Part 1072

Hamilton shared Jefferson's view, that the purchase of Louisiana was a question of the greatest, and even of vital, importance for the Union. His opposition on other occasions to the policy of the administration, and his personal enmity to the president, did not prevent his lending him a helping hand in this matter when an opportunity offered. The great majority of the Federalists opposed this increase of the territory of the Union with as much decision as Hamilton advocated it. They showed in their attitude towards this question a short-sightedness which would have been astonishing even among the doctrinarians of the opposite party."

_H. von Holst, Constitutional and Political History of the United States, volume 1, pages 183-185._

"Mr. Jefferson belonged to the school of strict construction, and was in fact its leader and apostle. … Under a construction of the Constitution as strict as he had been insisting upon, it was plain that the government would have no power to acquire foreign territory by purchase, and that any attempt in that direction would be usurpation. … To give the necessary authority an amendment of the Constitution would be essential, and amendment would be a slow process which might not be accomplished in time to meet the emergency. The case would be complicated by the fact that if the territory was acquired a considerable population would be brought into the Union and thus made citizens by a process of naturalization not contemplated by the Constitution. Mr. Madison, the Secretary of State, agreed with the President in his views. To use Mr. Jefferson's words, "The Constitution has made no provision for our holding foreign territory; still less for incorporating foreign nations into our Union.' But under circumstances so imperative he thought the political departments of the government should meet the emergency by consummating the purchase, and 'then appeal to the nation for an additional article in the Constitution approving and confirming an act which the nation had not previously authorized.' He did not conceal from himself, however, that in so doing ground would be occupied which it would be difficult to defend, and he proceeds to say: 'The less that is said about any constitutional difficulty the better. Congress should do what is necessary in silence. I find but one opinion as to the necessity of shutting up the Constitution for some time.' Mr. John Quincy Adams held similar views. … But it is difficult to conceive of any doctrine more dangerous or more distinctly antagonistic to the fundamental ideas of the American Union than the doctrine that the Constitution may be 'shut up' for a time in order that the government may accomplish something not warranted by it. The political immorality was obvious and glaring; more so in the case of the apostle of strict construction than it could have been if advanced by any other statesman of the day. … But Mr. Jefferson's political mistake was scarcely greater than that committed by his opponents: and, indeed, from a party standpoint it was no mistake whatsoever, but a bold measure of wise policy.

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… The purchase, according to the Federal view of the Constitution, was perfectly legitimate. … But the Federalists in general took narrow and partisan views, and in order to embarrass the administration resorted to quibbles which were altogether unworthy the party which had boasted of Washington as its chief and Hamilton as the exponent of its doctrines. … The Federal leaders did not stop at cavils; they insisted that the unconstitutional extension of territory was in effect a dissolution of the Union, so that they were at liberty to contemplate and plan for a final disruption."

_Judge T. M. Cooley, The Acquisition of Louisiana (Indiana Historical Society Pamphlets, number 3)._

The result of the debates on the Louisiana treaty, in the Senate and the House, "decided only one point. Every speaker, without distinction of party, agreed that the United States government had the power to acquire new territory either by conquest or by treaty; the only difference of opinion regarded the disposition of this territory after it was acquired. Did Louisiana belong to the central government at Washington, or to the States? … Whether the government at Washington could possess Louisiana as a colony or admit it as a State, was a difference of no great matter if the cession were to hold good; the essential point was that for the first time in the national history all parties agreed in admitting that the government could govern. … Even in 1804 the political consequences of the act were already too striking to be overlooked. Within three years of his inauguration Jefferson bought a foreign colony without its consent and against its will, annexed it to the United States by an act which he said made blank paper of the Constitution; and then he who had found his predecessors too monarchical, and the Constitution too liberal in powers,—he who had nearly dissolved the bonds of society rather than allow his predecessor to order a dangerous alien out of the country in a time of threatened war,—made himself monarch of the new territory, and wielded over it, against its protests, the powers of its old kings. Such an experience was final; no century of slow and half-understood experience could be needed to prove that the hopes of humanity lay thenceforward, not in attempting to restrain the government from doing whatever the majority should think necessary, but in raising the people themselves till they should think nothing necessary but what was good."

