The first New York City Directory appeared in 1786. It had eight hundred
and forty-six names, not going above Roosevelt and Cherry Streets on
the East side, or Dey Street on the West. There were then in the city
three Dutch Reformed churches, four Presbyterian, three Episcopal, two
German Lutheran, and one congregation each belonging to the Catholics,
Friends, Baptists, Moravians, and Jews. In 1789 the Methodists had two
churches, and the Friends two new Meetings. The houses in the city were
generally of brick, with tile roofs, mostly English in style, but a few
Dutch. The old Fort, where the provincial governors had resided, still
stood in the Battery. The City Hall was a brick structure, three stories
high, with wings, fronting on Broad Street. Want of good water greatly
inconvenienced the citizens, as there was no aqueduct yet, and wells
were few. Most houses supplied themselves by casks from a pump on what
is now Pearl Street, this being replenished from a pond a mile north of
the then city limits. New York commanded the trade of nearly all
Connecticut, half New Jersey, and all Western Massachusetts, besides
that of New York State itself. In short it did the importing for
one-sixth of the population of the Union. Pennsylvania and Maryland made
the best flour. In the manufacture of iron, paper, and cabinet ware,
Pennsylvania led all the States.

Over this rapidly growing portion of the human race in its widely
separated homes there was at last a central government worthy the name.
The old Articles of Confederation had been no fundamental law, not a
foundation but a homely botch-work of superstructure, resembling more a
treaty between several States than a ground-law for one. In the new
Constitution a genuine foundation was laid, the Government now holding
direct and immediate relations with each subject of every State, and
citizens of States being at the same time citizens of the United States.
Hitherto the central power could act on individuals only through States.
Now, by its own marshals, aided if need were by its army, it could
itself arrest and by its own  courts try and condemn any transgressor of
its laws.

But if the State relinquished the technical sovereignty which it had
before, it did not sink to the level of an administrative division, but
increased rather in all the elements of real dignity and stability. Over
certain subjects the new constitution gave the States supreme, absolute,
and uncontrollable power. The range of this supreme state prerogative
is, in fact, wider on the whole than that of national. For national
action there must be demonstrable constitutional warrant, for that of
States this is not necessary. In more technical phrase: to the United
States what is not granted is denied, to the State what is not denied is
granted. It is a perpetual reminder of original state sovereignty, that
no State can without its consent be deprived of its equal suffrage in
the Senate. Each State also must have at least one representative.
States cannot be sued by private persons or corporations. Even upon
subjects constitutionally reserved for national law, if Congress has not
legislated state statute is valid.

Precisely as its advocates had prophesied, this revised order worked
well, bringing a blessed new feeling of security. On commerce and
business it conferred immense benefits, which rapidly became
disseminated through all classes of the population. The sense and
appearance of unity and consequent strength which the land had enjoyed
in the early days of the Revolution came back in greater completeness,
and was most gratifying to all. There was still a rankling hatred toward
England, and men hostile to central government on other grounds were
reconciled to it as the sole condition of successful commercial or naval
competition with that country.

The consequence was a wide-spread change of public feeling in reference
to the Constitution very soon after its adoption. Bitterest hostility
turned to praise that was often fulsome, reducing to insignificance an
opposition that had probably comprised a popular majority during the
very months of ratification. Many shifted their ground merely to be on
the popular side. With multitudes Washington's influence had more weight
than any argument.

The Constitution's unfortunate elasticity of interpretation also for the
time worked well. People who had fought it saw how their cherished views
could after all be based upon it. All parties soon began, therefore, to
swear by the Constitution as their political Bible. The fathers of the
immortal paper were exalted into demigods. Fidelity to the Constitution
came to be pre-eminently the watchword of those till now against its
adoption. They in fact shouted this cry louder than the Federalists, who
had never regarded it a perfect instrument of government. It came to
pass ere long that nothing would blast a public measure so instantly or
so completely as the cry of its unconstitutionality.


[Click on map for larger image.]
Map Showing the Progressive Acquisitions of Territory by the United States


Few can form any idea of the herculean work performed by the First
Congress in setting up and starting our present governmental machinery.
The debt which we owe the public men of that time is measureless. With
such care and wisdom did they proceed, that little done by them has
required alteration, the departments having run on decade after decade
till now essentially in their original grooves. The Senate formed itself
into its three classes, so that one-third of its members, and never more
than this, should retire at a time. Four executive departments were
created, those of State, the Treasury, War, and the
Attorney-Generalship. The first occupants were, respectively, Jefferson,
Hamilton, Knox, and Randolph.

Of the present departments of government the post-office alone has come
down from colonial times, Benjamin Franklin having been general
superintendent thereof under the British Government. He was re-appointed
by the second Continental Congress, in July, 1775. The First Congress
under the Constitution erected a general post-office, but its head
attained the dignity of a regular cabinet officer not till about 1830,
and then only by custom. To begin with, in fact, there was strictly no
cabinet in the modern sense. Washington's habit was to consult his
ministers separately.

Under the Articles of Confederation there had been a treasury board of
several commissioners, and a superintendent of finance. The new
arrangement, making one man responsible, was a great improvement. A law
was passed forbidding the Secretary of the Treasury to be concerned in
trade or commerce, that is, to be a merchant. The late A. T. Stewart,
appointed by President Grant to the office, was rejected as ineligible
under this law. Yet no department of our Government has had a finer
record than the Treasury.

Not only had the First Congress to vote revenue, but to make provision
for the collection of this. Revenue districts had to be mapped out, the
proper officers appointed, and light-houses, buoys, and public piers
arranged for along the whole coast.  Salaries were to be fixed, and a
multitude of questions relating to the interpretation and application of
the Constitution to be solved by patient deliberation. The United States
Mint was erected, and our so felicitous monetary system, based upon the
decimal principle along with the binary, established in place of the
desperate monetary chaos prevailing before. Hitherto there were four
sorts of colonial money of account all differing from sterling, while
Mexican dollars and numberless other forms of foreign money were in
actual circulation.

The noblest part of all this work was the organization of the federal
judiciary, through an act drawn up with extraordinary ability by Oliver
Ellsworth of Connecticut. A Chief Justice--the first one was John
Jay--and five associates were to constitute the Supreme Court. District
courts were ordained, one per State and one each for Kentucky and Maine,
not yet States; also three circuit courts, the eastern, the middle, and
the southern; and the jurisdiction of each grade was accurately fixed.
As yet there were no special circuit judges, nor, excepting the
temporary ones of 1801, were there till some eighty years later. Clerks,
marshals, and district-attorneys were part of this first arrangement.
Originally the Attorney-General was little but an honorary officer. He
kept his practice, had no public income but his fees, and resided where
he pleased.

As his title implies, the Secretary of War was to have charge of all the
nation's means of offence and defence, there being until April 30, 1796,
no separate secretary for the navy. We had indeed in 1789 little use for
such a functionary, not a war-vessel then remaining in Government's
possession. In 1784 our formidable navy consisted of a single ship, the
Alliance, but the following year Congress ordered her sold.

The senators most active in the creations just reviewed were Langdon,
King, and Robert Morris, besides Ellsworth. In the House, Madison outdid
all others in toil as in ability, though worthily seconded by
distinguished men like Fisher Ames, Gerry, Clymer, Fitzsimmons,
Boudinot, and Smith. The three Connecticut representatives, Sherman,
Trumbull, and Wadsworth, made up perhaps the ablest state delegation in
the body.



CHAPTER II.

FEDERALISM AND ANTI-FEDERALISM

[1790]

Early in the life of our Constitution two parties rose, which, under
various names, have continued ever since. During the strife for and
against adoption, those favoring this had been styled Federalists, and
their opponents, Anti-Federalists. After adoption--no one any longer
really antagonizing the Constitution--the two words little by little
shifted their meaning, a man being dubbed Federalist or Anti-Federalist
according to his preference for strong national government or for strong
state governments. The Federalist Party gave birth to the Whig Party,
and this to the modern Republican Party. The Anti-Federalists came to be
called "Republicans," then "Democratic-Republicans," then simply
"Democrats."

The central plank of the federalist platform was vigorous single
nationality. In aid of this the Federalists wished a considerable army
and navy, so that the United States might be capable of ample
self-defence against all foes abroad or at home. Partly as a means to
this, partly to build up national feeling, unity, self-respect, and due
respect for the nation abroad, they sought to erect our national credit,
which had fallen so low, and to plant it on a solid and permanent basis.
As still further advancing these ends they proposed so to enforce regard
for the national authority and laws and obedience to them, that within
its sphere the nation should be absolutely and beyond question paramount
to the State.

In many who cherished them these noble purposes were accompanied by a
certain aristocratic feeling and manner, a carelessness of popular
opinion, an inclination to model governmental polity and administration
after the English, and an impatience with what was good in our native
American ideas and ways, which, however natural, were unfortunate and
unreasonable. Puffed up with pride at its victory in carrying the
Constitution against the opposition of the ignorant masses, this party
developed a haughtiness and a lack of republican spirit amounting in
some cases to deficient patriotism.

The early Federalists were of two widely different stripes. There were
among them Washington, Adams, Hamilton, and Jay; and there were the
interested and practical advocates of the same, made up of business men
and the wealthy and leisurely classes, who, without intending to be
selfish, were governed in political sympathy and action mainly by their
own interests.

The greatest early Anti-Federalists were Jefferson, Madison, and
Randolph, all of whom had been ardent for the Constitution. The party as
a whole, indeed, not only acquiesced in the re-creation of the general
Government, but was devotedly friendly to the new order. But while
Republicans admitted that a measure of governmental centralization was
indispensable, they prized the individual State as still the main pillar
of our political fabric, and were hence jealous of all increased
function at the centre. It became more and more their theory that the
States, rather than the individuals of the national body politic, had
been the parties to the Constitution, so making this to be a compact
like the old Articles, and the government under it a confederacy as
before 1789.

