOUISIANA. Purchase of Louisiana is an event original, if not unique, in the annals of mankind, whose compulsory but peaceable and clandestine cession from Spain to France, and fortuitous transfer from France to the United States, noiseless occur rences without convulsion or much complaint, have been cast into oblivion by the vast development of its unexplored re gions already peopled by numerous sovereign States, with a future of many numberless more. The acquisition of such an empire by purchase and its development in peace, are novel ties eclipsed by the convulsions of conquests, the commotions of revolutions, and all such dazzling attractions of common history. The greatest of modern warriors forcing the sale on the chief apostle of pacification, whom scarcely anything could provoke to war, annuls all idea of vulgar aggrandize ment. European governments, continually striving to enlarge dominion by force, cannot credit or conceive the American re publican method of enlarging bounds for no other purpose than to pacify and trade, and colonizing not to monopolize but emancipate. Space, indeed, is a vital element of Ameri can republican peace, freedom, and prosperity; and acquisi tion induces desire of more. But those among the wisest of their generation, the imperial ruler of France and the genius chief magistrate of the United States, had no conception of what the one sold and the other bought in Louisiana. The vendor reckoned one quarter of one year s present in come of the United States a large price to exact for it. The purchasers apprehended it was more than the country could pay, or would submit to. But if the warrior vendor hoped that it might help to enable a Transatlantic nation one day to contend with his invincible enemies for the liberties of the seas, and would at all events deprive them of another addition to their immense colonies, the peaceful purchasers, strangely unaware of the worth of their purchase, took it with no expec- CHARLES J. INGERSOLL. 21 tation that it would add such aggrandizement as to enable the New World to resist the Old, and by vast extension cor roborate the confederacy it seemed destined to enfeeble if not dismember. IMMENSITY OF UNCULTIVATED EMINENT DOMAIN IS THE VITALITY OF AMERICAN SELF-GOVERNMENT. Rivers of inexhaustible affluence, and far-interior lakes, like seas, all concatenated, are natural, constituting national ligaments and resources for the inhabitants of this continent, much more effectual than written constitutions to render it one and the same country. Having preceded, they corrobo rate federal union, overrule local antipathies, and constrain freemen hating slavery to embrace it. Patriotism of the soil holds wide-sundered populations of a mother country to iden tical nationality. Treaties of indissoluble unity hinder, and must, in any event, survive political disruptions. The great Western States have accordingly been preserved in their po litical, conservative entirety, notwithstanding political diverg ences, with unanimous, resolute, provident, and fortunate per tinacity. Before steam and electricity superadded more bonds of union, it was impossible to dislocate the American people, whose federal union may be broken, but whose indig enous and lingual unity is infrangible. Territorial enlarge ment, also, instead of weakening, as was apprehended and predicted, strengthens the confederation, holding North and South inseparably together by rivers and oceans. The spinal Ohio and Mississippi, with vertebral vitality, uphold the whole North American body politic, whose members cannot separate while neighboring States depend on each other for livelihood, whether under one government or several. Accordingly, part of the recognition of independence by the first treaty of 1782, was a substantive article securing the navigation of the Mississippi as a national artery, when that river was so far beyond the confines of the United States 22 RECOLLECTIONS OF that one of the most respectable statesmen of the Revolution, afterward their first chief justice, and plenipotentiary in sev eral foreign countries, John Jay, deemed it unwise to venture so far, and for that insufficient reason came to be called the enemy of the West. British consent to that national neces sity was not enough, however, while Spain held Louisiana. After long and anxious solicitation, the American Minister in England, as Envoy Extraordinary, was sent to Madrid, then Major (afterward, during the war of 1812, Major-General) Thomas Pinckney, commissioned by President Washington, and effected an excellent treaty, by which Spain ceded part of that region on the east of the river to the United States, established the middle-bed of the river as their boundary, and by chary allowance permitted their citizens to deposit their merchandise and effects in the port of New Orleans for three years, during that lease by sufferance, and export them thence on paying no other duty than store-rent : if that permission were not continued, then to assign an equivalent establishment on another part of the banks of the Mississippi. Precarious permission by Spanish sufferance, expiring with out either renewal or refusal at the end of the first three years, in 1798, was by no means sufficient for those hardy, enterprising, and independent pioneers, beginning to be known and felt as the Western people. Before the grant of deposit was made, an ardent expounder of the belligerent pretensions of the new-born French republic undertook, with the help of Kentucky and other Southwestern invaders, to proceed by the Ohio and Mississippi to surprise and capture New Orleans, and subdue Louisiana from a Spanish to a French colony; France and Spain being then at war. The French revolution, which began in 1789, had made fearful progress in 1793. On motion of a play-actor, Collot d Herbois, in the National Convention, royalty was abolished and a republic proclaimed. The king, the queen, and his cousin, the Duke of Orleans, were put to death. Nearly all the monarchs of Europe com bined to invade, subdue, and punish France. The French CHARLES J. INGERSOLL. 23 nation rose, almost to a man, to repel their invaders. Shot from that volcano, as it were a bomb across the Atlantic, a young, well educated, and accomplished firebrand of a minis ter, Edmund Genet, fell on the United States to embroil them in hostilities by sea against Britain, and ashore against Spain, by a hostile expedition to take Louisiana; to enlist for the former the people of the sea-ports, arm and organize for the latter those of the adjacent Southwestern population, to be led to that enterprise by the French Minister as their com mander. Those disturbances of American peace, with Har- mer s and Sinclair s defeats by the Indians, and theirs by Wayne, are nearly all our tranquil annals afford for history; when the proclamation and enforcement of neutrality was all this country has, with imperceptible development, while European history blazes with dreadful revolutions and enor mous catastrophes. Indignant as the French government and perhaps people were at that, as they pronounced it, ungrateful and perfidious violation of Franklin s treaty of 1778, securing French suc cor to the American Revolution on the solemnity of mutual guarantees by the French of the liberty, sovereignty, and independence of the United States absolute and unlimited, and by the United States of the possessions of France in America Genet was induced to urge armaments in this country against British commerce and Spanish territories, as France was at war with Britain and Spain. The difficulty, dignity, and ability with which Washington and his first and most eminent Secretary of State overcame that passionate French appeal to American sympathies, their resistance of Genet, and requiring the French government to recall him, largely impressed on the maritime occurrences of this country, are no further part of my narrative than as connected with the simultaneous and similar irregularities of the French Min ister inland, with design to capture New Orleans and wrest Louisiana from Spain. So little known and less regarded was Louisiana, and so comparatively unimportant that attempt RECOLLECTIONS OF deemed then, that Marshall s Life of Washington, after many pages concerning the commercial, disposes of the terri torial difficulty in two short lines. Genet pursued both with equal ardor and boldness; caused troops to be enlisted in South Carolina and Georgia, and his commission was accepted by no less a Kentucky personage than General George Rogers Clark, many if not most of the martial people of that enter prising State, just admitted in the Union and hardly recon ciled to its control, excited to arm under the French Minister s command for the conquest of Louisiana. Such considerate and respectable patriots as Isaac Shelby, the first Governor; Harry Innes, the District Judge of the United States ; John Brown and John Breckinridge, afterward Senators of the United States; Thomas Todd, afterward Judge of the Su preme Court of the United States, with many more of Ken tucky s best men, submitted reluctantly to Secretary Jeffer son s injunctions, by President Washington s directions, laid on Governor Shelby, to prevent warlike irregularities and arrest their abettors, under the French Minister s instigation to organize for conquering Louisiana. Still palpitating aver sion to England, inherited with recent independence, not achieved without treaties, armies, navies, and treasures, for which gratitude was due to France, were sentiments warming Kentucky hearts, which Governor Shelby imbibed at King s Mountain, and with his fellow-countrymen in other conflicts, to influence their feelings but without destroying their patriot ism. Nothing could be more loyal than the governor s answer to Secretary Jefferson: "Whatever be my private opinion as a man, a friend to liberty, an American citizen, and an inhabitant of the Western waters, I shall at all times hold it to be my duty to perform whatever may be constitutionally required of me, as Governor of Kentucky, by the President of the United States." President Jefferson s fortune, more than his policy, by the unlooked-for acquisition of Louisiana ten years afterward, provided demonstration, continental, practical, never-failing, CHARLES J. INGERSOLL. 25 irrefutable, that the Southwest and Northeast of this conti nent belong to each other in mutual dependence, and that their rivers are national bonds of United States. Attempts far exceeding the Kentucky intimation of dis union, several East and South, since that original Western ebullition, have reduced to a proverb of reproach the disgrace of all such abortions, proving as the United States extend in territories that they grow in unity, and that physical prohibits political dismemberment. The French Minister s provocation of individual hostilities by armaments within the United States without lawful war, for predatory purposes to invade foreign States, with which the United States are at peace, which gave rise to the first threat of disunion, was also the first of many similar subse quent, mostly Southwestern, infringements of national neu trality. More than any other the much and ill-abused on this account, Government of the United States has signalized by watchful enforcement that part of the international code recognized as neutral. An English prime minister held up in Parliament their example for imitation by other governments, and as neutrality is the asylum of weak nations from the aggressions of strong, it is natural that the United States when feeble, should shield themselves by its protection. Not withstanding Franklin s French treaties, which with positive stipulation certainly presented strong appeal for American aid to France in the crisis of her revolution, as France came to the rescue of the United States in theirs when not more in jeopardy, Washington s administration excited by Genet s turbulent misconduct to peremptory repulsion of the hostilities into which that mischievous emissary was plunging the United States both by sea against Britain and inland against Spain, Washington s administration were one and all cordially unani mous for his instantaneous proclamation of neutrality. De claration of war by Congress could hardly be a more mo mentous State stroke than that great stand for peace before the world in arms ; for which, though suggested by the Secretary 26 RECOLLECTIONS OF of the Treasury, no one of Washington s constitutional ad visers was more earnest, able, or effective, than the peace- loving Secretary of State. Accused of disinclination to the supremacy of the Federal Constitution, and avowedly averse to its constructive extension, Jefferson on that occasion, by masterly State papers, developed its great inherent powers, and disproved the French subserviency, of which he was accused, by profound and admirable refutation of the French Minister s misconstruction of the laws of nations, and by successfully urging his immediate recall. Most happily for the outset of the American Federal Government, the first president was a resolved conservative republican, wonderfully wise and virtuous in moderation, firmly resolved to make the trial of more liberty than had ever before been attempted. And both his chief advisers, antagonistical in their appreciation of republicanism, were men of genius, capable, and inclined to establish free institu tions. In expansion of the Federal Constitution to preserve peace, which was his constant endeavor, and to prevent war, to which his repugnance was almost insuperable, Jefferson, as Secretary of State, went as far as Hamilton, beyond strict construction, as afterward when President, on several emer gencies for the same purpose, he went much farther. Wash ington s wisdom, without the genius of his Secretaries, con curred with them in cardinal principles of federal authority not to be found in the letter of the constitution, but then for the first time asserted and enforced in these fundamental posi tions. First. That the President has power of proclamation with out act of Congress or other legislative sanction, to declare, prescribe, and enforce the law, subject no doubt, like that emanation of royal prerogative in England, to judicial or legislative control. The proclamation itself declared that the President had given instructions to cause prosecutions to be instituted against all persons, who, without the cognizance of Courts of the United States, violated the laws of nations with CHARLES J. INGERSOLL. 27 respect to the powers at war; and in his letter to Gouverneur Morris, the Minister of the United States, in France, insist ing on Genet s recall, Jefferson treated with indignant ani madversion that Minister s insolent condescension to respect the President s opinion, till the representatives confirmed or rejected it, insultingly asserting that Congress ought to have been consulted on certain questions which the President had been too hasty in deciding. Secondly. That the laws of neutrality, as part of the com- mon law of nations, are common laws of the United States without acts of Congress to enact or define them. In Jef ferson s letter to Genet, of the 17th June, 1793, among much admirable doctrine of the law of nature as part of the law of nations, this noble position was assumed : "Besides treaties, and without appealing to them, we are at peace with all nations, by the law of nature ; for by nature s law, man is at peace with man, till some aggression is committed, which by the same law authorizes one to destroy another as his enemy." Thirdly. That the laws of neutrality are military or execu tive, as well as civil or judicial, attributes enforcible militarily by the executive. The question was entirely new, "However, by which organ of the government, whether judi cial or executive, it shall be redressed, and not perfectly settled with us." But, adds this letter from Jefferson, "If finally the judiciary shall declare that it does not belong to the civil authority, it then results to the executive as charged with the direction of the military force of the Union and the conduct of its affairs with foreign nations." In his letter to Morris, he said : "The right of raising troops being one of the rights of sover eignty, and, consequently, appertaining exclusively to the nation itself, no foreign power or person can levy men within its territory without its consent, and he who does, may be rightfully and se verely punished. If the United States have a right to refuse per mission to arm vessels and raise men within their ports and terri- 28 KECOLLECTIONS OF lories, they are bound by the laws of neutrality to exercise that right, and to prohibit such armament and enlistment." Fourthly. That the President of the United States may call on the Governors of States to co-operate in the enforce ment of these duties of neutrality; and accordingly, not only Governor Shelby, of Kentucky, but Governors Mifflin, of Pennsylvania, Clinton, of New York, Moultrie, of South Carolina, and Lee, of Maryland, were invited by Secretary Jefferson, and contributed as enjoined. Most of these princi ples of neutrality were thereupon established by acts of Con gress in 1794, 1795, 1800, and 1818, providing a system more perfect and better enforced than that of any other govern ment. Sea-coasts and internal frontiers of greater extent than those of any other nation, embolden lawless attempts difficult of prevention; but the executive government has sel dom been wanting in either vigilance or force to arrest and punish those infractions of our laws, of which the French Minister set the first example, soon followed by a British Minister. Though British and French prejudice is extremely apt to disparage this American power and policy, the Govern ment of the United States has uniformly shown its capacity and will to prevent and punish breaches of neutral laws both international and municipal, and Jefferson, both as President and Secretary, never failed to execute that determination, with his conviction that strong executive government renders a nation strong. Blount s conspiracy, in which the British Minister, Robert Listen, was implicated, by troops of Cherokee and Creek In dians, with British forces from Canada, to invade Louisiana and wrest it from Spain, was discovered to Congress by con fidential message from President Adams, on the 3d July, 1797. Whatever the surreptitious design may have been, was frustrated by that unlooked-for exposure, and needs but brief notice pre liminarily to an account of the sale of that region. The Presi dent s confidential message stated that " The whole of this intelligence for some time had been received CHARLES J. INGERSOLL. 29 from abroad, the correspondence between this government and the ministers of the belligerent powers residing here; and the advices from the officers of the United States, civil and military, on the frontiers, all conspire to show, in strong light, the critical situation of our country." The subject, with many letters, papers, and other communi cations, being referred in the House of Representatives to a Select Committee, of which Samuel Sitgreaves was appointed chairman, a resolution was reported that William Blount, a Senator of the United States from the State of Tennessee, be impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors, and sequestered from his seat in the Senate immediately. On the 8th of July, 1797, the Senate resolved, almost unanimously twenty-five ayes, and only one nay, Henry Tazewell, of Virginia that William Blount, Esquire, one of the Senators of the United States, having been guilty of a high misdemeanor, extremely inconsistent with his public trust and purity as a Senator, be expelled from the Senate, and that he be taken into custody of the Messenger of this House, and enter into recognizance to appear and answer articles of impeachment as may be exhibited against him by the House of Representatives. The Committee of the House, in consideration of the importance of unraveling and developing a conspiracy apparently so extensive, comprehending extensive correspondence, many persons, and distant places, asked for time. William Blount, of North Carolina, after serving during 1782-83 and 1786-87 in the Congress of the United States, was elected one of the Delegates from that State to the Con vention to form the Federal Constitution, to which, as such, his signature is affixed. Appointed, by President Washington, Governor of the Western Territory, he was chosen one of the first Senators from the State of Tennessee, when received into the Union, the 1st June, 1796. As soon thereafter as April, 1797, if not before, he plotted an extensive conspiracy for invading Louisiana and Florida with Creek and Cherokee Indians, among whom his familiarity and authority as gover nor were considerable; with these martial savages, reinforced 30 RECOLLECTIONS OF by British troops from Canada, to wrest those provinces from Spain and put them under British control. The public press, ever prying and delating police of free countries, by publica tion in a New York newspaper, several individual informers thereby excited also to delation, and the Spanish Minister, Yrujo, contributed to put the executive on their guard against Blount s design. The British Minister, Listen, in conversation with the Secretary of State, Pickering, denied knowledge of it, or participation beyond advancing one hun dred pounds sterling to John Chisholm, an avowed conspira tor, to pay his passage to England, in order to induce the Ministry to join in the project. Liston showed Pickering Lord Grenville s letters rejecting the proposal. But an inter cepted guilty letter from Blount to James Carey, an Indian interpreter debauched by Blount from the service of the United States, wrote: "Among other things that I wished to have seen you about, was the business of Captain Chisholm, mentioned to the British Min ister last winter at Philadelphia. I believe, but am not quite sure, that the plan then talked of will be attempted this fall ; and if it is attempted, it will be in a much larger way than then talked of; and if the Indians act their part, I have no doubt but it will suc ceed. A man of consequence has gone to England about the business ; and if he makes arrangements as he expects, I shall myself have a hand in the business, and probably shall be at the head of the business on the part of the British. * * * You must take care, in whatever you say to Rogers or anybody else, not to let the plan be discovered by Hawkins, Dinsmore, Byers, or any other person in the interest of the United States or Spain." These were all in the service of the United States, espe cially Benjamin Hawkins, Indian Superintendent. Blount charged Carey " To teach the Creeks to believe that he is no better than he should be." * * * " Can t Rogers contrive to get the Creeks to desire the President to take Hawkins out of the nation, for if he stays in the Creek nation, and gets the good-will of the Creek nation, he can and will do a great injury to our plan. When you have read this letter over three times, burn it." By that, together with several more similar proofs of unde- CHARLES J. INGERSOLL. 31 niable conspiracy and crime, foolishly put in writing and post- offices, Blount s guilt was palpable, and his design betrayed, like Genet s before, and Burr s afterward, to seize Louisiana, Florida, Mexico, or whatever territories, by French or British succor of American force, might be wrested from lethargic and incapable Spain for development by adventurous specula tors in wild lands and schemes, south and west of the original United States. General Hamilton s plan, with the co-opera tion of Colonel Pickering, Secretary of State, and Rufus King, American Minister in England, by British co-opera tion to conquer all Spanish America, was an analogy that will be explained. As Blount s plot was completely frustrated by President Adams s prompt and decisive denunciation of a Senator in full standing, Blount s conspiracy need not be dwelt upon in an account of the subsequent purchase by the United States of regions so much coveted by others. Whether the British Minister at Philadelphia conspired with Blount and others, as he and more of them declared, was not ascer tained. The Spanish Minister Yrujo, the only other Minister Plenipotentiary, I believe, at that time here, as there was no French representative, probably thought so. The Spaniard, rather a young man of considerable talents and address, who afterward married, at Philadelphia, a daughter of Governor McKean, apt and authorized by proofs to expose Blount to the President and defeat a British attempt on Louisiana, was no match in either political or social influence for the Briton implicated. Robert Listen, a Scot of that old Tory regime which progressive freedom has since its day much attenuated and ameliorated throughout British government by American republican example and intercourse, was an experienced diplomatist of superior management and inscrutable circum spection. With a plain but sociable Scots wife, both long- trained adepts in the fine arts of polite, subtle, and unpre tending urbanity, learned in European capitals; with Lord Henry Stuart, grandson of the famous Lord Bute, Secretary of the British Minister, the head of the diplomatic corps in 32 RECOLLECTIONS OF Philadelphia, among British merchants and agents gave the fashion at the American sea-port seat of government. A new community, green in republican experiments, were socially eclipsed and politically overcome by the elegant hospitality, well-bred affability, and altogether superior tone of British Ministers, whose duty it was to maintain the ascendency of their venerable kingdom, contrasting its royal and aristocratic prepossessions with vulgar notions of upstart tradefolks. One of Mr. Listen s maxims was said to be always to do, but never to make business ; in which judicious inaction, perhaps, he only countenanced rather than joined Blount s conspiracy, however desirable to deprive Spain of Louisiana and make it English by American instrumentality. Not long after the exposure of that conspiracy, Mr. Liston was transferred from the United States to the difficult station of British Minister at the Hague, when Holland, overrun by French republican forces and controlled by their command ers, conspired emancipation. After faithfully contributing in America to alienate the United States from France, Mr. Liston was at the Hague when the American Minister, William V. Murray, broached, in 1798, the overture, through Pichon, French Secretary of Legation there, lately taken from this country, to Tal leyrand, also lately taken from this country to be French Secretary of Interior Relations, which overture brought about adjustment of our difficulties with the French Republic. And Mr. Liston was still in Holland in 1803 to watch, and if need be counteract, the French armament equipped there to take possession of Louisiana, when that province was sold to the United States, to prevent its seizure by England, irresistible as a maritime power, by France. Blount s impeachment, the only one of any Senator, ar raigned by articles prepared by a Select Committee of the House of Representatives, during the recess of Congress after his expulsion from the Senate, did not take place at the next session which begun in December, 1797, but was put off till CHARLES J. INGERSOLL. 33 December, 1798 ; on the seventeenth of which month the Senate resolved itself into a high court of impeachment for the trial. Unsurpassed for the ability, impartiality, and dignity with which that first trial by impeachment under the Constitution of the United States was prepared, conducted, and terminated, several positions of its forms and substance are worthy of no tice. Proof was made by James Mathers, Serjeant-at-Arms of the Senate, of personal service on the accused of the writ of summons to attend and abide judgment. But he did not per sonally appear ; which being reported to the House of Repre sentatives by Robert Goodloe Harper, one of the managers chosen for the impeachment; overruling his objection, the House resolved, by a majority of sixty-nine votes to eleven, that the managers proceed in the impeachment although Bleunt should not be personally present to answer, provided the Senate thought proper. Jared Ingersoll and Alexander Jones Dallas, at their written request, being admitted as counsel for the accused, and the Senate resolving that all questions arising in the course of the trial should be decided with closed doors, on the 24th December, 1798, it began. Five articles of impeachment, carefully elaborated by eminent lawyers, alleging no enacted law of the United States, except those regulating trade and intercourse with the Indian tribes, treaties with them, and the treaty of the United States with Spain, charged Blount with conspiring to violate the neu trality of the United States, by setting on foot, within their territories, a military hostile expedition, to conduct and carry it against the territories of Spain in Florida and Louisiana; for wresting them from Spain and conquering them for Great Britain, with whom Spain was at war; and with conspiring to excite the Indians to join such hostilities. Blount s counsel pleaded that he ought not to be compelled to answer, because not a Senator, and if one, not a civil offi cer impeachable according to the Constitution, the common law criminal courts where the alleged offence was said to have been committed, and the United States courts being VOL. I. 3 34 RECOLLECTIONS OF competent for his trial. On that plea issue being joined by rep lication and rejoinder, was discussed in extensive arguments by James A. Bayard and Robert Goodloe Harper for the managers, and the two counsel of Blount ; after which, on the 7th, 8th, 9th, and 10th of January, 1799, the Senate debated the question whether he was a civil officer within the meaning of the Constitution of the United States, and therefore liable to be impeached by the House of Representatives ; which was resolved in the negative by fourteen nays to eleven ayes, un affected by party, that the court ought not to have jurisdic tion of the impeachment ; which was dismissed. On the 14th January, 1799, judgment was pronounced accordingly by the Yice-President, Thomas Jefferson. No other prosecution was attempted nor could be sustained against Blount. Undergoing no punishment beyond expulsion from the Senate, a distinguished member of it, with that im punity for which the administration of justice, Federal, State, and Municipal, in this country is reproached, remained unmo lested, triumphant, and influential in the wild "West, never having obeyed the summons for his appearance and trial at the seat of government. A framer of the Constitution of the United States, enterprising, plausible, and popular person age, enormous speculator in lands of promise, like Robert Morris, his colleague in the Federal Convention, speculating inordinately at the same time in promissory notes, William Blount and Robert Morris were types of thousands since grasping at wealth by realty in the wild West, and personalty in commercial marts. Inexhaustible cheap public lands, vastly increased by the purchase of Louisiana, sufficiently before that event, as presented by several States to their union, in flamed rapacious landlords, as paper-money which that union in vain interdicted, maddened the universal passion of avarice. Since Morris s ruin and Blount s expulsion, several thousand State Legislators misspend most of their frequent sessions, throughout the United States, to incorporate aristocracies more detrimental than ancient privileged orders, which democ- CHARLES J. INGERSOLL. 35 racy undertook to remove, while numerous laws of Congress grant vast quantities of public lands to corporations. Reform is sometimes retrograde. Prevention of Genet s ambitious, and Blount s avaricious hostile designs against Louisiana, did not extinguish pursuit of what is deemed happiness by accumu lation, which the agrarian law of Rome forbade. Liberty loves property. The son of the British Minister, most re proached for corruption, who said, every man has his price, avers that our ancestors were rogues, and so will our pos terity be. Genet s and Blount s French and English invasions of Louisiana were prologues to the time of its sale, performed in a strange and secret plot by scenes at Paris, New Orleans, London, Madrid, and Washington, of which the fortunate disentanglement was President Jefferson s compulsory accept ance of an inestimable boon from Consul Bonaparte, con trary to the policy of both President and Consul, and its incorporation with the United States, contrary to their written constitution. The eventful truce of 1801-2, dividing two decades of dread ful hostilities between England and France, which at last ingulfed the United States by their war of 1812, preface the purchase of Louisiana. That clandestine elicitation of American love of peace, snatched from the shock of European lust for war, lawful, but the merely accidental offspring of a great crisis, has never been explained, nor is it generally known as it deserves. An American, describing what he witnessed during the conjuncture in Europe, may add some actuality to his tradition. The recovery of Louisiana conquered from France, with so much more of North America, by the first Pitt s tri umphant administration, and surrendered in 1763 by treaty, was ever after a strong French desire; and when the long ignominious reign of that amiable but despicable promoter of the revolution, Louis XV., with Cardinal Fleury for min ister, and successive mistresses for rulers, terminated with 36 RECOLLECTIONS OF the death of that monarch, Louisiana became a primary object of French pursuit, which the republic inherited from the de throned king. On the 22d July, 1795, by treaty at Basle, in Switzerland, the royal Spanish Bourbons renounced coali tion with other monarchs against the French republic, by a treaty sacrificing their royal French kindred to extricate Spain, transferred St. Domingo, then a Spanish possession, in return for French conquests in Biscay and Catalonia, restored by the French Minister, Berthelemy. The French Minister s instructions and endeavors were to obtain a cession of Louis iana, which Spain refused. Tallien s mistress or wife, daughter of the Spanish banker, Cabarrus, a beautiful brunette, whom I met in Paris, reigning belle, was supposed to have an in fluence in that arrangement, by which Spain refusing then to transfer Louisiana to France, ceded St. Domingo. At that time, when the events of a century were achieved in a year, 1795 was one crowded with great occurrences in Europe, involving the United States only by the influence of French convulsive efforts for freedom, and by depredations, French, English, Spanish, and Algerian, upon their commerce at sea. The proclamation of neutrality at the expense of treaties with France in 1793, the treaty with England in 1794, Monroe s recall from France, on imputed lack of zeal in its vindication there, and Pinckney s rejection when pre sented to take Monroe s place, in 1795, had elicited extremely inimical relations between that republic and this, extending continually from 1793 to 1799, inclusive. The Spanish cession by France of St. Domingo in 1795, and of Louisiana in 1800, induced French armed expeditions, of which that attempted against St. Domingo was intimately connected with that against Louisiana, an account of both of which constitutes this narrative, with sketches of contemporaneous personages and circumstances. On the 8th June, 1795, Louis Charles, entitled at his birth Duke of Normandy, Dauphin of France, born heir-appa rent, by what was deemed divine right, to the French throne, CHARLES J. INGERSOLL. 37 died a little more than ten years of age, a prisoner, after more than two years cruel imprisonment. On the 5th October, 1795, Bonaparte, then scarcely known, made what he con sidered his first great step toward renown at the church of St. Roch, by subduing a Parisian mob with slaughter so effectual, that there never was another such for twenty years. After twenty years of marvelous events had consecrated that bloody baptism by inordinate dominion, its founder, over thrown and imprisoned, was, as his adherents complained, tortured to death by inhuman royalists, who complained that their imprisoned prince had been tortured to death by inhuman republicans. Soon after his death, .and before Bonaparte s elevation, the French National Convention, on the 4th Sep tember, 1795, acknowledging that citizen Maurice Talleyrand Perigord, ex-Bishop of Autun, had powerfully seconded the revolution by his noble conduct, as citizen and clergyman, and moreover, appreciating the motives which removed him to a distance, authorized his return to France. Whereupon, quitting his residence in Philadelphia, and his American citizenship there affirmed by oath, he returned; and on the 18th July, 1797, was appointed Secretary of State for exterior relations. With personal knowledge acquired of this country by residence here, and probably without much respect for its people or their republican institutions, he performed during negotiations with their six ministers, in 1799 and 1800, im portant and valuable services for the pacification of the two estranged and inimical republics. Those transactions to be dwelt upon in a future part of this narrative are pretermitted here in order to come at once to the cessation of European wars, which occasioned the French armed expedition to St. Domingo, precursor of that prepared for Louisiana, prevented by its sudden secret sale to the United States. The inestimable benefits of that sale without commotion, or scarce any excitement for historical fuel, have rendered us insensible to the marvelous good fortune of the boon. While posterior wars, triumphs, and catastrophe of 38 RECOLLECTIONS OF Bonaparte have so engrossed and deluded history, that few are aware and still fewer believe that his advent was an era of universal peace, that the mightiest conqueror was the most earnest pacificator of his age; that, after pacifying all the conflicting parties in France, he sought peace with all foreign nations, and made it with most ; and that the wars were not of his seeking which promoted him to dictator, emperor, despot, and inordinate dominator. His first movement, after his last republican victory of Marengo, the 14th June, 1800, was a disdainfully rejected letter to the King of England, inviting peace; which, when. Moreau s victory at Hohenlinden, the 3d December, 1800, still further reduced and alarmed Germany, was concluded with Austria at Luneville, the 9th January, 1801. Joseph Bonaparte s good sense, conciliatory temper, sagacity, learning, and wisdom, eclipsed by his immense bro ther s vast genius and enormous achievements, were soon manifested in treaties with Austria at Lune ville, with England at Amiens, and with the United States at Paris. Wearied with revolutions within and wars without, divorced from roy alty and disgusted with red republicanism, the French nation, however vainglorious and tumultuary, having effected perfect equality, were desirous of rational liberty, and other reforms, maturing from ten years convulsions. The most powerful continental enemies of French republican ascendancy, Aus tria, Prussia, Spain, and Russia, were forced to yield to it. But insular England proved an impregnable and invincible obstacle ; and as in the United States we are insensible of the unpathetic, almost insipid, though inestimable advantages of the quiet acquisition of Louisiana, so few in Europe or the world perceived the effects of science and industry, elicited by war and liberty, in the tremendous and sanguinary strug gle between the chief belligerents. In France science worked wonders for war, as industry did in England. France began her defence from invasion, in 1793, deficient in iron, steel, saltpeter, gunpowder, and arms. Under the revolutionary exigency, republicans soon extracted CHARLES J. INQERSOLL. 39 twelve millions of saltpeter where royalists never got more than one million from their mother earth. Fifteen founderies of arms instead of two for brass cannon, and thirty founderies instead of four for iron artillery, with corresponding increase of all military projectiles and accessories. Instead of one single manufactory of swords, twenty were established on new principles of fabrication. Paris alone fabricated more fire-arms for republican defence than all royal France for wars of for eign conquest. The example of Paris was followed in all the departments, where, instead of six workshops for repairing arms before the revolution, one hundred and eighty-eight sprang up. The art of rifle-making, theretofore scarcely known in France, began. The balloon and the telegraph, gunpowder from muriate, oxygenated with potash, for incen diary bullets and balloon balls ; all arts and contrivances for war simplified and perfected by the most intelligent experi ments, in the midst of intestine convulsions, the sacred fires of science, burning bright during fourteen years of stupen dous hostilities, did more for victory than the talents of gen erals. On the 21st March, 1795, the Polytechnic School was decreed by the Convention, and called the Central School of Public Works, by whose prodigious creations, from brute materials more than by any mere soldiery, the first coalition was defeated. Mathematical science, geometry, elementary and descriptive, and chemistry, Lagrange, Monge, Fourcroy, Chaptal, and their illustrious associates in the high and exact sciences, supplied implements, instructions, and scientific ele ments for irresistible warfare; enabling Pichegru, Hoche, Moreau, and other distinguished warriors to triumph; and fortified Bonaparte s superhuman genius with the inconceiva ble mastery of strategic combinations brought to the certainty of calculations. One of the first exploits of his Consulate was to reorganize the Polytechnic School, on the 16th Decem ber, 1799, in order to diffuse instruction in mathematical, physical, chemical, and graphical arts, with special application 40 RECOLLECTIONS OF to the construction of artillery for land and sea, roads and bridges, vessels, mines, and geographical engineering. Too much of all this scientific improvement, elicited by war, was indeed confined to its operations; yet a precipitate and one of the fatal errors of royal reaction was an ordinance, on the 13th April, 1816, dismissing the Polytechnic School; re stored, however, on the fourth of September of that year. For these first fruits of revolution, though elicited by and de voted to war, are benefits for mankind to be cherished by the peaceful American republic, like the military academy which. Washington desired, Hamilton urged, and Jefferson estab lished, as a pillar of national prevention of war. England, with less occasion for military and more for naval vindication, put it mainly in her wooden walls, where, too, science was the great mother of might. But labor-saving machinery making children working-men, and every man capable of doing the work of several, increased the working-people of England be yond the number of fighting-men in France. Indefatigable factories supplied the world with clothing and other necessa ries. Bolton, Watt, Arkwright, and other inventors, rivaled and surpassed French science in production. Above all, lib erty as then becoming and since matured, multiplied British resources to enable British shopkeepers, as the mighty war rior contemptuously designated them, to demonstrate by his overthrow that however necessary the weapons of war, the tools of peace are a nation s greatest reliance. England, the greatest foreign hindrance of that French re publican development in peace, on such warlike foundation, was, however, much discouraged by the desertion of her allies. Austria at last was compelled to undergo peace with France ; and Bonaparte combined Russia with all the other maritime powers in that league of which the United States were a con stant champion for resistance to Great Britain s sea dominion. While science had done wonders for French military genius, labor-saving machinery, with liberty, still more for English CHARLES J. INGERSOLL. 41 industry and opulence; yet continental Europe was con strained or otherwise induced to forsake the coalition for which English stipends were paid. Pitt, King George III., and what was known as the Grenville Ministry, were obliged to submit, not quite to overthrow, but pacific modification. Left alone to contend, single handed, with France, trium phant in Germany, Italy, and Holland, allied with Spain, and all the maritime powers, headed by Russia, England felt herself forsaken by the great empires her subsidies combined in the second coalition against a French republic, proffering peace, cultivating commerce and colonies. To this discourage ment the bad weather and short crops of 1799 superadded the distress of scarcity. Committees were raised in both Houses of Parliament to deal with the appalling calamity : one loaf of bread for a week was deemed enough for each person, a maximum was contemplated, with bounty on Indian corn, and other expedients. When gentlemen dined out, they often took their bread with them. Pitt s talents for military enterprises were as insufficient as his father s had been admirable. From the defeat of the British at Toulon, by Captain Bonaparte, in 1793, a continual series of disasters ensued; terrible at Quiberon, in 1795, with thousands of those landed from British vessels, captured and butchered; disgraceful in 1798, at Alcmaer, in Holland, when the Duke of York surrendered a large army of British and Russians, by capitulation as ignominious as that of his great uncle at Closter Severn. The signal repulse of Bona parte at St. Jean d Acre, in Egypt, by his French school fellow, Philipeau, and Sidney Smith, the 21st May, 1799, and the capture of a French army at Alexandria, much in ferior in numbers to the English, and the French commander, Menou, extremely incompetent, were the only military suc cesses to atone for many reverses. Even on their own dominion at sea success was not invariable. In August, 1801, Admiral Saumarez was worsted by French ships in the Bay of Gibraltar; and soon again in the Bay of Cadiz; while nearer 42 RECOLLECTIONS OF home, Nelson, the conqueror at Ahoukir, confident of victory, was totally repulsed in repeated attacks on the French gun boats at Boulogne, prepared for the invasion of England, which, for the last hundred years and more, has been con stantly threatened with English apprehension but never at tempted. Defection of allies, all Europe at peace with France, pro claiming liberty of the seas, Irish disaffection stifled by forced union in 1800, national debt vastly augmented by fruitless subsidies to enlist monafchs taking the bounty and then deserting their colors, famine, and clamorous discontent com bined to press hard on Pitt s ministry, destined to be, after short removal and speedy revival, again crushed, and that Whig executor of Tory sway mortified to death by the over whelming victory of Austerlitz, demolishing another coali tion. A reliable work of English contemporary history, in strong terms, thus states the stress on their patriotism at that time : "A feverish desire for peace was exasperated by the production in Parliament of Bonaparte s offer of it. Gloom, sullenness, and malevolent apathy prevailed. Those most attached to the govern ment and the country, saw abundant grounds of alarm and unea siness, while those hostile to both waited with scarcely dissembled satisfaction to fulfill their forebodings and gratify their malignity. " The atrocious firstlings of French revolutionary fury pro voked and may have justified monarchical coalition to subju gate and parcel France like Poland. But perseverance in those hostilities at the end of the last and beginning of the present century by England alone, was the infatuation of George III. with his Prime Minister Pitt, and their many adherents, provoking in return Bonaparte s imperial and dynastic ambition, enormous despotism, and memorable down fall. Under his consulate, successful hostilities and advantage ous treaties of peace rendered France the most powerful and flourishing country of Europe, and as a republic alarmingly formidable. But deserted by every ally, indebted, as was CHARLES J. INGERSOLL. 43 then deemed ruinously, and disheartened England was dissat isfied with both peace and war. Sturdy Britain, annoyed by France s constant aggrandisement under Bonaparte s adminis tration of overbearing peace, lay to like a disabled line-of- battle ship, to repair damages, refit, and then try another cruise under Pitt, the pilot who certainly had not weathered the storm. As peace between England and France in 1801, and re newal of war in 1803, produced the French attempts to col onize St. Domingo and Louisiana, and Bonaparte sold us the latter, some contemporary occurrences with which he and peace and war are intimately connected, must here be briefly premised. On the 5th of September, 1800, Malta, the chief cause or pretext of the rupture of peace, was surrendered by France to England. On the 24th of December, 1800, what was called the infernal machine, contrived by French royalists in and from London, was exploded for Bonaparte s assassina tion in Paris. On the night between the 23d and 24th of March, 1801, the Emperor Paul, whom Bonaparte had charmed from British alliance, was assassinated. Count Theodore Pah- len, son of one of his murderers, was his son Alexander s first Minister to the United States; and, it may be added, that another son, Nicholas, who was with his brother in this coun try, was the same who, in 1855, during the late war between England and Russia, created so much sensation by appearing in London openly, as many eminent persons denied his right to do. On the 1st of October, 1801, preliminaries of peace were wrung from English reluctant, slow leave, by Otto, the French Commissary of Prisoners in England, who was, if I am not mistaken, with Luzerne, the first French Minister to the United States, designated also, at first, for Minister here in 1803, and French Minister afterward at several of the European capitals. Otto s preliminaries were digested into a treaty of peace, at Amiens, on the 25th of March, 1802, by our former captive, Lord Cornwallis, and future denizen, Jo seph Bonaparte. On the 3d of September, 1800, a treaty of 44 RECOLLECTIONS OF peace was signed by Joseph and his two colleagues, with the three special envoys of the United States, rehabilitating and improving the benign free provisions of Franklin s treaty of 1778 with Yergennes. And on the 1st of October, 1800, Lucien Bonaparte, as French Minister, by secret treaty at Madrid, received the cession of Louisiana, w r hich Spain could not withhold from Consul Bonaparte as she had at the treaty of Basle, in 1795, from the Minister of the French Direc tory. Thus owning both St. Domingo and Louisiana, and bent on colonies and commerce as the means by which England was able to resist and defy France, still Bonaparte could do no thing with those American colonies, considered rich enough to counterpoise all British East India, while Britain ruled the seas to the exclusion of all but what she permitted to navi gate them. In St. Domingo revolted slaves reigned in full possession, having expelled the English who attempted to seize the island. Before peace with England, the revolted blacks were induced to acknowledge the metropolitan authority of France. A negro chieftain, Toussaint Louverture, enchanted, as many persons were, with Bonaparte s dazzling talents and romantic career, volunteered or was induced to acknowledge the French government, and, notwithstanding the opposition of the civil commissioners, to take possession of the Spanish part of that rich island. On the 1st of July, 1801, com manding in the name of the French authorities, he assembled deputies from all parts of the island, who approved the con stitution which he presented to them. Slavery was abolished. Every citizen, of any color, was eligible to all places. The Assembly, meeting every year, was to enact laws. Toussaint, appointed governor for life, was authorized to name his suc cessor, and all other officers. Emigrants were deprived of the property they left behind. To some, dissuading that resolute negro from seizing the chief authority, "I am the Bonaparte," said he, "of St. Domingo, and the colony can no longer exist without me!" Professing submission to the French govern- CHARLES J. INGERSOLL. 45 ment and great admiration for the First Consul, the negro chief addressed him by letter, superscribed "from the great est black to the greatest white man." Considering the negro governor his colonist, Bonaparte was so eager to reorganize St. Domingo, that no sooner were preliminaries of peace signed, in October, 1801, with England, than, without waiting for the treaty, which was not settled till the following March, he dispatched an army to take possession of St. Domingo. On the 14th of December, 1801, twenty-two thousand troops, in thirty-four ships-of-the-line, twenty frigates, and a great many transports, set sail, to be soon followed by more from French, Dutch, and Spanish sea-ports. The First Consul s brother-in-law, General Le Clerc, commanded. His wife, Pau line Bonaparte, after Le Clerc s death married to Prince Bor- ghese, and her brother, Jerome Bonaparte, making his first cruise as a seaman, together with Joubenthon, of the Commis sariat, whose beautiful widow afterward married Lucien Bona parte, were of that fatal expedition, which, on the 4th of Febru ary, 1801, entered the port of Cape Francois, under Admiral Villaret Joyeuse. Toussaint, till then protesting submission, resisted the French with the fury of barbarian independence, laid waste and burned habitations, devastated plantations, and, though overcome, was far from submitting. His lieuten ant, Christophe, unable to maintain his position in the City of the Cape, reduced to ashes that fine capital of the French West Indies, which, from the 21st to the 24th of June, 1793, had been the scene of horrible massacre, by revolted slaves murdering their masters, and burning half the town. On the 7th May, 1802, Christophe, after three months of sanguinary and destructive resistance, reduced to the last ex tremity of defence, surrendered. Toussaint, by Christophe s capitulation induced to treat, together with Dessalines, sub mitted. Hostilities ceased, and though several towns had been burned, plantation and abundance soon revived through out that fertile region, Spanish as well as French. But Le Clerc had lost five thousand men in battle, and as many more 46 RECOLLECTIONS OF were dying in hospitals of the fatal fever of that climate. At that time another French squadron debarked three thousand five hundred more troops at Point-a-pitre, in the Island of Guadaloupe, and after some weeks resistance by the blacks of that island, reconquered it also to French sway. On the 10th June, 1802, Toussaint was taken a captive to France, where he died in confinement at Besangon, the 29th April, 1803. On the 14th September, 1802, the remaining negroes, risen again in insurrection, under Christophe and Dessalines, blacks, Petion and Clervaux, mulattoes, attacked the extenuated French forces, (Le Clerc and many others having died of the yellow fever,) commanded by General Rochambeau, cooped up in the City of the Cape. Besieged by Dessalines, the captain- general, and blockaded by an English squadron, sent there soon after war recommenced between England and France, Rochambeau, on the 1st of January, 1804, surrendered with five thousand men, wretched remnant of all the French expe ditionary army. More than forty thousand soldiers, ten thou sand sailors, crowds of non-combatants who went to seek their fortunes, more than three thousand of the colonists, and not less than ten thousand colored people, as many altogether as eighty thousand victims, perished in that attempt to recolonize St. Domingo ; dreadful issue of Bonaparte s overhasty essay for French aggrandizement by American colonization, whose catastrophe just preceded his similar colonial design on Louisiana, by sale to the United States rendered as blood less and prosperous as that of St. Domingo proved fatal and fruitless. Of that outbreak of hemispheric convulsions, convulsions of race, European, African, and American, white and black, bond and free, servile war, and metropolitan and colonial, came Louisiana, an unknown Spanish province, furtive free off spring obscurely born, mother earth of many unexampled self- constituted commonwealths, inaugurating an American era as new and strange as the American continent itself to the Old World. A prodigious warrior from the little Island of Corsica, CHARLES J. INGERSOLL. 47 said to be of Spartan descent, fresh from Italian and Egyptian conquests, constrained revolutionized France by pacts with nearly all her enemies to what a Roman historian calls peace, viz., respite from war; peace which pacified neither Europe, or France, or him, but from which he was changed by enor mous continental metempsychosis undergone by all Europe, to make and unmake his republican empire and democratic dynasty. The first throe of that long national agony hostilely thrust Louisiana aside, cast on thirteen distant, inchoate, un aware, and unwilling United States, with no constitutional provision, political preparation, or any expectation of such unwelcome addition to their responsibilities. With Corsican Vendetta hatred of England, intangible behind her wooden walls, and apprehending that she would seize the Spanish province for addition to the already immense American pos sessions she held by French ignoble capitulation to English conquerors, the haughty naturalized French chief sold quick, as he thought, cheap, what he hoped might help a maritime people to resist in the gristle overpowering British sea do minion, with which he felt France unable to contend. War, as insisted by the same mad monarch whose insanity freed the United States, soon ensuing with terrific animosity to shake Europe to the center, dislocating principalities, de throning and enthroning kings by divine and vulgar rights, left Louisiana slumbering in disregarded Spanish and American rest, stretching huge limbs from the Atlantic Ocean over the Alleghany and Rocky Mountains to the unexplored Pacific. Its natural development of spontaneous prosperity being unman- aged or governed by force, but quickened by forbearing demo cratic superintendence, with the least possible government, the inhabitants, left to take care of themselves, grew many and strong. Florida, supposed to be, Texas certainly, parts of Louisiana, soon providentially introducing California, Ore gon, and some of Mexico to the same United States, all by spontaneous growth expanded to an empire, progressive be- 48 RECOLLECTIONS OF yond all example, whose progress hitherto is only preliminary to greater and constant advancement for ages to come. Magnificent eminent domains, undulating from the Atlantic to the Pacific, irrigated and interlocked by noble rivers, en riching superabundant regions, swarming with innumerable animal life by land and water for man s subsistence, clothing, and commerce, in those temperate latitudes wherein the supe riors of mankind, from the earliest ages to the present, have chosen their abodes, midway between the benumbing north and emasculating south, invite the toiling millions of less fa vored climes to settlement and welfare. Already a score of sovereign States and people send greetings to Europe, Asia, and even Africa, that there is room enough left for twice or thrice as many more sovereign States, and ten or twenty times as many prosperous people. Europe s two hundred millions of overtaxed, overtasked toilers, invited to trafiic with Alantic marts, or proceed further to ultramontane homes, through flourishing and friendly commonwealths, are challenged for no passport, charged for no impost, without any obstacle or hindrance whatever over highways perfected by scientific improvement, journeying by easy, rapid stages, easier, safer, cheaper, and pleasanter than by sea, from Eu rope through America to Asia. There five hundred ill-faring millions more stand ready to exchange their productions for those of Europe and America by that international swop, for which barter, an American vulgarism hardly acknowledged in Europe, is the best expression. Midway between the Atlantic and Pacific, numberless wild beasts, natural pioneers with instinct superior to science, indicate an easy and gentle ascent of one hundred and fifty miles up once dreaded but lately familiarized gigantic mountains, and similar facility of descent from the dividing summits between the Atlantic and Pacific shores. Prairies, parks, mountain table-lands, perennial nutritious grasses, thermal springs, gold, silver, and copper mines, salt lakes, and mountains, with numberless other means, some already ascer- CHARLES J. INGERSOLL. 49 tained, others soon to be, of individual happiness and national wealth, abound; which this page, not intended to describe, only intimates. All the fabulous wonders for which Jef ferson was ridiculed and Humboldt is admired, realized by Louisiana, the political far surpass the natural advantages of that freshest portion of the New World, which an American Minister boasted to his presidential constituent that he had convinced the first Consul was no Paradise, which was Mr. Livingston s official assurance to Mr. Jefferson. Thirteen feeble United States, in little more than merely maritime and commercial partnership, with, to be sure, liberty for capital, multiplied from five to more than thirty odd millions of peo ple, are not only advanced, but vouchsafed to lofty, inoffen sive, glorious nationality, with enviable rank among nations, in admirable tranquillity refuting foreign disparagement and rebuking domestic disquiet by the severe signality of annals, triumphantly proclaiming the progressive and orderly welfare of men ruling themselves. These historical recollections are not intended to discuss the most, if not only, alarming peril of the prosperity they vindicate; nor will African slavery be dealt with further than as it involves the confederation of the United States, without inquiring whether it is wrong or right. Undeniable history assures all of its metropolitan establishment in the American colonies; and that the mother country, its propagator at one time, by revulsion of public sentiment about the period of the purchase of Louisiana, became its most redoubtable censor. Overruling all local and continental, religious and political, American endeavors for its removal, the British government, ready to war for the Assiento contract in one age, denounced slavery in the United States as sin in the next. Stewards and agents of English non-resident slave masters in Jamaica and other English possessions, by cruel treatment reducing the number of slaves, their transport from Africa was deemed indispensable and laudable traffic for their replenishment; while the more careful domesticity of masters living with 50 RECOLLECTIONS OF their slaves in this country has increased their number from a few hundred thousand, at American independence, to several millions, still constantly increasing. When the slaves of British planters in our Southern States were more immovable, suddenly, than the primeval forests, and more necessary, for eign philanthropy demanded the impossibility of their instant and universal libertinism. The miracles of American cotton then unknown, and compelled African labor in temperate lati tudes found dearer than that of hired freemen, the general tendency to freedom which accompanied the American and French revolutions, if not attributable to them, questioned the propriety, however common in all ages and countries, by which one man owns another; and in the Northern United States slavery was gradually abolished by easy, profitable philanthropy. But, when tobacco and rice were nearly the only Southern products, and liberty proclaimed in this coun try, France, and elsewhere as man s right, slaveholders them selves yielded to the general sentiment of the age. Jefferson, always an enthusiast for liberty everywhere and every how, if not for every one ; Madison, with more temperate constitu tional consideration; and Washington, by at least posthumous testamentary provision, all great slaveholders, set the seals of their authoritative reprobation on what Madison and Wash ington calmly condemned as evil, but Jefferson, roused from dreams of enthusiasm by burglarious abolition, cried out against as the midnight tocsin of fatal disunion. And if the United States had remained as at first constituted, merely Northern and Southern sovereignties, without Louisiana, there was reason to fear that disunion might have been their lot. For, when Virginia superseded Massachusetts in the Federal government, and Jefferson shaped their policy as well as distributed their offices, Eastern discontent was inevitable result. Inflamed by his despotic restrictive system to prevent war, which at last helped to produce it, with intolerable annoy ances to the non-slaving Eastern States, provoking their disaf fection to the slaveholding and warring South, Louisiana saved CHARLES J. INGERSOLL. 51 the Union, first by the total defeat of invasion to retake that State for England or Spain, and next by a marvelous product of slave labor, which, enriching Northern navigation and manufactures, exercises greater power over the world than iron or gold, cheaply clothing it, regulating its exchanges, commanding peace, and ministering so wonderfully to interna tional, our own national, and all individual welfare, that not to acknowledge its providential agency is impossible. National and sectional aversion is the prejudice common to all neighboring peoples; British Saxon hatred of Irish Celts, Austrians and Hungarians of each other, Poles and Rus sians, and even French Gascons and Alsacians, who do not understand each other s language, in strongly consolidated France. Northern and Southern fellow-citizens of these United States, not exempt from this uncharitable idiosyn crasy, have inflamed it to madness by hatred and habitude of slavery. Louisiana, with it guaranteed by treaty, but faintly denied admission into the Union, was furiously repelled when proffered, as Texas, part of Louisiana as first received. Lord Aberdeen, the British Minister, a peace-loving and not un friendly representative of the new British abomination of slavery, suffered it to mislead his pragmatic negrophilism to the offensive extent of instructing his Envoy to abolish slavery in Texas, and in this country to prevent its annexa tion. And a statesman so high spirited in his catholic patri otism as John Quincy Adams, whose presidency was altogether Southern in constitutional sympathies, was induced, as subse quently member of Congress, to oppose the admission of Texas, with the same Northeastern dementation since exciting civil war in Texas; and even servile war Mr. Adams did not shrink from invoking as preferable to slave-accursed Texas. Overcoming that monstrous and irrational recalcitra- tion, Congress, after memorable struggle, admitted Texas, with the result of incorporating one of the most orderly, best constituted and governed, flourishing, and improving of these United States; not only so, but with the States of Louisi- 52 RECOLLECTIONS OF ana, Florida, and Arkansas as border guards and barriers to prevent Carolina or any other Southern State, maddened by Northern outrage, from breaking the Union by remedy worse than the worst disease. The Committee on Foreign Relations, with which I was asso ciated, pleading for Texas, urging the importance of cotton, for union, power, and peace, contended for it as an inapprecia ble American monopoly, which likewise has proved the result. Great Britain and France, mighty empires, with perfect right to free themselves from dependence on that monopoly, cannot get the better of it while ever the gulf stream, flowing from the Gulf of Mexico, constitutes the gulf States a cotton- growing region, which peculiar changes of atmosphere, warm and cool, wet and dry, do not impart to Egypt, Italy, or any other field for cotton, by no means a modern production, but in its American abundance, excellence, and qualities, alto gether a discovery. And in its history the circumstance is of curious Americanism, that the twelfth article of Jay s British treaty, which President Washington induced the Senate to reject, specified cotton, though then not deemed more valuable than the molasses and sugar in that same article. Unparalleled victories at New Orleans, achieved by a slave holder chief behind ramparts, though not built of cotton, as com monly said, yet by slaves, and among whose best troops were the free negroes he rallied to his standard, expelling with over whelming discomfiture the last forcible foreign attempt against the United States, welded Louisiana in this Union without con stitutional sanction, as the victory at Saratoga, marking another great era in their annals, united the French kingdom with their struggle for liberty. Like the battles of Marathon and Phar- salia, of old, Marengo, Waterloo, and Jacinto, in our times, the triumph conferring Louisiana on the United States, with mo nopoly of cotton, immensity of space, and warranty of peace, crowned republican empire with better legitimacy of divine right to rule than any monarch can boast by grace of God ; CHARLES J. INGERSOLL. 53 and most happy will be Americans, if, convinced of that right, they maintain its possession. But beyond cotton and gold is the advantage of space in regions of salubrity and plenty for the growth of self-govern ment. First bestowed by several States upon their Union, and then by territorial additions largely augmented, the Old World, while contributing to, can hardly appreciate or con ceive this novel multiplication of new homes in the New, un disturbed from abroad, and mildly regulated in free settle ments. The experiment is without example. The Grecian Amphictyonic league is an extremely faint analogy of Ameri can confederacy, by organism of a few neighboring cities, as would seem, for mere police and perhaps judicature. Still less is the resemblance, on the contrary, there is contrast in several hundred German principalities reduced to some three dozen kingdoms, archduchies, and electorates, in a Congress at Vienna, by Bund, loosely designating a mere maze of despot isms, great and small, comprehending between forty and fifty millions of people, with no regard whatever to their unrepre sented interests, who have no right but that of insurrection living always under arms, in dread of each other, their Diet or Volparlament without authority, and their Zollverein merely commercial, without treasury, currency, judiciary, or any other law of confederation. Their union, the work of such regulators as Metternich and Castlereagh, carving king doms out of conquests, is the very opposite of American union. Of twelve millions already swarming in the Valley of the Mississippi, industrious, enterprising, patriotic, all ardent re publicans, all speaking the grave Saxon language significant of liberty and independence, nearly all attend school, all worship in Christian churches, all democratic suffragans by mandatory right of vote, choose their rulers, and change them when so willed. And most of these freemen are land lords, owning their homesteads, not like the French, by an average of one acre each, even which little fortifies manhood, 54 RECOLLECTIONS OF but averaging each his hundred acres or more, not held as most yeomen Britons, however sturdy, hold theirs, by ten antry under superior lords. The migratory mood of American Western pioneers may, for a time, weaken the national strength. Absence of all con stitutional provision for their territorial arrangement occasions controversy between North and South, aggravated by hatred and habitude, both excessive, of slavery. But all danger to the republican experiment is dispelled by a zodiac of free communities from sea to sea binding the extremes and all together, not merely as Washington counseled, but the Crea tor arranged. Surveying large tracts of land and on distant Indian cam paigns, Washington learned the inappreciable value of spacious domains for a new people ; and when not yet their Chief Magis trate, warmly inculcated the union of Western waters with the Atlantic. Deprecating entangling alliances for the republic, he felt likewise the necessity of keeping foreign nations from contaminating its original principles, or disturbing them by new settlements in their neighborhood. Room for develop ment he deemed indispensable. Long afterward, when Presi dent Monroe, through Congress, repeated that warning by what has come to be called the Monroe doctrine, suggested, there is reason to believe, to that determined champion of the West, by his excellent Secretary of State, John Quincy Adams what was it more than Washington inculcated ? Mr. Adams, in Congress, explained our claim to Oregon by the scriptural injunction for territorial extension which God, bless ing man, addressed to him " Be fruitful, and multiply and replenish the earth, and subdue it, and have dominion over everything that moveth on the earth." These recollections will exhibit every one of our founders contemplating continental enlargements. Rufus King, in Congress of the Confederation, claimed all the two great val leys of the Mississippi and the St. Lawrence; Alexander CHARLES J. INGERSOLL. 55 Hamilton s ambitious view extended much farther; and Wash ington shall be quoted, urging the forcible seizure of Louisiana by surprise, as I think his advice may be fairly considered, by mere executive action without legislative authorization. The glorious little island ruling Great Britain, with larger territo ries in several continents than the United States in one, in stead of unjustly charging her colonies with grasping at such accession, with injustice in their attainment, and anticipating danger by them of republican overthrow, should be proud of such offspring, and anxious for their aggrandizement. 56 JOHN ADAMS S CHAPTER II. ADAMS S ADMINISTRATION. PRELIMINARY to Bonaparte s treaty of 1800 with the United States occurred that reconciliation in 1798 between the French and American republics, which was effected by George Logan. And to our narrative belongs an account somewhat episodical, yet pertinent, of his memorable success by romantic interposi tion to arrest hostilities and restore peace. An Act of Con gress, sometimes called the Logan Law, was the passionate consequence, still frowning sixty years after its enactment a dead letter on our mild code, in the full force of threatening legality, not only never enforced against him, but never at tempted to be against any one. When pillories, tortures, scaffolds, and other such cruelties against partisan offenders were obsolete, this act indicates how they were nevertheless dealt with by American republican animosity. But as no notion was entertained of enforcing the Logan Law, though in full potentiality during the wars with England and with Mexico, and an imposing effort for one like it was completely frustrated lately in Parliament, during the Russian war, it is not probable that any such severity would now be created or tolerated in a free country. The gentleman whose enthusiastic philanthropy provoked it was among the purest and most noble-spirited of the descendants of Penn s associates, benevo lent reformers of government, one of the disciples of his, and Franklin s and Jefferson s aversion to war, as seldom under any circumstances an irresistible, indispensable necessity. His only offence was purely disinterested and dangerous exposure of his person, property, and character, to stop what he considered the calamities, national and individual, ADMINISTRATION. 57 of at any rate unwise if not unjust and almost chimerical hostilities. With Penn peaceably settling the novel Commonwealth bearing his name, and founded on his original postulates, was James Logan as one of the founders and most eminent fellow-laborers, whose public usefulness is registered in his tory with exemplary individuality, and his services and writ ings cherished as altogether monuments of institutions, civil and religious, more simple, peaceable, pious, and philanthropic, than those of any prior government; more tolerant than the Puritan, less ostentatious than other creeds, either Roman Catholic or Protestant. Non-combatants or controversialists by either sword, pen, or speech, the originators of their system have been less in evidence as American benefactors, -exem plary reformers of religious worship and political government, pious patriots, and altogether remarkable people, than either the Puritan propagandists of New England, the Carolina Huguenots, Virginia Episcopalians, or Maryland Roman Catholics, all by speech, pen, and sword more demonstrative, and therefore more celebrated, than the peaceable and secluded, but gregarious and invincible followers of Penn and disciples of his doctrines in the Commonwealth from his name called Pennsylvania. Born and bred of that uncelebrated and more peculiar than puritanic race of modern American Christians, at a large, comfortable brick mansion surrounded by majestic oaks, chest nuts, elms, and other noble forest trees, in the Northern Lib erties of Philadelphia, at Stenton, the family seat of the Logans, where George Logan s grandfather James and his father William lived and died, William s son George, the sub ject of this notice, after the manner of his sect and ancestry, lived and died a thoroughly well educated and principled Quaker gentleman. And there his children, of whom the eldest son Albanus, my school-fellow and about my own age, uncommonly handsome and extremely peculiar, departed this life lately; and some time before him Algernon Sydney, an- 58 JOHN ADAMS S other son of George, whose tranquil but ardent and inflexible love of liberty was quietly made evident even in the names of his children. In the same fine old homestead the grandchil dren and great-grandchildren yet reside in similar opulent retirement. By intermarriages among the Norrises and Dick insons, and other rich, long established families of the Penn dynasty, of their own religious persuasion and exclusive domes tication, the Logans, without, since Penn s companion James Logan, any eminence of talent or appearance in public life, have maintained a matrimonial landed aristocracy in almost royal segregation, with pedigrees more distinctly genealogical and pure of discredit than many of the recent nobility of Great Britain. I well remember, on my earliest professional journey into Delaware, employed by the agent of the Penns, the justly distinguished John Dickinson, then residing at Wil mington, a firm but temperate and cautious member of the Society of Friends, venturing his large possessions as friend of the American extremely perilous revolution. Tall and slender, in plain but the finest drab clothing, well-mounted on a pure-blooded and well-trained horse, attended by his well- equipped, plainly-dressed but gayly mounted groom, the highly respected author of the famous Farmer s Letters took his morning ride. At that time horseback exercise was not only the general recreation, but indispensable locomotion. Judges rode their circuits, country physicians visited their patients, merchants and men of business performed distant journeys over the Alleghany Mountains into the far West, in the saddle, when stages were rare, steamboats and railroads unknown. George Logan, more enterprising and progressive than his descendants, inherited from his ancestors a landed estate of several hundred acres, now a suburb of Philadelphia. Coming of age just when the Declaration of Independence proclaimed new rights for man, he began life their earnest, disinterested, and inflexible advocate. After having bee^n at school in Eng land, where well-born Americans, from deficiency of schools in this country, then thought it best for the well-bred to be edu- ADMINISTRATION. 59 cated, he went again to Europe to complete his education by the study of medicine, which was his profession, though he never practiced physic with the doctorate he acquired. Having spent some time for that purpose in Scotland, he then visited England, Ireland, Holland, Germany, Italy, and France. With mind enlarged by science, literature, and travels, and manners refined by good society, he likewise imbibed new ideas of political economy dawning in England and France, just as a novel political sovereignty was announced and strug gling upward in his own country. The illustrious American Minister to solicit royal succor to revolutionary liberty from France, at his modest retreat at Passy, a purlieu of magnifi cent Paris, whether in court dress and wig, or plain garb and hair, as democratic poetry adorns him, is no great matter; for certainly, in the benign principles of free trade, permanent peace, economy, and equality, Franklin was fully and largely accoutered. There he kindly welcomed their Quaker disciple to his lively breakfasts and instructive study. "Your illustrious grandfather, James Logan," said the grateful old epicurean philosopher, who considered neither wine, women, nor good cheer any hindrance to his experiments in electricity, cardinal politics, and noble charity, "laid me under obligations by his benevolent advice and information when I was poor and friend less, and it affords me much pleasure to acknowledge such obliga tions to his grandson." Logan was therefore received into Franklin s welcome ; heard him talk of Adam Smith, then little known, and Dr. Price, who had not only read to him, Franklin said, chapters of the forth coming work on the wealth of nations, but altered or modified parts of it, at Franklin s suggestion, for the first great expla nation of the unknown science of political economy. " Turgot, too," said Franklin to Logan, u has imparted to me some of his discoveries in the same science," then as strange and in credible as steam and electricity. Enlightened and impressed by such opportunity and instruction, planted in a soil ready for liberalism, fascinated and rooted in sentiments by no 60 JOHN ADAMS S means universal with those Americans born to independent property, George Logan returned from Europe to America in the disastrous year of 1780. The Carolinas were devastated that year by conquering armies of invaders; Congress were in their greatest strait; paper-money was at its last gasp ; General Washington was obliged to extort relief for his famishing soldiers by the use of the bayonet to compel contributions from impoverished people. Logan s home, like other places near Philadelphia, had been under the hoofs and torches of conquerors. But he did not hesitate. Although many of his religious society at least de clined resistance, if not more, he took his stand at once for uncompromising independence. The mansion at Stenton, by a lucky accident, had escaped the destruction inflicted in 1778 by the British on many of the dwellings around cap tured Philadelphia, though the farm was pillaged, wasted, and dilapidated. Colonel Twisselton, afterward Lord Say and Sele, exult- ingly reported to his commander, General Howe, that among the sixteen rebels houses he had been ordered to burn, that of the leading rebel Dickinson had not escaped. Fairview, a seat of uncommon value and beauty, two miles from Stenton, which had been inhabited by Logan s cousin, John Dickinson, was not occupied by that eminent patriot when the British torch was applied to it, but then belonged to minors. Dr. Logan receiving from his father s executors wasted estates, with piles of almost worthless paper-money, found it difficult to procure a loan on such depreciated property. Anxious, however, to relieve his countrymen from other parts of the United States seeking refuge near Philadelphia, many of them of adequate means theretofore, but reduced and driven destitute from home by hostile invasion, among other generous contributions, he loaned his furnished house at Sten ton, with fuel and other conveniences, to the brothers Pinck- ney, Charles Cotesworth and Thomas the latter severely wounded and Edward Rutledge, afterward Governor of South ADMINISTRATION. 61 Carolina, all distinguished emigrants from Charleston, then occupied by British forces, who lived six months, in free quar ters, at Stenton. It was rather late to draw a sword for independence, even if Dr. Logan had not been one of a sect opposed to bearing arms. Civil and religious freedom had been enjoyments of the American Colonies before they fought for independence ; to substitute a sovereign people at home for an individual foreign sovereign. His republicanism earnest, considerate, and invincible, less ambitious than that of soldiers or states men, was not less patriotic. The parade and pomp of war and strife of politics being inconsistent with the tranquil charities of the Society of Friends, of which he was a mem ber, Dr. Logan substituted beneficent and inoffensive support of the cause of liberty and independence. Of a family at ease and apart from most worldly pursuits, in associations aristocratic, but in politics thoroughly republican, a Pennsyl vania Quaker Whig gentleman of fortune, though not com mon, was not more extraordinary than Quaker generals, such as Mifflin in the first, and Brown, from the same corner of Pennsylvania, in the second war with Britain. Stenton, a large, plain, unpretending brick mansion, home stead of an extensive estate, could not, according to Quaker regulations, be ornamented with statues or pictures, enlivened by music and dancing, nor its opulent inmates indulge in ostentatious equipages, furniture, or clothing. But splendid trees, productive gardens, fruitful fields, all the comforts with many of the luxuries of habitation, profusion of the best sustenance, books, sociable entertainments without fashionable embellishments, were daily recreations of a large, spacious dwelling, with nothing picturesque or fanciful in its architec ture, but roomy, comfortable, akin to simple elegance, the home of plentiful hospitality. Mrs. Deborah Logan, born Norris, records that "Domestic manufactures, rightly so called from being indeed the production of the farmers families, were a favorite object of 62 JOHN ADAMS S encouragement; and this gave scope to the industry and ingenuity of their ideas, and introduced us in a social and pleasant manner to each other s acquaintance. I have not forgotten the agreeable interchange of visits, the beneficial emulation, and the harmless pride with which we exhibited specimens of our industry and good management to each other. The spinning-wheel was going in every house, and it was a high object of our ambition to see our husbands and families clothed in our own manufactures, (a good practice which my honored husband never relinquished,) and to produce at our social dinner parties the finest ale, of our own brewing; the home-made wines, cheese, and other articles which we thought ought to be made among ourselves rather than im ported from abroad. But this useful and pleasant harmony was destined to be interrupted by that baneful spirit of party which soon afterward nearly destroyed the comfort of all social society." To this description of a rich and exemplary rural house hold I add Mrs. Logan s account of Washington s visit to Stenton. " It was about this time that Dr. Logan s reputation as a skill ful agriculturist procured for him the grateful favor of a visit from the Father of his Country, 7 then in Philadelphia officiating as President of the Federal Convention. He came with his friend, Daniel Jenifer, Esq., of Maryland, who had often before been with us, and passed a day at Stenton in the most social and friendly manner imaginable, delighted with the fine grass land and beautiful experiments with gypsum, some of which plainly showed initials and words traced with it upon the sod, of a far richer hue and thickness than the surrounding grass, and other subjects of rural economy which Dr. Logan then had to show. His praise conferred distinction. Nor did he make me less happy by his pleasing attention to myself and his kind notice of my children, whom he caressed in the most endearing manner, placing my little boy on his knee, and taking my infant in his arms, with commen dations that made their way immediately to a mother s heart. I had always looked up to General Washington, from the first time that I had ever seen his auspicious name, as a rare and perfect pattern of the dignity to which man might attain by living up to the laws of virtue and honor ; and now that I beheld the colossal greatness at nearer view, I perceived it polished and adorned with all the amenity and gentleness which delights and endears in domestic society." Progress, as so called, from those times to these, exults in many refinements unknown to Washington and Logan, and ADMINISTRATION. 63 indeed beyond their conception; displayed mainly in cities of prodigious growth, teeming with luxurious ostentation, vices, and spectacles, but whether more highly civilized than they is the problem of progress. I remember Dr. Logan, with whom I had no personal acquaint ance, in the homespun dress he always wore, made by his own household from his own flocks and flax, with his powdered hair which was, perhaps, some departure from the Quaker garb, as was also his letters in the third and plural instead of the sin gular and second person ; his garb almost coarse, but his per son and manners indicative of good breeding. Deputed by the American Philosophical Society as one of a committee to visit Stenton, and ask his widow for some of the precious volumes of manuscript, copies of her husband s, containing his ances tors correspondence preserved by him, I had the pleasure of a slight acquaintance then and afterward with that remark able specimen of the manners and conversation of a Quaker lady, whose what many might deem punctilious rejection of the common forms and phrases of polite intercourse, far from deranging, enhanced its amenities. A lady far advanced in age, but with youthful complexion, fresh almost to brilliancy, received and entertained us with the best good breeding. Her inflexible refusal of our request was as gentle as it was abso lute, with a reason briefly intimated, at once womanly and religious. To part with the manuscript, freely put in our hands to examine, she said would look like vanity which her creed disapproved. But after her death they might be dis posed of as would be most useful. Accordingly, since then, a bound volume, altogether in Deborah Logan s plain mascu line and elegant handwriting, for the preservation of family memorials and her husband s justification pious pastime of the last years of a well-spent long life has been deposited in the Loganian branch of the Philadelphia City Library. Remote enough from the present time to be purified of passion and prejudice, yet so near as to record unquestionable realities, these invaluable materials for historical truths furnish most of 64 JOHN ADAMS S the particulars, and nearly all the interest of this attempt to publish what to sequester would be national and local mis fortune. These personal premises are homage cordially due to the widow who within five miles of a bustling, mercenary mart, but infinitely far aloof from its selfish pursuits, with serene intensity of devotion in her decline to her honored husband, as she called him, vindicated his memory from the calumny and proscription he braved for his country s peace and freedom. The story of the whole republican patriotism of both husband and wife will be found more laudable and rational than many other sacrifices sanctified as heroic by his tory, and the democratic loyalty of George and Deborah Logan as lofty, pure, and exemplary as that of any subject to any individual sovereign. Romance of history by fascinating style, like Hume s per suasion of royalism, or Macaulay s of liberalism, is fabricated legends delightful of perusal. But the most delightful histori cal delusion cannot deprive William Penn of solid and perma nent glory for founding a great commonwealth on original predication of peace and freedom, equality and toleration, such as hardly if ever conceived, and certainly never established till by him. The founder of the republic of Pennsylvania was likewise author of a plan of union for all the British- Ameri can colonies, since vastly realized by these United States, and in the same spirit of national prosperity, by pacification, sketched a plan for European confederated union, apparently preferable to the precarious and enormously belligerant bal ance of power by which that continent of neighboring rival nations is preserved from incessant warfare. Lord Macaulay, or other charming fabricators of public opinion, in vain dis parage such a founder, pacificator, and projector, whose solid celebrity no attractions of style can pervert or much preju dice; for the historian s disparagement will sink into oblivion while the founder s work must survive to continual admiration the founder gratefully remembered, the commentator for gotten. ADMINISTRATION. 65 After mentioning the excitement caused by the breaking out of the French revolution and the arrival of citizen Genet, as the signal for every one to arrange themselves according to the principles they advocated, Deborah Logan thus pro ceeds: "In the midst of this state of things my husband formed the project of his visit to France, with what then appeared to me the romantic idea of persuading the rulers of the desultorious govern ment to alter the tone of conduct toward the United States. He thought they were not aware of our growing importance, and that the rashness and injustice of their measures toward us would be the means of uniting us with Great Britain, and forwarding the views of the enemies of all republics. The recollection is still vivid of the slanders and obloquy heaped upon all those professing the political opinions he did. And perhaps no individual, except Jef ferson himself, (and he was thought less daring,) was regarded with such jealous suspicion. It seemed as if the crimes and horrors which the infuriated demons in France had committed under the abused name of liberty, were attributed to the assertor of their cause in every country. No one could more sincerely deplore their excesses than did Dr. Logan; but he still hoped, when these ferocious mon sters were put down, that their successors in the government would act with wisdom and moderation. Such an expectation, or even wish, approached, in the estimation of their enemies, to a partici pation of the guilt which they thought the whole nation had in curred by the excesses committed, never to be enough deplored. And though he was thus put under surveillance, and a committee appointed to watch and report his actions, yet they seemed, by the stir and surprise which his departure occasioned, to have had no idea of the step he was about to take, although part of his pre paration was the selling off of property for funds to undertake the voyage. He was fully aware of the misrepresentations to which his conduct would be liable, and from the violence with which Federalism at that time assailed its opponents, could hope for no quarter in case of a deviation from the most perfect pru dence. He thought it best, therefore, by a solemn legal act, to empower me to dispose of his estate in such a manner as to secure it from confiscation ; and, going to the Chief Justice, in order to acknowledge the power of attorney, informed him of his views and intentions. Thank God, exclaimed the venerable magistrate, that we possess one man who is capable and devoted enough to undertake this task. You have my best wishes in the enterprise. And filling out the wine, he drank to its success, furnishing Dr. Logan at the same time with the following simple certificate of citizenship : VOL. I. 5 66 JOHN ADAMS S STATE OF PENNSYLVANIA, ss. To all whom it may concern ; the underwritten Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, certifies that George Logan, of the County of Philadelphia, farmer, is a native citizen of the United States of America, has for several years been a worthy representative for the said County of Philadelphia in the Legisla ture of the State of Pennsylvania, and is well known to him. Given under the hand and seal of the said Chief Justice, at Philadelphia, the eleventh day of June, one thousand seven hun dred and ninety-eight. THO. McKEAN." Soon after chosen to be, for the succeeding half century and more, the last educated Governor of that considerable commonwealth, more populous and affluent than several Euro pean kingdoms, far exceeding many German and Italian sov ereignties, Thomas McKean was one of the boldest signers of the perilous declaration of American defiance of the Old World by popular sovereignty declared with independence for the New. Ardent in all his undertakings, Chief Justice McKean, intimate with Governor Mifflin, Secretary Dallas, Dr. Logan, and other republicans, was a warm supporter of Jefferson and those who denounced the British treaty and in fluence as injurious to the United States. First Chief Justice of Pennsylvania after the revolution, during twenty years, with stern integrity, joined with popular antipathies, he boldly expounded the doctrine that a good judge should enlarge his jurisdiction, vindicating from insult Marbois, Secretary of the French Legation, who married at Philadelphia, and was Bona parte s salesman of Louisiana to the United States. The Chief Justice pronounced the law of nations part of the com mon law of Pennsylvania, authorizing its enforcement without statutes or written provision. By severe execution of the English common law, he curbed and crushed Cobbett, stu pendous English disturber of the peace by libels extremely offensive to Americans deeming British influence detrimental to the United States. The Spanish Minister, Yrago, married a daughter of Chief Justice McKean, aristocratic in his social as democratic in his political relations. If passion or party ADMINISTRATION. 67 ever affected his judgment, no prejudice distorted his judicial rectitude. When promoted from the bench to the chief mag istracy of the State, he passionately led the way in party pro scription by removing from office those who had been his opponents, and was then obliged to throw himself on their support for re-election, when proscribed himself by the more radical of his own party, whose farther progress he ridiculed as ignorant and asserted as unjust. Master- workman, to sub stitute republicanism for royalty, McKean denounced as crops of weeds to choke the cultivation of liberty many superficial con trivances not contemplated by the original founders. As one of the pioneers of the great American experiment, he claimed to be bolder and better founder of rational freedom, whose durable foundations were endangered by party progress, reactionary and retrograde. Abolishing royalty to substitute republicanism, pronouncing the law of nations part of the common law of a State, and English common law another part, all for preserving peace and order, like presidential proclamations of abstinence from war, were great State strokes on w T hich to construct em pires, but which ignorant and partisan succurnbency to popu larity endanger by undermining property and introducing despotism. Shakspeare s axiom is constantly verified, "that excess is a devil:" a chief justice inviting a Quaker to toast judicial certificate by a glass of wine, recorded by a pious matron with favor, whose religion proscribed all excess, espe cially of drinks, typifies original temperance before modern despotism vainly punished with insufferable privation, social, convivial, and medical consolations of which beverage is a chief aliment. Embarking on a secret mission, of which p.eace on earth and good-will to man was the motive-power, not uninfluenced by those personal and perhaps party prejudices from which man is not born or educated to be exempt, Dr. Logan, shortly before he privately procured Chief Justice McKean s certifi cate, was furnished with another, from Vice-President Jeffer son, not less cordial or characteristic of the pure and primitive 68 JOHN ADAMS S patriotism and republicanism of him who took and him who gave the memorable passport. But partially apprised of Logan s intention, and disapproving its privacy, the second officer of the republican government, then in decided opposi tion to President John Adams s Secretaries administration of it, Mr. Jefferson supplied the clandestine emissary of a for tunate errand with the following memorial: "I, Thomas Jefferson, do hereby certify that George Logan, the bearer hereof, who is about to visit Europe on matters of busi ness, is a citizen of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and United States of America, of one of the most ancient and respect able families of the said Commonwealth, of independent fortune, good morals, irreproachable conduct, and true civism; and as such he is recommended to the attention of all those who, from princi ples of humanity, or a desire to attach to their country the respect of others, could interest themselves in seeing the protection and hos pitality of their laws extended to a worthy and unoffending stran ger placed under their safeguard. " Given under my hand and seal, at Philadelphia, this 4th day of June, 1798. TH. JEFFERSON." Altogether unofficial and merely commendatory, somewhat more diplomatic than that of the Chief Justice, the Vice-Presi dent s missive predicated the bearer s social respectability, historical ancestry, considerable property, and true civism by which, no doubt, his republicanism was vouched with good morals and irreproachable conduct, as claims to protec tion and hospitality for a worthy and unoffending stranger, placed under the safeguard of those who, from principles of humanity, desire to attach the respect of others to their coun try. Jefferson s presidential reformation of the whole basis of the Federal government, changing it from executive to pop ular supremacy, substituting much modified republicanism for that preferred by Hamilton, and administered by Adams, ap parently with Washington s approval, together with invective resistance, European and American, signalized its successful introduction. And not being entirely upheld, as he began, by either of his presidential successors and pupils, Madison and Monroe, commended his system to the mass as what is ADMINISTRATION. 69 acclaimed as Jeffersonian democracy. But his certificate to Logan teems with proof that ignorance and vulgarity, want of education and manners, were inconsistent with the true civism of Jeffersonian democracy, often thoughtlessly vaunted by many appreciating politics by deportment or garb, and suffering conceited aristocracy to vulgarize democracy as sig nified by coarse clothing and behavior instead of principles. Independent fortune, in Jefferson s estimate, if inherited or otherwise fairly acquired, is advantage, like ancient and respectable family, promissory of good morals and conduct. And to education his whole life was devoted ; not merely by schools and rudiments, but academies, literary and scientific, to the utmost attainment of intellectual excellence. The military college at West Point, which he created even when pruning the army by extensive reduction, and the Virginia State University, established when doubtful of the constitu tionality of a Federal institution, for complete and perfect education, were the firmament of Jeffersonian democracy. The half-educated upstart, boasting, among others still less edu cated, himself a self-made man, rarely equals the adult, who, after school tuition, pursues his studies at colleges, and, when graduating thence, still, like Jefferson, continues them as long as he lives, not only for the most rational of his own enjoyments, but for the greatest good of the greatest number. For collegiate education is necessary to prepare teachers to manage schools, and every uneducated laborer, mechanic, or other workman of the toiling million, is instructed, improved, comforted, enriched, and otherwise benefited by literary and scientific amelioration, imparted by learned men, like the genial sun enlivening every family and individual, in peace and in war supplying the aid, and comfort, and elevation much more needed by the poor than the rich, and the unin formed than the educated. And so, too, Jeffersonian democ racy was polished and refined by the popularity of gracious manners and those social recreations to which Jefferson was bred, and unspoiled by the luxurious elegancies of the most 70 JOHN ADAMS S splendid court of Europe, delighted to reconcile with repub lican simplicity and domestic dignity. A musician himself, fine horseman as well as accomplished scholar, his personal deportment was, like that of all the founders of American independence and democratic institutions, unblemished by vulgar coarseness, often accompanying superior talents and good education, sometimes the most aristocratic and royal. These two certificates Dr. Logan took from the Chief Jus tice and Yice-President, not as credentials to introduce or commend a spontaneous minister or protect an embassy, but merely for personal protection in case of arrest or interrup tion as he traversed any part of Europe on his way to France; nor did he ever tender or use them there or anywhere on any occasion. But fortunate in obtaining at Hamburg, through La Fayette s influence, a passport from the French Minister there, uniformly disclaiming all public authority, moved by the enthusiasm of triumphant benevolence, he relied exclu sively on private character and the representation of cardinal principles, which, he had reason to believe, were common to French and American republicans, alike resolved to vindicate republican freedom from British warring domination. The 4th of June, 1798, when Vice-President Jefferson de livered to Dr. Logan that significant certificate of his civism, family, fortune, and worth at home, with intimation of his business abroad, was the birthday of King George III., celebrated at the British Minister s, Kobert Liston, and the British Consul s, Phineas Bond, in Philadelphia, by numerous loyal Britons, all natural fomenters of American alliance, offensive and defensive, with their revered England as the only bulwark of the United States against the direful spread of French revolutionary enormities and despotic subjugation. Not a few Americans, many of them respectable citizens, stigmatized by Jefferson as Anglomen, believed with them that American republicanism was a weak, short-lived experiment, defective in nearly all its departures from British institutions, with some of whom, by equivocal allusion to the American ADMINISTRATION. 71 Minister in London, "Our King in England," was a sentiment sometimes toasted in their revels. Invested with the Vice- President s secret passport for his clandestine mission, Dr. Logan, fearing to be forcibly interrupted and arrested, felt obliged to keep secret his design and departure, and to make arrangements with the solemnities of a death-bed. The certi ficates furnished by the Yice-President and Chief Justice, intended to be kept profoundly secret, were betrayed Debo rah Logan records, it was never ascertained how and the project became the subject of furious obloquy. The consignee of the vessel in which he sailed, a respectable merchant, named by Mrs. Logan, many of whose worthy descendants now live in Philadelphia, not apprised of it till the fugitive was gone, declared that if he had been aware that Logan was going in that vessel, he should never have been allowed a passage by her. Brown s Philadelphia Gazette, a journal not remarkable for furious politics, published the following abusive notice of Logan s absconding: "We are assured from the best authority, that Dr. Logan (a noted and violent Democrat) departed from this city on Wednesday or Thursday last, in the ship Iris, for Hamburg, on his route to Paris. There cannot be the least question that the doctor, from his inordinate love of French liberty and hatred to the sacred Constitution of the United States, has gone to the French Direc tory fraught with intelligence of the most dangerous tendency to this country. The secrecy of his intention, (for his very linen was made up out of his own house,) and his visit by daylight on the day of his departure to the French Consul, announce that his abandonment of wife, children, relatives, and country is of a spe cies of conspiracy most fatal to freedom and abhorrent to human ity. For can any sensible man hesitate to suspect that his infernal design can be anything less than the introduction of a French army to teach us the value of true and essential liberty by reor ganizing our government through the blessed operations of the bayonet and guillotine ? Let every American now gird on his sword. The times are not only critical, but the secret of the junto is out. Their demagogue is gone to the Directory for pur poses destructive of your lives, property, liberty, and holy re ligion." 72 JOHN ADAMS S Porcupine s Gazette, with the ferocity invigorating Cob- bett s attacks, denounced McKean for the first instance of a chief justice giving credentials to a traitor. And not only that traitor, but his wife, too, said that enormous libeler, should be put in the pillory; which hundreds, if not thousands, of the most fashionable and influential citizens of the metropolis of the United States would not have opposed or regretted. British influence in America by social sympathies imbued American public sentiment with detestation of the French and their revolutionary enormities, as patriotic American as it was deemed patriotic British feeling. Americans not detest ing the French with British aversion, were denounced as no better than the French terrorists who guillotined their coun trymen for the crime of moderantism. Anglomania, pro claimed by Cobbett and advised by Liston, stood in sea-ports at the head of a commercial decalogue. "Were it proper to speak of myself, I could," Mrs. Logan writes, "say a great deal, with the strictest truth, of the infinite anxiety of mind which I underwent at this period. I knew the full extent of the enmity which his opposition to the views of government had excited ; and though buoyed above certain fears which a knowledge of the purity of his motives and his inflexible patriotism kept down, yet I could scarcely have dared to hope that his conduct would have been altogether so guarded, that those who were on the watch for his failure could find nothing to take hold of. I would not wish to revive in my own breast, or in those who read iny narrative, any sparks of that inflammable and deleterious party spirit that mounted triumphant over every other considera tion in the times of which I now treat, but I think, notwithstanding all the efficient causes which existed, great pains had been taken somewhere to exalt it to the height which it had then gained. Among which the intrigues and intimations of that arch-intriguer, Liston, were none of the least. He was a master in such business ; none ever sent from that Court to this country having ever equalled him in those qualities. I was credibly informed by a friendly Fed eralist, that it was contemplated by government to search our house for treasonable papers, and advised if I knew of anything that would implicate my husband to destroy it. I thanked the gentleman for his kindness, but assured him, in case of a search, they would only have to regret that they had insulted a man of honor in his absence. I bad nothing to secrete. ADMINISTRATION. 73 "On the 12th of June, 1T98," writes his affectionate partner in all his persecutions, "he left me and his children, and his pleasant home at Stenton, and embarked on board the Iris, a neutral vessel, bound for Hamburg. He took with him but two letters from citi zen LaTomb, the French Consul, one addressed to Merlin, at that time Chief Director of the French republic, and the other to the celebrated Talleyrand Perigord, who has seemed to be possessed of a political life-boat, with which he has in safety rode on the tre mendous surges of the revolution, and whom Dr. Logan did not know during his retreat in this country." A settlement of his property on his wife, to prevent its confiscation, his last will and testament, and other neces sary measures, were taken by Dr. Logan, for the safety of his family. Disposing, his wife s narrative states, of two parcels of his patrimonial estate, in order to pay his debts and obtain funds for the voyage, in spite of proscription and vituperation, he took his departure. Among the patrimonial acres sacrificed for the purpose is now a public square of the City of Philadelphia, once used as a race- course, which, if still the property of Logan s heirs, would be worth to them more than the salaries of all the American foreign minis ters among whom he intruded in Europe, with ancestral acres devoted to patriotic benevolence. Property not in America so ephemeral then, especially solid possessions, not without reason denominated real estate, increasing in value from gen eration to generation, and as this has since increased pro digiously, part of the foundations of a commonwealth erected to peace and good-will, an enthusiastic descendant from such founders deemed no sacrifice at any price for his romantic mission to propagate their polities of peace. Party persecu tion for such devotion, embracing his wife and family, his pious widow charitably records, with no note of bitter recol lection, as suiferings under what she calls a reign of terror, by which those of her husband s party, whether right or wrong, designated their party opponents, when the partisan antipathy of free institutions was as intense as it well can be without bloodshed or civil war. When Logan departed, the executive of the United States. 74 JOHN ADAMS S President John Adams, with his Secretaries, Pickering and Wolcott, Northeastern statesmen, governed, the Secretaries cordially, the President actually, by Alexander Hamilton, as well as Oliver Ellsworth, the Chief Justice, together with many more, deemed it no reprehensible attachment to England to believe that English liberty, order, religion, and right with might, were the world s best reliance, and that of their coun try, against French revolutionary misrule, conquest, anarchy, atheism, confusion, and ruin. Dr. Logan thinking otherwise, as his sponsors, Vice-President Jefferson and Chief Justice McKean, thought, sailed from Philadelphia with their good will, on the 13th of June, 1798, and, after an ordinary sum mer passage across the Atlantic at that time, landed at Ham burg the twenty-third of July. For the accomplishment of his purpose that free city was one of the few spots in Europe to which he could resort with safety and convenience. Eng land he must avoid; from France he was excluded; Italy, Germany, Switzerland, Holland, and Belgium, harassed by hostilities, were hardly available to an obscure mendicant for peace, without official credentials, passport, protection, au thority, or recommendation, landing unknown and unnoticed at a commercial mart, just as the greatest of French warriors fought his battle of the Pyramids in Egypt. Filling Europe and America with conjectures as to his voyage and object, obnoxious perhaps to the civilian Directory, who feared the ascendancy of any military rival of the sway of the five kings, as their quintuple presidency was called, Bonaparte, splen didly banished, landed in Egypt, the mightiest of modern warriors, as Logan, the Quaker zealot of peace, obscurely and secretly disembarked in Europe, without fleet, army, funds, or anything more forcible or promising than the cause of peace and liberty, to overcome and outlive all their most formidable opponents. The French Charge* d Affaires at Hamburg, declaring his orders positive to refuse permission for any citizen of the United States to enter France, would not give Dr. Logan a ADMINISTRATION. 