Part 6

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mr. Jefferson’s very different view was expressed in the following letter to Mr. Livingston: “... France, placing herself in that door, assumes to us the attitude of defiance. Spain might have retained it quietly for years. Her pacific disposition, her feeble state would induce her to increase our facilities there.... Not so can it ever be in the hands of France; the impetuosity of her temper, the energy and restlessness of her character, placed in a point of eternal friction with us and our character, which, though quiet and loving peace and the pursuit of wealth, is high-minded, despising wealth in competition with insult or injury, enterprising and energetic as any nation on earth,—these circumstances render it impossible that France and the United States can continue long friends when they meet in so irritable a position.... The day that France takes possession of New Orleans fixes the sentence which is to restrain her forever within her low-water mark.... From that moment we must marry ourselves to the British fleet and nation.”

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

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

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

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

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

XI

SECOND PRESIDENTIAL TERM

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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