Another issue divided the parties, that between the strict and the more
free interpretation of the Constitution--between the close
constructionists and the liberal constructionists. The question dividing
them was this: In matters relating to the powers of the general
Government, ought any unclear utterance of the Constitution to be so
explained as to enlarge those powers, or so as to confine them to the
narrowest possible sphere? Each of the two tendencies in construction
has in turn brought violence to our fundamental law, but the sentiment
of nationality and the logic of events have favored liberality rather
than narrowness in interpreting the parchment. When in charge of the
government, even strict constructionists have not been able to carry out
their theory. Thus Jefferson, to purchase Louisiana, was obliged, from
his point of view, to transcend constitutional warrant; and Madison, who
at first opposed such an institution as unconstitutional, ended by
approving the law which chartered the Second United States Bank.

The Federalists used to argue that Article I, Section VIII., the part of
the Constitution upon which debate chiefly raged, could not have been
intended as an exhaustive statement of congressional powers. The
Government would be unable to exist, they urged, to say nothing of
defending itself and accomplishing its work, unless permitted to do more
than the eighteen things there enumerated. They further insisted that
plain utterances of the Constitution presuppose the exercise by Congress
of powers not specifically enumerated, explicitly authorizing that body
to make all laws necessary for executing the enumerated powers "and all
other powers vested in the Government of the United States or in any
department or officer thereof."

In reply the Anti-Federalists made much of the titles "United States,"
"Federal," and the like, in universal use. They appealed to concessions
as to the nature of our system made by statesmen of known national
sympathies. Such concessions were plentiful then and much later. Even
Webster in his immortal reply to Hayne calls ours a government of
"strictly limited," even of "enumerated, specified, and particularized"
powers. Two historical facts told powerfully for the anti-federalist
theory. One was that the government previous to 1789 was unquestionably
a league of States; the other was that many voted for the present
Constitution supposing it to be a mere revision of the old. Had the
reverse been commonly believed, adoption would have been more than
doubtful.



CHAPTER III.

DOMESTIC QUESTIONS OF WASHINGTON'S ADMINISTRATIONS

[1790-1791]

I. Tariff.--Upon declaring their independence the United States threw
open their ports, inviting trade from all nations. During the Revolution
foreign commerce had become an important interest, and at its close the
inclination of all, the more so from memory of England's accursed
navigation acts, would have been to leave it untrammelled. Several
motives, however, induced resort to a restrictive policy which,
beginning with 1789, and for years expected to be temporary, has been
pursued with little deviation ever since. Of course the Government
needed revenue, and the readiest means of securing this was a tax on
imports. Rates were made low, averaging until 1808 only 11-1/4 per cent.
As a consequence the revenues were large.

The movers of this first tariff, especially Hamilton, also wished by
means of it to make the central Government felt as a positive power
throughout the land. It had this effect. All custom-houses passed to the
United States, and United States officers appeared at every port, having
an authority, in its kind, paramount to that of state functionaries.

A stronger consideration still was to retaliate against England. In
spite of America's political independence the old country was determined
to retain for her merchant marine its former monopoly here. Orders in
council practically limited all the commerce of England and her
remaining colonies with this country to English ships, although, from
the relations of the two lands and the nature of their productions, our
chief foreign trade must still be with England. There was no way to meet
this selfish policy but to show that it was a game which we too could
play.

Besides, however we behaved toward the mother-land, we needed to be
prepared for war, because it was evident that George III. and his
ministers had only too good a will to reduce us again to subjection if
opportunity offered. Should we, by taxing imports, become independent in
the production of war material, a fresh struggle for life would be much
more hopeful than if we continued dependent upon foreign lands for
military supplies.

II. Funding the Debt.--In the first years after they had set up their
new constitution the people of this country staggered under a terrible
financial load. Besides the current expenses of Government, there were:
1, the federal debt due abroad, over thirteen million dollars, including
arrears; 2, the federal debt held at home, about forty-two and one-half
million; 3, the state revolutionary debts, aggregating nearly
twenty-five million. Each of these sums was largely made up of unpaid
interest.

The foreign debt Congress unanimously determined to pay in full. In
respect to the domestic federal debt two opinions prevailed. Hamilton
was for liquidating this also to the last copper. But these securities
had mostly changed hands since issue, so that dollar for dollar payment
would not advantage original holders but only speculators. As soon as
Hamilton's recommendation became public this class of paper rose from
about fifteen cents per dollar to fifty cents, and enterprising New York
firms hurried their couriers, relay horses, and swift packets to remote
parts of the Union to buy it up. Madison, supported by a strong party,
proposed, therefore, to pay only original debtors at par, allowing
secondary holders barely the highest market value previous to the
opening of the question in Congress. He was overruled, however, and this
part of the debt, too, was ordered paid according to its literal terms.

Even the motion that the United States should assume and discharge the
state debts finally prevailed, though against most violent and resolute
opposition. This came especially from Virginia, who had gone far in the
payment of her own war debt, and thought it unjust to have to help the
delinquent States. Her objection was strengthened by the fact that most
of the debt was owned in the North. The victory was secured by what is
now termed a "deal," northern votes being promised in favor of a
southern location for the national capital, in return for enough
southern votes to pass the bill assuming state debts.

These gigantic measures had origin in the mind of Hamilton. To many they
appeared and appear today like a grand government job. But they worked
well, laying the foundation of our national credit. Interest arrears and
back installments of the foreign debt were to be paid at once with the
proceeds of a fresh loan, supplemented by income from customs and
tonnage. The remaining debt was to be refunded. Federal stocks shot up
in value, moneyed interests became attached to the Government, and the
nation began to be looked to as a more reliable bulwark of sound finance
than any of the States.



Alexander Hamilton.
From a painting by John Trumbull in the Trumbull Gallery at Yale College.


III. The Excise.--Unexpectedly productive as the tariff had proved,
public income still fell short of what these vast operations required.
Direct taxation or a higher tariff being out of the question, Hamilton
proposed, and Congress voted, an excise on spirits, from nine to
twenty-five cents a gallon if from grain, from eleven to thirty if from
imported material, as molasses. Excise was a hated form of tax, and this
measure awakened great opposition in Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina,
and New England, and most of all in Pennsylvania, in whose western
counties distilling was the staple industry.

Here, far from the seats of power, even the state government had
asserted itself little. The general Government was defied. A meeting in
Washington County voted to regard as an enemy any person taking office
under the excise law. September 6, 1791, a revenue officer was tarred
and feathered. Other such cases followed. Secret societies were formed
to oppose the law. Whippings and even murders resulted. At last there
was a veritable reign of terror. The President proceeded slowly but with
firmness, accounting this a good opportunity vividly to reveal to the
people the might of the new Government. Militia and volunteers were
called out, who arrived in the rebellious districts in November, 1794.
Happily, their presence sufficed. The opposition faded away before them,
not a shot being fired on either side.


Illicit Distillers warned of the Approach of Revenue Officers.


IV. The Bank.--The Secretary of the Treasury pleaded for a United States
Bank as not only profitable to Government but indispensable to the
proper administration of the national finances. Congress acquiesced, yet
with so violent hostility on the part of many that before approving the
Charter Act Washington required the written opinions of his official
advisers. Jefferson powerfully opposed such an institution as
unconstitutional, his acute argument being the arsenal whence close
constructionists have gotten their weapons ever since. Randolph sided
with Jefferson, Knox with Hamilton. The President at last signed,
agreeing with Hamilton in the view that Congress, being the agent of a
sovereignty, is not, within any sphere of action constitutionally open
to it, shut up to specific or enumerated modes of attaining its ends,
but has choice among all those that nations customarily use. The Supreme
Court has proceeded on this doctrine ever since. The bank proved vastly
advantageous. Three-fourths of every private subscription to its stock
had to be in government paper, which raised this to par, while it
naturally became the interest of all stockholders to maintain and
increase the stability and credit of the Government.



CHAPTER IV.

RELATIONS WITH ENGLAND

[1793]

In 1789 France adopted a constitution. Provoked at this, the friends of
absolute monarchy withdrew from France, and incited the other powers of
Europe to interpose in effort to restore to Louis XVI. his lost power.
The result was that Louis lost his head as well as his power, and that
France became a republic. War with all Europe followed, which elevated
that matchless military genius, Napoleon Bonaparte, first to the head of
France's armies, then to her throne, to be toppled thence in 1814,
partly by his own indiscretions, partly by the forces combined against
him.

From the beginning to the end of this revolutionary period abroad,
European politics determined American politics, home as well as foreign,
causing dangerous embarrassment and complications. War having in
February, 1793, been declared by England and France against each other,
what attitude the United States should assume toward each became a
pressing question. Washington's proclamation of neutrality, April 22,
1793, in effect, though not so meant, annulled our treaty of 1778 with
France, which bound us to certain armed services to that monarchy in
case of a rupture between her and England. Washington's paper alleged
that "the duty and interests of the United States" required
impartiality, and assumed "to declare the disposition of the United
States to observe" this.

"The proclamation," wrote Jefferson, "was in truth a most unfortunate
error. It wounds the popular feelings by a seeming indifference to the
cause of liberty. And it seems to violate the form and spirit of the
Constitution by making the executive magistrate the organ of the
'disposition' 'the duty' and 'the interest' of the nation in relation to
war and peace--subjects appropriated to other departments of  the
Government."

"On one side," says Mr. Rives, in his "Life of Madison," "the people saw
a power which had but lately carried war and desolation, fire and sword,
through their own country, and, since the peace, had not ceased to act
toward them in the old spirit of unkindness, jealousy, arrogance, and
injustice; on the other an ally who had rendered them the most generous
assistance in war, had evinced the most cordial dispositions for a
liberal and mutually beneficial intercourse in peace, and was now set
upon by an unholy league of the monarchical powers of Europe, to
overwhelm and destroy her, for her desire to establish institutions
congenial to those of America."