75 passport for that purpose. But fortunate in every stage of his seemingly desperate undertaking, he found La Fayette, with his wife and family, residing near the City of Hamburg. After President Washington s failure to procure his release from the Austrian prison at Olmutz, that illustrious citizen of two hemispheres had just been liberated by General Bona parte s generously requiring it as part of the treaty of Campo Formio. Well acquainted with La Fayette, Dr. Logan im parted to him fully the object of his proposed visit to France, of which Deborah Logan says that La Fayette, by letter, in formed General Washington ; and if he did, his letter, never published that I am aware, might shed light on the annals of that time. Owing to La Fayette s intervention, the French Minister at Hamburg gave Dr. Logan the desired passport for France. After five days unavoidable detention at Hamburg, leaving there on the twenty -eighth of July, hard traveling by a fatiguing journey through a large part of Europe brought him to the French capital on the 7th of August, 1798, three days before Mr. Gerry, then at Havre, homeward bound, em barked for America with clear and strong impression that France desired peace with the United States. How ripe France was for his judicious transaction and rapid success is testified by the state of France when that warlike country was more pacifically inclined toward the com monly peaceable United States, then inflamed to war with their quondam French ally. The condition of France wel comed and ratified Logan s fortunate interposition to reinstate Franklin s rejected treaties by the treaty of 1800, their lineal descendant, on principles of maritime peace, freedom, and in dependence, which from 1778 to 1800, and thence to 1803, for the treaty of Louisiana, transmitted Franklin s benign principles, in spite of their British denial and American tem porary suspension, till finally sanctioned and proclaimed as laws of nations by congress of the great powers assembled at Paris in 1756, when universal liberalism, monarchical as well as republican, European and American, predominated, and 76 JOHN ADAMS S national prosperity was consecrated as the natural growth of peace, instead of the forced production of war. During the year 1797, when enmity superseded amity as the American feeling toward France, verging continually toward hostility, the first of the five coalitions subsidized by British monarchy against French republicanism, underwent the discomfiture and overthrow which four of the five similar coalitions sustained, awarding to France control of the conti nent of Europe, while England corroborated her dominion of the sea. Bonaparte s speedy and complete defeat of five Austrian armies successively, rapidly and powerfully organ ized to resist him in 1796-7, rendered him as conqueror so terrible, as of course to be extremely traduced. When gener ally and bitterly detested as a Jacobin infidel, one of the first acts of his ascendancy was on the 15th of February, 1797, at Ancerata, in Ancona, to defy the general infidelity then almost an article of French republican creed, by proclaiming safety, subsistence, and protection, for the French clergy fugitive from their country, starving, and suffering extreme misery in the papal dominions ; thus rebuking French atheism, deism, and republicanism, by forbidding any molestation of the exiled, wretched French priesthood. And soon after, on the nineteenth of that month, at Tolentino, he -made peace be tween the Pope and the French republic, exacting, however, both pecuniary and territorial papal concessions; for Kapo- leon was so much of a Protestant as to believe that the head of the Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church would, as Pope, be more powerful and much better as religious Christian, if divested of civic and endowed with only ecclesiastical author ity; and that men, instead of being as priests constrained to unnatural and often impracticable celibacy, should be allowed to marry women; that the vast numbers of convents, monas teries, and other monastic establishments and orders, with their ruinous mortgages, privileges, and abuses, should be re duced; and other reforms established, as since adopted in several Roman Catholic countries, and by all Protestants ADMINISTRATION. 77 deemed essential to the welfare of the Christian Church, and that of every well-governed State. Bonaparte s marvelous career of victories crowned by triumphant encampment, on the 15th of April, 1797, at Leo- ben, in Upper Styria, there, within forty leagues of Vienna, extorted a suspension of arms, seconded by an armistice on the twenty-third of that month, conquered by Moreau and Hoche on the Rhine, altogether eventuating in peace on the seventeenth of October, by treaty, called the treaty of Campo Formio, settled at the hamlet of Friuli, near Udine, by Bona parte, with the Austrians, Cobentzc and Meerfeldt, and their Neapolitan Secretary Gallo. Bonaparte took there his first step in diplomacy, crushing the procrastination attempted to im pose on him, by passionately dashing to pieces a precious piece of china on the table, with a declaration that he would in like manner reduce the Austrian Empire to fragments if peace was not at once made. Soon afterward, at Rastadt, commissioned by the Directory to arrange peace there in congress, with that complicated sovereignity the confederated German Empire, Bonaparte met the handsome Swedish Minister, Ferseu, said to have been a favored lover of the Queen of France, and Metternich, then a young man, destined to an important part in the elevation and overthrow of the French adventurer. Then considered a child, and champion of democracy, after re buking, as just mentioned, Voltaireian infidelity and strength ening his consular republicanism by so many treaties with all nations, as to render him the greatest pacificator of his time, Bonaparte s destiny was by royal and aristocratic resistance, conspiracies and coalitions, to be provoked and persecuted to continual wars, inordinate conquests, dynastic empire, and tribunitian dictatorship, leading to downfall, capture, imprison ment for life, and death in torture. To that career, enthrone ment and dethronement, no one individual contributed more than the mulish Hanoverian tyrant, George III., whose ob- obstinacy emancipated the American Colonies, and constructed the French Empire. 78 JOHN ADAMS S Notwithstanding President Washington s glowing approval of the French revolution with all its terrible outrages, in his official reception of the French Minister, Peter Augustus Adet, on New-year s day, 1796, American sympathy with French republicanism, much weakened by the horrors of its achievement, was almost banished from the sea-ports of the United States by French depredations on American com merce, aggravated by the Directorial refusal to receive Wash ington s excellent Envoy, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, and inflamed to indignation by Barras s inflated farewell to Monroej on his recall, blamed by his own government for moderantism in not being earnest enough in vindication of Jay s treaty, which the French denounced as base submission to English enemies, and perfidious desertion of French friends. It was easy for British influence to deal with such American politics when there was no French Minister in the United States, nor American Minister in France, with the press English, society English, language English, and French altogether as foreign, almost as odious in the United States as in England. But while from 1797 to 1798 American enmity was fester ing to hostility, French discontent with the United States was decreasing, and war with them was discountenanced, as more moderate republicanism succeeded revolutionary radicalism. And by the time, in 1798, that this country was wound up to the highest hostile pitch against that, France, with politics mellowed and public sentiment improved, was prepared for that mission of peace which Logan accomplished. For as well before as since the revolution of 1789, every French govern ment, royal, republican, and imperial, regarded the United States as a natural ally, to be wrought for good service against British sea dominion, on the basis of those principles of independence, peace, liberty, and free trade which Frank lin inaugurated by the treaty of Versailles, and Bonaparte revived by the treaties of 1800 and 1803. The weak French Directorial government of five kings, as the five Directors were nick-named, and the French nation generally, were dis- ADMINISTRATION. 79 posed for renewal of amity between their republic and their creation, as they called the American republic, when the latter was bent on the war which Logan interposed to prevent, by restoring Franklin s admirable instead of Jay s obnoxious work. The voice of Great Britain, still for war, was less national than regal. The first of those un-English-German monarchs who could boast that he was born a Briton, with stubborn and impracticable self-will overruled Pitt s natural liberalism, yield ing to his royal master s hatred of both American and French independence, and longing to emulate or excel his father s hu miliation of France and opposition to independent government in America. An illustrious instigator of aversion to French revolution ary as ruinous reform, the great Irish-Briton, Edmund Burke, departed this life at this time, on the 8th of July, 1797; not withstanding his magnificent invectives against the French revolution, the early advocate of American independence; and though shocked at French democracy, no admirer of unre- formed French monarchy, or champion of absolute govern ment at any time anywhere. Admirable master of the noble science of politics, Burke was what in his day was disparaged but is now triumphant in England as liberal, and in these United States as republican. French monarchy, before its reform in 1789, Burke denounced as bad government. What, and all the French wanted, he thought, was royalty reformed as by the British Constitution, no more but no less; a consti tutional representative kingdom, mellowed by exalted aristoc racy, corroborated by massive democracy, a sovereign mass to curb individual sovereignty. Until French reform ran to excesses which he deemed fatal, Burke advocated reforma tion, but not the unchanged royalty for which his literatures is commonly considered classical. At the same time associ ated in Paris with respectable French reformers, Jefferson did not anticipate a French republic, much less the radical and sanguinary revolution which broke out soon after his return 80 JOHN ADAMS S home, and taking part in Washington s organization of the American Union. With all his horror of the French measures which overturned the reform of 89, Burke was no advocate of the prior French monarchy; and with all his republican enthusiasm, Jefferson deemed reformed monarchy good French government. Burke considered the French people inimical to the absolute rule of the kings to whom their loyalty was sup posed irrefragable, and Jefferson believed that they might be well governed by kings deprived of absolute power. A mod ern French royalist, deploring the first step of Louis the Fourteenth s concession leading to republicanism, when his majesty laughed at ridicule of the clergy by Moliere s comedy of the Hypocrite, accounts all modern excesses the logical consequences of that misstep. Washington approved the whole as desirable reform when royal dread of republicanism labored the British nation to misconceived hostilities which British influence, social, political, and commercial propagated throughout the sea-board of the United States, inflamed against French maritime depredations on American com merce. But, undeniably, great French reforms had worked pro found changes in that nation. Equality was completely established, and at least some liberty, though not according to English or American ideas of that most abused and, perhaps, least understood of the rights of man. With complete equal ity and considerable liberty were introduced popular elections, much more radical than the English, and as frequently re peated since their introduction in France by more universal suffrage than the American, also more orderly than English, if not American. The people were allowed and encouraged to express by ballot their preferences for candidates to repre sent them. Most English and many Americans are apt to consider French extreme division of landed property, and perfect universality of suffrage, revolutionary disadvantages. But constant increase of population, wealth, and other ele ments of national welfare have attended them, as was exem- ADMINISTRATION. 81 plified by the general election in April, 1707, for members to the Legislature. One-third being then constitutionally changed by peaceable and orderly elections, the sovereign people tri umphant over enemies abroad, signified their satisfaction at home by preferring temperate and rational republicans to vio lent and sanguinary revolutionists. Heroic remedies, if neces sary for organic disorder, having worked their cruel and bloody cure, their previous perpetrators went out of favor mostly as they went out of place, succeeded by milder men shedding a new and genial era on regenerated and pacified France. The best men were elected, instead of those some of whom many deemed the worst ; among others, Royer Col- lard, long afterward eminent as a constitutional royalist ; Marmontel, the pleasing fabulist; Berthelemy, who, in 1795, endeavored to negotiate Louisiana from Spain for France; General Collot, who, after traveling through the United States, was at first designated to command the French colo nization of Louisiana, together with many more estimable men chosen to supersede blood-bolstered forerunners in the revolutionary race. At the time when this country was most excited against France by French depredations on American commerce, and other causes of complaint fomented by British influence, great public improvements were accomplished in France. In 1797, when several years of quarrelsome alienation had estranged the United States and France, closing at last with French depredation on American commerce and American war on French shipping, there was no sufficient reason in such sporadic hostilities for putting an end to the natural national amity which had subsisted between the two republics, of which it was the obvious policy of one to cultivate the other s antagonism to the overruling sea dominion, by which England defied France and annoyed the United States ; and, moreover, the interior condition of the French republic was much amel iorated. The bayonet was less admired, the guillotine no longer supreme, the clubs abandoned, the National Guard was VOL. I. 6 82 JOHN ADAMS S reinstated, proscription was proscribed, anarchy was not the order of the day, attention was bestowed on restoring the national finances, toleration was established, rigors against clergymen discontinued at home and abroad prosperity and tranquillity smiled on France. Shortly before the American commissioners presented themselves at Paris, on the 18th of July, 1797, that invulnerable non-combatant, sometimes fugi tive but never subdued, who outlasted so many republican directors, consular dictators, imperial warriors and kings by right divine and revolutionary, sailing, Deborah Logan de scribed him, in a life-boat, water and weather tight, inaccessi ble to storms and insensible to harm, the naturalized American citizen, Charles Maurice Talleyrand de Perigord, fresh from America, was appointed Secretary of French Exterior Rela tions, which important place he filled with transcendant ability and inimitable tenacity under directorial, consular, imperial, and royal chief magistrates. Though he visited parts of New York and Massachusetts, his American residence was at Phil adelphia, the seat of government, where he took his oath of allegiance before the mayor, Hillary Baker, and lived in a small house in Union Street, between Second and Front, then not so unfashionable a part of the city as it has since become. Aristocractic contempt for American government and society did not prevent his perception of the use France might make of the United States as maritime rivals of England; though his personal preferences were not for those called in France the French party in America. "There," said he one day to an American Minister, who told me of it; "there," said Talleyrand, pointing to Thiers, "is our Alexander Hamilton ; that little man resembles him," (meaning in capacity.) Joseph Bonaparte to me called Talleyrand incomprehensi ble. When the manuscript memoirs, which he is said to have left with his Secretary of Legation in England, Mr. Bacourt, not to be published till thirty years after Talleyrand s death, come to be read, perhaps he may prove a better man than ADMINISTRATION. 83 proverbially represented. Unfrocked priest and married papist bishop, apostate from noblest aristocracy to Jacobin democracy, unscrupulous, imperturbable, elegant cripple, prince of sarcastic wit, fugitive from all dangers yet master of all situations, such a personage could not escape hosts of detractors to sneer at his emigration to America, there, by personal intercourse with Washington and Adams, Jefferson and Hamilton, and practical familiarity with Franklin s cun ning proverbs, to appreciate the uncouth wisdom of a vulgar community. To Logan, the un authenticated emissary of a mere party, if even that, not seeking Talleyrand s support or acquaintance, the Secretary of State, as Deborah Logan from her husband s reports relates, was merely polite, and the Min ister of Exterior Relations, though well disposed for the peace Logan solicited, took no part in his intervention. But Gerry s timorous correspondence, afraid of the great war party in flamed by Pickering, exhibits Talleyrand as earnestly anxious to put a stop to hostilities in 1798. With the American mission in 1800, offspring of that of Logan two years before, Talley rand was the decided and sagacious advocate of amity between his country and ours, on the broad basis of natural right to the seas as to the air, and of peace prevailing over war in stead of war usurping the rights of peace, as Franklin pre scribed in 1778, and Bourbons, Barrases, and Bonapartes have always asserted against one mistress of the sea, invinci ble by war, but capitulating at last to those principles, of which the United States were among the earliest and most strenuous assertors, till acknowledged as laws of nature ap plied to nations by the great treaty of Paris, in 1856. General Pinckney s colleagues, Marshall and Gerry, joined him at Paris in October, 1797, not long after the still unset tled, however improved, French government had undergone a shock more injurious to it than to the negotiation with the United States. On the fourth of September, of that year, a military State stroke, mentioned in French annals as the day s work or job of the 14th Fructidor, unrooted parts of the republi- 84 JOHN ADAMS S can institutions, deteriorating the whole. By disclosure so tardy as to be suspicious, for it was not till two years after the alleged discovery, Moreau denounced Pichegru as guilty of secret cor respondence with the Prince of Conde , commanding the royal Bourbon forces. Generals Augereau and Bernadotte, for that purpose, as was said, in this never fully explained explo sion, repairing from the armies to Paris, effected a revolution ary paroxysm in which Augereau with his own hand arrested Pichegru, and fifty-three mostly respectable persons were seized and transported as prisoners to Sinnamari, in French Guiana, by virtue of a novel legislation, introduced by Beulay de la Meurthe, Vice-President of France under the presidency of Louis Napoleon; M. Beulay s new doctrine being " That with numerous ascertained conspirators against public safety, there is not time for the ordinary judicial proceedings, wherefore immediate transportation should be summarily substi tuted instead of deliberate trial." Of those thus deported Barbe Marbois was one, who re turned to France after two years of rigorous confinement in Guiana, superadded to his prior residence in the service of the French royal government at St. Domingo and at Philadelphia, where he married the daughter of William Moore. He was First Consul Bonaparte s salesman for the secret disposal of Louisiana to the United States. The famous Carnot escaped from the French commotion of the fourth of September, 14th Fructidor, 1797, into Germany, where, in the course of the self-vindication published there, he mentioned the Directorial endeavors, by the negotiation at Basle, in 1795, to obtain Louisiana from Spain, which publication in public journals induced Rufus King to apprise President Jefferson of that design ; its first intimation. But what to the United States and peace was the most salu tary event of that paroxysm was a law, of the 30th of Sep tember, 1797, liquidating all the public debts of France by bonds, two-thirds exchangeable only for public property, and but the one remaining third funded with interest at five per. ADMINISTRATION. 85 cent., whereby the two-thirds fell at once to from seventy to eighty per cent, below par, operating in effect the sixth national bankruptcy of France in two centuries one for each generation, five royal and one republican all compulsory. The first was on the convulsive accession of Henry IV. to the throne, when the Duke of Sully arbitrarily reduced the inter est on loans contracted during previous reigns. The second, when Louis XI V., another king like Henry IV., surnamed the Great, in the decline of his regal omnipotence, overwhelmed by disasters, operated by his minister, Des Marets, a second national bankruptcy. The third was effected by the Duke of Noailles, during the profligate regency of the Duke of Orleans. Louis the Sixteenth s Minister, the Abbe de Terray, began his disastrous reign in 1770, by a fourth. A fifth was the repub lican extinction of forty millions of assignats and mandats. And the sixth was that by the Directory, in 1797, crowning the catalogue. To which enumeration of national frauds may be added recoinages of the money, with other unjust suppres sions and liquidations. National insolvency has not always prevented or arrested, but sometimes emboldened hostilities. Continental money, as our worthless paper was called, did not stop, however embar rassing to the American Revolution, greatly succored by re ceipt of some French coin. And from 1797, when Bonaparte s Italian successes compelled George III. and his Minister, Pitt, to suspend, as it was gently phrased, specie payments by substi tution of mere promises to pay, and by acts of Parliament making one-pound notes of the Bank legal tender, by which, as Burke said, guineas were banished, and for twenty-three years of discredit England subsisted without any genuine cir culation, with great depreciation of stocks and exchanges against London from nearly all parts of the world, yet under that depression English commerce and manufactures throve, and naval victories were constant. But penurious finances, in 1797 pacified as they mortified the distracted quintuple Executive, and next year, 1798, induced solicitation from the 86 JOHN ADAMS S American Ministers of a loan, as a condition of their official acceptance. Talleyrand s much abused defilement of the negotiation by intriguing a fee for himself, if he did so, as was the American impeachment, demanding, besides the pub lic loan, not only money, but a great deal of it for himself, argued, besides his notorious poverty and audacious venality, that the empty treasury could not or did not by salary supply the wants of his aristocratic parade and dissolute extrava gance. When Gerry, abandoned by his colleagues and re proached by Secretary Pickering for lingering in France, withdrew, as Deborah Logan intimates, absolutely sick with disquiet and indecision, pacification was proifered to him by Secretary Talleyrand. Just as Logan arrived in Paris, Gerry embarked at Havre, homeward, to assure his government and inform the American people, as soon as he landed at Boston, that the French government and nation undoubtedly desired peace, and solicited reconciliation. Although unauthorized and unaccredited, Logan was then the very deity of the occa sion to undo the difficulty. Overstepping Talleyrand s official reserve, and not only official but natural requirement of cre dentials, proceeding at once to informal communion with the chief Director, tired of war and studious of peace, the repre sentative of what the French called their party in America, in simple terms of intimate communion held up to the Direc tory the palpable policy of saving the United States from alliance, offensive and defensive, with England, by recon structing Franklin s impaired platform of sea liberty and peace on principles which, whether France was royal, republi can, or imperial, established, without entangling alliance, a coalition of the sea more natural and formidable than any continental coalition which England could subsidize, or kings and ministers desiderate; a coalition for liberty by sea and liberalism ashore, such as the two republics, American and French, were to maintain. For not only liberalism, but republicanism was at stake in 1797-8. After the example of the United States, and with ADMINISTRATION. 87 much encouragement in the most enlightened parts of Europe, no less than five republics had sprung up, headed by the great French republic, surrounded by the Cisalpine, the Ligurian, the Batavian, and the Roman republics, all with democratic reforms of royal and aristocratic prepossessions. From 1789 to 1799 republicanism made large progress, worsting royalty, and imbuing it with liberalism where republicanism was not allowed. Subsequent excesses, such as in 1848 laid the axe at the root of property, and by reaction, thereby disfigured, retarded, and marred beneficial reforms. But those excesses, like blood-thirsty terrorism discountenanced, were scarcely attempted in 1797. Having witnessed the germination of peace, order, and freedom as planted in France, when there with Franklin in 1780, on his return seventeen years after ward, Logan found the general recognition of popular sover eignty as preferable to individual by alleged divine right, familiar to most educated men ; although much remained to be done for the education of ignorant, however well-disposed people, to be weaned from the commotions of frequent cause less wars, composed to the enjoyment of industrious peace, and elevated to some share in their own government. In 1780, Franklin only hoped for liberty. In 1789, Jefferson compounded for it as sufficient, if regulated by constitutional reforms, with a king. Revisiting the French kingdom in 1798, their disciple, Logan, found it a republic surrounded by several other republics, with men of education and virtue in them all anxiously making the experiment of republicanism. As the merely unauthorized representative of republican sen timent, he was welcomed in France. The eminent and accomplished Minister of the Dutch republic founded on an cestral republicanism, instructed by its government to co-ope rate with Logan, cordially and efficiently joined his pacific endeavors. The chief of the French republican executive entertained them both in its official residence, together with the foreign Ministers of three other republics, and the scope of their sentiments bespoke an era of republicanism. The 88 JOHN ADAMS S conqueror of Italy, as founder of republics, was hailed at the Congress of Rastadt, and hailed everywhere as the messiah of republicanism. Talleyrand s adulation of Bonaparte, when presented to the Directory the 10th of December, 1797, dwelt on his heroic love of freedom, and the humanity constantly welling from achievements of which every republican might claim part. Whatever the hero and his eulogist afterward became, even if, as the prejudice of many leads to the belief, the hero then ruminated empire, and his adulator a princi pality, still the revolutionary assumption of 1789, repudiating divine royal right, was indispensable element of their ambition, and Talleyrand s discourse demonstrates palpably that repub licanism was then the reigning power, while France, extremely poor but proud, reckoned republican exploits redeeming pro digies. That stupendous elicitation of liberty, equality, and fraternity, the conscription, surpassing the famous Roman militia, the forcible continental system, by no means so pow erful as the American mere principle of sea freedom, to counteract English sea despotism, the invasion of England attempted at different times by Hoche and Humbert, and con templated by General Bonaparte and the Emperor Napoleon, all republican conceptions, were none of them imperial deeds. The romantic expedition to Egypt, and magnificent Italian campaigns, were republican exploits of democracy before it underwent French imperialism and English constitutionalism. Dreadful preliminaries of blood, terror, and horrors intro duced perfect equality and considerable liberty, with great prospect of tranquil peace. Without discussing the problem perhaps insoluble whether these reforms marked progress or retrograde, or whether France is capable of republican government, history attests the undeniable fact that, in 1797-8, a French republic of ten years development solicited peace with the United States when the American republic, not many years more advanced in the republican experiment, concluded its great State stroke for peace at almost any sacrifice by passionate hostilities ADMINISTRATION. 89 against the French revolution, then probably completed if for eign kingdoms had suffered it to terminate in a republic, as President Washington at first acclaimed and long anticipated. Republicanism had become a general European desire. The Roman people rejected the authority of Pope Pius VI., who fled to a convent at Sienna. Cardinal Chiaromante, bishop of Imola, learned and virtuous prelate, afterward chosen Pope Pius VII., on Christmas, 1797, published a homily, advising his people to be democrats as the way to be Christians. "Yes, dear brethren," said that homily, "be good Christians and you will be excellent democrats. The first Christians were animated with the spirit of democracy." Soon after, on the 28th of December, 1797, the pontifical troops assaulted the residence of Joseph Bonaparte, French Republican Minister at Rome, and murdered by his side, as he has described the particulars to me, General Duphot, en gaged to be married to his sister. To avenge that insult, General Berthier advanced with a force, and a Roman repub lic was proclaimed. Democracy, preached by cardinals as almost an article of faith, was treated with homage by potentates. The kings of Prussia and Spain withdrew from the coalition of its royal antagonists. The Emperor of Germany was compelled, at Cainpo Formio and at Rastadt, to bow before the bare-breeched and coarse-capped banner of the common people. On the 18th of April, 1798, the populace at Vienna, perhaps excited by their superiors, having insulted that vulgar emblem of irre sistible authority displayed over the residence of the fierce democrat, Bernadotte, French Republican Minister there, the Austrian government proffered mortifying explanations to pre vent the instant departure which he threatened for that indig nity. But to that ferocious and domineering republicanism milder rule succeeded. Men and women were no longer guillotined by scores for moderantism, civilians were preferred at free elec tions instead of usurping soldiers, to govern, and dangerous 90 JOHN ADAMS S soldiers were sent abroad on foreign missions ; Pichegru, be fore his disgrace appointed Minister to Sweden, Bernadotte to the German empire, and Bonaparte rewarded by a splendid exile to Egypt. From 1794 to 1804, however convulsed, France was a republic, and most of Europe represented at Paris by ministers from monarchs no longer aggressive. Re mote Russia and insular England alone continued belligerant, one unattackable but by sea, the other protected by hyper borean distance, ruled both by demented monarchs, the only remaining assailants of republicanism, proclaiming the French republic a nuisance to be abated by the common law of poten tates. With the worst faction of the Tory party, his confidential advisers, the Hanoverian King of England, almost as absolute and stupid as the Russian autocrat, joined him to send hordes of armed barbarians, led by the savage Souwaroff, through Italy, while the King of England s brave but incompetent son, Duke of York, led other forces through Holland, to subdue and partition that French republic which these mad monarchs treated as a nuisance to be abated. Roused by their outrage ous invasion, republican France, from the mere rudiments of defensive warfare, rose to the most formidable methods of scientific strategy. Permeating twelve years of reiterated coalitions to crush republicanism, universal liberalism suc ceeded, changing all government, royal to republican, and republican to democratic. As early as the 13th of April, 1796, the aristocratic Senate of Vienna, for fear of offence to the French republic, com pelled the legitimate heir to the French throne, afterward Louis XVIII., then fugitive under the nick-name of Count of Lisle, to leave his retreat at Verona, and, by another retro grade in royal pilgrimage, to retire to Rastadt, in the Duchy of Baden, there seeking refuge in the French royal army, commanded by his relative, the Prince of Conde . Obliged by the humbled Austrian government to leave that sanctuary, in vain he hoped for it at Blank enburg, in Prussian dominions; ADMINISTRATION. 91 whence also expelled, not to offend the terrible republic, on the llth of February, 1798, in the dead of winter, he withdrew to an inaccessible hiding-place proffered in his frozen regions by the Emperor of Russia. Not a resting-place was there for the Eighteenth Louis, by divine descent; not a kingdom in all Europe that dared to welcome him, except those ruled by demented monarchs ! At last suffered to die crowned, but constrained liberal, and as not absolute but constitutional chief magistrate, soon followed by his imbecile brother, dethroned because unconstitutional, and by their astute cousin for want of election by universal suffrage; all were supplanted by up starts, invoking the voice of the people as the only rightful interpretation of the grace of God. Whether the early republican disavowal of royalty was reform beneficial for France, at any rate it tended to dispose the French republic for peace, commerce, and amity with the republic of the United States, many if not most of whose people warmly sympathized in French emancipation from British and royal rule. Time-honored rulers, monarchs, nobles, priests, and minis ters, struggled in vain against democratic reforms, excluded in form from the surface, but undermining all government. Fifteen years from the advent of Jefferson in America, and Bonaparte in Europe, comprehending as much as so many centuries of conflict with democratic development, gave the modern sovereignty of absolute public opinion the precedence everywhere of former absolute rule. Furious French reaction against five monarchical coalitions striving to conquer and partition France like Italy, Hungary, and Poland, in subju gated principalities, engendered an upstart imperial dynasty and inordinate empire by the extremest of popular power, universal suffrage countervailing royal right divine. The fifth coalition calling the people to their aid by promising them a share in government, dethroned at last the child and champion of democracy, spoiled and delirious with triumph; imprisoned him; and congress at Vienna partitioned Europe and muti- 92 JOHN ADAMS S lated France, as thought conducive to monarchical suprem acy. Still the awakened spirit of democracy was constantly at work reforming every kingdom. And when, after a few years of deceitful respite, descendants of the only recalcitrants who had to the end resisted republicanism, descendants of the insane Russian and British monarchs, went to war with each other, neither could tell why. But England locking arms with the upstart imperial successor of the upstart French emperor, whom she locked arms with the Russian emperor by a supreme effort to overthrow, democratic reform had so imbued the great monarchical enjoyment of war with the spirit of equality, that aristocratic inequality disqualified the brave nobility of Great Britain either to vie with the democratic soldiers of France, or even the upstart heroes of Russia. Throughout all the prodigious vicissitudes of all governments in peace and in war during this century of political miracles, democratic reform has been the ruling genius of irresistible development : whether for better or worse may and will prob ably be disputed forever. But the fact is undeniable. From curbing to finally regulating governments, monarchical more than republican, popular representation has advanced till it supersedes divine right. Two of the three emperors of Europe are elected monarchs. Several of the kings have no royal progenitors. One of the most zealous champions of civil and religious reform is of the most ancient royal lineage. And those monarchies still enduring monarchs called absolute, have undergone greater reforms than the American republic. From these views of French condition in 1T96-7-8, and public opinion regarding hostilities with the United States, proceeding to theirs concerning France, the American annal ist encounters difficulties perhaps insuperable. Contemporary literature at that time scarcely existed beyond that of partisan newspapers. Few persons now survive to inform by tradition, and none exempt from party prejudices. Floods of mostly posthumous and always contradictory autobiographies by the chief actors, their descendants or vindicators, succeeding ADMINISTRATION. 93 dearth of printed information, like tempest after drouth, con found and obscure that always extremely impervious element, the truth, degrading narration from calm historical impar tiality to personal and partisan recrimination. Steering by such perplexing lights, an aged chronicler, with his own prepossessions to check, may fail in any attempt at candid ac count of the troubles from abroad, which President Washing ton s retirement, in March, 1797, devolved, with his adminis tration, on his successor, John Adams. Discriminating the foreign from the interior policy of the first presidency, with out reference to the cardinal measures at home, such as the funding system, assumption of State debts, national bank, taxation, the Indian and frontier disturbances, or any other intestine transaction, except as connected with the foreign relations of the United States, it is to the latter alone this narrative refers; with endeavor to explain how the American nation, divided by fundamental divergence into what arose as Federal and Republican parties concerning constitutional union of sovereign States, with demarkations diminished by its opera tion, were by European wars and foreign influences further more segregrated, till they took sides, and reproached each other respectively as French and English parties or factions. Quelling these dissensions, as peacemaker arresting war, Logan interposed, and Jefferson s election, superseding Adams as Pres ident, resulted from confusion of parties with foreign relations, distracting the internal administration of the United States. A sixth of their whole annual income was paid for peace with the Barbary pirates, liberty and peace being vital principles of American republicanism. Eighteen British treaties super- added to that by which Great Britian conceded independence to the United States, have, if not like Jay s treaty, rather embroiled than improved their relations, cleansed of accu mulations, by the storm of one sharp, short war, beyond calculation, amicable, profitable, and evidential how much more beneficial freedom is than colonies, conventions, force or constraint. Franklin s model treaties with France, suspended 94 JOHN ADAMS S by executive State stroke in 1793, and declared void by act of Congress in 1798, but restored by another treaty in 1800, and that still ameliorated by a third in 1803, with the inesti mable aggrandizement of Louisiana to the Union, were finally recognized as the law and policy of nations by all the great powers in 1856. The United States, not represented by any minister at that congress, were present by the principles they proclaimed from the first. And history attests that American republican politics of freedom and peace, unduly influenced by neither England or France, but constantly maintained, at home and abroad, are recognized as purely and eminently American throughout the world, to the great advantage of all mankind. Since Franklin inaugurated those principles, their adop tion has been universal; and much more by great reforms of monarchies than of the American republic. Functional changes in most of the States comprising it have affected the Union with some also. But no organic alteration has taken place in the United States, while throughout Europe they have been numerous and incessant. A British treaty, though President Washington insisted that it neither did nor should annul the French treaty, but, like it, was dedicated entirely to peace ; yet, together with much American condemnation of French revolution, provoked French complaint of American ingratitude, while France and England were at war, the United States, as the French averred, deserting their only friend in time of need to join their dire foe. Merely political, which never was natural amity between a people of British origin and those called by many of the wisest English their natural enemies, easily turned from amity to enmity and from enmity to hostility. Erst allied defensively and offensively with the French, and perhaps producing their revolution, American sympathies, once universally French, were forced to inflamed hostilities. The last royal French Minister to the United States, Ter- nan, being followed by the first republican, Genet, that well- ADMINISTRATION. 95 informed and not ill-disposed young revolutionary firebrand, undertook to equip privateers in American ports, a military expedition for the conquest of Louisiana and Florida, and other enormities, for which, when rebuked and discomfited by Secretary Jefferson, Genet appealed, as he said, from the gov ernment to the people, and by a whole career of insufferable outrages, induced President Washington to apply, through his Minister in France, Gouverneur Morris, for Genet s recall, which was conceded by the French republic, and a less offen sive Envoy, Fauchet, sent in his place. At the same time recalling Mr. Morris, wedded to the cause of the dethroned French monarch, and warmly denouncing his republican exe cutioners, President Washington sent in his stead James Mon roe, with sympathies for the French revolution as avowed as his predecessor s w r ere otherwise. Writing to Logan from Paris, the 24th of June, 1795, Monroe reminded him of his promise to revisit France, and sent him, for publication in the Aurora newspaper, edited by Franklin s grandson, Benjamin Franklin Bache, certain explanations of French affairs deemed requisite to remove false American impressions concerning France caused by English journals. American public opinion was mostly ardent for French emancipation from the dominion of their own weak, misguided monarch, and for their triumph over the coalition of European monarchs in arms invading France for his restoration coalition subsidized by the same stubborn, wrong-headed, arbitrary king from whose tyranny American independence had been lately wrested by French re inforcement. Few Americans believed, with Morris, that their French succor was due to the king, but ascribed it to the nation. American attachment was therefore almost unani mous and enthusiastic to the nation, like themselves, shaking off the yoke of a king, abetted and maintained in his odious majesty by a British still more odious monarch, against whom they had waged a severe struggle for their own independence. In these sentiments President Washington cordially coincided with nearly all the rest of his countrymen. A key of the 96 JOHN ADAMS S Bastile, displayed in the vestibule of his Philadelphia resi dence, signified his gratification at even the insurgent forcible and revolutionary overthrow of the French royal government. An enemy to kings, Washington was a propagandist of liberty so far as to utter freely his hatred of tyranny. Hopeful of republicanism, both American and French, he trusted that the French revolutionary struggle, though more sanguinary and shocking than the American, would end, like it, in tran quil, prosperous, and rational free government. Solicitous as the French government royal, as well as re publican, was of American maritime co-operation with France against England at sea, proud as the French republic was of being, as it boasted, progenitor of the American, and unable as the French republic was, in 1798, to wage effectual war on the United States, still they were an unarmed, feeble, and rich trading people, who had broken faith with France, she said, whose commerce was prey for all belligerents, formidable English and French, feeble Spanish, and piratical Algerines. Still, however, the French quarrel was rather sentimental than pecuniary. Barras, a vapid noble, as transient Presi dent of the Directory, in a turgid farewell to Monroe, repro bating England, as nearly all French speech did, provoked President Adams s retort in a resentful speech at a special session of Congress. Monroe, recalled from the French mis sion because accused at home of being too French, was super seded by Pinckney, sent to take his place, but rejected because said in France to be of the British party in America. These ebullitions of foolish national animosity clouded the natural relations between the two countries when an Ameri can triple mission, dealing with Talleyrand as French Secre tary of Exterior Relations, implicated with several minor mysterious personages of a strange drama by absurd perplexi ties of inexplicable diplomacy, elicited passionate and contra dictory recriminations, personal, official, partisan, and na tional, ending in hostilities hardly susceptible of explanation. Nearly all the American people, with Washington at their ADMINISTRATION. 97 head, were highly gratified with the French revolution as it began, and when war was renewed between France and Eng land, sided in sympathy with a recent ally against an old ene my; although many Americans considered social and political English institutions preferable to some of their own, for the government to be tried. But the mass of the American nation being swayed by either French or English attachment or aver sion implied no culpable disloyalty; nor was there ever an American party so French or English as to undo or much impair American patriotism. And American annals, truly told, will satisfy posterity that Washington s devotion not only to his country, but to republicanism, so inconceivable in the Old World, was not a solitary or peculiar virtue, nor common to his emi nent associates only, but shared by nearly the whole American people, among whom few, if any, were disloyally attached to France; nor, with the general predilection for English insti tutions, were there many who would have taken them altogether instead of their own. American republican patriotism almost universally predominated, with little French radicalism or English toryism, however imbued many were with French aversion to England. Of French socialism and revolutionary hostility to property, as long afterward proclaimed, and in 1848 common in many parts of Europe, there was scarcely any in America, where the politics of all parties predicated some of those of England. But while Hamilton, Adams, and, perhaps, Washington, wittfmany respectable adherents, deemed regulation, compulsion, treaties, and war also essential to gov ernment, and best for that of the United States, like Chatham, his son Pitt, and many if not most statesmen at the beginning of George the Third s reign, Jefferson s more original, and called radical Americanism, like Franklin s, deprecated much government, deplored war as injurious to all belligerants, preferring parsimonious patience, with a people little or even untaxed, and ruling instead of being ruled by government. Harmonizing with their politics what is called liberalism in England and democracy in America, has been constantly and VOL. I. 7 98 JOHN ADAMS S universally progressive. If Jefferson carried it too far, Hamilton, had he lived longer, would have witnessed Great Britain Americanized, if not essentially republicanized, and the United States democratized, with incredibly augmented prosperity and power, practically reforming and repudiating much of what, when Jefferson and Hamilton contested the policy, was deemed by Hamilton indispensable, and by Jeffer son detrimental to national welfare. War waged by coalition of kings with armies invading France, to subjugate revolution and partition the republic, provoked it to furious resistance. Both belligerants, reckless of all but mutual destruction, scarcely allowed neutral nations, and perilled the infant being of the feeble American experi ment of republicanism. As growth in peace was its vital necessity, internal constitutional concerns became much less important than protection from external injury. At the same time French republicanism ferociously dethroned and put to death the liberal king, whose ministers vouchsafed American independence. Supplanting his gentle sovereignity by theirs, wildly seated on a newly invented instrument of destruction called guillotine, dispatching thousands of men, women, and children, for a lately discovered crime condemned as mode- rantism, madmen enforced their sway by massacre at home, propagating it by reactionary conquest abroad. Anxiously and formally President Washington required written answer from his constitutional advisers whether a minister from such revolutionists should be received by his administration to re place the envoy of the royal benefactor; and if so, whether without qualification or restriction. Unhesitating all unani mously coincided in the President s conviction that he must be received. His Secretary of State, Jefferson, with the Attor ney-General, Randolph, furthermore agreed with the Presi dent that it must be without qualification. But the Secretary of the Treasury, Hamilton, contended, and with him Knox, the Secretary of War, coincided, that the sanguinary atrocities of what they denounced as Jacobin French misrule, were but ADMINISTRATION. 99 its scalding ebullitions, could not be lasting, and should not be recognized as regular government. The qualification which Hamilton urged Washington to put on reception of a French republican minister, was that the two treaties obtained by Franklin from France in 1778, should be, if not annulled, at least suspended ; and that so the French republican minister should be accosted when he came from the hideous carnage and confusion uprooting France. By their first essay of international conventionality, an event commonly consecrated by solemn oaths, and always of the utmost obligation, agents of the revolting American colo nies, in the jeopardy of conflict with Great Britain, sent to France to procure arms and money, of which they were desti tute, succeeded in obtaining two treaties, negotiated by Silas Deane, Arthur Lee, and Benjamin Franklin; but in fact diplomatic exploits of the sage Franklin then culminating to that true glory which has ever since been increasing in illus tration. By one of these treaties France guaranteed the united colonies their liberty, sovereignty, and independence, absolute and unlimited, and their possessions; promises beyond all price, but for which the American colonies unluckily, though most naturally, promised to protect the French West Indies in war with England. That natural stipulation cost destruction of the Franklin French treaties. From that false first step of ungrateful departure from good faith to backslide in visionary sentimentalism and national prejudice, mistake wandered from enmity to French revolution as far as hostili ties with France, and avoidance of these treaties, if they could be avoided by act of Congress, without consent of France, or solemn war for their recision. Contradicting his chief President Washington s superior solidity of judgment, supported by his Secretary of State s better knowledge of international law and usage, the Secretary of the Treasury s position militated with the obvious and rational abstinence of all governments from meddling with the internal changes of others. That principle withholds from one all right and 100 JOHN ADAMS S reason of demurring to the proceedings of another, and re quires each to accept what is presented to it from abroad. France went far beyond acknowledgment of their revolution when the revolted American colonies were acknowledged as a regular government. Louis XIV. received with magnificent welcome envoys reeking from Cromwell s short-lived and san guinary protectorate. Hamilton did not deplore more than Washington the disgusting excesses of French emancipation, which Jefferson more than any regretted as endangering the orderly reforms of which he witnessed the auspicious begin ning and expected the glorious consummation. To him Ro bespierre s terrorism and Bonaparte s despotism were equally odious, but did not prevent his acknowledging the govern ments of and receiving ministers from both. The belligerant protest by terrified monarchs and parasite ministers of that crisis, against government sprung from revolution, has been followed since by its reiterated, almost uniform, recognition. Tremendous reaction of that fatal pragmatism, sacrificing mil lions of lives and treasures, in vain baptized upstart emperors and new-made dynasties in the bitter waters of revolution, resisted and invaded from abroad, instead of being left alone to their own convulsions at home. The wrong-headed Eng lish Hessian king mortgaged Great Britain for hundreds of millions, squandered to force a king on France. Soon after his arrival in England, Rufus King, in 1796, wrote to Hamilton: " It is time to make peace, for all parties are weary of the war. The Minister, unwilling to augment the debt, already enormous, proposes a loan to be advanced by patriotic capitalists." Which Mr. King was too wise to believe would succeed. King George III., then having overcome the Whig oligarchy which had reigned throughout the lives of George II. and George I., intrenching his throne behind prerogative with Tory support, insisted on more war and more debt to put down republican ism. British prosperity, incredibly increased since by the liberal policy of republicanized British statesmen, emboldened ADMINISTRATION. 101 a bold, romantic, but commanding Chancellor of the Exchequer, apostate from Judaism and liberalism, "by trhriScen cleat mod cry lately to ridicule in Parliament as what he called mere flea-bites, the debt by whose enormity when not half its present burden, a wise American Minister, writing to Alexander Hamilton, described as beyond endurance, and a great English Whig afterward called recognizance in eight hundred thousand pounds sterling to keep the peace and be of good behavior. Pragmatic King George III. was the Emperor Napoleon s creator; enthroning whom, to be dethroned by his son George IV., the Hanoverian tyrant s granddaughter was doomed to consecrate another imperial upstart : stooping at whose feet, over the tomb of the first creature of their infatuation, her majesty tied her garter on Napoleon s honored knee. Re sisting Washington s wise acceptance of French tyrannicide, however outrageous, Hamilton marshaled American .parties into antagonized factions, stigmatizing each other as French and English, provoked hostilities which by extreme frustration of his dearest hopes, placed Jefferson and Burr in the execu tive, soon followed by Hamilton s own deplorable homicide. And the American model of humanity, less democratic than Jefferson, less aristocratic than Hamilton, type of genuine federal republicanism, contrary to his own original impression and settled policy, distorted from his superhuman impartiality, drifted or was forced, after inimitable retirement from chief magistracy, enjoying filial veneration of all his countrymen and all the world, by war plunged into the whirlpool of party, estranged from primitive adherents, died one of a minority, overpowered by irresistible events giving ascendancy to those he denounced as a faction. Reception of a French republican Minister without qualifi cation, and maintenance of the French treaties being resolved by the President, he took his Secretaries opinion whether he should likewise warn citizens of the United States against in terfering in the war, and proclaim neutrality, as the Secre tary of the Treasury suggested. For the President, by mere 102 JOHN ADAMS S executive State stroke, without act of Congress, to make law f&r -th^ "cbunt rt, might be deemed unconstitutional. But its faculties and inducements for privateering or other belligerant involvements were so tempting, and public safety so clearly supreme law, that the President was ready to take any respons ibility for its preservation, and the Secretary of State con curred in an otherwise questionable mean when peace was the end. The Attorney-General was therefore directed to draft an instrument, which was unanimously approved, and much applauded in America and England as the proclamation of neutrality. But no such word is in the rescript, by which in cautious and measured terms the President admonished his fellow-citizens " Of the duty and interest of the United States with sincerity and good faith to adopt and pursue a conduct friendly and impar tial toward the belligerant powers, and to avoid all acts and pro ceedings in any manner tending to contradict such disposition;" adding that "whosoever of the citizens of the United States ren dered himself liable to punishment or forfeiture under the laws of nations by hostilities against any of the said powers, by carrying to either contraband articles, would receive no protection from the United States ; and that instructions had been given to prosecute all persons, within the cognizance of the courts of the United States, violating the laws of nations with respect to either of the powers at war." For which prosecutions Federal authority had been before asserted by the administration without written law. In the political last will and testament, on the composition of which so much of the close of his life was anxiously be stowed, Washington designated briefly that admonition, as "The index of his plan, the principles of which continually governed him, uninfluenced by any attempt to deter or divert him from it," without stating to whom or what he alluded as the at tempts. Soon dissatisfied and finally disgusted with Ham ilton s financial organization, dangerous imitations of the British system, Jefferson complained, together with other ADMINISTRATION. 103 executive departures, which he reproached as unrepublican, both substantial and ceremonial, he resigned the Depart ment of State, on the last day of the year, 31st of December, 1793: the President earnestly striving to prevail on him to remain, and endeavoring in vain to reconcile him with Hamil ton. His financial arrangements, triumphantly vindicated with that cogency of argument which never failed Hamilton, and fully realized then, he controverted to the last Jefferson s foreign policy, which till the British treaty was Washington s ; and his first Secretary, with the President s undiminished respect, regard, and regret, retired to private life, relinquish ing all part in politics, though constantly and severely cen sorious of Washington s administration as dangerously tending to unconstitutional British monarchical methods of govern ment. Hamilton, remaining Secretary of the Treasury for eleven months after Jefferson s retirement from the Depart ment of State, resigned the 31st of January, 1795, to Wash ington s avowed regret and great embarrassment. By supe rior intelligence and incessant activity, commanding talents and great fondness for government, Jeiferson s rival while in it and without rival after his departure, Hamilton con tinued completely ascendant, Washington s chief adviser while Secretary, and habitual instructor of the other Secretaries in all their functions on all occasions, whether Secretary or not. After he resigned, and when immured in business as a lawyer at New York, with a large family to bring up, as he cheer fully wrote to La Fayette, one of his duties being to rock the cradle, President Washington, and the Secretaries, he devolved as heir-looms on his successor President John Adams, continually, all of them, called on Hamilton for advice and assistance. The Federal government, during the latter part of Washington s and the first of John Adams s administra tions, was regulated by Hamilton more than any one else, even, if may be said, the President himself, absorbed in the compo sition of the testament by which his last will was to be left to his country. Neither Jefferson or Hamilton ever taxed the 104 JOHN ADAMS S other with disloyalty; but, on the contrary, each confessing the other s earnest sincerity and ardent patriotism ; still, Jef ferson reproached Hamilton s deplorable English, and Hamil ton Jefferson s deplorable French attachments. Their diverg ence, caused by the British treaty which Hamilton induced Washington to negotiate, was inflamed to angry recrimination by hostilities with France, evoking retaliated abuse, branding one as British monarchist, the other French Jacobin. So scandalized these superior statesmen, taking positions belong ing to them, Hamilton with eager activity, Jefferson less active, particularly with the press, were by general acclaim chosen leaders of opposite parties : Jefferson popular, Hamil ton influential, until, simultaneously with French pacification and Washington s death, Jefferson s reactionary presidency substituted his politics for Hamilton s; both, as tested by experience, in some extremes departing from Washington s solid and simple republicanism. Jefferson s retirement and opposition with Madison and others of like opinions, interrupted their personal early vicinal intimacy with Washington, till at last their imputed Gallicism, in time of war with France, separated him entirely from them. But Hamilton s strong hold of his confidence, and strong conviction of his own rectitude, might well induce his urging the President to add his preponderating influence to Burke s and other illustrious British advocates of American, but enemies of French independence. American adherents of Hamilton s Americanism approved his vindication of law, order, and religion, almost universal in Britain, and prevailing in the United States, from the horrible misdeeds and misrule of the French revolution, unworthy to be tolerated or recog nized, they insisted, as civilized nationality. Hamilton con tended that treaties were not binding with the authors of such revolution, and English acceptance of what was then welcomed as the proclamation of American neutrality predi cated its disavowal as such of any French alliance and its abandonment by Washington as Hamilton desired. ADMINISTRATION. 105 That such was not the plan from which he could neither be deterred or diverted, but that he denied entirely Hamilton s misconception of neutrality, Washington signalized by selecting James Monroe to take Gouverneur Morris s place as American Minister to France early in 1794, when French revolutionary enormities were, by reports of the British press, and in fact, most abominable. Jefferson, delighted with the auspicious dawn of that national outbreak in 1789, was followed by Gouverneur Morris, disgusted with its shocking outrages in 1791-2-3, denying the revolutionists any claim to American sympathy, after murdering, Morris said, the martyr monarch to whose intervention the American revolution was indebted, not to the French nation, for vital succor. Thus, odious to the French republicans, as they were to him, Morris s recall from the mission being required, his antipode was chosen by President Washington to take his place. By selection seldom resorted to of Senators appointed to office, Washington took Monroe from his seat in the Senate, when his friend, Jefferson, was no longer Secretary of State, to designate him as a proper choice, though notorious enmity, political and personal, prevailed between Monroe and Hamil ton, still the master Secretary in the Treasury regulating every department. Nevertheless, because of Monroe s avowed and ardent attachment to the French revolution, he was com missioned by President Washington to represent his inflexible adherence to the French alliance and treaties, and to demon strate the presidential resolve not to be deterred or diverted from his plan of neutrality, which Monroe s instructions of the 10th of June, 1797, made even flagrantly manifest. "The President," they said, "has been an early and decided friend of the French revolution ; and whatever reason there may have been, under our ignorant efforts and policy, to suspend an opinion upon some of its important transactions, yet is he immuta ble in his wishes for its accomplishment, incapable of assenting to the right of any foreign prince to meddle with its interior arrange ments, and persuaded that success will attend its efforts. From 106 JOHN ADAMS S Mr. Genet and Fauchet we have uniformly learned that France did not desire us to depart from neutrality. We have therefore pursued neutrality with faithfulness. To remove all jealousy with respect to Mr. Jay s mission to London, you may say that he is positively forbidden to weaken the engagements between this coun try and France. You will be amply justified in repelling with firmness, any imputation of the most distant intention to sacrifice our connection with France to any connection with England. You may declare the motives to Mr. Jay s mission to London to be to obtain immediate compensation for our plundered property, and restitution of the posts." Of Fauchet, the French Minister who succeeded Genet, Monroe s instructions said: "He will represent the existence of two parties here irreconcil able to each other one republican and friendly to the French revolution, the other monarchical, aristocratic, Britannic, and anti- Gallican ; that a majority of the House of Representatives, the people, and the President are in the first class, and a majority of the Senate in the second. You go to France to strengthen our friendship with that country. You will show our confidence in the French republic without the most remote mark of undue com plaisance. You will let it be seen that in case of war with any nation on earth we shall consider France as our first and natural ally. You may dwell upon the sense we entertain of past services, and for the more recent interposition in our behalf with the Dey of Algiers. France, too, may become instrumental in securing to us the free navigation of the Mississippi." With these instructions Monroe reached France on the 31st of July, 1794, just after Robespierre s overthrow, and joined in the general exultation for the downfall of a tyrant, then pronounced author, but as subsequent history explains, rather moderator of the tremendous terrorism irrigating with blood the lately planted tree of liberty. As Joseph Bonaparte, once associated in a military pro-consulate with Robespierre s respectable brother, told me, and as a whole series of modern French history by many credible works testifies, the most blood-stained was not the most blood-thirsty tribune of ter rorism, but its moderator, far from designing, as was then generally asserted and is yet mostly believed, to demolish the triple aristocracy of birth, of fortune, and of talents. Soon ADMINISTRATION. 107 after the awful reign of terror, France settled in a republic much more powerful than the monarchy dreadfully uprooted. With some downfall of the elegant arts and refinements, all useful arts and sciences were much improved, particularly those ancillary to war forced by foreign invasion. Washing ton s friendship for the revolution, and immutable wish for its accomplishment, as stated by his instructions to Monroe, were abundantly justified. French republican establishment within, together with many victories, driving vast armies of invaders from the frontiers, created a great regenerated nation, not indeed free from commotion and vicissitudes, but quite as much at their ease as the United States were at the close of their distracting revolution, realizing what Washington hoped and predicted, and his Minister, Monroe, from actual observa tion on the spot averred, notwithstanding the disbelief of Morris in France, Jay in England, and Hamilton in America, as instinct or prejudice dictated impressions to each of those all equally patriotic statesmen. Notwithstanding George the Third s specious, flourishing reception of John Adams as first Minister from the revolted colonies acknowledged independent of his Court, Mr. Adams could effect nothing there, but was obliged to return home with admiration of British government as all he could get by way of reconciliation with his own. And Gouverneur Morris, a bold bachelor, needing no formal authority, commissioned to ascer tain confidentially if English ill-will was altogether unappeas able, reported that the unforgiving or contemptuous mother country felt no inclination to treat with her poor distracted off spring. Though Thomas Pinckney, the Minister who succeeded Mr. Adams, communicated no indications of actual hostility, yet the frontier posts were withheld contrary to treaty, till the Americans paid their British debts. A British Envoy, slow coming, and marrying into a Tory family here, smarting with the hatred of ^proscription and confiscation, was sullen when he did come; American seamen were impressed with all the brutal violence of that mode of manning the British navy; ships and 108 cargoes were captured and condemned by monstrous perversion of sea law ; Indians were inflamed with gifts and drink to make war on our borders, and the Governor of Canada, Lord Dor chester, in a talk promised them that they should have war with the United States in less than a year. Alarmed by these hostile manifestations, both President and Congress at a loss what to .do, just before Monroe s mission to France, a special mission to England was resolved upon, at the urgent instance of Secretary Hamilton, and by his nomination the Chief Justice, John Jay, chosen as Envoy, instead of Hamilton himself, who had been suggested, but declined. After some communion on the subject with the President, his Secretary of the Treasury his most influential counselor, in a lengthy, and as it stated uncalled-for letter, representing the state of parties as Hamilton allotted them, and the occasion as a great, difficult, and perilous crisis in the affairs of the country, urged a special embassy to England to prevent war, and also as likely, perhaps, to accomplish a commercial treaty. Within forty-eight hours of that letter, Chief Justice Jay was, as it suggested, nominated for that mission. His eminent antece dents as one of the negotiators of the treaty of independence, as Secretary of State under the Confederation, as one of the contributors to the Federalist recommending the Constitution, and as the first Chief Justice of the United States under it, together with unsullied purity and eminent rectitude, entitled him to the President s confidence and universal respect. The couple of foreign Ministers, John Jay and James Monroe, thus sent abroad together, with substantial talents, differed widely in their English and French impressions, as soon appeared by results of their respective missions. No treaty solicited by special mission to England, when a large portion of the country and Congress seconded the Sec retary of the Treasury s insistance that the French treaties ought to be at least suspended if not annulled, could be agreeable to France, and must be offensive to the enthusiastic and overwhelming popularity of French emancipation from ADMINISTRATION. 109 monarchy and triumph over its coalesced royal supporters, English and German, invading to subjugate France, the recent ally of American revolutionary emancipation from those des pots. It is a curious and forgotten fact that with all the pub licity supposed to be a principle of American government, and notwithstanding the searching discussion Jay s treaty under went in Congress and by the Executive, with vehement ani madversions at numerous public meetings and by the press, becoming a precedent for frequent discussions since, President Washington s instructions which produced it have never seen the light, but remain still locked up in our archives, a State secret. Written by the Secretary of State, Edmund Ran dolph, and dated 6th of May, 1794, as dictated by the Presi dent, and submitted to the members of his administration, Hamilton dissuading their publication, which he strenuously opposed, called them in general " Crude mass, which would do no credit to the administration, and which the delicacy of attempting too much reformation in the work of another head of department, the hurry of the moment, and a great confidence in the person to be sent, prevented my at tempting to reform." Hamilton s insuperable resistance, sustained by Washing ton, to all other than senatorial participation in the treaty, rendered the first constitutional exercise of the treaty-making faculty a State secret, by which the President and Senate enact supreme law, negotiated by the one and confirmed by the other, without agency or knowledge of the House of Rep resentatives, or the public in the transaction. Clamorous complaint of that, charged as unrepublican mys tification, would have been obviated by publishing Jay s instructions, which must have quelled all imputations of Washington s desertion of French to cultivate English con nections; for on no occasion was his inflexible adherence to the French treaty and alliance more positively asserted than in his instructions to Jay, maintaining his plan of neutrality unbiased. Hamilton and Jay, shocked by tremendous French tyrannicide, which they feared would lead to transcendant 110 JOHN ADAMS S despotism, preferred British serene amity, cultivated without American disloyalty, as safer and better reliance for their country. Washington, hoping, if not believing, that French revolution would end beneficially, at all events, faithful to the sanctity of treaties, and convinced of the mistake into which any government falls when interfering with the internal measures of another, with explicit and emphatic instruction, directed Jay by no treaty with England to draw or alienate the United States from France, but to preserve conventional and amicable relations between that country and this as theretofore. " If the British ministry should hint at any supposed predilec tion in the United States for the French nation, as warranting the whole or any part of these instructions, Mr. Jay was directed to stop the progress of this subject as being irrelative to the question in hand. It is a circumstance which the British nation have no right to object to us because we are free in our affections and in dependent in our government. But it may be safely answered from the authority of the correspondence between the Secretary of State and Mr. Hammond, that our neutrality has been scrupu lously observed." Another paragraph of the letter of instructions, of whose crude mass Hamilton s confidence in Jay, prevented, he said, his reformation, was that while " The ideas expressed are to be considered only as recommenda tions, which, in his discretion, the Envoy might modify ; yet in two instances they are immutable, viz., 1, that if the British ministry, as they doubtless will, should be solicitous to detach us from France, and make some overture of this kind, you will inform them that the government of the United States will not derogate from our treaties and engagements with France, and that experience has shown that we can be honest in our duties to the British na tion without laying ourselves under any particular restraints as to other nations ; and 2, no treaty of commerce must be concluded or signed contrary to the foregoing prohibition." Mr. Jay, whose condemned sympathies with the English and distrust of French, when at Paris negotiating the acknowl edgment of independence, brought him at once into social ADMINISTRATION. Ill relations with the Grenville party, Pitt, the Scotts, afterward Lords Eldon and Stowell, peculiar favorites of George III., from among whom came the Stamp Act to elicit the American revolution, whose Tory royalism has been since utterly super seded, and is now as thoroughly repudiated by all parties in England as British government in the United States. A treaty was by their condescension agreed to redress the shortcomings of British violations of that of 1783 ; adding a second to a cata logue swelled to no less than a whole score of mostly super fluous or disadvantageous compacts between Great Britain and the United States, making trouble for fear of it, by shackling intercourse best left to right itself, pacific commercial, terri torial, northeastern, northwestern, piscatory, fluvial, riverain, West Indian, East Indian, and border Indian, naval, and negrophile. I have heard Mr. King describe Mr. Jay s de portment in London as not only purely and firmly, but boldly and highly independent American. But his treaty pleased scarcely any one at home, was by no means satisfac tory to Washington s forecasting prevision, and disappointed Hamilton s high-toned anticipation, though he generously re pelled assaults it underwent. In a private letter, Mr. Jay wrote to the President it was the best that could be got, gild ing whatever bitterness there was by assurance, no doubt true, that "The confidence reposed in your personal character was visible and useful throughout the negotiation." But general, almost unanimous execration burst forth against imputed infidelity to French treaties and alliance, and compli cations of commerce as short-sighted as laws to regulate sugar or cotton in the North, or ship-building and manufactures in the South. Urged and supported by Hamilton s zeal for his own offspring, Washington braced his military nerves for the difficult resistance of a republican executive to popular dissat isfaction. The sturdy acting Secretary of State, Timothy Pickering, stood up alone against the President and all the 112 JOHN ADAMS S rest of his administration, the Secretary insisting that the treaty should not be sent to the Senate until the provision order, which after and notwithstanding the treaty, by monstrous perversion of right, captured American flour going to France, as contraband, because France was starving, and a barrel of flour for his family in Paris cost Mr. Monroe, with no means beyond his salary, forty dollars in specie. To that outrageous and ignominious fetter on American trade, Washington, Ham ilton, and Wolcott, rather than sacrifice the treaty, thought it better to submit under protest. But the twelfth article, con signing to British navigation, to the exclusion of American, together with coffee, cocoa, molasses, and sugar, the embryo immense and vital staple of the union, power, peace, and pros perity of the United States, COTTON, struck the President as so wholly inadmissible, that he advised the Senate not to allow, and they suspended it when confirming the rest of the treaty. Want of foresight into the miracles of cotton was indeed the common infirmity of all alike, attesting the danger of all in ternational conventions, instead of leaving commerce, like other events, to its own natural development. Scarce any American statesman of that day doubted that the English denial of free ships free goods, was the conventional as well as actual law of nations, as it certainly was not; and the future miracles of cotton were as inconceivable as any other of the hidden mysteries of futurity. Like the noble, free, and pacific principles of Franklin s treaty, so many years in abeyance before their recognition by the world, as they prob ably would have wrought out their acknowledgment without treaty stipulation, so cotton came forward after the deaths of the great statesmen arranging Jay s treaty, to testify how perilous it is for the greatest men to lay their hands on what freedom will best arrange. Washington s plain, profound good sense dictated misgivings as to several complicated arti cles, besides doubtful phrases of the treaty. "Would it not be better," he wrote to Hamilton, "would it not be better to have no commercial treaty than the restricted one agreed to ?" ADMINISTRATION. 113 Eager for which restrictions, that part of Jay s instructions which prescribe a commercial treaty are posthumously pub lished as Hamilton s composition, in strange company with an other cautioning Washington not to publish Jay s instructions, because a crude compound not creditable to the administration. Never satisfied unless enterprising, though careful and indus trious in what he undertook, Hamilton flattered himself that the United States might bind mighty Britain by treaty and get the better of her in commercial stipulations; forgetting his friend Talleyrand s warning against activity and words, as made not to explain but to misinform. Washington s gleam from the sunbeam of wisdom imparted caution of written con tracts, binding the feeble, disregarded by the strong. His Farewell Address warned against all foreign connections, ex cept by treaties then in force, but not to add more. Touching faintly, in his annual speeches to Congress of 1795 and 1796, on the British treaty, he keenly felt and complained after its arrangement, that far from making peace, it had not checked what he denounced as " The high-handed measures, and outrageous and insulting con duct of British officers, seeming to render it impossible to preserve peace between Great Britain and the United States." With similar indignation, Hamilton pronounced "The British Ministers as great fools and as great rascals as our Jacobins ; else our commerce would not continue to be distressed as it is by their cruisers," against whose depredations his warlike spirit was always ready to take up arms. Grateful to Hamilton for his gener ous defence of a treaty which neither approved but deemed it best to acquiesce in, Washington communed with that former favorite Secretary as to the hostilities which England seemed forcing on the United States ; and at a loss what to recom mend to Congress on the subject, who would, he said, have a hot session, the President entreated Hamilton s advice in VOL. i. 8 114 JOHN ADAMS S terms remarkable for his own disquiet and his strong respect for Hamilton s opinion. "Although you are not in the administration, a thing I sincerely regret, I must nevertheless, knowing how intimately you are acquainted with all the concerns of the country, request the favor of you to note down such occurrences as in your opinion are proper subjects for communication to Congress at their next session, and particularly in what manner the British treaty should be brought before that body." Hamilton s lofty counsel, not only to ratify the British treaty, but furthermore to disregard its popular condemnation, and to resist Republican eiforts in the House of Representa tives to subject the treaty to legislative supervision, alienated Washington from Jefferson, Madison, Livingston, Gallatin, and others, who had already incurred the President s dis pleasure by their opposition to Hamilton s financial measures, and his resistance to their sympathy with French revolution ary republicanism. Washington s separation from his early adherents thus brought about, connected him with Hamilton, Jay, and other Federalists, claiming to be his special support ers. When French resentment of the British treaty, and its American governmental support, finally provoked hostilities begun by French depredations, educing Washington s im mense influence and experience for organizing an army to repel invasion, which he insisted was not to be apprehended ; yet he coincided with Hamilton and all others upholding President Adams s administration, by large armies, consider able ships-of-war, heavy taxes, and other extremely strong measures, not only to maintain war, but denouncing its op ponents as factious adversaries of the British treaty and abettors of unjust French aggressions. His own peculiar popularity commanded respect from all parties. The Feder alists claimed him as their chief. The Republicans, except very few, never disowned him. English former and recent French enemies acknowledged his unquestionable and inflexi ble rectitude. As he had been often if not mostly defeated ADMINISTRATION. 115 in war, it was nevertheless his special superiority to be never discouraged or set aside. So when, as Chief Magistrate, confronted by popular condemnation, he was not confounded. Taking side at last with one party against another, still he did not forfeit the good-will of those from whom he separated. Departing life with universal admiration, American and Euro pean, more than any other person, civil or military, of the age in which he lived, a tower of strength was built on his name, which since his death has continually grown stronger. While still the rallying point of all parties, universally revered in America as the father of his country, and much admired in England as its wisest and truest republican, an occurrence in my neighborhood, by popular protest against the ill-starred British treaty, gave me my first lesson in poli tics, of whose specimen of that rude eloquence, common in England at the polls, and in this country at the stump, perfect recollection enables me to present an accurate description, as it took place in the garden or yard of the State House, in which independence was declared, and the Federal constitution was framed. In none of the democratic experiments of American gov ernment has it failed more egregiously than in that occult and irresponsible power authorizing treaties, conceived in secret, selfish ambition, confirmed in secret senatorial cabal, and fas tened on the nation as supreme laws, without consent of its representatives, often in their defiance, and contrary to the sense of large majorities of the people. The treaty of 1788, acknowledging American independence, is the only one of twenty with England, to be proud of, or satisfied with ; and that one, during the whole period of Washington s and most of John Adams s administrations, for ten or twelve years, was broken continually by England, with more than impunity, withholding the frontier posts where Cincinnati and crowds of other cities now flourish, on the plea that this country with held unjustly payments of private debts to individual English men. Few of the present generation are aware of the more 116 JOHN ADAMS S than presumption that part of the second clause of the third article of the Constitution of the United States, which gives the federal courts jurisdiction of controversies between Ameri can citizens and foreigners, was imposed on the convention by the influence of British creditors, whose troops, in defiance of all President Washington could say or do, forcibly withheld our frontier fortresses till long after they got that promissory clause inserted in the Constitution. The first treaty with France, Franklin s model treaty of Versailles, in 1778, although it introduced new versions and impressed wisdom in the maritime code of all nations, ever since its adoption, yet involved the United States in hostilities with France, and exposed Washington s administration to the charge of perfidy, by his famous, however wise but selfish proclamation of neutrality. Nearly a hundred (seventy-seven) years after that treaty, Congress are importuned every session by claimants for indemnities, amounting to not less than twenty millions of dollars, for spoliations prior to the supple mental French treaty of 1800, which was to heal the griev ances caused by alleged and not desired American rupture of the prior treaty of 1778. Jay s treaty of 1794 rent the American people into violent antagonist parties. I am one of the now not many survivors old enough to remember the angry outbreaks of that cardinal contest; one of whose early demonstrations I may sketch, not only as an argument, but as a sign of those times. It was the first public meeting I attended, when, as a boy, joining the throng in Independence Square, greedily swallowing the rude, profane energy of the first stump speech I ever heard, my maiden impressions were formed of highway oratory and republican, as it was then called, not yet known as demo cratic, aversion to British domination. My father s residence being near Independence Square, I witnessed the gathering of the crowd not the twenty or thirty thousands which I have since seen on similar occasions, but some thousands, I forget who, except one individual whose presence and speech are ADMINISTRATION. 117 still perfectly fresh and vivid in my recollection. That per sonage was Blair McClenachan, a rich and notable naturalized Irish merchant, who throughout the revolutionary contest with Great Britain, attested his constancy to the American cause by liberal contributions, and established his popularity as a generous republican. His ample fortune was always freely dispensed in the service of his adopted country. His eldest daughter married a young Irishman, Walter Stewart, one of the handsomest men of his day, who commanded a regiment in Washington s army. Mr. McClenachan then owned Mr. Chew s historical mansion at Germantown, key to the un lucky battle of that name, whose blood- stained floors and battered but impenetrable stone walls mark one of the several defeats by which Washington proved that he was not to be discouraged by disasters. From that house of opulent ease and proverbial hospitality, Mr. McClenachan rode, like a re publican gentleman, in his carriage, seven long miles over the then frequently almost impassable Germantown road, in whose bogs horses were sometimes mired and lost, to attend the pub lic meeting called to denounce Jay s detested treaty. Just back of the hall where independence was declared, under the shade of the old annually worm-eaten English elms, since cut down and replaced by American forest trees, in a square in closed by high brick walls, mostly removed afterward and capped by the present iron palisades, the meeting was organ ized. Well stricken in years, crippled by the gout, at that time a common but well-bred, fashionable and long-lived ail ment, lame and hobbling along on his cane, hale, bold, ani mated, sensitive, and outspoken, the old merchantman, born a British subject, but long boasting his American allegiance, was helped up on to a chair or table, I forget which was the rostrum, and looked bravely around upon his auditors, who cheered old Blair, and I, for the first time, joined heartily in the chorus of American sovereign defiance to British sway. The aged spokesman s bushy, gray hair, all white, but thick and healthy, his gouty legs as big at the ankle as the knee, 118 JOHN ADAMS S his air of confident independence betokened a resolute ebulli tion. In a hoarse, guttural voice, struggling for ejaculation, a few jerking phrases were uttered with vehement action, without a particle of oratorical method, grace, gesture, prac tice, or idea whatever. But the essence of conviction poured forth upon the crowd from the speaker, with flashing earnest ness of tone, look, manner, rubicund face, reddened to fiery purple, and indignant motion, while with one hand he propped himself upon his stick, and beat the air with the other. His discourse, extremely sententious, with laconic point, was soon brought to conclusion. If not nearly all personation, at any rate that is the part which, after sixty years, remains still engraved as original stump eloquence in my memory. Suit ing the action to the word, "Let us all join, fellow-citizens," loudly croaked the not more excited than exciting orator, "let us all join, then, fellow-citizens, and kick this d d treaty to h 11." My brother, who was present with me on that occasion, (with another boy, George Clymer, son of a signer of the Declaration of Independence,) says, McClenachan s words were "Take the instrument of this d d treaty and kick it to h 11." With loud laughter and shouts of adoption for that pithy devotion of the obnoxious treaty to the consignment which nearly all seemed to think it deserved, the orator was helped to get down from his elevation, and then, I believe, with the rest, hobbled across Chestnut Street to the residence of the English Consul, Mr. Phineas Bond, right opposite. That gentleman was a respectable native of Philadelphia, who, for siding with the mother country throughout the revolutionary war, was rewarded by England, as several more American Tories were in those days of national aggravation, by consul ates and other profitable employments in various parts of the United States. The stubborn, honest, half-crazy, till totally ADMINISTRATION. 119 insanified, King George the Third s birthday, the pleasant fourth of June, when our harsh winter, melting into hot sum mer, is enlivened by the first fruits and flowers, in their vernal profusion and gayest attire, was always duly feted both at the Consul s and first English Minister s mansions, the latter of whom, Mr. Hammond, married in Philadelphia a Philadelphia lady. Loyalty was there consecrated to the good old times and honest old king, repudiating all republican experiments as pernicious aberrations which must end in trouble. Phila delphia, then the seat of Federal Government, and of the greatest commerce of the United States, was full of British resident merchants to toast and sing, at the Minister s and Consul s residences, "God Save the King," "Rule Britannia," and the "Roast Beef of Old England." In their loyal appre hensions the noisy meeting in Independence Square was no better than a disorderly mob, who should have been punished for crossing over, as they did, from that Square to the Con sul s house, and burning the British treaty on the post, at his front door. After that exploit, which greatly amused me, though we were near neighbors of Mr. Bond s respectable and amiable family, the people merrily dispersed. The French revolutionary government, in its worst enormi ties of the reign of terror and tyrannicide, submitted without remonstrance to Genet s removal, and sent Joseph Fauchet to take his place as their Minister in the United States. Offi cially apprised of the -British treaty by the Secretary of State, Edmund Randolph, Fauchet specified some objections to it in temperate and amicable terms, to which the Secretary replied by explanations in like temper, vindicating what was objected to; and the whole correspondence, in June and July, 1795, reciprocated national amity. After considerable hesitation, laid before the Senate, that body, on the 24th of June, 1795, confirmed the obnoxious British treaty, except the twelfth article, by exactly the constitutional majority. The Senators of seven States, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, 120 JOHN ADAMS S New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland, repre senting a population of a million seven hundred and eighty thousand, all voted for it. The Senators of two States, Vir ginia and North Carolina, representing a population of one million one hundred and forty thousand, voted against it. The Senators of six States, New Hampshire, Vermont, New York, Kentucky, South Carolina, and Georgia, were divided. One of the Virginia Senators, Stephen Thompson Mason, defying the senatorial regulations of secrecy, communicated the substance and most of the details of the twenty-eight articles of the treaty to the editor of Bache s paper, as the Aurora was then commonly designated, edited by Franklin s grandson, Benjamin Franklin Bache, in close communion with many leading Republicans in his grandfather s politics and confidence. Whether, if then living, he would have excused or approved that at least irregular act, may be questioned. His somewhat similar disclosure of certain letters, for which Wedderburne so severely handled him in the British Privy Council, would probably induce some to think his sense of honor was not so nice as to prevent vindication of Mason s transaction. At all events, his death before it took place, while rendering that question only idle conjecture, does not preclude belief that, if living to uphold his own treaties against Jay s, he would have maintained his own as wisest and best. Much vilified in England and admired in France, personal or selfish as well as political and patriotic motives existed to fix his mind; and compared with the British treaty Franklin s is of transcendent lustre. Except in surrender of the frontier posts, which the mere march of population would have insured without treaty, Mr. Jay obtained little, if not in some stipulations worse than nothing; certainly not British forbearance from the sea outrages bitterly complained of by Washington, whereas the British Order in Council, of the 7th of March, 1860, issued while this narrative is yet unfinished, is recognition so striking of the complete conversion of British sea law to the simple rules of freedom and justice introduced ADMINISTRATION. 121 by Franklin, that I deem it due to historical registry to incor porate the whole State paper by its insertion as a note. [NOTE. At the Court at Buckingham Palace, the 7th day of March, 1860 ; present, the Queen s Most Excellent Majesty in Council : Whereas, in the event of hostilities commencing between her Majesty and her august ally the Emperor of the French on the one hand, and the Emperor of China on the other hand, it is the intention and desire of her Majesty and of his Majesty, the Emperor of the French, to act, during such hostilities, in strict conformity with the declaration respect ing maritime law, signed by the Plenipotentiaries of Great Britain, Aus tria, France, Prussia, Russia, Sardinia, and Turkey, assembled in Congress at Paris, and dated April 16th, 1856; and whereas, her Majesty is will ing to extend the benefits of the said declaration of Paris to all Powers which may be neutral in the said hostilities : Now her Majesty is pleased, by and with the advice of her Privy Coun cil, to order, and it is hereby ordered, that so far as regards the ships of any neutral Power, the flag of any such Power shall cover the enemy s goods, with the exception of contraband of war ; so that no goods of enemies found on board any ship belonging to the subjects of such neu tral Power, or to those inhabiting within the dominions of any such Power, and duly entitled to use the flag of such Power, shall be subject to capture or condemnation by reason only of such goods being enemies goods; all other liabilities to capture and condemnation, respectively, of enemies goods and neutral ships being reserved and remaining in all respects as before the declaration of said Congress at Paris, of the 16th of April, 1856. And it is hereby further ordered that neutral goods, with the excep tion of contraband of war, shall not be liable to capture, under the ene : my s flag, by reason only of said goods being under the enemy s flag; all other liabilities to capture and condemnation of neutral goods being reserved, and remaining in all respects as before the declaration of the said Congress at Paris, of the 16th of April, 1856; provided always, and it is hereby ordered, that nothing herein contained shall be applicable to or shall be construed, deemed, or taken, so as to operate or apply to, or in favor of any person, ship, or goods whatsoever, which may be cap tured for breaking or attempting to break, or which may be lawfully adjudged to have broken or attempted to break, any blockade main tained by a force sufficient really to prevent access to the coast of the enemy ; but that all such persons, ships, and goods may be duly taken cognizance of, proceeded upon, adjudicated, dealt with, and treated, in all respects and to all purposes according to the course of admiralty 122 JOHN ADAMS S In 1778, when Franklin, by treaty with France, asserted freedom and benificence for the sea, Great Britain was at war with every one of the principles so asserted. For many years it was impossible to maintain them against the irresistible power of Great Britain. In 1856, they were declared law of nations by Congress of the great Powers, at Paris, as there first announced by the American reformer. In 1860, Great Britain, with vastly more maritime force than ever, greater fleets, more seamen and mariners, and more occasions for sea supremacy, acknowledged that Franklin s doctrines were wisest and the law of nations, as if tins order had never been made, anything hereinbefore to the contrary in anywise notwithstanding. And it is further ordered that, notwithstanding the existence of hos tilities between her Majesty and her august ally on the one hand, and the Emperor of China on the other hand, and during the continuance thereof, all and every the subjects of her Majesty and of her august ally, the Em peror of the French, shall and may, during such hostilities, freely trade at and with all ports and places wheresoever situate in the dominions of China, and also with all persons whomsoever, as well subjects of the Emperor of China as others residing or trading within any part of the dominions of the said Emperor. And it is further ordered and declared that if any Chinese ship or ves sel shall be captured or taken by any of her Majesty s vessels or forces, having on board any merchandise or goods being the bonafide property of any subject or subjects of her Majesty or of her august ally the Em peror of the French, such merchandise or goods shall not be subject or liable to be condemned as prize, but shall, on the proof of such pro perty, as aforesaid, be restored to the owner or owners thereof; provided always, and it is hereby ordered, that this order shall not apply, or be construed, deemed, or taken to operate to, or apply to or in favor of con traband of war, or to trading in supply of, or dealing with, any articles or things which it may be declared by her Majesty and her august ally shall be deemed and taken as contraband of war, or to any trading or attempt to trade with places subject to effective blockade by the ships or fleets of her Majesty and her august ally, or either of them ; and it is further ordered, that her Majesty s officers and subjects, and especially her Majesty s courts and officers exercising any prize jurisdiction, do take notice hereof, and govern themselves accordingly. WM. L. BATHURST.] ADMINISTRATION. 123 and best for all nations ; conformity on the ocean to analogous doctrines of free trade and forbearance, by which her prodi gious industry is most developed, and her inexhaustible re sources most effectually activated five years before. The whole Republican party, together with many Federalists, and especially merchants, in all the sea-ports from Boston, where the first public meeting was held, to Charleston, together with the press, generally denounced the treaty for various reasons assigned, among which alienation from France and alliance with England was always prominent. At the New York meet ing, Alexander Hamilton arid Rufus King, attempting to de fend the treaty, were largely outvoted and even roughly handled. The Philadelphia meeting, on the 23d of July, 1795, numbering five thousand persons or more, was presided by Dr. William Lee Shippen, and the committee appointed to prepare a memorial to the President were Chief Justice Mc- Kean, Charles Pettit, Thomas Lee Shippen, Stephen Girard, A. J. Dallas, John Swanwick, Moses Levy, Blair McClena- chan, Abraham Coats, F. A. Muhlenberg, John Hunn, John Barker, and William Coats. Similar representatives of re spectability, social and political, of property and orderly patriotism, by no means mere partisans, composed the com mittees elsewhere, as in Philadelphia. On Saturday, the twenty-fifth of July, the Philadelphia committee submitted to a lage adjourned town meeting, in the State House yard, their memorial to the President, entreating him in these terms of affectionate respect to withhold his sanction from the ob noxious instrument of which they condemned the provisions in detail by temperate persuasion and wholly inoffensive argu ment: "Your memorialists, sincerely and affectionately attached to you from a sense of the important services you have rendered to the United States, and a conviction of the purity of the motives that will forever regulate your public administration, do, on an occa sion in which they feel themselves deeply interested, address you as a friend and patriot : as a friend who will never take offence at what is well intended, and as a patriot who will never reject what may be converted to the good of your country." 124 JOHN ADAMS S Such was the cordial attachment for President Washington of fellow-countrymen of education, property, and individual respectability, but of whose associates Hamilton s successor as Secretary of the Treasury, Oliver Wolcott, wrote to him "The influence of Messrs. Gallatin, Madison, and Jefferson must be diminished, or the public affairs will be brought to a stand." Opposition to Jay s treaty Hamilton considered plebeian factious clamor, instigated by French influence, which the President, far from yielding to, should defy, if not despise. Whether right or wrong in his reasons for soliciting the treaty, accepting it, and withholding it from public knowl edge, Washington s firm executive resistance to popular coun teraction, without much impairing his deep-rooted hold of American confidence, increased esteem for him abroad, espe cially in England, and in other countries where such a stand by a Chief Magistrate is always apt to be approved. Mean while depredations at sea, French and English, were incessant, troubles with Spain, and fear of the Barbary powers. Till the Gordian knot was cut by the sword of war declared four years afterward, it was difficult and perplexing cause of party recrimination whether France or England most challenged war. But, throughout 1795 and much of 1796, the official relations between the American and French republics were altogether amicable. On New-year s day, 1796, President Washington delivered his remarkable welcome to the French Minister, Adet, on his presentation of the French flag in return for an American flag presented by Monroe to the French Directory. After the French Minister s brief, friendly, and by no means revolu tionary or extravagant address, the President replied not only in French revolutionary sentiment, but in terms and tone as ardent as any French revolutionary enthusiasm could desire. Chief Justice Marshall records as history what he terms a task of some delicacy, to express feelings adapted to the occa- ADMINISTRATION. 125 sion without sentiments which might be improper by the Chief Magistrate of a neutral nation. But could such have been Washington s restraint when he declared that "His anxious recollections, sympathetic feelings, and best wishes were irresistibly attracted, whensoever, in any country, he saw an oppressed nation unfurl the banners of freedom." "Above all, the events of the French revolution had produced his deepest soli citude, as well as highest admiration." That unreserved condonation of all the revolutionary enormi ties, which Hamilton could not pardon, was followed by con gratulation that "Liberty, so long embraced with enthusiasm by invincible de fenders, found an asylum in the bosom of an organized govern ment, gratifying the pride of every citizen of the United States by its resemblance to our own. These," he added with perfect truth, "were the sentiments, not of his own feelings only, but of his fellow-citizens in relation to the commencement, progress, and ter mination of the French revolution." In April, 1794, the Secretary of State, Edmund Ran dolph, confidentially disclosing to Joseph Fauchet, the French Minister, that part of Jay s instructions which protected the French treaties and alliance, told him that the President was the mortal enemy of England and declared friend of France. In the course of a long official letter from Fauchet, dated the 24th of October, 1794, he informed his government that Washington was the friend of France and republicanism, together with the House of Representatives; but that the Senate inclined to England and aristocracy. That dispatch of the French Minister was intercepted by capture of the vessel, called Jean Bart, in which it was, and of course went into possession of the British ministry. If such was the case when it was written, and on New-year s day, 1796, at Wash ington s memorable welcome of the French revolutionary flag, with Timothy Pickering s bony form, Roman visage, and hatred of the French at the President s elbow as acting Secretary of State, his final accession to that department, followed by alarming intelligence from abroad, changed the 126 JOHN ADAMS S President s mind, and impressed him with Hamilton s appre hension of French revolutionary misfeasance; under which impression Washington closed and Adams commenced the presidency. On the 28th of July, 1795, George Hammond, British Minister at Philadelphia, delivered there to Oliver Wolcott, Secretary of the Treasury, Fauchet s intercepted letter, denounced as proving Secretary Randolph s criminal complicity with the French Minister. Proof that Hammond fomented the insurrection of part of Western Pennsylvania against the whisky excise in 1794, the French letter intimated had been sought, or at least contrived, between the Secretary of State and French Minister, by the Minister s supplying the Secretary with money. Part. of the French Minister s business was, through various agents in the United States, to buy flour for shipment to France; and the captured letter was charged with stating that Mr. Randolph arranged with M. Fauchet to take money from him with which to obtain information from the sellers of the flour that the English Minister had endeavored to embarrass the American govern ment by perfidious encouragement of the whisky insurrection. On the llth of August, 1795, Mr. Wolcott communicated to the President Fauchet s intercepted letter, thus implicating the Secretary of State. On the nineteenth of that month, in presence of Mr. Wolcott and Mr. Pickering, the President charged Mr. Randolph with the alleged offence, who imme diately resigned, and soon after published his vindication. Hammond, the British Minister, took his leave of Philadelphia on the 15th and sailed from New York for England on the 17th of August, 1795. Mr. Randolph hastily pursued the French Minister to Newport, to obtain his refutation of the charge, which Mr. Randolph vehemently denied as wholly untrue; and of which the French Minister afterward sent from France his explanatory denial, having, before Mr. Ran dolph reached Newport, sailed thence the 1st of September, 1795, in a storm and fog, on board the French frigate Medusa, chased from port instantly but not overtaken by ADMINISTRATION. 127 the British frigate Africa; our harbors being then actually used as stations for British cruisers to prey on French. And one of President Washington s official complaints, by his Secretary of State, which Hamilton warmly seconded, was against the British frigate endeavoring to capture the French Minister within the waters and jurisdiction of the United States, in the Sound between Newport and New York, which the British captain vindicated by an insulting letter to Gov ernor Fenner, of Rhode Island. Secretary Randolph s British accusation from intercepted French dispatch, resignation, and vindication, all sudden, and angrily imputing by him British influence to President Wash ington, do not lie in the path of this narrative, beyond this brief statement of them, further than by transferring Timothy Pickering from the War to the State Department, which put the whole executive, at the close of Washington s presidency and outset of Adams s, completely in the hands of Hamilton, more than ever anti-French. From Randolph s resignation, the nineteenth of August, till the middle of November, Colonel Pickering, Secretary of War, acted as Secretary of State. The State Department was tendered and was pressed by Washington on several, who all declined it, and finally, on Colonel Pickering, who wrote to Hamilton, that after repeat edly declining he at last reluctantly undertook it to relieve the President s anxiety, whose countenance was manifestly uneasy. Colonel Pickering modestly said that he had not the talent so much desired in a Secretary of State; which was a mistake of his own sufficient talents, his infirmity being temper. "A very worthy man," Hamilton wrote to Washington, "but nevertheless with something warm and angular in his temper, re quiring much a vigilant, moderating eye." Disqualified by irascible temper for diplomatic and inter national correspondence at a time when, as Hamilton advised Washington, 128 JOHN ADAMS S "The card to be played was the most delicate perhaps that had occurred in his administration. For," said Hamilton, with superior good sense, " nations, like individuals, sometimes get into squabbles from the manner more than the matter that passes between them ; and he considered it," he said, "all-important to avoid rupture with France ; if that cannot be, then to convince the people of our unequivocal disposition to avoid it; to be calm, smooth, argument ative ; remonstrate with moderation, and assert our rights in the language of friendship." "Which judicious method was reversed by Pickering s combus tible and explosive, scolding and abusive language, so that Hamilton condemned one of his most important letters to Adet for its harsh and epigrammatic sharpness; and, finally, when Secretary Pickering, in a ferment of anti-French pas sion, proposed alliance, offensive and defensive, with England, Hamilton vetoed it at once as injudicious, though there was no British influence in Pickering s red-hot hatred of the French, and fomentation of the brewing hostilities. President Washington s enthusiastic welcome of the French Minister and flag on New-year s day, 1796, annoyed Hamil ton and his intimate friend and constant, confidential corre spondent, Gouverneur Morris, in Europe, who, as soon as fixed in the French mission, opened with Hamilton, just appointed Secretary of the Treasury, a correspondence by which Morris cultivated continually, perhaps suggested originally, Hamil ton s abhorrence of the French revolutionary tyrannicidal enormities. "When superseded by Monroe, commissioned be cause of his strong French revolutionary sympathies, to take Morris s place in France, removed because of his equally strong royal attachments, he was employed by the President in confidential intercourse with the British Ministry, subsidiz ing nearly all the other crowned heads and aristocracies of Europe, coalesced to restore the dethroned French royal family by invasion and subjugation, if not partition of France, which Mr. Morris deemed not only wise and just, but promissory of success; openly and strenuously everywhere advocating the royal, and reprobating the revolutionary endeavor. Having, ADMINISTRATION. . 