_H. Adams, History of the United States of America during the first Administration of Jefferson, volume 2, chapters 4-6._

ALSO IN: _Treaties and Conventions between the United States and other Powers (edition of 1889), pages 331-342. _

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1803. Report on the British impressment of seamen from American ships.

"In consequence of a resolution of the Senate, calling upon the President for information respecting the violation of the national flag, and the impressment of American seamen, he communicated to that body a letter from the Secretary of State, specifying all the cases of impressment which had come to the knowledge of that Department. The Secretary had no information of the violation of the national flag, except in the recent aggression of Morocco. It appeared, by this report, that 43 citizens of the United States had been impressed by the British, of whom 12 had protections. Ten were natives of the British dominions, and 17 of other countries, none of whom were stated to have been naturalized. Thus a practice which, even within the British dominions, violates the dearest rights of personal liberty, and which their courts have never ventured to justify, and which is excused and acquiesced in on the plea of necessity, was unhesitatingly exercised by British navy officers on board of American vessels."

_G. Tucker, History of the United States, chapter 12 (volume 2)._

"When the captain of a British frigate overhauled an American merchant-vessel for enemy's property or contraband of war, he sent an officer on board who mustered the crew, and took out any seamen whom he believed to be British. The measure, as the British navy regarded it, was one of self-protection. If the American government could not or would not discourage desertion, the naval commander would recover his men in the only way he could. Thus a circle of grievances was established on each side. … The growth of American shipping stimulated desertions from the British service to the extent of injuring its efficiency; and these desertions in their turn led to a rigorous exercise of the right of impressment. To find some point at which this vicious circle could be broken was a matter of serious consequence to both countries, but most so to the one which avowed that it did not mean to protect its interest by force. Great Britain could have broken the circle by increasing the pay and improving the condition of her seamen; but she was excessively conservative, and the burdens already imposed on her commerce were so great that she could afford to risk nothing. … Conscious of her own power, she thought that the United States should be first to give way. Had the American government been willing to perform its neutral obligations strictly, the circle might have been broken without much trouble; but the United States wished to retain their advantage, and preferred to risk whatever England might do rather than discourage desertion, or enact and enforce a strict naturalization law, or punish fraud, The national government was too weak to compel the States to respect neutral obligations, even if it had been disposed to make the attempt. The practice of impressment brought the two governments to a deadlock on an issue of law. No one denied that every government had the right to command the services of its native subjects, and as yet no one ventured to maintain that a merchant-ship on the high seas could lawfully resist the exercise of this right; but the law had done nothing to define the rights of naturalized subjects or citizens. The British government might, no doubt, impress its own subjects; but almost every British sailor in the American service carried papers of American citizenship, and although some of these were fraudulent, many were genuine. The law of England, as declared from time out of mind by every generation of her judges, held that the allegiance of a subject was indefeasible, and therefore that naturalization was worthless. The law of the United States, as declared by Chief-Justice Ellsworth in 1799, was in effect the same."

_H. Adams, History of the United States of America, during the first Administration of Thomas Jefferson, volume 2, chapter 14._

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"Great Britain was clearly in the wrong. She ought to have kept her seamen by increasing their pay and putting an end to the grievances which produced the mutiny of the Nore. In heartlessly neglecting to render the service just to the common sailor, and at the same time making a brutal use of impressment, aristocratic government showed its dark side. It is true that impressment was conscription in a coarse form, and that the extreme notion of indefeasible allegiance still prevailed. But the practice, however lawful, was intolerable, and its offensiveness was sure to be aggravated by the conduct of British commanders full of the naval pride of their nation and perhaps irritated by the loss of their crews; for it is not denied that many British seamen were seduced from the service and that the American marine, both mercantile and national, was largely manned in this way."