The more sagacious opponents of the administration believed true policy
as well as true honesty to demand rigid and pronounced adherence to the
letter of the French treaty. They were convinced from the outset that
France would vanquish her enemies, and that close alliance with her was
the sure and the only sure way to coerce either Great Britain to justice
or Spain to a reasonable attitude touching the navigation of the
Mississippi; while by offending France, they argued, we should be forced
to wrestle single-handed with England first, then with victorious
France, meantime securing no concession whatever from Spain.

This was a shrewd forecast of the actual event. The Federalists,
destitute of idealism, proved to have been overawed by the prestige of
England and to have underestimated the might which freedom would impart
to the French people. After Napoleon's great campaign of 1796-97, Pitt
seeks peace, which the French Directory feels able to decline. In 1802
the Peace of Amiens is actually concluded, upon terms dictated by
France. Had we been still in France's friendship, the two republics
might have compelled England's abandonment of that course which evoked
the war of 1812. As it was, ignored by England, to whom, as detailed
below, we cringed in consenting to Jay's treaty, we were left to
encounter the French navy alone, escaping open and serious war with
France only by a readiness to negotiate which all but compromised our
dignity. The Mississippi we had at last to open with money.

The federalist leaning toward Great Britain probably did not, to so
great an extent as was then alleged and widely believed, spring from
monarchical feeling. It was due rather to old memories, as pleasant as
they were tenacious, that would not be dissociated from England; to the
individualistic tendencies of republicanism, alarming to many; and to
conservative habits of political thinking, the dread of innovation and
of theory. The returned Tories had indeed all become Federalists, which
fact, with many others, lent to this attitude the appearance of
deficient patriotism, of sycophancy toward our old foe and persecutor.

Great Britain had refused to surrender the western posts according to
the peace treaty of 1783, unjustly pleading in excuse the treatment of
loyalists by our States. Not only the presence but the active influence
of the garrisons at these posts encouraged Indian hostilities. England
had also seized French goods in American (neutral) vessels, though in
passage to the United States, and treated as belligerent all American
ships plying between France and her West Indian colonies, on the ground
that this commerce had been opened to them only by the pressure of war.
The English naval officers were instructed to regard bread-stuffs as
contraband if bound for France, even though owned by neutrals and in
neutral ships; such cargoes, however, to be paid for by England, or
released on bonds being given to land them elsewhere than in France. In
this practice England followed France's example, except that she
actually paid for the cargoes, while France only promised.



John Jay.
From a painting by S. F. B. Morse in the Yale College Collection.


[1795]

Worst of all, Britain claimed and acted upon the right to press into her
naval service British-born seamen found anywhere outside the territory
of a foreign State, halting our ships on the high seas for this purpose,
often leaving them half-manned, and sometimes recklessly and cruelly
impressing native-born Americans--an outrageous policy which ended in
the war of 1812. The ignorance and injustice of the English admiralty
courts aggravated most of these abuses.

Genet's proceedings, spoken of in the next chapter, which partly public
sentiment, partly lack of army and navy, made it impossible for our
Government to prevent, enraged Great Britain to the verge of war. After
the British orders in council of November 6, 1793, intended to destroy
all neutral commerce with the French colonies, and Congress's
counter-stroke of an embargo the following March, war was positively
imminent. The President resolved to send Jay to England as envoy
extraordinary, to make one more effort for an understanding.

The treaty negotiated by this gentleman, and ratified June 24,  1795
(excepting Article XII., on the French West India trade), was doubtless
the most favorable that could have been secured under the circumstances;
yet it satisfied no one and was humiliating in the extreme. The western
posts were indeed to be vacated by June 1, 1796, though without
indemnity for the past, but a British right of search and impressment
was implicitly recognized, the French West Indian trade not rendered
secure, and arbitrary liberty accorded to Great Britain in defining
contraband. Opposition to ratification was bitter and nearly universal.
The friends of France were jubilant. Jay was burned in effigy,
Washington himself attacked. The utmost that Hamilton in his powerful
"Letters of Camillus" could show was that the treaty seemed preferable
to war. Plainly we had then little to hope and much to fear from war
with Great Britain, yet even vast numbers of Federalists denounced the
pact as a base surrender to the nation's ancient tyrant, and wished an
appeal to arms.

Fisher Ames's eloquence decided the House for the treaty. An invalid,
with but a span of life before him, he spoke as from the tomb. "There
is, I believe," so ran his peroration, "no member who will not think his
chance to be a witness of the consequences (should the treaty fail of
ratification) greater than mine. If, however, the vote should pass to
reject, and a spirit should rise, as it will, with the public disorders,
to make confusion worse confounded, even I, slender and almost broken as
my hold on life is, may outlive the Government and Constitution of my
country!"

It was the most delicate crisis of  Washington's presidency, and no
other American then alive, being in his place, could have passed through
it successfully. After the fury gradually subsided, men for a long time
acquiesced rather than believed in the step which had been taken. In the
end the treaty proved solidly advantageous, rather through
circumstances, however, than by its intrinsic excellence.



CHAPTER V.

RELATIONS WITH THE FRENCH REPUBLIC

[1793]

 At its beginning all Americans hailed the Revolution in France with
 joy, but its terrible excesses, when they appeared, produced here the
 same effect as in England, of alienating everyone conservatively
 inclined. This included the mass of the Federalist party. On the
 contrary, most of the Republicans, now more numerous, now less,
 actuated partly by true insight into the struggle, and partly by the
 magic of the words "revolution" and "republic," favored the
 revolutionists with a devotion which even the Reign of Terror in France
 scarcely shook. It was in consequence of this attitude on its part that
 the party came to be dubbed "democratic-republican" instead of
 "republican," the compound title itself giving way after about 1810 to
 simple "democratic."



John Adams
From a copy by Jane Stuart, about 1874, of a painting by her father,
Gilbert Stuart, about 1800--in possession of Henry Adams.


Hostility to England, the memory of France's aid to us in our hour of
need, the doctrine of "the rights of man," then so much in vogue, the
known sympathies of Jefferson and Madison, who were already popular,
and, alas, a mean wish to hamper the administration, all helped to swell
the ranks of those who swung their hats for France. A far deeper motive
with the more thoughtful was the belief that neutrality violated our
treaty of 1778 with France, a conclusion at present beyond question.
Politically our policy may have been wise, morally it was wrong.

The administration, at least its honored head, was doubtless innocent of
any intentional injustice; and it could certainly urge a great deal in
justification of its course. The form and the aims of the French
Government had changed since the treaty originated, involving a state of
things which that instrument had not contemplated.  France herself
defied international law and compact, revolutionizing and incorporating
Holland and Geneva, and assaulting our commerce. And war with England
then threatened our ruin. Yet the pleading of these considerations in
that so trying hour, even had they been wholly pertinent, could not but
seem to Frenchmen treason to the cause of liberty. As to many
Federalists, trucklers to England, such a charge would have been true.

France was not slow to reciprocate in the matter of grievances. In fact,
so early as May, 1793, before the proclamation of neutrality could have
been heard of in that country, orders had been issued there, wholly
repugnant to the treaty (which had ordained that neutral ships could
carry what goods they pleased--free ships, free goods), to capture and
condemn English merchandise on American vessels. Provisions owned by
Americans and en route to England were also to be forfeited as
contraband. Even the most reasonable French officials seemed bent on
treating our country as a dependency of France.

We see this in the actions of Genet, the first envoy to America from the
French constitutional monarchy, accredited hither by a ministry of
high-minded Republicans while Louis XVI. still sat upon his throne.
Genet arrived in Charleston in 1793, before our neutrality had been
proclaimed. Immediately, before presenting his credentials to our
Government, he set about fitting out privateers, manning them with
Americans, and sending them to prey upon British ships, some of which
they captured in American waters. All this was in utter derogation of
the treaty, which only guaranteed shelter to bona fide French vessels.
Under a law of the French National Convention, Genet assumed to erect
the French consulates in this country into so many admiralty courts for
the trial of British prizes. We could not have allowed this without
decidedly violating international law at least in spirit. He also
devised and partly arranged expeditions of Americans, to start, one from
Georgia to invade Florida, another from Kentucky to capture New Orleans,
both as means of weakening Spain, which up to this time and for several
years later was France's foe.

[1795]

But Genet's worst gall came out in his conduct toward Washington. Him he
insulted, challenging his motives and his authority for his acts and
threatening to appeal from him to the people. He tried to bully and
browbeat the whole cabinet as if they had been so many boys. So
ludicrous did he make himself by such useless bluster, that his friends,
at first numerous and many of them influential, gave him the cold
shoulder, and the ardor for France greatly cooled. At length Washington
effected his removal, the more easily, it would seem, as he was not
radical enough for the Jacobins, who had now succeeded to the helm in
France. The officious Frenchman did not return to his own country, but
settled down in New York, marrying a daughter of Governor Clinton. He
was succeeded by Adet.



George Clinton.
From a painting by Ezra Ames.


Upon learning that the United States had ratified Jay's treaty, France
went insane with rage. A declaration of war by us could not have angered
her more. Adet was called home and the alliance with America declared at
an end. Barras dismissed Mr. Monroe, our minister, in a contemptuous
speech, and Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, sent as Monroe's successor, was
not only not received but ordered from the land. New and worse decrees
went forth against American commerce. Our ships were confiscated for
carrying English goods though not contraband. Arbitrary and unheard-of
tests of neutrality were trumped up, wholly contrary to the treaty,
which indeed was now denounced. American sailors found serving, though
compelled, on British armed vessels, were to be condemned as pirates.

