Volume II Part 44 (2/2)
”Yankee Freeholder” reminded his readers that ”Calumny had a.s.sailed General MARSHALL, in common with other men of merit.” Virginia newspapers had ”slandered him”; politicians had called him ”_Aristocrat_, _Tory_, and _British Agent_. All this abuse ... would infallibly have rendered him popular in _New-England_”--but not so in ”_Virginia_,” where there were ”too many ignorant, ill-informed and inflamed minds.”
Therefore, ”it became necessary that General MARSHALL should explicitly exhibit his political creed.” After all, his answers to ”Freeholder”
were not so bad--he did not a.s.sail the const.i.tutionality of the Alien and Sedition Laws. ”If Gen. MARSHALL thought them unconst.i.tutional or dangerous to liberty, would he” be content merely to say they were unnecessary? ”Would a man of General MARSHALL'S force of reasoning, simply denominate _laws useless_,” if he thought them unconst.i.tutional?
”No--the idea is too absurd to be indulged.... Time and General MARSHALL'S conduct will hereafter prove that I am not mistaken in my opinion of his sentiments.”[885]
Cabot's strategy had little effect on New England, which appeared to dislike Virginia with a curious intolerance. The Ess.e.x County politician, nevertheless, stood by his guns; and six months later thus rea.s.sures King: ”I am ready to join you as well as Ames in reprobating the publication of Marshall's sentiments on the Sedition & Alien Acts, but I still _adhere_ to my first opinion that Marshall ought not to be attacked in the Newspapers, nor too severely condemned anywhere, because Marshall has not yet learned his whole lesson, but has a mind & disposition which can hardly fail to make him presently an accomplished (political) Scholar & a very useful man.
”Some allowance too should be made,” contends Cabot, ”for the influence of the Atmosphere of Virginia which doubtless makes every one who breathes it visionary &, upon the subject of Free Govt., incredibly credulous; but it is certain that Marshall at Phila. would become a most powerful auxiliary to the cause of order & good Govt., & _therefore_ we ought not to diminish his fame which wou'd ultimately be a loss to ourselves.”[886]
The experienced practical politician, Sedgwick, correctly judged that ”Freeholder's” questions to Marshall and Marshall's answers were an ”electioneering trick.” But Pickering stoutly defended Marshall upon this charge. ”I have not met with one good federalist, who does not regret his answers to the Freeholder; but I am sorry that it should be imagined to be an 'electioneering trick.'... General Marshall is incapable of doing a dishonorable act.” Only Marshall's patriotism had induced him to accept the French mission, said the Secretary of State.[887] Nothing but ”the urging of friends ... overcame his reluctance to come to Congress.... A man of untainted honor,” had informed Pickering that ”Marshall is a _Sterling fellow_.”[888]
The Federalists' complaints of him continued to be so strong and widespread, however, that they even reached our legations in Europe: ”I too have lamented that John Marshall, after such a mission particularly, should lend himself thus against a law which the French Jacobinism in the United States had forced government to adopt. M[arshall] _before_, was not, that we ever heard of, one of us.”[889]
Toward the end of October Marshall gives his private opinion of the Virginia Republicans and their real motives, and foretells the Virginia Resolutions. ”The real french party of this country again begins to show itself,” he writes. ”There are very many indeed in this part of Virginia who speak of our own government as an enemy infinitely more formidable and infinitely more to be guarded against than the French Directory. Immense efforts are made to induce the legislature of the state which will meet in Dec'r to take some violent measure which may be attended with serious consequences. I am not sure that these efforts will entirely fail. It requires to be in this part of Virginia to know the degree of irritation which has been excited and the probable extent of the views of those who excite it.”[890]
The most decent of the attacks on Marshall were contained in a series of open letters first published in the ”Aurora”[891] and signed ”Curtius.”
”You have long been regarded,” writes Curtius, ”as the leader of that party in this State” which has tried ”by audacious efforts to erect a monarchy or aristocracy upon the ruins of our free const.i.tution. The energy of your mind and the violence of your zeal have exalted you to this bad eminence.” If you had ”employed your talents in defense of the people ... your history would have been read in a nation's eyes.”
”The publication of your dispatches and the happy exercise of diplomatic skill has produced a momentary delusion and infatuation in which an opposition to the administration is confounded with hostility to the government and treason to the country.... The execrations and yells against French cruelty and French ambition, are incessantly kept up by the hirelings of Great Britain and the enemies of liberty.”
