Volume II Part 58 (1/2)
Considerable retrograde steps in this respect have already been taken, and I expect the same course will be continued.” If so, ”there will exist no cause for war, but to obtain compensation for past injuries”; and this, Marshall is persuaded, is not ”a sufficient motive” for war.[1209]
To others, however, Marshall was apprehensive: ”It is probable that their [the French] late victories and the hope which many of our papers [Republican] are well calculated to inspire, that America is disposed once more to crouch at her [France's] feet may render ineffectual our endeavors to obtain peace.”[1210]
But the second American mission to France had dealt with Bonaparte himself, who was now First Consul. The man on horseback had arrived, as Marshall had foreseen; a statesman as well as a soldier was now the supreme power in France. Also, as we have seen, the American Government had provided for an army and was building a navy which, indeed, was even then attacking and defeating French s.h.i.+ps. ”America in arms was treated with some respect,” as Marshall expresses it.[1211] At any rate, the American envoys did not have to overcome the obstacles that lay in the way two years earlier and the negotiations began without difficulty and proceeded without friction.
Finally a treaty was made and copies sent to Marshall, October 4, 1800.[1212] The Republicans were rejoiced; the Federalist politicians chagrined.[1213] Hamilton felt that in ”the general politics of the world” it ”is a make-weight in the wrong scale,” but he favored its ratification because ”the contrary ... would ... utterly ruin the federal party,” and ”moreover it is better to close the thing where it is than to leave it to a Jacobin to do much worse.”[1214]
Marshall also advised ratification, although he was ”far, very far, from approving”[1215] the treaty. The Federalists in the Senate, however, were resolved not to ratify it; they were willing to approve only with impossible amendments. They could not learn the President's opinion of this course; as to that, even Marshall was in the dark. ”The Secretary of State knows as little of the intentions of the President as any other person connected with the government.”[1216] Finally the Senate rejected the convention; but it was so ”extremely popular,” said the Republicans, that the Federalist Senators were ”frightened” to ”recant.”[1217] They reversed their action and approved the compact. The strongest influence to change their att.i.tude, however, was not the popularity of the treaty, but the pressure of the mercantile interests which wanted the business-destroying conflict settled.[1218]
The Hamiltonian group daily became more wrathful with the President. In addition to what they considered his mistakes of policy and party blunders, Adams's charge that they were a ”British faction” angered them more and more as the circulation of it spread and the public credited it. Even ”General M[arshall] said that the hardest thing for the Federalists to bear was the charge of British influence.”[1219] That was just what the ”Jacobins” had been saying all along.[1220] ”If this cannot be counteracted, our characters are the sacrifice,” wrote Hamilton in anger and despair.[1221] Adams's adherents were quite as vengeful against his party enemies. The rank and file of the Federalists were more and more disgusted with the quarrels of the party leaders. ”I cannot describe ... how broken and scattered your federal friends are!”
lamented Troup. ”We have no rallying-point; and no mortal can divine where and when we shall again collect our strength.... Shadows, clouds, and darkness rest on our future prospects.”[1222] The ”Aurora”
chronicles that ”the disorganized state of the anti-Republican [Federalist] party ... is scarcely describable.”[1223]
Marshall, alone, was trusted by all; a faith which deepened, as we shall see, during the perplexing months that follow. He strove for Federalist union, but without avail. Even the most savage of the President's party enemies felt that ”there is not a man in the U. S. of better intentions [than Marshall] and he has the confidence of all good men--no man regrets more than he does the disunion which has taken place and no one would do more to heal the wounds inflicted by it. In a letter ... he says 'by union we can securely maintain our ground--without it we must sink & with us all sound correct American principle.' His efforts will ... prove ineffectual.”[1224]
It seems certain, then, that Hamilton did not consult the one strong man in his party who kept his head in this hour of anger-induced madness.
Yet, if ever any man needed the advice of a cool, far-seeing mind, lighted by a sincere and friendly heart, Hamilton required it then. And Marshall could and would have given it. But the New York Federalist chieftain conferred only with those who were as blinded by hate as he was himself. At last, in the midst of an absurd and pathetic confusion of counsels,[1225] Hamilton decided to attack the President, and, in October, wrote his fateful and fatal tirade against Adams.[1226] It was an extravaganza of party folly. It denounced Adams's ”extreme egotism,”
”terrible jealousy,” ”eccentric tendencies,” ”violent rage”; and questioned ”the solidity of his understanding.” Hamilton's screed went back to the Revolution to discover faults in the President. Every act of his Administration was arraigned as a foolish or wicked mistake.
This stupid pamphlet was not to be made public, but to be circulated privately among the Federalist leaders in the various States. The watchful Burr secured a copy[1227] and published broadcast its bitterest pa.s.sages. The Republican politicians shook with laughter; the Republican ma.s.ses roared with glee.[1228] The rank and file of the Federalists were dazed, stunned, angered; the party leaders were in despair. Thus exposed, Hamilton made public his whole pamphlet. Although its purpose was to further the plan to secure for Pinckney more votes than would be given Adams, it ended with the apparent advice to support both. Absurd conclusion! There might be intellects profound enough to understand why it was necessary to show that Adams was not fit to be President and yet that he should be voted for; but the mind of the average citizen could not fathom such ratiocination. Hamilton's influence was irreparably impaired.[1229] The ”Was.h.i.+ngton Federalist” denounced his attack as ”the production of a disappointed man” and declared that Adams was ”much his superior as a statesman.”[1230]
The campaign was a havoc of virulence. The Federalists' hatred for one another increased their fury toward the compact Republicans, who a.s.sailed their quarreling foes with a savage and unrestrained ferocity.