_Goldwin Smith, The United States, chapter 3._

See, also, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1804-1809.

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1803-1804. Federalist Secession movement.

"In the winter … of 1803-4, immediately after, and as a consequence of, the acquisition of Louisiana, certain leaders of the Federal party conceived the project of the dissolution of the Union, and the establishment of a Northern Confederacy. The justifying causes to those who entertained it were, that the annexation of Louisiana to the Union transcended the constitutional powers of the government of the United States; that it created, in fact, a new confederacy, to which the States, united by the former compact, were not bound to adhere; that it was oppressive to the interests and destructive to the influence of the Northern section of the Confederacy, whose right and duty it therefore was to secede from the new body politic, and to constitute one of their own. It was lamented that one inevitable consequence of the annexation of Louisiana to the Union would be to diminish the relative weight and influence of the Northern section; that it would aggravate the evil of the slave representation; and endanger the Union itself, by the expansion of its bulk, and the enfeebling extension of its line of de·fence against foreign invasion. A Northern Confederacy was thought to be the only probable counterpoise to the manufacture of new States in the South. This project was quietly and extensively discussed at the time, by the members of Congress from Massachusetts and Connecticut especially. General Hamilton, indeed, was chosen as the person to be placed, at the proper time, at the head of the military movement which, it was foreseen, would be necessary for carrying the plan into execution. He was consulted on the subject; and although it is quite certain that he was opposed to it, he consented to attend a meeting of Federalists in Boston in the autumn of 1804, but his untimely death, in the summer of that year, prevented the meeting. To whatever proportions, however, the project might otherwise have gone, it was checked by the advantage which was evident to all of the securing of so large a domain, by the great desirableness of preventing France from holding the mouth of our great river, and by the settlement of the question of our national boundaries. These considerations gave a quietus for a time to the suggestions of sectional jealousy."

_C. F. Robertson, The Louisiana Purchase in its Influence upon the American System (Papers of the American Historical Association, volume 1), pages 262-263._

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1804. Fifth Presidential Election.

Thomas Jefferson, Democratic Republican, reelected by the vote of 162 Electors in the College, against 14 voting for Charles C. Pinckney, Federalist. George Clinton was chosen Vice President.

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1804-1805. Impeachment and trial of Judge Chase.