[1797]

These brutal measures, coupled with Napoleon's increasing power, begot
in America the belief, even among Republicans, that France's struggle
was no longer for liberty but for conquest. The insolence of the French
Government waxed insufferable. President Adams, to a special session of
the Vth Congress, on May 19, 1797, announced the insult to the nation in
the person of Pinckney, and urged preparation for war. A goodly loan, a
direct tax, and a provisional army, Washington again leader, were
readily voted. Our Navy Department was created at this time. The navy
was increased, and several captures were made of French vessels guilty
of outrage. Adams, however, to make a last overture for peace,
despatched John Marshall and Elbridge Gerry to the aid of Pinckney, the
three to knock once more at France's doors for a becoming admission. In
vain. The only effect was a new chapter of French mendacity and
insolence, furthering America's wish and preparations for war.
Napoleon's recent Italian victories, terrifying Europe, had puffed up
France with pride. Talleyrand assumed to arraign us as criminals, and
what was worse, pressed us, through his agents, to buy his country's
forgiveness with gold. "You must pay money," our envoys were told, and
"a good deal of it, too."



John Marshall.


All this was duly made known at Philadelphia, and the President assured
Congress that no terms were obtainable from France "compatible with the
safety, honor, and general interest of the nation." The opposition
thought this an exaggeration, and called for the despatches, expecting
refusal or abridgment. The President sent every word.



Elbridge Gerry


Confusion seized the Republicans. Federalists were again in the
ascendant, the VIth Congress being much more strongly federalist than
the Vth. For once proud, reserved John Adams was popular, and
anti-French feeling irresistible. "Millions for defence but not a cent
for tribute," echoed through the land. Hosts of Republicans went over to
the administration side. Patriotism became a passion. Each night at the
theatre rose a universal call for the "President's March" [Footnote: The
music was that of our "Hail Columbia."] and "Yankee Doodle," the
audience rising, cheering, swinging hats and canes, and roaring
"encore." The black cockade, American, on all hands supplanted the
tricolor cockade worn by the "Gallomaniacs;" and bands of "Associated
Youth," organizing in every town and city, deluged the President with
patriotic addresses.

Seeing that we could not be bullied and that the friends of France here
were Americans first; ashamed, on their publication, of the indignities
which he had offered our envoys, and after all not wishing war with what
he saw to be potentially another naval power like England, the sly
Talleyrand neatly receded from his arrogant demands, and expressed a
desire to negotiate.



CHAPTER VI.

THE DECLINE OF THE FEDERALIST PARTY

[1797]

The heat of the nation's wrath evoked by this conflict with France
betrayed the Federalists in Congress into some pieces of tyrannical
legislation. These were especially directed against refugees from
France, lest they should attempt to reenact here the bloody drama just
played out there. Combinations were alleged, without proof, to exist
between American and French democrats, dangerous to the stability of
this Government.

A new naturalization act was passed, requiring of an immigrant, as
prerequisite to citizenship, fourteen years of residence instead of the
five heretofore sufficient. Next came three alien acts, empowering the
President, at his discretion, without trial or even a statement of his
reasons, to banish foreigners from the land; any who should return
unbidden being liable to imprisonment for three years, and cut off from
the possibility of citizenship forever. A "sedition act" followed, to
fine in the sum of $5,000 each and to imprison for five years any
persons stirring up sedition, combining to oppose governmental measures,
resisting United States law, or putting forth "any false, scandalous, or
malicious writings" against Congress, the President, or the Government.

To President Adams's credit, he was no abettor of these hateful decrees,
and did little to enforce them. The sedition law, however, did not rest
with him for execution, and was applied right and left. Evidently its
champions were swayed largely by political motives. Matthew Lyon, a
fiery Republican member of Congress from Vermont, had, in an address to
his constituents, charged the President with avarice and with "thirst
for ridiculous pomp and foolish adulation," He was convicted of
sedition, fined $1,000, and sentenced to four months in prison. This
impoverished him, as well as took him from his place in Congress for
most of a session. Adams refused pardon, but in 1840 Congress paid back
the fine to Lyon's heirs.

It is now admitted that these measures were unconstitutional, as
invading freedom of speech and of the press, and assigning to the
Federal Judiciary a common-law jurisdiction in criminal matters. But
they were also highly unwise, subjecting the Federalist Party to the
odium of fearing free speech, of declining a discussion of its policy,
and of hating foreigners. The least opposition to the party in power, or
criticism of its official chiefs, became criminal, under the head of
"opposing" the Government. A joke or a caricature might send its author
to jail as "seditious." It was surely a travesty upon liberty when a man
could be arrested for expressing the wish, as a salute was fired, that
the wadding might hit John Adams behind. Even libels upon government, if
it is to be genuinely free, must be ignored--a principle now acted upon
by all constitutional States.

But the Federalists were blind to considerations like these. As Schouler
well remarks: "A sort of photophobia afflicted statesmen, who, allowing
little for the good sense and spirit of Americans, or our geographical
disconnection with France, were crazed with the fear that this Union
might be, like Venice, made over to some European potentate, or chained
in the same galley with Switzerland or Holland, to do the Directory's
bidding. That, besides this unfounded fear, operated the desire of
ultra-Federalists to take revenge upon those presses which had assailed
the British treaty and other pet measures, and abused Federal leaders;
and the determination to entrench themselves in authority by forcibly
disbanding an opposition party which attracted a readier support at the
polls from the oppressed of other countries, no candid writer can at
this day question."

[1798]

It was next the turn of the Republicans to blunder. In November, 1798,
the Kentucky Legislature passed a series of resolutions, drawn up by
John Breckenridge upon a sketch by Jefferson, in effect declaring the
alien and sedition acts not law, but altogether void and of no force. In
December the Virginia Legislature put forth a similar series by Madison,
milder in tone and more cautiously expressed, denouncing those acts as
"palpable and alarming infractions of the Constitution." A year after
their first utterance, the Kentucky law-makers further "resolved that
the several States who formed (the Constitution), being sovereign and
independent, have the unquestionable right to judge of its infraction;
and that a nullification by those sovereignties, of all unauthorized
acts done under color of that instrument, is the rightful remedy."
Virginia again declared it a State's right "to interpose" in such cases.

These resolutions were intended to stir reflection and influence
opinion, and, if  possible, elicit a concurrent request to Congress from
the various States to repeal the obnoxious acts. They do not hint at the
use of force. Their execration of the hated laws is none too strong, and
their argument as a whole is masterly and unanswerable. But at least
those of Kentucky suggest, if they do not contain, a doctrine respecting
the Constitution which is untenable and baneful, in kernel the same that
threatened secession in Jackson's time and brought it in Buchanan's. The
State, as such, is not a party to the Constitution. Still less is the
Legislature. Nor is either, but the Supreme Court, the judge whether in
any case the fundamental law has been infringed.

Procuring the resolutions, however, proved a crafty political move. The
enormity of the despicable acts was advertised as never before, while
the endorsement of them by federalist legislators went upon record.
Petitions for repeal came in so numerous and numerously signed that the
VIth Congress could not but raise a committee to consider such action.
It reported adversely, and the report was accepted, the majority in the
House, fifty-two to forty-eight, trying contemptuously to cough down
every speaker lifting his voice on the opposite side.

[1799]

This sullen obstinacy in favor of a miserable experiment sealed the doom
of Federalism. In vain did the party orators plead that liberty of
speech and the press is not license, but only the right to utter "the
truth," that hence this liberty was not abridged by the acts in
question, and that aliens had no constitutional rights, but enjoyed the
privileges of the land only by favor. The fact remained, more and more
appreciated by ordinary people, that a land ruled by such maxims could
never be free.

So a deep distrust of Federalism sprung up, as out of sympathy with
popular government. It was furthered by the attachment of prominent
Federalists to England. Several of them are on record as ready to
involve the United States in an expedition planned by one Miranda, to
conquer Spanish America in aid of Great Britain, Spain and ourselves
being perfectly at peace. The federalist chieftains were too proud,
ignoring too much the common voter. They often expressed doubt, too, as
to the permanence of popular institutions. Federalism had too close
affinity with Puritanism to suit many outside New England. And
then--deadly to the party even had nothing else concurred--there was a
quarrel among its leaders. Hamilton, the Essex Junto (Pickering, Cabot,
Quincy, Otis), and their supporters were set against Adams and his
friends. This rivalry of long standing was brought to a head by Adams's
noble and self-sacrificing independence in accepting France's overtures
for peace, when Hamilton, Pickering, King, and all the rest, out of
private or party interest rather than patriotism, wished war.

[1800]

Toward 1800, Democracy bade fair soon to come into power, but the
Federalists learned no wisdom. Rather were they henceforth more factious
than ever, opposing Jefferson and Madison even when they acted on purely
federalist principles. Tooth and nail they fought against the
acquisition of Louisiana, the War of 1812, and the protective tariff of
1816, which was carried by Republicans. A worse spirit still was shown
in their disunion scheme of 1804, after the purchase of Louisiana, and
in the Hartford Convention of 1814. Federalism had further lost ground
by its mean and revolutionary devices on resigning power in 1801, first
to make Burr President instead of Jefferson, and, failing in this, to
use its expiring authority in creating needless offices for its clients.

In consequence of such ill-advised steps, federalist strength waned
apace. In 1804 Connecticut, Delaware, and Maryland alone chose
federalist electors, the last only two such. In 1808 these were joined
by the remaining New England States, North Carolina also casting three
federalist votes. In 1812, indeed, Clinton received eighty-nine votes to
Madison's one hundred and twenty-eight; but in 1816 again only
Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Delaware were federalist. In 1820 not a
State had a federalist majority. State elections in Maryland, North
Carolina, Delaware, and Connecticut commonly went federalist till 1820,
and in Massachusetts till 1823, when the Republicans swept this
commonwealth too, Essex County and all.