129 while Minister in France, been brought into uncommon inti macy with the French royal family, and then being employed in close communication with the British Ministry, Mr. Mor ris s aversion to the French reign of terror by such political and social relations in both the French and English capitals, was strongly encouraged and established; and in those senti ments he lived and died, as was said, like Burke truly predict ing French despotism from French democracy. No sooner had he read what he deemed Washington s un wise speech to the French Minister, than he wrote from Lon don on the 4th of May, 1796, to Hamilton, that the President had committed himself, so that Morris could not, he said, write to him more than in abstract. But at the same time to Hamilton, who received the letter before that from Morris reached the President, he wrote fully, inclosing a letter dated the 15th of February, 1796, from a person in Paris, on whose information Mr. Morris thought he might rely, apprising him that France would send a fleet, with a Minister Extraordi nary, to the United States, demanding rescision of the British treaty. Mr. Morris s information was so far correct that, although no army or force was to be sent with a Minister, yet, as Mr. Monroe wrote officially from Paris to the Secre tary of State, the sixteenth and twentieth of February, a special Envoy was to be sent to remonstrate against the treaty. But soon after, on the 10th of March, 1796, he wrote to say that the French government had yielded to his intervention, and would not send a special Envoy, but rely on the ordinary channel for explanations of the injury done by the treaty, which were expected and would be sought. On the fifth of May, Hamilton communicated to the President that menacing disclosure, which the President acknowledged on the eighth of that month, much displeased at the French threat, countenanced in the United States, he thought, by public meetings, and also, as he wrote to Hamilton, "By communication of influential men in this country through a medium which ought to have been the last to engage in it." VOL. I. 9 130 JOHN ADAMS S Whether that medium was supposed to be Monroe or not, his recall soon ensued. The President preferred sending a special Minister, with fresh instructions, to be associated with Monroe. But as there was a constitutional difficulty, when the Senate were not in session, in the way of appointing to a place not vacant, of several persons suggested by Colonel Hamilton, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, an excellent selec tion, was chosen to supersede Monroe. Commissioning Monroe to supersede Morris in France, and Jay as special colleague of Pinckney in England, Washington, honestly neutral and perfectly impartial, employed two sub stantial statesmen in harmony with Monroe s confidence and Jay s distrust of French republicanism. But the warmth with which the Chief Magistrate welcomed it on New-year s day was chilled by Morris s tidings, made known by Hamilton. On the 15th of June, 1796, he wrote to Wolcott, that " Government must immediately set in earnest about averting this storm, and to that end a person must be sent in place of Monroe." On the seventeenth, Wolcott answered, that he " Had for some time inclined to think that Mr. Monroe ought to be recalled, but as others have doubted, and the thing was not demonstrable, I have not urged it." By others he alluded no doubt to the President. But already several days before, the Secretary of State, on the 13th of June, 1796, by duplicate and triplicate letters, offi cially reproached Monroe for lack of zealous action with the means and views of government in his possession for removing objections and dispelling prejudices concerning the British treaty. And those complaints were soon followed by the Secretary s dispatch of the 22d of August, 1796, announcing to Monroe his recall, long before any explanation could be received from him, and that General Pinckney had been appointed to take his place. Relinquishing, as Mr. Monroe was officially told, their first ADMINISTRATION. 131 design of sending a special Envoy to the United States to re monstrate against the British treaty, he was also told, how ever, that the French Directory, far from ceasing would perse vere in their opposition to what, with French vivacity, as they call it, and we call vehemence, they denounced as ungenerous and unjust, if not perfidious desertion of the first and best friends of the United States, to join the worst enemies of both the United States and France : abusing the first occa sion for evincing their gratitude for French succor, solemnly promised when in the utmost want of it, the American gov ernment joined the British head of the coalition of kings invading France to restore royalty and uproot republicanism. Official reproaches, explanations, and recriminations in this strain were fired between Adet and Pickering at Philadelphia, and De la Croix and Monroe at Paris, during the summer of 1796. On the seventh of October of that year, the French Secretary of State notified the American Minister at Paris, that the functions of the French Plenipotentiary near the United States were suspended; and, furthermore, that by a decree of the Directory armed French vessels would treat the United States as they suffered the English to treat them. Consequently as the flag did not .protect American vessels from British search and seizure, as stipulated by the American treaty with France, and by several other American treaties, but American commerce, contrary to those treaties and the law of nations, was surrendered by treaty to British sea do minion, that dominion would, in like manner, be exercised by France. Thus the French treaties which Secretary Hamilton proposed to suspend because of aversion to the French revo lution, were suspended by the French to counteract what they charged as the gross injustice and ingratitude of the United States. Free ships free goods, was the point on which the contest hinged. Asserted by the French as law of nations, and Franklin s stipulation by treaty; denied by nearly, if not quite, all American statesmen, of every party, as not law of 132 JOHN ADAMS S nations, but special stipulation by treaty, which the United States were unable to maintain against Great Britain, and which Jefferson, both as President Washington s Secretary and as President himself, pleaded was not worth a war for its support, that panoply of peace, as put on by Franklin, is acknowledged and enforced as the law of nations, as it always was, though denied and put down by England. The French Secretary s notification of this decree of search and seizure to the American Minister, was wrapped in amiable assurances, hopes that the political relations between the two nations would be speedily re-established as they ought to be, and the clouds on their alliance dispelled. President Wash ington, who, from the time of Morris s communication through Hamilton, confirmed by Adet s insulting correspondence and offensive conduct, was much offended and annoyed, in his last annual speech to Congress, adverted to the increase of French depredations on American commerce, besides communications, he said, from the French Minister of further disturbances, which, with remarkable simplicity of complaint, he told Con gress were "far from agreeable:" at the same time express ing, like the French menace, hopes that hostile collision would be avoided, and the ancient friendly alliance restored. The Directory s refusal to receive Pinckney in Monroe s place, and farewell to him, nearly simultaneous with the Presi dent s speech to Congress, of course unknown in the United States, both act and speech gave greater offence than even commercial depredations. Apprised on the 6th of December, 1796, of Monroe s recall, and of General Pinckney s arrival to take his place, the French Minister of Foreign Affairs, Charles de la Croix, by official note of the 9th of December, 1796, to Monroe, named the hour that day for the delivery of General Pinckney s credentials and Mr. Monroe s recall; but then, by another official note, on the ninth of that month in formed Mr. Monroe that the Directory charged him to notify Mr. Monroe, ADMINISTRATION. 133 " That it will no longer recognize nor receive a Minister Pleni potentiary from the United States, until after a reparation of the grievances demanded of the American government, and which the French republic had a right to expect." Wherefore, on the 30th of December, 1796, at a private audience, James Monroe, as citizen of the United States, de livered his letters of recall, with an address to the Directory, instructed, he said, by the President to avail himself of the occasion to renew, on the President s part, assurance of the solicitude felt by the United States for the happiness of the French republic; to which the departing Minister added a statement not unlike Washington s to Adet on the first of January of that year, of fervent interest in French affairs, realizing under the auspices of a wise and excellent constitu tion, all the great objects so long and nobly contended for in council and field; and of his heartfelt hope for continuance of a close and perfect union between the two nations. To this the presiding officer of the Direc tory, Barras, replied that " France would not stoop to calculate the consequences of the condescension of the American government to the wishes of its ancient tyrants ; that, proud of their liberty, they will not forget they owe it to France, will weigh in their wisdom the magnani mous friendship of the French people with the crafty caresses of perfidious men who meditate to bring them again under their for mer yoke." Mr. Monroe was told to "Assure the good people of America that, like them, the French adore liberty, whose esteem they will always possess, and find in the French people that republican generosity which can grant peace as well as cause its sovereignty to be respected. As for you, Mr. Minister, you have combated for principles; you have understood the true interests of your country ; depart with our re gret. We restore in you a representative to America, and pre serve remembrance of the citizen whose personal qualities did honor to the title." Turgid official farewell to a departing American Minister, in December, 1796, looks like parody of florid official welcome 134 JOHN ADAMS S to a French new Minister on his presentation the January be fore. Washington s harangue to Adet, and Barras s to Mon roe, resemble each other, as of similar French rhetoric. And if mere diplomatic cajoleries, can plain, patient, pacific repub licanism claim superiority over royal and aristocratic, betraying misled nations into the calamitous horrors of war when pro fessing peace, but contriving to break it merely to please a monarch s mistress, or keep his Ministers in place ? From the eruption of tremendous hostilities between France and England in 1792, during twelve years, till at last the suf fering and complaining United States were relieved by war, they were continually not only disturbed by its outrages, but with causes enough for declaring it against either of the bel- ligerants, distracted by their aggressions and their own party recriminations, which of the two to choose as most offensive and least formidable. "Washington, having passed through that emergency by the experiment of his presidency, neither French or English, but American, and neither monarch, aris tocrat, or democrat, but republican, contrary to the opinions of most of the wise in the Old World and not a few in the New, enjoying marvelous trust, both European and American, in his virtue and rectitude, bestowed many last thoughts on a political testament. Its structure, four years before by Wash ington, about to retire, confided to Madison, was now entrusted to Hamilton, into whose intimacy Washington had drifted from that of Madison, and whose assistance, like that of Madison s before, the patriot testator anxiously sought by constant correspondence with Hamilton during the last months of experimental presidency. How much of this last will either of those accomplished scribes contributed has been made a question since the deaths of all three, which neither Madison or Hamilton made or would ever have made, being both too just and generous to claim what each well knew was the work of its author, not of his editors, by posthumous rapacity made to impair by filching some of that universal veneration, classical and almost evangelical, which all man- ADMINISTRATION. 135 kind feels and neither enemy could or friend would dimin ish. Engrossed with that subject, and not having heard of Pinckney s rejection or Barras s farewell to Monroe, Wash ington s last annual message to Congress, treating of navy, manufactures, agricultural and military academies, with other topics, cursorily noticed, the last session of the Fourth Con gress, closed the first term of the presidency, notwithstanding French, British, Spanish, and Algerine disturbances, the French consequences of the British treaty, and other con troversial excitements, with little more than merely perfunc tory legislation quietly enacted, passing only two acts of no great significance during the first three months. Among the acts crowded, as usual, into the last few days, was an ap propriation to pay Timothy Pickering for services as Indian Agent, whose public incumbency had become so habitual that when at last removed from the Department of State, by Presi dent Adams, for continual petty treason, challenging that enforcement, the Secretary urged the strange objection that he was too poor to live without the salary. Much deteriorated by Pickering s substitution for Jefferson as Secretary of State, Washington s administration was still more embarrassed by Hamilton s resignation as Secretary of the Treasury. His successor, Oliver Wolcott, by no means deficient of talents, had enjoyed the advantage of witnessing Hamilton s organization of the fiscal department, confessed, by continual applications to him for advice and assistance, after his retirement to private and laborious professional life, that his predecessor was greatly superior, if he had indeed any equal. Pickering and Wolcott, descending as heir-looms from Washington s presidency to Adams s, were to continue, it was said, the Washington administration as inherited from the father of his country, of whom Hamilton, Pickering, and Wolcott, with their adherents in Congress, claimed to be spe cial supporters, opposed by Jefferson, Madison, and others, who denounced Jay s treaty and deprecated French hostili ties. 136 JOHN ADAMS S Seldom has any Minister in any country or age exercised more controlling influence than Alexander Hamilton during the last two years of Washington s presidency, and the first two of John Adams s. Washington during that portion of his last term constantly and anxiously solicited, Adams while managed by his Secretaries, Pickering and Wolcott, descend ing on his from Washington s administration, reluctantly submitted to their measures, dictated by Hamilton, always sincerely and mostly wisely suggested, together with the proper persons to select and appoint for their execution. Superior intelligence and information acquired by studious research, indefatigable industry, great administrative talents, both civil and military, insatiable love of ruling, and frank, soldierly decision, without artifice or unworthy deportment, qualified General Hamilton for the complete ascendancy he enjoyed. Entire adhesion and subordination of the leading man of the great party governing the United States by uni versal acclaim, acknowledged him as leader of that party, comprehending presidential secretaries and influential mem bers of Congress. With confidence in his own genius and learning as superior to Washington s, Hamilton considered him a virtuous chief with colossal popularity, adapting him to the part he was called to perform, without commanding abilities. Not liking the Federal constitution or the American plebeian mass, he inculcated his own preference of government, more executive and less democratic, free institutions as like the English, and unlike the revolutionized French as American republicanism could be. In patriotic loyalty to this country of his sincere adoption, no one probably exceeded him. More than equal, if not much superior to the eminent Frenchman, Thiers, to whom Talleyrand compared Hamilton, his ambition, especially for military renown, hardly fell short of that of the hero of M. Thiers s history, Bonaparte himself. It is not unlikely that General Hamilton, as commander of the army he was raising and organizing to repel French invasion, had probably less fear than hope of it, flattering himself that he ADMINISTRATION. 137 might encounter in arms that child and champion of democ racy, whom he heartily detested. His eldest son, my school-mate and intimate, a fine youth, sacrificed, like his father, in a deplorable and insensate duel, on the same fatal spot and near the same time, was wildly enthusiastic of that romantic chiv alry which seemed to be a family infirmity, if heroic passion may be called such. Without reference to legal and religious interdict of duels, even the point of honor, as its proscribed but perpetuated code enjoins, did not require that either father or son should be so exposed to death. But neither could bear to be thought wanting in its defiance. With the bravery of a soldier, and the generosity of a gentleman, General Hamilton was not always able, when overcome by his besetting sin of military fanaticism or idolatry, to stand by the severe probity of his friend, Governor Jay, the noble disinterestedness of his military rival, General Pinckney, or the universally perfect rectitude of his much attached patron, Washington, excusing his ambition because it was, as Wash ington apologized, for his country, as certainly it never was merely ignominious. Having originated the special mission to England, and selected Chief Justice Jay for special Envoy, causing Mon roe s recall and Pinckney s appointment to the French mis sion, Colonel Hamilton prevailed on President Washington reluctantly to commission Rufus King as successor to Thomas Pinckney in the English mission. Major Pinckney, as he was then called, having signified his wish to resign the mission, Mr. King, from his seat in the Senate, made known to Colonel Hamilton his desire to succeed Major Pinckney in England, which Colonel Hamilton at once communicated to President Washington. The President considered Mr. King well quali fied and worthy of the place; but disapproving his resigning from the Senate, as he proposed, moreover objected to this selection, as he wrote, in answer to Hamilton s urging King, "Because you know what has been said of his political senti ments with respect to another form of government, and from thence 138 JOHN ADAMS S can be at no loss to guess at the interpretation which would be given to his nomination. " Hamilton, with importunate persistence, replied, strongly commending Mr. King s unquestionable patriotism, abilities, and irreproachable reputation, and insisting that the objection to which the President referred as well known to Hamilton, was but the mere stalking horse of party, and would apply to any man fit for the mission. Mr. King was thereupon com missioned, as his earnest advocate, Colonel Hamilton, insisted, and became, after President Washington s retirement, leaving Timothy Pickering, President Adams s Secretary of State, the confidential agent of Hamilton and Pickering for uniting the United States in not merely defensive war against French in vasion, but offensive war by invasion of the Spanish-American provinces, which seductive and brilliant but enormous warfare, ardently urged by Mr. King in England, with English co operation, to be led by General Hamilton as commander-in- chief of great forces, naval and military, was on the verge of perpetration when arrested by Dr. Logan in France, and President Adams at home. Rufus King went on his mission apprehending, with Alex ander Hamilton, the Federal Constitution too weak for good government, and that all governments were bound to extirpate French revolution. Shortly before Secretary Hamilton strove to induce President Washington for that purpose to suspend, if not annul, Franklin s French treaties, Germany, by atrocious convention of the Emperor of Austria and King of Prussia, at Pavia, in May, 1792, stipulated to invade and subdue, if not partition France. Accordingly, in the course of that year, their savage instrument, the Duke of Brunswick, at the head of a large army marching to Paris for its execution, proclaimed that all French National Guards taken in arms should be treated as enemies, all French defending their coun try punished by martial law, all French magistrates held re sponsible in their lives for submission of the French people to their king, and praying his pardon for their errors. Deserted ADMINISTRATION. 139 by fugitive princes, the king s brothers and relations, with many more emigrant nobles instigating from abroad these in human inflictions, the French constitutional nobles and other monarchists, together with the literary, scientific, and educated classes, mostly republicans, those whose society Jefferson cul tivated when American Minister there, enamored of antique classical freedom and struggling for its establishment in France, were discouraged and put aside by infuriated rabble, excited and justified by foreign invasion to rise up as one man in arms to defend their country. La Fayette and Rochambeau, generals with laurels brought from republi can America, were placed at the head of armies suddenly and imperfectly mobilized to resist such invasion by Russia, united with Austria and Prussia in the partition of Poland, land of noble individual without national liberty, where every landlord on his homestead enjoyed the independent veto, which distracted their country. On his march to in vade, partition, and lay waste France, ferocious Souwaroff, in September, 1794, premised his approach to Paris by mas sacre of fourteen thousand unoffending women and children, with some few men captured in Yarga, a district of Warsaw. Startled and maddened by such restoration of the royalty they had dethroned, the French hurried eight armies to their borders, big with heroic pupils of the arts of war, to roll its iron tide back whence it came, by prodigious and glorious reaction. German, Russian, and British falsification (England having soon gratified her Hessian King by joining the coalition of invasion,) denounced as universal French aggression what was repulsive of their combined invasion by force to restore the monarch France had a right to depose. Hamilton s plea for annulling Franklin s treaties, that their American stipula tions were merely defensive, and inapplicable because France began offensive war, was totally unfounded. The French, not aggressors, changed their government as is now almost uni versally acknowledged to be the right of all nations, with scarce any right claimed by any foreign nation to interfere 140 JOHN ADAMS S with such change in another, as President Washington right fully insisted till by the British treaty Pandora s box was forced open. In April, 1794, a treaty for French subjugation, signed at the Hague by England, Prussia, and the Dutch Statholder, was soon followed by the French conquest of Holland, and annexation of Belgium to France; first of that retributive justice by which revolution attempted to be suppressed from abroad, and thereby maddened at home, retorted furious re pulsion from its own borders, overrunning those of its many assailants. The King of England s son, Duke of York ; the Emperor of Germany s brother, Archduke Charles; the King of Prussia s kinsman, Duke of Brunswick, with legions more of royal and noble conspirators, with princes of Conde , Bourbon, and other French panic-struck deserters of the hearths they should have defended at home, fugitives beleagur- ing republican France with invading armies provoked over powering reaction to repel and discomfit nearly all from French democracy and an empire raised on the ruins of dilapi dated kingdoms. Falsifying predictions of Morris, Hamilton, Jay, and King, none of the royalized race by eight centuries reigning were permanently restored. Flying from one place of refuge to another, from Italy to Poland, to Germany, to Russia, till at last reluctantly allowed, not as king but outcast, mere sanctuary in England, the first momentarily restored future Louis XVIII. was hardly suffered to die, degrade d king with the terrorist executor of his brother, Fouche forced on him as Minister by Wellington, commanding the foreign armies that alone upheld the moribund royal deist with Vol- tairean infidelity believing no right divine but that by which he clung to a crumbling throne. His imbecile brother Charles, dissolute youth, bigoted old man, last of the thirty-two sove reigns of the Bourbon blood, together with their Orleans kinsman and usurping successor, were driven one after the other into ignominious banishment. The wretched dregs of that degraded race, kinglings, tyrannizing over principalities, ADMINISTRATION. 141 dethroned by universal suffrage of the Italian people they misruled, leave none outstanding but the Spanish remnant by profligacy of vice, and the Neapolitan monsters by excesses of despotism, trembling in agonies of dissolution. Annulling Hamilton s plea to Washington and Morris s exultation in the restoration of legitimate Bourbon king, they more than verify President Adams s prediction to Hamilton, that Bourbons, like Stuarts, were exhausted stock, to be rooted out by tri umphant liberalism. And while this line is written, the Span ish princes, basely revoking when in safety, the cowardly consent given to their pardon in captivity, attest beyond all condonation their unworthiness to rule. Whether imperial despotism or liberalized republicanism is to succeed that de generate race, mankind must be benefited by the demise of the Bourbons like the Stuarts. Of the doom of the royal Stuarts modern English history is full; and of royal Bourbons, a French royalist historian attests " The remarkable particularity that during thirty years all the royalist efforts tended only to enfeeble their party and confound its hopes. For their conduct was nothing but a tissue of faults com mitted through pride in despite of the simplest notions of good sense." The first coalition crushed by Bonaparte s Italian and Moreau s German triumphs, bringing them together near Vienna, reclaimed first Tuscany, then the Pope, Naples, and Sardinia to peace with the French republic, by offensive achieving defensive war ; Prussia having withdrawn by a treaty of peace, Spain by a treaty of alliance offensive and defensive with the French republic, and finally, the great German em pire forced to desert suddenly their British alliance and sti pends, leaving no foreign assailant of French intestine repub licanism but England inaccessible behind her wooden walls, and Russia in her remote hyperborean fastnesses. To that condition Europe was rapidly approaching as Washington s presidency closed, without his being aware of 142 JOHN ADAMS S Pinckney s abrupt rejection or Barras s offensive farewell to Monroe, though much annoyed not only by French maritime depredations and the conduct of the French Minister in the United States, Adet, denouncing Jay s treaty as perfidious, announcing cessation of diplomatic correspondence between France and the United States, and publishing his letter in Bache s paper before its acknowledgment by the Secretary of State, in order, as he and others charged, to influence the approaching presidential election. Hamilton, while disapprov ing Pickering s reply to Adet as undignified, more than coin cided by leading in the estrangement from France which marked the close of Washington s administration, devolving his extremely anti-Gallican Secretaries, Pickering and Wol- cott, on President Adams, and initiating his four excited years with anger against the French, just partially composed in comparative peace and not hopeless republicanism. The Congress of great powers, at Paris, in 1856, recogniz ing the doctrines of Franklin s treaties as laws of nations, attests the justice of French complaint in 1798, of their re jection, when no American statesman upheld them. Jefferson, as Washington s Secretary of State, passionate for peace, renounced them as not worth war, which, he said, the United States were unable to maintain for them against England. And so overpowering was English jurisprudential influence that nearly if not all American legists conceded the false English assumption, that according to the law of nations free ships do not make free goods. Franklin alone, of American statesmen, proclaimed the true principle, whether acknowl edged as law, as what it ought to be, the law of peace and liberty for all nations. If he had lived in 1798 he probably would have justified what Jefferson abandoned, and Hamilton, with all other lawyers, denied, and memorable proof it is of the vitality of truth that it came to universal acknowledgment many years after its desertion confessed in war by the coun try of all others most interested in its maintenance. As little foresight was there in the vast American pacific ADMINISTRATION. 143 futurity of cotton, when Washington objected to the twelfth article of Jay s treaty; not for cotton, but because, as he objected to Hamilton, there was too much regulation of what is best let alone. Hamilton, delighting in conventional regu lation by which he gloried in governing mankind, no more than others could foresee that cotton, like electricity and free trade, was to work wonders in peace and good-will without armies, navies, and governmental compulsion. Subsequent experience attests the profound wisdom of Franklin and Washington s simple optimism as infinitely wiser providence than regulating fetters. On the 15th of February, 1797, Hamilton wrote to King that Adams was elected to succeed Washington as President, and Jefferson to succeed Adams as Vice-President. Though good-will was so reputed between the lately rival candidates, he said, as to promise a united government, yet in a letter to Washington, Hamilton doubted it, his general pessimism de claring his " Indifferent opinion of this country and ill-bodings of its future system." Which ill-bodings of Jefferson s Jacobinism were soon to be worse of Adams. Washington had been unfortunate in both his Envoys to France committing great faults, Miranda wrote to Hamilton, by sending two antagonized exaggerations, Morris and Mon roe, though the first was much the best. Pinckney, selected as a medium, unquestionable in patriotism, unobjectionable to France, was rejected by the Directory, and on the 28th of January, 1798, insultingly expelled from Paris. That ex cessive enforcement of an undeniable right, but though not a cause of war, accompanied by depredations at sea, and Barras s offensive farewell to Monroe, closed Washington s presidency and introduced Adams, with Washington s indig nant Secretaries, Hamilton s warlike spirit, and Washington s hearty approval, all roused to resentment. Hamilton s plan, 144 JOHN ADAMS S suggested to the Secretaries, and which the President, when quarreling with Hamilton, claimed as his, Adam s, due, was "A. day of humiliation and prayer, Congress called together at as short a day as possible, a triple mission to France, an em bargo, creation of naval forces, authority to merchant vessels to arm, and a provisional army of twenty-five thousand men ; the mission extraordinary to France to consist of a man as influential there as Mr. Madison, but not trusting him alone lest his Galli cism should work amiss, united with General Pinckney and a third person, Mr. Cabot for instance, would mix useful ingredients." Granting Adams s talents and integrity, Hamilton deprecated Jefferson s politics and French designs, against which Adams s administration must be aroused, as it was in the services and sentiments of his Secretaries, and indeed the President s own impressions much inclining to English administration and French disparagement. Like a young heir just come to large estate, apt to enjoy and display his wealth, President Adams did not need Hamil ton s advice, or that of his Secretaries, to begin his high- wrought administration by the overaction of a special ses sion calling Congress with majorities in both houses to fab ricate laws, such as never before or since have been enacted in the United States. Without the naturalization, alien and sedition laws, all those for wars, taxes, and loans, passed by that Congress, might have been successfully enforced by the nation; such was the excitement against French injustice when Logan intervened, and war already waged was on the point of constitutional declaration. The President s speech, decided and even warlike, was dig nified and temperate, explicitly promising another special mission to seek peace. Expatiating on Pinckney s rejection as not only denial of an international right, but treating the United States neither as allies, friends, or sovereigns, the fare well speech to Monroe evinced, the President said, an alarm ing disposition to separate our people from their government. Depredations on our commerce were committed by cruisers, ADMINISTRATION. 145 most of them built, some partially equipped, in the United States, and the President called on Congress, in decided but unexceptionable terms, to make provision not only for the im mediate, but all similar exigencies to which the United States are at all times liable. Vice-President Jefiersori, declaring the vice-presidency more desirable public station than the presidency, took that of the Senate, with expressions of the utmost respect for the talents and integrity of his friend of long standing chosen president. Federal majorities in both houses undisturbed by factious opposition during a session of about two months, from the first of May to the tenth of July, passed many salutary laws preparing the country for conflict, should it become necessary, by provisions naval, mili tary, and fiscal, required by the crisis and useful at all times. Washington s policy and Secretaries, together with his and their chief counsellor, Hamilton s superintendence, were con tinued. However fond of war and its accessories, taxes with strong executive authority, Hamilton was too wise to precipi tate a young, weak, unprepared country into its perils ; but with Washington and Adams s entire concurrence, while in peace prepared for war. Hamilton s objection to Pickering for want of suaviter in modo, was retorted by Pickering s objection to what he con sidered Hamilton s excess of fortiter in re, with perhaps juster estimate of that multitudinous sovereignty represented in Congress by numerous ambassadors, slow of movement, tenacious of local prejudices, and apt to resist any but a popu lar chief. Secretary Pickering disapproved a triple mission, as making General Pinckney too much of a neutral character, and doubted whether a provisional army would be granted, unless the danger appeared more certain, while his experi ence of individual self-sufficiency in Congress had taught him what Hamilton deemed extremely wrong, that militia would do, as scores of militia officers in Congress vaunted, but Hamilton considered the very folly of military inefficiency. And moreover, before Joel Barlow s Parisian residence and VOL. I. 10 146 anti-English politics had discredited him with the President and Secretary of State, the latter suggested him as preferable to Mr. Madison as one of the commissioners, a person who arranged the negotiation with Algiers, Mr. Pickering testified, with great ability, address, and zeal, for the interest of his country. About the time of perhaps the most vigorous and entire support that the Executive ever received from Congress, when preparing for war with France, Fisher Ames, one of Hamil ton s devoted adherents, who outran him in abhorrence of French alliance, wrote to him: "Our proceedings smell of anarchy. What we call the govern ment is a phantom as long as Democrats prevail in the House. The efficiency of the government is reduced to its minimum, the proneness of a popular body to usurpation is advancing to its maxi mum. Our government will be in fact a mere democracy, which never has been tolerable nor long tolerated." And then by postscript, the pith of love letters if not politi cal, Ames added: " Porcupine is a writer of smartness, and might do more good if directed by men of sense and experience. His ideas of an inti mate connection with Great Britain offend correct thinkers, and still more the multitude. He proposes a new daily paper. Would not a paper once or twice a week, exclusively political, answer better?" British monarchy, as those unwrote and disputable institu tions sometimes recognized, but often questioned as the con stitution, underwent greater changes from 1798 to 1860 than the government of the American colonies by acknowledg ment of their independence. Till King George the Third s partial restoration of royal prerogative to supersede the whole Whig oligarchy, prevalent from the revolution of 1688, there was none of that democracy which during most of the present century has been penetrating as liberalism throughout every branch of the government. The first Pitt, by great triumphs over France, and the second Pitt, by disastrous defeats, in culcated hatred of Frenchmen as British patriotism. A ADMINISTRATION. 147 Briton so well informed and liberal as Charles Fox objected to Pitt s French treaty in 1786, that it contradicted English natural enmity to France. An American Minister in Eng land fell into connection, social and political, with upstarts ennobled by the Hanoverian king, Scotts, Vansittarts, Dun- das, Jenkinson, and other creatures of prerogative, supplant ing the old noble aristocracy, by servile politics now openly repudiated by nine-tenths of the whole British nation, culti vating liberalism and amity with the French imperial usurp ers, whom so much British blood and treasure, intelligence and industry were spent to overthrow. Without disloyal pre ference of English institutions to American, but believing their own would be improved by more English, and crediting Eng lish misrepresentations of French revolutionary commotions, which they considered dangerous to all good government, Mr. King s correspondence from England with Colonel Ham ilton conveyed English assurance that French republicanism was expiring, and the deposed French monarchy reviving. In November, 1796, Mr. King wrote that the archduke had ex pelled Jourdan and Moreau from Germany ; that Bonaparte was critically circumstanced, and would be compelled to retire from Lombardy; that paper money had entirely ceased as a medium in France ; and what their ability to prosecute another campaign you, as well as I can, may conjecture. Not long after which English mistakes, in March, 1797, Mr. King in formed his friend Hamilton of the total disorganization of that model on which he had constructed the American treasury, brought to the brink of ruin by Bonaparte s Italian and Mo- reau s German triumphs, coercing Great Britain s great Ger man stipendiary to desert her alliance and stipends and sue for peace, her capital in jeopardy, and further subsidies en dangering the Bank of England as alarmingly as French approximation menaced the German capital. So sharp, sudden, and overpowering was that terrible blow, that, on a Sabbath day in the preceding month of February, the governor of the Bank of England advised the Prime Min- 148 JOHN ADAMS S ister, Pitt, that an attempt at further payments in money would break the bank and reduce the kingdom to insolvency. Wherefore, by contrivance not much juster than American continental money, and less just than French assignats, what was called suspension of specie payments was legalized, first by order of the king in council, then by acts of Parliament desiring a long financial atrophy of three and twenty years. Forty and twenty shilling bank-notes by private bankers, Mr. King informed Colonel Hamilton, were authorized; one-pound Bank of England notes declared legal tender by act of Parlia ment, banishing guineas, as Burke predicted, and British credit, the vital spark of Great Britain, sunk in the slough of paper promises to pay, lower than with all the ruinous depravity of the American banks is possible in this country, inter dicting such counterfeits by the constitution. Exchange, once favorable to England from all parts of the world, fell against it from all. To uphold the paper currency, death for counterfeit paper was inflicted by the gallows as madly as by the French guillotine for moderantism. "When the British colossus of credit tottered to its fall, at last the liberals of all parties combining against the stagnant of all parties, with almost insurmountable difficulty overcame the stupid con servatives, favorites of George III., whom Mr. King found in power, by restoration of money for usurping paper, a task more difficult and severer trial than all the wars endured and taxes imposed by George III. to enslave American colo nies and reinstate Bourbon kings. After twenty-two years absence, returning again as American Minister to England in 1825, Mr. King found British supremacy imperilled when he was first there, by endeavors to stifle French republicanism, revived by liberty and industry in the early stages of progres sive liberalism. War in its most malignant delirium raged between England and France, striving to invade each other. Humbert s expe dition overcome by Cornwallis in Ireland, Hoche s frustrated by dispersion in a storm at sea, were nearly contemporaneous ADMINISTRATION. 149 with that sent from London, just before Mr. King s arrival, to disastrous abortion near an insignificant village called Quibe- ron, which gave its name to the enterprise. French princes, prelates, and other fugitives in England, easily prevailed on George III. and his Prime Minister, Pitt, to equip a large force of French prisoners and deserters for the invasion of France. Surrendering to Hoche, as they said, by capitula tion, which he denied, twelve hundred of the unfortunate French were put to death in cold blood as traitors taken in arms against their country. Three hundred of them were naval officers and seamen who had served in the French fleet which co-operated in the capture of Cornwallis at Yorktown, whose sacrifice was imputed to Pitt by the French in order to get rid of so many rival mariners. "Thank God!" said Pitt, when this dreadful disaster came before Parliament, "there was no British blood shed at Quiberon." "No," said Sheri dan, by sharpest of all his poignant retorts, "but British honor was at every pore." A naval mutiny at the Nore, as alarming to Great Britain as the late East India insurrection, a famine so severe that it was common for a gentleman dining out to take his bread in his pocket, Barras, revolutionary pro consul at Toulon and Marseilles, preaching hatred of England as inhuman as English hatred of France, prepared for his outlandish farewell, as Director, to Monroe. Such English and French hatred and combats with and for democracy were results of the royal infatuation making France, once overcome and conquered by Spaniards, Germans, Dutch, and English assailants, by dint of defensive war, the most accomplished and formidable of its offensive waging, more skilled in its science and vain of its exploits. Conscription, continental system, invasion everywhere became means and ends of a people not allowed by surrounding monarchs to dethrone their own, called by Washington wonderful, described by Caesar as the same people in his time as now. All parties were of one mind, that another special mission should seek peace with France, as Hamilton constantly ad- 150 JOHN ADAMS S vised, Washington approved, and President Adams, with his war-disposed Secretaries, consented. But pending negotia tion, armament was to be extensively prepared for any event uality. John Marshall, future Chief Justice of the United States, and Elbridge Gerry, future Vice-President, were selected in June, 1797, to join Cotesworth Pinckney in France, which they did at Paris, in October, and there broached the strange abortion which, instead of pacification, inflamed both republics to unaccountable if not absurd hostilities. Just preceding their arrival Talleyrand had been appointed Secretary of Ex terior Relations of the French republic. According to his practice of courting those in and avoiding those out of power, his American preferences had been, not for Jefferson and the opposition accused of French attachments, but for Hamilton and other adherents of Presidents Washington and Adams. Washington s anxiety to avoid offence to the French republi can government, induced his doubting whether he ought to receive Talleyrand at his presidential drawing-room. Picker ing informed Hamilton that Talleyrand was said to have left this country its enemy, and was suspected of the authorship of a pamphlet published against it in France. The Directory, Mr. Pickering believed, would have great confidence in his opinions. But much as Talleyrand despised American society, and little confidence as he had in American institutions, still that prince of courtiers was French enough not only to be inimical to England, but, as his negotiations with both the American special missions of 1798 and 1800 proved, to be fully impressed with the traditional French policy, royal, republican, imperial, constant and invariable, to withdraw American navigation from British control and cement it with French resistance to that domination. President Adams, without Gouverneur Morris s and Alexander Hamilton s belief that the French royal family would be recalled to the throne, was no admirer of French republicanism. Inclined to fortify the country with armaments, especially naval, and the execu tive with increased authority, still his instructions to the ADMINISTRATION. 151 special Ministers were moderate and peaceable in tone, and in terms as reasonable as American terms could be, which, assuming the repeal of Franklin s treaties, claimed damages for French spoliations, while the French claimed damages for injurious non-compliance with Franklin s treaties. Without military aptitude or ambition, disliking Hamilton and jealous of Washington, President Adams s hopes were pacific. But excited by French depredations at sea, and insulting language here and there rousing his country to resentment of French injustice, Mr. Adams s constitutional turn for eloquent invec tive armed his speeches, letters, and conversation to strong patriotic denunciation of foreign aggression by the French as he once denounced British injustice. Affairs between France and the United States were in great confusion, much requiring negotiation when the triple mission was sent. France demanded indemnity for alleged injuries by the United States, not only for not complying with their treaty stipulation to guarantee forever the actual possessions of the Crown of France in America, but furthermore failing to harbor French vessels-of-war and their prizes in ports of the United States, with other alleged grievances, but, above all, for the British treaty substituting close alliance with England in place of that with France, perfidiously violated when England and France were at war France for self-government, Eng land for imposing on France that of monarchs coalesced against freedom under the lead of the same tyrant from whom the United States had wrested their independence. Getting no redress for these wrongs, France had recourse for it by exer cising at sea no more powers than the United States endured, if not encouraged from England. Throughout the quarrel, from first to last, the French government not only disclaimed war, but professed the most friendly inclinations for the American, regretting the clouds involving the intercourse of the two republics, which France hoped would soon disap pear. On the other hand, the United States claimed indemnity 152 JOHN ADAMS S from France for enormous and indisputable depredations. Before Gerry s departure or Logan s arrival, but just when both were taking place, the Moniteur of the 24th Messidor, year sixth of the Republic, corresponding with July 11, 1798, under the head of Porto Rico, 19th Germinal, (9th of April,) published the following ominous account of privateer captures in the West Indies : " You can form no idea of the crowd of prizes, English and American, which our cruisers bring in daily to Gaudaloupe, Porto Rico, St. Domingo, Cayenne, Cura9oa, etc. In the last five months which have elapsed, they have brought into Gaudaloupe alone more than six hundred vessels of different sizes, and almost as many into Porto Rico. In the Island of Gaudaloupe alone they count one hundred and twenty cruisers, all of which make extensively productive cruises. In one of ours, which lasted sixty- six days, we took eight prizes with a schooner of six guns." How such sea robberies stung innocent, unprotected adven turers in the United States, especially in those northeastern sea-ports whence most of them embarked, was well told in one of the last sentences of Gerry s last letter to Talleyrand? dated and published at Paris the 20th of July, 1798, in the Moniteur of the 19th Messidor, forcibly, severely, and justly calling for indemnity for " Depredations, outrages, and cruelties, such as it would be diffi cult to find an example approaching them in the history of civiliz ation, committed on our commerce and citizens, as well in the West Indies as on our coasts by French cruisers, many of which were said not to have even letters of marque." In such anger, and with such complaints, the American Ministers presented themselves to Talleyrand. Pinckney, mortified at his unjust rejection and insulting expulsion; Mar shall, deeply imbued with the aversion of his party and most of his countrymen against nearly any and every thing French, from which, in Paris, he was separated almost as far as in Virginia by his utter ignorance of French language, habits, prejudices, and preferences; Gerry, without Pinckney s French acquaintance or Marshall s ignorance, inclined to pacification ; ADMINISTRATION. 153 but of the three, perhaps the one most deeply impressed with the monstrous injustice. Soon after their arrival in Paris, Messrs. Marshall and Gerry, with Mr. Pinckney, as American Ministers, calling on Secretary Talleyrand, were politely received by him, and took what were given as their cards of hospitality; but there all intercourse of Messrs. Pinckney and Marshall with Tallyrand, either official or personal, ceased. Mountflorence, still clerk of Fulwar Skipwith, American Consul at Paris, when I was there, informed General Pinckney that Talleyrand s private and confidential secretary, Osmond, told Mountflorence that the Directory were greatly exasperated at parts of the Presi dent s speech to Congress, and that probably the Ministers would not have a public audience till their negotiation was finished ; but persons would be appointed to treat with them and report to Talleyrand, who would have the direction of the negotiation. Four days after that subordinate and more than informal intimation from Mountflorence, the strange perform-. ance began by a Mr. (thus introduced in the official dispatches) calling on General Pinckney, and informing him that another equally unnamed person, whom the former said the General had seen, was a gentleman then in Paris, said the informant, of considerable credit and reputation, in whom the American Ministers might place great reliance. And thus was brought before them one of the secret actors, if not con trivers, of a diplomatic interlude, farce nearly turned to tra gedy, of which the dramatic persons performed their several parts, under the mysterious designations of X. Y. Z., males, together with a female personage, never yet discovered, but whom I happened to become acquainted with afterward at Paris. On the veracity of the first mentioned of these go-be tweens, one of them, Mr. , called on General Pinckney, and, after sitting some time, whispered that he had a message from Talleyrand. Withdrawing together to a private room this mysterious emissary or interloper then informed General Pinckney of a plan confidentially suggested by Talleyrand, 154 JOHN ADAMS S as his informant said, which would effect reconciliation with America, as Talleyrand, he said, was very desirous should be done. The plan or terms suggested were, apology or expla nation for the President s message, a sum of money, put at Talleyrand s disposal, for the pocket of the Directors and Min isters, and a considerable loan for France. General Pinckney promising to communicate these terms to his colleagues, they thereupon requested him to call on Mr. X. and ask for them in writing. So called on X., agreed to submit the terms in writing to those Ministers, saying that his communication was not immediately with Talleyrand, but with Mr. Bellamy, of Hamburg, designated among these secret persons as Y., and that evening X. called and left his proposals in writing, viz. : a secret loan, to keep it from English knowledge, out of which was to be taken about two hundred thousand dollars, for what were termed the customary distributions in diplomatic affairs; also some softening of the offensive paragraphs of the Presi- .dent s speech. After an interchange of morning visits, that evening X. called by appointment on our Ministers, but bringing Y. with him, whom he presented as Talleyrand s confidential friend, and who, though disclaiming explicitly all authority as well as any diplomatic clothing, largely and vehemently explained what he said was indispensable, and would be satisfactory. The Directory he represented as averse, and Talleyrand without authority to speak for them. But his regard for America, and grateful recollection of the kindnesses he had received there, induced him to intercede, and with probability of success on the terms suggested by X. and Y., which were at the time fully reiterated and reinforced. But after all, said this unauthorized, though friendly and im posing instrument, money is the great redress. His language, somewhat changed and impersonated in the American official dispatch, scattered broadcast like sparks of fire, kindling in dignation throughout the United States, was "there must be money, and a great deal of money," which offensive requisi tion, as officially published, was not literally exact, but "you ADMINISTRATION. 155 must pay money," etc. Talleyrand s grateful intercession predicated, according to his secret representative, considerable secret loan, out of which was to be taken some two hundred thousand dollars for distribution among official French per sonages, as said to be customary in diplomatic affairs, together with apologetic explanation of the President s speech, on which terms only, the American Ministers understood, would they be received by the French Secretary. To this written requisition the American Ministers read to Y. a written copy of their first answer, that, having no authority to contract a loan, one of them must and would re turn to America to get it, but not without assurances from the French government of certain cessations, which they spe cified, in French depredations and condemnations. These conditions were decidedly rejected by Y., who added, that the Ministers must not treat the money project as coming from the government, or even from Talleyrand, but as Y. s own suggestion, in order to obviate peremptory demand from the Directory, of which the consequences might, and he feared would, be extremely injurious to the United States. In this state of affairs matters stood throughout the month of October, 1797, as made known by official dispatches of the twenty- second and twenty-seventh of that \ month to our government. On the 27th of October, 1797, X. called and held a long conversation with our Ministers, of which they stated in their next dispatch of November, that money was the great subject. You pay money to the Indians and Algerines for peace, why not to us? Nothing is done here without money, as every body knows. Hamburg buys peace here with money. We loaned you money in your revolution. This demand being pertinaciously pressed and positively recited, X. at length took his leave, saying that he would report what they said to Talleyrand, or to Y. for him. On the twenty-second of October, Z., a gentleman of respect able character, told Mr. Gerry that Talleyrand, professing friendly disposition to them, authorized him to say that he 156 JOHN ADAMS S expected to have seen the Ministers in their private capac ities, to confer with them individually on the subjects of their mission. A conference between the three Ministers taking place on this intimation, Messrs. Pinckney and Mar shall, saying that they had no acquaintance with Talley rand, declined waiting on him, but thought that Mr. Gerry might, as he had known him in America. Mr. Gerry reluct antly did so. Talleyrand urged a loan, which Gerry de clined as impracticable without authority, for which one of the mission, however, might go home. Talleyrand replied that would take too much time, and showed Gerry a decree of the Directory, which he said should be withheld a week in order to give the Ministers time to consent. But they rejected the suspension, and the interview closed like those before it, nothing done. On the twenty-ninth of October, X. called once more on the Ministers for a last effort, he said. The sum of his proposition was, that if two hundred thousand dol lars were paid by way of fees, was his expression the Minis ters might stay in Paris, but unreceived as they were, till one of them would go to America and consult his government about the loan. As privateering and condemnations were to con tinue as theretofore, that scheme was rejected by the Minis ters, telling X. that a little money, such as he stated to be usual, they did not so much regard, though they might injure themselves by giving it. But what they wanted was sincere and durable pacification, such as France showed no disposi tion to grant; that unless American property was restored and hostilities were suspended, they would not give a shilling ; if received and negotiations begun, one of them would go home if necessary, to consult government. X. replied that without the money they would be obliged to quit Paris, American property would be confiscated, and their vessels embargoed. He dwelt on the danger to the United States by the fall of England, which he said was near and inevitable, and the in ability of the Federalists, or British party there, to save the country against France and the French party, and that the ADMINISTRATION. 157 fate of Venice might befall the United States. On the first of November the American Ministers resolved to hold no more underhand, indirect dealing, but to refuse all except open and acknowledged intercourse with the French government. So they informed X. when he called again, telling them that if Colonel Burr or Mr. Madison had been the Ministers, there would have been no difficulty, and that Talleyrand was pre paring a statement for circulation in the United States, to show that Federal Ministers of the British party were the sole hindrance to accommodation. Throughout November and De cember, 1797, things remained in the same stationary disac cord. On the seventeenth of December an attempt was made by Y. to involve Beaumarchais s well-known stale claim of the revolution in the pecuniary propositions. General Marshall was the lawyer employed for that claim, amounting to some seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars in litigation in Vir ginia. The proposal was to apply two hundred thousand dol lars of it for the diplomatic fees, and buy a Dutch loan, for French use, of about seven millions of dollars, all of which was rejected by our Ministers. As Talleyrand chose to sepa rate Mr. Gerry from his colleagues, with their approbation, but refusing all separate or individual negotiation, Gerry accompanied Y. on a visit to Talleyrand, had a conversation with him, and engaged him to dinner to meet his colleagues. By order of the Directory, officially communicated, Talley rand proposed that Gerry should separately conduct the nego tiation, as authorized by instructions severally, as well as joint. To prevent imminent rupture and for other reasons which Mr. Gerry deemed sufficient, he remained in Paris throughout the spring and most of the summer of 1798, conferring with Tal leyrand, but refusing to negotiate while French depredations at sea increased instead of relenting. On the 31st of January, 1798, he united with his colleagues in their voluminous vale dictory recapitulation of all prior French intercourse with the United States, by Secretary Pickering s official dispatch, 23d of March, 1798, being recalled. On the nineteenth of 158 JOHN ADAMS S April General Pinckney withdrew from France to Holland, and in May General Marshall returned to America. By per emptory official letter of the 25th of June, 1798, Mr. Gerry was again recalled. " Respect to your country and yourselves," said Secretary Pick ering s letter, "irresistibly required that you should turn your backs to a government that treated both with contempt, not dimin ished bu\ aggravated by the flattering but insidious distinction in your favor in disparagement of such men as Generals Pinckney and Marshall. It is therefore regretted that you did not concur with them in demanding passports some time before you left Paris." Before Gerry s return, and just when Logan s intervention was beginning beneficially to operate at Paris, the Secretary of State and Secretary of the Treasury, Pickering and Wol- cott, with General Hamilton and many of the party which placed Adams in the presidency, combined in what their adversaries called a cabal, which could not be considered con spiracy, for there was little or nothing secret or clandestine in their design, to clinch and rivet past retraction the Presi dent s approval of the warlike measures prepared for Gerry s encounter and discredit on his return. Both patriotic and partisan motives actuated a great number of statesmen to fix beyond change the policy of the administration. Whether the X. Y. and Z. dispatches and their fulmination throughout Christendom, were purely patriotic ebullitions, either from Paris or in Philadelphia, was questioned by opposition which never fails to disparage all measures and by imputation of sinister motives. But certainly many of their supporters, considering the executive as Fettered by deficient constitu tional authority, deemed war useful if not essential to in vigorate the Federal power; and not a few of Washington s adherents anxiously desired what Jefferson and the Republican party deprecated, war as a public benefit. No sooner were the inflammatory dispatches, with Secre tary Pickering s furious report on them, published, first in the American newspapers, then in the English, afterward the French, and by translations which the British government ADMINISTRATION. 159 took special care to scatter, in nearly every European lan guage, broadcast throughout Europe, than Talleyrand indig nantly denied and retorted the charges as absolute and clumsy calumnies, the product of that British influence which ruled the government of the United States ; manifested, he said, by their perfidious rupture of French, and base solicitation of the British treaty, by President Adams s elaborate panegyric of the British constitution, in his writings on Davila, by the tone of the public journals, the speeches and acts of Con gress, and numberless other demonstrations that the United States were as much British colonies since acknowledged inde pendent, as when struggling for independence, they promised aid to France in need as France in their utmost need had braved and fought England for these degenerate British off spring. Thus recriminations, depredations, and retaliations constituted almost the only intercourse between the French and American republics. No such demand had been ever made of the American Envoys by himself or any authorized or known agent. Official French animadversion on the offensive presidential averment of alleged exposure of French attempt to separate the people from their government, was denounced as a deplorable movement of credulity and contradiction by the Envoys, and still more deplorable provocation by their govern ment, whose indescribable mistakes it was necessary to exhibit by the evidence of facts and the Envoys own words ; thus to answer provocation by reason ; and by the sentiment of the happiness of both the republics. The alleged corruption was thus, with similar fierceness of averment, retorted in both countries, in this because officially declared and universally credited, in that because with official denial discredited and reprobated. Talleyrand, with superb contumely denouncing it altogether as clumsy imposture without a semblance of truth, called on Mr. Gerry for the undivulged and unknown names of the four obscure knaves who, with the woman, had, without pre tending to any authority, deceived and befooled the American 160 JOHN ADAMS S Ministers. Their solicitation of money, their whole fraudu lent contrivance, he pronounced equally despicable and in credible. While Mr. Gerry was hesitating and making terms about the disclosure of their names, these obscure foreigners, Talleyrand wrote to him, absconded from France to escape detection by the police and condign punishment awaiting their offence. This country was inflamed to war fever by official publication of the correspondence, demanding tribute and bribes from messengers of peace and amity. From the French capital France altogether was roused to supercilious denial of the whole exposure as sheer imposition on those too ready to accuse the French of any unworthy contrivance. Talleyrand is one of those statesmen considered by nearly all as venal, corrupt, and careless of truth. History revolts at taking his word against that of Pinckney, Marshall, or Gerry. Yet where national prejudices revelled in imputations, which we are to weigh long after their fever is over, may it not be said that Pinckney returned to Paris annoyed and mortified by recent rude expulsion from that purgatory of French politics, as well may be gathered from the docu ments, to be spokesman, as he was the senior of the mission ? Marshall s total ignorance of the French, their language and manners, and his abomination of their revolutionary politics, appear in every page of his life of Washington, in his never mentioning his colleague Gerry, or Dr. Logan, and his elabo rate condemnation of Jefferson s much abused letter to Maz- zei. Gerry separated from his colleagues, because while they kept aloof from all personal communication with the French Secretary of State, who courted their intercourse and was entitled to its policy, Gerry encouraged it, in confidence that it would produce peace. And Logan, never mentioned by either of them, seems to have been viewed by Pinckney and Marshall, as he was by Washington and Pickering, as an un welcome intermeddler with their work. Divested of passionate recrimination, the misconduct im puted to Talleyrand and his principals, the Directory, is not ADMINISTRATION. 161 altogether insusceptible of explanation. Demanding or solic iting a loan from the United States by their purchasing a Dutch funded debt for the benefit of France, was no insult at which the American Ministers took offence. On the contrary, they dealt with that demand as one which, while they had no authority to grant, yet one of their number might go home to America to get authority, provided the French government gave orders to stop maritime depredations meanwhile. And even the fees, stigmatized as bribes ; are not such gratuities to foreign Ministers common ? Would Talleyrand, or his instru ments, as our people represented them, have done anything reprehensible in Europe as diplomatic agents, by soliciting, at least expecting, such rewards for arresting by treaties the horrors of war, and restoring in their stead the blessings of peace? Talleyrand s notorious venality might pollute what ever was exacted for him. But, like all other eminent Euro pean negotiators, Metternich, JSTesselrode, Castlereagh, and other ambassadors, Talleyrand might receive, as if earning such rewards for such services. Lucien Bonaparte s consider able fortune, I have understood, was created by donations from the monarchs of Spain and Portugal, for treaties he made with them respectively, dictating terms by the formida ble French republic he represented under his brother s Con sulate. Robert R. Livingston was in the habit of showing the elegant and costly snuff-box, enriched with precious stones, which First Consul Bonaparte presented to him. At the very time when this country was all in flames and arms against alleged French corruption attempted of that sort, Thomas Pinckney, one of its purest statesmen, then member of Con gress, and soon after candidate for the vice-presidency, applied to Congress for permission to accept the customary presents made to him as American Minister Plenipotentiary, by the King of England, and by the King of Spain, as American Envoy Extraordinary. The Senate, by resolution, gave that permission; which, though refused by the House of Repre sentatives, was, by resolution, expressly declared to be solely VOL. I. 11 162 JOHN ADAMS S by motives of general policy and not by any views personal to Thomas Pinckney. Constitutional interdict of such dona tions demonstrates how extremely common they have always been. The French quintuple executive of a government weak, unpopular, and impoverished, with a Secretary of Exterior Relations needy, greedy, and ill paid, solicited from the United States a loan, as it had obtained loans from several weak powers. With that loan, perhaps to be taken from it were what was called customary official fees or donations on such occasions; perhaps by Talleyrand s suggestion, perhaps by subordinates without, as they said, his authority. Money, and a great deal of it, was represented as necessary and as effectual. Such terms with Portugal, with Hamburg, with Geneva were not unknown, as in America, or odious or offen sive as bribes. If the Mr. Hottinguer, finally disclosed as one of the mystified letters, was the respectable French banker, married to a lady of Rhode Island, whom I knew in Paris, afterward French banker of the American government, and whose son is now a respectable banker there, no person was more proper to negotiate a loan, or more unlikely to defile it with a bribe. In the joint official letter of the 24th of December, 1797, a female is introduced among the mysterious persons of the negotiation by General Pinckney, who states that on the twentieth of that month "A lady, who is well acquainted with M. Talleyrand, expressed to me her concern that we were still in so unsettled a situation ; but, adds she, why will you not lend us money ? If you would but make us a loan all matters would be adjusted ; and she added, when you were contending for your revolution we lent you money. We do not make a demand. We think it more delicate the offer should come from you. But M. Talleyrand has told me, who am surely not in his confidence, the necessity of your making us such a loan, and I know he has mentioned it to two or three others, and that you have been informed of it ; and I can assure you that if you remain here, in six months more you would not advance a single step further in your negotiation, without a loan. In that case, said I, we may as well go now. That, possibly, she replied, ADMINISTRATION. 163 might lead to a rupture, which you had better avoid, for we know we have a very considerable party in America, who are strongly in our interest." In the course of Talleyrand s indignant and sarcastic repu diation of all the alphabetical conspirators paraded in the correspondence of the American Ministers, he seems not only to deny the acquaintance, with which General Pinckney charges him, of that lady, but to throw it back again on General Pinckney. "A lady," retorted the arch Secretary, "known to be connected with Mr. Pinckney, who finds it necessary to mention everything and poison all he mentions, held a most innocent discourse with him, that had been repeated to him from one end of France to the other." To that lady, whose husband or father had been known to Jefferson, when our Minister there, I had a letter of introduc tion from General Pinckney s brother, Major Thomas, after ward Major- General Thomas Pinckney of the war of 1812, which brought me no knowledge of the correspondence of 1797, but a slight acquaintance with Madame de Corny, said to be the lady in question between General Pinckney and M. Talleyrand. French history is often poetized by female par ticipation; and my admittance to her presence, with her con versation, were unusual enough to deserve to be related. She was in bed when I saw her, confined, as she said, by fractur ing her thigh in a fall on the ice, for the cure of which her surgeon required that she should lie there, as she did, receiv ing visitors and talking of her limb, as in this country would be considered indelicate. That subject and other trivial topics were the staple of our conversation, with no allusion to past or any politics. Bed-curtains, head-dress, and a chamber rather dark, did not allow my ascertaining whether a lady, whose imputed mixture in an exciting negotiation render it somewhat desirable to know, was well or ill looking. But in support of Talleyrand s report, I found that General Pinck ney s nephew, who afterward married and settled in France, 164 JOHN ADAMS S was intimate at Madame de Corny s residence, where I met him. Secretary Pickering s famous elaboration of official report on this subject, bearing down all contradiction, if indeed any was ventured, may now be read as a marvellous tissue of pas sionate and preposterous mistakes. "Dr. Logan having been the cause of the last-mentioned com munication from the French government, and his EMBASSY (in capital letters, thus officially sneered at) having not only engaged the attention of the public, but been made the subject of debate in Congress, I trust it will not be deemed improper to introduce into this report some circumstances respecting it. On the twelfth of November the Doctor came to me at Trenton; he advanced with eagerness, and handed me the packet from Mr. Skipwith. On examining the contents I told the Doctor that I already pos sessed the same papers. I made some remarks on the decree of the Directory of the thirty-first of July, to show that it was only ostensible and illusory, and that it would not give any relief to the commerce of the United States. The Doctor, not contesting my arguments or opinion, said that more was intended to be done, but that the Directory could not accomplish it of themselves, seeing it depended on the laws which the legislative council alone could change." Here the Secretary s account of what the Doctor said to him ends, and premising his invariable assumption that what ever French Ministers or Directors said must be false, and their only object to deceive and depredate, Mr. Pickering to that assumption superadds another error, that the French executive could revoke laws as they chose without legislative action; whereas Dr. Logan had told him that a French law, like an American law, required both executive and legislative action, either to make or repeal it. The Secretary s whole argument, therefore, was a chain of mere assumption and error. "I answered," he proceeded, "that this was easy to be done, that as the Directory, on the 18th Fructidor, (September 4th, 179T,) had garbled the two councils, and banished some, and dismissed others of the best members, all who were firmly opposed to their views, and as on the new election to supply the vacancies and the ADMINISTRATION. 165 new third of the councils, the Directory sent home every new member who was not agreeable to them, (all of which was a mis take,) everybody must see that the Directory has but to declare its will and it would be obeyed." Then, resuming narration, the Secretary reports : "The Doctor said that the Directory was very well disposed toward the United States, and desired a reconciliation ; that they would promote a revision of the laws in regard to privateering, so to put the rights of neutral nations on a just footing, but that it would take some time to bring this about, the people concerned in privateering having gained a very great influence in the two councils." Again, the Secretary s statement is mere argument and erroneous assumption of what he charges as having taken place in France, imputing to the Directory what was done in their despite by the military force which they endeavored but were unable to resist. "Is it necessary to inquire how this very great influence has been obtained? Are the leading members owners of privateers? Or do they receive their shares of the prize-money from those who are ? Do the legislative councils really act independently of the Directory? Or does the same influence actuate both? The printed dispatches of the Envoys, under date of October 29th, 17 97, stated the information of M. Talleyrand s private agent X., that Merlin, one of the members, and now or late president of the Directory, was to receive no part of the douceur demanded of the Envoys, because he was paid by the owners of privateers ; and in respect to the loan then demanded, on which subject it was sug gested that one of the Envoys would go to America to consult the government, the Envoys asked Mr. X. if in the mean time the Directory would order the American property not yet passed into the hands of the privateersmen to be restored. He said explicitly that they would not. The Envoys asked him whether they would suspend further depredations on our commerce. He said they would not, but M. Talleyrand observed on this subject, we would not sustain much additional injury, because the winter days were ap proaching, when few additional captures could be made. Here was our Envoys inquiring not whether the two councils would suspend the depredations, but whether the Directory would do it; and M. Talleyrand s agent, X., without intimating that the Direc tory wanted power, or that they could only endeavor to prescribe in the legislature a revision of the maritime laws, announced per emptorily that the Directory would not suspend the depredations. The truth is, it was an act of the Directory alone (their decree of 166 JOHN ADAMS S the 2d March, 1797,) which authorized and produced more exten sive depredations on the commerce of the United States than any other decree or law of the French republic. To effect a repeal of that decree no application to the legislative councils would be necessary. They could also have repealed another of their de crees, that of the 2d of July, 1796, which subjected neutral prop erty, and particularly that of American citizens, to the discretion of their consuls and cruisers in the European seas, as well as their privateers and agents in the West Indies, and on which these agents have founded other numerous decrees, which have occa sioned those shocking depredations and abuses there and on the coast of the United States, which the Directory, by their decree of the thirty-first of July, affect to restrain." The Secretary of State, after briefly mentioning what lie calls garbling statement of Dr. Logan to him of the amicable inclinations of both the executive and legislative government of France, follows that perversion by the Secretary s own in variable assumption that the government was merely aifecting amity, when really ruled by privateersmen. For which he refers to information, as he says, of one X., one of those in terlopers indignantly repudiated as an obscure, unknown, dis owned, absconding knave, and his information, alleged by Secretary Pickering, was nothing, X. said, but that all the Directory were not disposed to receive our money, as Merlin, for instance, was paid from another quarter, and would touch no part of the douceur which was to come from us. We re plied that we understood that Merlin was to be paid by the owners of the privateers, and he nodded assent to the fact (not thus to the imputation, but the fact, proceeding to press the subject with vast perseverance). Thus by a mere nod was a fact ascertained, to be had by a disowned minion declaring that he had no authority to speak for any one; the fact that a chief magistrate, throughout a long life, characterized by irreproachable probity, sold his executive functions for bribes. The maritime depredations at that time inflicted on American commerce by both French and English cruisers, were harvests of scandalous piratical depredations. French courts of ad miralty, like English, were creatures of the executive, con- ADMINISTRATION. 167 demning as it directed. Dr. Logan felt and told the Secre tary of State that the sordid influence of privateer owners was operative in the French government, when the whole marine practice and code of both France and England was monstrous perversion of marine warfare by reckless belliger- ants, striking not only at each other, but at peaceful neutrals, which outrage Franklin s French treaties endeavored to put an end to. Just then, when the correspondence and intercourse between the American Ministers at Paris and Talleyrand were hatch ing intractable dissidence, and American aversion to France was inculcated by every branch of the American government, republicanism, prosperous and promising, was established in many parts of Europe. The Moniteur published every day full reports of the extensive discussions publicly taking place in the two French representative bodies, the Council of Five Hundred, and in the Legislative Assembly reports as full as those of Parliament, published in London, or of Congress, in Philadelphia. Every day s Moniteur contained accounts of legislative and other public proceedings of the Roman repub lic, the Cisalpine republic, the Ligurian republic, the Batavian republic, and the Helvetian republic. Transactions of all those republics, together with those of the great French republic, were familiarized by daily publications to all parts and the people of Europe. In the Universal Moniteur, or National G-azette, as the great official journal of France was termed, of the 16th Floreal, of the sixth year of the French republic, correspond ing with the 6th of May, 1798, the following paragraph ap peared, here literally translated into the language of two countries, the British monarchy and American republic, in both of which the impression is so predominant and settled that it can hardly be contradicted, that French republicanism always was and must always be impossible. " It is now ten years since were counted in Europe several States called republics, but which had no more than the name of that form of government. At present six are to be found having both the 168 JOHN ADAMS S form and the thing. Five of these republics have been raised or regenerated by the protection of the most powerful of them all, and they present together a population of forty-two millions of inhabitants, of which this is the list : The French Republic to the Rhine 33,000,000. The Batavian 1,900,000. The Cisalpine 3,300,000. The Ligurian 600,000. The Roman 1,500,000. The Helvetian 1,100,000." These forty-two millions of people, at least as intelligent as any others of Europe, were organized in republics when Bona parte, hardly then dreaming of a crown, which the British monarch and ministers, with French fugitive Bourbons, forced him to put on, or if he did it was but a mere dream, was about embarking to land an army of invasion in England, which, instead of England, was unexpectedly taken to Egypt, no historian or philosopher having told why. If, after his return from that inexplicable enterprise, the insane King of Great Britain had not, by withholding Malta and Egypt in violation of the treaty of Amiens, capturing French vessels at sea be fore declaring war, and other flagrant violations of the peace of Amiens, constraining Bonaparte to resume hostilities, who can say, fixing the mind on the mere chances and vicissitudes shaping human affairs, that republicanism would not now be what liberalism is throughout the Old World, predominating in the New, perhaps anarchical, if not retrograde in South America, but why may it not, however extremely democratic, be prosperous, and be progressive as in North America ? That privateer plunder contributed to pay salaries for French Directors, is as probable as that admiralty droits supplied the British King with large sums of ill-got wealth, by decrees in brilliant judgments for which Scott was en nobled and enriched, as he enriched his grateful royal master who ennobled him, when admiralty judges were both paid and instructed by executive government, admiralty droits pro ducing large sums for King s pleasures, plundered by British ADMINISTRATION. 169 cruisers from prizes surprised without declaration or any notice of hostilities. When those iniquities, as piratical as Algerine and Tripolitan sea captures, with other English laws and politics, were reformed according to the American model, droits were strongly condemned by many English statesmen, and perhaps that foul source of maritime wrong may be dammed up. The whole code, both English and French, when Logan expressed his aversion to the privateer influence, was enforced, like that of the African corsairs, by the great bel- ligerants disregarding all right; for whose only effectual ex tirpation mankind are indebted to the principles of Franklin s French treaties, not till long afterward recognized and pro claimed the laws of nations. American overthrow by war of the Barbary powers, more striking, was not more laudable or beneficial than American resistance and success, in peace and war, to British sea laws in much American favor, executive, legislative, and judicial, when Secretary Pickering proposed to his preceptor, Hamilton, wise enough to decline alliance, defensive and offensive, of the United States with England as superinduced by war with France. Be that as it might be, at all events, three days after that vainglorious, it may be, but sincere and earnest asseveration of republics, the following, among several other items of news or intelligence, published in the Moniteur of the 9th of May, 1798, (19th Floreal, sixth year of the French republic,) is the only notice of the cessation of negotiation with our Minister : "It is said that two of the Envoys of the United States of America, Messrs. Pinckney and Marshall, who did not choose to abide by the proposition of the French government, have received their passports ; but that Mr. Gerry, the third Plenipotentiary, exer cising the power conferred on each one of the three Envoys, to nego tiate altogether or separately, remains to continue the negotiation." Having, with a view to ascertain the truth, taken the trouble of carefully examining the entire series of daily Moniteurs during the whole period of that excited crisis, I would, but for incumbering this already irksome narrative with dull de tails, annex pages of proofs that, although privateer plunder 170 JOHN ADAMS S of our commerce was incessant and most provoking, yet not an idea of general warfare with the United States existed in France, but all governmental views were pacific. Arriving in Paris under these auspices three days after Gerry had gone, afraid to act alone, but convinced of French disposition for reconciliation, Dr. Logan, fortunate in his opportune advent, with no fear but of failure in his zealous effort for peace, alone in a strange land, condemned and per secuted at home, with cold comfort from his few countrymen at Paris, to whom he imparted no more of his design than that he hoped, by accepting the overture declined by Gerry, to turn it to some account. Disavowing all authority, by direct individual appeal he resolved to lay before the French executive the plain and simple policy of restoring amity between two nations once closely allied, and now, by lamenta ble misunderstanding and recrimination, by paltry privateer plunder and British influence alienated to the extreme of driving the United States into close alliance with the invete rate enemy of France, and despotic destroyer of those prin ciples of sea freedom which had always been asserted by the United States, and were indispensable to French success in war with the British, foe of both republics. Without a particle of disloyal attachment to France, but cordially sympathizing in French emancipation from mon archy, and natural coincidence with his own country to resist British sea dominion, George Logan, calmly enthusiastic in his errand, entered Paris, representing, as the French believed, their party among his countrymen. Opportunely in time, his arrival was fortunate in many other coincidences. Elbridge Gerry had just gone when Logan came on the 7th of August, 1798, and was at Havre to embark homeward bound, with assurances of peace, on the tenth of that month, to publish those tidings, as he did, at home on the first day of October. If not gone when his officious successor took his place, un trammelled and fearless as the official Minister felt himself fettered by fearful responsibility of acting alone, without his rejected colleagues, the volunteer must have conferred with ADMINISTRATION. 171 and deferred to the accredited Minister, complicating and probably frustrating all the negotiation proffered by Secretary Talleyrand, which, Deborah Logan recorded, it made Mr. Gerry sick either to decline or to accept. Her husband had no apprehension but of failure in the errand which he was resolved to execute at all hazards and events. Timeliness, always so important an ingredient in any enter prise, and boldness, another way to fortune, were reinforced in Logan s luck by the peculiar state of France, and indeed of much of Europe on his advent. For never since the Roman republic expired in the Roman empire, was republi canism so generalized and authenticated as when the Ameri can republicans appealed to French republicans for peace, the great policy of republics. The most enlightened parts of Europe, France, Italy, Switzerland, Holland, and Belgium were organized as republics. The great French republic was flanked and surrounded by four other republics, the old Hel vetian, with the new Batavian, the Cisalpine, the Ligurian, and the Roman republics. An era of republican ascendancy seemed to dawn in Europe to countenance and emulate the republic of the United States. From that well-established republic a Minister in France represented the French party, as France averred, united with France in natural resistance to British metropolitan tyranny and sea domination.. The French republic, from whose hostile resistance to England came the great productions of French genius, conscription and the continental system, immense republican contrivances for the conquest of England, still needed American mari time co-operation for that, the primary purpose of French hatred of the inaccessible islanders. And French liberty, though more social than either American or English political liberty, was vastly advanced in the seventeen years of Logan s absence, when, as Franklin s disciple, he witnessed its germ ination in Paris. Monarchs, nobles, feudal prerogatives, divine rights, were extinguished by overwhelming equality, more regardless of persons and privileges than even boasted American or English liberty. With this prodigious reform of 172 JOHN ADAMS S the rights of man the reign of terror ended; bare-breeched, bloody French anarchy was succeeded by regular government, and a French republic, resting from terrific commotions and achievements, was reposing in lassitude, studious of tranquil lity and peace. Fortunately for Logan s errand of pacification, that republic, vaunting its unity and indivisibility, was gov erned by a quintuple executive, distracted, incompetent, un popular; without energy, without funds, without public confi dence or their own confidence. There was no considerable force, either military or naval, no acknowledged leader to take command. The greatest, if not the only rallying hero, Bonaparte, was ostracized in May, before Logan s arrival in July, gone with the flower of the army and best of the navy on some secret, and even yet, unexplained substitution of a distant conquest for the invasion of England. Hoche was dead: Pichegru banished; Moreau out of place and favor; the feeblest of the first daring democratic generals, Jourdan, no longer fortunate or formidable, standing trembling sentinel on the threatened frontiers. The barbarous Russian auto crat s savage creature, SouwaroiF, on his way to Paris, after wresting all Bonaparte s Italian conquests from their French masters, was pressing forward, overpowering all resistance to his march through Switzerland to subjugate and partition France ; while the King of England s brave, stupid son, the Duke of York, was leading an Anglo-Russian army, both and altogether with that same fell purpose of exterminating French republicanism by the partition of France, as Poland had un dergone that purification. Then and thus it was that a fearless friend of peace, of French liberty, and sea freedom, disciple of Franklin in Paris, with Vice-President Jefferson s credential at Philadel phia, and La Fayette s recommendation from Hamburg, Kosci- usko s support, and Schimmelpenninck s co-operation at Paris, overstepping Talleyrand s formal perhaps fraudulent diplo macy, reading in French journals his advances to Gerry, went straight forward into the household and intimacy of Merlin, the rotatory Chief Director, with simple assurance of Ameri- ADMINISTRATION. 173 can good-will to French republicanism, and opposition to British endeavors to enlist the American republic against that of France ; readily and soon succeeding in conviction so sim ple, obvious, and irresistible. French invasion of America was impossible ; no thought of it was entertained by the imbecile and distracted government. If, as Mr. Pickering charged, and perhaps truly, some of the Directory shared in the plunder of prize-money, what was such despicable gain to that of enlisting American navigation, allied with French, against British control, insurmountable by any direct French resistance? There was no Bourbon occupying, or Bonaparte seeking the French throne, but a republic with reconciliation ripe for any American republican, which a plain, friendly Quaker easily gathered. If, as Secretary Pickering assured his countrymen, and even so considerate an American as Washington flattered himself, the French government was alarmed by American ardor and armament, that was another inducement for French forbearance. Having said that I had no acquaintance with Dr. Logan, I may add that in the course of my edition of his wife s record from his statement of his mission, I have been told that he was extremely shy and reserved, if not morose, and less amiable in his domesticity than represented by his excellent wife. Doomed to social as well as political ostracism, like his friend Vice-President Jefferson, the fashionable and most con siderable of Philadelphia looked upon his politics with bitter aversion. How self-spirited an enthusiast he was he showed by overruling the Vice-President s wish that his errand should be without concealment, and by declining to take from him anything like a passport or letter of recommendation, but a mere certificate of what they both considered it might be use ful to have in foreign countries, and when he came home successful, rejecting Mr. Jefferson s desire that Logan should say he had been actuated by Quaker principles, which he de nied. Like every other enthusiast he was moved by a power he felt but could hardly explain. To one of Jefferson s most 174 JOHN ADAMS S abused publications, he was largely indebted for that civism which they both praised, reprobated though it was by their party censors. The last note to Chief Justice Marshall s Life of Washing ton, largely and censoriously dwells on Jefferson s letter to Mazzei, whose publication excited much newspaper party con troversy in 179T-8. As aiding Logan s success it belongs to this narrative to explain that relic in the archaeology of ob literated party politics. The Chief Justice s historical view, and Mr. Jefferson s explanation in a letter to Mr. Van Buren, dated the 29th of June, 1824, both indicate incurable animosity against each other, of those two for the most part temperate and benevolent statesmen. Deborah Logan does not mention the letter to Mazzei, with which her husband must have been familiarized by the numerous versions it underwent in the press before his departure from America. " Upon his arrival," Mrs. Logan writes, "her husband found that Elbridge Gerry, Esq., the last of the commissioners, had left that city, and probably was on his voyage to the United States. The French government had urged him to exercise the power with which he was invested alone, as well as jointly with the two other commissioners ; so had all his countrymen in Paris. But anxiety and dread of that extreme responsibility impaired his health, and it was found that if he stayed he would not survive the agitation he underwent. An embargo had been lately laid on American ship ping. Fulwar Skipwith, the American consul, Joel Barlow, and other Americans resident there, represented all efforts for peace as hopeless." Gerry s timorous dissent from his colleagues, which elicited General Pinckney s contemptuous opinion, and may explain the Chief Justice s not mentioning him in his Life of Wash ington, but, more than all, Gerry s having left Paris to embark when Logan arrived there, conduced to his success. He had no colleague to differ with, no fears, no constituent at home but the party considered in France their party, of which Dr. Logan was ardently one as far as anxiety to prevent war with France and alliance with England went, and his conditions of ADMINISTRATION. 175 accommodation were, merely, to restore the relations between his country and France as they were before the British treaty, and might still be, notwithstanding that obnoxious marplot, if construed, as Washington accepted it, as no violation of the French treaties. A volunteer letter from the former Ameri can Minister in France and Secretary of State, to an Italian writer on America, vehemently condemning the British ten dencies of those who effected the British and strove to annul the French treaties, was a preliminary credential from Logan of the highest recommendation. On the first day of January, 1797, by happy coincidence the same day when President Washington welcomed the French Minister with such warm assurance of sympathy in French revolution, appeared in Florence an extract from a private letter of Jefferson, dated the 24th of April, 1796, to Mazzei, a Tuscan who had resided in Jefferson s neighborhood, and after his return to Italy published " Political and Historical Researches in the United States of America." Living where no considerable public journal was at hand for publishing his political views, such as Hamilton, residing in Philadelphia or New York, always had for frequent anonymous as well as official communi cations from his prolific pen, Jefferson gave vent to his in correspondence with many persons. His letter to Mazzei on private business contained also extremely severe animadver sions on the " English monarchical aristocratic party, which," he said, " had risen, whose avowed object was to impose on us the substance, as they had already given us the form of the British government. Although the principal body of our citizens remain faithful to re publican principles, with the landed proprietors, and a great number of men of talents, we have against us the executive power, the judi ciary, two of the three branches of the legislature, all the govern ment officers, all those who aspire to be, all timid men preferring the calm of despotism to the stormy sea of liberty, the British mer chants, and those Americans who trade on British capital, the speculative people interested in banks and public funds ; establish ments invented with views to corruption, and to assimilate them to the British model in its rotten parts. I should give you a fever 176 JOHN ADAMS S if I named to you the apostates who have embraced these heresies, men who were Solomons in council and Samsons in combat, but whose hair has been cut off by the English whore. They wanted to ravish from us the liberty we gained with so much labor and dan ger. But we shall preserve it ; our mass of weight and wealth is too great for our fearing that they will attempt to employ force against us. It will be enough for us to wake up and break the Lilli putian bands by which they bound us during the first sleep which followed our labors." And then comes a sentence surreptitiously interpolated, it never has appeared where or by whom, whether in Italy, France, or America, as follows : " It will be enough for us to arrest this system of ingratitude and injustice toward France, from whom they wished to estrange us, to British influence," etc. "Which sentence Jefferson, in his letter to Mr. Yan Buren, warmly protested was not in the letter he wrote, nor any other word about France. But his silence under that imputa tion throughout all the party denunciations with which the press teemed on this letter, and also its apparent comprehension of Washington among the Solomons and Samsons, gave much color to the charge of his imputed denunciation of that father of his country, as like nearly all other of his countrymen, Jef ferson to the last continued to consider Washington. In his letter to Mr. Van Buren he repudiated the interpolation about France as fraudulent, the alleged imputation on Washington as a calumny, with whom he lived in the most friendly har mony, he averred, notwithstanding their difference about French affairs; and the word form, which through Italian and French translations into English was ascribed to the let ter, was forms in the original as he wrote it, expressing his dislike of British, not form of government, but mere forms of administration, in which he declared that not only Washing ton, but Hamilton, perfectly agreed with him, in republican contempt for the royal and aristocratic parade which he said General Knox and Colonel Humphries imposed on President Washington, perfectly indifferent to such trifles, as he con- ADMINISTRATION. 177 sidered them, and professedly altogether uninstructed by any practice with their alleged employment and use. Republish- ing the letter to Mazzei as from "one of the most virtuous and enlightened citizens of the United States," the Moniteur of the 25th of January, 1797, an 6, 6th Pluviose, commenting on it in a spirit patronizing us, said : " France, the mother country to whom the United States owed their liberty and independence, their hostilities would strike a fatal blow at British commerce, of which even apprehension would force the British cabinet to make peace. As ungrateful as wrong in their politics, Congress hastening to reassure the English, in order that they might pursue undisturbed their war of extermination against France, sent to London a Minister, Mr. Jay, known for his attachment to England, and his personal relations with Lord Grenville, who hastened to conclude a treaty of commerce, which united them with Great Britain more than a treaty of alliance. Such a treaty, under the circumstances in which it was made, and by the consequences it must have, is an act of hostility toward France. The French government was able finally to testify the resentment of the French nation, which it did by breaking off all communication with an ungrateful and faithless ally, until they re turn to juster and more benevolent conduct. Justice and sound policy equally approve this movement of the French government. No doubt it will give place in the United States to discussion which may make the party of good Republicans, friends of France, triumph. Some writers, to disapprove this wise and necessary measure of the Directory, maintain that in the United States the French have no partisans, but demagogues wishing to overturn the actual government. But their impudent falsehoods persuade none, and only prove what is too plain, that they use the liberty of the press to serve the enemies of France." The French feeling had been so uniformly and warmly favorable to the United States, that on the 22d of October, 1797, first of Brumaire, year six, published in the Moniteur , vol. xvii. page 123, in one of the legislative assemblies, an elaborate view of the British treaty, in terms of decided good will for this country and hostility to England, demonstrated unquestionably that France deprecated hostilities with the American republic, her offspring as she boasted, and her ally as she desired, at least in marine principles, if not in arms, VOL. I. 12 178 JOHN ADAMS S against the former tyrant of the American colonies, and still always tyrant of the seas. A letter soon afterward from the former Minister of the United States in France, and first Sec retary of State, strongly denunciatory of an English party in the United States, with assurance that its opponents were numerous, rich, and resolute enough to prevent the triumph of such a party, was an introduction for Logan in all respects answering Jefferson s description of those the French chose to call their party, paving the way for such an emissary as no commission from those stigmatized by Jefferson as " the government officers," could possibly confer. The letter to Mazzei, every sentiment and syllable of which Logan heartily subscribed to, was his passport. The French party in the United States, as the French called them, were his constit uents. Accommodation with France, as it had been, inde pendence of England, as Jefferson and Logan insisted ought to be, without war with either France or England, to which both were earnestly opposed; peace, commerce, and good-will with all the world, as they anxiously cultivated that best if not only basis for republican development, these were the doctrines of Jefferson s letter to Mazzei, by a few months pre ceding Logan s arrival and recommending his mission. Waiting on Talleyrand with Le Tomb, the French Consul s letter, Dr. Logan was not encouraged by what he gathered from that American denizen, scarcely less inimical, socially, to American republicans, than politically to English sea dominion, and withal extreme formalist. Received politely, Mrs. Logan says her husband was convinced that politeness was all he had to expect from the Secretary of State. Adet, Genet s successor as French Minister in the United States, and another French gentleman, Mrs. Logan says, of superior attainments, were sent by Talleyrand to question her husband, learn his views, and, above all, get his letter to Merlin, the Director, which they repeatedly offered to present, but he declined parting with. Passing by Secretary Talley rand, Dr. Logan went straight to Merlin himself, a leading ADMINISTRATION. 179 Director, to whom the letter was addressed, by a bold first step, which in all hazardous enterprises is apt to be decisive. Casting all about for reinforcement, he consulted freely with those whom he thought might be relied on for assistance. Among the distinguished foreigners whom Dr. Logan saw in Paris, Kosciusko, whom he had known in America, received him with great kindness, appreciated his motives, approved his design, which he promised to support with all his interest, but cautioned him to repose no confidence in promises of the French government as to what they would do, without a pledge of their sincerity by removal of the embargo. On that position of high insistance Dr. Logan took a resolute stand. Prom ises, he was told by all advisers, were mere words of declama tion; without acts he would have no assurance of success. It is no derogation from Logan s merits that Gerry might have done as much if free to act, as he thought he was not. Talleyrand s final letter, 12th of July, 1798, at last complying with his reiterated demand for a passport of leave, teemed with conciliation. The loan and apology for the President s speech were no longer required. All that the Directory desired was pacific negotiation. To demonstrate which desire that letter was officially communicated as a circular to all the foreign Ministers in Paris, closing with a postscript of the fifteenth of the same month, with much feeling complaining of the act of Congress of the 7th of June, 1798, authorizing American ves- sels-of-war to capture French cruisers intending to stop American merchantmen. Notwithstanding which penultimate warfare, the French Directory, on the 31st of June, 1798, by decree restricted French cruisers and colonial courts within much of the license they had exercised against American commerce, which decree Talleyrand, on the 3d of August, 1798, officially dispatched after Gerry, then at Havre, who acknowledged it on the eighth, at the moment of his em barkation. Not stopping at these efforts of conciliation, which Secre tary Pickering repelled with contumelious rejection, as cower- 180 JOHN ADAMS S ing, as the tiger crouching in order to leap on his prey, the Dutch Minister, Schimmelpenninck, was sent, on the twenty- fifth of July, the last day of Gerry s stay in Paris, with a proffer of the mediation of Holland, which was declined by Mr. Gerry, because, he said, he had no authority to accept what must be tendered to his government. Just before din ner, said his minute, the Dutch Minister called on me, and said he had received from M. Talleyrand a printed copy of the letter to me of the twelfth of July, and that he came to offer the mediation of his government, who had authorized and instructed him. That visit and offer, whether suggested by Talleyrand, or from the Hague, Mr. Gerry felt obliged to decline taking advantage of. But not so Dr. Logan, who sought Mr. Schimmelpenninck, to whom he introduced himself, and by whom his cause was espoused, as efficiently as cor dially. That fine specimen of the noble Batavian race, emi nent among nations ever since their eulogy by Ccesar two thousand years ago, John Rutger Schimmelpenninck, I saw when with Mr. King at the Hague, a Dutch gentleman of striking presence and distinguished character, ambassador at Paris in 1798, and at London in 1802. and Dutch Plenipoten tiary for the treaty of Amiens, finally Grand Pensionary of Holland; of great talent and learning, whose Latin thesis, when graduated at the Leyden University, was the truly great republican doctrine popular power wisely regulated. With such political faith, it may be imagined how he executed orders to aid any representative of the United States of Ame rica. Mr. Schimmelpenninck was Dr. Logan s volunteer mas ter of ceremonies, presenting him to Merlin, President of the Executive Directory, residing, Mrs. Logan says, in one of the royal palaces (the Luxembourg) with great state, but not with out a mixture of what was, in their ideas, republican simplicity. Merlin received Dr. Logan well, carefully read Le Tomb s letter of introduction handed to him, and said he should like to have some conversation with Dr. Logan on the subject of his visit. After it was over, he invited the visitor to dinner ADMINISTRATION. 181 next day, as Mr. Schimmelpenninck had entertained him at dinner the day before, the first probably of their meeting, which the Dutch Minister turned to account of his instruc tions to cultivate amity with the United States, and prevent rupture between their republic and that of France. The ice thus broke, the American self-appointed while dis claiming the title but exerting all the power of Minister, prosecuted his artless diplomacy, as all diplomatic learning teaches is the best method, by honest, resolute, simple, and zealous fairness, with more zeal than Talleyrand might think judicious, but with an earnest ardor which is the most effectual wisdom. The American government, or any other, may take a lesson from plain, unauthorized George Logan s excellent and suc cessful diplomacy. An educated gentleman, of plain manners, polite but unassuming, actuated by singleness of purpose, purity and earnestness of motive, candid and conciliatory, but firmly tenacious, with peace for his object, was a Minister Plenipotentiary whom the most experienced ambassador could not surpass in qualifications. A volunteer, without commission or instructions, actuated by his own generous desire for peace, at his own expense, overcoming delay, form, and the vanity of written correspondence, cut the knot of negotiations, like a monarch, by personal, prompt, and explicit interview and con versation. As the Director invited him, after their first con ference, to dine with him the next day, Logan felt sure that he had made some impression. " Enmity to the United States was exactly furthering the design of their great enemy, the Minister of Great Britain," says Mrs. Logan s report of her husband s argument. " Pitt has co-workers with him in the United States, endeavoring to alienate the minds of the people entirely from France, and widening the breach be tween the two republics in such a manner that war, the great ob ject that Mr. Pitt wished to promote, appeared to be inevitable, and would finally enlist us on the British side." Among the guests at the Director s table, she adds, was Mr. 182 JOHN ADAMS S Schimmelpenninck and also an Envoy lately arrived from the Cisalpine republic, and some of the heads of Departments. That dinner of republics was a golden opportunity which an unapt guest might have missed, but the volunteer Quaker Minister seized and turned to best account with masterly appropriation. The French republic, the republic of Holland, and the Cisal pine republic having been successively toasted, with well- timed yet bold address, the uncommissioned American emis sary asked leave to offer as a sentiment, "The United States of America, and speedy restoration of peace between them and France." "I desire," said Merlin, "to offer that toast myself;" and then gave it in the words of his transatlantic guest. The elder of modern republics thus presented to the servants of her younger sisters by a governor of the strongest, the company, says Deborah Logan, looked upon each other with surprise and pleasure, and, joining their glasses, drank the toast with the utmost hilarity and pleasure. Convivial good-fellowship, even bacchanalian enthusiasm, when wine enlivens without intoxicating, sometimes begins or concludes negotiations, as their most skillful adepts carefully study and labor to accomplish. Genet s Gallic audacity and Listen s Scot s address, recoiled on themselves in frustration of their machinations, as Dr. Logan witnessed at Philadelphia; while his direct and simple earnestness triumphed over the invete rate prejudices and misconceptions he encountered at Paris. That his time was well chosen and his enterprise favored by fortune, by no means detracts from the merit of his success. And the reader will presently be struck with the similarity of unsophisticated negotiation and luck of opportunity which assimilate the pacification achieved by Logan with the pur chase of Louisiana five years afterward. There were on neither occasion written requirements or concessions of offi cial audiences ; no written correspondences. All was done by personal interview and frank conversation; formal, ceremo nial, and even official intercourse were discarded. The same crafty, inscrutable formalist of a Secretary was pretermitted ADMINISTRATION. 183 on both occasions: on the first, because Logan suspected him, not aware of his strong inclination for peace ; on the second, because Bonaparte considered Talleyrand not trustworthy when money was to be dealt for. By frequent and free con versations, in explicit and reliable communion, the zealous and resolute solicitor of peace, on terms equally desirable and honorable to both parties, obtained from members of the executive government, without a protocol or letter, minutes of conference, or other diplomatic muniments, a result equally and demonstrably advantageous to France and the United States. Logan s attractive overtures gained from one of the Direc tory on whom he pressed the palpable benefits of accommoda tion and mischievous effects of favoring estrangement, that the government had intimated to Mr. Gerry their inclination for reconciliation. Apprised of that inclination, Dr. Logan urged his suit ardently, yet without undue concession. Mer lin, the chief, asked him what would be considered by the government and people of the United States sufficient indica tion on the part of France of a desire to renew the former friendly intercourse between the two countries. "Nothing less," was Logan s manly answer, as politic as lofty, " than the fullest assurance that a Minister will be received as from the most favored people, and as proof of the sincerity of that as surance, immediate revocation of the embargo on American ship ping and liberation of American seamen." "That," said the Director, "is more than we would do for any nation." "Nevertheless," returned Logan, "it is what must be done if.you wish to conciliate my country." " Will you not return to America with assurance that a Minister shall be well received ?" " Certainly not, unless you give proof as well as promise." Whereupon Merlin said the subject should have further consideration. All of which, said Barlow and other Ameri cans in Paris, will prove mere empty assurance unless you in sist on confirmation by acts. 184 JOHN ADAMS S Continually visiting in Merlin s family as a friend, allowed to speak there without reserve, Logan perceived that warlike France was more disposed for peace with the United States than his peaceable country roused to warlike passion against France. Several considerations, republican, maritime, and commercial, caused that French inclination. France, Merlin said, had acquired great reputation by aiding the United States to become a free sovereignty, and would not disgrace the French revolution by attempting the destruction of the American republic France helped to create. French violation of the American neutral flag was induced, he said, by English violation of it, and American submission to that violation. But the French government contemplated less offensive and more effectual vindication of neutrality. Thus emboldened, Dr. Logan triumphantly laid before the French Directory 1. The prior gratitude of the United States to France. 