But, he cries, ”the vengeance of an oppressed and insulted people is almost as terrible as the wrath of Heaven”; and, like a true partisan, Curtius predicts that this is about to fall on Marshall. Why, he asks, is Marshall so vague on the const.i.tutionality of the Alien and Sedition Laws?[892] ”Notwithstanding the magnitude ... of your talents, you are ridiculously awkward in the arts of dissimulation and hypocrisy.... It is painful to attack ... a man whose talents are splendid and whose private character is amiable”; but ”sacred duties ... to the cause of truth and liberty require it.” Alas for Marshall! ”You have lost forever,” Curtius a.s.sures him, ”the affection of a nation and the applause of a world. In vain will you pursue the th.o.r.n.y and rugged path that leads to fame.”[893]
But while ”monarchist,” ”aristocrat,” ”British agent,” ”enemy of free speech,” ”destroyer of trial by jury” were among the more moderate epithets that filled the air from Republican lips; and ”anarchist,”
”Frenchman,” ”traitor,” ”foe of law and order,” ”hater of government”
were the milder of the counter-blasts from the Federalists, all this was too general, scattered, and ineffective to suit the leader of the Republican Party. Jefferson saw that the growing popular rage against the Alien and Sedition Laws must be gathered into one or two concentrated thunderbolts and thus hurled at the heads of the already quaking Federalists.
How to do it was the question to which Jefferson searched for an answer.
It came from the bravest, most consistent, most unselfish, as well as one of the very ablest of Republicans, John Taylor ”of Caroline,”
Virginia. In a letter to Jefferson concerning the Alien and Sedition Laws, this eminent and disinterested radical suggested that ”_the right of the State governments to expound the const.i.tution_ might possibly be made the basis of a movement towards its amendment. If this is insufficient the people in state conventions are incontrovertibly the contracting parties and, possessing the infringing rights, may proceed by orderly steps to attain the object.”[894]
So was planted in Jefferson's mind the philosophy of secession. In that fertile and receptive soil it grew with magic rapidity and bore fatal fruit. Within two months after he received Taylor's letter, Jefferson wrote the historic resolutions which produced a situation that, a few years afterward, called forth Marshall's first great const.i.tutional opinion, and, not many decades later, gave the battle-cry that rallied heroic thousands to armed resistance to the National Government.[895] On October 5, 1798, Nicholas writes Jefferson that he has delivered to ”Mr.
John Breckenridge a copy of the resolutions that you sent me.”[896] They were pa.s.sed by the Legislature of Kentucky on November 14, 1798; and the tremendous conflict between Nationality and States' Rights, which for so long had been preparing, at last was formally begun.[897] Jefferson's ”Kentucky Resolutions” declared that parts of the Alien and Sedition Laws were ”altogether void and of no effect.”[898] Thus a State a.s.serted the ”right” of any or all States to annul and overthrow a National law.
As soon as Kentucky had acted, Jefferson thus writes Madison: ”I enclose you a copy of the draught of the Kentucky resolves. I think we should distinctly affirm all the important principles they contain so as to hold that ground in future, and leave the matter in such a train as that we may not be committed absolutely to push the matter to extremities, & yet may be free to push as far as events will render prudent.”[899]
Madison accordingly drew the resolutions adopted by the Legislature of Virginia, December 21, 1798. While declaring the Alien and Sedition Laws unconst.i.tutional, the Virginia Resolutions merely appealed to the other States to ”co-operate with this state in maintaining unimpaired the authority, rights, and liberties reserved to the states respectively or to the people.”[900]
The Legislature promptly adopted them and would gladly have approved far stronger ones. ”The leaders ... were determined upon the overthrow of the General Government; and if no other measure would effect it, that they would risk it upon the chance of war.... Some of them talked of 'seceding from the Union,'”[901] Iredell writes his wife: ”The General a.s.sembly of Virginia are pursuing steps which directly lead to a civil war; but there is a respectable minority struggling in defense of the General Government, and the Government itself is fully prepared for anything they can do, resolved, if necessary, to meet force with force.”[902] Marshall declared that he ”never saw such intemperance as existed in the V[irginia] a.s.sembly.”[903]
Following their defiant adoption of Madison's resolutions, the Republican majority of the Legislature issued a campaign pamphlet, also written by Madison,[904] under the form of an address to the people. The ”guardians of State Sovereignty would be perfidious if they did not warn” the people ”of encroachments which ... may” result in ”usurped power”; the State Governments would be ”precipitated into impotency and contempt” in case they yielded to such National laws as the Alien and Sedition Acts; if like ”infractions of the Federal Compact” were repeated ”until the people arose ... in the majesty of their strength,”
it was certain that ”the way for a revolution would be prepared.”
The Federalist pleas ”to disregard usurpation until foreign danger shall have pa.s.sed” was ”an artifice which may be forever used,” because those who wished National power extended ”can ever create national embarra.s.sments to soothe the people to sleep whilst that power is swelling, silently, secretly and fatally.”
Such was the Sedition Act which ”commits the sacrilege of arresting reason; ... punishes without trial; ... bestows on the President despotic powers ... which was never expected by the early friends of the Const.i.tution.” But now ”Federal authority is deduced by implication”
by which ”the states will be stript of every right reserved.” Such ”tremendous pretensions ... inflict a death wound on the Sovereignty of the States.” Thus wrote the same Madison who had declared that nothing short of a veto by the National Government on ”any and every act of the states” would suffice. There was, said Madison's campaign doc.u.ment, no ”specified power” in the National Government ”embracing a right against freedom of the press”--that was a ”const.i.tutional” prerogative of the States.
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