In the closing hours of the session of Congress which expired March 4, 1803, proceedings of impeachment were begun for the removal from the bench of Judge Pickering, United States District Judge of New Hampshire, who had become mentally incapable of discharging the duties of his office. "By the federalists, the attack on Judge Pickering was taken as the first of a series of impeachments, intended to revolutionize the political character of the courts, but there is nothing to prove that this was then the intent of the majority. The most obnoxious justice on the supreme bench was Samuel Chase of Maryland, whose violence as a political partisan had certainly exposed him to the danger of impeachment; but two years had now passed without producing any sign of an intention to disturb him, and it might be supposed that the administration thus condoned his offences. Unluckily, Judge Chase had not the good taste or the judgment to be quiet. He irritated his enemies by new indiscretions, and on May 13, 1803, nearly three months after Pickering's impeachment, Mr. Jefferson, in a letter to Joseph H. Nicholson, suggested that it would be well to take him in hand:—'You must have heard of the extraordinary charge of Chase to the grand jury at Baltimore. Ought this seditious and official attack on the principles of our Constitution and on the proceedings of a State to go unpunished? And to whom so pointedly as yourself will the public look for the necessary measures? I ask these questions for your consideration. As for myself, it is better that I should not interfere.' … Nicholson seems to have passed on to Randolph the charge he had received from the President. … On January 5, 1804, Randolph rose to move for an inquiry into the conduct of Judge Chase. … After a long debate, the inquiry was ordered, and Randolph, with his friend Nicholson, was put at the head of the committee. On March 26, 1804, they reported seven articles of impeachment. … With this the session ended, and the trial went over to the next year. … The impeachment of Justice Chase is a landmark in American history, because it was here that the Jeffersonian republicans fought their last aggressive battle, and, wavering under the shock of defeat, broke into factions which slowly abandoned the field and forgot their discipline. That such a battle must one day be fought for the control of the Judiciary was from the beginning believed by most republicans who understood their own principles. Without controlling the Judiciary, the people could never govern themselves in their own way; and although they might, over and over again, in every form of law and resolution, both state and national, enact and proclaim that theirs was not a despotic but a restricted government, which had no right to exercise powers not delegated to it, and over which they, as States, had absolute control, it was none the less certain that Chief Justice Marshall and his associates would disregard their will, and would impose upon them his own. The people were at the mercy of their creatures. The Constitutions of England, of Massachusetts, of Pennsylvania, authorized the removal of an obnoxious judge on a mere address of the legislature, but the Constitution of the United States had so fenced and fortified the Supreme Court that the legislature, the Executive, the people themselves, could exercise no control over it. {3330} A judge might make any decision, violate any duty, trample on any right, and if he took care to commit no indictable offence he was safe in office for life. On this license the Constitution imposed only one check: it said that all civil officers should be removed from office 'on impeachment for, and conviction of, treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.' This right of impeachment was as yet undefined, and if stretched a little beyond strict construction it might easily be converted into something for which it had not been intended. … Judge Chase's offences were serious. The immediate cause of impeachment, his address to the grand jury at Baltimore on the 2d May, 1803, proved that he was not a proper person to be trusted with the interpretation of the laws. In this address he said that those laws were rapidly destroying all protection to property and all security to personal liberty. 'The late alteration of the federal Judiciary,' said he, 'by the abolition of the office of the sixteen circuit judges, and the recent change in our state Constitution by the establishing of universal suffrage, and the further alteration that is contemplated in our state Judiciary, if adopted, will, in my judgment, take away all security for property and personal liberty. The independence of the national Judiciary is already shaken to its foundations, and the virtue of the people alone can restore it.' That by this reference to the virtue of the people he meant to draw a contrast with the want of virtue in their government was made clear by a pointed insult to Mr. Jefferson: 'The modern doctrines by our late reformers, that all men in a state of society are entitled to enjoy equal liberty and equal rights, have brought this mighty mischief upon us, and I fear that it will rapidly progress until peace and order, freedom and property, shall be destroyed.' … There was gross absurdity in the idea that the people who, by an immense majority, had decided to carry on their government in one way should be forced by one of their own servants to turn about and go in the opposite direction; and the indecorum was greater than the absurdity, for if Judge Chase or any other official held such doctrines, even though he were right, he was bound not to insult officially the people who employed him. On these grounds Mr. Jefferson privately advised the impeachment, and perhaps Randolph might have acted more wisely had he followed Mr. Jefferson's hint to rely on this article alone, which in the end came nearer than any other to securing conviction. … The articles of impeachment which Randolph presented to the House on March 26, 1804, and which were, he claimed, drawn up with his own hand, rested wholly on the theory of Chase's criminality; they contained no suggestion that impeachment was a mere inquest of office. But when Congress met again, and, on December 3, the subject came again before the House, it was noticed that two new articles, the fifth and sixth, had been quietly interpolated, which roused suspicion of a change in Randolph's plan. … No one could doubt that Randolph and his friends, seeing how little their ultimate object would be advanced by a conviction on the old charges, inserted these new articles in order to correct their mistake and to make a foundation for the freer use of impeachment as a political weapon. The behavior of Giles and his friends in the Senate strengthened this suspicion. He made no concealment of his theories, and labored earnestly to prevent the Senate from calling itself a court, or from exercising any functions that belonged to a court of law."

_H. Adams, John Randolph, chapters 4-6._