2. To be perverted by French hostilities into American alliance with England, which was what Pitt had long labored to effect, with Liston in America for intrigue, and Cobbett for the press. 3. And, above all, Dr. Logan touched with power the French recurrence to what he called the new (it was the old) law of nations, asserted by the United States even before their inde pendence was acknowledged, and which all the maritime States of Europe, except England, were always ready to up hold against her sea domination. These positions were irre sistible. Soon after interviews enforcing them, the Director s Secretary was sent to inform Dr. Logan that a decree had issued, arid been officially communicated to the American Consul, revoking the embargo and liberating the imprisoned seamen. That decree, dated 19th Thermidor, sixth year of the French republic, (16th August, 1798,) signed by Merlin as President of the Executive Directory, was on the twentieth of that month officially communicated by Talleyrand to Fulwar Skipwith, Consul-General of the United States, according to Dr. Logan s disinterested and modest request that it might be ADMINISTRATION. 185 forwarded by the first vessel to sail from France for America, without waiting his departure. By it the embargo laid on American vessels was immediately removed, the Executive Directory considering, said the decree, that notwithstanding the hostile manifestations of the government of the United States, which have occasioned a momentary embargo on their vessels, it must be believed that, unless abandoned to the pas sions of the British cabinet, that government, faithful to the interests of the American nation, will take measures conform able to the pacific dispositions of the French republic, after it receives a confirmation of them; and wishing to persevere in the fraternal habits of France toward a people whose liberty it defended. Mr. Skipwith s official dispatch, 22d of August, 1798, for warded an official copy of that decree to Secretary Pickering, removing the embargo on all vessels of the United States in the ports of the French republic; and, furthermore, informing the Secretary of other favorable indications of the French government, executive, legislative, and judicial, then recently manifested beyond all doubt, although Secretary Pickering would not trust them. Having seen that act of the pacific tidings put on its way to America, Dr. Logan lost no time in hastening with his duplicate of the same good news to the same destination. Leaving Paris he went on his way rejoicing immediately to embark at Bourdeaux, from which port he sailed homeward the 9th of September, 1798, in the ship Perseverance, Captain Gideon Gardner, bound for Nantucket, the insular sequestra tion of a peculiar portion of his invincible countrymen, as persevering as he in their noiseless but steadfast pursuits. While waiting at Bourdeaux the departure of his vessel, to hasten regardless of equinoctial tempests over the perilous Atlantic, Dr. Logan addressed to Merlin, President of the Executive Directory, the grateful acknowledgment of which the copy inserted in his wife s narrative is here spread at large before the reader, as impressive testimony of her husband s 186 JOHN ADAMS S pure and exemplary love of country and of peace, for which, she says, he went so far and undertook so much, not as their friend Jefferson desired him to allege, as member of the So ciety of Friends, but as a patriotic and pious American gen tleman ready to brave all for his country and humanity. "BouRDEAux, September 9th. 1798. " RESPECTED CITIZEN : I embark this day for Philadelphia, and as the dispatches intrusted to my care by the Consul-General of the United States manifest the most unequivocal evidence of the desire which the government of France has to preserve peace be tween the two republics, they will afford sincere pleasure to my fellow-citizens ; and I have no doubt but that the most effectual measures will be immediately adopted by the government of the United States to meet the friendly disposition of your country. " My object in coming to France was to state such circumstances to Mr. Gerry respecting the situation of our country as might have induced him to conclude a peace before his return to the United States, but as that had been frustrated by his departure, I consid ered it as my duty as a private citizen of a free, independent com monwealth, to suggest to you as well as to other officers of the French government, that it was for the honor and interest of France to act with justice and magnanimity toward the United States. " It is not my business to justify the conduct of the government of my own country or to accuse that of France. I consider the unhappy difficulties which have taken place between the two repub lics to be attributed more to the intrigues of the British court than to any disposition to injury on the part of either people. " My country retains a grateful sense of the valuable services rendered her by France during the revolutionary war; and that the people of the United States sincerely rejoiced in the French revolution, by which the rights of man have been restored to mil lions of our fellow-creatures, has been manifested by the animated reception given to citizen Genet, the first ambassador of the re public to the United States, and by the declarations which citizen Monroe, on his coming to France, conimuiiicated from the Presi dent and both Houses of Congress. " In all points of this great question between the privileged orders and republicanism, the inhabitants of the United States are not united in opinion, but this diversity of sentiment produced no bad effects until blown into a flame by the British cabinet. " When the government of England acknowledged the sover eignty of the United States, it did not arise from a conviction of the justice of the claim of the people of the United States to live ADMINISTRATION. 187 under a government of their own choice, but was owing to the de ranged state of the finances by which she was rendered incapable of continuing the war. This ifact will be known whenever Temple Franklin publishes the life of Dr. Franklin, who intrusted him with the publication, and who was one of the commissioners who as sisted in making the treaty of peace at the conclusion of the revo lutionary war." ["Dr. Logan was possessed of some curious information on this subject, derived from Franklin himself, who read the passage in manuscript to him ; whether it is retained in his works as now about to be given to the public, I cannot say. But Dr. Logan was of the opinion that many things originally contained in the work were suppressed."] "The ambition of Mr. Pitt, which has engaged him to sacrifice the interest of all the world to England, and which, ever since his being placed at the head of the administration, has also inspired him with the desire of reinstating the influence and authority of Britain over the citizens of the United States, which has been lost by the miserable, contracted policy of his predecessors, convinced that this object could not be obtained by military force, he has had recourse to that base intrigue and artifice by which all his measures are strongly marked. A man has been sent by him to the United States properly qualified to accomplish his views.* This person has under his direction a newspaper published by an acknowledged British subject, at the seat of government. The atrocities of the French revolution, though the authors of them have been punished by the nation, yet are they made use of to wean the affections of the American people from France. The violation of our flag, con trary to treaty, and the repeated abuses and outrages of corsairs under the flag of the French republic, are made use of to stigma tize every friend to France and republican principles as an enemy to the United States, insinuating that those citizens who have ad vocated the French revolution and republican principles are enemies to the United States, and would sacrifice even their own govern ment to that of France ; when, on the contrary, however attached the great body of the citizens of the United States may be to France, they are only so as far as the government of France acts with justice, and consistently with the enlightened prin ciples of her own revolution. For, should she lose sight of these, and not only continue her depredations on our com merce, but violate the territory of the United States, every citi zen of our country will become their enemy. The same spirit * Listen. 188 JOHN ADAMS S of independence which influenced the citizens of the United States to oppose the armies of Britain in 1175, will engage them at all times to repel the hostile attacks of any other government. " France not being a mercantile nation, but more attached to the manly pursuit of agriculture, it is undoubtedly her true interest to place the neutral flag on the most respectable footing, by which means a competition will take place in her own ports for an ex change of the surplus produce of her agriculture and manufactures for those of other countries, highly advantageous to France. No people are so well calculated to insure these advantages to France as the citizens of the United States; therefore the commerce of the United States in a peculiar manner demands her protection. Would it not redound to the honor of France to return to the original principles of the revolution, respecting the freedom of commerce ? Would not an act of this kind contribute to bring about and establish the new laws of nations respecting neutral ships? And a violation of it by Britain would bring down the resentment of all neutral powers on that nation. " Believe me your obliged friend, GEO. LOGAN." Christopher Anthony Merlin, to whom that grateful valedic tory was addressed, was one of the sincere French republicans who sympathized in the Doctor s zeal for the rights of man, as then lately declared in both their countries, and warmly advocated in both, but in this without the royal, aristocratic, and ecclesiastical domination which was found necessary to uproot in that. Well educated son of a respectable farmer, Merlin rose at the bar and in public assemblies by his talents, probity, and industry, to high distinction. Taking an active part on the eighteenth Fructidor, 4th of September, 1797, he was chosen President of the Directory, in place of Carnot, when he fled to Germany, which situation Merlin occupied during four years. After the second Bourbon restoration he was banished as one of those who voted in the convention for the death of the king, and against any respite of that sen tence. While residing in banishment at Brussels he utilized his time by the laborious composition of a Repertory of Juris prudence, and other valuable works on law, in which he was ADMINISTRATION. 189 proficient. In him, as in Schimmelpenninck, Kosciusko, La Fayette, and other European champions of the then ascendant republican development, Dr. Logan found a friend to Ameri can institutions, whose position enabled him to appreciate, assist, and enforce the bold beneficence of pacification, on principles obviously all-important to both their nations. Mer lin of Thionville, as he was called in France, to distinguish him from two other eminent men of the same name, was, with Carnot, Brissot, and other originators of French revolutionary radical reforms, one of those obnoxious to royal, aristocratic English, and even much American disparagement and execra tion. But his talents, probity, great personal courage, and moral firmness, were never called in question. Republican enthusiast, that was his salient malfeasance in English and all royal or aristocratic estimate. It is obvious how that vir tue, united with the boldest assumption of responsibility for republican furtherance, rendered the President of the Execu tive Directory a host for Logan, prompt to initiate and exe cute an arrangement which Talleyrand was not authorized to offer Mr. Gerry, and if he had, Mr. Gerry thought himself not authorized to accept, or to venture beyond merely con ferring about it. Prejudices, national and individual, furious English, and American under English influence, political and social preju dices also, and French against their own countrymen, for condemning to ignominious death their liberal and amiable, but guilty and double-dealing king, with too many more inno cent victims, such prejudices induced Listen, Cobbett, Picker ing, and others, well-meaning English and Americans, to set down Merlin, the Director, who was what the French desig nate by the blasting epithet voter, as one of the memorable monsters who administered what the reign of terror signalized as the only adequate counteraction of what Deborah Logan mentions as Pitt s dreadful warfare against France. Insur rection, assassination, counterfeit money, and famine, paid for, 190 JOHN ADAMS S with many more violations of all law and humanity, were at tributed to Pitt by French patriots. The time has come for Americans, disbelieving such prejudices on both sides, to recognize Merlin, the voter, as a man of probity and human ity, with honest inclination to promote peace and amity with the American republic. Several captains of liberated American vessels at Bour- deaux, together with other Americans there, on the 8th of September, 1798, presented Dr. Logan their grateful thanks by a warm address. "At an awful crisis, when two great republics appeared to be on the eve of war, you have stepped forward the friend of humanity, to prevent, if possible, the worst of all calamities, and at your own private expense to undertake the arduous task of reconciling those who once were friends." In that strain of strong acknowledgment the address pro ceeded in terms that need not be added here ; to all of which Dr. Logan returned a short and modest answer. Next day, 9th of September, 1798. he embarked at Bour- deaux for Philadelphia, forwarding a letter to New York for his wife, which Governor Clinton transmitted to her, and of which she was advised by their republican friends to publish an extract. "All American vessels in the harbors of France have been re leased, and American prisoners have been set at liberty. I shall bring with me dispatches for our government calculated to restore harmony, the loss of which has been so sensibly felt by both countries, and positive assurances that France is ready to enter on a treaty for the amicable accommodation of all matters in dispute. Ameri can citizens are treated with respect in every part of France, and the appearance of a reconciliation between the two republics affords the highest satisfaction to all classes of citizens in this country." All history demonstrates the French desire of amity and renewed intercourse with the United States, on principles of maritime cement against England, as universal, governmental as well as popular French sentiment, when American passion ADMINISTRATION. 191 against France was kept heated to warfare by members of President Adams s administration, their instigators, con trary to the President s matured view of a national quarrel into which he rushed at first precipitately, and from which he finally extricated himself and his country, in defiance of strenuous efforts by many if not most of his own original ad herents, to prevent pacification, on the plea or pretext that the French pacific overtures were insincere. But as indi vidual advances or assurances of amity must be accepted, unless there are palpable indications of falsehood, so must those of a nation be, and even much more so. Dr. Logan, the next day, the 9th of September, 1798, em barked, regardless of equinoctial storms or any other peril, on board one of the imperfect merchant-vessels then in use, and after a long, dangerous passage did not reach America till November. Before his wife s account of his arrival is given, her description of her own situation, persecution, and ap prehensions for her husband as a proper preface to their meet ing and triumph, a newspaper, the Philadelphia Grazette, said of his letter: " Envoy Logan s letter is the best comment on the character of those patriots who are willing to sacrifice the liberty of their coun try to the insidious designs of a foreign foe. The citizen Envoy, with his whole train of French diplomatic paraphernalia, may be hourly expected." It has been already mentioned that Cobbett, in his fero cious malediction, had, as far as can be, by that terrible in strument of torture the press, especially when modest females are the victims, pilloried not only Dr. Logan but his excellent wife, by calling on the public to put them both together in the pillory; abomination of party outrage, under British influ ence and instigation, not deemed scandalous by many of the readers of Cobbett s journal, then in America as furiously English and Tory, as it became afterward American and republican in England. At this period Mrs. Logan experienced, she writes, what it 192 JOHN ADAMS S was to lay under the ban of political excommunication; "for it was said that those would be marked who should be seen to enter our gates." Then, after acknowledgments of the kind ness experienced from several Federal neighbors and friends, she adds: 11 Soon after the departure of my husband I received a visit from Thomas Jefferson, then Vice-President of the United States, who told me that he had been greatly concerned for me on account of the obloquy and abuse which had been so freely bestowed on Dr. Logan s character, and advised me to evince my thorough consci ousness of his innocence and honor by showing myself in Phila delphia as one not afraid nor ashamed to meet the public eye. He said he could not have believed it possible that the utmost bit terness of party spirit could have invented or have given credit to such unfounded calumnies ; that he was himself dogged and watched in the most extraordinary manner. And he apologized for the lateness of his visit (for we were at tea when he arrived,) by saying, that in order to elude the curiosity of his spies he had not taken the direct road, but had come by a circuitous route by the Falls of Schuylkill along one of the lanes to Germantown, and, passing by the house and gate, had come in by the entrance on the York Road, an excess of caution which seemed to me to be quite unavailing, for his Federal inspectors did not impute an iota less of evil designs to him for all his care to avoid suspicion. He spoke of the temper of the times and of the late acts of the Leg islature with a sort of despair, but said he thought even the shadow of our liberties must be gone, if they attempted anything that injured me. This was the only time I saw him during my husband s absence. In a few days I put in force the advice which Jefferson gave me, and went to the city, where some even told me they were surprised to see me, and many, that did not notice it in this rude manner to myself, expressed to others their astonishment that I could look thus gay and cheerful in the circumstances in which I was placed." * " One afternoon I went to visit our worthy friend, the ex- Chief Justice Frederick Augustus Smyth, at Roxborough. He was an Englishman and a Tory, who held an office under the Crown during the colonial government. But he was a man of great honor, candor, and good sense, and though they differed in politics had a sincere affection for my husband. Here I found, as was usual, a large circle of company, among whom were George Clymer (signer of the Declaration of Independence) and Thomas Fitzsimmons (framer of the Constitution of the United States) and several other Federal gentlemen. I observed they talked together ADMINISTRATION. 193 with much earnestness, and at length one of them, Fitzsimmons, came to me and inquired if he might ask me had I received letters from Dr. Logan, and if so, what was the state of things in France. I told him briefly and moderately what I had heard (reciting it), but I imputed nothing to the exertions of my husband. He re plied that it was extraordinary news indeed, and congratulated me on it. And our kind neighbor, the Judge, exultingly exclaimed, You know, gentlemen, I have always said that Dr. Logan would never disgrace himself nor injure his country. " His return to Stenton, to the faithful wife, was "With feelings," she says, "agitating her mind so intensely that she could scarcely control herself, as many told her that they would imprison Dr. Logan. He was not expected when he came. His sons, partridge shooting that day, accidentally wounded their father s favorite spaniel, which at their return was brought to their mother to be nursed, and carefully laid on a cushion near the fire." Among the kindly inclinations of that household was at tachment to that faithful, useful, and often persecuted animal, the dog, of which there were many at Stenton; companions as they are the world over of prince and peasant, black and white, and red people. On this occasion, like Ulysses dog Argus, Dr. Logan s affectionate spaniel recognized his master before either his anxious wife or children. " During their evening reading a step in the piazza roused the dog, alone and instinctively recognizing her master s step, and she struggled to get to the door. It opened, and in a moment the returned husband, father, friend, and master, found himself in the bosom of his happy family." An affectionate old female servant, who had nursed him in his infancy, " Hearing the joyful exclamation, brought the youngest child from bed to share his father s caresses, and herself embracing his knees, blessed God that she had lived to witness his return." Deborah Logan s pathetic narrative, now nearly closed, as much of it as relates his French mission, is memorably signifi cant of American, particularly Quaker sympathy, with that degraded caste, the negroes, rooted in American soil by British voi. i. 13 194 JOHN ADAMS S metropolitan cupidity, to be forcibly torn from it by British pragmatic benevolence, when it had become, as it were, part of the soil. When George Logan returned to his family in 1798, the sin of negro slavery had not been revealed by British abolitionists of it in the United States and other coun tries. Not long after his return, old Dinah, the faithful, fond slave of an honored husband, termed by his wife Dinah s master, dying in the bosom of that family of Friends, was, with solemn and affectionate care, buried at Stenton, at the foot of three noble cedars, lamented by a respectable house hold and neighborhood. The negro slave, it may be hoped, was better prepared for blessed immortality than if plunged by wild liberators into the licentious emancipation which British sentimentalism displays by the horrors of the middle passage, increase and cruel aggravation of slave trade and tenure everywhere and everyhow. ADMINISTRATION. 195 CHAPTER III. ADAMS S ADMINISTRATION. ON the 13th of November, 1797, pursuant to adjournment upon the tenth of July, when the special session closed, the Fifth Congress reassembled in ordinary, but their second ses sion, and during nearly eight months were buried in the enact ment of many memorable laws. The President s speech stating that the three Envoys proceeded on their journey from Holland to Paris about the nineteenth of September, and hoping their mission might be successful, invoked mani festation of energy and unanimity in the adoption of the pre cautionary measures recommended at the prior special session, then prudent, he said, but now required by increased French depredations. With majorities in both houses, Washington s known concurrence, and Hamilton s unabated urgency for armaments preparatory to hostilities, that task was under taken as earnestly and thoroughly as the Executive could ex pect or desire, and more so than ever since. In addition to several taxes in force, a stamp act, if by name and memory the most unpopular in the United States, still the most bene ficial, equal, and least onerous of all American taxation, together with a land tax, unavoidably cumbersome and vexa tious, by domiciliary intrusion and arbitrary valuation of property, were enacted. A navy department was created, with a corps of marines, the three frigates ordered to be equipped, and smaller vessels-of-war to be constructed or purchased; another regiment of artillerists and engineers added to the army; importation of arms directed, and their exportation prohibited ; arms distributed to the militia, money 196 JOHN ADAMS S appropriated to fortifications, and considerable loans author ized. Except more taxes and the loans, these precautionary measures, if not necessary, without any view to immediate war, as good from evil commonly shapes the course of human events, were useful results of the emergency. Counsel and administra tors left by President Washington to President Adams, were far less exigent then than what soon ensued. On the 5th of March, 1798, by special message, the President informed Congress that at a late hour the evening before the first dispatches from the Ministers in France were received in cipher at the Secre tary of State s office, one of which, dated the 8th of January, 1798, was of importance to merchants, to require its imme diate publication. On the 19th of March, 1798, another executive special message acquainted Congress that the dis patches having been examined and maturely considered, afforded no ground of expectation that the object of the mis sion would be accomplished on terms compatible with the safety, honor, or the essential interests of the nation. Where fore the President reiterated former recommendations for measures of armed protection to be adopted with promptitude, decision, and unanimity. On the 2d of April, 1798, the House of Representatives, by the large majority of sixty-five, overruling twenty-seven of the President s adherents, resolved to request him to communicate the instructions to and dis patches from the Ministers, which the President did next day, third of April, requesting however that they should be con sidered in confidence, for which purpose the lobbies and gal leries were cleared of strangers, and the subject taken into consideration in secret session. On the 5th of April, 1798, on motion to publish the instructions and dispatches, after debate thereon, with the previous question called and sustained, an adjournment took place, without decision of the motion, till the next day, when the injunction of secrecy was taken off as respected the dispatches, and then the subject postponed for a week. On the 5th and 8th of June, 1798, the President sent further dispatches. Finally, on the 21st June, 1798, by ADMINISTRATION. 197 special message, he informed Congress that General Marshall had arrived at a place of safety, and that the President, send ing Congress a letter " from Mr. Gerry, the only one of the three who had not received his conge , had instructed him to consent to no loans, and therefore the negotiation might be considered at an end." Which official announcement of ex ecutive rupture with the offending French republic, was closed with the portentous and pugnacious threat that the President "would never send another Minister to France without assur ance that he will be received, respected, and honored, as the representative of a great, free, powerful, and independent nation." Thus leaving little else to do than the last resort upon which republics venture like kings, and on this occasion the United States promptly and ardently. For not the least doubt or hesitation checked either entire belief in the assurance that the American Ministers in France had been treated with blasting indignity, which in all proba bility would cap the climax of lawless depredations at sea by invasion of the United States ashore, from which the country must be at once aroused, armed, and united. Accordingly, though constitutional declaration of war was not recommended by the President, nor moved in Congress, yet, with some re collection of that conjuncture in 1798, and intimate knowledge of what premised by such declaration, the war with England in 1812, and by the act of Congress authorizing war in 1847 with Mexico, I think there were more national, warlike, and inspiring congressional unanimity and energy in the first than in either of the two latter wars. The Fifth Congress was strongly belligerant, as the President urged, vehemently im pelled to it by his Secretaries, with all Hamilton s great influ ence bestowed on extensive armaments, military and naval, and profuse taxation, the whole cordially approved by Wash ington, soon called from his retirement to organize the army. The first war act of Congress, receiving the President s ap proval on the 28th of May, 1798, authorized the execution of Hamilton s plan, as suggested by him more than a year be- 198 JOHN ADAMS S fore, viz. : what was called a provisional army of ten thousand troops, to be enlisted for three years, but without pay or emolument except for actual service, in the event of declara tion of war against the United States, or the actual invasion of their territory by a foreign power, or imminent danger of such invasion, in the President s opinion, discovered to exist before the next session of Congress ; authorizing him also to appoint a lieutenant-general to command the armies of the United States. Hamilton s aptitude for war suggested a stable force erected beforehand to oppose the first torrent, which with mere militia he truly foresaw would be incalculably dangerous and alarming, as was President Madison and Sec retary Monroe s bitter experience when Congress declared the war of 1812, without either regular forces, military or naval, except a few vessels, and no taxes, to contend with a mighty power formidable in all those means of annoyance, as we were made to feel the improvidence most disastrously and dis gracefully to our cost. Another act of Congress, approved by the President on the same day, 28th of May, 1798, authorized commanders of armed vessels to capture French vessels hover ing on the coasts of the United States to commit depredations. By an act of the 13th of June, 1798, commercial intercourse with France was suspended. By another act on the 25th of June, 1798, merchant-vessels were authorized forcibly to repel, capture and make prizes of French vessels attempting to search, restrain, or seize American. By act of Congress of the 7th of July, 1798, the United States were declared freed and exonerated from the stipulations of French treaties and consular convention, which were enacted to be no longer obligatory on the United States. An act approved the 9th of July, 1798, authorized both public and private armed vessels of the United States to capture armed French vessels. An act of the 16th of July, 1798, augmented the army by adding twelve more regiments of infantry and six troops of light dra goons, so as to make a regiment of cavalry, to be enlisted during the continuance of the existing difficulties between the ADMINISTRATION. 199 United States and the French republic, together with several generals and teachers of engineering. Besides these warlike provisions a resolution of Congress on the 22d of June, 1798, directed the Secretary of State to have printed ten thousand copies of the instructions to the Ministers and their dispatches, to be distributed gratis throughout the United States. Thus Franklin s treaties, to which President Washington adhered throughout his term, forbidding their interruption by Jay s treaty, which in effect annulled them, were annihilated, if they could be by act of one party to a treaty without declaration of war, as Hamilton and his adherents all along insisted they should be; and without declaration of war by either belligerant, hostilities were perpetrated by both on the seas. Pursuant to the resolution of the 22d of June, 1798, Secretary Pickering, on the 18th of January, 1799, laid be fore the President, who communicated to Congress on the twenty-first of that month the Secretary s elaborate denuncia tion of Talleyrand s misconduct with our Ministers, insisting that that design was, by various pretexts and false pretences, to keep open a field for unlimited depredations to gratify avarice and revenge in the hope to satiate ambition. "After a long series of insults unresented and a patriotic en durance of injuries aggravated in their nature and unexampled in their extent, the French government expected our final submission. Our resistance has excited their surprise, and as certainly increased their resentment. With some soothing expressions is heard the voice of wounded pride warmly professing its desire of reconcilia tion, giving no evidence of its sincerity; but proof in abundance demonstrates that it is not sincere. From standing erect, and in that commanding attitude requiring implicit obedience, cowering, it renounces some of its unfounded demands. But I hope we shall remember that the tiger crouches before he leaps upon his prey. " Besides many acts for armament, that industrious Fifth Congress is memorable in our annals for several fundamental and salutary laws, by which the government of the United 200 JOHN ADAMS S States has been regulated and administered ever since, in peace and war. A voluminous act, in more than a hundred elaborate sections, to regulate the collection of duties on im ports and tonnage, carefully methodized, became a law at the close of the third session, 2d of March, 1797, which arrange ment has been always the basis of that method of public revenue preferred for the fiscal support of government. On the same day an act to establish the post-office of the United States, fixed the foundation of that great department. And on that same day an act for the government of the navy arranged a system of principles and rules for that branch of the public service. Other important acts came of a conjunc ture when preparing for w r ar, instead of hindering, quickened legislation for peace as well as war, for which the Fifth Con gress and President John Adams s administration are entitled to historical credit. That period of national excitement evoked, however, over- action, vehemently opposed and condemned, as ardently in corporated with our code, and President Adams s imputed excesses engendered by war prerogative, denounced as uncon stitutional and insufferable were extirpated by President Jef ferson s pacific, radical, and reactionary policy: extreme action of one administration and reaction of the other, neither proving quite acceptable or adopted as the permanent system of government. The first of these obnoxious acts, approved the 18th of June, 1798, altered that of the 3d of June, 1795, to establish a uniform rule of naturalization. The Declaration of Independence having invited emigrants to the United States, their first law under the present Constitution, by the First Congress, on the 26th of March, 1790, established two years residence within the limits and jurisdiction of the United States, and one year in the State where application was made, for any alien, being a free white person, to become a citizen. The Third Congress, by their act of the 29th of January, 1795, changed that requirement to five years residence in the United States, with one year in the State where application ADMINISTRATION. 201 was made, requiring also a declaration of intention three years before admission, that it was bona fide the alien s inten tion to become a citizen, and to renounce forever all allegi ance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, State or sovereignty whatever, and particularly by name that of which the alien applicant for citizenship was at that time a citizen or subject; together with renunciation of any foreign title of nobility; oath to support the Constitution of the United States ; and satisfaction of the court admitting him to citizen ship, that during his five probationary years after declaring intention, the applicant had behaved as a man of good moral character, attached to the principles of the Constitution of the United States, and well disposed to their good order and happiness. By the act of June 15, 1798, the Fifth Congress required fourteen years residence within the United States, and five years in the State where the court is held admitting the alien; ordering, moreover, report of their names to the clerks of the District Courts of the United States, by them to be registered. Aversion to foreigners was pushed further by an act, approved by the President on the 25th of June, 1798, authorizing him to order all such aliens as he should judge dangerous to the peace and safety of the United States, or had reasonable grounds to suspect concerned in any trea sonable or secret machinations against the government thereof, to depart out of the territory of the United States, within the time expressed in his order, to be served by the Marshal and returned to the Secretary of State; which banishment was enforced by fines and imprisonment, and judicially determined the Marshals might confine such aliens without further judicial authority. And, finally, by another act of the 14th of July, 1798, all persons were punishable by fine and imprisonment for unlawful combination and with intent to oppose any meas ure of the government directed by the proper authority, or impede the operation of any law of the United States, or in timidate or prevent any person holding a place or office under the government from undertaking, performing, or executing 202 JOHN ADAMS S his trust or duty; or counselling, advising, or procuring any insurrection, riot, unlawful assembly or combination ; or writing, printing, uttering, or publishing any false, scandal ous, and malicious writing against the government, Congress, or the President, with intent to defame or bring any of them into contempt or disrepute; or to excite against them the hatred of the good people of the United States ; or to stir up sedition within them; or to excite any unlawful combination therein for opposing or resisting any law of the United States, or any act of the President pursuant to such law, or of the power in him vested by the Constitution of the United States, or to resist, oppose, or defeat any such law or act ; or to aid, encourage, or abet any hostile design of any foreign nation against the United States, their people, or government; allowing, however, the truth to be given in evidence on any prosecution under this act, and the jury to determine the law and the fact under the direction of the court, as in other cases. The two first sessions of the Fifth Congress having been thus mainly dedicated to preparation for war, and French depredations, far from decreasing, being rather worse than ever, the third and last session of that Congress was opened by the President delivering his speech, with Generals Hamilton and Pinckney, and General Washington s Secretary, Colonel Lear, all in full regimentals, at his side; and their first act being a law to punish Logan s interposition for peace, their last ordered the Executive to execute rigorous retaliation on French prisoners for impressed Americans. Beginning with the act of the 30th of January, 1799, to punish Dr. Logan for putting a stop to the war, so they closed with that of the 3d of March, 1799, not only authorizing and empowering, but re quiring the President to cause the most rigorous retaliation to be executed on any citizens of the French republic captured pursuant to any of the laws of the United States, on satisfac tory proof to the President that any citizen of the United States found on board any vessel-of-war of either of the powers at ADMINISTRATION. 203 war with the French republic, having been impressed or forced by violence or threat to enter on board said vessel, had suf fered death, or received any other corporal punishment, or been imprisoned with unusual severity by order of the French Directory, or any officer or agent, pursuant to law of the French republic. And the act of the 2d of March, 1799, gave the President eventual authority, in case war ensued between the United States and any foreign power, or immi nent danger of invasion of their territories, existing in his opinion, to organize and raise, in addition to the other mili tary force of the United States, twenty-four regiments of in fantry, a regiment and a battalion of riflemen, a battalion of artillerists and engineers, and three regiments of cavalry. And the act of the 3d of March, 1799, extensively reorgan ized the army; among many provisions repealing that by which Washington was appointed Lieutenant- General, and substituting the style of General of the Armies, of the United States. An act of the 2d of March, 1798, regulated the medical establishment of the army. An act cordially ap proved by President Adams on the 25th of February, 1799, more inclined to increase the navy, rather than Colonel Hamil ton s preference for that of the army, authorized the President to build six ships-of-war, to carry not less than seventy-four guns each, and to build or buy six sloops-of-war, to carry not less than eighteen guns each, and to augment, at his discre tion, the number of guns and men in the vessels then in serv ice, and to place the revenue cutters in the naval service. An act of the 2d of March, 1799, increased the marine corps. And an act of the 28th of February, 1799, authorized ex changing or sending from the United States to the dominions of France all French citizens captured or brought into the United States. Thus many acts of Congress made ample provision for hos tilities with France popular, whether indispensably necessary or not. Imitating French excitement of martial enthusiasm by 204 JOHN ADAMS S popular songs, the Carmagnole and other lyrics were encoun tered by Paine s fine anthem, Adams and Liberty, much ad mired, said and sung, with other war verses. Newspapers overflowed with warlike addresses to President Adams, from State Legislatures, City Corporations, and various other as semblies of persons, whose manifestoes against France were warmly re-echoed by the President s eloquent answers. A party of young men, returning from exchanging with him one of these ebullitions, beset the residence of Benjamin Franklin Bache, grandson of Franklin, and editor of the Aurora, with clamorous and threatening outcries. Joseph (afterward Judge) Hopkinson s extremely popular national anthem, called Hail Columbia, with little merit of diction or tune, was so exactly opportune, that its singing was enthusiastically called for and encored every night at the theatre, vociferated in the streets, and as the favorite convivial Hallelujah everywhere. Cobbett, in his Porcupine s Grazette, required all anti-Gallican Ameri cans to display their colors by black cockades in their hats, which induced some others to mount cockades of blue and red, more like the French cockade, provoking sometimes occa sional personal quarrels, and even street rencontres. Gen eral Hamilton s suggestion of a fast day, to be proclaimed by the President, for which Mr. Adams angrily declared after their quarrel that he needed no suggestion, was realized by the President proclaiming the 9th of May, 1798, as a day of humiliation, fasting, and prayer, which ceremonial was ob served in some of the States, though more as political than religious solemnity; the Republican party denying altogether the President s constitutional authority to order any such royal mockery, as they called it. A clergyman at Philadelphia, the seat of government, Dr. James Abercrombie, strong in attachment to English and aver sion to French influences, preached at St. Peter s Church a fiery war sermon, forthwith printed for distribution by a sym pathetic congregation. Taking his text from Joel, chapter ii., with appropriate ardor, the reverend pastor began : ADMINISTRATION. 205 "Blow the trumpet in Zion ; stablish a fast; call a solemn assembly; gather the people. * * * Spare thy people, O Lord, and give not thine heritage to reproach, that the heathen should rule over them." From which significant text, launching forth into extensive invective against French universality of crime, contrasted with exemplary prevalence of English virtue, American youth were called upon to combine for conflict with the barbarous foes, and to sustain "The justly elevated Chief Magistrate, to whom reiterated trib utes of applause were resounding throughout our immense conti nent, incontestibly proving, during his administration of the adopted government, he hath done all things well." Such pulpit seconding presidential proclamations, could hardly fail to excite a metropolitan mercantile population, enlisted and inflamed by Cobbett s tremendous trump, and the British Minister s (Liston) great social influence in a sea port metropolis, a large part of whose commerce was trans acted by born Britons, many of them married into the most respectable American families, all, whether those Jefferson called Anglomen, or others, indignant at the depredations by French cruisers, of which every day s shipping intelligence published accounts, too true, and extremely provoking. The fast day, therefore, did not end without tumultuous dis orders, which Mrs. Logan, residing five miles from its scene in the city, did not witness to mention, but of which my recol lection is still fresh, then at home during a collegiate vacation. The black cockades, not brooking the blue and red, undertook to disperse their said-to-be seditious mobs. Conflicts ensued ; drawn swords were brandished ; groups of self-constituted police and partisan patriots paraded the streets ; the Mayor of the City and Attorney-General of the State were called upon to interpose; and, though I believe no dangerous blow was struck, certainly none fatal, yet names, if need be, might be mentioned of respectable persons I saw, sword in hand, rushing fiercely to combat. Too young and small to wear 206 JOHN ADAMS S either sword or cockade, I might, perhaps, have taken pride in both, for warlike excitement was so extreme that, not to signalize alacrity to fight the French, was decried as defect of patriotism, or even courage. Public sentiment, especially among the youthful, was mostly belligerant throughout the Northern and Western United States ; while the Federal gov ernment was almost entirely of Eastern administration. Resuming my place at Princeton College, I have still the liveliest recollection of the fiery, fighting patriotism predomi nant with young America panting for war, and their elders justly horror-struck at French enormities. Mortified that I was too young, and small of my age, to mount a sword or epaulet, I ardently desiderated those fascinating emblems of display and exploit, or a midshipman s warrant for that navy whose victories over the French were the delight of our vaunts. Some of my acquaintances, not much older, among them George Izard and Alexander Me Comb, became then embryo generals of our future war with England in 1812. Colonel Thomas Moore s regiment of the new army, whose sister was the wife of Marbois, the salesman of Louisiana Colonel. Moore s regiment, with some of my fellow-students in it, was encamped near Bristol. When John Henry, a soldierly Irishman, at the head of his company of infantry or artillery, I forget which, marched from Brunswick of a bad day, en camped in the College campus at Princeton, the effect was mag ical on the students, who, instead of being shocked, were rather gratified at seeing a poor soldier fastened to a tree and cruelly flogged for some military misdemeanor, by order of the double traitor who, afterward, first as a British spy, endeavored to debauch Massachusetts from the Union, and then, as a de serter, sold his disgraceful secret to President Madison. At no time during our war with England did the war fever blaze so bright as that against France. Parties were strained to sundering and almost to amalgamation by patriotic intensity. Our college provost, the Rev. Samuel Stanhope Smith, after ward author of a candid and credible account of the conjunc- ADMINISTRATION. 207 ture of 1798-9, by a third volume continuing Ramsey s his tory of the American revolution, was among the most decided of the anti-Gallican advocates of Adams s administration, when, with Secretary Pickering and General Hamilton, it was thoroughly anti-Gallican. Entering here upon that period of warfare with which the rest of this chapter deals, my anxious endeavor will be to present Hamilton s love, to be followed in subsequent chapters by proof of Jefferson s dread, of war, as American annals, with their antagonized influence on American politics. With out personal acquaintance or opportunity of gauging the abilities and preferences of those great men and exemplary patriots, as I deem both, with matured admiration for both, the genius, learning, talents, and love of country inspiring both, if their excesses were infirmities nevertheless they were noble passions. No undue, above all no comparative dispar agement of either, too common with their countrymen, will disfigure my profiles of these founders. Studiously drawn from historical records, they shall be authenticated by what Jefferson and Hamilton did, said, and wrote, once leaders of opposite parties, worthy now to be accepted with veneration as joint founders of a flourishing and powerful republic, no more, if not less merely experimental at this time than the many older contemporaneous empires and States emulating its institutions. Suspension preliminary to revocation of Franklin s treaties against President Washington s resolution to uphold them and the French alliance, but at any rate by mere executive State stroke proclamation of neutrality, soon followed by solicited British treaty, for which the Chief Justice of the United States was sent special Minister, to rectify British non-com pliance with prior treaty, and also to introduce new commer cial arrangements, Monroe s recall from and Pinckney s ap pointment to the French mission, King s to that of England, not to mention funding system, national bank, taxation pro voking insurrection, subdued by military force, alien and 208 JOHN ADAMS S sedition laws, naturalization thoroughly changed, and finally large armaments, military and naval, with great increase of taxation, loans, and national debt as not injurious if not bene ficial to union, many of these measures, with President Wash ington s approval, the whole course and policy of government, during his administration and the beginning of President Adams s, were the works of Alexander Hamilton s genius for, and love of rule. Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, and a large party called Republican, with all the might of opposition, in Congress, by the press, and in numerous public meetings, societies, democratic clubs, and otherwise denouncing such administration, estranged Washington from, and provoked Adams with, these antagonists, alienating the former, as the latter was identified with those called Federalists. Pinckney s rejection in France, not known to Washington when he retired, was no doubt mortifying annoyance, aggravated by insolent diplomacy and complaints, which, together with their incessant sea depredations, were resented by his successor in special session of Congress convoked as Hamilton dictated. Not only cordially supporting President Adams s resentful and retaliatory belligerant repulsion of French offences, Washington furthermore subscribed at last to the long pro jected and finally enacted repeal of Franklin s treaties, to Hamilton s habitual denunciation of the Republicans as French Jacobins, strongly decried by Washington himself as disloyal apologists for French outrages, and their scandalous abettors. By events stronger than his or any man s will thus estranged from the Republicans and associated with the Federalists as his better advisers and supporters, he drifted from controlling pre-eminence above all party to coincidence with one, always claiming him as their leader, when the other party had not altogether relinquished him as theirs. Jefferson asserted Washington s relations of unbroken friendship with him, to the last, entertaining more respect than Hamilton for the tal ents of their chief, then generally considered, since almost universally reverenced, as the father of their country. ADMINISTRATION. 209 After four years of distinguished and important service in his military family as aid-de-camp, captain, by that position entitled colonel, Hamilton quarrelled with and left Washing ton. Washington Irving, in his Life of Washington, puts Hamilton in the wrong, while with natural veneration, and not illaudable historical explanation, his son argues that he was right on that occasion. However that may be, it is cer tain, from the son s testimony, that to his respectable father- in-law, General Schuyler, earnestly and affectionately urging Hamilton to resume his situation in Washington s military family, he pleaded that " Having overcome many scruples by accepting his invitation to enter it, often, with great difficulty, he prevailed on himself not to renounce it, with a determination, if there should ever happen a breach between them, never to consent to an accommodation. The General he allowed to be a very honest man, his competitors with slender abilities, and less integrity ; his popularity had often been essential to the safety of America, and was still of great im portance to it; considerations which had influenced Hamilton s past conduct respecting him, and would influence it in future, for he thought it necessary that he should be supported. But Ham ilton had been cured of what he called being infected with the enthusiasm of the times, when an idea of the General s character overcame his scruples, and induced him, as before mentioned, to accept his invitation (phrase italicized by Hamilton to his father- in-law) to enter his family." Whereupon, recovered from that deluding infection, in something like the similar spirit of insubordination inducing Colonel Burr to renounce the same situation, young Hamilton, not without reason proud of his greater learning and informa tion, and naturally confident in his own opinions, always en forced with bold and brilliant vivacity, realized a long-pon dered determination to separate from a commander much older, but slower and less confident, whose mind was more deliberative, but absolute and inflexible. Conceding his hon esty, popularity, and public necessity, Hamilton had before censured what he considered Washington s want of enthu siasm. Taking generous interest in Andre" s desire to be shot VOL. I. 14 210 JOHN ADAMS S rather than hanged, and urging compliance with it, Hamilton found Washington inflexible. "Some people," he wrote on that occasion, "are only sensible to motives of policy, and sometimes, from a narrow disposition, mis take it." And he angrily adverted to the beautiful tribute of an eloquent female, Miss Seward, thus severely couched in verse, as the same hue and cry has since been raised by Lord Mahon in prose. " Remorseless Washington ! the day shall come Of deep repentance for this barbarous doom." The British treaty and its precarious ratification hardly assuaged, and by no means extinguished President Washing ton s avowed indignation at continued British sea offences, impressment of men, and capture of cargoes by indefensible, unwarrantable, insolent violations of the laws of nations, and prize condemnation as illegal as the French, though draped in the fascinating sophistry of Scott, created Lord Stowell with scandalous gains for his judicial sanction of admiralty droits and other such robberies, admired by most American legists, and impossible by Franklin s treaties. Hamilton, notwith standing his abhorrence of French republicanism and his belief in royal restoration, never wanting in American spirit to repel any foreign aggression, was ready to draw again the sword gallantly wielded against England ; and irascible Secre tary Pickering protested, alone of the President s counsel, for withholding ratification of the British treaty while the flagrant provision order defied the United States. Yet more pungent complaints prevailing against France, hostilities were brewing to show how inseparable they are from human passions, and from what preposterous misconceptions their much more de cried than prevented calamities ensue. The French Executive insulted the American, which the past and present President of the United States deemed it indispensable to resent: and the seas, all on fire with illegal captures, young America, then ADMINISTRATION. 211 very young, with concurrence of most of the elder, armed for a cruise on a sea of troubles, angrily, eagerly, not overwisely ; Washington, Hamilton, and Adams concurring, with majorities in Congress; the Vice-President and his adherents pleading for peace, with his and others unmeasured, perhaps intem perate, denunciation of Jay s treaty. Washington, in retire ment, went, as he believed right, with the government, against the people. Always discrediting French invasion, for which Hamilton caused great preparation, Washington heartily ap proved Adams s eloquent invocation of the country to arms, for which, before long, his presidential disinclination was declared by contemptuous averment that it was absurd to apprehend invasion. When nominated by his friend, Governor Jay, to the United States Senate from New York, Colonel Hamilton answered that "Although by his situation obliged to decline that position, a crisis might arise for him to conceive himself bound to sacrifice the interests of his family to the public call." When a boy twelve years of age, in the insignificant ob scurity of his little native island of Nevis, he put in writing that "His ambition was prevalent, that he despised the grovelling ambition of a clerk or the like, would risk his life to raise his con dition, and he wished there was a war. " After being much distinguished in war against the country he left, the crisis alluded to in his declension of the Senate had come in a war with that country of Jacobin misrule, against which war would be the very harvest of his highest aspiration. Having for several years been Washington s most confidential adviser, he wrote to him in May, 1798, shortly before Logan s departure to arrest war, suggesting, as Hamil ton had done, the proclamation of neutrality, the British treaty, Jay s, King s, and Pinckney s foreign missions, in similar confidential, and still more partisan tone, that " The powerful faction which has for years opposed the govern ment is determined to go every length with France; ready to new- model our Constitution under the influence or coercion of France ; to form with her a perpetual alliance, offensive and defensive, and to give her a monopoly of our trade by peculiar and exclusive privileges, which would make this country a province of France." This opposition being, he complained, south of Maryland, Colonel Hamilton urged General Washington to make a cir cuit through Virginia and North Carolina, under some pre tence of health, etc., to call forth addresses, dinners, etc., to afford him opportunities of expressing sentiments in answer to toasts, etc. More ardent than his more aged patron, Hamil ton had once before experienced Washington s positive rejec tion of his extravagant suggestion to utilize the military revolt hatching at Newburgh, by holding it in terror over Congress, to compel their providing for the public debts. And now again his partisan ardor overlooked the indelicacy of that pretentious parade by which the popular and necessary Washington was to be played off like a British monarch or the automaton chief magistrate proposed by Sieyes for French government, to do nothing, while Ministers ruled. Washington at once positively refusing such simulation, with a touch of sarcasm, declared that his health never was better, and that the measure would be susceptible of inimical interpretations, at which his invariable rectitude revolted. Hamilton ambi- tioning command of the army to be marshalled under his dic tation for war, in the same letter and confidential tone, told Washington that in the event of rupture with France the public voice would call him to command the armies of the country. Washington reluctant, he said, to leave the tombs of his ancestors, and because preference might be given to a man more in his prime, answered that he would like to know who would be his coadjutors, and whether Hamilton would be disposed to take an active part in case arms were resorted to. Thus encouraged, Hamilton signified as the place in which ADMINISTRATION. 213 he might hope to be useful that of Inspector-General, with command in the line, taking it for granted that the service of all former officers might be commanded, and that Wash ington s choice would regulate the executive. Washington being commissioned commander-in-chief, Hamilton informed him that the President " Had no relative ideas, and his prepossessions on military sub jects in reference to such a point were of the wrong sort. The arrangement of the army would demand Washington s particular attention; much adherence to routine would do great harm; men of capacity and exertion in the higher stations were indispensa ble." The President s responsibility to the country for proper selections, perhaps natural preference for a fellow-countryman of his own State, and possibly dislike of Hamilton growing under his absolute control of the presidential Secretaries, in duced him to desire Hamilton s former associate in President Washington s administration, Major-General Knox, with much higher rank, and having performed more service, rather than Captain Hamilton, to be raised at once over the heads of many meritorious veterans to the command of the army. And Gen eral Washington, notwithstanding his high opinion of the merits of his former aid-de-camp, while constant in the belief that no invasion would be attempted, yet thinking if it should be, that the Southern slave-holding States would be the first of it, according to the invariable European malignant misappre hension of American strength, considered General Pinckney the proper person to be appointed senior general, being in rank and service Hamilton s superior, in military knowledge and capacity his equal, well known and appreciated in the South where Hamilton was neither. These judicious selec tions of the President and Washington were both frustrated. Knox was put below Hamilton, the President s strenuous pre ference for him being overruled by Washington s insistance on Hamilton, at the risk and menace of rupture and separation between the commander-in-chief and the President. His old 214 JOHN ADAMS S chief addressed a soothing letter to Knox his former military companion and Secretary of War, whose soldierly sensibility, stung to the quick at his degradation, refused service under Hamilton, but whose noble patriotism offered to serve as Washington s aid-de-camp whenever he took the field. Gen eral Pinckney s magnanimous disinterestedness was still more strikingly patriotic. Doubt having been expressed whether he would consent to serve under his inferior in rank if not in service, General Pinckney, the instant he landed from France, without a moment s hesitation, declared that " With the greatest pleasure he saw Colonel Hamilton s name at the head of the list of major-generals, applauded the discrimina tion which placed him there, knew his talents were very great, that he had a genius capable of forming an extensive military plan, and a spirit courageous and enterprising capable of exercising it." Completing this admirable disinterestedness, General Pinck ney added: " That considering General Knox to be a very valuable officer, without estimating his talents in a degree equal to those of Gen eral Hamilton, yet rather than the feelings of General Knox should be hurt by General Pinckney s being ranked before him, he, Knox, might take his, Pinckney s, place in the arrangement." Not uncontrasted with Washington s rectitude of refusal to be the instrument of partisan demonstration, with Knox s generous martial sensibility, and Pinckney s still more admi rable magnanimity, Hamilton s not ignoble but inordinate ambition for warrior renown was gratified, so far as to place Captain Hamilton over General Knox, Colonel Pinckney, and all other well-reputed officers, at the head of the army. When the quarrel between him and President Adams was rotten ripe, tfhich budded with this derangement, and Hamilton, with profase publication, according to his wont, challenged still more copious refutal from Adams, he stigmatized those never fully disclosed embroilments as intrigue. But much of them were no secret plots. From strong impression of Hamilton s superior talents, and probably not ungrateful for his invinci- ADMINISTRATION. 215 ble vindication of Jay s unfortunate treaty, that upright and judicious statesman recommended, and Washington entirely approved Hamilton s exaltation, which the Secretary of State, Pickering, an old soldier, urged as that of an officer better qualified than Washington for the station. Such was Picker ing s avowed opinion, and, as he said, Hamilton s too: Picker ing affirming that, acknowledging Washington s fitness for the great part he performed, Hamilton never allowed him superior abilities. What constitutes talents? General Pinckney s truly glorious abnegation evinced more than Hamilton s insatiate ardor for fame, as the example he gave without display, both as soldier and gentleman, against the barbarism of duelling, if followed by Hamilton, might have saved him from sacrificing his life even to that shocking parody of war. Going to work with characteristic ardency, with Washing ton drawn from his retirement to Philadelphia, in the organi zation of the army, Hamilton s plans were evolved on a scale of magnitude commensurate with his ambition; requiring means to be taken, he enjoined, without delay, to raise imme diately the ten thousand men provisionally authorized, together with a corps of sergeants and corporals for an army of fifty thousand men, and if an incursion should be actually on foot, a draft from the militia to be classed, of a sufficient number to complete the army of thirty thousand. With such a land force, much of it to be thus raised by conscription, for such must be classification of the militia, Colonel Hamilton de manded six ships-of-the-line, to be purchased of Great Britain, and paid for in stocks, which would have been to borrow them, twelve frigates also purchased in like manner, and twenty sloops-of-war. To supply funds for such large forces, military and naval, he proposed, in addition to the land tax, carriage tax, stamp tax, whisky tax, and tobacco tax, further taxes on hats, saddle horses, male-servants, salt, wines, succession by descent or devise, besides large loans raised abroad at exorbi tant interest. Delirating with war fever at blood heat, the once head of 216 JOHN ADAMS S the treasury, now of the army, he was organizing with won derful activity and transcendant assumption of authority, dic tated to his successor, Oliver Wolcott, industrious and valuable incumbent, who, as comptroller, had justly admired Hamilton s original organization of that most difficult department to him at all times his devoted pupil, the General dictated fiscal malversation totally incompatible with the Constitution of the United States, and with any whatever representative govern ment. The General enjoined the Secretary that the Execu tive must have half a million of secret service money, without appropriation by Congress, or any act, or even knowledge of theirs ! The approbation, his injunction was, of three mem bers of each house might suffice : but with incredible contempt for the jealous and saving genius of free institutions, he added, "that it would be better to get the money without that incum- brance!" A secret service fund, placed by Congress at the President s confidential disposal, has been found useful from the beginning of the Federal government. Thirty thousand dollars is the sum usually appropriated every year by Con gress, and in the chary signification of contingent expense for foreign intercourse, as contradistinguished from a similar sum appropriated for contingent expenses of foreign missions; dis tinction well understood at the treasury. Special legislation provides for the secret service expenses, putting the whole at the President s confidential and discretionary disposal, of course guarded by his official oath, beside the power of Con gress to superintend and examine all disbursements, constitu tionally regulated with extreme provision against malpractice. Whole presidencies pass without a dollar of the fund for secret service money being used. President Madison gave fifty thousand dollars, without the expected requital, to John Henry, for betraying his clandestine instrumentality, as was alleged, under British subornation, to detach some of the Eastern States from the Union. And Secretary Webster applied portions of the secret service fund for foreign inter course, to clandestine internal management in Maine, of which ADMINISTRATION. 217 the illegality will be exposed whenever the unwarrantable secrecy in which, for his sake, the House of Representatives thought proper to bury that mystified transaction, comes to be unveiled, as it should and will be. General Hamilton s in junction to Secretary Wolcott, entirely free from all personal implication of either, nevertheless if executed as ordered, and apparently not objected to, would have been impeachable as unconstitutional misdemeanor then: and indictable now, under the independent treasury law, latterly enacted, with general approbation, to restore something like Secretary Hamilton s excellent organization of the treasury department and constitutional currency of the United States, deteriorated after his time by the pernicious infractions of State banks corrupting the currency, to the great injury of the industry, and still more, the morality of the country. For these extravagant armaments, expenditures, proposed malversation and debts, no war existed, or was declared, not even hostilities beyond marine retort, for which the shipping of the United States, civil and military, were an overmatch to cope with the marauding French depredators. French fleets were expelled from the ocean by overwhelming British, block ading most of the French harbors. French frontiers were with difficulty protected from invasion, and, as Washington always argued, France could not send either ship or soldier to the United States. Thus incapacitated, a weak French govern ment, anxious for peace, studious of republicanism and Ame rican maritime aid, solicited, even importuned amity with the American republic, arming to the teeth against a mere chimera of extremely improbable eventuality ; raising armies, navies, taxes, and loans; casting republican government under eclipse, almost extinguished by belligerant overaction, which no en lightened people could long submit to, or popular institutions endure. Many of General Hamilton s adherents, without disloyal attachment to any foreign government, considered the United States too feebly put together for adequate nationality, and 218 JOHN ADAMS S war tension, essential, if not indispensable, for constructive and practical improvement. Bitter disappointment was then so uttered, and is since published as denunciatory of Presi dent Adams s abandonment of hostilities. When the nation was completely roused, armed, and prepared for the crisis, the President suddenly, unaccountably, and capriciously unstrung the bow, and, for fear of losing his re-election, distracted his party, as ardent leaders complained then, and some of their historical deploring still attests, abandoning established ascend ant to be supplanted by clamorous opposition, encouraged by presidential vascillation and impracticable revolt against the government as administered by his Secretaries under Hamil ton s direction, with Washington s approbation. Whether war to be used as a mere corroboration of insufficient government be justly imputable to part of the ruling party, it is a page of American history not yet as much read as truth requires. And war with Spain, as reinforcement of war with France, war by our invasion of Spanish America to prevent our inva sion by France, was projected at that very instant, as this narrative proceeds to explain. Among the heterogeneous species of man s genus thrown together from many nations and various climes to be engulfed by that cataclysm the French revolution, Corsicans, Poles, Italians, English, Americans, and other rare individualities, Bonapartes, Clootz. Poniatowskis, Paines, w r ith Robespierres, Dantons, and the French material of that deluge, was a South American adventurer, of respectable birth, education, and character, Francis Miranda, from Caracas, the land of Boli var s noble and the only, either American or European, emu lation of Washington. Miranda s diversified career ended on a scaffold, when deserving a better fate. Having entered the French republican military service, he came to the United States with that part of the French army employed here, and became acquainted with Alexander Hamilton, both brilliant young soldiers, fond of exploit and of freedom. Rising after ward in the French army, Miranda, as second in command to ADMINISTRATION 219 Dumourier, was blamed by him for the loss of a battle on the frontiers in the beginning of the revolutionary war. Dis credited with Dumourier, to escape the guillotine he fled to England, where he found not only refuge, but welcome recep tion of his liberal opinions concerning the emancipation of his country and all South America from the Spanish yoke. Miranda was one of the originators, most sensible and strenuous, of that great hemispheric declaration of liberty which was to make Spanish South like British North America. His design was countenanced and supported by some South American Jesuits in England, taken into favor and pay by Pitt s ministry. Mr. King, the American Minister in London, becoming acquainted with their design and with Miranda, its plausible and respectable advocate, was captivated with the vast project of liberating all America. Recommended by Jesuits from South America, always among the best informed, best bred, and influential members of any priesthood, and sat isfied that Great Britain would apply her immense means to force open the whole American continent to her commerce and influence, Mr. King, entering with ardor into the scheme, in February, 1798, at Miranda s instance, gave his associate, Peter Joseph Caro, a letter of introduction to Mr. Pickering, the Secretary of State, which Caro was to deliver in person. But being delayed on his way by want of a vessel for his con veyance, and then suddenly ordered to hasten to South Ame rica, instead of going to Philadelphia, he forwarded Mr. King s .letter with one of his own to Mr. Pickering. Both letters opened fully the whole plan. Next month, in March, 1798, Miranda addressed a letter to the President himself, largely and flatteringly explaining the project, with the un doubted British co-operation; and inclosing a copy of the convention of South American commissioners for the purpose, held at Madrid, October 8, 1797. Insurrection of all Spanish America, and independence, were to be effected by British fleets and armies of the United States, to be paid by British funds. There was no secret of the design as between Miranda and 220 JOHN ADAMS S Mr. King abroad and the American Executive ; but of course perfect secrecy as to all foreign powers, and, except to Gen eral Hamilton, it was probably unknown in this country. The relations between the President and his Secretary of State were at that time far from confidential, between the President and General Hamilton quite inimical, between him and Colonel Pickering, together with Mr. King, as cabalistic as an event could be, by men of integrity contriving a secret movement which all considered right. An air of mystery and concealment pervades their correspondence, which it is not easy to unveil without imputing motives that may be un founded, and should not be charged without reason. A vast military and insurrectionary movement was undoubtedly pro jected by the Foreign Minister, the Secretary of State, and the General to lead in that movement, together with a foreign associate, General Miranda, and the British government, of which the President had not been apprised, as neither Gen eral Hamilton, Secretary Pickering, or Foreign Minister King, considered him a reliable personage. Dispatched from Tren ton, then the seat of government, on the 21st of August, 1798, by the Secretary, Miranda s letter reached Mr. Adams on the twenty-fifth of that month, in his sequestration at Quincy, where he spent much of his time. That letter broached pro posals for another warlike movement still and much more extensive than that against France, at which the President had begun to revolt from the enormous expense, the public agitation, and Hamilton s excessive waging, with Picker ing s instrumentality, rudely insubordinate to his superior, and devoted to those least acceptable to the President. On the same 21st of August, 1798, with his dispatch for warding Miranda s letter to the President, his Secretary of State wrote in suspicious confidence to General Hamilton at New York, that "Not to miss the mail, I wrote a line and inclosed a letter supposed to be from Miranda, which, if it gave rise to any ques tions prudent for Hamilton to ask and Pickering to answer by the ADMINISTRATION. 221 mail, might be done, otherwise the information may be suspended till we meet." Next day, 22d of August, 1798, Hamilton, by letter to Miranda, acknowledging duplicates of his letter of the sixth of April, but that the bearer had not come, added portentous assurance that Hamilton s sentiments on that subject had been long in Miranda s knowledge, but he could have no partici pation in it unless patronized by the government of this country. On that patronage he had every reason to rely when the Secretary of State and American Minister in Eng land were with General Hamilton in the plan, and the British government, of which the President was considered a warm admirer, had arranged with the American Minister for fur nishing fleets and funds for an American army commanded by Hamilton, whose letter to Miranda stated that " The plan ought to be a fleet of Great Britain, an army of the United States, and to arrange the plan competent authority from Great Britain to some person here, in which case, he said, Miranda s presence here would be extremely useful." Pursuant to this arrangement, the day after Mr. Pickering s letter of the twenty-first of August, forwarding Miranda s letters to General Hamilton, he wrote to Mr. King on the 22d of August, 1798, acknowledging the receipt of several letters from Miranda, to which by terms and method implying the most confidential secrecy, General Hamilton directed Mr. King to suppress General Hamilton s answer if thought proper, and instead of it to say as much as he might think proper to Miranda. With cordial coincidence of the Minister in England and the Secretary of State, Miranda had addressed letters to the President himself, in flattering terms anticipating his approval of the project. And as his immediate representa tives in government, both abroad and at home, warmly sup ported it, together with General Hamilton s selection to lead the army of invasion to the Spanish territories, with charac teristic confidence, he felt reasonably sure of the government 222 JOHN ADAMS S patronage for the great design contemplated, without which patronage his enlistment would not take place. Whether the inimical relations between the President and Hamilton and King caused the mystery in which this affair was shrouded, the face of the whole correspondence looks like a cabal. On the 31st of July, 1798, warmly urging it in a letter to General Hamilton, Mr. King depreciated the "Mere public addresses and volunteer associations (which seemed to be the President s delight) as becoming irksome without suffi cient object that will interest and revive the passions of the people." And with ominous croak his letter intimated dissatisfaction with some unexplained, intractable hindrance. " I have nothing to observe," the Minister wrote from London to the General to command the great enterprise, "in reference to the subject of regret and complaint contained in your last letter." That letter, and many more of General Hamilton s volumi nous and enlightening correspondence, is not published with the volumes printed by order of Congress, for which no mem ber voted more heartily than I did, when, as member of a special committee to whom the subject was referred, I urged the printing by Congress of whatever either Jefferson or Hamilton wrote on national subjects, as a single letter from either of those great statesmen might give information, I argued, worth to the country more than all the cost of the publication. Far from any insinuation of improper selection, I venture to regret that General Hamilton s letter mentioned in that of Mr. King, of the 31st of July, 1798, is not in print, or otherwise accessible, that I know of. Disclosure of all the correspondence, and schemes, and enmities of the leading men of that day, would be highly instructive. By allusion, which I suppose was to Mr. Adams, Mr. King wrote " You will not doubt that all the means in my power have been employed to correct the mischief. They have served only to con vince me that it is incorrigible. It is an evil too deeply rooted, and too powerfully protected, to be cured, and it is something ADMINISTRATION. 223 gained to know that it is so. If we are wise we shall hasten the events that will place the remedy in our own hands." That remedy was undoubtedly offensive war with Spain as the best reinforcement of defensive war with France. For that mighty alternative, urged by the Minister in England, and Secretary of State at home, he had succeeded in getting Hamilton preferred to Knox and Pinckney, and even Wash ington, as active commander, being by Pickering openly pro nounced fitter than "Washington himself for that station. And though the President had given no indication of his assent to the Spanish war, but was known to be at variance with his Secretaries and Washington too, against Hamilton s ravished predominance, yet the latter had reason to flatter himself that the crooked Chief Magistrate would be made straight by all his counsellors as all desired. Whether Washington was in formed of the Spanish war is perhaps problematical, though as to Louisiana and Florida he seems to have had no doubt not only of their indispensable necessity to the American Union, but of their hostile seizure, that is, of the barren east side of the Mississippi, for of the magnificent west not one of the best informed statesmen of that time appear to have had an idea. In the outline proposed by Hamilton for Washing ton, which he signed at Philadelphia the 10th of November, 1798, the third query is: "Is it probable that the French will, in the way of exchange, or by other means, become pos sessed of the Floridas and Louisiana." And thus fully im pressed with the American continental postulate, entertained by King and Hamilton in their most extensive requirements, and since proclaimed as Monroe doctrine, viz.: that space and elbow room, with entire freedom from the contamination of European contact, are indispensable for the development of the great republican experiment, Washington seems to have been disposed even to fight for it, as Jefferson himself was likewise, to make war for rather than lose Louisiana. Writing on the 25th of June, 1799, to his former aid-de-camp, John 224 JOHN ADAMS S Trumbull, then American Minister at Madrid, his ancient general, with soldierly confidence, said: "It is unfortunate when men cannot or will not read danger at a distance, or, seeing it, are undetermined as to the means which are necessary to arrest or keep it afar off. I question whether the evil arising from the French getting possession of Louisiana and the Floridas would be generally seen, until felt ; and yet no prob lem in Euclid is more evident, or susceptible of clear demonstra tion. ]^or less difficult is it to make them believe that offensive operations oftentimes are the surest, if not in some cases the only means of defence." Wise politics as well as strategy. Without one spark of military ambition, but on the con trary, jealous of even Washington s soldierly supremacy, and disgusted with Hamilton s promotion by Pickering s intrigue, as the President called it, he was in no humor, on the 25th of August, 1798, to welcome a Spanish war; and on the twenty- ninth of that month he wrote to Mr. McHenry, his War Secretary, that "There was too much intrigue in the business with General Washington and me;" in the angriest mood declaring, "if I shall ultimately be the dupe of it I am much mistaken in myself." On the 17th of August, 1798, Miranda again addressed the President in the same nattering strain, confident that his ad miration of England would favor the great design, and una ware, probably, of Mr. Adams s aversion to General Hamilton for any design in which he was to lead. On the third of Oc tober the President, with wise misgivings, and also uninformed of Hamilton s lead in the project, wrote to Secretary Pick ering : "We are friends with Spain. If we were enemies, would the project be useful to us ? At all events, it will not be in character for me to answer the letter. Will any notice of it, in any form, be proper?" Which pertinent inquiry the Secretary never answered. Hamilton s controverted rank, in that relative order of which he told Washington that Adams had no idea, and was all ADMINISTRATION. 225 wrong, took up probably more of executive attention than a Spanish war, or, it may be, even the French war. For the rupture, on the very point of breaking out between Adams and Washington concerning Hamilton s elevation, so much desired by one and opposed by the other, was a subject of more ex citement than any war. About that time, on the 17th of September, 1798, Mr. King wrote to General Hamilton that "Logan, who, as we learn, was provided with letters from Jef ferson and others, has been presented to Merlin as the Envoy of the patriotic party in America, has been closeted with Talleyrand, and speaks openly of his success with the French government. Since his arrival in Paris the American seamen have been released, who on the laying on of the embargo were conducted to prison, and the Directory have ordered the embargo to be raised." Nevertheless, however, Mr. King still deprecated what he deplored as a an unimpassioned, phlegmatic, cautious, inactive, mere defensive war." And on the 20th of October, 1798, wrote to Hamilton that his letter of the twenty-second of August, with the inclosures, (which were several to Miranda,) had been delivered as directed. "On that subject (which was provisionally, said Mr. King,) things are here as we could desire. There will be precisely such a co-operation as we wish the moment we are ready. The Secre tary of State will show you my communication on the subject. Though I have not a word from him respecting it, your outline corresponds with what has been suggested by me and approved by this government. Fortunately, some months since I obtained a fac-simile of the latest map of the country. This government has considerable information respecting the interior." Within less than a fortnight of the President s revulsion from war to peace, his Secretaries and their General Ham ilton, with his agent the American Minister in England, had everything prepared in the executive to move Congress, and public sentiment for war with both France and Spain. And so near the catastrophe of the strange drama as the 15th of October, 1798, General Washington, in writing, ridiculed Gerry s terrible fright, as the General italicized his sarcasm, VOL. I. 15 226 JOHN ADAMS S hoping that General Pinckney might be as safely landed in America from what Washington deemed a place so perilous as Paris, for an American Minister. On the first day of that month, Mr. Gerry landed with tidings and assurances of French sincerity in their overtures for reconciliation, as presented to him, then with pacific meas ures laid at Logan s feet, and soon afterward, through the American Minister in Holland, William V. Murray, submitted in such official importunity to the President, that no American Chief Magistrate, unless bent on sinister war, could hesitate to receive the overture with attention. Mr. Gerry, residing near the President, immediately strove, for his own sake and the country s, to impress Mr. Adams with peaceable misgiv ings, which, on the twentieth of that month, he intimated by letter to his Secretary of State disclosing his notion of an other mission to France. War is a fearful responsibility for any one man s resolution to undergo, which nations, parties, or Congresses may endure without shrinking, but which Bona parte, King George III., and nearly every other hero or monarch in Europe, within the present century, found to be always ruinous peril, and frequent jeopardy. Fears of the approaching presidential election were said, and are yet said, to have operated Mr. Adams s conversion, which even so gen tle a narrator as Deborah Logan hints. But intimate knowl edge justifies my belief that President Adams sought peace Avith France, in 1798, with less anxiety than it was solicited in 1813 by President Madison from England, with the advice of his Secretary of State, Monroe, a future President, and by President Polk, in 1848, from conquered Mexico, with the advice of his Secretary of State, and a future President, Bu chanan. Sharply imputing that alleged inconsistency, Secre tary Pickering forthwith quarrelled with Mr. Gerry, peremp torily and acrimoniously refusing the President s request that Mr. Pickering should correct some alleged mistakes of Mr. Gerry, who deserved, the implacable Secretary replied, im peachment, but no concession. Before the President s peace- ADMINISTRATION. 227 bearing letter of the 20th of Octoher, 1798, was sent to his belligerant Secretary, the President had received, on the ninth of that month, two letters, dated the first and ninth of the preceding July, from the American Minister resident in Hol land, William Y. Murray, imparting confidential tidings of another war contemplated against France by Dutch revolt, with English co-operation, against French dominion, extremely odious in Holland. Proud of his country s noble defiance, painfully envied and much admired by oppressed but feeble Holland, Mr. Murray made known to Mr. King, in England, Quincy Adams the American Minister in Prussia, and his father, the President, this design in which Mr. Murray heartily sympathized, and which accorded with the favorite project of the Secretary of State. Mr. Murray s confidential commu nications to the President continued till October, when he became the medium of a direct overture for peace from Tal leyrand, made to Murray through Pichon, the French Secre tary of Legation in Holland, proffering such explanations, concessions, and terms to the United States as no Executive could decline to take into serious consideration. Disappoint ing strenuous efforts of his Secretaries, their regulator Gen eral Hamilton, and others, among whom even General Wash ington might be counted, to prevail on the President to require a mission from France rather than send another there, if not to recommend a declaration of war, the President, in February, 1799, nominated Mr. Murray Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to France, and then, at the in stance of some Senators who waited on him for the purpose, added the Chief Justice Oliver Ellsworth and William K. Davie to the mission. My narrative is here so far suspended as to insert Mrs. Logan s seraphic account of her honored husband s welcome home by the public, before adding the history of the passion ate indignation and distraction of constituted authorities. Mrs. Logan s simple narrative proceeds to say of his return 228 JOHN ADAMS S "We all shed tears of the purest joy, and never shall I forget the happiness of that hour, for there was an honest serenity in his manner that at once banished all my fears from the machinations of his enemies," Deeming it his duty, in the spirit of fearless rectitude actu ating all his conduct, to wait on the Executive, civil and mili tary, inform them of all he could impart, and invite their investigation, Dr. Logan, immediately after his return home, repaired to Trenton, where Washington, Adams, Pickering, Hamilton, Pinckney, Ellsworth, and several other eminent personages were assembled. A pestilence, called the yellow fever, had for the second time ravaged the City of Philadel phia, causing the executive government to remove, in August, to Trenton, the capital of New Jersey, about thirty miles north of the then Federal metropolis. The official communi cations from France, dispatched at Logan s instance after his accommodation with the French Directory, preceding his re turn to America, caused the President s repairing to Trenton from his residence at Quincy, where it was his habit to spend all the summer, and much of the rest of the year, leaving administration to his Secretaries, Pickering and Wolcott, who, with McHenry, transacted the current business. Referring occasionally by letters to the President for sanction, they were less regulated by him than by General Hamilton, who was complete master of the situation during all the quarrel with France, from 1797 to 1799, and with his numerous adherents, in both the executive and legislative branches of government, extremely averse to Logan s interposition and arrangement. On his way to Trenton Logan breakfasted at Bristol, his wife s narrative records, with General Pinckney, but makes no mention of what passed at an interview which ought to have been attended by interesting, if not important disclosures. General Pinckney, having enjoyed, in 1780, when fugitive from South Carolina, the generous hospitality of Dr. Logan s comfortable mansion near Philadelphia, had just landed, in 1798, from France, after the frustration of his mission there, ADMINISTRATION. 229 finding himself, on his arrival, appointed to the second rank in the provisional army levied to repel the apprehended French invasion. His conversation, under such circumstances, with the volunteer Minister, likewise just returned from the theatre of the defeat of the duly commissioned, and success of the unauthorized missionary, their reciprocal, no doubt amica ble explanations, could hardly fail to be significant. At Tren ton President Adams received him politely, and, according to Mrs. Logan, during a long conference asked many questions, showing none of that irritability of temper with which he was charged. " Only a little sally escaped him when the assurance of the Directory that they would receive a Minister was repeated to him. Rising from his chair, with a characteristic action used when in earnest Yes, said he, I suppose if I were to send Mr. Madi son, Mr. Giles, or Dr. Logan, they would receive either of them. But I ll do no such thing. I ll send whom I please. And who ever you do please to send will be received, calmly replied Dr. Logan. "About the same time," she adds, "he had an interview with Colonel Pickering, the Secretary of State, in which the two gen tlemen of politics diametrically opposed to each other, became so convinced of each other s honesty of purpose and love of their country, that it laid the foundation of a sincere and lasting esteem and friendship between them." But the stern, honest Secretary could not dismiss the modest, uncompromising Minister, as he officially sarcastically styled him, without reproof and protest against his unauthor ized and most unwelcome interposition. " I must tell you, Dr. Logan, said the offended Secretary, that government does not thank you for what you have done. On which thanks," says Deborah Logan, "he did not count, but re ceived the thanks of hundreds of his fellow-citizens, and enjoyed the conscience of that self-approving hour which constitutes the highest of all enjoyments. When he waited on General Washing ton, he asked why the Directory treated him so well when the gov ernment of France had assumed so different a tone to the commis sioners. To which," she says, "her husband replied, that his own conduct, and not theirs, was all he could account for. "While the utmost surprise was expressed at seeing him at 230 JOHN ADAMS S large," says Deborah Logan, "the people all greeted him with joy. The inn-keeper who furnished him with a horse and gig to carry him to Stenton, would take no pay for it, saying he was too happy to have it in his power to oblige him. The difference in public opinion was soon so manifest, that Dr. Logan enjoyed a complete but guiltless triumph. The most sanguine could not have prom ised themselves such entire success as had attended his enterprise. He very soon went to Chester to pay his dutiful respects to my mother. I accompanied him, and we afterward extended our ride to Wilmington, the residence of our valued cousin Dickinson; and I greatly enjoyed the attention and respect with which he was everywhere received, so different from the fear and shyness visible a few months before, when many, who were otherwise friendly, appeared afraid to be seen speaking to him in the street. But now when we met the stages there was a general burst of welcome and congratulation. Yet I know that he repressed any public ex pression toward himself which he thought might exasperate the opposite party. The full approbation of so enlightened and virtu ous a citizen as John Dickinson weighed much more in his estima tion than the vain breath of popular applause." On the 12th of January, 1799, a fortnight before the President s approval of the Logan act, Dr. Logan published an address to the citizens of the United States, explaining, vindicating, and justifying his conduct in the visit to France. Previous to delivering this piece to the press, Mrs. Logan registers that Dr. Logan " Showed the manuscript to his friend, Thomas Jefferson, who approved of it as an able refutation, which truth and honesty enabled him to make, of the calumnies then in circulation; but wished him to insert as an additional motive for his going to France, the Quaker principles in regard to war in which he had been educated. This he refused to do, because it was not so. Yet he afterward thought all war unlawful to a Christian, except that which was strictly of a defensive kind. The first business of Congress at the session after his return, seemed to have been the enacting of a short law to prevent in future that interference with foreign governments which in the present instance had forced a peace upon our own. It was the ebullition of party vexation, and was at the time denominated the Logan Law. I do not know, particularly, whether he transgressed against the letter of it when he afterward went to England, though during another administration with the same anti-warlike extent, but I am sure he thought," adds this lady, "that it was to be more honored in the breach than the observance." ADMINISTRATION. 231 In 1798, Dr. Logan was, while absent, without his knowl edge, elected to the Legislature of Pennsylvania; and in 1801 to the Senate of the United States, where he served during the New Orleans controversy, the Louisiana negotia tion, and most of the period of Jefferson s Presidency, mostly his adherent, but not satisfied with all his administration. He retired when probably he would have been re-elected. Deborah Logan, recording no doubt her husband s senti ments, says that " Some degree of disappointment was felt by the Federalists themselves as well as by the best patriots of the Republican party, when they found that the new President, in his appointments to office, did not make good that impartiality of which they thought he had given a pledge, when he said in his inauguration speech: We are all Federalists ; we are all Republicans. For he dismissed from public service many respectable men and excellent officers, to whom no fault could justly be attributed but their political opin ions, and bestowed the places which they had held upon their clamorous and exulting rivals. It was not amusing, but mortify ing to us, who had indulged in a sort of chivalrous expectation of patriotism and disinterestedness, to mark the avidity with which offices of emolument were sought. At one time the numbers who waited on Dr. Logan to ask him to use his interest with the President quite surprised me." More of Deborah Logan s conscientious and instructive views of primitive American politics and parties might be given from her manuscript volume. But all except those con cerning pacification, the territorial acquisitions, and the states men prominent in their history, are pretermitted. Dr. Logan s peace triumph was complete, and much more modestly enjoyed than triumphs commonly. Soon after his return the Logan law was indeed enacted, on the 30th of January, 1799; the very first bill receiving the President s approval at the third session of the Fifth Congress. But severe and comprehensive as its provisions are against all citi zens of the United States, whether abroad or at home, who, without permission of the government, directly or indirectly commence or carry on any verbal or written correspondence 232 JOHN ADAMS S or intercourse with any foreign government, or any officer or agent thereof, with an intent to influence the measures or con duct of any foreign government, or of any officer or agent thereof, in relation to any disputes or controversies with the United States, or defeat the measures of their government, and against any citizen or resident of the United States, not duly authorized, counselling, advising, or assisting in any such correspondence, thereby clearly comprehending Logan, yet not only was no prosecution instituted against him or at tempted, but the bill as debated on its passage was declared to be impersonal. Introduced by Roger Griswold, and main tained by speeches from many leading Federalists, it was car ried by a large majority. Thomas Pinckney, who enjoyed the generous hospitality of Stenton, as before mentioned, during the disastrous revolutionary winter of 1780 a winter as severe atmospherically as it was trying patriotically with his subse quent experience of the permanent English and special Span ish missions under Washington s administrations, and then served in Congress under that of Adams, gave the weight of his high standing for moderation and wisdom, in a speech for the measure, entitled rather oracularly an act for the punish ment of crimes therein specified. George Logan s truly glorious but uncelebrated mission of peace, never the subject of historical notice, or any public applause, can scarcely be recognized as it deserves without the English pendant to that great picture of French and American history. Actuated by that same charity which St. Paul enthrones above all Christian virtues, Dr. Logan, four teen years afterward, on his own responsibility and expense, went to England to prevent the impending war of 1812, when an American Minister in London, at daggers drawn with the British Ministry, rendered Logan s an abortive endeavor. Its difficult achievement has been latterly attested by the failure of an effort in Parliament to punish such individ ual interference with national proclivities to evitable wars. Soon after the war lately raging between Britain and ADMINISTRATION. 233 Russia, on the occasion of the appearance in London of a Russian gentleman well known in Philadelphia, Count Nicho las Pahlen, and other supposed provocations, the Chief Jus tice of England, Lord Campbell, moved, in the House of Peers, for the introduction of an act of Parliament like the Logan law, which he cited as a precedent. But the eminent ex-Chancellor, Lord Lyndhurst, a British peer born in Bos ton, Massachusetts, together with several other members of the House of Lords, strenuously objected to any such law as in sufferable in a free country, and the Chief Justice s proposal was totally defeated. In our English war of 1812, and again in the Mexican war of 1847, there were many occasions when such legal punishment of individual or party interference might have been agreeable to the Executive. But it never was attempted, and probably never will be, though the Logan law may remain menacing brute thunder from our code, which none but some extremely provoked Executive will venture to enforce. From Deborah Logan s history of her honored husband s triumph to pacific return and popular acceptance, we proceed to that of the bitter feuds ensuing among the war party, which, with pacification abroad and their distraction at home, overthrew John Adams s administration. Quietly confronting the animosity of Washington and Adams, intensified by Pickering and Hamilton, the Quaker herald of peace arrived in their midst just before the law for punishing his offence became an act of Congress, with President Adams s cordial approval. A fortnight after his pacific letter of the twentieth of October to his Secretary of State, the President, on the 2d of November, 1798, sent him "Papers and particulars which had been presented to him, the President said, of Dr. Logan s memorial to the French Minister, with information given to Mr. Adams that Genet was still the principal conductor underhand of all the French affairs in this country. "Logan s object, in his unauthorized agency, seems to have been to do or to obtain something which might give oppor- 234 JOHN ADAMS S tunity for the true American character to blaze forth in the ap proaching election; so Mr. Adams said, and asked: Is this con stitutional, for a party of opposition to send embassies to foreign nations to obtain their interference in elections? " The Logan law, declared in Congress to be impersonal, and never enforced by judicial prosecution, left its object, under no martyrdom beyond party animadversion, reposing on his harmless and modest laurels at Stenton. Thence soon elected by his neighbors of the County of Philadelphia to the Legis lature of Pennsylvania, he was then promoted by that body to the Senate of the United States : when there was no lack of party and popular besides official impulsion to the Presi dent for recommendation to Congressional enactment and judicial execution of such a law. One of those inflammatory addresses to the President, common, Deborah Logan says, at that stormy season, which Mr. Adams reverberated with still more eloquent and exciting appeals to public passions, was just then presented to him by the Senate of Pennsylvania, sitting in the City of Philadelphia, denouncing individual officious intermeddling with national foreign negotiations as treasonably obnoxious to legal punishment. Still belligerant, the Chief Magistrate by eloquent response echoed many such incitements like that from the Senate of the State of Penn sylvania, whose presiding officer, one of those denominated Anglomen by Jefferson, was a respectable naturalized English man, connected by marriage with an influential American family at the seat of government. Urged by State Legislatures and presidential recommenda tions American republican partisan prejudice, running at that time probably higher than ever since, exceeded English re pression of private opinion. As in 1700 English went beyond French in 1790, so in 1798 American surpassed English pro scription. The Logan law was natural sequel of the alien and sedition acts. Even so temperate and just a man as Thomas Pinckney, the former Minister in England and Spain, who had enjoyed Dr. Logan s generous hospitality by several ADMINISTRATION. 235 months free quarters at Stenton, was one of those who not only voted, but spoke for that prescriptive act of Congress. Another South Carolina member, Robert Goodloe Harper, going far beyond Major Pinckney in denunciation of the alleged Jacobin emissary of Jefferson, as Logan was calumni ated by Cobbett and his too many American disciples, pro duced with his violent speech a memorial which he charged Logan with having presented to Talleyrand; which gross error Dr. Logan denied by a note on the 14th of January, 1799, published in a newspaper. That he had little or no intercourse with Talleyrand has been already explained. The memorial to which Mr. Harper referred was presented to Talleyrand ty Mr. Codman, a Boston gentleman resident in Paris, with whom, if I am not mistaken, Rufus King soon after placed his third son, James, to learn French, whom we found under that gentleman s care, an intelligent boy, when I accompanied his father from London to Paris. On the 25th of July, 1798, in the very midst of Miranda s project, Alexander Hamilton was officially informed by the Secretary of War, McHenry, whom he held in great contempt for incompetency, that he was duly appointed, just as he had signified to Washington his wish to be, inspector-general, with the rank of major-general. That elevation placed him at the head of all American forces to be organized, General Pinckney having magnanimously waived his better right, and General Knox been set aside in spite of the Chief Magistrate s just sense of relative rank, always strenuously, often turbulently asserted, but now subdued by the alterna tive which presented either Hamilton as first, or Washington, by rupture with the President, as driven from the station assigned to him. Thus pressed, the President was obliged to submit. Hamilton s hour had come for conquering the command of armies to be led by him against combined France and Spain. Boyhood s dreams were realized in prime of ambitious manhood. No idle visions; but assurance that the sword gallantly wielded by Captain Hamilton against 236 JOHN ADAMS S English soldiers was to be displayed by General Hamilton, with inexplicable inward gratification, against those French Gascons whose Corsican commander, after conquering Italy in campaigns of brilliant strategy, was gone to subdue Egypt, whence lying bulletins of romantic victories soon came stream ing from Africa over Europe to astonish America. That child and champion of democratic despotism might be Hamil ton s competitor on some field of cisatlantic glory. At all events, whether he or any other of the French Jacobin gen erals ventured here, as they had to Ireland and Egypt, at least all Spanish America was at the grasp of an American army led by General Hamilton, transported by irresistible British fleets and supported by inexhaustible British pay, to wrest from domineering democratic France her Spanish- American sources of gold and other colonial assistance. During the two succeeding years of Hamilton s military reign, from midsummer, 1798, till about the same time, 1800, his indefatigable activity, superior intelligence, voluminous correspondence, drafts and construction of laws, masterly system and superintendence of warlike organization, displayed wonderful genius for war. Under a President neither willing or qualified, and a Secretary of War, of both of whom Hamil ton told Washington that "whatever the props, the administra tion of the War Department cannot prosper in the present very well disposed but very unqualified hands," nevertheless, by what Shakspeare calls industrious soldiership, superabund ant preparation was made for a French invasion which Wash ington insisted would never come, but for which he deemed preparation wise, while in France there was not a thought of it. Forty thousand infantry of the line, two thousand rifle men, four thousand cavalry, and four thousand artillery, fifty thousand regular soldiers without one enlisted, but all con- scribed by drafts from the militia, were the basis and be ginning of Hamilton s plan. Six ships-of-the-line, twenty frigates, and many war sloops were Adams s predilection, to which Hamilton consented, though he demurred to engulf- ADMINISTRATION. 237 ing, as lie said, the army in a navy. Such were the military and naval first step of less than five millions of a poor nation, scattered over wide-spread territories, whose impost revenue scarcely exceeded twelve millions of dollars, eked out to some fourteen by about a million more wrung from internal taxa tion, always everywhere detested and then and there contested. From what Hamilton s high-toned aversion to popular insub ordination stigmatized as " the putrefaction of Pennsylvania," had seethed up an alleged insurrection, in 1794, against one of his taxes as Secretary of the Treasury; and another from another quarter of the same generally quiescent State con fronted his military movements in 1799, against which he magnificently warned the Secretary of War to "beware how, by inadequate military force of repression, he magnified riot to insurrection." Both these formidable and expensive revolts deemed indispensable to subdue by military forces, one by Sec retary Hamilton s requirement, the other by General Hamil ton s warning, were subdued by armies marched into for the most part quiet, laborious, and inoffensive thinly- peopled re gions, not only to extirpate by the sword alleged revolt, but seize on both occasions free men to be prosecuted for high treason: as Sheridan said on Hastings s trial, "an army was employed in executing an arrest." Early in November, 1798, leaving Mount Vernon some what annoyed at such an inroad of cattle brought by an Eng lishman, which General Washington declared he had not or dered, and for which he had neither funds to pay, or buildings to house, the General repaired to Philadelphia to spend there the last weeks of the last year but one, of his life in organizing the forces to be commanded by General Hamilton, in the event of a French invasion, which Washington, from first to last, pro nounced improbable, if not impossible. Setting his signature to the many letters prepared by Hamilton, and other docu ments of his indefatigable preparation for organizing large forces and fortifying numerous places, covering the whole Atlantic side of the United States with encampments, forts, 238 JOHN ADAMS S garrisons, and other warlike preparations, Washington sub scribed with them their anti-French politics interweaved with munitions of hostilities. Not less annoyed than the President and Congress by Logan s interposal, extremely unwelcome, and if not treason able, at least surreptitious and punishable, as partisan intru sion into affairs of State, the commander-in-chief took the prevailing contagion of dislike to Logan, with strong symp toms of its intensity. A very remarkable testimonial of that antipathy has passed into history in General Washington s memorandum of the interview between him and Dr. Logan, when the Doctor, at Trenton, waited on the General to report and explain what he had accomplished in Paris, supposing that it would be agreeable tidings to all American lovers of peace. The General s memorandum not differing materially from Logan s modest report, as told by his wife, presents the manner of the two so unlike the general deportment of one, that its entire insertion here is deemed due to historical truth. "Called down to a gentleman in the parlor desiring to see him, he found there a clergyman he named and Dr. Logan. Advancing and giving his hand to the clergyman, the General says he was backward in giving it to Dr. Logan, advancing to meet it. Finally, in a very cold manner, and with an air of marked indiffer ence, I gave Dr. Blackwell my hand, and asked him to be seated. The other (as the General designates Logan) took a seat at the same time. I addressed all my conversation to Dr. Blackwell, the other all his to me, to which 1 only gave negative or affirmative answers, as laconically as I could, except asking how Mrs. Logau did." In this ungracious strain the offended General adds that O "Dr. Logan seemed disposed to be very polite, and while Dr. Blackwell and myself were conversing on the late calamitous fever, offered me an asylum at his house, if it should return, and I thought myself in any danger in the city, and two or three rooms by way of accommodation. I thanked him slightly, observing there would be no call for it." A gentleman, of historical lineage, well educated and man nered, well known like his respectable wife to the General, ADMINISTRATION. 