Yet Federalism did not die without fixing its stamp indelibly upon our
institutions. Not to mention the Whig and the modern Republican Parties,
close reproductions of it, or the public credit, its child, methods of
administration passed with little change from Adams to Jefferson and his
successors, and federalist principles modified the entire temper, and
directed in no small degree the action, of the Democratic Party while in
power. The nation was exalted more, state rights subordinated, and the
Constitution construed ever more broadly. Thus there was silently and
gradually imparted to our governmental fabric a consistency and a
solidity which were of incalculable worth against storms to come.



CHAPTER VII.

THE WEST

[1787]

A simple resolution of the Continental Congress in 1780 has proved of
the highest consequence for the subsequent development of our country.
It declared that all territorial land should be national domain, to be
disposed of for the common benefit of the States, with the high
privilege of itself growing into States coequal with the old Thirteen.
The treaty of 1783 carried this domain north to the Lakes, west to the
Mississippi. The Ohio divided it into a northwestern and a southwestern
part. The land to the west of themselves Virginia and North Carolina
claimed, and it became Kentucky and Tennessee, respectively, erected
into statehood, the one June 1, 1792, the other June 1, 1796, these
being the fifteenth and sixteenth States in order. Vermont, admitted in
1791, was the fourteenth. Virginia never released Kentucky till it
became a State. The Tennessee country, ceded to the United States by
North Carolina in 1784, the cession revoked and afterward repeated, had
already, under the name of Frankland, enjoyed for some time a separate
administration. The nucleus of Kentucky civilization was on the northern
or Ohio River border, that of Tennessee in the Cumberland Valley about
Nashville; but by 1800 the borders of these two oases had joined.

United States land has since broadened westward to the Pacific, over the
infinite areas which in 1800 belonged to Spain. From an early period
there have been, as now, unorganized territory and also partially
organized and fully organized territories, the last being inchoate
States, ready to be admitted to full membership in the Union when
sufficiently populous, on condition of framing each for itself a
republican constitution.



General Arthur St. Clair.


[1788]

The great ordinance of 1787, re-enacted by the First Congress, forever
sealing the same to civil and religious liberty, opened the Northwest
for immediate colonization, twenty thousand people settling there in the
next two years. The territory was organized and General St. Clair made
governor. In 1788 Marietta was founded, named from Marie Antoinette,
also Columbia near the mouth of the Little Miami. In the same year
Losantiville, subsequently called Fort Washington, and now Cincinnati,
was laid out, the first houses having gone up in 1780. Louisville,
settled so early as 1773, contained in 1784 over one hundred houses.
Emigrants in hundreds and thousands yearly poured over the mountains and
down the Ohio. By the census of 1790 there were 4,280 whites northwest
of this river, 1,000 at Vincennes, 1,000 on the lands of the Ohio
Company, 1,300 on Symmes's purchase between the Great and the Little
Miami, Cincinnati being part of this purchase. In 1800 these numbers had
much increased. The settlements which had Pittsburgh for a nucleus had
also greatly extended, reaching the Ohio. Northern and Central
Pennsylvania west of the Susquehanna Valley was yet a wilderness. St.
Louis, in Spanish hands, but to become French next year, had been
founded, and opposite it were the beginnings of what is now Alton, Ill.

[1790]

The centre of United States population in 1790 was twenty-three miles
east of Baltimore. It has since moved westward, not far from the
thirty-ninth parallel, never more than sixteen miles north of it, or
three to the south. In 1800 it was eighteen miles west of Baltimore; in
1810 it was forty-three miles northwest by west of Washington; in 1820,
sixteen miles north of Woodstock, Va.; in 1830, nineteen miles
west-southwest of Moorfield, W. Va.; in 1840, sixteen miles south of
Clarksburg, same State; in 1850, twenty-three miles southeast of
Parkersburg, same State; in 1860, twenty miles south of Chillicothe, 0.;
in 1870, forty-eight miles east by north of Cincinnati; in 1880, eight
miles west by south of that city; in 1890, twenty miles east of
Columbus, Ind., west by south of Greensburg. It has never since been so
far north as in 1790, and it has described a total westward movement of
four hundred and fifty-seven miles.

The land system of the United States was at first a bad one, intended
to secure immediate revenue from the sale of immense pieces at auction,
on long credit, at very few points, the land to find its way into the
hands of actual settlers only through mercenary speculators. The honest
pioneer was therefore at the mercy of these land-sharks, greedy and
unpatriotic in the extreme.

The western movement aroused the Indians, of whom there were, in 1790,
from 20,000 to 40,000 north of the Ohio. The idea of amalgamating or
even civilizing these people had long been practically given up.
Settlers agreed in denouncing them as treacherous, intractable,
bloodthirsty, and faithless. So incessant and terrific were their
onslaughts, the Ohio Valley had come to be known as "the dark and bloody
ground." The British, still occupying the western posts, used their
influence to keep up and intensify Indian hostility to the United States
settlers and Government.

In September, 1790, Governor St. Clair sent Harmar against the Indians
on the Miami and Maumee. He had about fifteen hundred men, two-thirds of
them militia. The expedition was ill-managed from the first, and, after
advancing as far as the present Fort Wayne, came back with great loss to
itself, having exasperated rather than injured the red men. Harmar,
chagrined, soon resigned.

The Indians south of the Ohio were perhaps twice as numerous as those
north, and partly civilized. The Chickasaws and Choctaws, nearest the
Mississippi, gave little trouble. Not so the Cherokees and Creeks, whose
seats were nearer the whites. The Creeks claimed parts of Tennessee,
Georgia, and the Carolinas, justified herein by acts of the Continental
Congress. However, the whites invaded this territory, provoking a fierce
war, wherein the Cherokees allied themselves with the Creeks of Alabama
and Georgia. This brave tribe had border troubles of its own with
Georgia. These various hordes of savages, having the Florida Spaniards
to back them with counsel, arms, and ammunition, were a formidable foe,
which might have annihilated Georgia but for aid from the general
Government. McGillivray, the half-breed chief of the Creeks, was enticed
to New York, where the kindness of Washington and the evident desire of
Congress to deal with his people fairly, resulted in a treaty, August
13, 1790, which secured peace to the Southwest for a long time.

[1791]

Touching the northwestern redskins, Harmar's defeat had convinced
Washington that mild measures were not yet the thing. A larger force was
fitted out against them under St. Clair in person, whom, as an old
Revolutionary comrade, Washington still trusted. General Butler was
second in command. The two thousand regulars and one thousand militia
rendezvoused at Cincinnati in the autumn of 1791. Part object of the
expedition was to build a military road, with forts at intervals, all
the way to the upper Wabash. Progress was therefore slow.

A fort was constructed on the present site of Hamilton, 0.; then one to
the northwest, near Greenville, 0., close to the present Indiana line.
From here the army pressed northwesterly still farther.

St. Clair was heroic, but incompetent through age and the gout. Some of
his militia deserted. Chills and fever shook the remainder of his too
slender host. His orders were not well obeyed. On November 9th,
encamping by a small branch of the Wabash, St. Clair's force was most
vehemently attacked by Indians, under the redoubtable Joseph Brant or
Thayendanegea--famed for his bloody exploits against us during the
Revolution--and well-nigh annihilated. Five high officers, including
Butler, were killed, and as many more sank from wounds. Cannons, guns,
accoutrements, in fact the whole equipment of the army, were lost. After
a four hours' fight St. Clair, sick but brave as a tiger, horse after
horse shot beneath him, part of the time carried in a litter, his gray
locks streaming in the breeze, put himself at the head of the five
hundred who remained unscathed, and hewed his way through walls of
savages to the rear. Six o'clock that night found the survivors back at
Greenville, twenty-nine miles from the scene of carnage. Had the Indians
pursued instead of stopping to mutilate the slain, every soul must have
perished.



Joseph Brant or Thayendanegea.


[1793]

The announcement of this disaster called forth in the East a universal
howl of rage at the unfortunate commander. Even Washington went beside
himself: "To suffer that army to be cut to pieces, hacked, butchered,
tomahawked, by a surprise--the very thing I guarded him against! O God!
O God, he is worse than a murderer! How can he answer it to his country?
The blood of the slain is upon him, the curse of widows and orphans, the
curse of Heaven." St. Clair came East to explain. Hobbling into
Washington's presence, he grasped his hand in both his own and sobbed
aloud. He was continued as governor, but had to resign his
major-generalship, which passed to Anthony Wayne.

Wayne was every inch a warrior. Cautiously advancing over the road St.
Clair's fugitives had reddened with their blood, he reached Fort
Jefferson, at Greenville, in June, 1793. Next year he advanced to the
junction of the Au Glaize with the Maumee. The Indians fleeing, he
pursued to the foot of the Maumee Rapids, where he encountered them
encamped by a fort which the English, defying the treaty, still held,
fifty miles inside our lines. Wayne, agreeably to Washington's policy,
tried to treat. Failing, he attacked, routed the enemy, and mercilessly
ravaged the country, burning crops and villages. Building Fort Wayne as
an advanced post, he came back and made his headquarters at Fort
Jefferson. The Indians' spirit and opposition were at last broken. Their
delegates flocked to Wayne, suing for peace. Captives were surrendered.
The whole Ohio Territory now lay open to peaceful occupation, and
emigrants crowded northward from the Ohio in great companies.

[1794]

The pioneer bought land wherever he found a vacant spot that pleased
him, building his hut, breaking up any open land for crops, and as
rapidly as possible clearing for more. His white neighbors, if any were
near, lent their assistance in this work. His rough dwelling of logs,
with one room, floored with puncheon, caulked with mud, and covered with
bark or thatch, however uncomfortable from our point of view, made him a
habitable home. When this primitive mansion was no longer sufficient, he
was usually able to rear another out of hewn logs, with glass windows
and a chimney. Then he felt himself an aristocrat, and who will deny
that he was so? A large family grew up around him, neighbors moved in,
the forest disappeared, the savages and wild beasts that at first
harassed him slunk away, while the fruitful soil, with such exchanges
and mail privileges as were speedily possible, yielded him all the
necessaries and many of the comforts of life.