239 who had partaken of their bountiful hospitality, at a home stead more considerable and as hospitable as the General s favorite Mount Vernon, was thus, as he represents, coldly repelled. "About this time Dr. Blackwell took his leave. We all rose from our seats, and I moved a few paces toward the door of the room, expecting the other (still thus offensively designated) would follow and take his leave also. Instead of which he kept his ground, and proceeded to inform me more particularly (for he had mentioned it before) that he had seen General La Fayette at Hamburg, and his lady and daughter, I think, in France, and re lated many things concerning them. He said something also respecting an interview he had had with our Minister, Mr. Mur ray, in Holland; but as I remained standing, and showed the utmost inattention to what he was saying, I do not now recollect the purport of what it was, except that he hurried from there to Paris, his object being, he said, to get there before the departure of our commissioners, as he called them." All the remainder of this picture of Washington by his own pencil, is added just as drawn by himself. And it appears by the General s own record that much more was said to him by Dr. Logan than is mentioned; the last sentiment full of patriotic enthusiasm, which should have softened Washington s aversion, being that to resist invasion the whole country would rise up in arms. " He observed that the situation of our affairs in this country, and the train they were in with respect to France, had induced him to make the voyage in hope, or expectation, or words to that effect, of contributing to their amelioration. This drew my atten tion more pointedly to what he was saying, and induced me to remark that there was something very singular in this, that he, who could only be viewed as a private character, unarmed with proper powers, and presumptively unknown in France, should suppose he could effect what three gentlemen of the first respecta bility in our country, specially charged under the authority of the government, were unable to do. With this observation he seemed a little confounded, but recovering, said, that not more than five persons had any knowledge of his going; that he was furnished by Mr. Jefferson and Mr. McKean with certificates of his citizen ship; and that Mr. Merlin, President of the Directory of France, had discovered the greatest desire that France and America should 240 JOHN ADAMS S be on the best terms. I answered that he was more fortunate than our Envoys, for they could neither be received nor heard by Mr. Merlin or the Directory ; that if the powers of France were serious in their professions, there was a plain and effectual way by which that object could be accomplished, namely, to repeal all the ob noxious arrets, by which the commerce and rights of this country had been invaded, put an end to further depredations on both, and make restitution for the injuries we had received. A conduct like this, I said, would speak more forcibly than words, for the latter never made an impression on my mind when they were contradicted by actions. "He said that the Directory was apprehensive that this country, the government of it, or our Envoys, I am not sure which he meant or alluded to, was not well disposed toward France. I asked what better evidence could be given in refutation of this opinion, than its long suffering of the outrageous conduct of that nation toward the United States, and dispatching three gentlemen of un questionable worth, with ample powers to reconcile all differences even at the expense of great sacrifices on our part; and asked him if the Directory looked upon us as worms, not even allowed to turn when trod upon ; for it was evident to all the world that we had borne and forborne, beyond what even common respect for ourselves permitted. He replied that they had taken off the em bargo, and were making restitution of property, mentioning one instance, I think. With respect to the embargo, I observed, that taking it off, or continuing it on, was a matter of no great import ance, if, as I had been informed, our vessels in French ports were few. He said that the attempt at a coalition of European powers against France would come to nothing; that the Directory were under no apprehensions on that ground, and that Great Britain would have to contend alone, insinuating, as I conceived his object at the time to be, that we should be involved in a dangerous situa tion if we persisted in our hostile appearances. To this I finally replied, that we were driven to those measures in self-defence, and I hoped the spirit of this country would never suffer itself to be injured with impunity by any nation under the sun. To this he said he told citizen Merlin that, if the United States were invaded by France, they would unite to a man to oppose the invaders." Hasty and prejudiced, if not jealous and invidious, jet honest John Adams, testifying to posterity that "partisan feel ings never ran higher than at that time" testimony of which a respectable survivor of it just now volunteers confirmation to me added of Washington s hard-featured likeness, drawn by himself of himself in his memorandum of his interview ADMINISTRATION. 241 with Logan, that it records one of the very few life-like pic tures we have left of him. In the course of the long subsequent voluminous vindication of his presidential revulsion from Hamilton s equally lengthy censure of it, Mr. Adams made some atonement to Logan by confession, still inaccurate, that "There was reason to believe Dr. Logan s representations con tributed to soften the temper of the rulers in both countries, and that time has completely vindicated his conduct from suspicion, but not yet done due justice to his motive." Misrepresenting Logan s intercourse as with Talleyrand, which we have seen it was not, Mr. Harper s harsher and still more unfounded imputation in Congress of Logan as Jefferson s tool, was completely disproved by JeiFerson s letter to Gerry, truly affirming that " The merit of Logan s enterprise was, that it was dictated by his own enthusiasm, without consultation or communication with any one; nor, being made aware of it only just before Logan s departure, did I write a scrip of a pen to any one about it." His shy and solitary enthusiasm, not free from party preju dice, was, nevertheless, more so than what flashes from Hamil ton s summons of Washington to war, prefaced by extreme denunciation of the party opposed to it. Overruling that pretence of patriotism, the General, once strictly neutral and above party, joined that charged, he believed, with vindication of his country from foreign aggression, shared their antipathy to what was deemed factious opposition, beginning with the British treaty, and increasing till it countenanced the common enemy. Washington s strong feelings were shown by his whole conduct and correspondence, from the time of his leaving Mount Vernon for the seat of government, and after some weeks absence returning there. To William V. Murray, his Minister to Holland, soon to perform a very important part in putting an end to hostilities, he wrote in the same strain as his account of his interview with Logan : VOL. I. 16 242 JOHN ADAMS S "Logan arrived about the time I did at Philadelphia, bringing very flattering accounts of the disposition of the French Direc tory toward this country. (These are the General s own italics.) He has dined with one, supped with another, and, in short, has been as familiar with all that were in place as the hand is with its glove ; and he is not a little employed in propagating this doctrine in all parts of the United States, by means of the presses which are at the command of that party. He says the inclination of France to be on good terms with this country, are now so strong that it must be our own mismanagement and disinclination to peace if matters with that country are not accommodated upon terms honorable and advantageous to this." Soon after the interview with Logan, and letter to Murray, Washington had a correspondence with Joel Barlow, as signifi cant of his uncompromising devotion to the war, and dissatis faction with its opponents. A Connecticut chaplain of the army of the Revolution, Barlow had been commissioned by President Washington to settle important measures with the African Barbary powers, then among the most formidable enemies of the United States. His conduct on that occasion had been so satisfactory, that when Hamilton was casting about for a Republican Minister to be associated with Pinck- ney in France, the Secretary of State, Pickering, recom mended Mr. Barlow, with strong eulogium, as better qualified and less objectionable than Madison, of whom Hamilton had thought. But Barlow had taken up his residence in Paris, radical in politics, and Voltairean in irreligion, decried Jay s treaty and Adams s administration. Writing from Paris, the 2d of October, 1798, in the best situation for correct informa tion, his persuasive appeal to Washington for peace was re ceived by him with strong repugnance. Characterizing the dispute as simply a misunderstanding^ threatening to render the dreadful calamity of war inevitable, merely because thought so, Mr. Barlow s letter clarified the subject with admirable explanations. Predicating French relinquishment of every obstacle to accommodation, the letter added: "Were I writing to a young general whose name was still to be created, I might deem it useless to ask him to stifle in the birth a ADMINISTRATION. 243 war on which he had founded his hopes of future honor. But you, sir, having already earned and acquired all that can render a man great and happy, can surely have no object of ambition but to ren der your country so. To engage your influence in favor of a new attempt at negotiation before you draw your sword, I thought it only necessary to convince you that such an attempt would be well received here, and probably attended with success. I can do no more than assure you that this is my sincere opinion, and that my information is drawn from unsuspected sources." Seeing two great and friendly nations rushing on each other s bayonets, without any cause of contention but misun derstanding, Barlow entreated the great arbiter to interpose his matured and indisputable moderation to prevent that fatal result. On the 1st of February, 1799, Washington at once communicated Barlow s letter to the President, with strong expression of his ardent desire for peace and tranquillity upon just and honorable terms, but accompanied with marked dis paragement of Barlow, with whom, the General wrote, he had never corresponded ; a man of known abilities, he said, whose letter written in a very good or very bad design, from the implications in it had not been written without privity with the French Directory. After the President s conversion from war to peace, Bar low s letter was acknowledged by Mr. Adams in these terms: "Barlow s letter had very little influence, I assure you, in determ ining me to this measure. It is not often that we meet with a composition which betrays so uneasy and so unequivocal symptoms of blackness of heart. The wretch has destroyed his own charac ter to such a degree that I think it would be derogatory to you to give any answer at all to his letter. Tom Paine is not a more worthless fellow. The infamous threat that he has debased him self to transmit to his country to intimidate you and your country, that certain conduct will be followed by war, and that it will be a war of the most terrible and vindictive kind, ought to be answered by a Mohawk." Although Barlow could not have been aware of Hamilton s correspondence and arrangements for invasion of Spanish America, when eulogizing Washington as a general whose laurels were already won, nor was Washington probably 244 JOHN ADAMS S informed of that vast warlike scheme, yet the fact was that an untried candidate, thirsting for renown, ambitious as Bona parte, almost his equal in pre-eminent talents, and like him in overweening confidence in his own capacity for whatever he undertook, had just then written, through King, to Miranda : "I much wish the enterprise to be undertaken, but should be glad that the principal agency was in the United States, they to furnish the whole land force. The command, in this case, would very naturally fall upon me, and I hope I should not disappoint so favorable anticipations." With that plan of the foreign policy of enormous war, to repel French invasion, or prevent it by our invasion of Span ish America, General Hamilton added what he pronounced indispensable to render the Federal Constitution sufficient for the government of a nation. "In the two Houses," he comforted Mr. King with assurance, "we have a decided majority. But the dread of unpopularity is likely to paralyze it, and to prevent the erection of additional buttresses to the Constitution, a fabric which can hardly be sta tionary, and which will retrograde if it cannot be made to advance." The additional buttresses were large armies, and borrowed navies, profuse taxes, and loans at exorbitant interest, half a million of secret service money without the incumbrance of congressional appropriation or knowledge, to fire the whole American hemisphere with the fuel of British funds, fleets, and belligerant co-operation, the land forces to be commanded by Hamilton, confident that he would not disappoint expecta tions favorable to his military capacity, in which, all who knew him, implicitly confided, and no one more than himself. Against such ambitious delusions the Connecticut chaplain of the Revolution struck, aware probably of the personality without being aware of the severe accuracy of his aim. Be fore disfranchisement by party prejudice recommended by Secretary Pickering as more worthy than the future Presi- ADMINISTRATION. 245 dent, Madison, of the French mission, which, in the vicissi tudes of parties, he conferred on Barlow, succeeding in that mission Franklin, Jefferson, Monroe, Marshall, Gallatin, two Livingstons, and other eminent statesmen, Joel Barlow, with out reference to political distinction, had before dedicated its only epic poem, the Columbiad, to his country, in which Hamilton appears among its heroes. Like Marshall s Life of Washington, not received with much public favor, both among the earliest efforts of nascent American literature, are works better entitled to national consideration than some others to which it is awarded in the modern literary superabundance. These rambling, as may be thought, and disjointed indi vidual recollections, indispensable portion of contemporary history of party prejudice and public condition, shall be con cluded by enough of the undeniable evidence that General Washington, from the time of his acceptance of the chief command of the army, coincided in all General Hamilton s opinions against the party opposed to hostilities with France. Whether then apprised of the scheme carried so far by Hamil ton, Pickering, and King, for reinforcing war with France by war with Spanish America, probably not, Washington united thoroughly in all military and fiscal preparations for hostile contest, believed all the two American Ministers, Pinckney and Marshall had stated of French misconduct, with Secre tary Pickering s inflammatory report of it, disbelieved Gerry s assurance of French amity, denounced Logan s pacific inter vention, and the republican as factious opposition to Adams s administration. From his final return to Mount Vernon, December, 1798, to the latter end of December, 1799, when he died, his letters, one and all, overflow with those convictions. La Fayette s letters gave assurance that " The Executive Directory were disposed to an accommodation of all difficulties," and expressed a wish, which Washington acknowl edged was " worthy the benevolence of La Fayette s heart, that Washington would exert all his endeavors to avert the calamitous effects of a rupture between our two countries," 246 JOHN ADAMS S Signifying that his open arms and ardent affection for La Fayette associated adjustment of the differences and restora tion of the harmony between the nations, by "complete view of the politics and situation of things in this country," Wash ington explained that a party existed in the United States opposed to the government in all its measures, determined to change its nature and subvert the Constitution, leaving no means unessayed having a tendency to accomplish their pur poses, inimical characters among ourselves encouraging ene mies to outrages against their own government, anxious and endeavoring, Washington averred, to maintain neutrality and preserve peace. When Hamilton and the war party were bent on it as the only alternative, trampling neutrality and peace under the pressure of their armaments, Washington s corre spondence with La Fayette reprobated the opposition almost in the terms, and quite in the spirit of Hamilton s letters to him, suggesting his partisan pilgrimage when calling him to organ ize the army. In that spirit persisting to the last, nearly twelve months after that Christmas letter to La Fayette, and after the President s revulsion from war and accession to an other peace mission, Washington, on the 26th of October, 1799, writing to William V. Murray, expressed his "Devout wish that the urgent, indeed, unanswerable reasons you urged to dissuade our friend from visiting the United States in the present crisis of our affairs, may have prevailed :" that Murray would deter La Fayette from coming to the United States as French Minister to make peace, which ap proach Washington pronounced "Injudicious in every point of view, embarrassing to himself, embarrassing to his friends, and possibly embarrassing to the gov ernment in the result." Undeniable evidence of Washington s entire and earnest coincidence in all Hamilton s measures, military, naval, and fiscal, for hostilities with France, and at least demur, if not opposition, to President Adams s acceptance of Talleyrand s ADMINISTRATION. 247 overtures, through Murray, with strong aversion to Logan s intervention for peace, might perplex this narrative, if in his torical recollections expression of opinion were indispensable to narrative of facts, instead of what Cicero commends as the academic method, sanctioned by Socrates, with fair statement of circumstances to leave judgment to each one s preference. On a subject so merely speculative as politics, concerning which men have always differed, and always will, no one s notion need be introduced to waylay the reader beyond candid confession of prepossessions, with resolute assertion of what ever experience has inductively and decidedly established against some excesses of both Hamilton and Jefferson. From inchoate hostilities, fortunately arrested and pre vented by Logan s mediation and Adams s resistance, the republic perhaps took no detriment "by preparations, however extensive, to encounter war, and the roused national spirit, warmly approved by Washington, but who, like Marshall, would most probably have welcomed the pacification as effected, even though it supplanted one party by another. Mortified and annoyed by rejection of his Minister, Pinck- ney, offended at Barras s bombastic farewell to Monroe, coin ciding in President Adams s resentment of it, and implicitly believing what Pinckney and Marshall officially reported as their insulting and insufferable treatment by Talleyrand, Washington regarded martial spirit and attitude as preventive of war, by wise preparation for it, without probably admiring Secretary Pickering s vaunt, as fantastic and foolish as Bar ras s tumefaction, for if the tiger crouched in fear, was that, according to the Secretary s misplaced figurative confusion, to leap upon his prey? Murray in Holland, King in England, and probably other American Ministers in Europe, by their dispatches, made known belief that the United States were vouchsafed from war by brave preparation for its encounter. "Millions for defence, but not one cent for tribute," the national chorus, was a manly and laudable rally. Logan told Merlin, and repeated to Washington, who put it in his letter 248 JOHN ADAMS S to La Fayette, .the whole country in arms would confront any invader on its shores. Whether the debilitated state of France, its distracted government, invaded frontiers, want of public funds and public confidence, as described by Mr. King, in some of his letters to Hamilton, were not more effectual peacemakers than our military preparation and ardor, at all events, American annals have a right to the historical honor of bold union to repel invasion by an aroused nation, well- nigh unanimous, and so enthusiastic that recollection with pride records everywhere, without dissenting voice from the vehement opposition to government, the predominant feeling of resolution to encounter the French if they came, and de feat them, as they were by our cruisers at sea. But public sentiment at that crisis cannot be understood, party spirit explained, or Washington s popularity appreciated without reference to that touchstone of antagonism, underly ing, though not overruling patriotism, superadded by the British treaty to previous divisions of opinion. And candor requires confession that, as is commonly the case, merely ac cidental and familiar circumstances no doubt fixed impressions from my first lesson in politics at the town meeting in Inde pendence Square, denouncing that obnoxious treaty. Although my father nominated on the committee, declined serving, yet my grandfather and Chief Justice McKean, with whose family mine was connected by marriage, together with Stephen Gi- rard, Alexander James Dallas, and Blair McClenachan, all of our intimacy, were also appointed, and my impressions natu rally came from theirs. Not one of them averse to Washing ton was expected to censure him, but, on the contrary, by respectful and cordial expostulation endeavor to prevent his departure from grateful republican traditional French alliance, in which he was believed to have uniformly governed, to inim ical traditional despotic British, to which he was supposed to be as little inclined as any of the mass in Independence Square. Brought up by the one I most venerated of Wash ington and Hamilton s associates in the Convention which ADMINISTRATION. 249 established the Federal government, to regard Washington as the model of wise and virtuous statesmen, and his temperate republicanism as the true standard, and Hamilton, likewise, as bright preceptor of the brightest virtue, truth, these recollec tions would be untrue if not presenting both Washington and Hamilton far gone from the neutrality and peace which Washington s Christmas letter to La Fayette averred was their endeavor to preserve against factious and unprincipled opposition. Truth requires statement that both were strong for war; Hamilton for it in enormous proportions, French and Spanish, with immense executive prepotency, Washington, probably not aware of the extent to which Hamilton, with President Adams s Secretaries and Minister in England, were tending, but averse to the method of pacification fortunately effected by individual mediation and presidential acceptance of terms. Forced by the President on the country, in defiance of Hamilton s war-waging ascendancy in Washington s inclina tions, overcoming the revolt of the presidential Secretaries, it caused their ejection by him from office, the downfall of his ad ministration, by what has been often called the civil revolution, and Jefferson s elevation to the Presidency, who, twenty-five years afterward, when he wrote what is now quoted, was not, it is believed, aware of all that preceded his election. As Hamilton and Jefferson, severely denouncing each other s politics, never charged one another with untruth ; and Hamilton, in the civil revolution of 1800, implored Jefferson s election to the presi dency as only fanatical success, which, reversing their fortune, Jefferson might have said of Hamilton, I shall let Jefferson tell how he thought the great and good Washington was tem porarily misled by Hamilton. " General Washington, after the retirement of his first Cabinet and the composition of his second, entirely federal, and at the head of which was Mr. Pickering himself, had no opportunity of hearing both sides of any question. His measures consequently took more the hue of the party in whose hands he was. These measures were certainly not approved by the Republicans; yet were they not imputed to him, but to the counsellors around him ; and his 250 JOHN ADAMS S prudence so far restrained their impassioned course and bias, that no act of strong; mark, during the remainder of his administration, excited much dissatisfaction. He lived too short a time after and too much withdrawn from information to correct the views into which he had been deluded; and the continued assiduities of the party drew him into the vortex of their intemperate career, sepa rated him still farther from his real friends, and excited him to actions and expressions of dissatisfaction which grieved them but could not loosen their affection for him. They would not suffer the temporary aberration to weigh against the immeasurable merits of his life, and although they tumbled his seducers from their places, they preserved his memory embalmed in their hearts with undiminished love and devotion, and there it forever will remain embalmed, in entire oblivion of every temporary thing which might cloud the glories of his splendid life. It is in vain, then, for Mr. Pickering and his friends to endeavor to falsify his character by- representing him as an enemy to Republicans and republican princi ples, and as exclusively the friend of those who were so, and had he lived longer he would have returned to his ancient and unbiased opinions, would have replaced his confidence in those whom the people approved and supported, and would have seen that they were only restoring and acting on the principles of his own first administration." Deprecating wars, with what it is hardly unjust to consider fanatical dread of an inevitable and therefore necessary evil, Jefferson, as Washington s Secretary of State, and afterward more emphatically as President himself, as another chapter of these recollections will show, pronounced Franklin s great postulates of peace not worth war for their maintenance, and that if the United States ventured to war for them, they were not able to wage it successfully against the preponderating re jection of those postulates by Great Britain. The inflammable French, submitting to Genet s indignant removal without a murmur, were not bound by Jefferson s plea of American in ability to resist England, therefore to refrain from the same sea search and other maritime outrages to which the United States submitted from England, as according to English in- sistance of the laws of nations scarce any American legist ever denied, but, on the contrary, subscribing to English perver sion of it, over-ruling to Franklin s doctrine, at last sanctioned ADMINISTRATION. 251 by the great powers. Franklin did not live to enjoy this sanction of his principles inaugurating American principles of government before its sovereignty was acknowledged. Fresh, it may be flushed, though seventy odd years old, by the telling victory of republican militia capturing a royal army of regulars at Saratoga, Franklin ravishing opportunity in lust of luck, extracted from French jealousy of England two precious treaties, whose benign capitulations enlighten and harmonize the world. One in title, spirit, and terms, a treaty of alliance joined the feeble revolted American colo nies in coalition one and indivisible with the powerful French kingdom. The other still more inestimable, for which it is said Turgot s dawning liberalism seconded Franklin s amazing genius for human amelioration, inaugurated evangelical doc trines of international peace, freedom, and charity, as effect ual as electricity, then essayed by him, and since perfected, for individual and national intercourse. Slowly making their way, like Shakspeare, Milton, and Bunyan, for eighty years after their disclosure, struggling for acknowledgment, while stifled, and held in abeyance by militant monarchs and selfish ministers literally barking at them, it was long before man kind were allowed such commercial and intellectual benefac tions as laws of nations, common rights, and universal enjoy ments. Repudiated by American statesmen in horror of French revolution, of which they were among the first and richest promise, they were, like both the American and French revolutions, recognized by treaty of the great European po tentates at Paris in 1856, as and where imparted by the American reformer. When announced in America in 1778, La Fayette burst into a flood of tears of joy, and Washington, by general orders, called on his ragged soldiers to join him in thanks to Almighty God for such benediction. No one joined in that Te Deum with more fervor than the gallant captain of artillery, young Hamilton, and the solid Brigadier Knox, who, as President Washington s Secretaries, in horror of the French revolution, abjured the donation, on the mistaken 252 JOHN ADAMS S assumption that the treaties were not national, but merely royal gifts, and that the nation cruelly put the royal donor to death, and then began war, when it was begun by royal co alition, conducted with more massacral barbarism than the dreadful revolution which it was to extirpate, by subjugation and partition of republican France like Poland. President Adams used publicly to call Franklin a fool. Cobbett s Porcupine G-azette lampooned him with scandalous ribaldry, and even yet there are respectable and well-informed Americans who pronounce him a knave. Much of the wisdom and patriotism of his country exercised restless opposition to his treaties till that wisdom and patriotism succeeded in having them declared void by act of Congress. Ministers of the great potentates of Christendom in Congress assembled pro claimed them the best code of laws for nations to maintain the peace, freedom, and happiness of mankind; Great Britain, long their invincible repudiator, uniting in that homage. Five years preceding either the provisional or definitive treaties of the United States with England acknowledging their inde pendence, prior treaties inaugurated American government on the principles destined eventually to universal acceptance. Shortly before the British acknowledgment of American inde pendence, in October, 1782, Mr. Adams negotiated a treaty of marine amity and considerable liberty with Holland, without the principle of free ships free goods, and some others of the great principles of Franklin s French treaty. Before the definitive treaty of peace between the United States and Great Britain these principles were all repeated by a treaty executed at Paris by Franklin with the Swedish Min ister. In 1785, Jefferson having then succeeded Franklin in the French mission, a treaty was executed by Franklin in London and Jefferson in Paris, together with Adams in Hol land, by which all the principles of Franklin s French treaty of amity and commerce were adopted and consecrated by the great Prussian monarch. Thus, before government was con stituted or begun in the United States, their cardinal principles ADMINISTRATION. 253 of peace, amity, freedom, and equality, and wealth of nations were established by maritime league, uniting the American republic with several of the great powers of Europe for com mon intercourse with preservation of peace and liberty. The inestimable benefits of the era thus inaugurated by Franklin, to be after long repudiation recognized and established incon- testably, are beyond adequate illustration by these cursory and imperfect recollections. History and philosophy will combine to signalize them in American annals as momentous and beneficial as the Declaration of Independence, or the Fed eral Constitution of the United States. A gentleman em ployed in the diplomacy of the United States abroad and at home contemplates a history of its diplomacy, than which no nobler theme can historian or philosopher develop. When the United States, in the outset of their republican experiment, too feeble to brandish a sword for its vindication, but the pen was their best, almost only instrument, many of their most eminent statesmen admirably wielded it as foreign Ministers, whose great works are a great theme for any author; and none more than Franklin s treaties, collated with just pre ceding and just ensuing events ; diplomacy in its most admir able exploits. Peace then first instituted as national obligation with good will to all men abroad as law of nations was interdict of war, prevailing so much less since than formerly that, although like death inevitable, it ceased for the first time in Europe for the long repose of forty years after the downfall of its prodigious champion in 1815. Claimed by his imperial and royal con querors as their work in Congress, that long repose was caused by elevating peoples to share in government, enlightening all princes and peoples with knowledge that liberty, not force, guarantees peace. Nevertheless the United States, peaceable and poor, from apprehensions of certainly formidable and per haps alarming French revolutionary republicanism, initiated by Hamilton contrary to Washington s policy, urged its inces sant reprobation till Franklin s guarantees of international 254 JOHN ADAMS S peace were at last supplanted by Avar. And their repeal not constitutionally declared, but brought about by succession from amity to enmity, and from enmity to hostility, this chap ter has explained how Washington, unquestionable lover of peace and honest champion of neutrality by wrongs of his own countrymen provoking greater French wrongs, was committed to war against France as earnestly as he deemed it just and indisputable against England. In that spirit the first President lived the last years of his life in earnest co-operation with Hamilton and President Adams s Secretaries for hostilities which Adams discovered to be unnecessary and susceptible of accommodation. American government, thus inaugurated abroad was in de plorable inanition of sovereignty acknowledged, but almost wholly deficient at home. Poverty, debts, distraction, such in capacity for several years, from 1783 to 1787, for self govern ment, that the old tyrant George III. was not without Ameri can encouragement to flatter himself that his dull son, then called Bishop of Osnaburg, afterward Duke of York, might perhaps be invited by revolted colonists, to seek relief from dear-bought arid impracticable liberty by renewed allegiance to the son of their old master. Instead of that alternative a Federal Constitution ensued, in which Jefferson abroad had no hand, and Hamilton at hand little heart. But less brilliant or exigible founders more hopeful if not wise, Washington, Franklin, Madison, and their associates carefully and painfully elaborated a work by another great original American reform, harmonizing with Franklin s treaties. Constitutional denial of power to declare war by monarchs, ministers, or individuals, withheld that last and dread resort, the terribly abused play thing of kings, parasites, and ministers, for the representa tives of the common people themselves, who fight the battles, pay the taxes, bear nearly all the burdens, and receive fewest of the rewards. How Franklin s conventional arrangements abroad for preventing war, and constitutional arrangements with Washington, Madison, and others at home for preserving ADMINISTRATION. 255 peace, were frustrated by chimerical hostilities with mere ap prehension inflaming friends to foes, and endangering the rise of republicanism, is the recital of this chapter and moral of its annals. We have seen with what reluctance President Washington, at Hamilton s seldom failing insistance, commissioned Rufus King to take Thomas Pinckney s place as American Minister in England. Washington was displeased at what was said to be John Adams s intimation that there was British influence in Mr. Pinckney s selection, the Duke of Leeds having inquired of Mr. Adams about the Pinckneys, his school fellows, the Duke said, at Havre. Writing, soon after his arrival in London, to Hamilton, Mr. King, in the spirit of American independence and philosophic investigation which characterized him, said: "You know my opinion respecting this country. We have often endeavored to explain appearances that we disliked, and preserve our respect for a nation who have done so much to improve the condition and happiness of mankind." But soon immersed in British traditional aversion to France, embittered by war, local and moral exclusion, fomenting mor tal antipathy, royal, aristocratic, clerical, commercial, social, universal, against everything French, one of Mr. King s first diplomatic strokes, as he proudly informed Hamilton, was "To prevent, as you will see, the sending to you of about fifty Irish State prisoners, who were at the head of the rebellion in Ireland, and closely connected with the Directory at Paris." That exclusion of Irish rebels, who called themselves patriots, as Adams, Washington, Hamilton, and King, rebel ling for less grievous cause against the same British ruler called themselves patriots, by American diplomacy in England and alien acts of Congress in America, in a few years was followed by almost national exody of hundreds of thousands of Irish to do menial and other laborious work, and fill the vast void of the United States. Their diplomatic arrest 256 JOHN ADAMS S because connected with the French Directory, President Adams, by nearly simultaneous sneer at the fears of French directorial invasion of America, wrote to his Secretary of War that " There is no more prospect of seeing a French army here than there is in heaven." Familiarized by long European residence in France, Hol land, and England, with government, policy, and people there, Adams contradicted Hamilton s theoretic apprehensions of revolutionary short-lived existence and sanguine confidence of early and permanent royal restoration results verifying Mr. Adams s prediction. If alternately Bonaparte and Bourbon, republican, royal, and imperial, even though despotism came of democracy, yet democracy predominated, and Gouverneur Morris s reproach of Washington to Hamilton, that by his French welcome of Adet Washington had committed himself, was refuted by reversal of the repose fancied for France in the bosom of legitimate Bourbon kings. But Washington had come to the belief that foreigners, if not nuisances to be abated, ought at least to be much restricted by laws of the United States. And aversion to France had become so overwhelming that war would probably have been declared, as waged, but for alien and sedition acts, whose condemnation by resolutions in the Kentucky Legislature emanating from Jefferson, and in the Virginia Legislature by Madison, like the Letters of the Federalist, had risen to be classical with a large portion of Americans : acknowl edged like the Letters of the Federalist in Europe as au thoritative and admirable elicitation of another crisis to constitute the classics of politics. Nevertheless, after his return from Philadelphia to Mount Vernon, to a friend confess ing conviction that the alien and sedition laws were unconsti tutional, Washington answered, asking "If it was not time and expedient to resort to protecting laws against aliens who acknowledge no allegiance to this country, and, ADMINISTRATION. 257 in many instances, are sent among us for the purpose of poisoning the minds of our people and sowing dissensions among them in order to alienate their affections from the government of their choice, endeavoring to dissolve the Union, and, of course, the fair and happy prospects which were unfolding to us from the Revolu tion." At that time, writing to his nephew, Judge Washington, his uncle informed him that he had sent to General Marshall, then embryo Chief Justice of the United States, just returned from the French mission, the charge of Judge Addison to the Grand Juries, requesting his nephew, the General said, after he had read it, to give it to you. " The charge is on the liberty of speech and of the press, and is a justification of the alien and sedition laws." Washington s approval of the alien and sedition acts was entire. With all his fondness for Hamilton he disliked for eigners, especially Irish and English, prominent, and, as he said, turbulent and offensive in American politics, by means of the press particularly. The sedition act was an injudicious law. But several years after its repeal Mr. Adams, publish ing his vindication from Hamilton and his war party, to whom he ascribed those obnoxious acts, which he wholly disclaimed for himself, intimated his wise experience that an alien act is indispensable in time of war, as President Madison discovered in the war with England, when that kind of police by mere executive authority proved so essential that government could hardly have been conducted without it. With entire approval of the alien and sedition acts, Wash ington confirmed Hamilton s striking expurgation of the list of officers of the Revolution submitted by the President^ through the Secretary of War, to Washington, for selection of such as were to serve under Hamilton, not one being left whose aversion to France and the Republican party was not notorious. Preferring Major-General Knox to Captain Ham ilton for chief command, so likewise the President presented the names of many, besides Gates, Burr, Muhlenburg, and VOL. i. 17 258 JOHN ADAMS S others, for appointment, whose party sympathies not being acceptable, every one such was eliminated from the President s list and an army organized altogether of anti-Gallican and anti-Republican officers, known to be such. Foraging among desultory recollections as the introduction of these craved leave, it may be added in this connection that overruling the equality in all except English military service, deemed best method for merit, Washington wrote to Hamilton that the junior officers should be taken from " young gentle men of good families, liberal education, and high sense of honor;" ordeal which many who might be named, with scores from every army in the world except British, could not abide. Among the French soldiery serving with Washington at the capture of Cornwallis, was an unknown stripling, who returned to France a decided republican, but so poor that he peddled his wife s needle-work about on his back for subsistence till up lifted by the revolutionary waves on which he was among the foremost to mount sword or hat in hand, bareheaded, to lead ill-disciplined but enthusiastic republican volunteers to victory, soon made General, and then created Marshal Jourdan, while troops of "young gentlemen of good families, liberal educa tion, and high sense of honor" were fugitives from their invaded country, if not its invaders. Washington dissuading La Fayette, in 1798, from exposing himself to the French faction in this country, seemed to re turn to the outset of his military career when hostilities with France constituted the main staple of North American colo nial patriotism, with " Chatham s language as the native tongue, And Wolfe s great name compatriot with his own," and when French history and poetry accused Major Washing ton of the unjustifiable death of Major Jumonville, a young French officer, killed, as the French then said, and even yet say, notwithstanding his protection by a flag of truce; assas sination, as they charge, to the very letter confessed in a sub- ADMINISTRATION. 259 sequent capitulation containing that word, the same in both languages, which they averred was dictated by Jumonville s brother taking Washington prisoner, and compelling his sig nature to that confession, in 1754. Without stopping to deny French historical calumny, re futed by all Washington s spotless life, reference to the French prejudice of 1754 may excuse apprehension that its object, organizing armies in 1798 to repel French invasion, experienced some revival of that inextinguishable feeling of race instilling dislike of foreigners and stirring British blood in American veins to natural aversion of French enemies. Obligation of treaties and emotions of gratitude for succor, however vital in extreme need, not natural, but political senti ments, like attachment to an adopted French son, gave way to patriotic conviction that public duty required warfare with former friends become foes. It was natural as well as patri otic for an American to dislike French, and for Washington, in 1798, to feel as he felt in 1754. From the first arrival of French troops to assist the Americans, at Rhode Island, when General Sullivan quarrelled with them, to this time the United States and France have never been able to harmonize. Aliena tion by imposts and tariffs extremely injurious to both nations derange their commercial intercourse, more detrimental to both than that of this country with any other. And hostili ties in arms in 1798, were only preliminary to inimical es trangement ever since. England, in 1786 and 1860, effected commercial treaties with France such as the United States have never been able, or even disposed to have. Excepting a few millions of Irish and Germans, with slight sprinkling of other nationalities, all implored to come by the Declaration of Independence, and induced by inexhaustible cheap lands and superabundant dear labor except those for eigners to cross the breed, all Americans are instinctively proud that they are Anglomen, as Jefferson reproached some with being, all not excepting himself and Washington, almost as English as the little Englishman, as John Adams angered 260 JOHN ADAMS S by Hamilton, with honest pride of New England birth, called that native of the little island of Nevis. There was no occasion for British influence to be exercised by Cobbett and Liston to make all Americans dislike, if not hate, all French, when the depredations, insults, executive resentment, and recriminations of 1798 roused the whole nation to arms and passion. The difference between the head of the French faction, as Jeffer son w r as called by Hamilton, and the monarchist, as Jefferson called Hamilton, was that Jefferson, venerating the birthplace of his ancestors, did so because there kings were reformed by a commonwealth in 1648, and a revolution in 1688, because Hampden and Sidney were born there, and Milton, Locke, Somers, Pratt, Fox, Huskisson, and so in succession of lib eralism down to Bentham, Molesworth, Cobden, and Bright; whereas the England Hamilton preferred was that regulating liberty by law administered by the two Pitts, the two Scotts, Mansfield, Blackstone, Jenkinson, Grenville, and those who conceded Jay s treaty as what he truly announced to Washing ton was the best that could be got. Release by sufferance from pigmy difficulties of frontier posts, and colonial, trade, which the natural growth of the United States would have overcome with a little patience in a short time, was allowed to supersede the sublime providence of immortal stipulations for the grandeur of the United States and welfare of the world. Of the mistaken preference to which Washington was brought, for the British instead of the French treaties, with all the disastrous results briefly set forth in this chapter dis suading his adopted and cherished French son La Fayette from coming, as he intended, to this country to make peace, is me morable indication. One of La Fayette s earliest wishes after his liberation being to visit the United States, he wrote ac cordingly to Washington, but his letters in August and Sep tember did not reach Washington till his arrival in Philadel phia. Dr. Logan s announcement to him at Trenton of his having met La Fayette near Hamburg was probably Washing- ADMINISTRATION. 261 ton s first intelligence of La Fayette s enlargement. Christmas- day 1798, after his return to Mount Vernon, was thereupon devoted to a long letter to La Fayette, to dissuade him from coming to America, because of " Factious opposition to the government by an unprincipled party, whom, without quite Hamilton s severity of reprobation, Washing ton denounced as extremely odious. The scenes," he wrote to La- Fayette, "he would meet with and the part he would be called upon to act, in case of an open rupture with France, even if mat ters should remain in statu quo, would be such as to place you in a situation in which no address or human prudence could preserve you from embarrassment ; you would lose the confidence of one party or the other, perhaps of both, were you there." Not long before the involvement of the United States in precipitated hostilities, Washington s valediction testified that his " Predominant motive had been to gain time to our country to settle and mature its recent institutions, and to progress, without interruption, to that degree of strength and consistency which is necessary to give it, humanly speaking, the command of its own fortunes." How disastrously the settlement and maturity of these re cent institutions, and that progress without interruption would be jeoparded by war, need not be dwelt upon, too alarmingly self-evident to require explanation. Except Jay, there was not an American statesman of that time who did not declare Louisiana indispensable; Washington and Hamilton by force and even seizure by surprise, rather than not at all ; Jefferson preferring spontaneous accretion, though he was ready to yield peace and wage war rather than suffer formidable French to take the place of supine Spaniards. But none of these American founders contem plated more than the sandy east side of the Mississippi, merely to secure the navigation of that river, with no view to the vast west, as it fell into the lap of the United States by the fortunate contingency explained in a future part of these recollections. All was in jeopardy of French reinforced by 262 JOHN ADAMS S Spanish war, when the manifest destiny of the United States, since so much vaunted and ridiculed, was snatched from perdi tion by surreptitious mediation abroad, persecuted as meddle someness, and by presidential revolt against overruling- Secre taries engendering civil revolution, as unlawfully throwing tea overboard prefaced military revolution beginning the career of the United States. Without the providential instrumentality of Logan and Adams to create a world from partisan chaos, there would have been no Louisiana with far West for mother earth of numerous new States and numberless people. Thir teen Atlantic States, with perhaps a few more beyond the mountains and the Mississippi, would be recolonizcd by alliance offensive and defensive with Great Britain for wars against France and Spain. Instead of Great Britain by vast com merce, especially the cotton monopoly, recolonized to the United States for permanent peace, by control of British manufactures, exchanges, and prosperity in unprecedented de velopment, the United States, indebted, impoverished, retarded, and restricted in growth, would have been recolonized to Great Britain for incessant warfare. For in the division of Spanish spoils, which was part of the plan of Miranda and Hamilton, the lion s share must have fallen to the strongest; and Louis iana would in all probability have been annexed to Canada. The Mississippi would have been at least no more than common to the navigation of the United States with England, even if so favorable to the United States. The lakes would of course be much more British than American. In short, without pur suing these boding speculations to prevented results easily foreseen, invasion of Spanish America as reinforcement of war to repel French invasion, with the buttresses Hamilton contemplated for the Federal Constitution, and high-wrought executive progress to prevent the stagnation he deplored and despised, fatal to the patient wisdom of moderation recom mended by Washington s last will, must have terminated the American experiment of republicanism growing in power, by its perversion to vulgar and ruinous glorification. ADMINISTRATION. 263 Spanish war for the liberation of all Spanish America, South and North, by American troops under General Hamil ton, transported by British fleets and supported by British funds, was an enterprise so plausible and fascinating that Ru- fus King felt no hesitation and General Hamilton longed for undertaking, if patronized by President Adams s administra tion, of which there was little reason to doubt, when his Sec retary of State and Minister in England were ardent in its support. Seizing by surprise part of Louisiana Washington contemplated. How much more of the design was imparted to him has not been divulged that I am aware. The last twelve months of his life were spent at Mount Vernon, bestowing his attention equally on military organiza tion and strengthening government against what he openly and earnestly condemned as factious opposition to the Presi dent, the war, and the armaments for its vigorous waging. In the election of John Marshall, returned from his abortive French mission, to Congress, with other advocates of Adams s administration, and defeat of their adversaries, General "Washington took zealous part, disapproving the President s hesitation when he paused, inclining to pacification, which Washington thought should come by French unquestionable proffer, and not of any further American movement. His cordial and conscientious judgment was that resentment by armed repulsion of French injustice, waged at sea, and for which every preparation should be made ashore, was the im perative duty of American patriotism and wisdom. Neutrality asserted by his presidency against French interference in American affairs was applauded by England as wisely anti- Gallican. Jay s solicited treaty, without arresting either im pressment or other British wrongs, sustained at Hamilton s instance by President Washington and the Senate notwithstand ing the people s condemnation, still more approximated his administration and that of his presidential successor to England, at internecine war with the French revolution, even more than with the French nation, Common people throughout Europe, 264 JOHN ADAMS S with less information but less selfish instincts than their rulers, as many of Rufus King s letters to Hamilton characterized the European mass and their rulers, persevered in cherishing deep-seated regard for French revolutionary freedom and re publicanism, and emancipation from the American stereotyped enemy, the British tyrant and his coalition. But French resentment of imputed American ungrateful perfidy, piratical depredations at sea, Jay s treaty, rejection of American peace Envoys, and panderism for their corruption, as exposed by the American government with all its power, together with the much greater power of British influence, social, commer cial, political and religious, wounded American fibres of pride and purse, and it was in Anglo-American blood to seek bloody requital. Under that impression Washington departed this life on the 18th of December, 1799, by sudden death after two days ill ness ; fortunate, it may be said, in the period and even the suddenness of his demise, increasing the shock with which the bereavement struck his country. Those claiming to be his special adherents were in power by majorities in both Houses of Congress in session, with his own presidential Secretaries as Secretaries of President Adams, and martial fervor at its highest elevation. But there was no need of any fomentation for the unanimous reverence which followed Washington to the grave as the father of his country, by far the best of the great men of his time, by his constancy in adversity and mod eration in prosperity, the brightest example of the truest hero ism. When he retired from the presidency there were mur murs by William B. Giles, Andrew Jackson, and a few more, disparaging his administration. But at his death no dissent ient voice disturbed the universal acclaim of all parties united in reverence of his virtues, wisdom, and superhuman rectitude. The French historian before referred to, who as late as 1818 still insisted on the unjust death of Jurnonville, acknowledged that without that stain Washington s glory would be that of the only man with whom modern history cannot compare ADMINISTRATION. 265 any others. Bonaparte, then still republican chief magistrate, offered homage to Washington s memory by a military gen eral order. From that time to this the memories of both Washington and Franklin have been continually growing in veneration, European and American, though at their deaths I believe neither was much noticed in England. But for the period of his death Washington might have seen those he pronounced factious opposition raised to rule over those he preferred. Like his friend Marshall, he might have welcomed peace restored with the provisions of Franklin s treaties. But the extremes of Jefferson s administration, so successful at first, were so much less consonant with Washington s policy than Hamilton s extremes, that Washington, even if reconciled to modern literalism, would hardly have welcomed modern dem ocracy. In several crises, both of war and peace, the execu tive government, particularly as administered by Presidents Madison and Jackson, found it indispensable to resort to Washington s principles. Taking his determined stand for a republican government of liberty, property, and peace, with out either aristocracy or democracy, independent of radical influence from France or royal from England, pressing for his preference, with the co-operation of his two great Secretaries, he inaugurated a federal republic such as had never before been attempted. After his retirement, and the trial of some of the schemes of both Hamilton and Jefferson being found impracticable, eighty years of successful government attest that the best-working elements of American welfare are what Washington inaugurated, without extremes of construction or reduction, but administration with adaptation of parts of the policy of both his great rival Secretaries. Claimed by nearly all of all parties as the father of their common country, though estranged by one and embraced by the other, he left the world with its unanimous veneration everywhere, in other countries as in his own, of an apotheosis always superior and growing daily in strength and beauty by comparison of repub lican with royal, martial, and all other titles to renown. 266 JOHN ADAMS S A recent American traveler throughout Europe, England, France, Italy, Greece, Egypt, and Turkey, the late Henry D. Gilpin, excellent authority, assures us that the names of Washington and Franklin are in universal admiration, which no democratic fanaticism should condemn as man-worship ; for such individuals, more than statues or edifices, like institutions characterize a country; Washington and Franklin being per sonifications of their country s institutions. Differing perhaps more than Jefferson and Hamilton on many of the methods and fundamental elements of republicanism, Washington and Franklin, intimate friends, agreed on the great cardinal prin ciples of republicanism as the best of all governments, and the only government for the States and the United States of North America : Independence, not only of English sover eignty, but all undue English influence, amity with France on the provisions of Franklin s treaty of amity, peace with all other nations, entangling alliances with none, enforcement of law, with perfect order and sacred preservation of property, religion with tolerance, liberty and equality without putrid par tisan demagogism. After having shown how the benevolent interference of Logan, to be now followed by some account of the conse quential revolt of President Adams against the rule of his Secretaries and their warlike commander, saved the United States from hostilities with France and Spain, which must have reversed the whole basis of American institutions, and marred the development of their republicanisms, it does not belong to this narrative or its design to dwell extensively on the party feuds which ensued between the w r ar and the peace divisions of those who elected and nearly re-elected that sturdy, strange, honest, learned, eloquent and patriotic, but indescribable chief magistrate. Shrinking from the intolerable expenses of armaments and taxes for war and commotion, which he had helped to raise, burdening and inflaming a free but poor nation, to fight inva sion which the commander-in-chief averred never would or ADMINISTRATION. 267 could occur, the chief magistrate told his war minister pre paring for it by General Hamilton s direction that it was pre posterous apprehension, which must provoke enthusiasm of opposition, much more to be feared than warlike enthusiasm. Fuming in his isolation at Quincy, he wrote: " One thing I know, that regiments are costly articles every where, and more so in this country than in any other under the sun. If this nation sees a great war to maintain without an enemy to fight, there may arise an enthusiasm that seems to be little foreseen." That dreaded enthusiasm, not for war, but of opposition to it, described by Washington to La Fayette as selfish and fac tious, if not seditious, whose worst symptoms Hamilton saw predominated in the South, Washington was constrained to deplore as emanating from the constituted authorities of his native State, ancient dominion of the constant American pa triotism Washington understood and appreciated much better than Northeastern loyalty. It hardly disparages John Adams s sagacity to suppose that he was not blind to the adumbrations of presidential re-elec tion. And when Hamilton, through Pickering and other satellites, was overshadowing the chief magistracy with Wash ington s living apotheosis, eclipsing Adams s just preferences, it was natural for the President to ask Senator Sedgewick, at tempting to overawe his superior as much in mind as station, what was intended by the amendment to the army act, chang ing Washington s military title, " Are you going to appoint him general. over the President?" as Hamilton and the Presi dent s Secretaries designed. On another occasion, with ex- quisi-te irony but in provincial phrase, writing that General Washington conducted with perfected honor and consistency, which antipleonasm, in good English, would have been, conducted himself, Mr. Adams said: " If I could resign to him the office of President I would do it instantly and with the highest pleasure ; but I never said I would hold the office and be responsible for its exercise while he should execute it, nor has he ever intimated a desire of the kind." 268 JOHN ADAMS S Deferring to Washington s superior hold on public regard when he most reluctantly submitted to placing Captain Ham ilton above every one, even believing, as he hinted, that the old general desiderated the chief command, the President s native Americanism, chafed at not venturing to resist Washington s insistence on pain of refusal to serve, to put the little Englishman Adams so much disliked at the head of an American army which that little Englishman made so extrav agantly costly. While Hamilton revelled in excessive taxation, loans and armaments for sea and shore, with extreme ardor, much greater responsibility oppressed the President with alarming ponderosity. " If you want an army," said the disquieted chief magistrate, as brave as any of them, and as little French in his sympathies, " if you want an army, I will give it to you," speaking with command ing egotism, but wisely adding, " remember it will make the gov ernment more unpopular than all their other acts ; for," said he with perfect truth and superior wisdom, " they have submitted with more patience than any people ever did to the burden of taxes which has been liberally laid on, but their patience will not last always;" on which text Senator Sedge wick reported to Hamilton that Adams dilated extensively, but not to his astonishment, for, said he, with disparagement of Mr. Adams becoming every day more common among his professed adherents in London and Ame rica, " astonishment is a sentiment which he has for some time lost the power to excite." Hamilton s uneasiness was that what he despised as "Dread of popularity might paralyze and prevent the erection of those additional buttresses to the constitution, without which that fabric can hardly be stationary, but will retrograde if it cannot be made to advance." Armies, navies, taxes, and war, nearly all borrowed from England, can it be surprising that from his Eastern rustica tion, alarmed by such emergencies, the President wrote to his Sectetary of war, almost raving, "Our means ! I never think of our means without shuddering. All the declarations as well as demonstrations of Trenchard and ADMINISTRATION. 269 Gordon, Bolingbroke, Bernard and Walpole, Hume, Burgh and Burke rush upon my memory, and frighten me out of my wits." Hamilton, whose disgust at the incapacity of the Secretary of War, James McHenry, a very respectable and industrious officer, we have already seen expressed to Washington, re peated it by again writing to him that 11 My friend McHenry is wholly insufficient for his place, with the additional misfortune of not having the least suspicion of the fact." Mr. McHenry, deserving the respect of both sections of the divided party, was obliged to resign ; and that he did not want passion which, when disciplined, is said to be fruitful of uncommon results, appears by his writing, in November, 1800, to Hamilton: "The chief will destroy himself fast enough without such expo sures. Can it happen otherwise to a man (as I wrote the other day to Mr. Wolcott) who, whether sportful, playful, witty, kind, cold, drunk, sober, angry, easy, stiff, jealous, careless, cautious, confident, close, or open, is so almost always in the wrong place, and to the wrong persons ? My great fear is, that while he is destroying himself he will destroy the government also." Similar disparagement of associated friends Hamilton did not escape, whom Gouverneur Morris considered "More theoretic than practical, not sufficiently convinced that a system may be good in itself, and bad in relation to particular cir cumstances, adding that Hamilton s devotion to executive in pre ference to popular power was so inordinate as to covet war, and even civil war, for its gratification." Confident of his own knowledge from experience of Euro pean affairs as much superior to what he pronounced Hamil ton s ignorant theories concerning them, Adams ridiculed Hamilton s continually repeated assurance that the Austrians and Russians, with their British allies, would overcome the French, by whom they were totally discomfited and coerced to peace, that the Bourbon kings would soon be returned, who were not for many years, if ever; that Pitt would remain 270 JOHN ADAMS S their triumphant supporter in the British ministry, who was even forced to retire that England might make peace with the French republic, all of which mistakes, with what Mr. Adams termed mild contradiction, he described as "Eloquence and vehemence which wrought the little man up to a degree of heat and effervescence like that which General Knox used to describe of his conduct at the battle of Monmouth, and which General Lee used to call his paroxysms of bravery, but which, he said, would never be of any use to his country." In view of the state of affairs ensuing Gerry and Logan s return with assurances of peace, and the President s inclining to credit them, whether his motive was patriotic and laudable, or distorted from right and consistency by partisan apprehen sions of that popularity of which Hamilton might speak with contempt, but the President was obliged to respect, at all events there is no occasion to bring into view the party of which Jefferson was the head. Without active interference, their work was done by that worst of evils, discord among the adherents of the administration. As the President paused, from whatever motive, his party divided between followers of Hamilton and Pickering ardent for war, and adherents of Adams turning to pacification, the chronic distemper of presi dential re-election striking in with the inherent and inevitable divergences of that periodical crisis. The war division of those who chose Mr. Adams President, Timothy Pickering and Oliver Wolcott, descended from Washington s administra tion on Adams, were more Hamilton s Secretaries than the President s. As if General Hamilton s aids-de-camp, they not only counteracted Mr. Adams s plans and policy, but, moreover, betrayed his confidential consultations in Cabinet to those contriving its frustration. Mr. Adams, as he after ward bitterly complained, considered these his Secretaries no better than spies on his actions and designs. Mr. Wolcott, though complaining of General Hamilton s excessive arma ments, was less indiscreet in language respecting the President. But Mr. Pickering gloried in countervailing his measures, ADMINISTRATION. 271 discrediting his appointments, and reviling his character. Be fore his discharge from the State Department, for continual and audacious contumacy, General Izard, long after, told this anecdote of relations hetween President and Secretary: that when a young lieutenant, about to sail for Europe, charged with dispatches for William L. Smith, American Minister in Portugal, just before his departure, at a presidential drawing- room, the Secretary of State, toward the close of it, took Izard to a sofa to let him know what the Secretary of State said he desired told to Mr. Smith. As the Secretary grew warm and loud in his extensive communication, all the com pany left the room except him and his young sole auditor, whom he kept on the sofa while the President walked to and fro before them looking as if he thought they too ought to be gone with every one else. But the angry Secretary persevered, and after long indictment of the President s alleged follies, "Tell Mr. Smith," said he, "that we should do very well but for that old fool, who mars everything." With that extra offi cial message the young bearer of dispatches was at last re leased by the Secretary, and allowed to take leave of the President, still pacing the drawing-room evidently impatient of his rebellious Secretary s presence, though ignorant of his own vilification. Colonel Pickering s termagant temper was vented alike on President Adams, Yice-President Jefferson, and all French men. Scolding epithets, such as devils, miscreants, robbers, monsters, and the like, semi-officially and indiscriminately peppered what he wrote of the French with whom he had diplomatic correspondence, dogmatic skepticism of their offi cial advances, with confused jumble of rhetoric and logic, charging them as cowering like tigers before they leaped upon their prey. Such were the State papers of an honest, dili gent, in many respects not unkind, perfectly sincere states man of furious prejudices, like Robespierre, St. Just, and Marat, outrageous fanatics, such as in all ages and countries abound to perpetrate misdeeds with good intentions. 272 JOHN ADAMS S ADMINISTRATION. Thus distracted and ruined, President Adams s administra tion was doomed to destruction, hastened by Hamilton s war passion, of which Washington s support could neither avert nor long delay the catastrophe. Democracy propagated by Jeffer son in America, and Bonaparte just then rising from military to civic ascendancy, whether republican or imperial, irresisti bly overcame mankind. Ever since prodigiously progressive, however disputed as to whether for good or evil, at all events it has moved onward, making greater reforms in old mon archies than in the American republic ; their transitions from absolute to liberal, ours from republican to democratic. It is too soon yet, or the author of these recollections is in capable of philosophizing on the vast civil revolution which came out of chaos upon all nations at the close of the last and beginning of this century. Altogether belligerant elsewhere, it has been mainly pacific in this country, without the emotions and attractions of hostilities to recommend history. But the levity of these pages is in the annals, not in their description. Tragedy of calamitous war turned to peace, seems to reduce the drama almost to farcical details. Some American Terence may hereafter methodize the multiform plot, where Franklin, Washington, Jefferson, Hamilton, Pickering, Logan, and some others performed parts, which, without the elegant talents of the Carthagenian African, these pages cannot pretend to de pict, but merely sketch their origin, dependencies, contrarieties, and extremities, evolving altogether the national condition of United States still on trial, misapprehended and condemned, admired and imitated by the rest of the world. TREATY OF MORTEFONTAINE. 273 CHAPTER IV. TREATY OF MORTEFONTAINE. THE works and life of John Adams, by his respectable grandson, assert, and Mr. George Gibbs s memoirs of the administrations of Washington and Adams from the papers of Oliver Wolcott, scarcely deny, if they do not acknowledge, strenuous exertions to arrest and prevent President Adams s inclining to pacification, after the return of Gerry and Logan with assurances of French sincere and earnest pacific disposi tion. Oliver Wolcott s papers contain no allusion to the Span ish war, in which design he was probably not involved ; and his fiscal objections to Hamilton s extravagance of warlike disbursements were frequently expressed. To bring about a declaration of war, or at any rate to pre vail on the President not to insert in his next speech to Con gress any intimation that another peace mission was thought of, are said by Mr. Adams to have been anxious efforts of General Hamilton. And as the approaching presidential election involved the result, those apprehending Mr. Adams s deference to the popularity which General Hamilton deemed unworthy, plebeian condescension, resorted to the expedient of commissioning Gouverneur Morris to solicit General Washing ton to stand once more as presidential candidate, by his great weight of character to save the country from dishonorable submission to French injustice, and its factious American solidarity. Washington s sudden death before receiving Mr. Morris s application, not only put an end to that resort, but also to his superintendence, in the sanctity of almost posthu mous retirement, of military organization, which he considered voi. i. 18 274 TREATY OF not more indispensable than political protection from Ameri can connivance with the foreign enemy. Dr. Logan arrived at Paris on the 7th of August, 1798, three days after Mr. Gerry s departure thence homeward, leaving no American Minister at Paris. If free to accept the terms pressed on him by Talleyrand, which he declined, Gerry, the accredited Minister, might have accomplished all so readily granted to Logan, the merely officious, unauthorized agent, whose success was so prompt that on the eighth of September he was publicly complimented for it by the American shipmas ters at Bordeaux, having then forwarded it by another convey ance through the American Consul, Fulwar Skipwith, the only representative person from the United States in France, whose official announcement of accommodation actually effected pre ceded, as we have seen, Dr. Logan s personal transport of the same intelligence. Deborah Logan does not mention that on his way to Paris her husband had an interview, at the Hague, with William Y. Murray, American Minister in Holland. For that important fact we are indebted to General Washington s memorandum of his discontented conversation with Dr. Logan, which does not state whether he mentioned what passed between him and Murray, so that we are not informed how much of his plan, if any, Logan disclosed to Murray. But official correspondence testifies that before Logan saw Murray, the latter had judi ciously paved the way for Logan at Paris. Owing to the estrangement ensuing the only interview of the three Ameri can Ministers with Talleyrand, in October, 1797, he had never seen or been apprised of their temperate instructions, which, in the course of sociable intercourse by Murray with L. A. Pichon, French Secretary of Legation at the Hague, Murray had confidentially imparted to Pichon, to show their pacific tenor, who forthwith dispatched them to Talleyrand according to the ways of diplomacy, especially when amicably inclined. When Logan at Paris kept aloof from Talleyrand, the French Secretary was prepared for friendly negotiation, which his MORTEFONTAINE. 275 last notes to Gerry strongly urged. Dr. Logan could not go amiss, whether he chose Talleyrand the Secretary, or Merlin the Director, for his plea of peace. The Director had more power but not more inclination than the Secretary. On the 9th of July, 1798, never before, shortly prior to Gerry s fas tidious departure impracticable, and Logan s zealous arrival, intensely pacific, Talleyrand had been made aware, and of course made the Directory aware, that the instructions of the American Envoys were pacific, notwithstanding hostile presi dential declamations, acts of Congress, and speeches, and a press clamorous for belligerant retort of the French depreda tions. Before and during Logan s daily familiarity with Merlin, during July, August, and September, Talleyrand, in active correspondence with Pichon, finally, on the 7th Ven- demiare, (29th September,) 1798, completed the French endeavor for peace by the letter here inserted at large : "PARIS, the 7th Vendemiare of the French\ Republic, One and Indivisible. / " The Minister of Exterior Relations to Citizen Pichon, Secre tary of Legation of the French Republic near the Batavian Republic. " I have received successively, citizen, your letters of the 22d and 27th Fructidor, (8th and 13th of September.) They afford me more and more reason to be pleased with the measure you have adopted to detail to me your conversations with Mr. Murray. These conversations, at first merely friendly, have acquired consist ency by the sanction I have given them by my letter of the llth Fructidor, (29th of August,; I do not regret that you have trusted to Mr. Murray s honor a copy of my letter; it was in tended for you only, and contains nothing but what is conformable to the intentions of government. I am thoroughly convinced that should explanations take place, with confidence, between the two Cabinets, irritation would cease, a crowd of misunderstandings would disappear, and the ties of friendship would be the more strongly united, as each party would discover the hand which sought to disunite them. "But I will not conceal from you that your letters of the 2d and 3d Yendemiare, (23d arid 26th of September,) just received, surprise me much. What Mr. Murray is still dubious of, has been very explicitly declared, even before the President s message to 276 TREATY OF Congress, of the 3d Messidor (21st of June) last, was known in France. I had written so to Mr. Gerry, namely, on the 24th Mes sidor (12th of July) and 4th Thermidor (22d of July,) and re peated it to him before he set out. A whole paragraph of my letter to you, of the llth Fructidor, (29th of August,) of which Mr. Murray has a copy, is devoted to develop still more the fixed determination of the French government. According to these bases, you were right to assert that whatever Plenipotentiary the government of the United States might send to France to put an end to the existing differences between the two countries, would be undoubtedly received with the respect due to the representative of a free, independent, and powerful nation. " I cannot persuade myself, citizen, that the American govern ment need any further declarations from us to induce them, in order to renew the negotiations, to adopt such measures as would be sug gested to them by their desire to bring the differences to a peace able end. If misunderstandings on both sides prevented former explanations from reaching that end, it is presumable that those misunderstandings being done away, nothing henceforth will inter pose obstacles to the reciprocal dispositions. The President s in structions to his Envoys at Paris, which I have only known by the copy given you by Mr. Murray, and received by me the 21st Mes sidor, (9th of July,) announce, if they contain the whole of the American government s intentions, dispositions which could only have added to those which the Directory has always entertained; and, notwithstanding the posterior acts of that government, not withstanding the irritating and almost hostile measures they have adopted, the Directory has manifested its perseverance in the sen timents which are deposited both in my correspondence with Mr. Gerry and in my letter to you of the 1 1th Fructidor, and which I have hereinbefore repeated in the most explicit manner. Convey therefore, citizen, to Mr. Murray those positive expressions, in order to convince him of our sincerity, and prevail upon him to transmit them to his government. " I presume, citizen, that this letter will find you at the Hague ; if not, I ask it may be sent back to you at Paris. " Salute and fraternity, (Signed) CH. MAIL TALLEYRAND." That palpable invitation, strong as it was in concessions, by capitulation even to the President s bombastic assurance to Congress of the 21st of June, 1798, that he would never send another Minister to France unless acknowledged as represent ing a great and powerful nation, was not much more pacific MORTEFONTAINE. 277 than had been the uniform language of French government. Whether it was then a a cowering tiger," according to Secre tary Pickering s nonsense, by a change superinduced by Ameri can defiance roused by Talleyrand s imputed solicitation of a loan and a bribe, beyond all doubt the Directory manifested anxiety for peace, and the only remaining question seemed to be whether the United States should send, or wait till the French sent, a Minister. General Washington appeared to prefer the latter. The Secretary of State and General Ham ilton, with most of their followers, vehemently opposed and denounced the French advances as false and perfidious double- dealing. In defiance of their violent resistance, though not without misgivings of his own as to French sincerity, amid a storm of contradiction raging around him, the President re solved to accept the French proffer through Mr. Murray, by transferring him from Holland to France as American Minister, which was announced to the Senate, of course con fidentially, and without the knowledge of the President s Secretaries, sending the following by Mr. Shaw, his Secre tary : FEBRUARY 18, 1799. " GENTLEMEN OF THE SENATE : I transmit to you a document which seems to be intended to be a compliance with a condition mentioned at the conclusion of my message to Congress of the twenty-first of June last. "Always disposed and ready to embrace every plausible appear ance of probability of preserving or restoring tranquillity, I nomi nate William Vans Murray, our Minister resident at the Hague, to be Minister Plenipotentiary of the United States to the French republic. " If the Senate shall advise and consent to his appointment, effectual care shall be taken, in his instructions, that he shall not go to France without direct and unequivocal assurances from the French government, signified by their Minister of Foreign Rela tions, that he shall be received in character, shall enjoy the privi leges attached to his character by the law of nations, and that a Minister of equal rank, title, and power shall be appointed to treat with him, to discuss and conclude all controversies between the two republics by a new treaty. " JOHN ADAMS." 278 TREATY OF How that nomination, made without the knowledge of his Secretaries, in spite of personal, official, senatorial, party, and other oppugnation, was received, the following letter from Theodore Sedgewick, a Senator, to General Hamilton, betrays, written during the public rejoicings for Washington s birthday, February 22, 1799:- " I have seen, as far as they are in the office of the Secretary of State, Mr. Murray s communications relative to the intercourse between him and Pichon. Part of his letters have been immedi ately addressed to the President. As far as I have seen, there is more evidence of integrity than of wisdom. It is one of the mis fortunes to which we are subjected by the wild and irregular starts of a vain, jealous, and half-frantic mind, that we are obliged to practice in infraction of correct principles, a direct communication between the President and the Senate. I am this morning to wait on him and solicit an interview between him and the committee on his nomination. The objects are to induce him to alter it as re spects the person ; and instead of an individual, to propose a com mission, as it respects the principles on which the negotiation shall commence, and as it respects the scene within which it shall be car ried on. On all these points, I am told, and from good authority, he has formed strong opinions. If they are unalterable I believe I must vote against the appointment. But at present I think that is not the inclination of a majority. A circumstance confirmatory of the President s total ignorance of human nature, is that he fre quently declared he believed the message would add to the federal energies of the legislature." Senatorial expostulation, so disparagingly expressed of the President by Senator Sedgewick, with his committee, objecting to Murray s nomination, suggesting at any rate a more solemn embassy, and the favorable impression made on the public by Murray s nomination, induced the President, within three days of the committee s visit, to add two more Ministers to Murray, officially acknowledging by his letter to the Senate, the many manifestations of public opinion on this subject. "MONDAY, February 125, 1799. "The following written message was received from the President of the United States, by Mr. Shaw, his Secretary : "GENTLEMEN OF THE SENATE: The proposition of a fresh negotiation with France, in consequence of advances made by the MORTEFONTAINB. 279 French government, has excited so general an attention, and so much conversation, as to have given occasion to many manifesta tions of the public opinion, from which it appears to me that a new modification of the embassy will give more general satisfaction to the legislature and to the nation, and perhaps better answer the purposes we have in view. " It is upon this supposition, and with this expectation, that I now nominate "Oliver Ellsworth, Esq., Chief Justice of the United States; "Patrick Henry, Esq., late Governor of Virginia; and "William Yans Murray, Esq., our Minister resident at the Hague, to be Envoys Extraordinary and Ministers Plenipotentiary to the French republic, with full powers to discuss and settle, by a treaty, all controversies between the United States and France. " It is not intended that the two former of these gentlemen shall embark for Europe until they shall have received from the Executive Directory assurances, signified by their Secretary of Foreign Rela tions, that they shall be received in character ; that they shall enjoy all the prerogatives attached to that character by the law of na tions ; and that a Minister or Ministers, of equal powers, shall be appointed and commissioned to treat with them. "JOHN ADAMS." Whatever may have been the state of things when Generals Pinckney and Marshall, with Mr. Gerry s coincidence, officially reported them before the two former left Paris, preceding Gerry s departure and Logan s arrival, French solicitation of peace came at last to absolute contrast with American persist ence in hostilities. The imputed insult by bribery, vehemently denied at once, as we have seen, was now followed by extin guishing requirement of explanation of the President s resent ing Barras s farewell speech, and for a loan, together with official assurance that the French government would receive whatever Minister the United States might send in the very terms of the President s high-toned condition. Nothing re mained in dispute but depredations, against whose continuance Logan was authorized to give assurances, and by acts inform his government, as he did, that all cause of hostility was at an end, and the doors wide open to amicable negotiation. Nothing remained but to deny French sincerity, and to insist on their first sending a Minister. Under those circumstances of strange and curious suspicion, 280 TREATY OF abroad and at home, Talleyrand s letter to Pichon, forwarded by Murray, forcing peace on the reluctant Executive of the United States, like Jay s instructions, before mentioned as re maining yet a State secret Murray s important letter gave rise then to controversial, conjectural, and extremely contra dictory disputation, which leaves it still among the nebulous asteroids of American annals. According to the record, Tal leyrand s letter was communicated to Colonel Pickering by Mr. Vans Murray in a private letter of the 12th of October, 1798, received at the Department of State the 4th of January, 1799. On the 22d of February, 1799, Senator Sedgewick in formed General Hamilton that he had seen, 11 As far as they are in the office of the Secretary of State, Mr. Murray s communications relative to the intercourse between him and Pichon. Part of his letters have been immediately addressed to the President. " On the 26th of February, 1799, Vice-President Jefferson, from the Senate chamber, writing to Mr. Madison, mentioned "A conjecture as to the Executive that they had received Talley rand s letter before or about the meeting of Congress, and kept it secret," for sinister purposes, which he states, but certainly in error as to the time of the letter s receipt. Mr. Adams s or his grandson s long posterior explanation is inexplicit as to when Murray s letter with Talleyrand s came to Mr. Adams s knowledge ; ten days later it states than his receipt on the 21st of January, 1799, of the Directory s an swer to the Dutch offer of mediation, which would put Mur ray s and Talleyrand s communications into the President s possession about the beginning of February. But according to the record they had then been in the Department of State three weeks from and after the fourth of January. And his nomination of Murray to the Senate was not till two weeks more had elapsed. Could the President require, would per emptory John Adams take, so much time to make up his mind? Was Talleyrand s letter kept from his knowledge so long or at all ? MORTEFONTAINE. 281 Criticising Jefferson s letter of the twenty-sixth of February to Madison, Adams s biographical animadversion is that " Jefferson s letters during that period scarcely do him credit ;" the same biographical page adding that " the Secretary of State, exultingly vindictive, informed General Washington, three days after the event, that the President was suffering the torments of the damned at the consequences of his nomination." This is not quite transparent as to whose nomination it means, or whether the President s torments began with the first or the second nominations. Unexplained and inexplicable delay of six weeks suffered to elapse between the receipt of Murray s letter with Talleyrand s, and Murray s nomination, is an unquestionable fact proved by the department record. But Mr. Adams s biographical censure of Mr. Jefferson s aspersions on the Executive, suspected of withholding the letter, and of Mr. Pickering s vindictive malice, does not accuse him of any instrumentality in the misdeed, by his de partment devolved specially on his management. We may leave it in doubt with Milton s line in the Samson Agonistes "For evil news rides post, while good news baits." The President, Deborah Logan says, with significant ges ture, told Dr. Logan that he would nominate neither him, Mr. Giles or Mr. Burr, but whom he pleased. His independent selection, certainly not courting party opponents, fell on Oliver Ellsworth, Chief Justice, taken from the Supreme Court of the United States, as President Washington took Chief Justice Jay, to send abroad on foreign missions, and Patrick Henry, whose place was afterward filled by William Richardson Davie, both uncompromising in their anti-Gallican politics, but statesmen of the highest respectability. As the President officially and repeatedly assured the Senate that they should not go on their errand till he had unquestionable assurance of their reception on the terms of his braggart pro mise to Congress, they did not leave this country till the 6th of November, 1799, and then going by way of Lisbon, did not 282 TREATY OP join Mr. Murray in Paris till February, 1800. Great events rendered the last year of the last century perhaps the most memorable of it altogether. American transactions as usual were insignificant in comparison with the vast occurrences in Europe, Africa, and Asia, agitating and altering the world. With these succinctly narrated, a large chapter might be filled. But as somewhat connected with our affairs or sympathies, the most worthy of notice were the final retirement of Suwar- row, retreating back to Russia, with not more than thirty of the eighty thousand barbarians he had triumphantly marched into Italy, the capitulation of the Duke of York with all his Russian and British forces at Alkmaar, the eighteenth of Oc tober, and, on the ninth or tenth of November, the usurpation of the French chief magistracy by Bonaparte returned from Egypt, and acclaimed by nearly the unanimous and enthusiastic French nation, as if elected by all their votes given in uni versal suffrage for his consulate. One of his first acts was to \ restore Talleyrand, who had been dismissed, to the depart ment of exterior affairs. And though Bonaparte and Talley- 1 rand became the detestation even to mockery of American \ opinion, yet this chapter will signalize both as ardent cham- i pions of those American principles of maritime independence 1 and freedom, which Franklin s treaty introduced, and the j French ruler sustained as the most if not only effectual coun teraction of British sea despotism, as intolerable and mortify ing asahe despotism with which, by conflict with it, Bonaparte was provoked and encouraged to overrun and subjugate so much of the earth. Fortunately for an extremely difficult, if not impracticable embassy, our Ministers found Bonaparte in the first stage of the immense power he used so admirably for peace at home and international amity, till compelled by foreign aggressors to postpone the pre-eminent administrative faculties in which he excelled, in order to draw the sword he had sheathed. Ellsworth, laying aside, if my recollection is right, the scar let robes in which he presided in the Supreme Court at Phila- MORTEFONTAINE. 283 delphia, like his successor, Marshall, a man of superior ability, and like him tall, ungraceful, and awkward, was less noticed by Bonaparte than General Davie, well looking and sociable, with some military odour about him, or Murray, better broke at the Hague to diplomatic urbanity; whose English wife, after her husband s death, when she retired to pass her widowhood in England, preserved and gratefully exhibited to an American minister, who told me of it, many written tokens of that amiable and profuse hospitality with which Joseph Bonaparte entertained them in Paris, and at his country residence Morte- fontaine. The President was not satisfied that the French could be trusted, his Secretary of State was vociferous that they could not be, General Hamilton considered war with the French revolution a Christian obligation, and indispensable to rectify the Federal Constitution, Liston persuaded society, Cobbett bullied the community, and Washington was induced to believe that a French party in the United States, conspiring with a French faction for general havoc and demoralization, was the state of affairs when the American Ministers took their departure for France. Every day s experience abounds with innumerable proofs that truth is not human, but delusion, in dividual and national, much more prevalent. That we cannot foresee what is to happen is scarcely more human infirmity than that we can seldom tell truly what has happened. In tense and general European, and especially English, engen dering much American abhorrence of Bonaparte s overreach ing and overpowering career, derided and cried down to proverbial ridicule and scorn his asserted regard for the United States, branded as a falsehood, impudent and despic able. But that he nevertheless earnestly seconded the policy by which King Louis XVI. was deemed entitled to the grati tude of the United States, and that he carried its principles much farther than the French king and his ministry, for enlisting the maritime faculties and avowed principles of this country to countervail the sea dominion and colonial grandeur 284 TREATY OF of Great Britain, is testified by such historical unquestionable proofs as must put an end to all incredulity on the subject. British naval supremacy during the American revolution was by no means incontestable as Bonaparte found it. The royal government of France contended for the sea by force. The consular government had no chance but upon principles. So that Bonaparte was constrained to cultivate sea freedom, when no French fleet could go to sea without almost certainty of in curring the fate of Aboukir in 1798 and Trafalgar in 1805. Bonaparte s only hope was to undermine his marine con querors by principles. And confessing that it was hopeless to attempt counterpoising them by force, American principles of maritime liberty and equality were the only means by which the acknowledged mistress of the ocean could be brought to share foreign commerce and colonial opulence with France and other nations, which, when Bonaparte assumed the French government, had been the long-settled policy of that aspiring nation under all its rulers, royal and republican. Peace, commerce, and colonies, were therefore the first ambition of a warrior not perhaps sated with territorial victories, but con strained to perceive that they were not then his first policy. Accordingly with that impression the first of all his numerous treaties of peace was with the United States in September, 1800, with its accompaniment the treaty by which he got from Spain the cession of Louisiana. Bonaparte found that seven years of inglorious enmity, aggravated at last to marine hostility with the American republic, had been closed by the Directorial government he overturned, and that the transatlantic republican advocate of sea freedom might be easily associated with the maritime States of Europe, all eager for such combination against one irresistible ruler of the waves. One of Bonaparte s favorite maxims and profoundest creeds was, that ideas are stronger than men ; which, with all his pro vocation to war and superiority in waging it, if more prac ticed, might have profited him more than force. At the MORTEFONTAINE. 285 outset of his administrative career he was convinced that, for overcoming England, old Franklin s dispassionate provi sions were infinitely more effectual than any young warrior s weapons. Wherefore, with as ardent circumspection as he prepared for the battles of Austerlitz, Wagram, or Moskva, he intrenched behind liberty, equality, and peace. Nor in any of Napoleon s proclamations, general orders, bulletins, or other appeals to that imagination which he considered the chief motive power of war was there an idea more captivating to the French than proclaiming afresh in 1800 by treaty with the United States, the resistance to British domination inaugurated by treaty with them in 1778. Warfare without arms was to resist the audacious insolence of search, colonial monopoly, equally pernicious to both colony and metropolis, disturbed exaggeration of contraband, monstrous fiction of blockade, and other sea wrongs adjudicated by admiralty, perverting international law into a piratical code of illegal seizure, and conversion, spoliation, and destruction of commerce by sea, which Bonaparte was obliged to confess was irresistible by arms on that exclusive English domain. Elaborated as most of his resolves were in the eager and subtle agitations of a o o mind seldom asking others to confirm its designs or share his responsibility, the mightiest of all his foes, who had stripped France of her foreign commerce and colonies, and driven her navies all from the ocean, must be assaulted not by armed but by unarmed mariners, by universal maritime coalitions, French, American, and European, by French-American colonies recov ered, by French and American identical assertions of interna tional freedom and maritime independence. For this purpose, Louisiana and St. Domingo, conquered by England from France, were to be regained by her, as colonies acquired and commerce extended. Inconsistent with peace and liberty as the enormous empire and despotism to which in their stead Napoleon was conducted the triumphant Dictator, the time has come, and certainly this country is the meridian for historical averment that Bonaparte might not have been what he died. 286 TREATY OF No more admirable vindication of the rights of neutrals has ever appeared than the chapter he dictated as some relief for the confinement he underwent at St. Helena; nor is any fact more undeniable than that his determination to fortify the United States in those principles, is manifested in the treaties with them of 1800 and 1803, finally reasserted and completely established as laws of all nations by his imperial successor and disciple, with the consent of all nations, at the congress of 1856. Glad to preface the many treaties of peace with which he inaugurated his policy by one leaguing a maritime republic with the French republic, Bonaparte welcomed the Ameri can Envoys with the good-will to the United States uniform under the administrations of both Bonapartes uncle and nephew. By an Executive order or decree of the 4th of March, 1800, the first Consul appointed his brother Joseph, with Charles Peter Claret Fleurieu and Peter Louis Rsederer com missioners to treat with the American Ministers. As further evidence of pacific intention, Mr. Pichon was transferred from the Hague to Paris, to serve as secretary of the commis sion, in order that the originator might be the finisher of re stored harmony. Joseph Bonaparte, too, always peacemaker in all his eminent stations, republican and royal, placed at the head of this congress, was enabled to perform the most im portant part, as three years later uniform benevolence induced his intervention with his overruling brother for the sale of Louisiana. Joseph as head of the French, and Ellsworth of the American board, diligently strove to solve what the first American note termed the. strange phenomenon of differences dividing the countries ; the whole six meeting frequently, sometimes at Joseph s residence, and by elaborate notes inter changed endeavoring to settle an impracticable difficulty. The Americans insisted, as instructed, for indemnity in money for indisputable depredations by sea. The French claimed dam ages for non-compliance with express stipulations of Frank- MORTEFONTAINE. 287 lin s treaties of 1778 for defence of the French West India Islands in war. The Americans replied that acts of Congress annulled those treaties. The French rejoined that treaties could not be annulled by act of one party to a treaty. By the latter end of August amicable discussion came nearly to a dead stand, and but for the victory of Marengo, enabling Bo naparte to be magnanimous to the Americans, as he was when he released the Austrian prisoners taken at that battle, con tinued rupture with this country would have ensued. Soon after the arrival of our Envoys at Paris, the last of Bonaparte s republican victories, gained at Marengo, the 14th of June, 1800, enabled him to display that generosity of power which he deemed policy, by concession to the United States, casting away pelf, which he always disregarded, and restoring with improvements the great principles of Frank lin s treaty. Soon after Bonaparte s mysterious arrangements for passing the Alps, as Suwarrow or any other warrior never imagined possible, on the 9th of May, 1800, by a familiar family letter never published till lately, fifty-five years after it was written, Joseph Bonaparte, in the course of various inti mate domestic intelligence, such as one brother might give another of their own family concerns, apprised the consul that settlement with the Americans was impossible. " Our negotiation with America," Joseph wrote, " is barred by absolute antagonism of the instructions of the two governments. The Minister cannot change ours for us, which is convenient enough. Our first instructions were : 1, preservation of former treaties ; 2, indemnities to grant. The Americans cannot treat on the basis of maintaining former treaties which they are enjoined to consider at an end, and they wish to make new ones. As these treaties could not be rescinded but by the will of the two parties, or by the fact of war, that is a fact which must be agreed upon, and in that case make peace 1, to cement it by new treaties ; 2, not accord in demnity, because the injury we did the Americans was by war, and we may not buy peace." Bonaparte s the sword to cut that Gordian knot, was not then the sword with which Napoleon conquered Europe. Bishop Chiarrmonte , a republican, was elected Pope Pius 288 TREATY OF VII. in March, 1800, by Bonaparte s active agency, attend ing the Te Deum at Milan for that difficult election. By the treaty of Lune ville, negotiated by Joseph in 1801, the inde pendence of all the five republics, Batavian, Helvetian, Ligu- rian, and Cisalpine, was recognized. Incredulous as subsequent conquests, fomenting inordinate ambition, have rendered nearly all mankind, Bonaparte s obvious interest was pacific in 1800, when he effected peace with all nations, but one disdainfully rejecting the proffer, England said, of any such man. Faction quelled, tranquillity established, religion restored, pure morals, public schools, arts and sciences revived, property protected, territorial improvements, finances from dilapidation raised to economical abundance, crime and vice severely restrained and punished, probity public and private, with all that renders society respectable and content, perfect impartiality in the distribution of offices, all these were the consular administra tion of France, with complete cessation of intestine strife. Peace was as plainly French policy as that of coalitions by foreign monarchs to prevent the growth of a formidable French republic in their midst, headed by a man of superior genius for government. Ambitious as he undoubtedly was, and bent on placing France at the head of Europe, why not emulate the French favorite of all their monarchs, Henry IV., or the great Frederick of Prussia, or the celebrated American Washington, crowning warlike achievements by pacific hero ism, inclination eminently manifested by all Bonaparte s con sular government ? On his way home from Marengo his own estimate of all his brilliant Italian and Egyptian triumphs was that they would not fill with his name a single page of uni versal history. Making La Fayette s liberation from an Aus trian dungeon the article of a treaty of peace, putting the French army in mourning by general orders for the death of Washington as founder of a republic, hastening his army home from Italy by forced marches to Paris that they might be present at a celebration of the anniversary of the demoli tion of the bastile, expressly forbidding all triumphal arches, MORTEFONTAINE. 289 or other such demonstrations for his own return; at Lyons, on his way, he promised the inhabitants of that inflexibly republican mart of manufactures that he would restore peace, commerce, colonies, and freedom. All these actions contradict historical and probable denial that Bonaparte s first consular predilection was pacific, if not even according to his sense of the term republican, as most conducive to French grandeur and his own renown. But chief magistrate and ambitious ruler of what he was bent on rendering the greatest of nations, his military glory full to satiety, France, once great at sea, -was no longer known there. England had driven her from the ocean, taken nearly all her colonies, and deprived her of all foreign commerce. Within sight of the French shore stood one intangible foe, erect and defiant, blockading her ports, annihilating her ex ports, haughtily rejecting the consular advance for peace, while cruising, careering, and conquering all over the globe. Bonaparte s getting to Egypt was only escaping British fleets; his return to France was only famous by that infamous won der, and the fleet which transported him out was totally destroyed so as to prevent its taking him back again. With no conceivable motive for saying what he did not think, the constant tenor of his familiar conversation, of which he was always prodigal, testified by such of those in his inti macy, Marbois, Talleyrand, and others, as had no inducement to misrepresent it favorably, was that the wisest rivalry for nations is by useful enterprises for commercial intercourse, to exchange their products profitably, to surpass each other in progressive prosperity. All who knew him best considered him bent on peace. With that impression consisted the endeavor by pacific coalition and for sea freedom to compel England, irresistibly waging war with one hand while selling wares with the other, to relax her exclusive hold on commerce and colonies, and share their profits with all other seafaring nations. For maritime coalition, or armed neutrality without actual hostilities, were the only means of coping with Great VOL. I. 19 290 TREATY OF Britain. Studying this chief problem of that policy with the intensity which marked all his pursuits, Bonaparte came to the conclusion that foreign commerce and colonies were the magical arts by which ten millions of Englishmen kept twenty-five millions of fighting Frenchmen at bay, and all the rest of mankind in awe or under tribute. Those he stig matized as English shopkeepers subsidized all the rest of Europe combined against France; subdued the East Indies and the West, held American colonies larger than either France or England had lost there, expelled French, Dutch, Italian, Spanish, northern European, and all other vessels from the seas, except American, circumscribing and plunder ing them by a prize code as arbitrary and controlling as the continental system and conscription devolved by French re publican energy on Bonaparte s administration. Not ascrib ing the wonders worked by the invincible islanders to tradi tional liberty and labor-saving ingenuity, but to Cromwell s vigorous navigation laws, and Chatham s vigorous ministry, continued by his anti-Gallican son, French counteraction must be by principles of freedom, to cope with what could not be overthrown by arms, by free trade, administered by his own energetic government combined with all maritime nations, in cluding the American republic, whose resistance of the great monopolist of the ocean France had always cultivated. To constrain the British navy and admiralty to conform at sea to the law of war as enforced ashore, was achievement beyond Bonaparte s power as warrior, but dear to his ambition. Franklin s treaty of 1778 inaugurated principles on which all nations would unite against England, not in arms, but by laws recognized by all except her; doctrines in the wooden horse to be peaceably introduced to undermine the wooden walls of England. What wiser or vaster ambition could inspire a French chief magistrate than revival of such law of nations for maritime peace ? With what pertinacious ardor Bonaparte labored to estab lish these great principles of maritime freedom, and to remove MORTEFONTAINE. 291 the most frequent cause of repeated wars, by a principle of peace more effectual than all the British navy, and its most for midable foe, and with what inflexible tenacity England adhered to her navy, victoriously working the lever of eternal hostili ties, is curiously shown by an official communication, as it may be considered, though addressed to the Secretary of State by Mr. King as a private gentleman at home, just after he ceased to be a foreign Minister, dated in July, 1803, as follows, which he styles an anecdote: "As it is possible," he states, "that another attempt will be made, during the present war, to establish the rule that free bot toms make free goods, I ought not to omit the communication of the following anecdote. Soon after the British armament in March past, Bonaparte sent his aid-de-camp Du Roi to Berlin to an nounce his determination to occupy Hanover, and to close the Elbe against England in the event of war. The Prussian Cabinet. a thing very rarely done, immediately dispatched a courier with orders to Baron Jacobi, the Prussian Ambassador at London, to apprise the English government of the views of France, to im press the dissatisfaction with which Prussia had learned them, and to offer to protect Hanover and the north of Germany, provided that England would give her consent to the principle that free ships should make free goods. The English Cabinet immediately replied, that the German empire is bound to protect the rights of its several members; that Hanover must therefore look to Ger many, and not to England, for support; and in respect to the proposed rule, that free ships should make free goods, that no ad vantage or service which could be named, would be sufficient to engage England to give it her sanction. In any circumstances this would be the opinion of England. In the present instance, if I mistake not, the proposition was believed to have come indirectly from Paris." So ardently was Bonaparte bent on peace, commerce, and colonies, particularly Louisiana, and on maritime freedom to secure them, when forced by England to war, empire, and continental despotism, that he proffered Hanover, the patrimo nial and favorite royalty of the English reigning family, which he designed to make, as he did, his first conquest, when England began the war, as a price for those objects of his most earnest and ardent desire. How ardently Bonaparte 292 TREATY OF was then resolved on commercial and colonial wealth for France he long afterward explained to an English visitor at St. Helena, to whom, explaining the continental system which England compelled France to substitute for peace, Napoleon said : "If I had not fallen, I would have changed the face of com merce, as well as the route of industry. I had naturalized sugar and indigo among us. I would have naturalized cotton and many other things. I should have been seen displacing colonies, if others continued obstinate in not allowing us a share." Such were the ruminations of that mighty mind when all its thoughts and energies were forced from peace and liberty to war, dominion, and dynasty. All the natural American subordination of belief to colonial adoption of British doctrine hardly suffices for the distrust of Bonaparte s sincerity in earnest adoption of American mari time principles. With them he as ardently contemplated at least some other American predilections. Popular suffrage more universal than the American, and equality far surpassing either English or American, he found essential to even dynas tic aspirations. Maritime equality with England by means of American principles was his only redemption from hated British control. Under these impressions he found the negotiation with America at a dead stand, as his brother Joseph wrote to him, when the first Consul engrossed by other cares had no time to attend to that subject ; and which after his return he had not leisure to take ftp at once, or, when undertaken, to arrange satisfactorily. By Joseph s Diplomatic Memoirs, where the whole of this affair is narrated, it appears that the American Ministers were on the point of demanding their passports, and taking their departure, when to their great surprise and relief, on the 9th of September, 1800, Joseph most unexpectedly announced his brother the Consul s order to omit all vexatious and intractable recriminations concerning damages, and forth with to lay a broad basis on great principles equally dear to MORTEFONTAINE. 293 both republics. Joseph s Memoirs, not published till more than half a century after the transaction, manifests beyond cavil Bonaparte s generous but politic, commanding, and characteristic interposition for peace on that occasion, by that arrangement, and his constantly impregnable resolution to make peace with the United States on their own principles of maritime independence of English domination. The editor of Joseph s Memoirs states that " The great man who directed everything in France, more de sirous to get an ally for France, and an enemy to Great Britain on the seas, than to procrastinate the negotiation, gave his brother orders to pretermit the pecuniary difficulties, and secure the great principle of neutral rights. Provisional articles to that effect were thereupon drawn, and a few days later, on the thirteenth of Sep tember, the American Ministers communicated an accordant vote." Bonaparte, addicted to cutting Gordian knots, ordered the beneficent second article of that treaty, postponing for ulterior adjustment the conflicting claims of each party for damages, and induced the American Envoys to reconstruct, with im provements, the dilapidated laws of nations vouchsafing mari time liberty and equality as installed by Franklin s treaty of 1778, and consecrated by the treaty of all the powers at Paris in 1856. The treaty of Mortefontaine manifests what great sacrifices of French claims for indemnities in money, of French pride and French interests, what natural impulses of a great and vain nation Bonaparte suppressed, to what large concessions he submitted, in order to heal an unfortunate rupture with a sister republic, return to the benignant principles of Frank lin s treaty of 1778, and revive international peace with free dom of the seas. The proclamation of neutrality in 1793, the British treaty in 1794, whole tissues of hostile acts of Con gress in 1797, 1798, and 1799, obnoxious to French resent ment, denounced as perfidious ingratitude for French revolu tionary succor, as palpable breaches of Franklin s treaty of 1778, justly provoking retaliation on American commerce, 294 TREATY OF all these grievances were overlooked that the treaty of Morte- fontaine might re-enact that of 1778, with extension of its admirable principles of freedom and peace. That marine providence that free ships make free goods was proclaimed afresh, with improved sanctions of unrestricted and unmolested navigation, restraining sea search, blockade, contraband, and prize proceedings, curbing war and its enor mities, and enlarging the rights of all nations not at war, all so regulated by beneficent treaties at Versailles in 1778, and at Mortefontaine in 1800, and finally at Paris in 1856. Immediately afterward the Emperor Paul of Russia, by a signal act of Bonaparte s politic magnanimity, charmed and converted to his adhesion, on the 16th of December, 1800, executed at St. Petersburg a treaty with Sweden, to which Denmark and Prussia forthwith subscribed, coercive on bel- ligerants to respect neutral rights, particularly that of the free ship making the cargo free. Not content with the solemn promulgation of that great principle, the violent auto crat seized all the British vessels in his ports, with their cargoes, and was assassinated on the night of March 23d, 1801, as was said by many French because of his sudden and sharp conversion to the policy of the great counteracter of British control ; his death certainly not regretted by Lord Whitworth, the British Minister at St. Petersburg, or other true Britons. In January, 1801, an embargo was laid on all Russian vessels in British ports, and in April of that year Nelson, with thirty ships-of-the-line, on his first expedition, dispatched to Copen hagen, there, by bombardment, strove to crush neutrality and sea freedom. Conflict between neutral commerce and bellig- erant usurpation, never urged so as to worst war till by half a dozen American frigates and sloops, with the reinforcement of privateers, taught the world that the immense British navy, not invincible, may be successfully resisted. Till then no despotism ashore was more absolute than British domination at sea. After long overpowering and irresistible despotism by an insular hive of seamen, as intolerable and unwarrantable MORTEFONTAINE. 295 as that of the African Barbary powers, or the continental des potism to which Napoleon was driven by five coalitions against French regeneration, the talisman of British naval enormity was broken. Sea freedom asserted by all maritime powers, proclaimed between the Bonaparte and American Ministers, as it had been between the Bourbons and Franklin, was, after protracted and precarious struggle for acknowledgment, ascer tained to be not only just, but as politic as just, and for no people more so than the free islanders who long resisted its establishment. Not manifested fully till lately, when all the parties to it are no more, that reality is unquestionable that American principles of freedom, equality, and peace, were the basis on which Bonaparte strove to plant France when prosecuted by England, compelling him to a career in which it is no part of this narrative to follow him. Talleyrand s instructions to the French commissioners for the treaty with the United States, largely and most ably elaborated, breathe those benignant principles in a spirit strongly persuasive of peace: anxious to engage the United States in the great peaceful maritime league of all nations against one naval tyrant, just as at last Napoleon s transcendant successes and consequent inordinate lust of conquest combined nearly all nations to overthrow his continental enormity, still eager as always to effect whatever he undertook. Bonaparte promoting Pichon from Secretary of Legation at the Hague to Charge* d Affaires at Washington, transferred him from the former to the latter; anxious to complete at Washington the suggestion at the Hague, adopted at Paris. Dispatched on board the frigate Semillant, Captain Montalon, notwithstanding marine hostilities then in force between France and the United States, Pichon hastened to Washington. When President Adams submitted the treaty to the Senate for con firmation in January, 1801, it was rejected by a majority of sixteen votes against to fourteen in its favor. The majority still smarted with the sting of unrequited French sea depre- TREATY OF dations, and were extremely hostile to France. Nearly all the lawyers in the Senate had been brought up in the faith of English dogmas of admiralty and maritime law. Scott, the masterly sophist, whose elegant jurisprudence in the English admiralty ruled the sea, was the instructor from whom, till a much later period, most American legists took their law lessons. Party passions intensified by the recent election of the Re publican candidates, Jefferson and Burr, to supersede Adams in the presidency, in spite of British influence, strongly imbued the expiring majority with ill will to France. But when in February, 1801, President Adams a second time pre sented the treaty to the Senate, the second article concerning damages being struck out, and the duration of the treaty re duced from perpetuity to eight years, on motion of Mr. Wil liam Bingham, (who was, during the negotiation for Louisiana, in Paris,) after a vehement discussion, by combination effected between the Republican adherents of Jefferson and such of the Federalists as still stood by Adams, their opponents were overcome by a constitutional majority; and on the 18th of February, 1801, the treaty became a law. James A. Bayard was then nominated Minister to France; but with laudable delicacy since not always practised, declined the appoint ment, because he deemed it the right of the President elect, although not yet inaugurated, to determine who should repre sent him abroad. Boldly exercising, as he never failed to do, executive authority, one of President Jefferson s first acts was to appoint one of the Virginia members of the House of Rep resentatives, his personal friend and political adherent, John Dawson, without his nomination to the Senate for their per- adventure doubtful confirmation, but commissioned merely by executive authority, to take the treaty to France, with as surance of good-will, which was as quickly and cordially reciprocated by Bonaparte s unhesitating acceptance of the mutilated treaty on the 31st of July, 1801. Senatorial objection to the second article of the treaty post poning negotiations concerning indemnities, claimed recipro- MORTEFONTAINE. 297 cally by both parties, to some convenient future time, and limitation of the treaty to eight years duration, contrary to President Adams s better judgment, led to the insertion in the final French ratification of a provision that, by retrench ment of the second article, the two States renounce the respective pretensions which were the object of that article. Whereby, as Mr. Adams foresaw, the United States abandon ing large claims for undeniable depredations on their citizens, for which they had not declared war, of course rendered them selves liable to reimburse those whose claims their government thus relinquished, for which reimbursement Congress have been ever since petitioned, and on several occasions enacted laws, which, however, fell under presidential vetoes. The French frigate landed Mr. Pichon at Norfolk on the first day of March, 1801, where she was obliged to ask ad mission under a flag of truce, as hostilities still were the law between the United States and France ; and the frigate Con stellation, Captain Truxton was at apchor in Norfolk, who in that vessel, after a well-contested engagement had defeated the French frigate Insurgente; the last exploit of American naval warfare with France, in which, with British actual co-operation, the United States were an overmatch for the French at sea. One of the American Ministers, Governor Davie, preceded Pichon s arrival in America, with gratifying accounts and im pressions of French amity, as evidenced by the treaty to which Bonaparte cheerfully affixed his signature. The treaty partly negotiated was also signed at Joseph Bonaparte s country residence, Mortefontaine, some thirty miles from Paris, where he dispensed the profuse hospitality in which he delighted, more congenial with his amiable and perhaps somewhat indo lent disposition than thrones. Eclipsed as well as overruled by his immense younger brother, as La Fayette well styled Napoleon in his letter to Joseph, the elder on the throne of Naples was a benignant philosopher, and on that of Spain, a brave and only too faithful Minister of the Emperor s vast plans, frustrated less by Joseph s incapacity, than Napoleon s delirious ambition. 298 TREATY OF Mr. Miot, created by Joseph Bonaparte as King of Na ples, Count of Melito, whom I met at Joseph s Jersey resi dence in 1825 or 1826, was at the festival given by him at Mortefontaine to celebrate the treaty signed there the twenty- sixth of August, though officially dated as if signed at Paris, the first of September, 1800, to celebrate peace between France and the United States. The importance of that paci fication has never been duly appreciated in this country, while in France it was hailed with great satisfaction as the first of the series of treaties which Bonaparte was ardently desirous of effecting with the many States then hostile to France, whose recovery from extreme trouble and discontent, together with Bonaparte s popularity, he rightly believed would be much enhanced at home by peace both at home and abroad. The American treaty, therefore, besides sanctioning long- cherished French and American principles of maritime free dom and independence, moreover inaugurated the era of gen eral peace by which Bonaparte hoped to tranquillize France and consolidate his own chief magistracy. That disposition of spirits, says Miot de Melito, rendered the fete at Mortefontaine as animated as it was brilliant. I was there, said he, with the American Commissioners, the three Consuls, the Ministers, a crowd of generals and members of the Legislature, and among other remarkable personages, General La Fayette, whose in vitation to be there by Joseph Bonaparte was generally approved. All the Bonaparte brothers and females, their mother, Joseph s homely wife, and Eliza with her husband, the future Cardinal Fesch, Murat and his ambitious wife Caroline, Lucien and his beautiful wife, Josephine and Hortense, if I am not mistaken, Madame de Stael, with many other celebrated ladies, attended that festival, of several days duration. Re specting the date and place of the treaty, Mr. Miot says that Joseph was anxious to have the truth published; that it was signed at Mortefontaine the twenty-sixth of August, and not at Paris the first of September. Intimate with all the Bona- partes, he was sent by Joseph to Paris to get Napoleon s con- MORTEFONTAINE. 299 sent to that alteration, which he refused with characteristic peremptoriness and force of his axiomatic reason, viz., that Joseph should have done it at the right time, when it was true. For never, said he pointedly to his brother s messenger, should an occasion be either forced or lost. Joseph had let the time go by, and his precise, peremptory brother refused to suffer his connecting his country-seat with a treaty signed there, because not done at the proper time. It would not be candid to part with Mr. Miot without acknowledgment that with incomparably better opportunities than mine for knowing the truth, he insists that Bonaparte was not only always a mon archist, and never republican, but that from his first campaign in Italy his ambition contemplated a throne. Governor Davie s oral report confirming all accounts of the favorable state of things in France, the auspicious tidings were cordially welcomed in America. The French frigate was received and saluted at Norfolk with marked attention by the inhabitants and country generally. Hastening to Washing ton, the French Envoy found President Adams and the Sec retary of State whom he had appointed instead of Timothy Pickering, gratified that others had accomplished a pacifica tion which he and his colleagues had failed to bring about. John Marshall, soon by President Adams, as one of his best and happiest selections, appointed Chief Justice, rejoiced with nearly all unprejudiced Americans that the unnatural and de plorable hostilities which for seven years, as long as the war of the Revolution, had prevailed between the United States, and, next to their own fortitude, their best supporters in that struggle, were closed by a pacification on those terms of rational independence which the United States have never failed to assert and uphold, by sea and land, by law and in arms, from the beginning to the end, till they have become the acknowl edged and consecrated law of nations. In 1814, during our war with Great Britain for those rights of man and nations, then a very young member of Congress, and therefore perhaps bolder than wise, not without their 300 TREATY OF studious investigation, however, I ventured to assert that according to the law of nations, of liberty and peace, free ships free goods is part of that science of politics, among the sublimest and clearest of all sciences in great doctrines, as despicable fallacy when degraded to vulgar and selfish abuses. In 1814 the learning, the force, the law, and the vast influence of Great Britain repudiated the doctrine as so false as to render it forlorn. Jefferson, despairing, had twice aban doned it; first as President Washington s Secretary, in an official letter to the American Minister in France, and again as President in his own semi-official admonition to his Minister in France, Robert R. Livingston, as will be explained in another chapter of these recollections. Jefferson loved peace as the sap, and denounced war as the poison of liberty. En thusiasm in excess becomes infirmity. Snatched as the United States were from calamitous if not fatal war with France and Spain, there was no war or danger of it in coalition of mari time powers to enforce neutrality, and subordination of terrible war to neutrality in benign peace. Some of the relief of Napoleon s incarceration was to dic tate to companions of his cruel captivity explanations of the treaty of Mortefontaine, by which the then pacificator and lib erator Bonaparte sought to enlist in vindication of peace and maritime independence, a transatlantic republic. The sixth chapter of the third volume of his Memoirs of France, be queathed from St. Helena to posterity, like his Code, is among the most signal but least signalized of his triumphs. Surpass ing in historical elucidation, accurate and profound logic, the insular contradictions of the tyrants of the sea- it refutes, that treatise wanted only their confirmation for universal and unquestionable authority and acceptance, which it has lately received in nearly all the capitals, and by all the intelligence of Europe. The sea code of English prize law, and the continental system of Napoleon were alike, and equally self- destructive elsewhere; not only at home, but everywhere pernicious despotism. MORTEFONTAINE. 301 By inheritance of Bonaparte s ideas of sea-freedom, his and their hitherto invincible antagonists, with his successor in the French metropolis of Europe, have consecrated and proclaimed them by sanction hereafter undeniable and probably irresist ible, not only European and American, but by the British Parliament. The dogmas of British admiralty to the contrary have been overruled and repudiated by British Ministers. Sir William Molesworth, sympathizing with American freedom as the surest safeguard of British and all other property, a royalist with republican tendencies, latterly explained, justi fied, and enforced free ships free goods in a speech in Par liament exhausting all the learning and argument on the subject. By solemn compact with Napoleon s successor and other sovereigns, Great Britain proclaims that universal liberty of foreign commerce, to which all nations have clear rights, whose hindrance and suppression is as injurious to the bel- ligerant wrong- doer as to the neutral sufferer. Molesworth, educated and proficient in the laws of nations beyond the narrow dogmas and destructive rapacity of British Star-Cham- ber prize acts, demonstrated the wisdom of self-government at sea, and that the rights of peace cannot be lawfully super seded by the wrongs of war ; demonstration faintly and feebly gainsayed by a few admiralty proctors and technical pleaders for monstrous prize parables. Another of the British King s Ministers, Sir Cornwell Lewis, Chancellor of the Exchequer, still further proved, by overwhelming arithmetic, the losses to England by her prize law. Such, said he, were the profits of neutral exemption from belligerant wrongs, that during the war waged by England against Napoleon, immense increase of national debt incurred to put another sovereign over an un willing people, was the least of British detriments. Orders in Council, which drove the United States to take up arms, de prived England, said the Chancellor, of the trade of neutral nations, cost her more loss and distress than all the other war charges and burdens of war. That cause of the loss of 302 TREATY OF MORTEFONTAINE. commerce, the Chancellor estimated as equal to the whole expense and suffering by internal taxation. British exports 18,500,000 in 1793, and 58,000,000 in 1816, exceeded, he said, 353,000,000 in 1853, notwithstanding great and corre sponding reduction of taxes. Such, according to the intel ligent Board of British Finance, are the fruits of that freedom and peace at sea as well as ashore, where armies, navies, and other instruments of forcible regulation do not cramp, retard, and devour their products. The close sea is as injurious to those who enforce as to those forced to submit to its privations. All that the treaty of Mortefontaine pleaded, was for equality of the lesser with mightier nations ; that the former, by wars and their inflictions, shall not deprive the latter of their fair share of the world s property transported by sea. To that sea standard of justice, as the United States ever insisted, all other powers have finally acceded. For dwelling somewhat extensively, in this chapter, on that evangelism of peace, liberty, equality, and vested rights of property, not foreign to the subsequent narration of these recollections, if apology is necessary, it is not the vanity of having asserted it nearly half a century ago, when it had few friends, but the gratifi cation of surviving to see it recognized by nearly all, with opponents now as few as its advocates once. JEFFERSON S ADMINISTRATION. 303 CHAPTER V. JEFFERSON S ADMINISTRATION. BY act of the 13th of May, 1800, the next ensuing session of Congress was directed to be held at the City of Washing ton, District of Columbia, to commence on the third Monday of November, 1800. And next day an act declared it lawful for the President to suspend any further military appoint ments under the act to augment the army, and under the ninth section of the act for better organizing the troops. And the President was authorized to discharge, with three months additional pay, on or before the 15th of June next, all officers and privates theretofore appointed or raised by the said acts, except engineers and inspectors of artillery and fortifications, the first four regiments of infantry, the two regiments of artillery and engineers, two troops of light dragoons, and the general and other staff. Before those acts of disarmament were effectuated, and much in advance of American pacific tendency, the young warrior whom the second American triple mission found at the head of affairs in France, by one of the first acts of his transcendant authority, cast aside the sordid quarrels which for seven years had embittered the relations between the United States and France, and for war without reinstated peace on principle. After several years of declared aversion to many of the measures, principles, forms, and ceremonies of Washington s administration, from which he withdrew, and all of Adams s, during which he served as Vice-President, above all his hos tilities with the French republic, Jefferson, superseding Adams 304 JEFFERSON S as President, succeeded to restored pacification and amity with France, effected by Adams in spite of that large portion of the Federal party of which Hamilton, Pickering, and Ames were the vital spirits. Though Jefferson deemed France what he called the natural ally of the United States, with whom we never could have occasion of difference, yet was he perfectly free of that undue French influence of which by the predominance of British influence he was furiously accused. American sympathy with France was merely political, whereas British influence throughout the United States was social. Following Franklin as American Minister at Paris, when vast changes, political and ecclesiastical, were introducing enormous revolution, yet neither Franklin nor Jefferson had any part in what did not break out till after they were both at home in America, Franklin in his grave. Jefferson as Secretary of State signalized his inauguration of that department by the overthrow of Genet the French republican Minister, defying and provoking the French republican and their revolutionary designs attempted by a firebrand representative. "While Jef ferson was in France there was no revolution, and a republic was not thought of. Franklin and Jefferson were monarchists there; believing that less absolute royalty by the liberal king and less extreme papacy by the church, would be reforms beneficial to State and Church. Few deprecated republican ism as the offspring of Protestantism; probably none foresaw democracy as the child of republicanism, or socialism as the bastard of democracy. Among the best informed and dis posed reforms in State and Church were inculcated, not by popular insurrection or violence, but by moral suasion peace ably impressed. Philanthropists, monarchs, and lovers of order proclaimed these reforms as great improvements. At Paris, the metropolis of Europe, Jefferson found these benevo lent sentiments predominant, with approximation cordially welcome to his American politics. From the metropolis of Europe liberalism radiated with the divine lights of peace and good-will, literature and science impregnating French society ADMINISTRATION. 305 with their charms. The Emperor of Germany, the Empress of all the Russia?, the great King of Prussia, numbers of the learned, the wise, and good delighted in the era of reform when Voltaire paid homage to Franklin as more than mortal. In the full flower of his fine faculties and republican antece dents welcomed by that French circle whose supremacy the intellectual world acknowledged, Jefferson took his place where attractions social as well as political were surpassing, and from the study to the parlor, from the parlor to the chamber or the kitchen, all was delightful. No blood was shed, or outrage perpetrated ; no revolution disfigured the era of reforms, pro nounced by enthusiastic France, breathed in scholastic Ger many, and resisted by the recent enemy of the United States, England alone, the only great protesting country. It would have been strange if an American republican gentleman, who had staked his life and fortune against English domination, with all his fine faculties, had not returned from France to America with some French preferences and English aver sions. Many of his predilections for French refinements pre vailed with him as long as he lived. But his imputed French politics disappeared forthwith, signally and repeatedly, from first to last, at the least touch of his pure and perfect patriot ism. He demolished Genet; he detested Bonaparte; he pre ferred alliance offensive and defensive with England forever, rather than suffer French occupation of Louisiana for one instant. Arriving at Washington the 2d of March, 1801, the French Charge d Affaires, L. A. Pichon, found the newly elected Chief Magistrate, not yet inaugurated, lodging at a hotel, without a Secretary of State, Mr. Madison not having arrived; but, as Pichon wrote to Talleyrand, he had reason to be satisfied that the two republics were on good terms. Jefferson s free and pleasing accessibility, naturally affable, with manners polished without being perverted by European ceremonial, put at once at ease the Envoy of an old and re fined, but recently republicanized nation, where diplomatic VOL. i. 20 306 JEFFERSON S forms were still deemed substance, while in mere phrases and some other superficial radicalisms they attempted more than American simplicity. The highest functionaries were entitled citizen, even the mighty ruler so soon to be recognized as emperor. Months and days were denominated by a new cal endar, and for a time monstrous infidelity supplanted religion. While liberty, either English or American, was never natu ralized in France, liberty s twin sister, equality, by terrific convulsions was enforced there as unknown in either England or America. The relations between France and the United States, owing to difference of race or some other causes, have never been intimate and much less amicable than those of the United States with England. The first signal act of President Washington s administra tion, with Secretary Jefferson s earnest and efficient co-oper ation, was the furious French Minister s removal and the proclamation of neutrality contravening Franklin s treaty stipulating French alliance for American assistance, of course followed by French retort, which led to acts of hostility by Congress, battles by sea, depredation and bloodshed, without American declaration or French acknowledgment of warfare, but on our side excitement, commotion, armament, and anger if not madness, which, during some years, reigned supreme. Logan having paved the way to accommodation in 1798, at length, in 1800, Bonaparte s treaty of peace, predicating great principles of maritime independence and concord be tween the United States and France, in which nearly all Europe, except Great Britain, concurred, closed the breach between this country and France. But even their treaties have by no means brought the two nations to the commercial harmony which prevails with England and most others, but alienation from France, either by arms or tariffs, seems to be their unnatural but established relation, in flagrant contradic tion of Franklin s first arrangements and the wise policy of his admirable treaties. All I recollect personally of Franklin is his funeral in 1790, ADMINISTRATION. 307 and the detraction uttered against him as a democratic re former and scientific discoverer, for what I have survived to hear and read his almost universal applause, European and American. Mr. Adams, as President, spoke of him as an old fool ; and many of his countrymen still depreciate him as a knave and libertine. Nor did I ever see Jefferson, his dis ciple and successor in democratizing republicanism, whose por trait is thus drawn by Deborah Logan : "My husband s friendship with Thomas Jefferson began soon after the formation of the federal government, when that gentleman was Secretary of State ; he used frequently to visit us in a social and familiar manner, sometimes with several parties, whose company were agreeable to each other, and sometimes alone. His conver sation was very pleasing. He had resided at the court of France, and after his return appeared in somewhat of its costume, and wore a suit of silk, ruffles, and an elegant topaz ring, but he soon assimilated himself to a more republican garb, and was reproached with going to the other extreme as a bait for popularity. He abounded in anecdotes of great interest, and it appeared to me that he did not often suifer political prejudice or party spirit to warp his judgment, and cause him to misrepresent men and things. Yet I saw that he wanted sincerity toward General Washington, whom I had always revered, and could not bear to hear mentioned in terms that implied the smallest diminution of his character or qualities, though aware that it is not among contemporaries that the most exalted powers can hope for this exemption. I could not bear that any suspicion whatever should be attached to the purity of his motives. And I well remember how I was shocked when I first discovered the disaffection which was manifesting itself against him. Jefferson told us of the surprise and displeasure which the President evinced upon the first abuse of his measures in Frenau s paper. He said that the council were to have been convened, but that the President was too much agitated to meet them that evening; that he found him walking the room in a dis turbed manner, with the paper in his hand, which he presented to the Secretary with expressions of surprise and indignation. Jef ferson knew but too well who he deemed it to appear. But even when party spirit was at its greatest height, my husband preserved a high respect for the President, and I believe never authorized or wrote anything derogatory to this truly great man." Almost as much may be said of Frenau s high respect for the President, whom his newspaper treated personally with 308 JEFFERSON S the utmost deference and acknowledgment of his perfect title to public respect. But Frenau s newspaper, the National Journal, was a leading Republican gazette, in which several of the measures of Washington s administration, the bank, Eritish treaty, and others, together with the general tendencies of Adams, Knox, Hamilton, and their other advocates, were denounced and satirized, with Jefferson s good will. Frenau was a classmate and intimate of Madison at Princeton College, a man of superior education and attainments, excellent as patriot and poet. But Hamilton, who was one of the anony mous contributors to Fenno s Gazette, in which the opposite politics were mantained, seems to have imparted to Washing ton his own dislike of Frenau, and a party controversy on the subject ensued, in which an attempt failed to implicate Jeffer son in Frenau s publications, because, as Secretary of State, he appointed Frenau to the place of translating clerk in the Department of State, for which he was perfectly qualified. It is that grievance no doubt to which Deborah Logan alludes. But her husband was not more discriminating between Wash ington and some of his measures than Frenau and his gazette. After mentioning the violent effervescence of public senti ment caused in the United States by the eruption of the French revolution, and the arrival of citizen Genet as the signal for every one to arrange themselves according to the principles they advocated, with many observations concerning it, Deborah Logan adds: "At the very time when the heads of the Republican party were accused by their opponents of being ready to sacrifice the interests of the community to France, I have myself been present at some of their confidential conversations, and can witness that although they were greatly mistaken in their opinion of the fitness of France to assume the cap and the mantle of liberty, yet they never wished to put it in her power to arbitrate upon the least right appertain ing to their own country. On the contrary, I have heard Jefferson remonstrate with Genet on the rashness and impropriety of his conduct, and insist upon the inviolability of those eternal principles of justice to other nations and respect for their rights, to which it had been well for France and the world had she adhered. I have not forgotten the force and expression of Jefferson s arguments, in ADMINISTRATION. 309 a beautiful simplicity of language and a politeness of manner that disarmed offence, yet with a strength that defied refutation when reason was admitted to sit as judge. One of these conversations I remember ended with Genet s rising from his chair, where he had been seated, under the venerable trees that surround our dwelling, and, baffled in argument, but retaining his good humor and gentle manly demeanor, he exclaimed in his (then) imperfect English: Well, gentlemen, if my country were once happily settled in peace, and the enjoyment of her rights, as yours is now, I would sit under my own vine and trees as you do ; but I would disclaim political dis quisitions altogether. I would never suffer a gazette to enter my house. Genet was very pleasing in his address and manners. But the political offence which he committed against the govern ment and people of these States cannot be palliated, nor ought I to omit that my husband saw the presumption of his conduct toward the government of this country in the same light that her best citi zens beheld it." Deborah Logan s touches of actual history are realities shedding light much greater than State papers and most his tories. A retired lady, of fine intelligence and pure truth, is much more reliable than contemporary politicians or post humous historical fabrications. But truth as best presented for evidence is still in great measure mere matter of opinion, and mine is only the opinion of one merged in the whirlpool of millions, divided between preference for progressive and for radical, or sedentary and traditional republicanism, as respec tively inculcated by the conflicting politics of Jefferson and Hamilton, from Washington s midway administration, branch ing off, as Hamilton accused Jefferson, toward anarchy, and as Jefferson accused Hamilton, toward monarchy. Both sin cerely earnest and pre-eminently capable in their divergent principles, the American federal republic was beyond all other governments inaugurated fortunately by founders, however antagonist, equally and unquestionably patriotic, disinterested, and inflexible, controlled, tempered, and mostly reconciled by a President wiser and more dispassionate than either, for the trial of an experiment originated in a new world, defying all the prejudices of all the old. Judgment on that experiment must be premature, speculative, and imperfect, till time proves 310 JEFFERSON S the problem which plan is the best, and experience ratifies that recognition. Diversity of sentiment upon the question is at least as old as the Christian religion, and like its sects will never cease to prevail. Mine, like that of most other indi viduals, being of little importance, shall not be intruded, ex cept as lessons from public service in government, which actual experience, whether affirmative or contradictory of Jefferson s democracy or Hamilton s monarchical predilections, the truth shall be told as fairly as my own prejudices will permit. Hamilton never governed, although, as a Secretary, adminis tering one branch of government, and participating in others with uncommon power and influence, but died before he had an opportunity of more than advising, admonishing, and pre dicting. Whereas Jefferson rose to rule with absolute sway during several years, and his system has mostly prevailed since. They differed and separated because, while members together of Washington s administration, Jefferson denounced, orally, Hamilton s English tendencies, which provoked Hamil ton s pen to retaliate in the press the censures proceeding from Jefferson s tongue. Their love of liberty was equally sincere. But while Jefferson was enthusiastic for an Ameri can edition of it far beyond English, which he deemed ex tremely insufficient and inappropriate for America, Hamilton considered English the best liberty in the world. In an admirable vindication of American right to better government than England allowed, Hamilton, when not twenty years of age, with amazing force argued the natural right of all mankind to liberty beyond any constitutional or civil grant of it, and the vital importance of union to the American colo nies. But deprecating independence, then invoked by none, he declared himself "a warm advocate for limited monarchy, and an unfeigned well-wisher to the present royal family." No candid and impartial consideration can deny the sin cerity and ardent earnestness of both. Hamilton s love of liberty was as genuine as Jefferson s, but not of Jefferson s democratic liberty. Hamilton deprecated the insubordinate ADMINISTRATION. 311 spirit of the American people, which, for their happiness and public welfare, he deemed it indispensable to restrain by vigorous government. Jefferson considered them governed too much, and trusted them almost without reserve. His devotion to law and order was as great as Hamilton s, but to be mantained without much restraint. Early in the French revolution Hamilton was alarmed at its excesses and dreaded their results. Jefferson believed that it would end well. But insincerity or duplicity, intrigue or artifice, are attributable to neither of these great masters in the sublime science of poli tics, to whose little arts and contrivances they never descended, and whose different view of government was, is, and will be beneficial to their country. Hamilton s love of rule was such that he could not live without governing, which Jefferson pro fessed to dislike, and can it be truly said that his professed preference for literature, science, elegant and scientific retire ment was disproved by his life? Hamilton s capacity for organization was equal to his fondness for it, displayed in the treasury and the army, and almost whatever he undertook. Jefferson organized, as he believed, self-government, and little else. Without having ever known or seen Jefferson, I had some boyish knowledge of Hamilton, as schoolfellow and playmate of his eldest son Philip, killed, like his father, in a duel, both sacrifices more than commonly unnecessary and deplorable, on the same fatal spot, not far from the same time. With the son, when his father was Secretary of the Treasury, I was often at their dwelling, and remember bundles of valueless continental notes among the rubbish of the cellar to the house, where the treasury was kept. Colonel Hamilton lived directly opposite to General Washington s residence in Philadelphia, and with a country retirement in Joseph Parker Norris s mansion on the Germantown road, not far out of town, in both of which homes I was familiarized by my schoolmate. His father s fondness struck me as uncommon, like French if not tropical effusion, kissing his son after half a day s absence with warm 312 JEFFERSON S welcome. Mrs. Washington s grandson Custis, also of our school and intimacy about the same time, introduced me into the President s parlor to witness the ceremony of smoking the pipe of peace at the celebration of an Indian treaty by Washington and Hamilton with a party of Indians of both sexes and several ages. The pipe was an East India hookah, with a long, flexible stem coming from a silver bowl like a bell, placed on a silvered cloth in the middle of the carpet, from which the pipe was passed round from mouth to mouth, each one taking a puff and then handing it to the rest. The President transcendent in stately reserve, the Secretary of State, Pickering, with his tall, bony figure, rigid muscles, and Roman face, likewise took his turn in dignified acquiescence. The Secretary of the Treasury, Hamilton, daintily handling the instrument, first wiped it with a white pocket-handkerchief before he put it to his mouth; which precaution for refined elegance, I understand, is deemed by the savages extreme want of good behavior, inasmuch as one s nicety should not imply another s deficiency in that respect. About ten years after that occurrence I dined at a gentleman s house in New York with General Hamilton, who with Gouverneur Morris and a few more of R-ufus King s friends met together to welcome his return to his country, after seven years absence in Europe, bringing the first tidings of the incredible purchase of Louis iana, and expected resumption of hostilities between England and France; which was the last time I ever saw Hamilton, then at the head of the bar, and long busy by copious corre spondence and otherwise regulating the party lately overthrown by Jefferson s election. Cheerful, communicative, and gracious, he talked as he wrote, with the authority of a master, but without Jefferson s courting address, or Washington s control ling forbearance. All three of those founders of empire were men of conviction, but neither Jefferson or Hamilton so much men of the common people as Washington. These remote recollections from fifty to more than sixty years ago may perhaps affect mere memory with Hamilton s ADMINISTRATION. 313 likeness in marble and on canvas. But according to what I deem accurate impression, independent of such classical me morials, which of course represent his most dignified appear ance, Alexander Hamilton was a small man, about the size of Madison or Burr, of much less imposing figure than Wash ington, Jefferson, or the ostentatious Gouverneur Morris. So careless of dress was General Hamilton, that his garb and hair were apparently neglected ; and though sprightly and polite, there was nothing to distinguish him from any other well- behaved gentleman. Without knowing how distinguished he was as a soldier, statesman, publicist, and party leader, no one would have recognized much personal superiority in the commander by Washington s preference, to head an army of the United States, as Hamilton burned to do against French invasion, which Washington never believed would take place, and against French revolutionary dogmas which Hamilton dreaded much more than Washington. Sensible of Hamilton s superior talents, military and civil, and of his warm attach ment, Washington often desired and not unfrequently took his opinion. But only ignorance of both would impute to Wash ington, more considerate and less prompt than Hamilton, any solicitation of his more rapid and confident opinions on official measures or personal demeanor, except as advice but not as instruction. From British provincial governors, sometimes noblemen, fashionable military officers, and others familiar with court usages and ceremonies, giving tone and polish to Virginia society as well as government, Washington acquired his good breeding before Hamilton migrated to this country, or was even born abroad. When his military talents, like Burr s, attracted General Washington s notice, inducing their invitation as aid-de-camp into his household, the commander- in-chief, a middle-aged man, had learned how to give directions for conduct, formal and informal, which some of Hamilton s posthumous encomiasts suppose were solicited and taken from the young man, who even when ably administering the Treas ury Department, or ever after, was not preceptor, but pupil 314 JEFFERSON S to that commanding patron. The curious contents of a rel- ique in the shape of "Washington s portable camp dinner-ser vice, presented to Congress in 1843, with an explanation from John Quincy Adams, signified clearly that whether before Boston, at Valley Forge, or Yorktown, no matter in what rough straits or destitute circumstances, Washington was always a refined gentleman, never failing to practice among others the polite art of entertaining hospitality. And as is well remembered, and I have often heard ladies say who danced with him, he performed in that also elegant art graceful evolutions, which none but those well trained could accomplish. In danc ing, which some hold extremely light, horseback grace, signal ized by Spenser in the Fairy Queen as peculiar to high breed ing, and at dinner parties, which are another of its exercises, in all elegant attainments Washington excelled, and it is no derogation from Hamilton s undeniable characteristics as a gentleman, that he might have learned from what it is alleged he taught his patron. As such he was too much of a gentle man to claim posthumous credit for instructions in either for malities or literary compositions, any claim to which by others for Hamilton betrays its own demerit. Speaking French, quoting Latin, and wonderfully ready with tongue and pen, Hamilton s sprightly promptitude may have deemed Washing ton s much slower, less learned and circumspect judgment the demerit of an inferior, less qualified than such brilliant genius as his own to control and regulate others. On Hamilton s resignation of the Treasury Department, President Washington addressed him by a kind letter of fare well, of which no copy has been preserved. Hamilton s acknowledgment of it on the 3d of February, 1795, in terms equally kind and respectful, nevertheless expresses what Tim othy Pickering said was Hamilton s opinion of Washington, viz., a very good, but not so wise a man, however admirably qualified for the part he was called on to perform. Jefferson, even when estranged from Washington, considered him as great as good, estimated his wisdom as equal to his virtue, ADMINISTRATION. 315 and his republicanism as sincere, as he considered Hamilton s tainted by English predilections. Gravity distinguished Wash ington at the Indian treaty from Hamilton s sprightliness, and though I never saw Hamilton on horseback, as I did Washing ton, nor dancing as I heard familiarly spoken of by ladies who danced with him, or doing the honors of a dinner table, yet from perfect recollections of both these personages, I cannot even imagine Hamilton delivering Washington s farewell address as I saw him head and shoulders taller, broader and more com manding, towering up above Congress and the by-standers, fastidiously grand and elaborate in every movement, in full court dress, small sword, lace ruffles at his breast and wrists, gold buckles in his shoes, his hair powdered with the display then common, and I am not sure whether he had not gloves on his hands. Without knowing who he was, no one could have failed to recognize the President. So too in his richly-panneled chariot and four or sometimes six horses, all of the selection and discipline of the master, who every morning before break fast visited his stables to overlook his coachman and grooms, and keep that establishment in order, there was strong con trast with the equipage of President Adams at the parade of Washington s state funeral in Philadelphia, when the horses took the stud, members of Congress in their scarfs were thrown into confusion, and the whole scene was disorderly. Older and colder, at any rate much less demonstrative of familiar aifection, Washington, as I remember him at dinner with his wife, two young grandchildren, a secretary, and several servants, was extremely unlike Hamilton at home; silent, abstemious, almost abstruse of attention to his house hold. Quite as unlike were they at the ceremony of an Indian treaty; on horseback, where, though I never saw General Hamilton, he could have no pretension to Washing ton s commanding and captivating grace, still less in dancing, which probably Hamilton had never learned, and least of all, in the delivery of the farewell to Congress, claimed as Hamil ton s composition. 316 JEFFERSON S Brought up to respect Adams, admire Hamilton, and re vere Washington, by one who well knew them all, to whose instructions my veneration belonged, without acquaintance with Jefferson, but in intimate relations with many of his po litical intimates, Mifflin, McKean, Logan, Dallas, Rush, and others less conspicuous, I was too young to partake much of their objections to Hamilton s fiscal administration, and just juvenile enough to be charmed with his warlike patriotism. The transparencies of those days overshone some of its realities. But the whole exhibited Washington as the indisputable chief object of American admiration; with Jefferson, Hamilton, and Adams, primary but yet questionable, between whom respec tively public attachment and aversion fluctuated. The problem of government, insoluble but by experiment, no discussion can reduce to certainty. Wisdom seldom equalled, patriotism never surpassed, and perfect purity, to gether with martial merits always more than all others admired by mankind, placed Washington among his own countrymen and everywhere far above either Jefferson or Hamilton, without the genius, learning, or plausibility of either. But while the best informed of Europe, who give the tone to most of the rest, elevate Hamilton above Jefferson, history, and it may be posterity, will accord a high station to the country gentleman born to competent fortune, better edu cated than either of the others, statesman as it were born and bred, practiced in more elevated and extensive civil service, better versed in the fine arts, in sciences and languages, whose attainments and aptitudes cultivated at home were improved abroad by contact with the most distinguished proficients and best acknowledged models. With these advantages completely untainted by foreign prejudice, Jefferson returned from Eu rope, to be again associated with Adams, also come home much impressed with British institutions, for which Hamilton s preference was undisguised enthusiasm. Of the bold experiment of temperate civilized republicanism which Washington was firmly resolved to try, Adams had misgivings, Hamilton ADMINISTRATION. 317 acquiesced denying its feasibility, while Jefferson had enthu siastic faith, and only departed from Washington s develop ment when alarmed by what Jefferson deemed Hamilton s distortion of it, and excited to extreme reaction by Adams s administration carried to excess by Hamilton s belligerant extravagance. Brilliant soldier and magnanimous advocate of what he feared would prove a weak government, and with signal suc cess initiating its fiscal establishments on the plan of his cher ished English models, without independent executive opportu nity of proving thoroughly his political principles, Hamilton was cut off by deplorable death in midcareer. Since his death his proposed modifications for republicanizing British govern ment have been undergoing continual British reduction of monarchy to the democratic standards introduced by Jefferson with all the constitutional authority conferred on him by chief magistracy, together with all the inborn ardor and inflexible will of that father of democracy. So that while Hamilton s disciples may aver that this democratic preponderance is so much the worse for conservative freedom both abroad and at home, yet Jefferson has been constituted a founder, leaving Hamilton no more than the merit of a projector or soothsayer warning against Jefferson s erroneous, disastrous, and fatal substitution for republicanism of democracy running wild to despotism. How can we ascertain which is best ? and even if ascertained, is there vitality enough left in European mon archy and aristocracy to make head against the irresistible progress of American democracy? Jefferson s rejection or reform of many venerated regulations by representative con federated democracy transcending original liberalism, trans ferring government from a few to the many, with unprece dented and never before averred confidence in the capacity and rectitude of the multitudinous mass to administer their own affairs that democracy, since its American essay more than half a century ago, has made much further progress against European aristocracy and monarchy than against American 318 JEFFERSON S republicanism, of which it is mere advancement. So far and so much beyond anticipation has this gone, that perhaps it exceeds Jefferson s wishes as well as his views. Should the excess which Hamilton deprecated as the inevitable element of such reform lead through anarchy to despotism, or other retrogressive misfortune to this country, still, if freedom be not detrimental departure from ancient authority, English and French, Belgian, Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian, if not all other European royalty and aristocracy, have been greatly ameliorated since, if not by, American liberalism, of which more than the last half century s progressive establishment, civil and religious, attests the benefits. It not being the purpose of this work to deal with politics more than is incidental to the main design, nor then beyond the author s personal experience of their controversial princi ples, as practically impressed, they are left to each reader s arbitrament, as each may estimate the statesman necessarily presented by the narration. What that great American scrip ture the Declaration of Independence proclaims as rights of man, as enforced by President Jefferson, place him in Ameri can and probably European history as reformer, second to Franklin, in either perfecting or prostrating the work of Wash ington, to whom the place of heroic founder and inimitable benefactor is awarded by constantly increasing admiration. Soon after frustrating the French republican attempt, in 1793, to seize Louisiana, on the last day of that year Jeffer son resigned as Secretary of State, and on the last day of January, 1795, Hamilton resigned as Secretary of the Treas ury; both their places being filled by President Washington with successors unequal to that twain, next to him, the greatest statesmen of the United States. Hamilton then took his stand at the bar of New York, still ever and over active in party politics, till three years afterward appointed as Inspec tor-General to command the army contemplated and partly organized for war with France; always an influential and authoritative leader, but never popular. Jefferson renounc- ADMINISTRATION. 319 ing politics, as he said, for agriculture, literature, science, and extensive correspondence, lived retired on the popular captivation of his political principles, rallying, but without active interference, a large party to their support. The most if not only popular Presidents, Washington, Jefferson, and Jackson, not soliciting public favor, seldom attended public demonstrations, and neither was known ever to make an un official speech, that greatest of all but military attractions, and for men of high rank addressing a party multitude, meanest of all popular condescensions. Washington earnestly, Jackson anxiously but ineffectually, disclaimed mere party support, upon which Jefferson was constrained to cast his administration, without, however, descending to the mere par tisan obsequiosity of subsequent Presidents. In any country, but, above all, in a republic, it is extremely difficult to with stand solicitation for place, always selfish, mostly mercenary, often corrupt, yet yielding to which degenerates to paltry and pernicious party despotism. Successors, pleading but misrep resenting Jefferson s example, have depopularized and de graded the American chief magistracy by weakly striving to gratify individuals instead of the mass. Measures, more than men, is obvious policy for good government; inasmuch as nations are more influenced by measures than by men. Per verting executive faculties and misspending time to consider the choice or change of persons, distracts government and combines opposition, enabling those out of place to supplant those in, perpetuating disturbing changes for petty purposes, inordinately increasing presidential power beyond that the Constitution contemplates, and, moreover, breeding alarming doubts whether elective chief magistracy, thus pliant, is pre ferable for public good to hereditary stability. Whether Jefferson s powerful and fascinating democracy undertaking to improve by reforming Washington s substan tial republicanism, was rational and durable government is speculation, which, I repeat, every reader of this narrative will solve according to his own predilection. But beyond all 320 JEFFERSON S speculation or question, the author of the reform was a patri otic ruler endowed with great force of will and of personal popularity: with superior genius, learning, and experience of affairs, perfectly sincere in his undertaking and as confident of its success. A country gentleman, uncommonly well edu cated, having filled nearly all the principal public places, member of the Legislature and Governor of his State, one of its representatives in the Congress executive as well as legis lative of the United States, and then representative as Minis ter in a foreign country at the most momentous conjuncture of modern times, Secretary of State, with Washington and Hamilton initiating the federal administration, Vice-President, and without solicitation or partisan nomination, except by platform of principles, spontaneously proclaimed by a large portion of his fellow-countrymen as their choice, with his always avowed democratic politics, to succeed Washington and supersede Adams as President, as the type of better republican development, Jeiferson was completely master of the situation. The Prince of Orange was by no means so acceptably, firmly, or durably chosen to introduce English liberty in 1688; nor Bonaparte to establish French tranquil lity with more general confidence, if even greater popularity, in 1799, than Jefferson soon acquired while he and Bonaparte ruled simultaneously, the French ruler assuming, the Ameri can renouncing as much executive power as possible. Neither of the military chieftains, Dutch and Corsican, chosen to re construct government in England and France respectively, excelled the American reformer in knowledge of politics; nor was either prince or king, consul or emperor, superior to the democrat in those personal accomplishments, which aristocracy claims as its exclusive attributes, seldom if ever democratic. Literary, scientific, and polite before he went abroad, the presi dential democrat returned an urbane and pleasing gentleman, such as a distinguished French statesman, Guizot, pronounces Washington, and holds that every American President, ought to be. ADMINISTRATION. 321 Among those well called by Washington wonderful people, whose philosophers, royal and republican, soldiers and states men, mathematicians and courtezans, were shining lights throughout the world, Jefferson was domesticated ; and when he came home from among them, the American democrat, vehemently accused of attachment to French revolution and English aversion, had never proposed or desired for France any government freer than that of England, with king, lords, and commons like the English. Jefferson s chief confidential advisers, in perfect unity of administration, with abilities universally acknowledged, while acknowledging his as superior, harmonized in his singleness of purpose for democratic reforms, welcomed by growing ma jorities of the progressive American republicans. Under the auspices of that administration, a nourishing people, proud and vain of their advance in independence of all foreign example, inoffensively cast the radiance of their republicanism on Eu rope, if not to moderate the ferocious transformation of French aristocracy into democracy, at any rate to encourage and uplift English democracy to mix more and more of itself with Eng lish aristocracy. As Jefferson beyond all question was taken for Washington s chief Secretary, so was Madison for Jeffer son s. Without his foreign finish, winning manners, or enthu siastic democracy, diffident, temperate, and .cordial disciple of that acknowledged master, he was likewise Washington s pre ferred unofficial adviser till Jay s treaty rent the Federalists and Republicans asunder. Having in another work presented a large portrait of Madison, I shall put on these pages only that of an eloquent and ardent opponent, Fisher Ames, who thus describes the leading Republican of the House of Repre sentatives of which they were both members : "A man of sense, reading, address, and integrity, as tis allowed. Yery much Frenchified in his politics ; speaks low; his person is little and ordinary ; decently as to manner, and no more. His language is very pure, perspicuous, and to the point ; a little too much of a book politician, and too timid in his politics ; not a little of a Virginian. He is our first man." VOL. I. 21 322 JEFFERSON S That shining and sentimental limner of a dispassionate but persuasive logician might naturally prefer brilliant and pathetic oratory like his own to that of either Madison or Hamilton. Their inculcations, both written and spoken, con vince without passion or declamation, as their profound wisdom is impressed by the classics of American politics, the letters of the Federalist, and by State papers and speeches surpassed by none of their often vaunted successors. During some days spent at Geneva in 1802 Rufus King, who with his colleague, Aaron Burr, Senators of New York, took prominent part on opposite sides on the question of Albert Gallatin s non-reception in the Senate of the United States, after which rejection he became President Jefferson s Secretary of the Treasury Rufus King making particular inquiries respecting Mr. Gallatin s family and character where he was born, was informed that in extreme youth and poverty as offspring of one of the aristocratic families of that intellect ual city, Albert Gallatin, with several other baptismal names besides Albert, emigrated to seek fortune in America. In her masterly work on the French revolution, retorting her ex tremely unwise banishment from Paris to her father s residence near Geneva, that formidable Swiss, Madame de Stael, dispar ages the Emperor Napoleon as wanting, among graver defects, the manners of a well-bred man, which she cordially awarded to Mr. Gallatin when she met him in London in 1814, solicit ing negotiation for peace at Ghent. His speech was so in- veterately French, that Louis XVIII. sarcastically said to him when the American Minister at his court in 1818 : "You speak French perfectly, Mr. Gallatin; but I think my English is better than yours." So good a judge both of manners and language as Ma dame de Stael, courted Mr. Gallatin s intimacy not only for his superior learning and talents, but as uncommonly attrac tive in personal and polite intercourse, excelling in conversa tion. Notwithstanding his foreign accent and look, lam- ADMINISTRATION. 323 pooned by Cobbett and many others, and one of the first subjects of American caricature, after being expelled from the Senate, Gallatin was an acknowledged leader in the Plouse of Representatives, where, like Madison, he had no superior in debate, as like Jefferson he was admirable in conversation. Of the difficult subject of finance, which so few venture upon, and still fewer comprehend, he was master, and perfectly mas ter of the best English language in all its grammatical pro prieties of diction, though the pronunciation of his English was never naturalized to that perfection sarcastically denied by the King of France as wanting to his once Swiss subject s French pronunciation, meaning thereby to signify that he saw with no pleasure in one of his former subjects the Minister of a foreign republic at the French court. Robert Smith, President Jefferson s Secretary of the Navy, fortunately for that somewhat discountenanced arm of national defence in its infancy, was a gentleman of independent prop erty, well educated and bred, such as Jefferson preferred, whose example accorded with his precepts for the naval estab lishment, much indebted to the foundations in which he laid its future usefulness. I never knew or saw General Dearborn, the Secretary of War, an officer of considerable revolutionary merit, nor Levi Lincoln, the Attorney-General, another New Englander, carefully selected from among the well educated and reputed of that intellectual region, by Jefferson s presi dency deprived of their much-regretted ascendancy in the government of the United States. Although General Dear born was not fortunate as commander of our extremely imper fect army in the beginning of the war of 1812, nor Mr. Lin coln as Attorney-General when a complication of restrictions vainly essayed to prevent that war, rendered the Federal ad ministration as legally difficult as it was odious in New Eng land, yet of both Dearborn and Lincoln it may with truth be recorded that not only while they lived, but by their descendants they attest patriotism and probity as attributes their historical due. 324 JEFFERSON S Altogether Jefferson s administration, whose individual, intellectual and social dignified and embellished their political eminence, of whom, especially Jefferson, Madison, and Galla- tin, it cannot be called unjust to assert that as rulers they compared advantageously with the honest but passionate President, and his also honest but still more passionate and prejudiced chief Secretary, as well as most of those composing the cabinet of the first Adams s administration. With cordial coadjutors chosen for his constitutional advisers, refined gentle men and learned men, Jefferson calmly originated the most demo cratic government ever peaceably undertaken. Their reforms, substantial and ceremonial, much opposed, criticised, ridiculed, and counteracted, some of them modified, have made head against the vast power of the past, with all its good old times which they set at naught. Executive democratic govern ment was instituted by men of the world, not of its upstarts or illiterate, but of scholastic education, scientific and literary attainments, refined and polished deportment, whom the fasti diously fashionable of European civilization could not fail to recognize as of that exclusive peerage which styles its mem bers gentlemen. The chief architect of those invasions of ancient realms walled in by theretofore impassable barriers, except by force, together with his two principal and most intim ate co-operators, were all three not only experienced statesmen, but fine scholars, superior writers shining, and above the others the ruling genius of reform shone, as much in the politest social amenities as in the perplexing paradoxes of politics. During their long lives all three were acknowledged leaders in whatever either undertook. For awhile European interlopers, official and private, often denounced their substantial, and ridiculed their informal novelties. But neither departed life till their advantages were not only much confessed, but con siderably adopted in the foreign world. Madison and Galla- tin, outliving detraction and disparagement, have descended into historical respect, Madison with at least universal Ameri can veneration. Jefferson s more ardent, radical, and defiant ADMINISTRATION. 325 reforms, not only civil, but religious, have elicited more conservative animadversion, but retributed by greater popular celebrity. Jefferson s democracy and deism, avowedly invari ably inculcated, were at the same time as tolerant as inflexible. He considered men no more born to think than to look alike ; that their diversities of opinion were as salutary as unavoid able; and the great question of politics whether it is best to empower individuals or the multitude. But likewise that besides civilizing the mass by education, there should be some elevated by it above the rest, with equal chance for all to reach that elevation. Wherefore to Jefferson and Madison, in voluntary retirement, a great university was the darling object of their old age, deemed a nobler title to historical favor than even the Declaration of Independence by its author. Not only the mere rudiments of education taught in primary schools, but collegiate accomplishments in sciences and the fine arts, to elevate individuals above their fellows, and enable mental to overcome common equality of birth. Government at Washington, germinating under such culture in a wilderness metropolis, was not more unlike that in gorgeous European capitals than their misconceptions of the supposed turbulent vulgarity of that democracy of which Jefferson with his cabi net were the inaugurating aristocracy. Without any plebeian inhabitants, or more than about a thousand, mostly official incumbents, no public spectacle or diversion but Congress, the foundations of a new metropolis and novel institutions were laid by three or four statesmen, earnest in reforms, superior in attainments, pure in morals, refined in manners, with no stronger implements than pens, and no force than that rank democracy which from their plantation of it had spread all over the world. Their method of planting and propagating was gentle, polite, and mainly persuasive or influential. The polity, like Jefferson s will, was avowed, absolute, and most welcome to the multitude proclaimed sovereign. Even those who deny his wisdom can hardly doubt his patriotism, sin cerity, personal integrity, or public purity ; in which virtues 326 JEFFERSON S what reformer ever excelled him ? Provoked by his imputed Gallican aversion to what he openly condemned as priestcraft, and equally outspoken defiance of other powerful classes, male diction accused his morality of that illicit love which has mostly been venal among the royal, aristocratic and high-bred, and whose printed and published confession in this chaster country did not degrade Jefferson s great rival from political or social respectability. Alleged grossness of amours was even indicted in verse by one of Jefferson s presidential suc cessors. But as all eminence, especially that of reformers, is obnoxious to extreme detraction, which when priests and par tisans combine is often formidably fabricated, such scandalous misconduct seems inconsistent with the invariably discreet and decorous circumspection of a personage so modest, that, as I have been assured by one who knew him intimately without at all liking his politics, Mr. Jefferson would blush at an indeli cate allusion, and never was known to indulge in any such discourse. While more commanding faculties than manners, or perhaps morals, are indispensable to enable a reformer to rule with more effectual than regal sway, as Jefferson wielded popu larity, yet his learning, politeness, and grace were admirably calculated to reconcile European and other foreign prejudice to plain, bold, republican institutions, and disarm our pos terity, as Europe is sometimes termed, of some of its alarm and disgust. Washington, with little scholarship, and Jack son with almost none, but each master of himself and of the people, popularized novel and experimental chief magistracy, Washington with fastidious reserve, Jackson with commanding familiarity. Like them, wise and virtuous patriots may be successful rulers and great reformers without learning or polish. But the specialty of Jefferson s administration is, that transcending Washington s to democratize republicanism, he nevertheless did not expose it to the aristocratic reproach that such government is incompatible with refinement, order, subordination, and tranquillity; though his reforms cannot ADMINISTRATION. 327 be as durable as lie designed, unless they convince the multi tude that ignorance has no more divine right than royalty to rule. But Jefferson s opponents insist that by his concessions to the mass, their conceded sway inevitably leads to that of a single despot. Energy of will and practical good sense enabled Washing ton, aided by the counsels of Jefferson, Hamilton, and Madi son, and the inbred preference of a whole people accustomed to freedom, to establish republicanism, when a novelty almost as repulsive as religious infidelity, without force to be ren dered respectable first at home, and then abroad. After its tolerated but still much doubted and quite problematical establishment, Jefferson undertook to redress Washington s republicanism, distorted, as Jefferson believed, to monarchical administration by his presidential successor, and extraneous intermeddlers. If Jefferson s reaction was excessive, still his reversal of Adams s federalism and reform of Washington s republicanism was not only peaceable, orderly, and moral, but effected by Democrats more polite and refined than most of the Federalists they decried. As Jefferson democratized republi canism and overthrew Anglicism, at the same time the British combination of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy began that drifting toward the latter, in which the tide has set ever since throughout not only England but Europe, and indeed nearly all the world. Whether this tendency began in Ame rica or was European before the American revolution, as many learned men insist, it is certain that even when French repub licanism puts on a crown it still calls its empire a republic, and continues many of the most radical institutions of demo cratic sovereignty. Which work is the best, to last longest, is the heroic problem for futurity to solve. By one of the lately published confidential letters to his brother Joseph, the Emperor Napoleon cautioned him against learned and brilliant men for public service. "I look on them," he says, "as coquettes. We must look at and chat with them, but no more take them for ministers than coquettes 328 JEFFERSON S for wives." In another letter he expressed his dislike of men of letters, philosophers, and monks; theories which seem out of keeping with his employment of Talleyrand, who was learned, brilliant, and a priest, and of the Count of Narbonne, said to be a natural son of Louis XV. by one of his own daughters, and whether of that incestuous birth or not, by all accounts one of the most elegant courtiers of the age. Jeffer son s learning, gracious deportment, and fine style, without other executive qualifications, would not have rendered him the institutor of a great reform. But in its inauguration and propagation of a system disclaiming many forms, was it un important that the master-spirit should be likewise master of ceremonies, peaceably to overthrow those by which the world was governed as much as by substantial regulation? One of his accomplished daughters, the wife of John W. Eppes, died while her father was President, and the other, the wife of Thomas Mann Randolph, I have understood, was seldom at Washington. The widower President, therefore, without ladies in his household, and few inhabitants at hand, reformed draw ing-rooms by removing them, which reform expired with him, for that agreeable and useful public organization was imme diately restored by his successor, and like many more indis pensable parodies of court resorts, has become as much of an American as a European necessity. President Jefferson s presidential dinners, according to tradition at Washington, were quite an institution. With a French maitre d hotel to arrange a well prepared table, that excellent arrangement for exchanging information, by sociable conviviality, proved a valuable measure of his economical administration. The con stitutionalists and other institutionary statesmen of the First Congress, who appropriated a much larger salary to the Presi dent than any other officer, intended that gratuity for hos pitable and other rational expenditures, but not to be hoarded. Washington, as commander-in-chief, and Jefferson, both at home and abroad, knew the value of refined sociality and the essentiality of certain forms, especially when dealing with ADMINISTRATION. 329 foreigners, who, like the Society of Friends, and other worthy people, deem them indispensable for dress, address, and other good purposes. An early arrangement, therefore, of Presi dent Washington s ceremonial, with his Secretary of State Jefferson s, concurrence, established that on all occasions, in cluding dinners, foreign Ministers should yield precedence to Secretaries of State. Under Jefferson s presidency one of those always susceptible and sometimes exacting representa tives of whole nations, the British Minister, Anthony Merry, just translated from the French consular court, took such offence at the President s leading to dinner the wife of the Secretary of State before the British Minister s wife, that he made it matter of complaint in his official correspondence. Whereupon Mr. Monroe, then American Minister in England, was asked, by the under Secretary for Foreign Affairs, if he had heard of an unpleasant occurrence at Washington, an in dignity, he said, offered by the President to Mr. Merry, stating the occurrence in its worst English version, to the great dis paragement, as of a rude republican chief magistrate. Mr. Monroe said he had heard nothing of it, but was very glad that it was to be made the subject of international complaint, inasmuch as it would justify and require his retaliating, by complaint of a much more offensive indignity, which he had deemed it best not to resent or notice, but should certainly present as much more insulting than what Mr. Merry com plained of. "At the first dinner to which I was invited by the Foreign Sec retary, my place at table was at the very foot, below every one of the Ministers of the little German principalities, some of them not so large as the county I live in at home. So mortified did I feel that when I heard where I was to be placed, the American Minis ter called to sit, I could not take my seat, but felt inclined to leave the room, and did not sit down till the Minister, Lord Hawksbury, said, gentlemen, be seated, in which title I thought I might acqui esce. Very soon the Russian Ambassador, who, with the Austrian, were next to our host, in the highest places at the table, asked, iu a loud voice, for the honor of a glass of wine with the American Minister, a kindness which seemed to say that the representative of the United States was entitled to a higher place in the relative 330 JEFFERSON S ranks at the board. I was so relieved and delighted by that notice," said Monroe, "that, awkward, as I know I am, after drink ing the toast with my imperial patron, in returning the decanter, instead of putting it on the table, I plunged it into a fingerglass of water, and scattered the water over the fine clothes of my next neighbors, the Ministers of several potentates, with very small dominions and very hard titles. That little misadventure, with the Russian Ambassador s distinguished attention, soothed my national susceptibility, and not caring to make my personal annoyances matter of public complaint, I thought no more of it. But I am glad to learn that Mr. Merry s case is to be duly noticed, because that will call for mine." Whether the English under Secretary reported to his superior this retort of the American Minister in London he never heard; but President Jefferson s affront to Mrs. Merry, though much talked about in diplomatic and other fastidious circles, was never made the ground of official remonstrance. Another British Minister is said to have described at the court of Munich, the capital of Bavaria, where he long represented the dignity of Great Britain among the ancient and absolute formalities of German ceremonial, another breach of its decorum, against which that gentleman deemed it his duty to remonstrate to President Jefferson. Eldest son of the celebrated lawyer Erskine, and through his influence commissioned to represent their country in this, where the son married, and was otherwise not indisposed to its habits, but by no means so well trained as Jefferson in diplomatic proprieties, David Erskine was, as he is reported to have said, ludicrously overruled by the President at an official interview, sought to complain of informality. The President received him in his slippers, with which undress his whole vin dication of the imputed impropriety harmonized with Louis XIV. with a riding whip in his hand addressing a French parliament, with not more imperturbable authority. Not boor ishly, churlishly, or angrily, but effectually the democratic chief magistrate made it good-humoredly felt that as master of ceremonies he was as superior as tribune of the people. The number of those admiring the sincerity and efficacy of ADMINISTRATION. 331 Jefferson s democracy has much increased since its introduc tion, especially of his countrymen who proclaim it as the true standard of executive government. Earnestly transferring as much authority as possible from the chief magistrate to the people, with sincere confidence in the vulgar capacity for wise self-government, the democratic reformer, whether at the seat of government or at his palatial home among neighbors in Virginia, was served by expert cooks and other well-bred domestics, with none but the finest blood horses, kept late hours for luxurious meals, enjoyed generous, light wines, which he considered the best guards against intemperance, cultivated literature and science, statues, pictures, and architecture, with refined society, and other gratifications arrogated by European aristocracy as their exclusive gratifications. Without being a fashionable man, his life, habits, pleasures, manners and social enjoyments were elegant. When foreign Ministers sometimes ventured to complain of his want of what they deemed estab lished propriety, he easily showed how much more familiar than they he was with the highest refinements ; and his repub lican simplicity, sometimes criticised or calumniated by other half-bred foreigners, was as much superior to theirs in polished refinement as his tall figure and gracious deportment were to those of the pigmy poetaster Moore, whose sarcasms of the great, while meanly courting their company, were bestowed on Jefferson by English detraction almost vernacular then of everything American. 332 JEFFERSON S ADMINISTRATION. AAEON BUEE. Jefferson s Vice-President, Aaron Burr, as such at least the peer if not superior of either him or Adams as President of the Senate; the most inexplicable enigma of American annals, and almost their greatest reproach, is such a drama in their nearly always dull and unexciting scenes, as to require and deserve portraiture at large. Conjecturally of ancient, sturdy Teuton, and certainly of modern American illustrious descent from Jonathan Edwards, his maternal grandfather, the most, and as many learned men of Europe assert, the only profound American scholar, and another pious clergyman, Aaron Burr, his father, both Connecticut Puritans of the best blood of that peculiar purification, educated, trained, and disciplined by them, after a youth and manhood of the utmost promise, Vice-President Burr cast down from that elevation, totally degraded and almost universally vilified, nevertheless if parentage, lineage, and excellent education be either advantage or merit, if, according to a French aristocratic axiom, noble birth is an obligation, Burr was born and trained obliged to virtue and honor. His pious parents strove in vain to make him either clergy man or Christian ; he was more skeptical than Jefferson, Madison, and the two Adamses : at least two of whom were superior biblical scholars, but rejected the holy mysteries which are the faith and solace of devout Christians. Jefferson, cordial venerator of Christian charities, almost mocked at revelations of which Madison s belief or denial was impene trably secret. Washington and Jackson, the soldiers of the presidential dynasty, were earnest Christians. Jefferson and Burr, both men of the world, with many of the preferences of European refinement correcting homelier American habits, would be designated there and here as gentlemen; both AARON BURR. 333 imbued with the aristocracy of democracy, neither having condescended to mix much with the plebeian mass upholding them. Thus they met in the desert where government was pitched at Washington, political and ostensibly personal friends, but both extremely self-willed, dissimilar, and intract able, soon to part bitter foes, hating and dreading each other. Burr was born a soldier fond of war, to fight sword in hand for the same revolution which Jefferson, abominating war, with his brilliant pen championed as statesman. He had been eminent many years in Congress, a foreign mission, and the Department of State as its first Secretary, before Burr, with hardly any promise of statesmanship, unexpectedly translated from the bar, was almost reluctantly wedded to politics as a third spouse, after warm attachment to war and law, his two first passions. Unsurpassed as soldier, leading as lawyer, and universally admired as a fine gentleman, his private character was unexceptionable as son, father, husband, friend, and master. Slaves he always treated as estimable companions, whose liberation by law he was among the first to desire. A few years public service in the Senate of the United States and the Assembly of New York developing his more solid than shining but superior abilities, with the most sagacious aptitude for rational, orderly, republican government, by nat ural progress advanced him rapidly as a national statesman to nearly the highest political honors, with general acknowledge ment that as a virtuous man of the best talents he was worthy of the highest. Party opponents of course thought otherwise, of whom his most indefatigable and restless rival and censor incessantly in the press decrying Burr s integrity and depre cating either his or Jefferson s elevation, was Alexander Hamilton. Whether greater insight of character or deeper prejudice of politics actuated Hamilton s conviction, it was incessantly working, anonymously through the public press, and confidentially by private correspondence, to defame and put down Burr, Jefferson, and Adams, as equally detrimental to public welfare, while they, particularly Burr, said little and 334 JEFFERSON S ADMINISTRATION. wrote less against Hamilton. Jefferson not long after, with all the enthusiasm he displayed in whatever he undertook, exerted all the power of chief magistracy to convict Burr of treason. Defeating that attempt of President Jefferson, and killing Hamilton in a duel, with the maledictions of Washing ton, Jefferson, and Hamilton upon him, blasted, crushed, banished and utterly degraded, Burr survived, abroad and at home, till more than eighty years old, with the same defiant and imperturbable self-possession that nerved him when Mont gomery fell mortally wounded into his arms at the storming of Quebec, and the youth of twenty undaunted urged the battle to go on. Die game was his grand maxim, from which he never departed. Living and dying he was such a drama of American politics, which for the most part are so prosaic that besides mere historical impartiality, other and peculiar circumstances, perhaps biasing my opinion, but which I shall endeavor to state fairly, may excuse my somewhat particular and exceptional account of the rise and fall of a man of mys tery, who like Job, having washed his steps with butter, with the rock pouring him out rivers of oil, was then poisoned in his whole being, execrated, accursed, and buried alive, but, unlike Job, never complained or entreated. While resident at Philadelphia, attending the Senate, Colo nel Burr s daughter and only child Theodosia, in whose virile and ambitious education he took deep interest and performed an anxious part, she with romantic filial reciprocating his romantic parental affection, was for some time my fellow-student. A Mr. Latta, her instructor, my private tutor for the Latin classics, every day urged me to emulate her progress by accounts of her admirable industry and aptitude. Without personal acquaintance, I was by that spiritual medium not only excited to rival, but prepared to admire a young lady, to whom a few years later I was introduced, under flattering cir cumstances, in the captivating hospitality of her father s elegant domesticity at New York. Among my associates at Princeton College, where Colonel Burr had been educated, AARON BURR. 335 and a member of the secret literary society of which I also was a member, were John and William Alston, of South Carolina, my classmates, and William, the youngest, in the still more intimate fellowship of roommate and bedfellow. Their eldest brother Joseph, who married Theodosif Burr, senior when I was sophomore, left Princeton College before I got there, and I did not know him till three or four years afterward. Inheriting a fortune in his own right, he was moreover eldest son of the richest rice planter of South Carolina, when rice and indigo were elements of Southern wealth like cotton since. Joseph Alston had too much money to spend to be as studious and orderly as was necessary to gain collegiate honors. Spendthrift, poetaster, ladies man, and somewhat of a sling er, (frondeur, as the French might have called him,) he left college without a diploma, and though intimate with his brothers, I did not know him till shortly before he courted Theodosia Burr in the summer and married her in the autumn of 1800. Biographers and other misin formed annalists have erroneously chronicled that Colonel Burr inoculated his son-in-law with some of his own ambition. And probably he did increase what was already vehement in Alston before he ever saw his father-in-law. William Lowndes, afterward so distinguished in Congress, before he died merely middle aged, and Daniel Elliot Huger, with the latter of whom I was intimate at college, and with both of them at different periods in Congress, came forward at Charleston, South Caro lina, with Joseph Alston, born to independent fortune and brought up to no other pursuit than politics. Alston promoted early to be the democratic Governor of an aristocratic State, mostly governed by educated men, and Lowndes, highly educated, were remarkable, among other talents, for public speaking; nojt an uncommon American proficiency, in which Joseph Alston was also said to be superior. At that time, end of last century, without railroads, steam boats, or steam power on water or land, convenient stages, sailing packets, or other comfortable public conveyance, nor 336 JEFFERSON S ADMINISTRATION. good inns to induce travelling, there were nevertheless annual migrations from the Carolinas and Georgia, then the extreme Southern United States, to the North and East for cooler summers. Large plantation incomes, received through over seers and factors, not requiring landlords to stay at home, provided for long, expensive journeys of several weeks, per formed by a few miles every day, with much now obsolete, parade of equipage superseded by steam, and discontinued even in Europe, where this country learns its lessons of osten tation while giving some of plain utility. Private carriages drawn by more than one pair of horses, with no relays like European post-staging, but attended by several servants, gen erally slaves, some mounted as outriders, others driving four or six horses to the carriage, with sometimes females seated behind it, were the tardy, clumsy, showy methods by which indolent Southern gentlemen and ladies paraded for recreation through the industrious North and East. Joseph Alston, rich eldest son of one of the richest rice planters, drove an English curricle, the open carriage which in fashion succeeded the phaeton, attended by two black servants in sky-blue liveries, imitative of European menial equipment, spending his money profusely, and by letters of recommendation intro duced to some of the principal families of Philadelphia, then just deprived of the seat of federal government. At the head of fashion there, if not throughout the whole United States, was the wife of a Senator of the United States, William Bing- ham, whose elegant town residence with its extensive garden in the heart of the city, and handsome country-house near town, were the resort of those, especially foreigners, French and English, who institute the regulations of drawing, dining, and dancing rooms. Though a grandmother, still young and handsome enough to dispense fashionably her husband s ample means, that lady was a social summit at Philadelphia. Joseph Alston, with whom through former associations with his bro thers, I then and there became acquainted, met at Mr. Bing- ham s country-seat his eldest daughter, with her husband. AARON BURR. 337 Alexander Baring, usefully instrumental in our purchase of Louisiana in 1803, by his kind and friendly interposition between our Ministers and the British Ministry in the war of 1812, and by his settling several difficulties between Eng land and the United States by his treaty at Washington in 1843: after long and honorable service in the House of Commons, created Baron Ashburton. We have reason to be proud of our native or denizen American-British noblemen Copley, Lord Lyndhurst, and Baring, Lord Ashburton both earning their promotion by eminent talents and services. The present Lord Ashburton, born near Philadelphia, eldest son of Alexander Baring, inheriting most of his large fortune, devotes himself not to idle recreation, but to public improve ments. At Mr. Bingham s table, if I am not mistaken, Mr. Alston met also the youngest daughter of Mr. Bingham, who had clandestinely married a French count, Tilly, from whom she was divorced, and then married Henry, a brother of Alexander Baring, from whom once more divorced, she mar ried again another worthless French noble, Marquis de Blaiset, for whose title she exchanged some wealth which did not save a handsome and sprightly woman from the maltreatment of a dissolute husband and the frown of society. Of a third English nobleman born in Philadelphia, grandson of the great English lawyer Erskine, whom I often heard mention him as his little man of the West, I know nothing. After some time spent in the hospitalities of Philadelphia, Alston took his way further North, with me in his curricle, attended by his two gaudy grooms, by slow daily stages travel ling through New Jersey. In the display of equipage and other such antiquated demonstration, as I have heard from those who enjoyed them, Dr. Franklin s son, the Governor of that province, and many more had been conspicuous. When such parade had somewhat declined, Alston and I, by his means, made our rather spectacular progress, especially through Princeton, where neither of us was remembered for collegiate honors. Staying some time at the City of New VOL. i. 22 338 JEFFERSON S ADMINISTRATION. York, he there solicited Theodosia Burr in marriage, to which her father promptly and heartily consented. Under pleasant auspices I was welcomed at Colonel Burr s residence in Broadway, dined several times there, and was allowed the sumptuous and captivating hospitality of a distinguished gen tleman, before the country as vice-presidential candidate and extremely gracious to Alston and his companion. Colonel Burr, remarkably given to maxims for his conduct, and living up to many of them, yet, as has been said of one extremely unlike him, the distinguished French Minister Guizot, maximed more of his practices than he practiced of his maxims. One of his apothegms, that woman s condition is not improved by marriage, gave way at once to so desira ble a union for the much beloved, affectionate, and dutiful daughter of an ambitious man near fruition of that absorbing passion by the presidential election then in full transaction. Shrewd manager of masses without condescending to mix much in popular assemblies, except to actuate and excite them by public speaking, Burr s adroit and energetic interposition wonderfully aided the influence of Jefferson s declared princi ples, for whose establishment Jefferson dealt even more spar ingly by personal communion with the people than Colonel Burr, both acting through centurions conducting the bulk of plebeian forces rallied to the Republican party and its candi dates. Though no doubt anxious for his daughter s marriage with Joseph Alston, Theodosia, dutifully bred to either single life or brilliant wedlock, was not sacrificed, but consented, without undue parental influence, to a match obviously desired by a parent who had by fondness, never severe, impressed her with heroic filial magnanimity. An affectionate, devoted daughter, brought up by a fond father in his worldly views, rather to shine in public than live obscurely at home, was sought in marriage by a respectable, promising, rich, and all the better for being aspiring suitor, she eighteen and he twenty-one years of age ; of the politics in whose future dis astrous vicissitudes the father then delighted. The dutiful AARON BURR. 389 and affectionate daughter became a faithful wife and fond mother. And if when first married more devoted daughter than wife, an ambitious husband proved likewise constant in the affection which united man and wife in ambition and love. If ambition misled all three to regard public distinction as more desirable than private content, afflicting lessons of retri bution, as it may be called, were in store for them all ; calami ties, bereavements, and bitter disappointments, seclusions, persecutions, and catastrophe, to cut off Alston and Theo- dosia, with their only child, by premature deaths, burying her father alive by separation infrangible and inexorable from the rest of mankind. On her way to solace his misery, she was put to cruel death, as I well remember was reported at the time, and is just now, as this is written, republished by the following distressing paragraph of a newspaper : "Confession. A sailor died recently in Texas, and on his deathbed confessed that he was one of the crew who murdered Mrs. Alston, of South Carolina, forty years ago. Mrs. Alston was the daughter of Aaron Burr. She sailed from Charleston for New York in a brig, and on the trip the crew mutinied and mur dered all the officers and passengers, Mrs. Alston being the last one to walk the plank. The sailor remembered her look of despair, and died in the greatest agony of mind." Once, and only once after their marriage, I was with Mr. and Mrs. Alston, when, for a short time, they stopped at the Indian Queen tavern in Fourth Street, Philadelphia, where, it was said, Jefferson used to lodge and hear the " Rogue s March" sometimes played under his window, with other in sults. I do not recollect distinctly the time, except that it was cold, wet, autumnal weather, and probably their honey moon had somewhat waned. On their way from New York to Carolina they travelled with more than Alston s former pageant. A close carriage instead of the open curricle, with more servants than when before in Philadelphia Jefferson and Burr then, I presume being known to be the successful candidates. One of President Jefferson s first selected favor- 340 JEFFERSON S ADMINISTRATION. ites, a radical Democrat with aristocratic associations, superior foreign education, fashionable appearance and address, son of an emigrant Tory who left and never returned to this country, George W. Erving, was with the Alstons. Democrat of the school of Jeremy Bentham s utilitarian and extremely popular doctrines, then so generally derided, since so much adopted, to which and to Bentham, Burr, when in England, took with considerate adoption of a democracy transcendant, surpassing perhaps that of Jefferson himself. Soon after appointed, by President Jefferson, American Consul at London, Erving was afterward special temporary Envoy to Denmark, then permanent Plenipotentiary to Spain, where he learned, as he told President Jackson, undivu]ged improprieties in Secretary Adams s purchase of Florida and relinquishment of Texas. Mr. Erving spent his latter years in Paris, but disappointed, as many have been, of the object of their greatest desire, by not getting the American mission to France, which Mr. Adams characterized as heaven upon earth, as also Mr. William Short thought, who succeeded Mr. Jefferson in the enjoyment of that beatitude. Joseph Alston s classmate and roommate at Princeton, my contemporary there as my schoolfellow before, was Richard Rush, in whose father s family Colonel Burr was familiar, and still more in his mother s, the Stocktons, of Princeton, among the most respectable per sons of New Jersey. Mr. Rush, now with me one of the very few survivors old enough to try by personal remembrance the personages, traditions, and occurrences presented cursorily but fairly in this chapter, on full and frequent communion with me, hold it both of us unjust to surrender Colonel Burr to the ferocious execration under which he lies buried near his father at Princeton. Romance as well as malevolence mis represent Burr, Alston, and Theodosia, depicting him as more hideous, and her as more beautiful, than the reality, also disfiguring Governor Alston. Although neither good looking or prepossessing, Alston was a gentleman of good character, chosen, as before mentioned, when young, governor of his AARON BURR. 341 native State, qualified and perhaps destined to further politi cal distinction, prevented by early death: born, bred, edu cated, and thoroughly imbued with that slaveholding aristoc racy of democracy never acceptable, but become since much more odious in parts of the United States. Mr. Alston, at the time of his marriage to Colonel Burr s daughter, rallied to Jefferson as their party founder, acknowledged leader, and respected future representative ruler. With no dishonor, in volved in his father-in-law s embarrassments, Governor Alston was urged by him to declare party and patriotic independence of what Burr then felt constrained to denounce as the Vir ginia usurpation, by proclaiming Andrew Jackson as the founder of a new and better presidential dynasty. I dined several times at Colonel Burr s luxurious table, though only at family parties, and was often in his house while in New York with Alston. At the same time I was, if I am not mistaken, at General Hamilton s by renewal of school-boy acquaintance with his oldest son Philip, killed in a duel on the fatal spot, and not long before his father fell there, both by deplorable quarrels requiring no such shocking result. I was also at Brockhost Livingston s, and with Edward Living ston and Theodosia Burr visited one of our new frigates, where, with his usual jocularity, he told her to be sure that no one of her sparks attended her, or it might blow up the ship. We also waited on General Gates, residing out of town, of whose military party, as opposed to Washington, Colonel Burr was a decided member. French, both the language and per sons were cultivated at his home, where Kings Louis Philippe and Jerome Bonaparte, Talleyrand, Yolney, Chateaubriand, and other French personages, were entertained. Nathalie, the daughter of a Madame de L Age, of the French nobility, I think lived at Colonel Burr s, who practised talking and writing French with Theodosia. Nathalie de L Age accom panied Robert R. Livingston when he went Minister to France, where his Secretary of Legation, Thomas Sumpter, married her, after courtship on their boisterous and perilous voyage 342 JEFFERSON S ADMINISTRATION. aboard the frigate Boston, commanded by a nautical madman, Captain Macniel. Sumpter and his wife, whom I knew in Paris, afterward represented the United States during many years, he as Minister Plenipotentiary at the Portuguese court of the Emperor of Brazil. General Sumpter, his father, one of the Carolina partisan celebrities of the Revolution, was in the Senate under Burr s presidency, at the acquisition of Louisiana; and another Sumpter, Thomas D., grandson, I suppose, of the General, was in the Twenty- Seventh Congress when I was in 1843. In her small family circle, where only I saw Theodosia Burr, according to my recollection, she was not the beautiful creature since depicted by romantic tradi tion, though handsome enough, with the pathos of her letters posthumously published, to exalt the victim of her vicissitudes into a paragon of female loveliness. Not strikingly even handsome, the mild, considerate expression of her oval face, with pleasing aspect rendered the rather dignified presence of her small person and quiet manners prepossessing, with out her seeking it. Educated unlike most young ladies, and beyond them, there was no demonstration of superior literary attainments, but without much lively girlhood she was simply unpretending and kind. A well-trained English mother, de parting this life before her daughter s tuition was completed, Theodosia became the apt and worshipful pupil of an idolizing father, man of the world and of fashion, with fashionable tastes and even fopperies. Born and bred piously, but with irreligious ambition, if not selfish, it gratified him, as it did her, to marry a well-educated, rich, aspiring young gentleman, of suitable age and condition, without winning personal attrac tion, probably the first and only suitor of a daughter taught by her father that to marry is no female advancement. From what little I saw of it her behavior to Alston indicated that her father s gratification at the fitness of the union entered into her inducements. Her whole deportment was gentle and perfectly amiable, as well as cheerful, but there was no show of the ardor and energy any more than of the learning and AARON BURR. 343 talents she had in store. With her father the warmest love was in constant demonstration. I saw her a blooming young woman seated in his lap in the most affectionate embraces; and their correspondence when separated, if on his part some thing like Lord Chesterfield to his son, evinces throughout that the mutual, parental, and filial attachment was more than common. When inclining some time after his wife s death to choose a stepmother for his daughter, the father seemed to consult her even on that delicate and painful subject. In all the prosperity and all the reverses of a man extremely reserved and clandestine she was his oracle and most confidential privy counsellor, invoked by letters if absent, and entreated to bestow her beloved presence in time of need. I do not remember ever seeing Colonel Burr but once after leaving him at New York, whence I accompanied Joseph Alston by easy stages of his pompous travel to Boston, where ostentatious Southern republi canism and style did not hinder welcome attentions paid by a gentry of merchants, lawyers, and clergymen better educated than most of those further South, and hospitable as the richest residents of plantations. Some time afterward Colonel Burr followed his married daughter and her husband through Phila delphia for his inauguration after the alarming presidential superfetation in Congress more critical and exciting than even the presidential birth at the polls. But for that party effort in Congress to make the undesignated Yice-President the actual President in spite of undeniable party and popular predilection, Burr, as far as possible with his insubordinate spirit, would have harmonized perfectly with the aristocracy of democracy predominant in Jefferson s administration, except in their passion for peace, which was by no means his passion. Wild and refractory, but extremely studious and well read youth, a juvenile soldier, not merely brave as thou sands of others are, but fearless as very few by the best qual ified judges are allowed to be, circumspect withal, forecasting and provident, so well renowned as to induce Washington to invite him into his military family, a lawyer indefatigably 344 JEFFERSON S ADMINISTRATION. pains-taking and eminently successful, at all times as addicted to books as pleasure, to literature as law, cultivating the fine arts, patronizing painters, sculptors, and musicians, self-made by strict discipline superadded to constitutional self-possession, Burr was unexpectedly taken from the bar into politics, with out countenance, if not in defiance of the Schuylers, Clintons, Livingstons, Jays, Hamiltons, and other New York magnates. Promoted at the first bound to the Senate of the United States, he proved there at once the emulous and redoubtable colleague of a statesman so eminent and distinguished as Rufus King; and though Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, and Gallatin had served long as statesmen, yet none rose faster or stood much higher in public respect. A courteous gentleman of lofty mien, rather smaller in person than Hamilton or Madison, widower something more than forty years of age, vigorous and elastic, extremely temperate and sparing of food or words either written or spoken, courtly but somewhat stately, with eyes of the most penetrating assurance, and lips of voluptuous if not sensual inclination, ostentatious in refined dissipation, all attention to all ladies, but more partic ularly to those more fond of company than home, the Vice- President was by the French Minister Pichon s wife entitled not Vice-President, but president of vice, when there was no vulgarity in his vices, whatever they were, but his amours were intrigues, not coarse pollutions. As republican as any of the eminent trio of Jefferson s administration, Burr had none of that great courtier s benign enthusiasm for pacific democracy, and little of the gracious flattering condescension, said to be a faculty of that taller and more suasive superior. Appreciating Gallatin s fine scholarship, extensive informa tion, and frank expression of opinion when misrepresented as a timid timeserver, Burr could hardly admire Madison s modest and unimpressive personality. As to Monroe, though not of the new executive government, yet much in its confi dence, who had co-operated with Burr as Senators to change the Senate from secret to open session, Burr pronounced that AARON BURR. 345 future and fortunate chief magistrate a dull, stupid, half-edu cated, not half soldier, with whom I believe there was at one time a duel between them in contemplation. Excelled by Jefferson, Hamilton, and Madison in writing, and by the two latter in elocution, either declamatory or argumentative, little Burr as Hamilton sometimes called him, as Adams called Hamilton a little Englishman little Burr, as soldier, lawyer, and politi cian, proved superior to most in doing what he undertook ; man of action, with large endowments of education and mental culture, fond of books as one of his pleasures, but so secretive as to relish intrigues, in literature filling no page, while in politics excessive defamation attests his fall from formidable eminence. In disdainful silence holding off from the House of Representatives surreptitiously tempting him to be Presi dent, to analogy of which temptation, men so high minded as Quincy Adams and Clay yielded, Burr calmly took his place in the Senate, throughout his lustrum governing with enforce ment of the nice regulations of parliamentary and constitu tional law, applied with inflexible impartiality. In dignity and authority not excelled, if equalled by his illustrious predeces sors, Presidents Adams and Jefferson, Burr was master of the situation in that chair: on the memorable occasions of the Mississippi crisis, preliminary to the purchase of Lou isiana, and Chase s impeachment, ruling with consummate ability. His downfall had not only begun, however, but his doom was manifestly foreshadowed before his official term expired. Notwithstanding which, with fearless serenity standing upright on ruin, he took affectionate leave of the Senate, by valedic tion apparently unpremeditated, neither registered in writing beforehand nor afterward, but effusion so natural, touching, manly, and delightful, that it rebuked his vilification by unanimous vote of senatorial admiration, which tradition has never ceased to mention with applause, and, if I am not mis informed, his is the only instance where the Senate took leave of a parting Vice-President by a resolution. But sentenced 346 JEFFERSON S ADMINISTRATION. to execution, legal, political, and social, mountains of execra tion were heaping up to cover a degraded outcast, from which ages may not relieve his memory. Dropped by the party which re-elected Jefferson to the Presidency by an overwhelm ing majority, and again, soon after discomfiture in a contest for the governance of New York, the degraded Vice-President killed General Hamilton in a party duel, who from Burr s election in place of Hamilton s father-in-law, General Schuy- ler, to the Senate of the United States for the ensuing ten years, never ceased malediction of Burr and Jefferson. At that unfortunate homicide, like the execution of the Duke D Enghein by Bonaparte s order, about the same time, one on the twentieth of March, the other on the llth of July, 1804, mankind shuddered, exclaimed, and wept as tragic events, indefencible, for which no apology could be offered. Coinci dent antipathy to Burr of such enemies as Washington, Jefferson, and Hamilton, ought to imply sufficient cause for it, which, though never flagrant, was affirmed by the verdict of large majorities of their countrymen, for the followers of Washington, Jefferson, and Hamilton comprehended most of the American people. All Burr s European vagabondage, together with that in the Southwest, is omitted from this D excerpt. His love for his daughter descended as fervent on her son, whose premature death is said to have wrung the only tears or emotion which storming cities, fighting duels, persecution, imprisonment, destitution, and disgrace never drew from the youth of twenty or the man of eighty. Steeled in remark able stoicism, Aaron Burr lived and died game. My impres sion of his daughter s calamity is that it was more shocking than being merely put to death; and that she did not sail from Charleston, but some other seaport of South Carolina, on a voyage, when the catastrophe of daughter, mother, and wife may yet supply legends to animate the dull realities of early American history. After some four years of fruitless vagrancy in Europe, AARON BURR. 347 almost as solitary among multitudes there as in the American wilderness, the strange questist of illegitimate advancement was finally reduced to clandestine, extremely difficult return for ignoble livelihood in the humbler walks of a profession whose highest he had left disastrously for politics. Exposed to creditors for many debts, and to prosecution for unpardoned homicide still tremendous, disguise and concealment were con sidered his only safeguard from prison, till, by the interven tion of a few friends left, the offender was suffered to venture his disclosure at the bar. Incapable of dejection, impatience, or complaint, but submitting to conscious obscurity by total seclusion, Burr lingered through long old age begloomed by domestic bereavements. His grandson, only child of his only child, child of solace and promise, died nine years of age. Ambitiously educated and married, Theodosia, affectionate, devoted, constant and domestic daughter, wife, and mother, with all her noble perfections tried by that irreparable afflic tion, embarking from Carolina to share consolation with her father in New York, was heard of no more but by harrowing rumors of sufferings from pirates at sea worse than the most cruel death. Some years afterward Governor Alston died estranged, as it was said, from his father-in-law, by loans which he could not pay. The last and only time I saw Colonel Burr after his down fall was in the District Court of the United States, held in a room at the City Hotel at New York. William Van Ness was the judge on the bench, his second when he shot Hamilton. There were few persons present and nothing remarkable occurred; Burr s speech, if it could be so called, was but a few words without gesture or animation. He did not recog nize me nor did I speak to him. Mr. Rush tells me that some time after that he fell in with Colonel Burr and travelled with him in the stage from Jersey City to Trenton. According probably to what was said to be his plan to know no one till first addressed, he did not speak till Mr. Rush respectfully saluted him; but after that renewal of old acquaintance, and 348 JEFFERSON S ADMINISTRATION. all the way, Colonel Burr was affable and polished as thereto fore; not communicative and talkative, but cheerful, amiable, and natural as Mr. Rush had known him formerly, when inti mate at his father s, Dr. Rush s, house. Lingering to beyond fourscore, the once superior scholar, soldier, gentleman, and statesman, his contact almost leprous, but serene stoic on the brink of the grave, cared for only by some few commiserating creatures of his former kindness, Burr calmly fell asleep in death and was buried, as he re quested, near his father s tomb, and with military honors, which also he desired. Of one endowed with so many excel lent aptitudes, it is painful and difficult to believe the infamy heaped on his memory. Occupying no space in literature and not much in politics, extreme infamy itself challenges question whether the verdict is just. Is there reason for accusing or suspecting Burr of treason ? Denounced and persecuted by enthusiastic adherents of Jeffer son and Hamilton, driven from home and social as well as political respectability, he was not without cause for disliking all parties, if not renouncing his country. But what could he gain by dismemberment of the Union? Conquest of Mexico, a foreign land of fabulous attractions, presented inducement enough for all his errterprising spirit, to which, when prose cuted by President Jefferson, he invited first England and then France, by perhaps illegal, but not treasonable misdemeanor. Disliked, shunned, and discredited by Washington, Adams, and Jefferson, Burr underwent for a long time, without being apprised of it, Hamilton s extremest malediction. But highly esteemed as Hamilton was by many eminent persons, he also, with great confidence in himself, was in the habit of under valuing many others, among the rest Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Pickering, and McIIenry. His aversion to Burr w r as aggravated result of continual partisan conflict, in which Burr, with little talking or writing, mostly discom fited Hamilton, profusely censuring Burr by speech and his pen, in private and in public. The fatal result was Hamil- JEFFERSON S ADMINISTRATION. 