[1800]

So rapid was the increase of population henceforth, that Congress, in
1800, divided the territory, the line running north from the junction of
the Kentucky with the Ohio. All west of this was to be known as the
Indiana Territory, William Henry Harrison its governor, and a
territorial legislature to follow so soon as a majority of the
inhabitants should desire.

On February 19, 1803, Ohio became a State. Mainly through Governor
Harrison's exertions a better system of marketing public land was begun,
in healthy contrast with the old. It allowed four land-offices in Ohio
and Indiana. Lands once offered at auction and not sold could be
pre-empted directly by private individuals on easy terms. Actual
settlement and cultivation were thus furthered, speculation curbed, and
the government revenues vastly increased.



Dugout of a Southwestern Pioneer


[1802]

We have spoken mostly of the Northwest. The present States of Alabama
and Mississippi north of 31 degrees, except a narrow strip at the
extreme north owned by South Carolina, were claimed by Georgia, but the
part of this territory south of 32 degrees 30 minutes the United States
also claimed, as having before the Revolution been separated from
Georgia by the king and joined to West Florida, so that it, like the
Northwest, passed to the United States at the treaty of 1783. This
section was organized in 1798 as the Mississippi Territory. In 1802
Georgia relinquished all claim to the northern part as well, which
Congress added to the Mississippi Territory. At this date there were
settlements along the Mississippi bluffs below the Yazoo bottom.



Robert Fulton



CHAPTER VIII.

SOCIAL CULTURE AT THE TURN OF THE CENTURY

[1800]

In 1800 the population of our land was 5,305,482, of whom 896,849 were
slaves. New York City had 60,489; Philadelphia, 40,000; Boston, 24,937;
Baltimore, 23,971; Charleston, 18,712; Providence, 7,614; Washington,
3,210. The population of Vermont, Northern and Western New York, and the
Susquehanna Valley of Pennsylvania had grown considerably more dense
since 1790. The social life, ideas, and habits of the rural districts
had not altered much from those prevalent in colonial days, but in the
more favored centres great improvements, or, at any rate, changes, might
have been marked.

Even far in the country framed buildings were now the most common, the
raising of one being a great event. The village school gave a half
holiday. Every able-bodied man and boy from the whole country-side
received an invitation--all being needed to "heave up," at the boss
carpenter's pompous word of command, the ponderous timbers seemingly
meant to last forever. A feast followed, with contests of strength and
agility worthy of description on Homer's page.

Skating was not yet a frequent pastime, nor dancing, save in cities and
large towns. Balls every pious New Englander abhorred as sinful. The
theatre was similarly tabooed--in Massachusetts, so late as 1784, by
law. New York and Philadelphia frowned upon it then, though jolly
Baltimore already gave it patrons enough. When, in 1793, yellow fever
desolated Philadelphia, one theory ascribed the affection to the
admission of the theatre. In other cities passion for the theatre was
growing, and even Massachusetts tolerated it by an act passed in 1793.
President Washington, while in New York, oftener than many thought
proper, attended the old, sorrily furnished play-house in John Street,
the only one which the city could then boast. John Adams also went now
and again. Both were squinted at through opera-glasses, which were just
coming into use and thought by the crowd to be infinitely ridiculous.
Good hours were kept, as the play began at five.



Fulton's First Experiment with Paddle-wheels.


All sorts of shows, games, and sports which the country could afford or
devise were immensely popular, the most so, and the roughest, in the
South. Horse-racing, cock-fighting, shooting matches, at all which
betting was high, were there fashionable, as well as most brutal
man-fights, in which ears were bitten off and eyes gouged out. President
Thomas Jefferson was exceedingly fond of menageries and circuses, his
diary abounding in such entries as: "pd for seeing a lion 21 months old
11-1/2 d.;" "pd seeing a small seal .125 ;" "pd seeing elephant .5;" "pd
seeing elk .75 ;" "pd seeing Caleb Phillips a dwarf .25;" "pd seeing a
painting .25."

Lotteries were universal, and put to uses which now seem excessively
queer. Whenever a bridge or a public edifice, as a schoolhouse, was to
be built, a street paved or a road repaired, the money was furnished
through a lottery. In the same way manufacturing companies were started,
churches aided, college treasuries replenished. It was with money
collected through a lottery that Massachusetts first encouraged cotton
spinning; that the City Hall of New York was enlarged, the Court House
at Elizabeth rebuilt, the Harvard University library increased, and many
pretentious buildings put up at the Federal City. [Footnote: McMaster's
United States, 588.] This was but a single form of the sporting mania.
The public stocks, as well as the paper of the numerous canals,
turnpikes, and manufacturing corporations now springing up, were gambled
in a way which would almost shock Wall Street today.



Departure of the Clermont on her First Voyage.


Anthracite coal had been discovered and was just beginning to be mined,
but on account of the plentifulness of wood was not for a long time
largely used. The first idea of steam navigation was embodied in an
English patent taken out by Jonathan Hulls in 1736. The initial
experiment of the kind in this country was by William Henry, on the
Conestoga River, Pennsylvania, in 1763. John Fitch navigated the
Delaware steam-wise in 1783-84. In 1790 one of Fitch's steam
paddle-boats made regular trips between Philadelphia and Trenton for
four months. In 1785-86 Oliver Evans experimented in this direction, as
did Rumsey, in Virginia, in 1787. One Morey ran a stern-wheeler of his
own make from Hartford to New York in 1794. Chancellor Livingston built
a steamer on the Hudson in 1797. It was only in 1807 that Fulton
finished his "Clermont" and made a passage up the Hudson to Albany from
New York. It took thirty-three hours, and was the earliest thoroughly
successful steam navigation on record. He subsequently built the
"Orleans" at Pittsburgh. It was completed and made the voyage to New
Orleans in 1811. No steamboat ruffled the waters of Lake Ontario till
1816. The pioneer steam craft on Lake Erie was launched at Black Rock,
May 28, 1818. It is recorded as wonderful that in less than two hours it
had gotten fifteen miles from shore.



John Fitch's Steamboat at Philadelphia.



Massachusetts Bill of Three Shillings in 1741.


At the North the muster or general training was, for secular
entertainment, the day of days, when the local regiment came out to
reveal and to perfect its skill in the manual and in the evolutions of
the line. Side-shows and a general good time constituted for the crowds
its chief interest. Cider, cakes, pop-corn, and candy drained boys'
pockets of pennies, those who could afford the fun going in to see the
one-legged revolutionary soldier with his dancing bear, the tattooed
man, the ventriloquist, or the then "greatest show on earth." College
commencements, too, at that time usually had all these festive
accompaniments, and many a boy debated whether to spend his scant change
here or at the muster. In New England, Christmas was not observed; it
was hardly known, in fact, Thanksgiving taking its place, proclaimed
with the utmost formality by the Governor some weeks in advance.

Intemperance was still terribly common; worst in the newer sections of
the country. There is extant a message of William Henry Harrison, while
Governor of Indiana Territory, to his legislature, against this evil,
urging better surveillance of public-houses. "The progress of
intemperance among us," it runs, "outstrips all calculation, and the
consequences of its becoming general I shudder to unfold. Poverty and
domestic embarrassment and distress are the present effects, and
prostration of morals and change of government must inevitably follow.
The virtue of the citizens is the only support of a Republican
Government. Destroy this and the country will become a prey to the first
daring and ambitious chief which it shall produce."



New Hampshire Bill of Forty Shillings in 1742.


To counteract this and other vices, which were justly viewed as largely
the results of ignorance, philanthropic people were at this period
establishing Sunday-schools, following the example of Robert Raikes, who
began the movement at Gloucester, England, in 1781. They had been
already introduced in New England, but were now making their way in
Philadelphia and elsewhere. The first Methodist bishop, Asbury,
zealously furthered them. They had, to begin with, no distinctive
religious character, and churches even looked upon them with disfavor;
but their numbers increased and their value became more apparent until
the institution was adopted by all denominations.

Before 1800 the new United States coinage, with nearly the same pieces
as now, had begun to circulate, but had had little success at that date
in driving out the old foreign coins of colonial times. Especially were
there still seen Spanish dollars, halves, quarters, fifths or
pistareens, and eighths--the last being the Spanish "real," "ryall," or
"royall," worth twelve and a half cents--and sixteenths or half-reals,
worth six and one-quarter cents each. Many of these pieces were sadly
worn, passing at their face value only when the legend could be made
out. Sometimes they were heated to aid in this. Many were so worn that a
pistareen would bring only a Yankee shilling, sixteen and two-thirds
cents; the half-pistareen, only eight cents; the real, ten; the
half-real, five.



Massachusetts Twopence of 1722.


The denominations of the colonial money of account were also still in
daily use, and, indeed, might be heard so late as the Civil War. The
"real," twelve and one-half cents, was in New York a shilling, being
one-twentieth of the pound once prevalent in the New York colony. In New
England it was a "nine-pence," constituting nearly nine-twelfths, or
nine of the twelve pence of an old New England shilling of sixteen and
two-thirds cents. Twenty such shillings had been required for the New
England pound, which was so much more valuable than the pound of the New
York colony. But neither one or any colonial pound was the equivalent of
the pound sterling.



Pine Tree Twopence.
"IN MASATHVSET"  "NEW ENGLAND" "1662"

Pine Tree Threepence.
"MASATHVSET" "NEW ENGLAND" "1652" "III"


In the middle colonies, including Pennsylvania, the pound had possessed
still a different value, the Spanish dollar, in which the Continental
Congress kept its accounts, there equalling ninety pence. This is why
those accounts stand in dollars and ninetieths, a notation so puzzling
to many. A "real" would here be about one-eleventh of ninety pence,
hence called the "eleven-penny-piece," shortened into "levy." Dividing
a levy by two would give five (and a fraction); hence the term
"five-penny-piece," "fippenny," or "fip," for the half-real or six and
one-quarter cent piece. There are doubtless yet people in Virginia and
Maryland who never say "twenty-five cents," but instead, "two levies and
a fip."



Pine Tree Sixpence.
"IN MASATHVSET"  "ANO NEW ENGLAND" "1652" "VI"


General intelligence had improved, partly from the greater number,
better quality, and quicker and fuller distribution of newspapers.
Correspondents were numerous. Intelligent persons visiting at a distance
from home were wont to write long letters to their local newspapers,
containing all the items of interest which they could scrape together.
Papers sprung up at every considerable hamlet. Even the Ohio Valley did
not lack. Perhaps four and a half million copies a year were issued in
the whole country by 1800. They were admitted now--not so, however,
under the original postal law--as a regular part of the mails, and thus
found their way to nearly all homes. The news which they brought was
often old news, of course, post riders requiring twenty-nine and
one-half hours between Philadelphia and either New York or Baltimore;
but they were read with none the less avidity. Its first mail reached
Buffalo in 1803, on horseback. Mail went thither bi-weekly till 1806,
then weekly. Postal rates were high, ranging for letters from six cents
for thirty miles to twenty-five for four hundred and fifty miles or
over. So late as 1796 New York City received mails from North and from
South, and sent mails in both directions, only twice weekly between
November 1st and May 1st, and but thrice weekly the rest of the year. In
1794 the great cities enjoyed carriers, who got two cents for each
letter delivered. In 1785 there were two dailies, The Pennsylvania
Packet and The New York Advertiser, but, as yet, no Sunday paper
appeared, nor any scientific, religious, or illustrated journal, nor any
devoted to literature or trade. The New York Medical Repository began in
1797, the first scientific periodical in America. In 1801 seventeen
dailies existed. Paper was scarce and high, so that appeals were
published in most of the news sheets imploring people to save their
rags.



Pine Tree Shilling.
"IN MASATHVSET"  "ANO NEW ENGLAND" "1652" "XII"



Postal Progress, 1776-1876.


The press was more violently partisan and indecently personal than now.
To oppose the federalist United States Gazette the republican National
Gazette had been started, which, with brilliant meanness, assailed not
only Washington's public acts, but his motives and character. Him, and
still more Adams, Hamilton, and the other leading Federalists, it, in
nearly every issue, charged with conspiracy to found a monarchy.

Republican journals reeked with such doggerel as:

  "See Johnny at the helm of State,
    Head itching for a crowny;
  He longs to be, like Georgy, great,
    And pull Tom Jeffer downy."

[Footnote: 2 McMaster, 383]

Federalists were not behind in warfare of this sort. Jefferson was the
object of their continual and vilest slander. In New England, the
stronghold of Federalism, nearly every Sunday's sermon was an
arraignment of the French, and impliedly of their allies, the
Republicans. [Footnote: 2 McMaster, 383] From Jefferson's election--he
was a conservative free-thinker--they seemed to anticipate the utter
extermination of Christianity, though the man paid in charities, mostly
religious, as for Bibles, missionaries, chapels, meeting-houses, etc.,
one year of his presidency, $978.20; another year, $1,585.60. One
preacher likened the tribute which Talleyrand demanded of Adams's envoys
to that which Sennacherib required of Hezekiah. [Footnote: Isaiah, 36]
Another compared Hamilton, killed in a duel, to Abner, the son of Ner,
slain by Joab. Another took for his text the message which Hezekiah sent
to the Prophet Isaiah: "This is a day of trouble and of rebuke and of
contumely," [Footnote: Isaiah, 37: 3 seq.] etc. Another attacked
Republicanism outright from the words: "There is an accursed thing in
the midst of thee, O Israel." [Footnote: Joshua. 7: 13] The coolest
federalist leaders could fall prey to this partisan temper. Lafayette
meditated settling in this country. Such was his popularity here that no
one would have dared to oppose this openly. Hamilton, however, while
favoring it publicly, yet, lest the great Frenchman's coming should help
on the republican cause, secretly did his utmost to prevent it. Even
Washington, who was human after all, connived, it seems, at this piece
of duplicity.

According to a federalist sheet, Hamilton's death called forth "the
voice of deep lament" save from "the rancorous Jacobin, the scoffing
deist, the snivelling fanatic, and the imported scoundrel." "Were I
asked," said an apologist, "whether General Hamilton had vices, in the
face of the world, in the presence of my God, I would answer, No."

Another poetized of the

                               "Great day
  When Hamilton--disrobed of mortal clay--
  At God's right hand shall sit with face benign,
  And at his murderer cast a look divine."

In 1800 instrumental music might have been heard in some American
churches. There were Roman Catholic congregations in Boston, New York,
Philadelphia, and Baltimore. Baltimore had its Catholic bishop. The
Protestant Episcopal Church in America had been organized. Methodism,
independent of England since 1784, was on its crusade up and down the
land, already strong in New York and the South, and in 1790 a Methodist
church had been gathered in Boston.

The manufacture of corduroys, bed-ticking, fustian, jeans, and
cotton-yarn had been started. Iron ore and iron ware of nearly all sorts
was produced. Syracuse was manufacturing salt. Lynn already made morocco
leather, and Dedham, straw braid for hats. Cotton was regularly exported
in small quantities from the South. In New York one could get a decayed
tooth filled or a set of false teeth made. Four daily stages ran between
New York and Philadelphia. The Boston ship Columbia had circumnavigated
the globe. The United States Mint was still working by horse-power, not
employing steam till 1815. Whitney's cotton-gin had been invented in
1793. Terry, of Plymouth, Conn., was making clocks. There were in the
land two insurance companies, possibly more. Cast-iron ploughs, of home
make, were displacing the old ones of wood. Morse's "Geography" and
Webster's "Spelling-book" were on the market, and extensively used.



Cotton Plant.



The Cotton-Gin.
From the original model.


The great industrial inventions which were to color the entire
civilization of mankind had a powerful effect upon America. So early as
1775, in England, Crompton's mule-jenny had superseded Hargreaves'
spinning machine. The latter had improved on the old spinning-wheel by
making eight, and later eighty, threads with the effort and time the old
arrangement had required for one; but the threads were no better, and
could be used only for woof, linen being required for warp. Arkwright's
roller arrangement was an improvement upon Hargreaves'. It bettered the
quality of the threads, making them evener, so that they could serve for
warp as well as woof. Crompton's mule was another quantitative
improvement, combining the excellences of both Hargreaves and Arkwright.
One man could with this machinery work twenty-two hundred spindles, and
they went much faster than by the ancient wheel. Then came steam-power.
Watts's engine was adapted to spinning and carding cotton at Manchester
in 1783. Two years later the cylinder printing of cottons was invented,
and a little after began the use of acid in bleaching.



Eli Whitney.


These mighty industrial devices did not cross to America immediately,
but were all here before the time of which we now write. A
spinning-jenny was indeed exhibited in Philadelphia so early as 1775.
During the Revolution, Philadelphia was a seat of much manufacture. We
have in an earlier chapter remarked that Beverly, Mass., had a cotton
factory in 1787. Oxen furnished its power, as a horse did that for the
first Philadelphia mill. A cotton mill was also started very early at
Worcester, but whether in 1780 or 1789 may admit of doubt. There is some
evidence that before July, 1790, a cotton factory run by water, with
ginning, carding, and spinning machines, the last of eighty-four
spindles apiece, was in operation near Statesburg, S. C.; but whether it
was successful or not is not known. Oliver Evans was operating a
single-flue boiler for steam-power by 1786. Soon after he had one with
two flues, and in 1779 a high-pressure or non-condensing engine, the
principle of which he is by many believed to have invented. He was the
earliest builder of steam-engines in the United States, having in 1804
secured a patent for the high-pressure device. His factory furnished
engines to all parts of the country.

England did her best to prevent all knowledge of the new manufacturing
machinery from crossing the Atlantic. The Act 21 George III., c. 37,
denounced upon anyone who should aid toward giving America any tool,
machine, or secret relating to manufacture in any branch, a penalty of
200 pounds and one year's imprisonment. In vain. Partly by smuggling,
partly by invention, the new arts soon flourished here as there. Some
Scotch artisans who came to Bridgewater, Mass., by invitation from Mr.
Hugh Orr, of that town, constructed, about 1786, the first
cotton-spinning machines in America, including the Arkwright inventions.

To build and launch the English machinery with full success was,
however, reserved for Samuel Slater, a native of Belper, Derbyshire,
England, who, in 1790, erected at Pawtucket, R. I., the Old Mill in rear
of Mill Street, which still stands and runs. Slater had served his time
at the making of cotton-manufacturing machinery with J. Strutt, who, had
been Arkwright's partner. In Strutt's factory he had risen to be
overseer. So thoroughly had he mastered the business that, on arriving
here, he found himself able to imitate the foreign machines from memory
alone, without model, plan, or measurement. Having gotten his gear in
readiness, almost solely with his own hands, December 20, 1790, he
started three cards, drawing and roving, also seventy-two spindles, all
on the Arkwright plan, the first of the kind ever triumphantly operated
on this side of the ocean. President Jackson styled Slater "the father
of American manufactures," and 1790 may be taken as the birth-year of
the American factory system.