349 ton s death by Burr s hand; when explosion of general regret for the illustrious victim was loud in execration of his alleged murderer, prosecuted and fugitive as such, and irretrievably dishonored, but neither history or charity need perpetuate the hue and cry against his memory. Whatever influence it was in executive refinement that assimilated Congress to that standard of manners, certain it is as historical event that Jefferson s administration began with leading members of both houses of the Seventh Congress, not only of his party, which was matter of course, but of his class as individuals. Nathaniel Macon, chosen Speaker of the first democratic House of Representatives, was an aboriginal personage of the staid and uncommonly independent State of North Carolina, outstripping Jefferson in radical democracy, while harmonizing with most of his politics. As presiding officer his principle was to rule and regulate as little as possi ble, and let the house govern itself. Continually re-elected for many years during most of his protracted career in both branches of Congress, he never made a single sacrifice to vul gar popularity. Votes inflexibly and invariably given for extreme liberty and parsimonious economy, many more nega tive votes than cast by any other member, with tenacity altogether impracticable to his imperturbably good-humored but transcendant opposition to whatever he deemed unrepubli- can, constituted the enviable public character Macon enjoyed. After voting for the war with England, those striving to sus tain it by taxes, banks, loans, and other such contributions, found in him a negation invincibly pregnant, adhering in superably to the radicalisms on which Jefferson s administra tion was supposed to be raised, till rejected by those of his disciples and successors, Madison and Monroe, as unfit for exigencies befalling a country. Macon was wedded indissolu- bly to that plantation independence which, like the Polish, 350 JEFFERSON S ADMINISTRATION. vetoes whatever its bucolic isolation disapproves. At home a sportsman, at Washington enjoying cards without gam bling, and dinners without excess, idler everywhere with a moderate competency by slave labor, he held all work for hoarding wealth in sovereign contempt; much admired and respected, his days to good old age were spent consuming the fruits of the earth in moderation, with the recreations of tran quil indolence, eschewing display and fashionable parade. John Randolph, of Roanoke, by Speaker Macon s appoint ment, Chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means, the laboratory of President Jefferson s reforms, leader of the Democratic party in the House of Representatives, acknowl edged and absolute, proud of his Saxon and of his Indian pedigree, with a long, skeleton finger of unmitigated scorn to point at not only ill-bred but low-born opponents, revelled like Macon in aristocratic revolt against fashions and forms. Slender, angular person, rustic and fantastic dress, silver- toned articulation, weasened face, and altogether sarcastic oratory distinguished the haughty Democrat who finally re belled against Jefferson s control. Some years afterward, when Jefferson s son-in-law, John W. Eppes, overcoming Ran dolph at the polls on the question of the war of 1812, took his place and his position as Chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means, a gentlemanly fit of the gout deprived us of his services long enough to bring forward George W. Bibb with those taxes, banks, armies, and navies which war evolved, and Macon, with Randolph, Eppes, and other inflexible adhe rents of Jefferson s politics deprecated and opposed. Some of the remains of those primitive materials of the original structure of democratic government, executive and legislative, were still in Congress when I took my seat there several years afterward, with Clay, Calhoun, and other such Democrats bent on war, which all Jefferson s pacific contriv ances did not prevent, if they did not promote, while his dis ciple Madison was obliged to subscribe to it, and his disciple Monroe was said to have returned from Europe with mortify- JEFFERSON S ADMINISTRATION. 351 ing conviction avowed, that without that resort the United States were irretrievably degraded. William B. Giles and Richard Brent, members of the House of Representatives in 1802, Virginia Senators in 1813, of the Corinthian order of Democracy, Mr. Giles drove his coach and four, and Mr. Brent was daily on horseback well-mounted, attended by a well- mounted slave groom. My Pennsylvania colleagues, of a more Doric order, William Findley and Robert Brown, with perhaps some more, plainer but as ancient and faithful repre sentatives as the Virginians, had for many years been in Con gress. Local struggle for place had not then adulterated the wholesome sap of rotation in office, always salutary when not abused, by perversion from executive to elective stations, that impatient aspirants might supplant better incumbents to the detriment of constituents, before a short-lived member has learned how to be useful and effectual in the art of legislation. Incessant changes in Congress imposed by Northern and Eastern constituencies keep preponderance of power, presi dencies, and patronage, and enable permanent delegations with greater experience, even though minority, by better practice to check and control majorities; upholding and vouchsafing slavery while denounced to execration and extermination ; so that only slaveholding Presidents have been re-elected, and never Presidents without slaves. Still more detrimental in the practical working of the republican experiment abuse and excessive rotation dwarfs short-lived membership in Congress to dependency on presidential protection for mere minions of presidential will. This enormously increases executive power by incessant increase of places to give away, so that legions of partisan mercenaries are enlisted for every presidential election to deflect Presidents from attention to measures and public wel fare, that they may misspend their official time in bestowing places on men; every incursion of incumbents giving bounties on malfeasance by the foreknowledge that as they are to be but briefly in the receipt of emoluments, they must hasten to make 352 JEFFERSON S ADMINISTRATION. the most of them, integrity being no reason why they shall not soon be supplanted by others in like manner tempted to malversation. Deborah Logan s primitive purity of democ racy was shocked at the crowds of hungry democratic expect ants infesting Stenton for Dr. Logan s recommendation to the President, faithless, she says, to his profession of patriotic equity. Similar harpies abound under all governments. But that good lady s rigorous condemnation of President Jefferson does injustice to, at any rate, the principles and rules he pro claimed for official removals and appointments. His theory at least was not inequitable. Whether the democracy he in troduced was practicable without inherent and inevitable degeneracy to the swooping proscription since common, is a question that shall be attended to in another part of these recollections ; all that will be said on that subject here is, that if Jefferson s democracy was what Deborah Logan condemns it for, it is bad government and cannot be defended. FOREIGN MISSIONS. 353 CHAPTER VI. FOREIGN MISSIONS. DISTINGUISHED and ennobled by talents, and taking none but those like himself for his intimate counsellors at home, Jefferson s selections for American representatives in Europe were of the same eminent class. Pichon wrote to Talleyrand that it was believed William Short would be the Minister in France, where, when a young man, he succeeded Jefferson as Charge d Affaires, and being an intimate friend, it seemed probable that he would be appointed the Minister. But Chan cellor Livingston was preferred ; a gentleman in all respects of elevated position, for ability, tried experience, republican politics, and independent fortune. Charles Pinckney was appointed Minister to Spain; cousin of Thomas Pinckney who arranged the Spanish treaty of 1795, and whose signal efficiency (Charles Pinckney s) in the formation of the Federal Constitution equalled that of Madison or any other leading member of the convention. These gentlemen were of the few American families of general acknowledgment as such; the South Carolina Pinckneys and the New York Livingstons, and Clintons, long established and much respected socially: Charles Pinckney and Robert Livingston, both of Jefferson s party in politics. The Consuls he appointed, Fulwar Skip- with to Paris, and George W. Erving to London, were also respectable gentlemen of the President s politics. But no step was taken for the appointment of another Minister to Eng land, superseding Rufus King, although differing entirely from the President s politics, and having been six years resident in London as American Minister. I believe Mr. Jefferson has left, now published, his opinion that four years is about the VOL. i. 23 354 FOREIGN MISSIONS. proper duration of an American mission in Europe. Mr. King said that when his had lasted six years, and he considered seven a reasonable period, President Jefferson never interfered to put an end to it, but left the time to Mr. King, whose valu able services, particularly in the Louisiana acquisition, were officially avowed by Mr. Livingston in his correspondence with their government. Deborah Logan, reliable chronicler of actualities she de scribes, yet, as devoted wife of a persecuted husband, describing the downfall of Adams s presidency, calls it a reign of terror, stating "It really does seem to me," is her record, "that if the false principles upon which the government had been conducted had lasted a little longer, or with the help of the violent party spirit that it had excited, had extended a little further, not only would the progress of the improvement of our country have been im peded, but we should unhappily have witnessed it turned into an Aceldama, wet with the blood of our best citizens. Friendships were dissolved, tradesmen dismissed, and custom withdrawn from the Republican party, the heads of which, as objects of the most ingenious suspicions, were recommended to be closely watched, and committees of Federalists appointed for that purpose. Many gentlemen went armed, that they might be able to resent any per sonal aggression." While, according to that lady s impression of what she had reason to consider a reign of terror, as it was called by the party opposed to it, faction, persecution, and distraction domineered within, the foreign relations of the United States were no better if not worse than their internal condition. Grain, with some rice and tobacco, constituted all they had for foreign commerce, then their sole resource. Without manufactures, agriculture depended on commerce tormented, ravaged, and spoliated with reckless impunity in every sea by cruisers, French, English, Spanish and Algerine, capturing American vessels, seizing their cargoes, imprisoning their crews and passengers, while their governments scorned and mocked the complaints of ours, which were the wretched bur den of all their foreign missions. President Washington was FOREIGN MISSIONS. 355 obliged to seek relief from Algerine depredations by large annual tribute voted by act of Congress. Special embassies to England, to France and Spain, solicited redress and in. dulgences, grudgingly allowed if at all at our entreaties. The British treaty, as stigmatized, rent the whole Union to furious party antagonism. The Spanish treaty promising, did not make sure the navigation of the great Western waters. The French treaty was torn to fragments of mutual recrimination, and President Washington s mission -of explanation was driven away with insulting repudiation. Parties more English and French than Federal and Republican, by degrading parody of the royal and radical internecine European struggle to root each other out of that continent, elevating Jefferson by very small majority of votes to supersede Adams in the presidency, in the first year of the new century by a civic revolution, inducted democracy to supersede republicanism. John Adams almost fled in Saxon dudgeon from the wilderness seat of government in gloomy crepuscule of the brumal fourth of March, 1801, taking his petulant way to Braintree, in that modest home to survive to patriarchal age a genuine, learned, eloquent, and most efficient republican patriot. At eleven o clock of that eventful day, uncompromising Aaron Burr proudly installed as Vice-President, at twelve, enthusiastic Thomas Jefferson, triumphant over Burr and over Adams, after severe contests with each in turn, mellowed, as all such presidential conflicts, however severe, always have been, by American republican optimism into submissive tranquillity, severally took the oath of executive office, administered by the new Chief Justice, John Marshall, succeeding Oliver Ellsworth, making peace with Bonaparte. President Jefferson s inaugural discourse was a masterly homily, his first, I believe, last, and only speech; unlike Wash ington s stately yet modest addresses to Congress, or Adams s sententious imitations of those delivered by kings to parlia ments. Read in the Senate to a few by-standers, forerunners of multitudes vastly increasing in numbers and sovereignty 356 FOREIGN MISSIONS. at every succeeding lustrum, to devour captivating eulogy of free government, with never-ceasing reiterated assurances of its popular administration, printed on silver and satin, framed and gilded for household ornament in the dwellings of admiring fellow-citizens, published far and wide, Jefferson s much extolled inaugural inculcated the purest ethics of the freest politics, in the attraction of his felicitous diction utter ing fervent and benevolent patriotism. The rising people of a New World, remote from interruption by the Old, in their chief magistrate s sincere and earnest belief and assurance, in harmonious concert with him, were to develop the sublime experiment of peaceful happiness in spontaneous, orderly, and religious progress. Transferring as much power as practically could be taken from the government, especially the executive, to its legitimate republican sovereigns, the people, they would govern themselves, and be governed best when governed least. For more than half a century since announcement those be nign principles not only predominate in these United States, but with established favor throughout the entire American hemisphere, where, if one monarch yet remains, and British colonies still continue, it is with popularized monarchy anal- ogous to neighboring democratic institutions. Boundless space and self-governed spirit, vital elements of original nationality, spreading beyond exploration and far beyond all example the area for liberty, unknown hitherto in the crowded Old World, may perhaps by imitation rival development in the republican new government which Jefferson was first and boldest to pro nounce the strongest in the world, already ranking in a few years, so few as to be hardly hours in a nation s life, with the strongest and oldest anywhere, imposing on all the North American model. The confidence of American democracy, risen from contempt to be the admiration of all, is that by unexampled room and freedom mankind are rendered not only stronger but better than ever before, to flourish with government till now found incompatible with weak and wicked humanity. FOREIGN MISSIONS. 357 Toward the beginning of the second year of the unexampled experiment Louisiana became the boon incredible and inesti mable of Jefferson s inflexibly pacific administration. Before it was three weeks old the first intimation of that great event reached him from London, to take place two years afterward in the midst and as the offshoot of immense European prepara tions for tremendous warfare, when Jefferson had disarmed the United States of nearly all means for that much too frequent and much abused but still inevitable last resort of nations. Devoted to and delighted with peace and plenty, disarming, and repealing taxes, the boon of Louisiana came wholly un expected, and without the least agency of Jefferson s adminis tration; whose inflexible rejection of all force, not preventing, if it did not eventually provoke war, renders it questionable whether he considered such total abstinence from all prep aration the true democratic policy of peace, which his un paralleled expedients and contrivances failed to preserve. Before Jefferson s retirement from chief magistracy, halcyon visions of perpetual peace without preparation for war van quished ; and he was constrained to revive a standing army, not to fight foreign enemies, but, by extreme inflictions of in tolerable police, control fellow-citizens. War, at last the only alternative, unavoidably cast on his two favorite disciples and presidential successors, with disastrous experience taught that their preceptor s pacific transcendence was, like all excess, detrimental. When Jefferson succeeded to the presidency the United States had been during several years without a Minister in France ; but their Minister in England, Rufus King, a member of the convention which framed the Federal Constitution, and eminent as member of Congress both before and after that accomplishment, highly respectable, was always at his post and on his guard. Adequate private fortune enabled him by liberal additions to his official salary to maintain, without undue ostentation or impracticable emulation, in a country where ages of primogeniture and entails, by amassing very 358 FOREIGN MISSIONS. large private fortunes, render very often painfully difficult, the peculiar social position of an American Minister. By the patent of his commission levelled up to the rank and splendid intercourse of personages elevated by wealth and titles, and among them some of his diplomatic colleagues, the representa tive, often poor, of a plain republic, disclaiming show, and most of whose people denouncing it as unrepublican, cannot easily avoid derogatory disparagement. The French Minister Luzerne, at Philadelphia when the treaties of independence were negotiated at Paris, procured from Congress a resolve that in the arrangement of those treaties the western boundary of the United States should be left to French management. And although Franklin s treaty of 1778 provided that the territorial possessions of the United States should not be disturbed by France, yet every Executive of that ambitious nation, whether royal, republican, or im perial, regretted the transfer of Louisiana by France to Spain in 1763, and entertaining the highest conception of its great value, coveted its restoration. Accordingly at the treaty of Basle in 1795, when Spain changed her English for French alliance, St. Domingo, another cherished French-American colony, was restored to France, but her Minister Berthelemy failed to procure also a cession of Louisiana. A republican fugitive from a French sanguinary State stroke before men tioned, the well-known Carnot, vindicating himself to his country from his retreat in Germany, disclosed by publica tion there, the unknown fact of the French attempt to get Louisiana at Basle. On the 29th of March, 1801, within three weeks of Jefferson s inauguration as President, Mr. King thereby discovering that statement in the public jour nals, deemed it of sufficient importance to be made known to his government, with an intimation of the necessity of an American Minister in France, by the following official com munication : "In confirmation of the rumors of the day, Carnot s answer to Bailleul, published during the exile of the former, states the pro- FOREIGN MISSIONS. 359 ject which had been discussed in the Directory to obtain from Spain a cession of Louisiana and the Floridas. A reference to that performance, copies of which I at the time sent to the Depart ment of State, will show the manner in which it was expected to obtain the consent of Spain, as well as afford a clue to the views of France in seeking this establishment. "What was then meditated, has, in all probability, since been executed. The cession of Tuscany to the Infant, Duke of Parma, by the treaty between France and Austria, forms a more compact and valuable compensation to this branch of the House of Spain than as formerly thought of; and adds very great credit to the opinion which, at this time, prevails both at Paris and London, that Spain has in return actually ceded Louisiana and the Floridas to France. " There is reason to know that it is the opinion of certain influ ential persons in France, that nature has marked a line of separa tion between the people of the United States living upon the two sides of the range of mountains which divides their territory. "Without discussing the considerations which are suggested in support of this opinion, or the false consequences, as I wish to be lieve them, deduced from it, I am apprehensive that this cession is intended to have, and may actually produce, effects injurious to the union and consequent happiness of the people of the United States. Louisiana and the Floridas may be given to the French emigrants, as England once thought of giving them to the Ameri can Tories; or they may constitute the reward of some of the armies which can be spared at the end of the war. "I hear that General Collot, who was a few years ago in America, and a traveller in the Western country, and who for some time has been in disgrace and confinement in France, has been lately set at liberty ; and that he, with a considerable number of disaffected and exiled Englishmen, Scotchmen, and Irishmen, is soon to proceed from France to the United States. Whether their voyage has any relation to the cession of Louisiana, is a matter of mere conjecture ; but having heard of it in connection with that project, I think proper to mention it to you. "What effect a plain and judicious representation upon this sub ject, made to the French government by a Minister of talents and entitled to confidence, would be likely to have, is quite beyond any means of judging which I possess; but on this account, as well as others of importance, it is a subject of regret that we have not such a character at this time at Paris." Mr. King s warning demonstrated his large and liberal American nationality: native of Massachusetts and inhabit ant of New York, warmly alive to the vital importance of 360 FOREIGN MISSIONS. maintaining the United States one and indivisible, over and on both sides of the Allegheny Mountains, pursuant to his resolution in Congress, already mentioned, that the entire valleys of the Mississippi and the St. Lawrence belong by nature to the United States, and should be accordingly so considered and maintained. Aware of the French design to meddle in the settlement of the Western boundaries, notwithstanding the provision to pre vent it by Franklin s treaty of 1778, President Washington s Secretary of State in 1790, Jefferson, endeavored to obtain from Spain a strip on the eastern bank of the Mississippi, for which the Spanish treaty of 1795 was believed to supply a satisfactory substitute in the place of deposit. The subject thereupon slumbered for ten years, till unexpectedly and alarmingly brought to Jefferson s apprehension by Bona parte s policy of peaceful but formidable aggrandizement as actively and ardently, however differently pursued, as Jeffer son s peaceful policy of tranquil development. Inheriting the royal and republican desire for Louisiana, and adding his always energetic determination to get it, Bonaparte went to work with treaties and armaments, while Jefferson, busied and delighted with peaceable establishments, placed his reliance on them, resolved, however, that if war must be the resort, he would risk it with the mighty French warrior, to whom he was accused of subserviency, rather than submit to his occu pation of Louisiana. From first to last as assiduously and earnestly employed in the Louisiana affair as he had been in that of Spanish America some years before, at one time in Paris, where it was my good fortune to accompany him and his amiable lady, and constantly in London, Mr. King put off his return to this country till the treaty for the purchase of Louisiana was effected, which he brought home, with the first intelligence of that wonderful event, though not then fully appreciated, to gether with first tidings of the tremendous war of which it FOREIGN MISSIONS. 361 was the secret offspring. On the 1st of June, 1801, he wrote to Mr. Madison, Secretary of State: "On this occasion, among other subjects of conversation, his lordship (Hawksbury) introduced the subject of Louisiana. He had, from different quarters, received information of its cession to France, and very unreservedly expressed the reluctance with which they should be led to acquiesce in a measure that might be followed by the most important consequences. The acquisition might ena ble France to extend her influence, and, perhaps, her dominion up the Mississippi, and through the lakes even to Canada. This would be realizing the plan to prevent the accomplishment of which the seven years war took place ; besides the vicinity of the Floridas to the West Indies, and the facility with which the trade of the latter might be interrupted, and the islands even invaded, should the transfer be made, were strong reasons why England must be unwilling that the territory should pass under the dominion of France. As I could not mistake his lordship s object in speak ing to me on this subject, I had no difficulty or reserve in express ing my private sentiments respecting it, taking for my text the observation of Montesquieu, that it is happy for trading powers that God has permitted Turks and Spaniards to be in the world, since of all nations they are the most proper to possess a great empire with insignificance. The purport of what I said was, that we are contented that the Floridas remain in the hands of Spain, but should not be willing to see them transferred except to our selves." On receipt of that letter, Secretary Madison wrote to Charles Pinckney, the new Minister to Spain, to engage his early attention to a subject of which he said there were several other besides Mr. King s tidings. "The confidence and cordiality," Mr. Madison stated, "formerly subsisting between France and the United States have had a deep wound. While she remained on the footing of confidence and affection with the United States, which originated during our Revolution, and was strengthened during the early stages of her own, it may be presumed that she adhered to the policy which, in the treaty of 1778, renounced the acquisition of continental terri tory in North America. Circumstances are not now the same. Retributive justice was operating. France being refused the guar anty of her West India possessions by the United States, designed to supply their loss by other American colonies much more dis quieting to the United States." 362 FOREIGN MISSIONS. Though Mr. King s information did not extend beyond Carnot s disclosure of the Directorial attempt on Louisiana at the treaty of Basle in 1795, yet his familiarity with the British ministry supplied much of their knowledge. And soon after he wrote, Lucien Bonaparte, as his brother s Min ister at Madrid, on the 1st of October, 1801, obtained by treaty there the cession of Louisiana to France. Joseph Bonaparte s treaty with the American Ministers at Morte- fontaine, and Lucien Bonaparte s treaty with Spain at St> Ildefonso, were nearly simultaneous, the one following the other the next year the cession of Louisiana being kept secret lest England, apprised of it, should take that province to prevent France getting it. Madison s letter to Pinckney was the first expression of disquiet ; earnest and anxious, but vague and uncertain between conflicting designs imputed con- jecturally to France and England. If Mr. Pinckney did not enter on his mission in time to resist the deprecated cession, his correspondence is less frequent than that of Mr. King and Mr. Livingston. Nor, perhaps, could his instrumentality be so efficient at a court which he described as the most volup tuary and dissolute in Europe, the Capua of more than one American Minister, and not more debauched than exclusive and impenetrable. To the last no American Minister ever ascertained whether Florida was part of Louisiana. Whether Florida was part of Louisiana was matter of great importance to France as well as the United States, which important particular was clouded in darkness at Paris, London, and Washington, if there was ever light upon it even at Mad rid, from the beginning to the end of the whole affair, French and American. Mr. King, in amicable communication with the several British ministries of Pitt and Addington, sharp ened by the English aversion to France and to Bonaparte, carefully supplied his government with tidings obtained from them. Mr. Livingston did not go till Mr. Dawson s return; and it may not be out of place to mention here that by erroneous FOKEIGN MISSIONS. 363 economy Jefferson discontinued the Dutch mission. From the first that mission was deemed so important that Mr. Adams, while Minister there, purchased a house at the Hague for the permanent accommodation of American Ministers. Per manent foreign missions, wisely filled and honorably, are the cheapest and most effectual protection of our foreign rela tions, not less if not more so than armies and navies. And personal experience in Congress authorizes averment that since the government of the United States began, no depart ment of it has done more for its safety and honor than that of its agents abroad, whose expenses, with the constant advancement of the country, have increased proportionally less than those of either the executive, the legislative, or the judicial departments. President Washington s Minister in Holland, Mr. Murray, was all-important in closing hostilities with France by treaty, prefacing that which arranged the purchase of Louisiana. Some of the best ancestors of our country and their best examples were Dutch. Exemplary principles of commerce and industry, confederative conserva tive republicanism, good order, and morals were held forth by Holland to the United States. Rufus King, visiting that highly interesting republic, was welcomed with cordial hospi tality by a frugal, wealthy, intelligent and industrious people, with better likeness of our own institutions than to be met with elsewhere in Europe, hardly excepting Switzerland. The example, emulation, and alliance of such a nation, largely worth American cultivation, could not be renounced without disadvantage. Mr. Livingston s official instructions, dated at Washington, September, 1801, just before his departure, were little more than meagre and timorous deprecation of French, instead of Spanish neighbors on the banks of the Mississippi; suggesting topics to be cautiously intimated to the French government why the United States would regret such a change; the expe diency, however, of hazarding which at all was left to his information and discretion. Should he ascertain that the ces- 364 FOREIGN MISSIONS. sion was irrevocable, it would then deserve to be tried whether France could not be induced to make over to the United States the Floridas, if included in the cession by Spain to her, or at least West Florida. Such proof of French good will would reconcile the United States to an arrangement much disliked by them, strengthen the returning friendship between the two countries, and afford a fund for indemnifying and soothing American sufferers by French wrongs. If the cession had not taken place, Mr. Livingston was to solicit the good offices of France with Spain to effectuate the same ces sion of the Floridas, for which Mr. Pinckney was written to. But not a word of Louisiana, any territory west of the Mis sissippi, or of New Orleans, was there in these circumspective instructions ; nothing more than a hint that if France would pay for her spoliations, it might be deducted from what the United States would credit her for West Florida. Those inexplicit, opaque, official instructions, composed in ignorance with apprehension of the state of things between Spain and France, were accompanied by advice and warning still more timorous from the chief magistrate himself; not official, but not therefore the less impressive. Love of peace, not only a wise, but most essential predilection in any ruler, may by excess degenerate to infirmity. And in the gestion of affairs, soon endowing Jefferson s fortunate administration with Louisiana for his country, his personal but authoritative admonition to his Envoy sent in dark diplomacy to seek not that region, which was as unexpected as unknown, but such a small part of it as would ensure the peaceable navigation of the Mississippi, was so swaddled with precautions against war as authorizes our calling that weakness which many, if not most of his admiring countrymen regard as wise. In his his tory of the French Consulate and Empire, Mr. Thiers truly stating that the sale of Louisiana to the United States com pleting their domination in the North, and rendering them masters forever of the Gulf of Mexico, was caused by the struggle between France and England, supposes by mistake FOREIGN MISSIONS. 365 that Mr. Monroe was sent to Europe to regulate with England the question of maritime rights. Monroe had no such mis sion. But lest Livingston might happen to provoke hostilities, Jefferson s dread of war induced him with all his weight of position and learning to urge abstinence from assertion of the great American principle of maritime liberty and equality, which was then Bonaparte s absorbing aim for France ; whose inoffensive mere avowal by the American Envoys there he would have prized as more valuable than the few millions he got for Louisiana. Withdrawn from the sultry September solitude of Washing ton to his cherished mountain home, Jefferson, the 9th of September, 1801, wrote to Livingston from Monticello "You will receive, probably by this post, from the Secretary of State his final instructions for your mission to France. We have not thought it necessary to say anything in them on the great question of the maritime law of nations, which at present agitates Europe ; [for which reason everything necessary should have been said in Livingston s official instructions;] that is to say, whether free ships shall make free goods, because we do not mean to take any side in it during the war. But as I had before communicated to you some loose thoughts on that subject, and have since consid ered it with somewhat more attention, I have thought it might be useful that you should possess my ideas in a more matured form. Unforeseen circumstances may perhaps oblige you to hazard an opinion on this subject, and it is better that it should not be at variance with ours." [So that Mr. Livingston s opinion did not coincide with the President s, either on the subject or the policy of asserting it, which had been discussed between them.] Then, after adding that he gives his individual view, not official, Jefferson s letter presents an elaborate and evidently well-studied historical statement of the principles so vital for peace, and adds : "Although I consider the observance of these principles of great importance to the interest of peaceable nations, among whom I hope the United States will ever place themselves, yet in the present state of things they are not worth a war," [which their national American assertion, in harmony, with- 366 FOREIGN MISSIONS. out entangling alliance, with France, Russia, and all the other great and united powers, was the best way to prevent, with no danger of it.] Mr. Jefferson proceeds to explain how, as President Wash ington s Secretary of State, in their instructions to the first triple mission sent to France, he apologized to the French government, reproaching that of the United States for failing to assert the principle against England, that the United States were unable to contend for it with that great power. Stripped by his reforms of nearly all military and fiscal facul ties of self-protection, in which fascinating experiment of cheap government he persisted till the fortunate acquisition of Louisiana, not content with these sacrifices to peace, President Jefferson would not suffer his Envoy to visit Europe without warning against even the mere assertion of the cardinal prin ciple of sea peace, lest that mere assertion might provoke war. In blindness respecting Louisiana, and fettered to prevent his vindication of sea peace, a deaf, but nevertheless excellent agent was sent abroad to be laudably instrumental of great result. Thus commissioned, that worthy representative of his coun try took his departure in the autumn of 1801, on board the Boston frigate, destined for Bourdeaux, but after a stormy passage putting into L Orient, owing to the strange eccen tricities of her commander Captain Macneil, memorable for those vagaries in the naval annals of the United States, which induced President Jefferson to strike him, on his return to the United States, from the navy, by one of those blows of executive decision in which he was never deficient. Mr. Livingston was accompanied by a large family, his wife and two daughters, with their husbands, both named Robert Liv ingston, his Secretary of Legation, Thomas Sumpter, son of the famous South Carolina once warrior and Senator at the time of the acquisition of Louisiana, Miss Nathalie de L Age, a young French lady of highly respectable family, afterward married to Mr. Sumpter, and with him during his ten years FOREIGN MISSIONS. 367 residence as American Plenipotentiary in Brazil. Established in a large and elegant hotel in Paris, Mr. Livingston adding, as was understood among us Americans there, largely to his official salary, lived in hospitable dignity, entertaining his own countrymen and most of the respectable strangers then swarming in Paris from England, Russia, and most other countries, and upholding, by social as well as political con sideration, the interests of his country. Talleyrand, Secre tary of Exterior Affairs, and Marbois, at the head of the French Treasury, were both known to Mr. Livingston in America, as member of Congress and Secretary of what was then called Foreign Affairs. Mr. Livingston was quite deaf, a tall, ungainly person, negligent of dress and appearance, but uncommonly well tempered and disposed, and, notwithstanding the disadvantage of want of hearing, by industry, zeal, and good sense he fulfilled all the requirements of a post in which vigilance and intrepidity were indispensable qualifications. For the First Consul Bonaparte was arbitrary, exclusive, wary, however sudden in his positions, and inflexible in their operation ; while his chief Minister, Talleyrand, having adopted the maxim that words are made less to express than disguise thoughts, in his first interview with the American Minister, anxiously and somewhat importunately seeking information concerning the commonly rumored, much asserted, and gener ally credited cession of Louisiana to France by Spain, by a flat falsehood, declared that though it had been mentioned, yet nothing was done, although by two treaties it was then actually transferred to France. Mr. Livingston, unlike Mr. Jefferson in democratic enthu siasm, and less inclined to confidence, that peace may be pur sued and perpetuated without preparation for war, was also unlike him in having few French acquaintances or corre spondents. Still it was his good fortune to deal for Louisiana with Frenchmen whom he had known in America, and at least one of whom, the principal salesman of Louisiana, unlike many foreigners who cannot reconcile European habits and 368 FOREIGN MISSIONS. prepossessions to those they find so different in America, Barbe Marbois was an admirer of this republican country, and cordially disposed to its prosperous development. Having, while resident at Philadelphia as French Secretary of Lega tion and Consul-General, married the daughter of William Moore, one of the Governors of Pennsylvania; the daughter and only child of that union was married, during the negotia tion for Louisiana, to the son of the Third Consul, Le Brun, (afterward imperial Duke of Placentia,) so that Mr. Livingston had near the First Consul, in his closest intimacy, two im portant assistants in the chief of the Treasury, Marbois, and the Third Consul, Le Brun. Talleyrand had also been known while in exile in this country to Mr. Livingston, who by several eminent public stations, both Federal and State, by his numerous and conspicuous family, and by his attractive hos pitalities of Clermont, his fine residence on the North River, was known to M. Talleyrand as one of the most respectable and distinguished citizens, every way qualified and entitled to negotiate, associate, and correspond with the aristocratic French Secretary, whose recollections and impressions of Mr. Livingston s democratic country were by no means so favor able or unprejudiced as those of M. Marbois. Reviving his acquaintance with both of them, one as Secretary of Exterior Relations, and the other as head of the Treasury, the Ameri can Minister s public station was recommended to respect by knowledge of his social position at home, an opulent gentle man, living hospitably on his patrimonial acres, able from his private fortune to renew and increase in Paris the attractive hospitality for which his American home was distinguished. M. Marbois, in his interesting account of the sale of Louisiana, bears testimony to his own and to the First Consul s sense of the security which Mr. Livingston s personal afforded for re liance on his public agency. Soon taking his equal rank with foreign Ministers from nearly all the world whom he found at Paris, he was not long in correcting and improving the extremely bad odor into which he found his country had fallen in France. FOREIGN MISSIONS. 369 Landing at L Orient the 22d of November, 1801, instead of Bourdeaux, which was their destination, Mr. Livingston hastened with his large family to Paris, where soon afterward arrived a soldier of classical American celebrity, Marquis of Cornwallis, with a splendid retinue, as British Ambassador on his way to meet Joseph Bonaparte, and arrange a treaty of fleeting peace at Amiens. The ambassador s ostentatious British advent and French welcome contrasted with the Ame rican Envoy s unheralded and almost unnoticed entry into the French capital, where for several years there had been no British or American Minister, but ill-blood and bloodshed, hatred, abuse of each other, and between the American and French republics recriminations, with depredations, supplant ing enthusiastic amity, resisting, by sympathetic revolutions, British warfare with both. Mr. Livingston found, he said, the American name odious in France, where the once general gratification in its republican development was much abated, almost extinct. But a tree of liberty then fruitless, growing wild, uncultivated, and unknown, by European discord was cast into the hands of American by-standers, to flourish in their ownership with golden abundance in peace, vastly in creasing as the warring nations of the Old World, insensible to its worth and growth, vainly subdued each other to pre carious peace and continually varying boundaries. Bonaparte found the French navy no more, totally anni hilated by the English. Three hundred and forty vessels-of- war, sixty of them line-of-battle ships, one hundred and thirty-seven frigates, together with forty-three more vessels-of- war, manned by not less than eighty thousand seamen, were the ascertained French losses inflicted during the revolution by impregnable shopkeepers, whose liberty quickened industry to perform miracles of force and finance, whose fleets swept all others from all seas, whose armies in Italy and Egypt were the only forces that broke the charm of French invincibility, whose hatred of the French equalled Bonaparte s of them, by mutual Corsican vendetta. The youthful warrior crowning VOL. i. 24 370 FOREIGN MISSIONS. ten years of foreign and civil wars with universal peace abroad and at home, ascribing the vast and invincible British power and wealth to commerce and colonies, with all the passionate ardor of his restless temperament devoted his government to what he deemed the only means of enabling France to cope with and overcome that only insuperable enemy, for which purpose the United States were deemed instrumental, and Louisiana all-important. For French marine recuperation and colonial aggrandize ment, not long after the treaty with the United States, Bona parte dispatched his brother Lucien to Spain, where, on the first day of October, 1801, by the treaty of St. Ildefonso he rectified the humiliating surrender of Louisiana to Spain, by the treaty of 1763, under Chatham s resistless dictation; and in 1801 again the transfer must be clandestine for ignominious fear, if known to Great Britain she might frustrate it by that preponderating naval power so irresistible that she had but to will in order to enforce her prevention of French marine revival. Thirsting for peace, commerce, and colonies, on the same first day of October, 1801, by coincidence of dates worthy of notice, Otto, the French commissary of prisoners in England, where the hulks and Dartmoor, with other places of confine ment, were gorged with them, adroitly seized, as instructed, an opportunity for preliminaries of peace with England, stipu lating immediate cessation of hostilities. Whereupon Bona parte, in haste to execute his American colonial enterprises, without waiting for a treaty, or certain assurance that peace would ever be settled by treaty, dispatched his brother-in-law, Le Clerc, with the largest military expedition ever equipped by France. Sailing the 14th of December, 1801, for St. Domingo, his orders, in full confidence, were, after French colonial reinstatement in that rich island, thence to proceed to New Orleans, take like possession of Louisiana, and pro claim French authority there, perhaps to the Ohio, including Carolina, which was an original French idea of their American FOREIGN MISSIONS. 371 territorial rights, at all events extending from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean, according to the papal grant of the Spanish see in that fabulous region. The American Minister found France, however, magnificent with the opime spoils of Italy and romantic Egyptian marvels, all conquests and glories of Bonaparte, yet, as every ascertained indication tes tified, destined by him to overtake Great Britain in commerce and colonies, for which American amity and territories were deemed all-important. Mr. Livingston, with no specific or imperative instructions, but merely perfunctory authority to defalk part of the dam ages for which he was to dun France from the price of the small, sandy slice of Florida which he was to try to get, was sportively and impudently told by Talleyrand, that none but spendthrifts sold their real estate to pay their debts. Even the well-disposed Marboia said to him, that France must have Louisiana as a place whereon to discharge her turbulent spirits. Mr. King, from the British Ministry and press, obtained more information than Livingston could worm out of a government sealed up in secrecy and a press under its con trol. But with the glimmering of light he had, Livingston informed his government that he was satisfied the expedition to St. Domingo was to follow its way thence to New Orleans; of which the belief was so common as to be published in the public journals, American and European, During all the winter of 1801-2, and the following spring, summer, and autumn, that is to say, the whole twelve months ensuing Mr. Livingston s arrival in France, his incessant, urgent, and judicious efforts to eviscerate the truth were abortive. In fact, Talleyrand s untruth was so far venial that France did not know, and Spain, unwilling altogether, would not tell whether Louisiana comprehended Floricta. Mr. King ascer tained and wrote to our government, that the colony of Louisiana was a darling object, and would be pursued on a grand scale unless deranged by mishap in St. Domingo. Mr. Livingston added, that though disapproved by every states- 372 FOREIGN MISSIONS. man in France as waste of men and money, yet it was a scheme to which the First Consul was much attached, and must of course be supported. Both those gentlemen soon became aware that General Bernadotte had been appointed to command the forces in Louisiana. And Mr. Livingston said he had good reason to believe that it was honorable banish ment of that bold and insubordinate republican, who, with ele ments of a future French marshal, Swedish prince, king, and progenitor of royal dynasty in his refractory nature, was fre quently so offensive to Bonaparte as to require Joseph s paci fying intervention to reconcile their quarrels. Bernadotte married the elder sister of Joseph s wife; the same fortunate daughter of a Marseilles banker, who, after being engaged to be married to Napoleon, was then married to Bernadotte, and still, almost a century afterward, survives as Queen-Dowager of Sweden. "I will not take command of Louisiana," said Bernadotte, bluntly to Bonaparte, without three thousand good troops, be sides as many laboring men for our support and protection, so far removed from French assistance." "Then," said Bonaparte, sharply, "you will not take command at all; for what you require is more than I would allow one of my own brothers." Thereupon another distinguished but less intractable sol dier, General Victor, the future marshal and Duke of Bell- uno, was substituted for Bernadotte, who, as his absence was still desirable, was appointed Minister to the United States instead of Otto, at first designated, with special authority to arrange the Louisiana question. In March, 1802, Mr. Liv ingston, impudently misinformed officially, but not deluded, though baffled, wrote that the French government, believing Louisiana the most fertile and important country in the world, and that New Orleans would command the trade of the whole Western country, was resolved on the immediate possession of Louisiana without any notice to the United States. "It is a darling object," he wrote, "with the First Consul, who sees in it a mean to gratify his friends and dispose of his armies, FOREIGN MISSIONS. 373 which at that time, bent on commerce and colonies, he was re ducing to a peace establishment." Such, however, Mr. Livingston thought, was the universal French desire for peace that he hoped England might force Bonaparte to relinquish Louisiana rather than risk war. At the same time he suggested to our government to disregard New Orleans and make Natchez the Southwestern seaport. After a winter s unprofitable work, trying in vain to dis cover to which Power Louisiana belonged, and what Louisiana was for whether Florida was part of it, and what was its extent, no one could tell in July, 1802, Mr. Livingston wrote his conviction that Spain had made the transfer; but neither France or Spain knew of what by the term Louisiana, Spain insisting that it did not include the Floridas, and France hunting up old treaties and voyages, disposed to believe that it included Carolina and all the banks of the Ohio. That misunderstanding caused some delay in French proceedings, of which Mr. Livingston took advantage to compose a long argument showing the disadvantages of Louisiana to France, an ingenious view of the subject entirely unavailing against Bonaparte s fixed determination. "There never was a government in which less could be done by negotiation than here," Mr. Livingston testily but truly and man fully wrote to his own. " There is no people, no legislature, no counsellors. One man is everything. He seldom asks advice, and never hears it unasked. His Ministers are mere clerks, and his legislature and counsellors parade officers. Though the sense of every reflecting man about him is against this wild expedition, no one dares tell him so." Still Mr. Livingston confidently predicted that it would come to nothing, and that war of which indications were low ering, would save the United States from Bonaparte s myrmi dons. The extreme hauteur of this government to all around them will not suffer it, he prophesied, to be of long continu ance. Baffled by Talleyrand s official inscrutability, and casting about for a better medium, through whom to reach the First 374 FOREIGN MISSIONS. Consul with lengthy memoirs which he composed to show the worthlessness of Louisiana to France, if not to America also, Mr. Livingston s good management procured for him the im portant and well-disposed intervention of Joseph Bonaparte, as the only person in the world who could deal freely with his despotic brother. The only time I ever saw him there was at Mr. Livingston s residence, he then still citizen Joseph prelimi nary to the two kingdoms, from the last of which he was cast fugitive on the shores of the Delaware, where it was my good fortune to be favored with that freedom of conversation in which he delighted when sure of his company, to talk without reserve of the monarchs, princes, other eminent men, and marvellous events of his brother s meteoric career and his own, also sufficiently wonderful to be highly attractive. After a morning visit with a young American friend at Mr. Living ston s, and sitting awhile with him before a blazing wood win ter fire, the only French hearth that ever reminded me of those at home, as we left the house we met at the door rather a small, good-looking gentleman in plain dress, who, my com panion whispered, was Joseph. Anxious for a near view of any Bonaparte, I turned back and followed him into the Minister s room, and there took a fair survey. His chariot stood at the door, a plain, comfortable carriage without orna ments, the servants not in livery, one pair of horses, and the whole equipage unpretending. Recollection more than half a century after it of that trivial occurrence, together with the many outpourings I enjoyed of Joseph s unreserve, as my however unconscious familiarity with Mr. King and frequency at Mr. Livingston s, while the one conducted in Paris and the other co-operated from London in the negotiation for Louis iana, in which Joseph Bonaparte likewise bore a part, seems like afterthought to realize historical publications recurred to for official ascertainments in this narrative. Mr. Livingston handed Joseph a copy of his lengthy argu ment against Louisiana as a French colony, very properly saying that the interest Joseph had taken in settling the dif- FOREIGN MISSIONS. 375 ferences between our countries entitled him to our confidence ; and that Mr. Livingston would take the liberty to ask his advice on matters that were likely to disturb the harmony be tween the two. Joseph, pleased with the compliment, accepted the paper with pleasure, but said that as he did not like to interfere in what was not his business, he desired the writing to be without signature, and informally presented. Then adding, with the kindness and candor uniformly character izing him, "You must not suppose my power greater than it really is. My brother is his own counsellor. But we are good brothers ; he lis tens to me with attention ; and, as I have access to him at all times, I have opportunities of turning his attention to any particu lar subject." Joseph had already, he said, read Mr. Livingston s argu ment, and so had the First Consul, who told him that he had nothing more at heart than to be on the best terms with the United States. Mr. Livingston, encouraged by such friendly assurances, impressed on Joseph the jealousies which vicinage in the West must naturally excite, and the impossibility of preventing the abuse of military power at so great a distance. Wishing to learn whether the Floridas were included in the cession of Louisiana, Mr. Livingston told Joseph that all we desired was New Orleans and the Floridas in compensation for our debts. Joseph asked whether we would rather have Florida than Louisiana. The value of Louisiana is incom parably the greatest, said Mr. Livingston, but all we seek is security, not extension of territory. Spain, Joseph stated, had very reluctantly parted with Louisiana, and there would be great difficulty in getting any more from her. Seldom was diplomacy ever more adroit than in this over ture of the American Minister, or more fortunate than in the perfectly candid but equally cautious mediator to whom he applied. At Lundville and at Amiens Joseph Bonaparte had recently shown his superior talents, love of peace and fairness, in the most difficult and momentous negotiations, having 376 FOREIGN MISSIONS. effected treaties of peace with the American Ministers in 1800, with the Austrian Ambassador, Count Cobentzl, at Lune ville, and with the British Ambassador, Marquis Corn- wallis, at Amiens. While at Lune ville Joseph had been informed by Talleyrand s official letter of the 24th of Janu ary, 1801, that by convention with Spain, in exchange for the Spanish Duke of Parma s Italian aggrandizement, Spain gave France six ships-of-the-line and Louisiana to the Mobile. Judge, said his letter, whether such a price deserves ardent pursuit. Without any flattering, therefore, Mr. Livingston might invoke Joseph s aid as the principal diplomatist of the time, who had made peace with the United States, with Ger many, and England. Better mediator with his imperious and dictatorial, but always inquisitive and pondering brother, it was impossible to find than the intimate friend from whom that natural dictator inured by several years of military command and success to absolute sway, was still patient listener to sug gestions whenever he asked for information or advice. Inform ation from all, either oral or printed, he greedily devoured, and patiently listened to suggestion when required. But his autocratic determination, when made, at once annulled all explanation or appeal. A few days afterward Joseph treated Mr. Livingston to the familiar opportunity of a shooting party at his country residence, Mortefontaine, where the treaty of 1800, negotiated with Joseph, was signed and celebrated. But all his interposition, if indeed he even ventured much, with his fiery brother, together with Mr. Livingston s constant exertions to prevent French occupation of Louisiana, proved fruitless. Active correspondence between Mr. Livingston and Mr. King, Mr. King s correspondence with the British minis try, Mr. Livingston with Talleyrand, and with the Spanish Minister in France all that could be done came to nothing. Throughout all the time of the first session of the Seventh Congress, from December, 1801, to May, 1802, when it was apprehended by all three of the American foreign Ministers and by the Executive at Washington that Louisiana had been FOREIGN MISSIONS. 37T ceded by Spain to France, and that France was determined to take possession forthwith, nothing was known ; and whether, if the cession had taken place, it included the Floridas, seemed to be unascertained and disputed between Spain and France themselves ; France assuming, but Spain denying that it did. Without specific orders to do more than frustrate, and that with extreme circumspection, or to offer anything but some abatement of the debts claimed to be due to his country men, Mr. Livingston feeling his way in the dark made no pro gress. When hinting deduction from the debts as a price, he was told that only spendthrifts sell their land to pay their debts. An outlet in Louisiana for turbulent French spirits France must have. Mr. Livingston indeed said, that provided France respected the American right, conceded by Spain, of navigation and deposit, the United States had no interest in opposing the exchange. Still so secret was it kept, that Lord Hawksbury told Mr. King that not a word was said of it when Otto negotiated the preliminaries of peace, nor when the treaty was arranged at Amiens. Yet England was aware, as Mr. King wrote, that the colony was a darling object, and would be pressed with ardor on a grand scale. Rebellious and intractable negroes were to be sent there from St. Domingo and other French colonies. France was secret; England, as Mr. Madison said, torpid, unwilling at first to oppose Bona parte s restless commercial, maritime, and colonial French aggrandizement ; and Spain passive, but reluctantly exchang ing Louisiana for the kingdom of Etruria, erected by Bona parte for a Spanish Bourbon prince. Mr. Livingston s calls on Talleyrand for information and explanations were not only frequent and urgent, but much bolder than Bonaparte had been used to, or would have borne, Marbois says, from any second-rate European power; but the United States were invulnerable by distance. If, Livingston wrote to King, France colonizes Louisiana, it will lead to her getting all the West India Islands, perhaps regaining Canada, and absorbing Mexico. In April, 1802, Pinckney wrote from Madrid to 378 FOREIGN MISSIONS. Livingston that the cession of Louisiana did not comprehend the Floridas, and that "he had made a proposition to purchase them. Livingston, however, was sure that it did, and urged his suggestion of making Natchez the seaport of the West, instead of New Orleans. In May, 1802, Livingston wrote that the expedition for Louisiana was postponed till September, because the French government, in consequence of doubts suggested by him, questioned whether Louisiana included the Floridas. But Bernadotte was appointed to command ; Collot, who had travelled in America, second in command; and Adet, once Minister in this country, prefect. Without more energetic opposition than he had then been authorized to make, the much-dreaded French occupation of Louisiana was inevitable. Mr. Livingston therefore waited impatiently further instruc tions, those he had in some sort prohibiting such measures as might show any kind of dissatisfaction, of which forbearance he doubted the policy. For so interesting an object he thought there was inducement to risk something. If he did not hear soon he should present a pointed memorial stating our objec tions fully to their taking possession of the Floridas, and demanding security for our rights originally and by treaty with Spain. By separate conversations with Collot and Adet he found that neither of them had seen the treaty, nor knew what the boundaries were. Confident that France intended to consider Florida as part of Louisiana, she would construe the cession as she chose. For, said that high-minded representa tive of principals whom he thought too forbearing, in Europe France does as she wills, and it will require firmness and exer tion to prevent her doing so in America. Throughout all the transaction Mr. Livingston s view differed much from Mr. Jefferson s, though the plan of neither was realized by the accidental result. Azara, the Spanish Minister, assured Mr. Livingston that Louisiana as ceded did not include the Floridas. In July, 1802, Livingston wrote for precisely the utmost limits of the sum he might venture to offer in cash or in our own demands, FOREIGN MISSIONS. 379 for Florida and New Orleans, and thought we should not hes itate at a large price. In August, 1802, he had reason to believe that Spain had come to some settlement with France, what he could not precisely say, but presumed it was whatever France wished. The difficulty between them, however, soon returned, and Mr. Livingston thought the Floridas were not included. His lengthy memoir, submitted through Joseph to the first Consul, and interesting conversations with Joseph, ensued. But early in November he wrote that France had cut the knot, a body of troops from Holland would soon sail for Louisiana under General Victor. Daniel Clarke, an enter prising merchant who performed a journey from Louisiana to France, to discover what was likely to be done in a change of masters, could learn nothing from Victor about the right of navigation and deposit, of which that soldier had never heard. With a body of troops and totally insufficient funds he was going to take possession and compel the inhabitants to supply his wants. On being apprised of this alarming future, Mr. Livingston earnestly appealed to Talleyrand, who said that copies of the treaty and documents would be furnished to the general, with instructions to respect the American rights in those waters, assurance from Talleyrand which Livingston deemed it foolish to rely upon. So dissatisfied was he with his relations both to the French government and his own, so much more lofty were his views than the President s, that requesting authority to demand, he wrote home that if it did not soon come he would assume authority to demand security from the French government for their respecting our rights of naviga tion and deposit. Near as he was to the consular government, he was a better judge of what was judicious regarding it than the President so far off, and absorbed in his favorite reforms. With deportment always more decided than his instructions, his correspondence, he wrote, had long shown his opinion of the necessity to strengthen ourselves by force and ships at home, and by alliances abroad. Conversations with Joseph Bonaparte gave some hopes, but only faint. And in a spirit 380 FOREIGN MISSIONS. as elevated as far-sighted, he warned the President that nothing less than war in Europe would avert war in America, unless we succumbed, against which Livingston protested with a manly and patriotic earnestness, into which Jefferson s passion for peace resolved itself likewise at last with still greater fervor of patriotism. Livingston s last letters at the close of his first year in Paris, December, 1802, were sent to Washington by Mr. Anthony Merry, the British Minister superseded in France by their Ambassador, Lord Whitworth, whereupon Mr. Merry was appointed Minister to the United States. The French, Mr. Livingston wrote, had not then got Florida, but probably would ; nor had the armament sailed. Anxious for explicit orders respecting the contemplated purchase, he added, pray be explicit in the amount I may offer, and consider the value of the country, its importance to peace, the expensive estab lishments it will save, and its intrinsic worth from the price of the land and actual revenue. Not, however, he said, that his prospects of obtaining it were great, because I fear, as Tal leyrand told me yesterday, that the First Consul is infatuated with the project. If one great ruler was infatuated with his darling project of restoring the commercial grandeur of a vain and warlike nation by French colonial aggrandizement in America, to be begun by armed men settled in St. Domingo and Louisiana, another great ruler had his darling project too, by depriving a high-spirited people of regular army and all perceptible tax ation, liberating them entirely from what he considered exces sive government, and letting them rule themselves. Nothing could be more different than the methods by which these reforming founders, each in his day and way, simultaneously undertook national reforms, of which some survive in both hemispheres still among posterities French and American. But Bonaparte s abnormal passion for peace was soon turned to lust for war ; and Jefferson s passion for peace, after many extravagant resorts to prevent war not succeeding in its pre vention, disabled his country for the scientific and safest man- FOREIGN MISSIONS. 381 agement of that inevitable evil. Deaf to his Minister s earn est counsel to prepare for it hy arms and alliances, disregard ing all experience, Jefferson s fervid patriotism struggled in vain with inflexible aversion to war, which his embargo and other intolerable commercial restrictions could not ward off, and for which this narrative will expose still more extravagant and incredible resort in these pages, hitherto veiled behind the splendid pacific but purely accidental purchase of Louisiana. From the 4th of March till the 6th of December, 1801, in the solitary wilderness of Washington, with nothing abroad to alarm and everything at home to please and encourage three lovers of peace, Jefferson, with his confidential Secretaries, Madison and Gallatin, Madison almost as inveterately pacific as Jefferson, Gallatin dreading war because he did not believe that the American government was capable of it or the people willing to bear its burdens, luxuriated in delightful public tranquillity, with marvellous prosperity and daily increasing power ; devoting all their superior talents to strip government of control and the Executive of patronage, in order to endow with untried sovereignty a people much more disposed to war than their Chief Magistrate. For the only two wars in which they have been involved since the power of declaring war has been constitutionally transferred from the Executive to the Legislature, have demonstrated that the popular mass not only encounter more freely, but endure more firmly than their representatives in government, their perilous responsibilities. That popular promptitude may be no reason why wise rulers should either encourage or yield to the inclination. But totally disarming such a nation, instead of pacifying only disqualifies them for hostilities. Nor was that, it may be in ferred from many circumstances, Jefferson s theory of repub licanism when chosen to reform the martial extravagancies of a predecessor, against which his reaction was also extreme. A new nation, revelling in novel prosperity, fortified by dis tance, so as seemingly not to need the ancient defences of armies, navies, taxes, and police, the offensive injustice of 382 FOREIGN MISSIONS. older nations, as he thought, rather admired than peaceably counteracted by the government of the United States, inspired a republican of the purest patriotism and finest genius with the noble conception of self-government, which he flattered himself would never fail. Without foreseeing what his coun try was to derive from Louisiana, superadding numberless flourishing republics to that once feeble mother of them all, for whose Declaration of Independence his name must be for ever celebrated, enthusiast for peace in 1802 as he braved war in 1776, he deprived his country of the little armor it had left, dreading lest preparation for hostilities might produce them, and frustrate or hinder the experiment, from which no contingency could deter him, of trying to maintain in peace, order, and progress, a nation infinitely less regulated than was ever before found sufficient for government. After Louisiana became a peaceably purchased American possession, Jefferson declared that European war would give it to us. Nearer the theatre of war and better informed con cerning it than his constituent, Livingston advised him that nothing but war in Europe could prevent it in America, which opinion did not predict it as imminent or probable then, though Jefferson s extreme abnegation of all armament, with retrenchment to the most helpless condition for forcible vindi cation, was contrary to Livingston s advice. Good fortune, incredible and inconceivable, cast upon the defenceless United States territories unsought, [unexpected, and unappreciated by President Jefferson, whose passion for peace risked inter minable wars rather than prepare for one, but whose falsely imputed predilection for France and aversion to England nevertheless in the loftiest patriotism was ready for alliance, offensive and defensive, with England, if necessary, to wage eternal war with France as a less evil than French occupation of Louisiana. These eccentricities of genius in the good fortune of Jeffer son will be the burden of our chapters to come. OCCLUSION OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 383 CHAPTER VII. OCCLUSION OF THE MISSISSIPPI. BEFORE the first session of the First Congress began under Jefferson s administration, a Spanish unauthorized agent at New Orleans, by one of those irregularities, if indeed it was such, which produce trouble and provoke hostilities, precipi tated the crisis concerning Louisiana. Apprehension that Spain had ceded that region to France, and that France would be a much less quiet neighbor there than Spain, had slightly affected the foreign relations of the United States, after their agreeable adjustment contemporaneously with Jef ferson s accession. This inflexible and triumphant policy encountered its first serious impediment at New Orleans, not changing his determination to maintain peace without preparation for war, and finance without perceptible taxation. Unexpectedly and perplexingly to all parties, American, French, and Spanish, an ebullition of Spanish colonial exclu- siveness, conformably to the Spanish colonial system always enforced, broke forth by proclamation the 18th of October, 1802, that the United States permission of deposit at New Orleans was at an end, which provoking interdict was pro claimed by the Spanish Comptroller and temporary Intendant at New Orleans, John Ventura Morales, apparently with no instructions to that effect from, or any consultation with the Spanish governor of the province, John Manuel Salcedo, or the Spanish Minister Plenipotentiary at Washington, the Marquis of Casa Yrugo. Without either metropolitan or provincial orders or approbation of superiors, the Intendant issued his decree, on the basis of well settled principles of Spanish colonization, and not an unreasonable interpretation 384 OCCLUSION OF THE MISSISSIPPI. of the treaty between the United States and Spain. The three years permission stipulated by treaty had expired, and the United States had not requested its renewal. Colonies were useless, unless, like farms, enjoyed by the owning mother country to the exclusion of all others. Proscription might be taken advantage of to perptuate a temporary indulgence which had already proved prejudicial to Spanish interests. Granted in time of war, peace put an end to it. The Spanish gover nor to no purpose gave his opinion that the right of deposit could not be lawfully taken away without giving, as stipu lated by the treaty, an equivalent for it somewhere on the banks of the Mississippi elsewhere than at New Orleans. The Intendant was inflexible, and a few weeks afterward his inter dict was confirmed with exaggeration by the Governor of Baton Rouge, Charles de Grandpre, who published, on the 22d of December, 1802, that the Intendant of these provinces having told him that the citizens of the United States of America, by their right of navigation on the Mississippi, could have no commerce with subjects of his Spanish majesty, he therefore charged all to be zealous and vigilant that the inhabitants neither bought or sold anything to the shipping, flat-bottomed boats, barges, or any other smaller vessel going along the river for the American possessions. Leclerc died the 3d of November, 1802, and with him the French expedition to St. Domingo failed, and the sailing of that destined for Louisiana was suspended. Nevertheless its precursors, the Prefect Laussat and the Judge Aymd, sailed from France the 10th of January, 1803, and received submis sive though reluctant transfer of the province from the Spanish authorities. When therefore President Jefferson sent his first annual message to Congress the aspect of affairs was threaten ing, though doubtful as to ownership, whether French or Spanish. But there was enough of Bonaparte, with his for midable spirit of encroachment in the whole movement, to arouse the prevalent American aversion to him, of which Jef ferson partook, with increasing dislike as Bonaparte s imperial OCCLUSION OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 385 ambition betrayed itself by acts offensive to Jefferson and many of his French friends of 1789. Spain from the first was always opposed to American estab lishment on the Mississippi; selfish and stubborn in their ex clusion. Genet s attempt to wrest Louisiana from Spain strove to seduce Kentucky to disaffection to the Federal government, distant beyond the Alleghanies, and accused of either inability or indisposition to protect the West from Spain. Turbulent and clamorous indignation against Wash ington s administration broke out from all parts of the State much agitated. Threats of separation from the Atlantic States were uttered. The President did nothing, they said, for their protection, or if he did, it was wrapped up in diplo matic mystery, instead of being made known to the people as became the chief magistrate of freemen. Sovereign States confederated or connected by such a consti tution as that of the United States can be very insubordinate and refractory. Kentucky, the first new State received into union with the original thirteen, set the first example, in 1794, of that anti-federal recalcitration in which Massachusetts excelled in 1813. Objections to the Federal troops, preference of the State militia, that the Federal government should employ none but the State militia to enforce laws, and let the Federal funds be paid by the State to its militia for services performed in and for the State alone, with other, if not perversion, at any rate extreme applications of constitutional rights, were Ken tucky resorts against President Washington, like those of Massachusetts against President Jefferson s untoward restric tive system, and its painful offspring, the war conducted by President Madison. By Washington s direction his Secretary, Jefferson, expostulated and superintended almost in vain. Even so loyal a patriot as Governor Shelby was hardly tract able. Washington overcame Kentucky in Spain, by transfer ring Pinckney, his stationary Minister in England, on a special embassy to Spain, where he effected the treaty which re moved uneasiness concerning the navigation of the Mississippi, voi. i. 25 386 OCCLUSION OF THE MISSISSIPPI. Nearly unanimously insisting on their rights of riverain liveli hood, the Western people were equally confident of their own strength. Unless the Union vouchsafed their water highway, of what use was the Union to them ? They were able to take care of themselves. But the treaty with Spain removed their discontents ; and another of President Washington s treaties, about the same time, arranged by Jay, converted them nearly all to adherents of Jeiferson. Disposed to aid Genet in his project against Louisiana, and disaffected to the Union after that project was suppressed, they grew in attachment to it by the time of Jefferson s promotion to the presidency, to which they strenuously contributed, and his tranquillizing influence with the martial borderers was signally displayed when he resisted the efforts of most of the Atlantic States to appeal to arms. Contrary to the belief which nearly all Europe im presses on sea-port and other less truculent Americans that borderers are lawless ruffians, the whole Western country re mained perfectly tranquil during the crisis concerning the Mississippi and Louisiana, confiding their dearest rights to the chief magistrate of their preference. His most secret and unknown diplomacy was patiently allowed to take its course. The West seemed as averse to war as Jefferson himself. Seldom has one of his most democratic apothegms been more memorably exemplified, that of all governments the most popular is the strongest. President Washington never neglected the Western waters or territories. Far from it ; his earliest livelihood and career impressed him with primeval conviction of the arterial vitality of the River Mississippi, continental and consolidating to the natural national Union, which he was one of the foremost and most strenuous to cherish as obvious welfare of all the States. Wherefore by the confederation and under the present consti tution it was kept sedulously in view, and long before South western, in the course of nature, succeeded to Northeastern ascendancy, maintained as primary policy by all. The pro visional articles of peace with England in September, 1782, OCCLUSION OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 387 and definitive treaty of November, 1783, by a substantive clause, the eighth of both those conventions, ordained that the navigation of the River Mississippi, from its source to the ocean, should forever remain free and open to the subjects of Great Britain and citizens of the United States. But to Spain that freedom was offensive and alarming. Her ex clusive colonial system dreaded American freemen so near Louisiana and Florida, nor far from Mexico. Spain opposed and hampered as much as she could American establishment and commerce on the Mississippi, encouraged and contrived detachment of Western Americans from union with the At lantic States, to prevent and frustrate which design, attempted at various times by Spain, France, and England, the Missis sippi proved more effectual than written constitutions. The Western waters constitute large part of the territories of the United States, whose configuration is so naturally ligamental that from first to last it must always be North American patriotic instinct to enjoy combination of the whole under the same self-sustaining government, one and indivisible. Euro pean disparagement of imputed national aggrandizement by territorial extension, and of the boast of manifest destiny, mistakes indigenous, and spontaneous development of regions which cannot be separated without unnatural disruption. Wherefore before their present constitutional union, Congress resolved, in May, 1786, on motion of William Grayson, a Vir ginia member, seconded by Rufus King, then of Massachu setts, that all navigable waters emptying into the Mississippi and the St. Lawrence should be common highways, and the landing places between the same common to all the people of the United States, without tax, impost, or duty, according to that commercial communism of States which is the national constitution of the North American republican empire, con tinually spreading in space and flourishing in peace, em bracing the regions and waters of the St. Lawrence like those of the Mississippi. Withdrawal by England of nearly all colonial restraints from her Canadian and other North 388 OCCLUSION OF THE MISSISSIPPI. American possessions, leaving them to their own self-govern ment, together with their close commercial association by per fectly free trade with the United States, are political accom plishment of these natural preliminaries. Soon after Washington s installation in the constitutional presidency of the United States, as early as August, 1790, his executive vigilance was exercised on this subject, when he required the opinions of his administrative counsellors what as President he ought to do, in case of war between England and Spain, as was then apprehended, if the English from De troit undertook to reduce New Orleans, and the posts above it on the Mississippi. For, his call for their opinion stated, the consequences are too obvious to our Western settlements and the Union to need enumeration, of so formidable and enterprising a people as the British, on both our flanks and rear, with their navy in front. Not one of the whole Ameri can nation had so practical a knowledge of the vast unin habited West as Washington, or of its inestimable importance to the Union, as he foresaw to be strengthened by extensive dominions superadded to the original States. What, there fore, he asked his Secretaries to say, ought to be the Execu tive answer if England applied for permission to move troops through the uninhabited country of the United States, from Detroit to the Mississippi ? If they did so, without permis sion, what notice should be taken of such a step ? To that early assertion by Washington of the vast Southwestern range, whose freedom from European molestation he deemed neces sary to the union, strength, peace, and progress of the whole United States, his Secretaries, Jefferson and Hamilton, gave answers affirmative of Washington s assumption of space, though characteristically different on the policy of asserting and ensuring it. Secretary Jefferson was so deeply im pressed with the magnitude of the danger which would attend our government if Louisiana and the Floridas were added to the British empire, that we should, he said, make ourselves parties to the general war expected, if that would be the only OCCLUSION OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 389 means of preventing the calamity. But such was his aversion to the uncertainties, calamities, and wrongs of war, that his opinion inclined to the President giving no answer to the British application, if made, but taking the chances of reserve in silence. To that policy Secretary Hamilton dissented by a long and elaborate argument, less of the territorial than the jurisprudential view of the question, concluding that leave should be given if asked, because it would be taken if re fused, and then war was indispensable. For with none of Jefferson s aversion to war, Hamilton s opinion was that as soon as Britain took the hostile step the legislature should be immediately convened, the most vigorous measures made for war, formal demand for satisfaction, negotiations commenced for alliances, and if satisfaction were refused, endeavor to punish the aggression by the sword. Hamilton s instinctive love of war, and Jefferson s of peace, appear in their respec tive answers to Washington on that occasion, whose knowledge of men superior to either of them induced his combining their services in his administration. And though their essential political divergence may be said to have originated two parties in the United States, and even ill-will between those two founders of American government, the time has come when their posterity may regard both with the veneration due to pure patriots and eminent statesmen, discountenancing in considerate prejudices against either. When driven from the Hudson to the Delaware, with a mere shattered remnant left of an army, and American hopes seemed blasted, Washington recurred with patriotic fortitude to the distant scene of his first services and chrysalis glory. If driven from Jersey, he said he would try Western Pennsylvania, if that failed him, then the most western part of Virginia, and if there too unable to make a stand for liberty, then beyond the AllegJianies, which far West he always cherished as part of his country. All three, Washington, Jefferson, and Hamilton, held Louisiana, the Floridas, and the Southwest indispensable to the Ameri can Union, for which all three agreed that war was not too 390 OCCLUSION OF THE MISSISSIPPI. great a sacrifice to make if inevitable. Lord Dorchester s demand for liberty to march troops to New Orleans was not made as apprehended. But President Washington imme diately, by advice of his Secretaries, Jefferson and Hamilton, instructed William Carmichael, the American Charge d Affaires in Spain, to use his utmost endeavors to secure the undisturbed use of the River Mississippi, by obtaining a cession of the Island of New Orleans and of the Floridas. The volume of public dispatches for that year has been lost, supposed to be either stolen from the Department, or burned by the British at their capture of Washington, so that we are not able to get the precise terms of Secretary Jefferson s instructions to Car michael, but rely on the substance as given by Chief Justice Marshall in his Life of Washington. No territorial or pecu niary compensation was proposed for that cession. Adequate requital seems to have been considered, as Marshall argues for Washington, the obvious interest of the United States, that listless, harmless Spain should continue undisturbed occu pant of Louisiana. The interest of the United States that Spain should not be molested in her vast unknown regions west of the Mississippi, was the best compensation Spain could desire for the cession of New Orleans and the Floridas. Writing his instructions as Secretary of State in 1790, under that impression, Jefferson did no more than repeat them to his Ministers in 1802 as President. While his aversion to all European, except Spanish, colonization there, and his antici pation that Louisiana would become eventually part of the United States were constant, still deprecating war, force, or precipitation, his policy appears to have them to suffer a few inoffensive indolent Spaniards to vegetate in Louisiana till the whole region dropped ripe, peaceably and piecemeal into the republican lap. The American confederacy was the hive from which all North America, if not South, he thought would .be ultimately peopled. But care must be taken not to press too fast or soon on the Spanish tenants at sufference of Lou isiana and Florida. Get the navigation of the Mississippi as OCCLUSION OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 391 soon as it could be done without violence. As to all the rest Jefferson s fears were that the Spaniards were too feeble and inert to hold till the North would be able to take without compulsion. From that forbearing anticipation his mind would seem never to have varied, till the policy of that expec- tative inaction was abruptly cut short by the sudden stroke of good fortune which cast Louisiana, through his reluctant administration, on the United States. There is sufficient reason to believe that Washington always deemed either English or French occupation of that region as dangerous and detrimental to the United States, their entirety and strength. Among his most steadfast adherents there were wise and patriotic men who disapproved great enlargement of the Union. So exemplary a statesman as John Jay suggested relinquishing the exclusive navigation of the Mississippi to Spain for twenty years. And at a later day Fisher Ames, in plaintive retirement from Congress, still uttered eloquent anonymous deprecation of any acquisition of Louisiana, espe cially if effected by the party and the policy of which Jeffer son was then the rising leader. But Hamilton outstripped all of any party in the manifest policy of not only preventing Louisiana falling into the hands of France, but of its great importance to the Union and general welfare of all the other States. Before Bonaparte s consulate or Jefferson s election, and when there was no great apprehension of the latter or idea of the former, Hamilton wrote to a member of Adams s administration that if Spain would cede Louisiana to the United States he would accept it absolutely, if attainable absolutely, or with engagement to restore it if it cannot be ob tained absolutely. Again in that year, before Bonaparte s imperious rule rendered him the object of terror which he be came, but when French designs on Louisiana were generally apprehended, to Harrison Gray Otis, who, by the Hartford Convention, would have expunged Louisiana from the Union, Hamilton wrote, as it is every moment possible that the pro ject of taking possession of the Floridas and Louisiana, long 392 OCCLUSION OF THE MISSISSIPPI. since attributed to France, may be put in execution, it is very important that the Executive should be clothed with power to meet and defeat so dangerous an enterprise. Nor were these mere war thoughts and suggestions of a great public leader, then in arms against France. For Hamilton added that he had long been in the habit of considering those coun tries essential to the permanency of the Union, which (that is the Union) I consider, said that profound Northern patriot, without Northeastern jealousies, important to the permanency of the Union. Next year, in 1799, still before the cession by Spain to France, we ought, he wrote, to look to the possession of the Floridas and Louisiana; and that oft misrepresented champion of continental, if not hemispheric, American nation ality, added we ought to squint at South America. Similar were the sentiments of Hamilton s friend, Gouverneur Morris, associated with him in the Convention which arranged the Constitution of the United States. When the third section of the fourth article was written, providing that new States may be admitted by Congress into this Union, Mr. Morris afterward testified, concerning Louisiana, that he had no con templation of a desire to restrict the constitutional empire, knowing that all North America would at length be annexed to us ; happy if the lust of dominion w r ould stop here. It would be perfectly Utopian, Mr. Morris believed, to oppose a paper restriction to the violence of popular sentiment, in a popular government, and while he considered it unconstitutional for Congress to admit as new States territories which did not be long to the United States when the Constitution was made, yet he always contemplated the acquisition of Louisiana and Canada to be governed as provinces. Whichever was the wisest, Jefferson s peaceable, patient, and inoffensive waiting on the accretions of time, or Hamilton s bold, prompt, and probably forcible movements, it is certain that with Washington they considered extensive territories as the manifest destiny of these L T nited States, for whose peace and harmony it was indispensable that neither England or OCCLUSION OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 393 France should be their next neighbors in Louisiana, or any where on the Mississippi. Mr. Morris s apprehension of popu lar irresistable rapacity was but a different impression of the same progressive spirit. Nor was it in any of the statesmen or the people for whom they acted a spirit of war or conquest. An empire of natural territories, boundaries, and circumjacent waters, comprehending one and the same contiguous nation, by configuration exclusively vicinal, and altogether pacific, however extensive and various, was the country contemplated, to cultivate peace and commerce with all mankind. While Spain upheld Louisiana exclusively, and England and France alternately coveted it for forcible colonization, it was with no such design desired by any American statesman, but solely and purely to prevent war and cultivate the arts of peace. The public press during the first years of this country, almost the only literature of the United States, and except tradition the only indication of public opinion, affords striking proofs of these attachments to great space and originality of politics, which distance from the Old World and peculiarity of independ ence inculcated throughout the whole United States, and in great measure without distinction of jparty or place. The same continental patriotism which induced Washington in 1790 to repel British colonization, the crisis of 1802 elicited as national assertion of natural right to insist on the free naviga tion of the Mississippi, and repel French occupation of its banks. The only apparent difference of opinion was whether the Western people should forthwith enforce their unquestion able right, or trust their favorite chief magistrate to manage it by negotiation. But nearly universal repudiation of European authority was proclaimed by the press, together with averments of American independence of all antiquated control or example and predictions of American destiny, which in Europe, and indeed in this country, it is common to ascribe not to the nature of things, but mere vain-glorious insubordination. Washington, Jefferson, Hamilton, Morris, and no doubt other 394 OCCLUSION OF THE MISSISSIPPI. originators of American independence, entertained aspirations of its destiny which were natural to landlords of such immense domains. Differing as those founders did among themselves as to how far it was wise to reject the institutions of the Old World and substitute a novel system for the New, they all con sidered great space essential to the great progress they con templated : space as a safeguard of peace, not a conquest for aggrandizement. The press least inclined to Jefferson s departure from established institutions and time-honored pre cedents was that most forward in commendation of what latterly it has become common to ridicule as the foolish cry of manifest destiny, of which Hamilton s was among the earliest and boldest vaticination. Federal journals strongly opposed to Jefferson and his policy were forward then to foretell that when what they proclaimed as rights of man came to be, as they certainly would, better recognized and more enjoyed, the powers and prejudices of European potentates, both aristo cratic and monarchical, would be altogether repelled from the American soil, and confined to their own Old World. All government in the New World would be confederated, either by constitutions or treaties in free, popular sovereignties, culti vating peace and rendering war unnecessary among each other. The experiment was said to be in rapid realization by the emancipated British colonies ; their mother country, much of the rest of Europe, and all European colonies in America, already learning from the United States the advantages of such liberal government. When, therefore, long afterward, a paragraph, perhaps not meaning all it was soon construed to import, interpolated as the law of nations, what was called the Monroe doctrine, that repulsive chastity of American soil from contamination of foreign politics was then first broached, requiring its protection from transatlantic contagion, for which Washington seemed to think space indispensable. And the only difference between Jefferson and Hamilton, notwith standing political collision, was that while Hamilton would have forced the continental and exclusive aggrandizement of OCCLUSION OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 395 the United States, Jefferson would have left it to spontaneous growth. That in order to develop American prosperity in peace, the soil should be kept by large domains and wide borders free from European intrusion, colonization, influence, and disturb ance, seems to have been the natural sentiment of the wiser of the heroic founders of this independent republic. That European laws are mostly unsuited to the American code is recognized not only by our repeal or change of theirs, but by their frequent late adoption of ours substituted for their own. The Monroe doctrine did not originate that American ward. As soon as the Western frontiers were in danger of foreign intrusion government took post on space as indispensable to peace. And when danger to Western freedom of navigation suggested the necessity of at least the east side of the Missis sippi, which Secretaries Jefferson and Hamilton, by direction of President Washington, had long before sought, the public press of the North, and that least satisfied with President Jefferson s administration, claimed that increase as obviously essential. And is the American continental exclusiveness required by Washington, desired by Jefferson, which Hamilton would perhaps have insisted on as a hemispheric necessity, not natural basis for the Monroe doctrine? Or is that doctrine less rational than that European interpolation into the law of nations that the European intruder into the mouth of an American river thousands of miles long, the Mississippi for instance, entitles the sovereign of that intruder to ownership of all the territories it washes, from mouth to source, although where the source may be is totally unknown ? Or than a Pope s bull organizing Louisiana into one and the same see from the Atlantic to the Pacific ? Space is an element of American republicanism strange to European politics like American liberty and slavery. Territorial enlargement, not for power, but peace, by pur chase, not conquest, is not a European idea. Their annexa tion is by force and for more power, not space. Thus South 396 OCCLUSION OF THE MISSISSIPPI. America and Mexico were acquired by Spain, North America by England and France alternately, and India, with numer ous other colonial possessions, by Britain, as Bonaparte also coveted Louisiana as tributary to a metropolis hankering for such sustenance. Keturning as he did to France, disappointed of the romantic subjugation of Egypt, and invested with supreme control of a Conquest-loving nation, Louisiana took hold of his imagination with overwhelming desire. Triumph ant over all but British adversaries, the French fleet which transported him to Egypt totally defeated at Aboukir, his return to France, however marvellous and fortunate, still only escape from British capture, British colonies circumventing the globe, British commerce covering the seas, British colo nies comprehending in America, Asia, Africa, and Europe more realm than France ever boasted, and France committed to his government completely shorn of colonies, commerce, and marine, Louisiana was to him the land of the only wealth or grandeur France needed. He found in her executive archives a memoir historical and political presented to the king by Vergennes in warm, but scarcely exaggerated descrip tion, representing Louisiana as superior to any other part of the world. I will repeat again, said the writer of the memoir, what I have already mentioned several times, that Louisiana, beyond contradiction, is the finest country in the world ; by the mildness of its climate and its felicitous situation. The American possessions of his majesty were of extent so vast that they much exceeded the whole of Europe. They were filled with a multitude of places of immense riches, only wait ing for inhabitants to come and gather them ; where might be successfully cultivated all the productions of Europe with out distinction, and nearly all those of America. Dishonored and dismembered by the peace of 1763, which compelled the cession of Louisiana by France to Spain, French royalty and republicanism had been often covet ing and machinating its recovery. To the ardent, young, restless warrior chief that policy was his legacy of glory. OCCLUSION OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 397 Insatiate of dominion, rapacious of national wealth, burning to overmatch Britain, and sensible that colonies, commerce, and maritime freedom were the only means of doing it, Louis iana, with fabulous resource, was a land of promise surpassing Egypt, India, or Mexico, far more desirable than Canada or Newfoundland. To the heroic Corsican, whose favorite youth ful study had been Ossian, who named the first child to whom he stood godfather Oscar, (the last King of Sweden,) who, inde fatigable as he was in research by book learning, still imbued it all with hues of imagination, Louisiana was the very paradise which the American Minister vainly flattered himself he had convinced Bonaparte that it was not. Pending the negotiation at Amiens, where, as Mr. King remarked, assiduous silence reigned as to Louisiana, which was never even mentioned, a remarkable pamphlet appeared anonymously at Paris on the subject. Extolling the power of France, adulating her great ruler, defying England, despising Spain, dividing the United States, it urged with uncommon force forbearance to St. Do mingo, but ravishing inestimable and invaluable Louisiana, worth many Maltas, said the author of this powerful tract, and which the greatest stroke of French policy was to ravish from slumbering Spain, invidious England, and the despicable American republic. Brief extract of this very significant sign of that time, anonymous as was its publication, when nothing was so to the consular police, will show that immediate seizure and military holding of Louisiana were, as the writer urged, by far the most important, feasible, and profitable measure of the consular government. The radical and fatal error of European colonization in America had been, it said, the expensive conquest of adult, instead of the cheap planta tion of infant settlements there. Had the whole process of French government been employed to people deserts with a hundredth part of the zeal and vigor directed to the annoy ance of neighbors, it argued that all North America would now be French and its inhabitants thrice as many as they are. Proud and slothful Spain would have been excluded from La 398 OCCLUSION OF THE MISSISSIPPI. Plata and Columbia by French genius working such won ders as have been wrought by the English on the Hudson and Chesapeake. Is it yet too late ? Is the great mind of the master of France ambitious to perpetutate her name, to en large her empire ? To add regions more extensive than all Europe, blessed with more genial soil and grateful climate ; to change dreary wastes into a populous empire ? Forty years has French genius slumbered with all its faculties benumbed by the old government. Proceeding in a strain of admirable reasoning to describe the errors of French colonization, and the partial superiority of English, the author gave a glowing delineation of Louisiana ; compared with Egypt, greatly to its advantageous means of incalculable wealth to France ; explained the principles of population ; and with great force of argument showed that France had not to begin, but merely to continue settlement ; not to kindle the first spark, but merely add fuel to a flame already burning. Spain Bonaparte could easily constrain to cede, and England would not interfere, lest Bona parte should add Italy and Germany to French dominion. Nor could Germany, Spain, Italy, and France all combined do aught against England without colonies and commerce, whose trade begets the invincible navy ; deprived of which their navy must vanish, and that trade comes chiefly from abroad. India does nothing for England that Louisiana will not do for France. And with Louisiana we shall soon recover Canada, while the Valley of the Mississippi is naturally inac cessible to invasion from Europe. As to the United States, this tractarian appeal insisted that of torpid Spanish neighbors the American republicans having nothing to fear, must fall an easy prey to irresistible French men, whose vicinity would cramp their movements, circum scribe their progress, make incessant inroads on their harmony and independence. Spain cannot deny them the navigation of the Mississippi. The hardy warriors of their upper coun try would fall like lightning on feeble Spanish garrisons, and sweep them away like a torrent. Spain cannot say nay to OCCLUSION OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 399 them as France can. In adjusting peace at Amiens, France has Spain completely in her power ; and what has France to fear from the American peddlers and shopkeepers, who call themselves free, with one-fifth of their population slaves, and the other four-fifths scattered over interminable deserts, divided into thirty weak sovereignties, their government the least executive, their people the most insubordinate in the world, their great founder no more, and if alive stripped of authority ? A tax on the ridiculous luxury of tea they did indeed resist, and rebel against the liquid poison of whisky. But all France has to do is to compel the cession from Spain, and then let her military occupation of Louisiana be the first signal to England, America, and the world, that it is a French colony, whose prosperity will require exclusive French posses sion of the Mississippi. If the Americans complain, what then? They may send Envoys to France to be baffled by diplomatic procrastinations. Or if the worst comes to the worst, what has France to fear from war with an undisciplined and faithless rabble, whose form of government is inherent and incurable weakness, whose whole country is a hotbed of faction and sedition ? The fluvial States west of the mountains are by nature separated from the maritime States east of them. France holding the subsistence of the West in her hands will easily rule the former. The Republican party is already French ; a French master of the Mississippi will find them his willing adherents. That party have lately gained the political ascendancy, with all their love of France and fear of war. The slaves are always at our command. We can at any moment raise up a Spartacus or Touissant in a country full of fugitives from St. Domingo, quaking with panics at servile wars. And this inflammatory excitement of French national passions closed with views of French influence always superior over the American Indians, like the slaves, to be marshalled in case of war against the United States for exclusive possession of Louisiana, estimated by the author as 400 OCCLUSION OF THE MISSISSIPPI. a colony much more valuable than Egypt, Malta, or Gibraltar, for either France or England. In June, 1831, I spent a day or two at Joseph Bonaparte s Jersey residence with a sprightly lady entitled Baroness of Pontalba, having, as it was said, large possessions, real estate, in New Orleans, to look after which caused her visit to this country. Her husband was, I understood, an aid-de camp to Massena. She w T as some time afterward much pre sented to general sympathy by a statement that her husband or father, I forget which, had shot and mutilated her with many bullets, but without quite putting her to death. I can hardly give a reason for the conjecture that the same husband or father was the author of the remarkable pamphlet just cited concerning Louisiana, calculated, as it probably did, to inflame Bonaparte s desire for that possession to the extreme anxiety, mentioned by both Mr. Livingston and Mr. King in their dispatches, indicating the mortification and annoyance he underwent when secretly selling Louisiana to the United States, for fear of its seizure by England. Neither French nor Bonaparte s passion for territorial, however peaceable, especially colonial, aggrandizement needed such excitement to fix attention on Louisiana at the time when, as the pamphlet remarked, Jefferson became ascendant, with all his imputed subserviency to France, and his avowed predilection for peace at all events. Beginning their executive career together, the first and penultimate French warrior s sway was scarcely more absolute than that of the constant American enthusiast for peace. The Western people especially were almost unaccountably under Jefferson s influence. All their people elected Representatives, and their States chose Senators to take with them to the seat of government their confidence in his pacific policy, however variant from their common impulses. Bonaparte had closed several years of inimical estrangement by satisfactory accommodation with the United States. Still the usurper of French chief magistracy, its dictator in Italy, Switzerland, and Holland, domineering OCCLUSION OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 401 in Spain, and feared in Germany, was a focal point for Amer ican sea-port aversion, and indeed general apprehension that the same denouncing rapacity which compelled Spain to cede Louisiana, also compelled her exclusion of American naviga tion from the Mississippi, the first step, as the Parisian pam phlet stated, of French establishment on both sides of that river and throughout the whole province ceded. As soon as apprised of what had occurred at New Orleans, which it required a month to reach Washington, the Secretary of State appealed to the Spanish Minister, who without hesi tation denounced and condemned the Intendant s conduct. Married to a daughter of Governor McKean, of Pennsylvania, the Spanish Minister Yrujo, well informed and disposed, countenanced by his opinion the President s reluctance to make any sudden or forcible move ; and as soon as he could get instructions from Madrid, by official letter, on the 10th of March, 1803, gave assurance that the Intendant s was a mis take of which his government disapproved. At the same time the French Charge d Affaires at Washington, Pichon, ad dressed a letter in the name of the French government to the Spanish Governor of Louisiana, warning him to retrace a false step which might involve war. So that Bonaparte con firmed the Spanish apology for an unauthorized error; and while there was little reason to hope that Spain had not ceded Louisiana to France, there was ground for belief that the right of navigation and deposit would be respected by France as acknowledged by Spain. The Western people, thoroughly excited, were perfectly tranquil. Their cause was espoused by all the rest of the United States. Never, Jefferson declared, since the Revolution had they been more excited or united. Indeed they were more united than then. The whole nation agreed that the navigation was a natural and national right, and the deposit a right by treaty unquestionable, both to be maintained at any hazard or cost. But owing either to less dread of Bonaparte, or more confidence in Jefferson, perhaps both, those most interested were least complaining or clamor- VOL. i. 26 / f. t / 402 OCCLUSION OF THE MISSISSIPPI. ous, and the most martial of the people the most peaceable. On the first day of December, 1802, the Legislature of Ken tucky by unanimous resolutions pronounced the Intendant s proclamation a direct infraction of the treaty, and briefly stating the consequences, requested the Governor, Garrard, to forward their memorial to the Senators and Representatives in Congress, to be presented to the President and Congress. On a former occasion, they said, when representing the obstruction of their navigation, they had experienced the attention and justice of the general government, and now rely on your wisdom and justice, pledging ourselves to support, at the expense of our lives and fortunes, such measures as the honor and interest of the United States may require. In that temperate tone of laudable appeal to their government, the high-spirited men of Kentucky put themselves at its disposi tion. When his annual message was delivered to Congress on the 15th of December, 1802, till which day, owing to the absence of Yice-President Burr and some of the Senators, both houses were not organized, the President had no official assur ance that the interdict at New Orleans was an individual act, unauthorized, which was not ascertained till three months afterward, in March, 1803. Nor was it certain that Louisiana was French, who in December had not taken possession. Vague notions of peaceably securing the navigation were entertained by purchasing New Orleans and some ground on the east side of the river. But of any on the west there was no idea. Nor did Grandpre s untoward aggravation of the original wrong occur till some time after the President took his position. The Western and indeed general excitement was well known at Washington. But in those days of intract able distances, hardly credible now, even the Kentucky reso lutions and memorial were not presented to the House of Representatives by Thomas T. Davis, one of the members from that State, till the 28th of January, 1803. The Presi dent knew nothing when his message was delivered but that a OCCLUSION OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 403 Spanish officer had stopped the landing, and that there was too much reason to apprehend that Spain had yielded Louis iana to France. But whether Florida was in the cession, or whether the cession preserved the rights of navigation and deposit, were disturbing problems unsolved. The American Minister in France counselled armament, alliances, and pre paration for hostilities. The Minister in Spain gave no counsel, and little information. The Minister in England expressed his own, imbued with English warnings against French inimical designs; against which the President s Amer ican opponents with much of the whole nation urged imme diate and forcible resistance. But the only information he could give to Congress of the state of the Union, constitu tionally imperative, he did not give, that a Spanish officer had annulled the treaty stipulation. When the message was composed, having hopes but no certainty that the error would be rectified, not a word on that point or any allusion to it was ventured. The presidential communication, redolent as such political poetry mostly is of patriotic congratulations, com placency with the present, promises and hopes for the future, with especial satisfaction rejoiced that our burdens were lightened, yet our income sufficient for the public wants; blessed with peace and friendship abroad, law, order, and religion at home ; our citizens managing their own affairs in their own way, and for their own use, unembarrassed with too much regulation, unoppressed by fiscal exactions. Five mil lions of national debt paid within the first year of his presidency, and nearly as much left in the treasury at the end of that year, were substantial proof of public prosperity. Still con cerning Louisiana the message, extremely laconic, was more over ambiguous and hypothetical. One little paragraph enigmatically intimated, for it could not be considered as giving Congress information, that the cession of the Spanish province of Louisiana to France, which took place in the course of the last war, will, if carried into effect, make a change in the aspect of our foreign relations, which will 404 OCCLUSION OF THE MISSISSIPPI. doubtless have just weight in any deliberations of the legis lature connected with that subject. No royal speech, if even Delphic response, could be more immutably oracular than this republican disclosure. The public mind was quite at fault. A leading journal on the 4th of December, 1802, the Aurora, supposed to be much in Jefferson s confidence, who was continually accused of its influence, announced that the shutting up the Missis sippi by Spain had caused some vigorous measures to be taken by our government, the particulars of which had not then transpired, when no such measures had been taken, nor did information of such ever transpire. On the contrary, the President s resolution was not for vulgar vigor at home, but secret negotiation abroad. Conced ing the cession, as his message did, not however that it was, but, if carried into effect, would make a change in the aspect of our foreign relations, that change he contemplated only in the aspect, not of force by arms, but reason. His preference for indolent Spaniards, and dread of meddlesome French, was as strong as those of any of the Anglomen, as he termed the most English Federalists, few of whom exceeded Jefferson in aversion to Bonaparte. But of war he had still greater abhorrence, as the direst of all calamities, fatal not to his administration merely, but to all essay of strong govern ment by really popular sovereignty, unarmed, untaxed, and unsupplanted by the executive usurpation he earnestly depre cated of multitudinous majesty and national spontaneous prosperity. Not long after the ambiguous message, pregnant with his own mind, tidings reached the seat of government of Grandpre s offensive order on the 22d of December, 1802, as Governor of Baton Rouge, rendering the darkness still more visible by forbidding all intercourse with any of the American watermen on the Mississippi, and intelligence fur thermore that Bonaparte s officers had taken possession of Louisiana. But having, among the other extreme reforms of the first session of Congress under his presidency, reduced the OCCLUSION OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 405 army to some three thousand men, repealed all the internal duties, and rather diminished than advanced the naval estab lishment, Jefferson s administration had disqualified itself for armaments ; and not a disbanded soldier or other man was enlisted, not a tax imposed ; but the Western navigation and Louisiana were left to that fortune which so wonderfully favored their acquisition by Jefferson s administration. On the 17th of December, 1802, two days after the mys terious presidential message was sent to Congress, John Ran dolph, Chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means, and leader of the administration party in the House of Representa tives, no doubt in concert with the Executive, moved, and it was resolved, without objection, by the House, to call on the President for official information relating to the Spanish viola tion of their treaty, which information was without delay com municated on the twenty- second of December, together with written assurance that the President was led by due regard to the rights and interests of the United States, and to the just sensibility of that portion more immediately affected by the irregular proceeding at New Orleans, to lose not a moment in causing every step to be taken which the occasion required from him ; equally aware of the obligation to maintain in all cases the rights of the nation, and to employ for that purpose those just and honorable means which belong to the character of the United States. By that still oracular allusion to what he said belonged to the character of the United States, his meaning was their character as a nation devoted to govern ment by peace, and not by force. No armament by act of Congress, forcible seizure of New Orleans, or compulsion of the Western navigation by the injured Western people, no declaration or preparation, much less perpetration of war was suggested or contemplated, but negotiation for acquiring New Orleans with some circumjacent eastern territory, as Jefferson had proposed when President Washington s Secretary in 1790. Beyond that precedent he had no idea of going, except by adding some pecuniary inducement to France, instead of the 406 OCCLUSION OF THE MISSISSIPPI. mere equivalent in American republican good-will to Spanish undisturbed possession of Louisiana, which was deemed suffi cient in 1790. A few days afterward, on the 31st of Decem ber, 1802, the President by confidential message to Congress disclosed his project. Before the discussion of that confidential message and pro ject, which lasted during several days in secret session, was terminated, a leading opponent of the administration, Koger Griswold, moved in public session for documents announcing the cession of Louisiana to France, with explanation of the stipulations, circumstances, and conditions under which that province was to be delivered up. I shall not dwell on the somewhat animated but not extensive or entire discussion which it caused in the House of Representatives, because it was rather what may be deemed a preliminary skirmish or affair of outposts in parliamentary tactics ; the great engage ment soon afterward taking place in the Senate, as it shall be presently described. Randolph carried, by the small ma jority of ten, his motion to control Griswold s resolution by referring it to the Committee of the Whole on the State of the Union, out of which committee the administration went triumphantly into the house. Unanimous votes more than once declared the wrong altogether Spanish, individual and not national, asserting the unquestionable right of the United States to the deposit and the navigation. The primary question was whether to trust the whole settlement of the affairs to the President. On the llth of January, 1803, the day on which Monroe was nominated, Jefferson s resolution was taken to manage it by resort to that theology of politics, as one of its demigods, Talleyrand, by feli citous and significant witticism, is said to have termed diplomatic negotiation, into whose secret contrivances, con ducted by statesmen deemed the w r isest of mankind and most consecrated to its rites, none of the vulgar are admitted, but expected, and for the most part constrained to conform. Of this the only clandestine and compulsory branch of American OCCLUSION OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 407 generally patent free government Jefferson was not an admirer. By entangling alliances and obnoxious stipulations, it has proved in American annals much less pacifying than hostili ties. Nevertheless on the day when Griswold s motion was negatived, James Monroe was with an explanatory message nominated to the Senate as special Envoy Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to France and Spain, there with Livingston and Pinckney, the Ministers respectively in those countries, to arrange the difficulty. Griswold s motion was negatived in the house hy 51 nays to 35 ayes, and on the question of con fidence in executive negotiation, the ayes and nays twice taken stood 53 to 30, and 50 to 25. It was settled in Com mittee of the Whole, and thereupon confirmed in the house, that relying with perfect confidence on the vigilance and wis dom of the Executive, the people s representatives would wait the issue of such measures as that department of the govern ment shall have pursued for asserting the rights and vindica ting the injuries of the United States, holding it to be their duty at the same time to express their unalterable determina tion to maintain the boundaries and the right of navigation and commerce through the River Mississippi as established by existing treaties. Thus in the representative branch the President and his method by negotiation and purchase were sanctioned, rather than by seizure and violence risk, if not begin war, as urged by many. That negotiation should precede hostile action was not only most consonant with the character of the United States, but with that of any the most powerful or belligerant nation. Whether all preparation for force, if nevertheless unavoidable, was the wisest course, was a question on which Jefferson in sisted on overruling his party opponents, and perhaps a ma jority of his fellow-citizens. But prompt and assured acquies cence in his inflexibly pacific stand by that branch of the legislature which held the purse and is aptest to appeal to the sword, especially of the whole representation of that part of the country whose rights were most directly involved, was the 408 OCCLUSION OF THE MISSISSIPPI. first and a governing confirmation of his forbearance and evi dence of his ascendancy. Encouraged therefore by the dis cussion and its result, certain that his influence and adherents were invincible in that branch of government which held the only sinew he intended to exercise, and that he might rely on the two millions which he required, together with the usual allowance for a special Minister, even before opposition was actually outvoted in the house, on the 10th of January, 1803, he wrote privately to his friend Monroe, then lately withdrawn from public life, by expiration of his official term as Governor of Virginia, and returning to the practice of law, that he would nominate him next day for an extraordinary mission to France, which he urged his undertaking at whatever derange ment of his private affairs. The fever into which the Western mind is thrown by the affairs at New Orleans, stimulated by the mercantile and generally the Federal interest, threatens, he wrote, to overbear our peace. Wherefore he urged Mon roe to submit to a temporary sacrifice to prevent the greatest of evils in the present prosperous tide of our affairs. Next day, llth of January, 1803, which was the day when Gris- wold s movement was defeated in the House of Representa tives, Monroe was nominated to the Senate. The Presi dent s message of nomination was prefaced by an explanatory statement that the cession of the Spanish province of Louisiana to France, and perhaps of the Floridas, and the late suspen sion of our right of deposit at New Orleans, are events of primary interest to the United States. While his confidence in our Minister Plenipotentiary at Paris is entire and undimin- ished, still thinking that the object might be promoted by joining with him a person sent from home directly, carrying with him the feelings and sentiments of the nation, excited on the late occurrence, impressed by full communication of all the views we entertain on this interesting subject, and thus prepared, etc., the President nominated Robert 11. Livingston to be Minister Plenipotentiary, and James Monroe to be Min ister Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary, to enter into a treaty OCCLUSION OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 409 with the First Consul of France for the purpose of enlarging and more effectually securing our rights and interests in the River Mississippi and in the territories eastward thereof. But as the possession of those provinces is still in Spain, and the course of events may retard or prevent the cession to France being carried into effect, it will be expedient to ad dress equal powers to the government of Spain, Monroe was nominated by the same message Minister Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to Spain, with Charles Pinckney, Minister Plenipotentiary, to enter into a treaty with his Catholic Ma jesty for the same purposes. These presidential premises did not mention New Orleans, nor contemplate a single foot of the vast West soon and so easily acquired. President Jeffer son, in 1802, did not step beyond the precedent of President Washington in 1790. A little money added to the induce ment was* the only difference. Next day the Senate took the nominations up for action on them, confirmed Livingston and Pinckney without opposition, but on Monroe a strict party vote, that common standard of senatorial judgment, cast fifteen Republican votes for, and twelve Federal votes against him. Kentucky and Tennessee then being two of the United States, the whole of them were represented in that suffrage. But who foresaw or could imagine that within four months of Monroe s appointment as special Minister by President Jefferson, to deprecate unseen but apprehended difficulties to the navigation of a river by the purchase of a few roods of barren sand east of it, the boundless and exuberant territory stretching from its western side to fabulous regions of incredi ble value, eventually to extend the United States from the Atlantic to the Pacific, would, with little instrumentality of the Minister and no expectation of his constituent, fall to the lot of their country ? If the President had then been Aaron Burr, as was near being the case, instead of Thomas Jeffer son, immediate armament and forcible occupation would have no doubt been the executive policy, and with executive influ ence why not the legislative will? But Jefferson, inflexible in 410 OCCLUSION OF THE MISSISSIPPI. his resolution to govern without physical force, exerted all his official influence and personal popularity to deprive his place of patronage and his country of military organization. The martial West, though tranquillized by him, was ripe, with most of the rest of the Union willing, if not eager for that compulsion, which was prevented by the will of one individual sincerely, earnestly, and invincibly resolved not to raise a soldier or spend a cent for warfare. Whether his was the best way to victory is a speculation of opinion in which men differ according to prejudice or birthplace. The results as they came to pass in Jefferson s and Napoleon s respective reigns and regions may perplex and confound history, but the facts are of recent and universal familiarity of knowledge. Bonaparte by force magnified to Napoleon, with superhuman intelligence, by stupendous armaments and transcendant vic tories, crushing several enormous coalitions, puttfng many millions of men to death in convulsive warfare, closed his prodigious career with no considerable change of dominion, leaving the boundaries of his country less than when by such means he undertook their enlargement. Jefferson s country during the same period, his administration conducted with hardly a soldier or a tax, was in profound peace extended over more world than Napoleon won and lost by conquests. Louisiana from that parallel beginning, together with circum jacent domains, soon increased in numbers of people exceeding those of the original United States, laying foundations for countless free sovereignties, with material products and political faculties more powerful than armies and navies create, and wealth exceeding that of all the highly cultivated kingdoms changing sovereigns by force of arms in Europe. Awakening from Spanish slumbers, Louisiana by terror and hatred of belligerant nations cast into the arms of an adver sary of all warriors, was by his transcendant inaction dedicated to permanent tranquillity and unexampled development. Eome decreed the title of Fortunatus or Felix, as often more desir- OCCLUSION OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 411 able than that of wise. Patience, mostly more effectual than violence, has been sometimes called genius. Jefferson s patient and expectant abstinence from all force proved wiser than his contemporary Napoleon s tremendous abuse of it. Their respective excesses may however be indi cated to be avoided, and testing policy by undeniable facts brings it to the proof of experience, of which any annalist with some share may regulate his narrative by his own prac tical recollection. Majorities in the House of Representatives affirmed the President s forbearing, unwarlike and secret dealing with the unwelcome difficulty which threatened, as he feared, the per manence as well as the policy of his administration, and peace of the country. Although Monroe s nomination as Envoy Extraordinary was confirmed by a majority of Sena tors, still a powerful minority of that body were resolved, in order to effect more vigorous and warlike measures, to appeal from the President to the people, as had then latterly become senatorial practice. And as the senatorial debates on that occasion are the first public indication signalized of the great change which had taken place in that body, marking an era in American republican politics, it is deemed a preface to pre mise the debates with a view of that originally secret and merely aristocratic branch of the American experimental government ; by which view it will appear that the aristocratic Senate within the first twelve years of its establishment funda mentally changed itself from a conclave irresponsible to the people into an assembly appealing, like the representative branch of Congress, to popular support under democratic responsibility. 412 SENATE. CHAPTER VIII. SENATE. As the American House of Representatives is a free imita tion of the British House of Commons, so is the Senate a parody of the House of Lords ; both, like their British types, considerably altered from the original theory by practical development. The Senate is a permanent body politic, neither elected by, nor directly responsible to the people; but chosen in small numbers by sovereign States, men maturer in years and citizenship than Representatives of the people, and endowed with every function of government, legislative, executive, and judicial. Though not hereditary, yet two- thirds are permanent counsellors of the President concerning treaties and appointments to office, sharing with or curbing the Representatives in legislation, and judges of impeached functionaries. Neither created by nor amenable to the people, the Senate was established as a bulwark against misgovern- ment, whether popular or presidential. The people may err like any other sovereign, though not so apt to go wrong or be selfish as an individual. Should they, or the President, or any public functionary misbehave, a body of elders, longer in office than the President, are always at hand, constitutional parents, by age and seclusion removed from passion and exte rior influences to keep the confederated republic safe from harm. Such was the primordial theory, than which nothing can be more promissory of good government. About thirty years after an American republican constitu tion was modified in written regulations like the similar mon archical and unwritten constitution of a free mother country, the opinion of Cicero, the great philosophical Roman republi- SENATE. 413 can, in his treatise on a republic, was brought to light by the ingenious discovery of an Italian priest. That opinion, if the British and American governments are better than all others, as Britons and Americans believe, is so remarkable in its preference for them, that homage to its wisdom is best ren dered by placing the original sentence before the reader, with its translation into our language, English and American lan guage being still more alike than their respective governments. And as no such form of government was known till first tried in England, to be afterward modified for adoption by British descendants in America, may we not think, if politics are the most indispensable, and though the most familiar yet the least certain of all sciences, that there is no proposition in the old exact science of mathematics or the modern asserted science of political economy so wonderful in its truths as Cicero s merely prospective and speculative predilection for British and North American forms of government, already instituted or attempted by all the rest of America, North and South, and large portions of Europe ? " Quod ita transit, tribus primis generibus longo praestat, mea sententia, regium ; regio autem ipsi praestabit id quod erit equa- tum et tempera-turn ex tribus optimis rempublicarum modis. Pla cet enim esse quiddam in republica praestans et regale ; esse aliud auctoritate principum partum ac tributum ; esse quasdam reserva- tas judicio voluntatique multitudinis. Hsec constitutio primum habet equalitatem quandam magnam, qua carere diutius vix pas- sunt liberi ; deinde firmatudinem quod et ilia prima facile in con- traria vitia convertunter, ut existat ex rege dominus, ex optimatibus factio, ex populo turba et confusio ; quodque ipsa genera generibus saspe commutantur novis ; hoc in hac juncta moderata que pre- raixta confirmatione reipublicae non ferme sine magnis principum vitiis evenit. Non est enim causa conversionis, ubi in suo quisque est gradu firmitur collocatus, et non subest quo precipitat ac decidat." Thus contemplating the three unmixed forms of government, Cicero decides that of the royal, the aristocratic, and the democratic, the royal is the best ; but that a government tem pered and equalized of all the three will be more excellent than the royal. For it pleases, he says, that there should be 414 SENATE. something regal and excelling in a republic, and other things reserved for -the judgment and will of the mass. This consti tution has in the first place a certain great equalization, without which people can hardly be long free; then stability; because primary are easily changed into contrary defects; from a king comes a master, from betters faction, from the people mobs and confusion; and also because those kinds are often changed to new; which in the joint and moderately blended conformation of republics scarcely happens without great vices of the chiefs. For there is no cause for change where every one is firmly fixed in his grade, and does not get underneath by which he may be cast down or fall. Of this emanation from ancient learning Tacitus says: (Tacitus, an. 4, 33:) Mixta republics forma laudari facilius quam evenire, vel evenerit, haud dinturna esse posse videtur. It is easier to praise than find a mixed form of republic, or if found that it should seem to last long. English translations of Cicero s sentence make it conform to English government. Avoiding that natural tendency, mine, which I believe is accurate, gives that remarkable doc trine of two thousand years ago as never practiced till in England latterly, and as it may be by republican as well as regal realization; for President, Senate, and House of Repre sentatives are as conformable to Cicero s text as King, Lords, and Commons. But is not the great Roman republican s opinion, that each unmixed government is apt to degenerate, monarchy to despotism, aristocracy to faction, and democracy to tumult, true also of his favorite mixed constitution? Since the American and French revolution have nearly exploded divine right to rule, and diminished hereditary legislation, substituting the sovereignty of the people, throughout Amer ica, and much if not the most of Europe, that preponderating sovereignty has continually republicanized monarchy and democratized republicanism. Whether for better or worse is a speculation with which I shall not trouble the reader, but leave every one to judge for himself. But history attests that SENATE. 415 the legislation, jurisprudence, politics, and government gener ally of this country, of its mother country, and of all others in which the people are sovereign since revolution inaugurated freedom, have drifted toward democracy. Such has been the case with Congress in the forty-seven years since I entered that body; and in the Senate by the fundamental change in its transactions which I am about to show. For not only is each unmixed government apt, as Cicero thought, to degenerate, monarchy to despotism, aristocracy to oligarchy, and democ racy to demagogism, but his favorite form of mixture of all three will incline to whatever is the strongest of the three elements, and as kings in the middle ages absorbed nearly all power till, as Louis XIV. naturally said, that he was the government, so where the people predominate will they, or those who influence them, encroach and absorb, if not consti tutionally checked, balanced, and restricted. Supposing the Senate of the United States, founded in imi tation, with some republican alteration, of the British House of Lords, the Senate Journal discloses radical change to bring it nearer democratic basis than it was originally built upon, with, however, perhaps nearer resemblance to the British House of Lords.. The Constitution requires each house to keep a journal of its proceedings, and from time to time to publish the same; on w T hich journal the yeas and nays of the members shall be entered at the desire of one-fifth of those present. But such parts as in the members judgment require secrecy need not be published. Thus constituted, the Senate, during nearly the first four years of its transactions, including all the two First and part of the Third Congresses, held no public deliberations whatever, gave no opportunity to public speech, none for animadversion or applause of the press, and little for approbation or condemnation by the people to whom the representatives of sovereign States were not directly accountable. The Senate deliberated without audience, in their legislative as well as in their executive capacity. There was no judicial trial. The Senate chamber had no gallery or 416 SENATE. accommodation for an audience. A committee of six-and- twenty grave personages, when all attended, not much larger than committees ordinarily, communed though not secretly but in private, as committees mostly do, and except occasional publication by mere skeleton of their proceedings, none of the flesh and blood of that body politic were made visible or known to the people. Several members of the first Senate, fresh from the convention which had just finished the Constitution, John Langdon, William S. Johnson, Rufus King, William Few, Pierce Butler, Richard Bassett, and Robert Morris, with the local prepossessions of all parts of the United States, and intimate knowledge of the charter they had just fixed, more than a sixth of the whole Senate, with President Washington likewise just from the presidency of the convention, and several more of its members in the House of Representatives, met together daily during the nearly seven months of the long first session of the First Congress, without a notion, as far as their journals or any publication indicate, that the Senate was a public legislature. Not till the middle of the second session, which began the 4th of January, 1790, on the twenty-ninth of April of that year did some member venture to move that the doors should be open when the Senate sat in their legislative capacity, to the end that such citizens of the United States as choose to hear the debates may have an opportunity of doing so. On motion, the consideration was postponed till next day, but the journal does not tell who moved the resolution, who moved to adjourn its consideration, nor whether the same member moved both the resolution and its postponement. Be that as it may, not a word of debate ensued, or call for names to be journalized, but the motion was forthwith negatived without a division. And during the three remaining months of that session the Senate sat, as they had done during the three preceding months, and throughout the three protracted sessions of the First Congress, not secretly, but privately, without a single auditor or room for one. SENATE. 417 So ended the First Congress after three sessions, during which several of the ablest constitutionalists of the country were members of Congress. Inducements to remain at home for livelihood, and conflict with unworthy competitors for elec tion were then much less than now. The foundations of the government were carefully, thoroughly, and well laid by acts fully prepared, considered, debated in both houses, approved and enacted, establishing the treasury, judiciary, impost navi gation, post-office, naturalization, patent laws and copyrights, punishment of crimes, census, seat of government, tonnage, regulation of seamen, Indian intercourse, taxation, admitting the States of Kentucky and Vermont into the Union, and creating the bank of the United States, besides other enact ments: twenty-six of these important acts, some of them largely voluminous, together with three resolutions passed at the first session, forty-four acts and five resolutions at the second session, twenty-seven acts and five resolutions at the third of the First Congress, without any public proceedings in Senate, where several important measures originated, and all were canvassed. Adams resident as first American Minister in England, and Jefferson as Franklin s successor in the mission to France, without having had any part in forming the constitution of the United States, so far coincided in Cicero s opinion, then unknown, Adams that the English government was the best in the world, and Jefferson that king constitutionally restricted in royal authority, with Lords and Commons, was much better for France than revolutionary republicanism. But the genius of reform, proclaiming what were announced as rights of man, was far in advance of those American republicans. Kevolu- tion, rampant, destructive, and sanguinary, revelled in France, exciting popular commotions which alarmed more stationary England, and affected the experimental American republic with democratic sympathies from which neither Congress or even a written constitution could be exempt. Glance at the exploits of that conjuncture will much conduce to explain VOL. i. 27 418 SENATE. their irresistible operation by which the government of the United States, though much changed from the original theory, has perhaps swerved less than those of the European mon archies, where popular sovereignty dethroning many divine rights to reign, has republicanized those left reigning. By chronological coincidence not often remarked, just be fore Washington was called to preside over a self-constituted convention, calmly to arrange a constitution for the United States, on his birthday, the 22d of February, 1787, the French notables convoked by King Louis XVI. assembled at Ver sailles to inaugurate the French revolution. At that first popular assembly in France for 175 years, the first European homage, except by England, was manifested to the principle of publicity in national administration. On the 25th of May, 1787, an American citizen, Washington s disciple, La Fayette, moved, in that assembly, to suppress royal secret rescripts for indefinite imprisonment, and all state prisons, to tolerate Protestants, and convoke an assembly of national deputies. On the 4th of January, 1788, the Parliament of Paris boldly protested against all arbitrary royalty. On the 15th of Feb ruary, 1788, the king abolished preparatory torture. On the 3d of May, 1788, the Parliament of Paris declared France a constitutional monarchy. On the 24th of July, 1788, the Swiss economist, Necker, was restored to the head of the dilapidated French treasury. On the 20th of December, 1788, a numerous deputation of the nobility proffered to the king their consent to be taxed like the commonalty. On the 5th of May, 1789, the States-general assembled, three hundred clergy, two hundred and eighty nobles, six hundred and twenty commoners, or Third Estate. On the 12th and 13th of July, 1789, the first Parisian revolutionary revolt, provoked by the royal Prince of Lambesc ordering the German and Swiss troops to fire on the multitude, rallied eighty thousand ragged plebeians to register their ignoble names as volunteers at the City Hall. Next day, 14th of July, 1789, they stormed and demolished the Bastile, of which some keys and a small resern- SENATE. 419 blance in stone, as grateful mementoes of liberty regenerate, stood in the hall of President Washington s house at Phila delphia. Although only seven prisoners were found in the Bastile, and most of them guilty of forgery, or other not political offences, yet the mob were incensed by prejudices and sanguinary assaults to take the barbarous vengeance they inflicted. Two days afterward, on the 16th of July, 1789, the king s brother and royal successor as Charles X., with the Prince of Condd, also of the royal family, and crowds of frightened nobles, fled from their country into foreign lands. On the twenty-sixth of that month La Fayette, as commander of the National Guard, presented them the tricolored cockade, which he declared would make the round of the world. On the night of the 4th of August, 1789, the National Assembly decreed the rights of man, on the motion of the Viscount of Noailles, who lived several years in Philadelphia. Every noble eagerly renounced his privileges, and the Empress Josephine s first husband, the Viscount of Beauharnais, moved for equality in all places, and all punishments for all men, all of which reforms were soon acceded to by the king. On the 4th of October, 1789, when that imbecile monarch was amusing him self hunting, the general belief, well founded, that he intended to escape, like his brother Charles, to foreign parts, there to rouse foreign powers to invade France to reinstate him, in duced the mob of Paris to march at midnight to Versailles to force the king to return with them to Paris; on which occa sion La Fayette, by his courageous loyalty, saved the queen s life, whose most intimate adviser, he said, was the Swedish Minister, the handsome Count of Fersen. On the 9th of October, 1789, jury trial was established, prisoners to be in terrogated within twenty-four hours after arrested, allowed free intercourse with counsel, with public trial, and torture abolished. Not only noblemen, but many other men of edu cation and respectability continued ignobly, says Madame de Stael, in her history of the revolution, to fly their country, leaving it to the ignorant and violent, by whose excesses ad- 420 SENATE. mirable reforms were defiled with blood. On the 6th of November, 1789, the first Jacobin club was formed. On the 20th of February, 1790, Joseph II., Emperor of Germany, died, a sort of crowned democrat. The liberal sentiments of Frederick the Great, of Prussia, were constantly published by his intimate Voltaire, the greatest of all aristocratic demo crats; and the future Emperor of Russia, Alexander, born in 1777, educated in similar sentiments, told our Consul, Le- vett Harris, that if not born to a throne, he would have been a democrat. In a speech in the National Assembly La Fayette said that when servitude renders revolution necessary, insurrection is the most sacred of duties. Thus contempora neously with American republican development were European democratic doctrines proclaimed by the most imposing authori ties. On the 1st of April, 1790, the French red book, so called, containing the public receipts, expenditures, pensions, and prodigalities was made public. On the 17th of that month Franklin died, venerated in Europe, as much for his consecration of property and scientific discoveries, as in America for his devotion to liberty, equality, and economy. On the 14th of June, 1790, Talleyrand, afterward fugitive and naturalized in this country, as Bishop of Autun cele brated mass at Paris, before an immense concourse, commemo rating the anniversary of the taking the Bastile. On the 15th of May, 1791, the National Assembly, on the motion of Abbe Gregoire, supported by a speech of Robespierre, decreed that colored children of free parents should enjoy the same rights as whites, to which movement the colonial disasters w^ere im puted. On the 5th of June, 1791, the pardoning power was taken from the king, who, intimidated to the basest submis sion, privately protested against many acts he publicly ap proved, and on the first of that month was captured at Var- rennes escaping, and taken back prisoner to Paris. His brother, afterward Louis XVIII., escaped at the same time. On the 18th of May, 1791, the Emperor of Germany, Leo pold II., at Padua, summoned all sovereigns to join him in SENATE. 421 making Louis XVI. s cause their own; and at Pilnitz, the 27th of August, 1791, the Emperor of Germany and King of Prussia stipulated the forcible emancipation of the King of France. On the 13th of September, 1791, the Constituent Assembly completed the French constitution, after a session of twenty-eight months, during which, in 1789, it passed 68 acts of general legislation, 643 in 1790, and 625 in 1791, altogether 1319, besides private acts. The National Assem bly began its sessions forthwith, on the 1st of October, 1791, consisting of 745 members, of whom near 400 were lawyers and 70 priests. On the 7th of February, 1792, at Berlin, Austria and Prussia, by treaty, in which Russia soon united, allied themselves to suppress the troubles in France. On the 29th of March, 1792, Gustavus III., King of Sweden, who attempted to put down aristocracy in his kingdom, and wished to command the army to invade France, was assassinated by the nobles at a ball. On the 22d of April, 1792, France, induced by Dumouriez, Louis XVI. s Minister of Foreign Affairs, declared war against Francis II., Emperor of Ger many, who on the first of March of that year succeeded his predecessor, Leopold. On the 20th of June, 1792, the king and his family were invaded by a multitude, said by the royal ists to have been excited to violence by the moderate party, the Girondists, in order to force a change of ministers to their advantage. The mob broke into the Tuileries, where the poor dismayed monarch put the red woollen cap of laboring men, called the cap of liberty, on his head, as if to replace the dia dem. A pair of ragged breeches on the point of a pike were paraded as what was called the sans culottes flag, and a bul lock s pluck at the end of another was labelled the heart of an aristocrat. La Fayette proffered his services to defend the royal family, but they, particularly the queen, deprecated relief by means of his popularity. The Duke of Larochefau- cault Liancourt, who had been in this country, also offered effectual protection. But Louis, with none but passive courage, declined all active vindication; and, absorbed in the history of 422 SENATE. Charles I. of England, which the poor king of France was continually studying, Louis hoped to escape Charles s fate by avoiding energetic resistance. On the 26th of June, 1792, the King of Prussia s manifesto began the first of the five coalitions against France, followed on the 26th of July by the Duke of Brunswick s barbarous Vandal proclamation, which warranted as it maddened entire France to leap with tiger s fero city upon their monarch within and the abominable conspiracy of brother monarchs without. The dreadful 10th of August, 1792, soon followed, revolutionary laws, confinement of the king and royal family in the Temple, all the foreign ministers quitting Paris; and on the eighteenth of that month the flight of La Fayette, whose constant endeavors to rescue the -king from the Jacobins, destroyed his standing and endangered his life. Very soon La Vendee rose in insurrection, and several persons were guillotined in Paris. From the second to the sixth what is known as the September massacres took place; on the twentieth the battle of Valmy was fought, and on the twenty-first the final adjournment of the Legislative Assem bly, which sat one year and passed twenty-five hundred acts, general or special, with which ended the French monarchy. At the same time what is called the National Convention commenced, with war, foreign and intestine, the French American colonies in revolt, and French finances in ruins. The actor, Collot d Herbois, moved the abolition of royalty, and the republic was proclaimed by acclamation. In Novem ber, 1792, Louis XVI. was put on his trial. On the sixteenth of December George III., disclaiming interference with French politics, announced his disposition to oppose French aggran dizement. On the last day of the year 1793, Chauvlin, Louis XVI. s Minister in England, inquiring by an official note whether England was neutral or hostile, was answered by Lord Grenville that he was not recognized, being Minister of a republic. On the 13th of January, 1793, a mob at Rome murdered Basseville, the French republican Secretary of Legation, and burned the French academy of painting there. SENATE. 423 King Louis, condemned almost unanimously as guilty of treason, but to suffer death only by a small majority of 749 members, was executed the 21st of January, 1793. In the amazing expedition, for that period, of fifty-four hours, the intelligence reached London, caused universal indignation, and the French Minister Chauvlin was ordered ignomini- ously, contrary to treaty, to leave England. Wherefore on the 1st of February, 1793, the French National Convention declared war against England and Holland, and on the seventh of March against Spain. And then began that conflict by land and sea involving nearly all the world, from which the United States were snatched only by taking refuge behind President Washington s proclamation of neutrality, advised by his Secretaries, Jefferson and Hamilton, notwithstanding Franklin s treaties with France, stipulating American protec tion of French West India possessions, in consideration of French succor to enable the United States to achieve their independence. English royal and general indignation against French regicides was such that Burke declared in Parliament that the two nations were already at war before it was de clared. But George III. s ministry, in 1793, went to war more against French revolution than the French nation, as in 1803 they helped the United States to Louisiana by going to war again more against Bonaparte than France. There was all along great democratic English sympathy and ten dency. Numerous petitions for reform, Lord Grey s motion for it in Parliament, a respectable Society of Friends of the People, riots at Birmingham and other places, royal pro clamations against sedition, declared in Parliament to be levelled against Paine s Rights of Man, together with many other signs of the times, signalized public sentiment. So authoritative a journal as the Annual Register applauded "the temperate mode in which the French conducted them selves in the beginning of the dispute, rebuking the insuffer able and puerile vengeance of our ministry;" characterized Burke s speech as "the insanity of the Hibernian orator s 424 SENATE. discourse," and Lord Sheffield s in the same vein, "as almost entirely consisting of a repetition of the words cut-throats, robbers, banditti, vilest dregs, and other equally elegant epithets." The Annual Register averred that on the 2d of April, 1793, "a most humane and liberal proposal was made by Le Brun, French Minister of Foreign Affairs, to send Maret from Paris to London with official declaration that the French republic desired to terminate all its differences with Great Britain, and to end a war that by the manner in which it is otherwise likely to rage, cannot fail to bring miseries dreadful to humanity on both nations." Of which overture no notice was taken by the British government but by war. Le Brun, then the republican Secretary of State, was the future imperial Duke of Placentia, whose son, while I was in Paris, married the daughter and only child of Barbd Marbois, the salesman of Louisiana to our Ministers. Maret was the future imperial Duke of Bassano, whose daughter married a son of Alexander Baring, who furnished the funds to pay for that purchase. Le Brun and Maret, highly respectable as well as most distinguished Frenchmen, were both favorably connected with the great event of my narrative. France defied, and the United States disregarded in the British inception of tremendous warfare, on the 6th of No vember, 1794, the first of the marine aggressions inflicted on American commerce in total and rival outrage of our rights was proclaimed by an order in council instructing all British cruisers to stop and detain all ships carrying provisions or other supplies for the use of any French colony ; soon revoked indeed, but still the primary cause of all the maritime vexa tions which after long forbearance at last elicited our second war against England. The Annual Register for 1793 closes the British annals of the events compressed in my few pages, with animadversions on the impolicy of English interference to punish French crimes, and by opposition to consolidate the French republic. The royal family, it avers, would have been SENATE. 425 kept on the throne, with complete ascendancy of British influ ence in France, the West India islands would have all become British, "that fatal decree for the emancipation of the negroes would never have been passed, and had we preserved our neu trality, the trade of the whole world would have been ours." Such being contemporaneous English peaceable judgment on the stupendous French convulsions as they broke forth, while public sentiment was not quite unanimous in the United States, there was vast preponderance toward progressive liberty ; and every arrival from Europe brought contagion for the universal struggle to endow popular sovereignty with more power of knowledge and administration. As in prior and darker ages individual sovereigns monopolized power, so as light increased the sovereign mass attracted it to themselves; who, it began to be believed, could neither have enough with out shining in public counsels, nor govern too much if duly informed. The Second Congress opened under these impres sions, and on the memorable 24th of February, 1791, when the Senate concurred in the resolution from the House of Representatives, requesting the President to communicate to the National Convention of France the condolence of Con gress for the death of Franklin, and passed a supplement to the act establishing the Bank of the United States, against which James Monroe was one of the only three who voted, that future incumbent of more places than any other of his countrymen had filled, Minister to France twice, to Spain, and to England, Secretary of State and of War, Governor of Virginia, and President almost unanimously re-elected, pursuant to notice he gave the day before, renewed the defeated motion to reform the Senate from a private council of dignified elders into a public meeting of ambitious orators, obnoxious to the press, assailable by it and the people, inevitably by the domi neering press and people sovereign impelled to more absolute democracy. His notice the day before was to open the doors of the Senate and admit citizens of the United States to hear the debates generally, without restriction. But the resolution 426 SENATE. next day taken into consideration was restricted to legislative debates, with express reservation of the Senate s judgment whether they required secrecy, the new rule not to he enforced till the next session, and the Secretary to cause a gallery to be erected for the accommodation of an audience. After two days discussion the innovation was repudiated, getting but nine ayes to seventeen nays ; defeating the second attempt at change, and with names exposed by journalized votes on what does not seem to have been either a party or a local question. Of the conventionalists King and Butler voted for, while Bassett, Few, Johnson, Langdon, and Morris voted against the motion. The mover s motive could hardly have been the vanity of public speech; for Monroe was no orator, but a very unimpressive speaker, not bright, prompt, graceful, or sonorous, but plain, modest, and awkward, pro gressive in politics, and tenacious, though not an elegant yet not a bad writer. Whether his Virginia neighbors, intimate and presidential predecessors at hand, Jefferson, Secretary of State, Madison, a leading member of the House, or either of them, countenanced Monroe s proposed reform, I am not aware. The second session of the Second Congress began the 24th of October, 1791. After the Senate had sat in private for six months, Monroe, inflexible and persevering, on the 26th of March, 1792, renewed his still forlorn attempt, seconded now by his colleague Richard Henry Lee. Without a word of debate it was again rejected by a vote of seventeen nays to eight ayes. And so throughout four sessions, three of the First and one of the Second Congress, publicity remained not only unknown, but with few friends in Senate. No senatorial speech had more than some two dozen senatorial auditors ; none had the glorification of print. Senatorial legislation was private. The spontaneous police of reporters was wholly unknown. Public parliamentary reports were unlawful in England; and what passed in the American Senate was less published than the proceedings in the British House of Lords. SENATE. 427 The second session of the Second Congress began on the 5th of November, 1791, as always, with closed doors in Senate. On the 3d of January, 1793, some member, whose name the journal does not mention, repeated the struggle for publicity, this time introduced by a series of argumentative resolutions and an open invocation of the press. "Resolved, That the Senate are individually responsible for their conduct to their constituents, who are entitled to such infor mation as will enable them to form a just estimate thereof; that the journals are too voluminous and expensive to circulate gener ally, and their information of the principles, motives, and designs of individual members is inadequate ; that this defective information becomes more nugatory and delusive as occasion for it increases, since the Senate make their own journals." Then immediately following that insolent, offensive, and, might it not be added, rejectionable ? accusation, another pre- ambular resolution added that the conducting of the legislative and judicial powers of the Senate in public, and suffering an account of their measures and deliberations to be published IN THE NEWSPAPERS is the best means of diffusing general informa tion concerning the principles, motives, and conduct of individual members, and that by withholding this information respons ibility becomes unavailing, the influence of their constituents over one branch of the legislature in a great measure annihi lated, and the best security which experience has devised against the abuse of power and a mal-administration aban doned. The motion to print that provoking appeal from the Senate to the newspapers was instantly overruled, and the resolution laid on the table; but ordered for consideration a month after ward. Accordingly on that day, the 4th of February, 1793, the offensive premises were repelled by twenty-one nays to only seven ayes, and the proposed publicity refused by eighteen nays to ten ayes. Two Congresses, five sessions, and three years of private senatorial transaction had taken place; the first lustrum of Washington s administration was drawing to 428 SENATE. a close ; Jefferson and Hamilton were leaving it, having sowed the seeds of their divergent politics : Europe was convulsed with wars, intolerant despotism marshalled against frenzied liberty, whose wild emissary and exact representative Genet was in this country, recapturing Louisiana, embroiling com merce, establishing democratic societies, defying the American government, perverting the national aversion to England and gratitude to France into sympathy with England and enmity to France. Still the impulse of progressive freedom was onward; and when the Third Congress was opened on the 2d of December, 1794, by President Washington, in a court dress, going to the assembled legislature in a state coach, with pictorial panels and liveried servants, that sedate and considerate conservator of republican institutions checked and balanced against either monarchy, aristocracy, or democracy absolute, read a speech in which the overpowering press was homaged. "I cannot forbear," said the President, "to recommend a repeal of the tax on the transportation of public prints. Nothing con duces more than a faithful representation of the public proceedings diffused without restraint throughout the United States." Monroe, the leading advocate for publishing and diffusing without restraint throughout the United States the only legis lative proceedings held in conclave, had been sent by Presi dent Washington in May, 1794, as his Minister to succeed Gouverneur Morris, recalled from Paris, the headquarters of revolutionary democracy; the first coalition to destroy which was soon by terrible reverses reduced to England, deserted by all her allies ; while on this side of the Atlantic republican prosperity was calmly marching with giant strides even faster than sans culotte armies, on the career of popular triumph. Among the new Senators who for the first time took their seats in the Third Congress, in December, 1794, were Albert Gallatin, from Pennsylvania, and Alexander Martin, from North Carolina. Mr. Martin was a Southern gentleman of Northern collegiate education, classical attainments and tastes, SENATE. 429 considerable property, had served with distinction in the war of the Revolution, been several times chosen Governor of his native and steadfast State, where his social and public posi tion were highly respectable; such a person, whatever his party politics, as all well-wishers of their country may desire to see in the Senate of the United States. No sooner had Yice-President Adams administered the requisite oath to Gal- latin, than the Vice-President himself presented what was called a petition, but in reality a remonstrance against Galla- tin s eligibility to the Senate, because he had not been, it was alleged, nine years a citizen of the United States. Sharp and frequent controversy, as was said, ensued, in which Rufus King and Aaron Burr, the New York Senators, as I can remember to have heard, took prominent part on opposite sides. That contest, with which our present narrative has no other connection, enabled Martin to throw open the doors of the Senate at last to the curious many, the mighty press, and sovereign people every day the Gallatin question was dis cussed, not only within but without; while no authentic report enabled the press to unfold its argumentation. In the midst of its daily excitement Mr. Martin moved, on the 16th of Janu ary, 1794, for senatorial legislative publicity of debate; affirm ing the policy and wisdom of it by several argumentative preliminary resolutions, couched in respectful and persuasive terms, without the offensive and insulting language of the prior defeated attempt, which the Senate refused to print. The Senate, according to Martin s resolutions, are representa tives responsible to constituents entitled to information. Sen ators represent sovereign States, but their basis is the people. The journals and their newspaper extracts do not circulate satisfactory information. Wherefore resolved, etc., as before. For the first time the Senate allowed the motion and argument to be printed. On the tenth of February another concession followed. It was moved, and ultimately resolved, that the doors be opened and continue open during the discussion of the contested election of Albert Gallatin. Although on the 430 SENATE. nineteenth of February Martin s preliminary resolutions were negatived without a division, and his main resolution postponed till next session, yet it was by a majority of only a single vote, fourteen ayes to thirteen nays. But the Senate were wavering, several members changed their votes, if not their minds. In the course of that same doubtful day a recon sideration was carried by seventeen ayes, to ten nays, and in that state of the protracted struggle the Senate adjourned. Next day, 20th of February, 1794, without dissent, it was resolved to throw the doors open during the Gallatin contest; and by eighteen ayes to nine nays, that after the end of this session, and as soon as suitable, galleries shall be provided, and permitted to be opened every morning as long as the Senate shall be engaged in their legislative capacity, unless in cases which in their opinion require secrecy. Thus after a struggle protracted and severe, continually re newed during four organic years, and always with like despe rate prospect till the very last, and not till after all the great foundations of government were laid in secret, publicity finally prevailed, overcoming many difficulties, and to the last, much resistance. Martin s final motion was to take the question on all his propositions generally. Whereupon, by rare senatorial resort to the previous question, that put on the prefatory reso lutions was negatived, and the main question was then post poned till next session. But the subject was revived next day by a motion to recommit, which also being negatived, an unexpected majority recorded their votes for the long-deferred and oft-rejected change; whether a reform, each reader will have his own opinion, as in the recital of facts it is not my province to interfere much with mine. Nearly all Christen dom had been agitated with fundamental, many of them san guinary and terrific, alterations of government, while that thus stated from their journal was operating in the Senate of the United States. In secret, and almost in silence, a great practical departure was effected from contemplated theory; and that the theory most familiar to the whole American peo- SENATE. 431 pie, consecrated to them by their government throughout the Revolution, when Congress always governed by secret session, which method of government achieved American independence. Scarce any departure from it could be greater than that of the most permanent and partly the executive department being altered from private session, with no audience, to public assembly in the face of all the nation, by the press and other wise regulating instead of being regulated. Nearly all Christendom underwent contemporaneous radical alteration. France intimately connected with the United States by revolutionary deracinations, political and social, moral and religious, unsettling property and entirely remodel ling government ; Britain, Germany, Spain, and other great States making war on French revolution as the only escape for monarchy and aristocracy from convulsive democracy. Per haps the wonder is, certainly the solid merit of the American Union, that it stood fast on its original basis of balanced and confederated republicanism, swerving so little from it though following the general tendency to democratic sovereignty. Yet great was the change in the conservative department of government when the Senate, from private deliberation, without audience or published speech, was turned into a thea tre for oratorical display, appeals to popular passions, and the multitude s applause. The votes of the Conventionalists in Senate were so divided on that question as scarcely to infer how they themselves construed the Constitution they framed. Indeed, each one does not seem to have always voted alike; but Robert Morris appears to be the only one who every time voted against the innovation. Several Senators, if I am not mistaken, Cabot, Izard, Langdon, Brown, Butler, Morris, merchants, planters, men of property and respectability, were not orators ambitious of display in the press and to the mass. Nor reciting as I shall the lamentations of still some surviving veterans of that distant day, who deplore the Senate s con descension to popularity, am I to be understood as either adopting or rejecting when recording their opinions. Those 432 SENATE. veterans, with fond recurrence to what they call the good old times of primitive politics, insist that the Senate has been not only totally, but detrimentally loosened from its well-laid, if not aristocratic, yet wise and stable foundations. The Con stitution, say these bygone interpreters of it, while securing to the people direct agency in the enactment of all laws, counteracted the proneness of mere unbridled and unbalanced democracy to instability, violence, and misapprehension. Pop ular passions and prejudices were held in check by a body older in years and citizenship, fewer in number, longer in office, not chosen by the people, therefore not answerable to them directly, not individually hereditary, yet, as a body, per petual, whose policy may be continued beyond the two years of a Representative or the four years of the President. They advise the President in all appointments to office and in trea ties, to all of which, both officers and treaties, their secret con sent is still indispensable. They are judges too of all high crimes and misdemeanors. Their condemnation is perpetual disfranchisement from offices of honor, trust, or profit, and from their sentence there is no appeal. Senators, amenable only to that transcendent thing, a State, dragged by the licen tious press from the secluded sanctuary of private independent deliberation into the flagrant glare, noise, and turmoil of pub lic disputation before the despotic mass, are no longer consci entious sages, but creatures of ephemeral, often ill-got popu lar favor. Instead of men tried by experience in responsible places, and there proved worthy by wisdom and virtue of pre ferment to the Senate, its seats, since deprived of sanctity, are canvassed and usurped by the young, ardent, and ambi tious aspirants for the presidency. Eminent statesmen who, since the change, from the Senate move the country, influence its measures, and mould its policy, are more conspicuous for shining with the blaze of oratory than warming with the light of wisdom. Become like the Roman Cirque an arena for display, it is crowded with audiences of both sexes, seeking not instruction but amusement; to admire, if not applaud SENATE. 433 contestants for the palm of brilliant not beneficial triumphs. Universal vulgarized aptitude for fluency of speech, stimulated by the ubiquitous press to echo its ejaculations throughout the whole country, supplying their troops of supervising reporters, provided with special accommodations and privileges, engen ders incessant and inordinate appeals, not to convince other Senators, but captivate the idle audience and far-distant pub lic. In a single one of these interminable popularizations weeks are taken by vanity from utility, to be answered, not in debate, of which there is scarcely any, but in days appro priated by Senators, each one his day or several days, to fill newspapers with short-lived notoriety on sectional excitement. What practical departure, say these regrets of the good* old times, could be enacted by law, or even organized by Consti tution, greater than changing by mere self-constituted regula tion, the permanent and stable branch of government from private session with no audience, to public assembly continu ally uttering entreaties to those whom they do not represent and should not adulate, the merciless press and the people whose conglomeration makes a State, but among whose masses statesmen are rare productions? Departure from the Consti tution as at first enforced, like all backsliding, grows worse as it goes. Disregarding positive constitutional interdict against money drawn from the treasury, but in consequence of appro priations made by law, which Jefferson insisted is specific ap propriation, prodigal largesses are squandered by the Senate, without act of Congress, on conscribed bodies of reporters and other potentates of the arbitrary press, myrmidons of party and venality more dangerous than Praetorian guards to free thought and honest action. Contingent funds without specific appropriation are lavished with notorious though clandestine prodigality, and with no audit but by the beneficiaries dis tributing the plunder. These lovers of the past furthermore asked whether senatorial divergence from private councils to public appeals had not even changed the character of con gressional oratory to more popular invocations of the hearts VOL. i. 28 434 SENATE. instead of convincing the understanding of the nation? Ham ilton, Madison, Burr, Marshall reasoned when they spoke, seldom addressing the mere passions of auditors. Ames, in his highly pathetic speeches, even when enlisting sympathies, was not merely declamatory. Whereas, of later ruling public speakers, Clay seldom argued, though his command of an audience was perhaps greater than that of the public; Web ster, a powerful logician to be sure, always courted popular support; and Calhoun, bald and bare as his speeches were of imagery and illustration and strictly argumentative, neverthe less addressed them expressly to the people. The inordinate length, too, not only of modern speeches but of State papers, is attributable to the supposed necessity of proving all the most familiar postulates to the multitudinous auditory, supreme in judgment as in power. In answer to these antiquated imputations of senatorial de generacy, the modern reformers may say that, like universal suffrage, the step once taken can never be retraced, and tem perate conformity is the only wisdom. And would an Ameri can Senate, less accessible to the public than its original type, the British House of Lords, be tolerated or tolerable, sitting like that of Venice, in odious conclave incompatibly with republican government ? Would not the most licentious press and most desperate popular sovereignty be less dangerous to public welfare, or more propitious to peace and more conserv ative of property ? Would irresponsible privacy in permanent stagnation be consistent with American development in its perpetual exigencies? So great, however, is the change, that as far as irksome research of newspapers without index, when there was scarce any other American literature, authorizes the averment, scarce a word of either triumph or regret was uttered by the then far from silent press when that change took place in 1794. The proceedings of Senate at that time formed little or no part of public printed intelligence. Mon roe s confirmation as appointed Minister to France instead of Gouverneur Morris, recalled, and Gallatin s rejection from the SENATE. 435 Senate, were gazetted in brief paragraphs, almost without comment, though with the names of Senators easily guessed, if not surreptitiously disclosed. In the ensuing nine years, what a change ! Senatorial discussions from 1790 to near 1795 unknown out of their hall, in 1803 constituted the ful crum of polished and sounding steel from which to mark pub lic sentiment by popular reverberations. Monroe and Burr were among the earliest and stoutest champions of publicity. Whether Jefferson, while presiding over the Senate, or Madi son, a leading member of the other house, sympathized in their movement I am not aware. But as is every day s ex perience of the uncertainty to which statesmen and States are liable, Monroe s treaty for Louisiana, effected in the deepest secrecy, was submitted by President Jefferson to secret sena torial judgment. The Senate, which by the utmost stress of public debate, by tribunition appeal to the multitude, strove to force Jefferson to arm publicly when he insisted on private negotiation; the same Senate may be said to have closed their public cry to arms by unanimous secret confirmation of the treaty of peace without preparation for war. France still asserting adhesion to the reforms of 1789, has nevertheless lately expulsed, by the votes of many millions of universal suffragans confirming the rejection of it, English par liamentary government as, in the opinions of wise and learned men, factious, turbulent, and revolutionary. As no govern ment is without evils, while each people may prefer its own, no people should be hasty to insist that its own is alone fit for other people. If the merits of all government, like the com pensations of climates, are rather relative than positive, the best modern method for checking excess by proclivity to any one of the three cardinal principles, is, as Cicero taught, to blend them. American and European modern history, with perhaps even Asiatic and African, concur in the demonstration that since the principle of self-government, or universal individual ism has become common, if not prominent, the democratic 436 SENATE. tendency rules everywhere, not only in the American repub lic and the numerous republics united to compose it, but in monarchical Great Britain, and more monarchical France; whether for their benefit is theory which this narrative will not undertake to discuss, but leaves the fact to each reader s solution. This historical sketch of this drift of democracy stops at that statement, which is unquestionable. But before leaving the senatorial change so largely dwelt upon, there is no reason w r hy vindication of silent action without speech should not for a moment be presented. Oratory, like warlike exploit, will always be puissant, often more effective than learning, sometimes than wisdom. Still, silence is a great faculty, if not the greatest. The Deity rules by acts, not words. The silent man seldom, like the speaker, says foolish or injurious things. The talent for public speaking misleads, even when handled by its greatest adepts; when by its innumerable American agitations of this common faculty it is oftener injurious than useful. A secret Senate, felt and known only by acts, may be impracticable in a free country. The multitude, inured to be told how to think and what to do, might not submit to Senators not asking their opinion. The press, a power next to warriors and orators, would no doubt insist on what it unjustly deems its right of animadversion. But if Franklin, Washington, Jefferson, and Jackson had ruled by policy explained not by executive acts but only in deliberate, written vindications, would the nation be worse governed than if ruled by the speeches of Clay, Webster, and Calhoun? Senatorial transformation from executive privacy to organ ized publicity underwent its final action just before the West ern-waters crisis, when on the 8th of January, 1802, the editor of the National Intelligencer addressed a letter to the President of the Senate, who submitted it to that body, requesting permission to occupy a position there for taking the proceedings and debates correctly. Theretofore no SENATE. 437 stenographer had been admitted into the area ; and the gallery was too remote for hearing. The resolution for admission in the area was adopted, but reconsidered, when it was moved and ten Senators voted to amend by adding that the steno grapher should first give security for his good conduct with two sufficient sureties, in a sum to be fixed for that purpose. On the rejection of that amendment, the word note-taker being added to stenographer, the resolution was adopted by sixteen ayes to twelve nays, nearly party votes between Re publicans and Federalists respectively. The editor therefore took his place in the area, and congratulated the country upon the opening of a new door to public information which might be considered as the prelude to more genuine sympathy between the Senate and people than theretofore subsisted, by rendering each better acquainted with the other. We congratu late, said the editor in triumph, without qualification, every true friend to our republican institutions. Simultaneous with that radical and immutable alteration of institutions, the future effect of which is far beyond the ken of the wisest men, Congress, pursuant to executive recommend ations were busied with reactionary reforms; repealing part of the Federal judiciary, all the direct and internal taxes, reduc ing the regular army to three thousand men, diminishing the navy and marine corps, and the foreign missions. A self-con stituted guild of letter-writers for newspapers was not contem plated by the senatorial permission to stenographers and note-takers when allowed admission for taking with correct ness the debates and proceedings of that body. The press, since then become almost as sovereign as the people, now sup plies Congress in both houses, the bench of justice, the execu tive seat, and other public places with numerous incumbents ; more than any other class, if not more than executives and legislatures; suggesting, forming, changing, and regulating the public opinion, by which all things are ruled. In the midst of his reforms, so little was the press countenanced by President Jefferson, that his standing order to his Postmaster-General 438 SENATE. was, to employ no printer in that department. Among the archaeological curiosities of that distant day may still be found in print a letter written in January, 1802, by Gideon Granger, one of the earliest and boldest of the then first executed dog mas, of what has become since lamentably familiar as rotation in office by executive arbitrary removal of harmless, often excellent incumbents ; by which missive, like imperial rescrip- tive French royal lettre-de-cachet, Nicholas Powers was dis missed from the postrnastership at Poughkeepsie, because, as the letter of destitution stated : " The printer of a newspaper is not the most proper person to discharge the duties of a postmaster." That the post-office is that part of government which of all others should be kept sacred from the contamination of party politics was Jefferson s excellent political principle. When accused by antagonists of being unduly influenced by editors of newspapers, particularly foreigners inoculating this coun try with wild European notions of false freedom, he denied their influence and intimacy with earnest exculpation. If the press since his time has become a privileged class or aristoc racy, it was not with his direct approbation, although his system might sympathize with their theories. Many powerful batteries of the press in the sea-ports were manned by for eigners, like Paine, their archetype, mostly consumed in self- combustion. Jefferson s policy was pre-eminently American. The Fourth Estate, as it has been called, not recognized as now till its ascendancy began, about the beginning of this century, was then much less than since the companion and controller of American statesmen, as of French Monarchs and British Ministers. At present a despotic press revolts, and wars against what it denounces a French imperial despotism. But which is the greater despotism? Is the overruling control of the press by an emperor more tyrannical than uncontrolled malediction of everything and every one by the press? SENATE. 439 DEBATE IN SENATE. Just before the Western alarm and general excitement by Spanish exclusion of our people from the Mississippi, the Senate, having put on the armor of public speech, resolved with it to appeal from the President to the people. The Vice- President, their presiding officer, Colonel Burr, and Colonel Monroe, about to be dispatched on secret mission to France, had been two of the earliest and stoutest champions of resort from conclave to publicity. After the President overcame opposition in the popular branch of Congress to his clandes tine and unarmed method of dealing with the difficulty compli cated of French formidable domination superadded to Spanish unmanageable inaction, discussion and opposition were renewed in the Senate with vigor never before displayed. The President s confidential message producing that debate is not to be found among the public archives at the Capitol. Among the valuable State papers destroyed by that monster of the deep, Admiral Sir George Cockburn, one of whose most active subordinate agents at the burning of the Capitol is believed to be Sir De Lacy Evans, now member of Parlia ment, then a lieutenant of the British army, was President Jefferson s confidential message of the 31st of December, 1802, calling for two millions of dollars to pay for New Orleans and the Floridas. By an imperfect report of the debate in the House of Representatives on the llth of Janu ary, 1803, it would seem that after Mr. Griswold s resolution calling on the President for information was negatived, Gen eral Smith, of Maryland, said he had a communication to make which required secrecy; whereupon the galleries were cleared and the doors remained closed for a short time. When the injunction of secrecy was removed, it appeared that a select committee, of which Joseph H. Nicholson was chair man, had reported a resolution for two millions to defray any expenses which may be incurred in relation to the intercourse between the United States and foreign nations, to be applied 440 SENATE. under the President s direction, who was authorized to borrow it if necessary, and required to lay an account thereof as soon as possible before Congress. A distinct and special bill for the appropriation became a law by the President s approval on the twenty-sixth of February. It would seem, from the most reliable publication of the proceedings, that the bill as it passed the House was delivered to the Senate confidentially by two members of the select committee, Messrs. Nicholson and Bayard, and on the fifteenth of February, the day before Mr. Ross presented his resolutions. The report from the select committee sanctioned by the House, possibly written, at any rate the argument suggested by the Executive, was a plain statement of the history and indispensability of the navigation of the Mississippi, with assurances that the acqui sition proceeded from no disposition to increase our territory, for which neither the Floridas nor New Orleans offer any inducements than their mere geographical relation to the United States. But peace was the sole purpose ; peace for which the government of the United States was organized differently from any other ; peace, by inoffensive purchase, to avoid war, which, the committee argued, would cost much more than the sum proposed to be paid. This view of the subject, harmonizing with Jefferson s insuperable aversion to war at almost any cost, closed with citation of the similar course pur sued for settling the difference with Algiers, by an appropria tion of a million of dollars prior to the commencement of the negotiation, of which, the report argued, we have since expe rienced the beneficial effects. That somewhat derogatory pre cedent does not seem to have been referred to in debate by either house. The President had majorities in both for his determination to negotiate without arming. Both houses recognized unanimously the right of navigation, and the necessity of force to maintain it, if indispensable. But on the question of confidence in the man, as Mr. Goddard said in the house, the Federal members would not vote with Mr. Jefferson s adherents. Griswold, Dana, Goddard, Huger, and SENATE. 441 Bayard, on the contrary, though they could not take from him the majority of the house, yet by their speeches put his chief champion Mr. Randolph s fealty to the test, on his resolution, which Dana s pungency designated as the offspring of the intellectual energies of that gentleman. Less logical than linguacious, that silver-tongued, eloquent, and always impres sive debater, then in short-lived harmony with the President, overcame all opposition, as has been already mentioned, in the money-moving house. My account of their proceedings, unavoidably without the executive letter asking for the money, prefaces this sketch of the debate in Senate, to which we now proceed, with part of what occurred in the House of Repre sentatives. Louisiana was not in question or in contemplation. Igno rance prevailed of that vast West since so greatly developed in importance, geographical, territorial, and political, legislative, executive, and universal. New Orleans was of no worth but as sea-port for traffic from and to the northern parts of the Mississippi, whose navigation was involved. The President s conversation and correspondence expressed apprehension that Ross and Morris, as he said, with other leading Federalists, would try, by rousing public sentiment to the ardor of war, to arrest the policy he had triumphantly introduced for its ex tinction. The Federal opposition, still strong in both houses, but strongest in Senate, laid hold of the difficulty with Spain, believed to be instigated by Bonaparte, as the unlooked-for means of embarrassing, peradventure overthrowing, Jefferson s auspicious and popular commencement. His passion for peace at all events they derided. Their inclination for hostilities with France had been gratified by raising a considerable army. The press treated the public, not indeed to local or sectional, but yet partisan views of the subject. The Ameri can Minister in France lent all his efforts to convince the ruler there that he could not do anything more unwise than colonize Louisiana; while no one, except that ruler, either there or here, seemed to have any conception of what Louis- 442 SENATE. iana might be. A landing-place at a small, wooden town, with a sandy strip hard by on the east bank of the river, was the utmost pretension of that first solicitation of territorial increase which has since passed into European proverb of re proach as American rapacity. Perhaps the peaceable pur chase of so much more may have induced national desire for still more ; for such covetousness is national as it is individual. But peace from first to last has been the object, and not aggrandizement. Of the boundless and fabulous region acquired there was no idea. The object, pursuit, and crisis were altogether and merely fluvial. Not a wish was felt for a single foot of ground, except as a landing-place from the river. After the brief contest on the subject ceased in the House of Representatives, where the President s peculiar policy overcame all opposition, it was renewed in the Senate with much more breadth and vigor of discussion, and was, if I am not mistaken, the first occasion when any extensive debate by that body was fully reported and submitted to public atten tion. The bill having passed the house, as the President desired, was presented to the Senate, as we have seen, on the 15th of February, 1803. On the day before which present ment, resolutions proposed by James Ross, one of the Sena tors from Pennsylvania, brought out full discussion. Mr. Ross s colleague was the Quaker gentleman heretofore largely introduced in this narrative, George Logan, siding with Jeffer son and the Republicans against the Federal party, differing thereby with Mr. Ross, but moderate, conservative, conscien tious, and patriotic. However separated by those party dif ferences which seldom survive short-lived intervals, both were of highest personal respectability and inbred republican pre dilections; one perhaps more reverend of England and averse to France than the other, the Quaker more repugnant to warfare with either. For such was Dr. Logan s aversion to all war, that, in 1811, he performed a voyage to England at his own expense and on his own motive, in defiance of the SENATE. 443 penalties of the Logan law, to prevent the war next year declared by the United States against that country; where, however, the residence, influence, and instructions of William Pinckney, the American Minister, baffled Logan s philan thropic effort, which was moreover counteracted by orders in council and other English hostile measures, extremely unlike those of the French Directory when he pacified them in 1798. James Ross was a large, handsome, native, and pleasing specimen of the State he represented; with its Scots-Irish and German, mostly Celtic, population, inhabiting the most temperate climate and cultivating the most grain-producing of the thirteen original United States. By some of those most capable of the best judgment, he was considered the ablest man of Pennsylvania; plain, but gracious and steadfast in politics, having served in the Senate as a distinguished advo cate of Washington s principles during part of his and all of Adams s administrations, as such defeated in 1797 in acrimo nious party contest for governorship of the State, premising Jefferson s analogous triumph over Adams for the presidency in 1800. Ross s complete discomfiture in the central State, then containing both Federal and State seat of government in its chief city, paved the way for a party revolution, of which Mr. Ross was one of the first and an eminent victim. His party victor, Chief Justice McKean, consecrated to public favor by signature to the Declaration of Independence and other national distinctions, passed through long official career without ever courting popular good-will. Much more aristo cratic than Mr. Ross, the Chief Justice, elected Governor, giving vent to unrestrained indignation by contumelious de nunciation of the party opposed to his election, soon, by haughty contempt for the vulgar and ignorant of the party promoting him, conflicting with many of them, was thrown back for support on those whom he had so severely denounced as his opponents. Still uncompromising, he persisted, how ever, and triumphed throughout, while his competitor Ross, 444 SENATE. with principles substantially similar, and conduct much more consistent with plebeian rule, fell under the blows of partisan assault never to rise again as a statesman. Ross, Logan, and McKean were among the most earnest and exemplary repub licans of a State less promotive if not less prolific of eminent men than several others of the United States. After under going ordinary vicissitudes of public estimation, they all closed honored lives in respectable retirement, but most respected by the few, nearly forgot by the many, and as estimable public servants surpassed by none of their successors. McKean manfully and unsubdued stood erect to the last. Logan s sin cere but sensitive republicanism was easily reconciled to opu lent privacy as preferable to contentious publicity. Ross s party ostracism was compensated by lucrative professional eminence, with high social respectability. Driven from the Senate to flourish at the bar, talents and industry create the only American nobility, which, without titles or pensions, depends on its own exertion for respectability and transmis sion to posterity of social and substantial position, more dura ble if not desirable, than for penurious and precarious politi cal honor. Mr. Ross lived secluded to good old age, in the enjoyment of the accumulations to which his mind was bent : his resolutions and speeches in the Senate, on the Mississippi navigation, to which we now proceed, being the last efforts of his statesmanship. Premising brief, forcible, and impressive explanation of the subject, he came, he said, from a part of the country where the late arrests on the Mississippi had excited great alarm and solicitude; and could not consent to go home with out one effort to avert the calamity which threatened the Western country. Aware the President had acted, he would not say that negotiation was wrong, nor embarrass it. But could the President proceed further if he thought more vigor ous measures expedient? He could not use the public force to repress our wrongs. To the free navigation of the Missis sippi we have a natural right, and, by treaty, to a place of SENATE. 445 deposit at New Orleans. By those who have constantly acknowledged our right we are shut out as a common nuisance, and they tell us they have parted with the right. A large portion of our citizens are ruined, the whole nation s power insulted. Explaining statistically the numbers injured and the amount of losses, Mr. Ross said that experience proves submission to wrong leads to aggravation of it. Trea ties are insufficient, justice must be done by force. Let those annoyed do themselves justice. That is all they ask ; no aid from government, but merely leave to go. If permitted, negotiation will be strengthened by their possession. But if you suffer Bonaparte to plant his legions there, the West must make terms with them, and become their tributaries. Will they wait your pleasure ? If they go, they leave these United States forever, to unite with foreigners and enemies. Dis union is inevitable. If they fail, still they will never return to this Union, but attach themselves to Bonaparte s conquer ors and form a foreign colony. If the United States cannot protect them, they will make the best terms they can with other masters of the Mississippi and trade as heretofore. We Western men of the Atlantic side will be laid under foreign impost and export duties. Mr. Ross treated with contempt the absurd suggestion, that perhaps Bonaparte would sell to us. Why should he sell to a government without army, navy, or any means of compulsion? There was, indeed, he said, a newspaper report, that the foreign claimants of the disputed country may be prevailed upon to sell by giving two millions of dollars to certain influential persons about the court. At this significant intimation of what was confidentially known to have occurred in secret session, Robert Wright, one of the Maryland Senators, sprang to his feet, and sharply called Mr. Ross to order. During the war with England, ten years afterward, Governor Wright, as he was called from having been Governor of Maryland, sat near, much surpris ing, and, indeed, amusing me, as member of the House of Representatives. Fierce, fiery member of our war party, 446 SENATE. always forward to challenge controversy, anyhow, anywhere, having fought some desperate duels. Rather short in size, with powdered hair dressed as in former times, flashing eye, curling lip, short-armed circular gesticulation, fluent, with no mean power of speech, which he vaunted as loud, learned, and long, especially on legal questions, and considerable fertility of suggestion. Frequenting the floor and fomenting contro versy by aggressive sallies, he threw down his gauntlet or took up that of any opponent for sharp encounter, never declined but every day challenged. His delight, as I often heard him boast, was, when in Senate, to beard James Ross, Gouverneur Morris, or some other prominent influential mem ber, and put them to the torture to which such men are una voidably subjected in every deliberative assembly by such assailants. This incontinence of provoking sallies of fluent speech was accompanied by constant streams of indelicate conversation, the vernacular of statesmen, as we are told, in former times, enabling them to be talkative without being communicative, and entertaining at some expense of dignity. Maryland was divided like Pennsylvania, and still more neu tralized by her two Senators of diametrically opposite party politics and personal demeanor. In strong contrast, Governor Wright s colleague, a much respected mute, like Dr. Logan, never making speeches, John Eager Howard, was kindly nick named Colonel Cowpens, from his having, at the battle of the Revolution fought at that place, ordered his regiment of regu lars, and when ordering also leading them to the unusual ex ploit of charging with the bayonet the better-prepared and generally more formidable British. Lieutenant- Colonel How ard s co-operation, on that victorious occasion, with General Morgan and Colonel Washington in the total defeat of Tarle- ton, till then conquering all before him by ruthless and san guinary subjugation, overrunning South Carolina, was prelim inary to the series of American indomitable repulsion of British invasion, which not long after closed with their final surrender at Yorktown. Colonel Howard, as taciturn and SENATE. 447 reserved as Governor Wright was voluble and incisive, sat in Senate with another mutilated mute of the Revolution, Gen eral Thomas Sumpter, one of the heroic volunteer combatants of South Carolina when that State underwent more tribula tion and trials than any one of the thirteen in arms against Great Britain, nobly resisting Cornwallis, Rawdon, Tarleton, and other military scourges dragooning and alternately tempt ing in vain an impoverished and downtrod but invincible peo ple. Renouncing the foolish titles of nobility with which so wise a founder as John Locke endowed South Carolina, they contended with fanatical fervor for a principle of independ ence, to them almost a mere abstraction, while to their North ern navigating fellow-countrymen, for whose cause they so bravely fought, practical and lucrative reality. Mr. Ross denied that there was any confidential information in the Senate, in which he was confirmed by the Vice-Presi- dent. One of President Jefferson s special friends, Wilson Carey Nicholas, of Virginia, nevertheless remarking that Mr. Ross was about to treat confidential matters, hoped that the doors would be closed, against which Mr. Ross earnestly pro tested, declaring that he would never speak while they were so. The Vice-President deciding that any member might require the doors to be closed, and even interrupt a speaking member for that purpose, the galleries were then cleared and the doors again shut. When this subject was resumed the next day, on the sixteenth of February, Mr. Ross reasserted what he said some might desire to smother in secret, though the Vice-President had determined there was nothing confiden tial in it. Let the injured redress themselves, said he. They want no help from this side of the mountains. One-half the money consumed by delay and negotiation would pay all the expense. We are told indeed that the remedy provided is a secret, whispered in confidence, but soon to operate like enchantment, no one can tell how or when. That idle tale may amuse children, but will not quiet the hardy men, still armed with the weapons which conquered their homesteads 448 SENATE. from savage foes. They will laugh at us if we go home to talk secrets to charm away the wrong-doers. They are unanimous for action; and Mr. Ross pledged his party to support the Executive, which unanimity of all parties would secure the desired result and prevent war. If desirable to give the President greater power, they were all willing to do so. His resolutions affirming indisputable right of the United States to the navigation and a place of deposit in the island of New Orleans, and that the late infraction of it is hostile to their honor and interest, their consistency with the dignity and safety of this Union to hold so important a right by tenure so uncertain, that it materially concerns American citizens dwelling on the Western Avaters, and is essential to the union, strength, and prosperity of the States to obtain complete security for the full and peaceable enjoyment of such absolute rights, therefore authorized the President to take immediate possession where in the said island or adjacent territories he deemed convenient for his purpose, and to adopt other meas ures as he might deem fit; to call into actual service, not exceeding fifty thousand of the militia of the States of South Carolina, Georgia, Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee, and employ them, together with the military and naval forces of the Union, for effecting these objects, appropriating five mil lions of dollars for carrying these resolutions into effect. Samuel White, of Delaware, who followed Mr. Ross, read an advertisement by Carlos de Grandpre, Governor of Baton Rouge, dated the 22d of December, 1802, forbidding the inhab itants of Louisiana to buy or sell anything of or to the ship ping, flat-bottomed boats, or barges plying on the river for the American possessions; wherefore Mr. White urged imme diate seizure as indispensable. For war, he said, was actually w r aging against us, not by the impotent King of Spain or his indolent subjects, but by the king of kings, Bonaparte, ruler of fifty millions of people, whose word was the law of nations, and ambition as boundless as the world. John Breckinridge, of Kentucky, afterward President Jef- SENATE. 449 ferson s Attorney-General, (in place of Levi Lincoln, who retired broken down by the arduous responsibilities of that difficult place,) and grandfather, I believe, of the gentleman of his name who at thirty-five years of age has just been elected Vice-President of the United States, John Breckin- ridge insisted that negotiations having been entered upon by the President, it was contrary to all international law, and the invariable practice of our government, to commit hostility till the negotiation failed. Under the uplifted olive branch it is proposed to send fifty thousand men to invade the territory claimed. As to the impatience imputed by Mr. Ross to the Western people, Mr. Breckinridge denied it. They would abide by the Union and law, had no thought of treason or insurrection, as had elsewhere been the result, (alluding to the Pennsylvania insurrection, which had broken out in a part of that State where Mr. Ross resided;) and what could force effect, when a single ship-of-war at the mouth of the Mississippi might effectually put a stop to all American trade on that river? Mr. Breckinridge therefore moved to substitute for Mr. Ross s resolutions, to authorize the President, when he should deem it expedient, to require of the Executives of the several States to take effectual measures to organize, arm, and equip, and hold in readiness eighty thousand militia, or accept volunteers in their stead, and to appropriate a sum sufficient to pay the expenses, and erect arsenals in the Western States. The next speaker was De Witt Clinton, large, handsome, and grave young man, then in the flower of his age and rising eminence, grown up in opposition inherited to Jay, Hamilton, and the whole Federal party of New York, and warmly sup porting the cheap policy of Jefferson s pacific and popular administration. Transition of parties from Federal to Repub lican operating with large acceptance, had divided and neu tralized the State of New York in Senate like Pennsylvania and Maryland ; represented by De Witt Clinton, ardent and VOL. i. 29 450 SENATE. extreme Republican, soon by resignation to leave the Senate, and Gouverneur Morris, high-toned Federalist, then, in the last stage of distinguished public life. Clinton, without that fluency of speech so common as to be almost an indigenous American facility, and probably for that reason instead of one of those unprepared and almost unpremeditated ejaculations often uttered by members of Congress without effort and with as little effect, methodically took his part in this debate by an elaborated oration, leaving, as he disdainfully premised, Mr. Ross and Mr. White in undisturbed possession of what he called their inflammatory appeals and declamatory effusions. Carefully dividing his discourse into three separate heads, he pronounced Ross s resolutions open war, which he showed, by the laws and history of nations, should always be preceded by demand for satisfaction. Citing authoritative publicists for the law, he recapitulated the usages of other nations, and the practice of the United States on all the similar difficulties with England, France, and Spain. War would cost the United States, he estimated, a hundred millions of dollars and to what end ? The cardinal virtues of this republic are forbearing, if not feeble executive, administering the affairs of a strong and controlling people as the best government, potent by State pillars of sovereignty, shunning armies, na vies, debts, and foreign entanglement, still more the spirit of conquest, supplanting that of commerce ; temporizing, expos tulating, deprecating aggression at all events before warring with it, careful above all not to become a nation of conquerors and robbers odious to all others. And if we take any part of Louisiana, said he prophetically, we must also take Florida and Cuba too. Foreshadowing what the acquisition of Louis iana unavoidably superinduced, an inclination, if not necessity for further territory, De Witt Clinton was, I believe, the first to announce that desire for Cuba, now so general and at least venial. His deprecation of an irregular spirit of conquest, and turbulent covetousness of territory was not therefore the less wise. Extension in peace and for it is the very reverse SENATE. 451 of that warring counterfeit by seditious rapacity of adventur ers, latterly alarming the world and dishonoring this country. The intimation of disunion Mr. Clinton rebuked ; as last year it came from the East if the Federal judiciary was reduced, this year imputed to the West, where such is the predominant love of union that all Western members of Congress latterly elected are avowed supporters of the present administration. And in Mr. Ross s State, following his total defeat, not a single member will there be in the next Congress of his party. With negotiation comes time for preparation ; if the former fails, the latter may be eifectual. Jonathan Dayton, a soldier of the Revolution, who had represented New Jersey for twelve years in both houses of Congress, part of the time as Speaker of the House of Repre sentatives, sharply resented De Witt Clinton s asperity, exhausting, as Dayton charged, the full cup of bitterness in disparaging his opponents when severely declaiming against their asserted declamation. Our resolutions are not imperative on the President, but optional with him. They cannot injure negotiation by showing the world that we rely less on the glittering metals of Mexico than on the harder material of our own mountains. To General Dayton William Cocke, of Tennessee, replied that the General s Federal relish was for war, havoc, and desolation, with the fat offices and contracts attached to them . In the West we do not fear the hero of Italy or any other hero. But what our militia may fear at New Orleans is the deadly fever of that region. Having felt the evils of the war of the Revolution, General Cocke had no wish to plunge headlong into another. Mr. Ross voted for the odious British treaty, and for tribute to Algiers. Why not deal reasonably with Spain ? Those Senators who reproach us with undue confidence in Executive mystery have but to go and ask the President what the secret is, and they will learn all about it. Speeches from Jonathan Mason, of Massachusetts, for Ross s resolutions, and James Jackson, of Georgia, taking 452 SENATE. middle ground between the two parties, followed up the rest of the third day s discussion. Next day, the 24th of February, 1803, after William Hill Wells, of Delaware, contended for seizure at all events because of the importance of the possession, even without regard to its mere right, Governor Wright, in a full and able view of the whole subject, insisted on forbearance as the true policy of the occasion. If, said Mr. Wells, the President had taken Mr. Morris s advice of last session, and stationed a thousand troops at Natchez, what has happened would never have taken place. British interference is not to be expected. England is stag gering under the weight of her own burdens, and will not venture to check the career of Gallic aggrandizement. Gov ernor Wright aimed his blows chiefly at Mr. Ross and his positions, from which he vindicated the Executive. He did not desire to cross the Atlantic for authority from princes and nobles, but preferred our own precedents, which were abund ant, as he recited them, for soliciting peace before going to war. Mr. Ross again addressed the Senate, with additional power of argument, grave and earnest intervention making his re appearance in debate; no rhetorician or orator, mere eloquent endowments, but earnest and impressive in well conceived and digested replies on a subject he had at heart. Though I re member only his personal appearance, yet not altogether un acquainted with his contemporaneous character, the public annals of that period attest, together with the best tradition, his solid and masculine deserts. President Jefferson s excel lent Minister in France, Robert R. Livingston, with much greater opportunities than the President of the most reliable information, by his official dispatches strongly recommended the forcible territorial occupation which Ross s resolutions proposed. Ross s reply, therefore, opened with convincing truth when he said that his resolutions had at least the good eifect of rousing the Executive from perilous torpor, and by SENATE. 453 producing Breckinridge s amendment-, rendering the whole controversy a mere question of time, the American right and European tendency, both conceded, sounding alarm and pre paring force to follow failure of negotiation. Following Ross s pertinacious logic in the evening of that day, when dimness emboldens fervid oratory, Gouverneur Morris delivered the valedictory of his high-wrought and much extolled senatorial philippics against Jefferson s pacific extrav agance, which he insisted led to war, and democratic experi ments as the way by anarchy to despotism. Large in person, with prominent features, commanding aspect, and graceful action, vain of the wooden leg, which was said to be the not unwelcome fruit of an act of gallantry, by exposing his own to save a lady s life, wearing his hair so artificially dressed with powder that he seldom disturbed it by putting on his hat, eloquent, arrogant, elegant, and entertaining, with all the bold independence of American assurance blended with social French freedom, Mr. Morris confronted with peremptory but polished confidence, the polite dogmatism of French, and less communicative disdain of English society. A gentleman of fortune and a bachelor, at Morrisania, his residence near the City of New York, his Sunday receptions at dinner, and constant hospitality, were continued after his political life ended, distinguished as it was by eminence in many stations. Always remarkable for the freedom of his manners and con versation, William Short, who was American Chargd d Affaires between Jefferson s time and Morris s in Paris, used to say that Jefferson blushed to the temples at some of Morris s im modest expressions. His attachment to the Bourbon royalty and prediction of the Bonaparte despotism gave to his appa rent knowledge of France weight, which modern French his tory seems to be continually undermining. For already during the lifetime of many, horror struck by the guillotine, the vir tues ascribed to the martyr king, and wickedness of his regi cides, are undergoing many historical modifications, In what he premised would be, he believed, the last scene 454 SENATE. of his public life, Mr. Morris declared peace his object, peace and honor, for there is no national interest so dear as honor. More than any other Senator, if not the only one taking European views of Louisiana, and dilating on its commercial eventualities as a French possession, France, said he, in the hands of monsters, had been broken on the wheel by heaven before the world, to warn mankind of her folly and madness. The Gallic Ctesar, the greatest man of his age, was on the throne of that gallant nation, with Avhom, like others, we must contend or submit. Mr. Morris then considered at large the present state of things, the consequences to the United States of the possession of Louisiana by France, and the consequences to France herself. He denied the right of Spain to impose dangerous French neighbors on the United States by a secret transfer without notice to our government. It is the pivot of the lever by which the French ruler means to overturn Ameri can institutions, as he does all others. American commerce, revenue, union, independence, would all fall under his blows. Louisiana his colony, would supply all the West India islands to the exclusion of the United States. France has long coveted Louisiana. The French Minister had obtained a reso lution from Congress that at the peace of independence in 1T83, our Minister in Paris should arrange the Western boun dary under French dictation. With Louisiana French, a standing army becomes indispensable to the United States. Nor will it cost half so much to resist as to subdue it. But we are to treat with Bonaparte ! Without army, navy, or revenue, will he regard us? Power with him, as with all Europe, is in battalions. Let us first seize and then nego tiate. Having seized, let us assure France and Spain that it is not for war but peace, and if they persist in hostile measures, let us threaten them to unite with England and strip them both of every American possession they have. With twenty ships-of-the-line, which we ought to have, we might be re spected. But as we are, who can suppose that Bonaparte will yield anything to us ? Infant America, when only threatened SENATE. 455 by England, spurned the insult, threw our oaths of allegiance in our sovereign s face, and committed our future to the God of battles. Joseph Anderson, of Tennessee, stoutly defended the Western people from the imputation of rash disloyalty, which he said was unjustly cast upon them, and ridiculed what he called bepowdered views of the European balance of power, with which we have nothing to do, alluding to Mr. Morris s arguments. Stephen Thompson Mason, of Virginia, and Wil liam Cocke, of Tennessee, the latter with sharp replies to some of the arguments for seizure, and Wilson Carey Nicholas, of Virginia, contended for confidence in the President s peace able proceedings. James Jackson, of Georgia, on his middle ground, as well as Clinton, Ross, and Dayton, spoke again. Finally, Mr. Breckinridge s amendments to Mr. Ross s reso lutions were carried by fifteen votes to eleven, the South and West, with some from the centre and East, voting for negotia tion, the East and North for seizure. Mr. Ross s resolutions being overruled, the unanimous votes of the twenty-five Sena tors present were given for Mr. Breckinridge s substitutes. Everything said and the little done on this subject in Con gress and by the Executive is now less memorable for any thing else than what at the time appears to be the extreme ignorance of all branches of the American government of the value of Louisiana, the possibility and necessity of its acquisi tion ; in short, of the whole future as soon to begin and to continue ever since in wonderful development. Therefore Americans in Louisiana, among whom was prominent Daniel Clarke, then resident at Natchez, were extremely averse to the transfer of the country by Spain to France, and as anxious for its forcible seizure rather than submit to that change. The American Minister in France was as resolved in opinion and assertion that the forcible seizure was indispensable to acquisi tion of that part of the whole region then contemplated; much more by Livingston than Jefferson, but much less than Bonaparte disposed of. The territorial legislature of Missis- 456 SENATE. sippi, by an address to Congress, strongly urged action; and such was the view mostly taken of the crisis by the public journals. But the President resisted force and relied on remonstrance, explanation, or purchase. His influence was irresistible in Congress and on public sentiment. Keen as the Western desire was for the navigation and deposit, uncom monly united as the whole country was for maintaining a right of way and benefit of commerce, much more local than general in their advantages, and capable as the Western people were and felt themselves of taking forcible possession without danger of defeat, probably without bloodshed, yet the Presi dent s inflexible love of peace and aversion to measures which endangered and might have destroyed all the peaceable foun dations he had successfully laid of free, cheap, and self-gov ernment, prevailed. The Western people, the Americans in Louisiana, the American Minister in France, the Federal party, Congress, and all opposition whatever were overcome by the popularity of one superior man, endowed with official authority, and favored by those fortunate contingencies so operative in all affairs. The chapter of accidents was with Jefferson. Rejecting the advice of his Minister in France, resisting the effort of his opponents in Congress, disregarding public sentiment as uttered by most of the people, and probably the warlike self-sufficiency of his own Western adherents, merged in personal attachment to him, Jefferson overruled all sugges tions and personal experience, that negotiation for peace should be accompanied and fortified by preparation for war. Without either soldier or tax levied, on the contrary crowning the first lustrum of his disarming and untaxing era by the triumphant acquisition of Louisiana, the glorious and inestim able benefits of its merely fortuitous purchase, overshadowing causes and realities, were and yet are attributed not as due to the warrior vendor, but to the pacific purchasers. While the French government archives were full of docu mentary evidence of the immense value of Louisiana, informed SENATE. 457 by which, and urged by immediate memorialists, Bonaparte s incessant researches, sharpened by desire to colonize as the only effectual counteraction of British commercial and mari time preponderance, induced his investigation and mastery of the subject, neither Jefferson, Madison, or Gallatin, with all their superior knowledge, appear to have been aware of the resources, or the particulars in any respect of the region so soon to be developed through their administration upon the United States. When party detraction after the purchase denied its advantages and Jefferson s merit in the transaction, he faintly if even fairly asserted them by letter to General Gates, since published, that he had foreseen the renewal of hostilities between England and France, by which the purchase was precipitated. But as all human foresight is only conject ural and rarely as wise as often claimed to be, so there was not the slightest reason for it on that occasion, as shall be shown. Jefferson s subsequent praiseworthy exploration of Louisiana by his Secretary, Meriwether Lewis, and another military officer, Captain William Clarke, was not undertaken or thought of till some months after the purchase. Jefferson s presidency closed by his retirement without his ever contem plating Louisiana for any better purpose than as a wide, vacant, uninhabited boundary, to keep peace, always his dar ling object, between the Southern possessions of the United States and the Northern Spanish American provinces. In the beautiful address written by Wirt for the Virginia Legislature, welcoming President Jefferson s return home on his final retirement from public service, cordial ascription of Louisiana, ignorantly as usual to his administration, was not noticed in his answer, otherwise a full acknowledgment ; for he was too just to take what was not his right, and too learned not to know that in the estimate of the wisest ancients Fortunatus or Felix is title as historical as victor or conquisitor. He sent his friend Monroe special Envoy to France, not to propitiate Bonaparte, for which purpose he knew, as Monroe himself confessed, his former intercourse with the Directory rendered VOL. i. 30 458 SENATE. him the most unfit Minister that could be sent to the consular government. Monroe s mission was to tranquillize the West, as Jefferson wrote to him at the time. Nor had he any instructions but those written by Jefferson as President Washington s Secretary, to endeavor to procure a small sandy strip of ground on the east of the Mississippi, with the only sea-port there, New Orleans, an inconsiderable town of wooden tenements, without the slightest notion of Jefferson, either as Secretary or President, of the vast wilderness on the west side of that river and town. Nor was Secretary Madison s reply to Mr. Livingston s call for armed alliances quite accu rate when pleading the Washington precedent of Jay s special mission to England under what he called analogous circum stances ; for whereas President Jefferson persisted in refusing all military preparation, it was the burden of President Wash ington s uniform policy to prepare in peace for inevitable war. END OF VOLUME FIRST. U.C. BERKELEY LIBRARIES CD3SbD7133 LIBRARY USE RETURN TO DESK FROM WHICH BORROWED LOAN DEPT. THIS BOOK IS DUE BEFORE CLOSING TIME ON LAST DATE STAMPED BELOW NOV2Q 64. NOV2 64- 7 PM JAN? 65 . JAN 9 65-5 OCT04 AUTO DISC LD 62A-50m-2, 64 (E3494slO)9412A ^ 5 General Library University of California Berkeley