The Tariff, the embargo policy of President Jefferson, and the hatred
toward England, taking form in organizations pledged to wear only
home-made clothing, all powerfully stimulated the erection of factories.
A report in 1810, of Albert Gallatin, Madison's Secretary of the
Treasury, states that by the end of the year preceding, eighty-seven
cotton factories had arisen in this country, calculated for eighty
thousand spindles. The power loom, however, not used in England till
about 1806, did not begin its work here till after the War of 1812.
[Footnote: See. further, Period II., Chap. VIII.]



CHAPTER IX.

DEMOCRACY AT THE HELM

[1801]

By the original mode of election, President and Vice-President could not
be separately designated on electors' tickets, so that, soon as party
spirit led each elector to vote for the same two men, these two were
tied for the first place. This occurred in 1801. The republican
candidates were Jefferson and Burr. Each had the same number of
electoral votes, seventy-three, against sixty-five for Adams, sixty-four
for C. C. Pinckney, and one for John Jay. There being no choice, the
election went to the House. This had a federalist majority, but was, by
the parity of the two highest candidates, constitutionally shut up to
elect between these, both of them Republicans. Jefferson as the abler
and from the South, was more than Burr an object of federalist hate.
Against Hamilton's advice, to his honor be it remembered, the
Federalists agreed to throw their votes for Burr. But the vote then, as
to-day in such a case, had to be by States. There were sixteen States,
nine being necessary to a choice. In nineteen ballots on February 11th,
nine the 12th, one the 13th, four the 14th, one each the 16th and 17th,
thirty-five in all, Jefferson every time carried eight States and Burr
six, while Maryland and Vermont were equally divided, and therefore
powerless.

The fear at last began to be felt that the Union would go to pieces and
the Federalists be to blame. Accordingly, on the 36th ballot, five
Federalists from South Carolina, four from Maryland, one from Vermont,
and one from Delaware--Mr. Bayard, grandfather to President Cleveland's
first Secretary of State--did not vote, enabling the republican members
from Vermont and Maryland to cast the votes of those States for
Jefferson. Thus, with ten States, he was elected, Burr becoming
Vice-President. This crisis led, in 1804, to the XIIth Amendment to the
Constitution, which directs each elector to vote for Vice-President as
such. There can hardly now be a tie between the two leading presidential
candidates, and if there is for any reason delay in electing the
President, the Senate may proceed to elect the Vice-President at once.
The improvement became manifest when, in 1825, the House again had to
elect the President, and chose John Quincy Adams over Crawford and
Jackson.



Thomas Jefferson.
From the painting by Gilbert Stuart--property of T. Jefferson Coolidge.


The Democratic Party proved to have entered upon a long lease of power.
For forty years its hold upon affairs was not relaxed, and it was in no
wise broken even by the elections of Harrison in 1840 and Taylor in
1848. Nor did it ever appear probable that the Whigs, upon anyone of the
great issues which divided them from the Democrats, were in a way to win
permanent advantage. Not till after 1850 had the ruling dynasty true
reason to tremble, and then only at the rise of a new party, the modern
Republicans, inspired by the bold cry of anti-slavery, which the Whigs
had never dared to raise.

As to its main outlines, the democratic policy was well foreshadowed in
Jefferson's first inaugural. It favored thrift and simplicity in
government, involving close limitation of army, navy, and diplomatic
corps to positive and tangible needs. It professed peculiar regard for
the rights and interests of the common man, whether of foreign or of
native parentage. Strict construction of the Constitution, which was to
a great extent viewed as a compact of States, was another of its
cherished ideas. It also maintained special friendliness for agriculture
and commerce. From its strict constructionism sprung, further, its
hostility to internal improvements; from this and from its regard to
agriculture and commerce resulted its dislike to restrictive tariffs.
Particularly after the whig schism, about 1820, did these ideas stand
forth definite and pronounced as the authoritative democratic creed. In
and from Jackson's time they were more so still.

Yet in most respects Jefferson has remained the typical Democrat, He had
genuine faith in the people, in free government, in unfettered
individuality, His administration was frugal almost to a fault. He
insisted upon making the civil power supreme over the military, and
scorned all pretensions on the part of any particular class to rule, In
two points only was his democracy ideal rather than illustrative of that
which followed, viz., adroitness in giving trend and consistency to
legislation, and non-partisan administration of the civil service. In
the former no executive has equalled him, in the latter none since
Quincy Adams.

Growing up as a scholar and a gentleman-farmer, with refined tastes,
penning the great Declaration, which was early scouted for its
abstractions, long minister to France, where abstract ideas made all
high politics morbid, the sage of Monticello turned out to be one of the
most practical presidents this nation has ever had. If he overdid
simplicity in going to the Capitol on horseback to deliver his first
inaugural, tying his magnificent horse, Wildair, to a tree with his own
hands, he yet entertained elegantly, and his whole state as President,
far from humiliating the nation, as some feared it would, was in happy
keeping with its then development and nature. His cabinet, Madison,
Gallatin, Dearborn, Smith, and Granger, was in liberal education
superior to any other the nation has ever had, every member a college
graduate, and the first two men of distinguished research and
attainments.

As to the civil service, Jefferson, it is true, made many removals from
office, some doubtless unwise and even unjust; but in judging of these
we must remember his profound and unquestionably honest conviction that
the Federalists lacked patriotism. It was this belief which dictated his
prosecution, almost persecution, of Burr, whom Federalists openly
befriended and defended.



Aaron Burr.
From a painting by Vallderlyn at the New York Historical Society.


Aaron Burr was the brilliant grandson of President Edwards. Graduating
at Princeton at the early age of seventeen, he studied theology a year,
then law, which on the outbreak of the Revolution he deserted for army
life at Boston. He went in Arnold's expedition to Canada, was promoted
to be colonel, and served on Washington's staff. In Canada he did
service as a spy, disguised as a priest and speaking French or Latin as
needed. His legal studies completed, 1783 found him in practice in New
York, office at No. 10 Little Queen Street. Both as lawyer and in
politics he rose like a meteor, being Hamilton's peer in the one, his
superior in the other. Organizing his "Little Band" of young
Republicans, spite of federalist opposition and sneers from the old
republican chiefs, he became Attorney-general of New York in 1789. In
1791, superseding Schuyler, he was United States senator from that
State, and in 1800, Vice-President.

Higher he could not mount, as federalist favor cursed him among his own
party, yet was too weak to aid him independently. It was kept down by
Hamilton, who saw through the man and opposed him with all his might.
For this Burr forced him to a duel, and fatally shot him, July 11, 1804.

Indicted for murder, Burr now disappears from politics, but only to
emerge in a new role. During all the early history of our Union the
parts beyond the Alleghanies were attached to it by but a slender
thread, which Spanish intrigue incessantly sought to cut. At this very
time Spain was pensioning men in high station there, including General
Wilkinson, commanding our force at New Orleans. Could not Burr detach
this district or a part of it from our Government and make here an
empire of his own? Or might he not take it as the base of operations for
an attack on Spanish America that should give him an empire there? Some
vision of this sort danced before the mad genius's vision, as before
that of Hamilton in the Miranda scheme. Many influential persons
encouraged him, with how much insight into his plan we shall never know.
Wilkinson was one of these. Blennerhassett, whose family and estate Burr
irreparably blasted, was another. He expected aid from Great Britain,
and from disaffected Mexicans.

From the outset the West proved more loyal than he hoped, and when, at
the critical moment, Wilkinson betrayed him, he knew that all was lost.
Sinking his chests of arms in the river near Natchez, he took to the
Mississippi woods, only to be recognized, arrested by Jefferson's order,
and dragged to Richmond to jail. As no overt act was proved, he could
not be convicted of treason; and even the trial of him for misdemeanor
broke down on technical points. The Federalists stood up for Burr as if
he had been their man, while Jefferson on his part pushed the
prosecution in a fussy and personal way, ill becoming a President.

Jefferson's most lasting work as national chief-magistrate was his
diplomacy in purchasing for the Union the boundless territory beyond the
Mississippi, prized then not for its extent or resources, both as yet
unknown, but as assuring us free navigation of the river, which sundry
French and Spanish plots had demonstrated essential to the solid loyalty
of the West. Louisiana, ceded by France to Spain in 1762, became French
again in 1801. Napoleon had intended it as the seat of a colonial power
rivalling Great Britain's, but, pressed for money in his new war with
that kingdom, concluded to sell. He wished, too, the friendship of the
United States against Great Britain, and knew not the worth of what he
was bargaining away. Willing to take fifty million francs, he offered
for one hundred million, speedily closing with Livingston and Monroe's
tender of eighty, we to assume in addition the French spoliation claims
of our citizens. The treaty of purchase was signed May 2, 1803, and
ratified by the Senate the 17th of the following October.

This stupendous transaction assured to our Republic not only leading
hand in the affairs of this continent, but place among the great powers
of the world. Its 1,124,685 square miles doubled the national domain. It
opened path well toward, if not to, the Pacific, and made ours
measureless tracts of agricultural and mining lands, rich as any under
the sun.



Stephen Decatur.


If it originated many of the most perplexing questions which have
agitated our national politics, as those relating to slavery in this
territory itself, to the acquisitions from Mexico, to the Pacific
railways, and to the Indians and the Chinese, all this has been amply
compensated by the above and countless other benefits.

Equally brilliant if less impressive was another piece of Jefferson's
foreign policy. He might be over-friendly to France, but elsewhere he
certainly did not believe in peace at any price. The Barbary powers had
begun to annoy our commerce soon after Independence. The Betsey was
captured in 1784, next year the Maria, of Boston, and the Dauphin, of
Philadelphia, and their crews of twenty-one men carried to a long and
disgraceful captivity in Algiers.

The Dey's bill for these captives, held by him as slaves, was:

3 Captains at	$6,000	$18,000
2 Mates at	$4,000	8,000
2 Passengers at	$4,000	8,000
14 Seamen at	$1,400	19,600
Total		$53,600
For custom, eleven per cent		5,896
Grands Total		$59,496