The newspapers, whose excesses had whipped even the placid Franklin into a rage a few years before, now became geysers spouting slander, vituperation, and unsavory[1231] insinuations. ”The venal, servile, base and stupid”[1232] ”newspapers are an overmatch for any government,”
cried Ames. ”They will first overawe and then usurp it.”[1233] And Noah Webster felt that ”no government can be durable ... under the licentiousness of the press that now disgraces our country.”[1234]
Discordant Federalists and harmonious Republicans resorted to shameful methods.[1235] ”Never ... was there such an Election in America.”[1236]
As autumn was painting the New England trees, Adams, still tarrying at his Ma.s.sachusetts home, wrote Marshall to give his ”sentiments as soon as possible in writing” as to what the President should say to Congress when it met December 3.[1237] Three days later, when his first request was not yet halfway to Was.h.i.+ngton, Adams, apparently forgetful of his first letter, again urged Marshall to advise him as President in regard to his forthcoming farewell address to the National Legislature.[1238]
[Ill.u.s.tration: _Statue of John Marshall_ _By W. W. Story, at the Capitol, Was.h.i.+ngton, D. C._]
Marshall not only favored the President with his ”sentiments”--he wrote every word of the speech which Adams delivered to Congress and sent it to the distressed Chief Magistrate in such haste that he did not even make a copy.[1239] This presidential address, the first ever made to Congress in Was.h.i.+ngton, was delivered exactly as Marshall wrote it, with a change of only one word ”much” for ”such” and the omission of an adjective ”great.”[1240]
The address is strong on the necessity for military and naval preparation. It would be ”a dangerous imprudence to abandon those measures of self-protection ... to which ... violence and the injustice of others may again compel us to resort.... Seasonable and systematic arrangements ... for a defensive war” are ”a wise and true economy.” The navy is described as particularly important, coast defenses are urged, and the manufacture of domestic arms is recommended in order to ”supercede the necessity of future importations.” The extension of the national Judiciary is pressed as of ”primary importance ... to the public happiness.”[1241]
The election, at last, was over. The Republicans won, but only by a dangerously narrow margin. Indeed, outside of New York, the Federalists secured more electoral votes in 1800 than in the election of Adams four years earlier.[1242] The great constructive work of the Federalist Party still so impressed conservative people; the mercantile and financial interests were still so well banded together; the Federalist revival of 1798, brought about by Marshall's dispatches, was, as yet, so strong; the genuine worth of Adams's statesmans.h.i.+p[1243] was so generally recognized in spite of his unhappy manner, that it would seem as though the Federalists might have succeeded but for the quarrels of their leaders and Burr's skillful conduct of the Republican campaign in New York.
Jefferson and Burr each had seventy-three votes for President. Under the Const.i.tution, as it stood at that time, the final choice for President was thus thrown into the House of Representatives.[1244] By united and persistent effort, it was possible for the Federalists to elect Burr, or at least prevent any choice and, by law, give the Presidency to one of their own number until the next election. This, Jefferson advises Burr, ”they are strong enough to do.”[1245] The Federalists saw their chance; the Republicans realized their danger.[1246] Jefferson writes of the ”great dismay and gloom on the republican gentlemen here and equal exultation on the federalists who openly declare they will prevent an election.”[1247] This ”opens upon us an abyss, at which every sincere patriot must shudder.”[1248]
Although Hamilton hated Burr venomously, he advised the Federalist managers in Was.h.i.+ngton ”to throw out a lure for him, in order to tempt him to start for the plate, and then lay the foundation of dissension between” him and Jefferson.[1249] The Federalists, however, already were turning to Burr, not according to Hamilton's unworthy suggestion, but in deadly earnest. At news of this, the fast-weakening New York Federalist chieftain became frantic. He showered letters upon the party leaders in Congress, and upon all who might have influence, appealing, arguing, persuading, threatening.[1250]
But the Federalists in Congress were not to be influenced, even by the once omnipotent Hamilton. ”The Federalists, almost with one Mind, from every Quarter of the Union, say elect Burr” because ”they must be disgraced in the Estimation of the People if they vote for Jefferson having told Them that He was a Man without Religion, the Writer of the Letter to Mazzei, a Coward, &c., &c.”[1251] Hamilton's fierce warnings against Burr and his black prophecies of ”the _Cataline_ of America”[1252] did not frighten them. They knew little of Burr, personally, and the country knew less. What was popularly known of this extraordinary man was not unattractive to the Federalists.
Burr was the son of the President of Princeton and the grandson of the celebrated Jonathan Edwards, the greatest theologian America had produced. He had been an intrepid and efficient officer in the Revolutionary War, and an able and brilliant Senator of the United States. He was an excellent lawyer and a well-educated, polished man of the world. He was a politician of energy, resourcefulness, and decision.
And he was a practical man of affairs. If he were elected by Federalist votes, the fury with which Jefferson and his friends were certain to a.s.sail Burr[1253] would drive that practical politician openly into their camp; and, as President, he would bring with him a considerable Republican following. Thus the Federalists would be united and strengthened and the Republicans divided and weakened.[1254]
This was the reasoning which drew and bound the Federalists together in their last historic folly; and they felt that they might succeed.
”It is ... certainly within the compa.s.s of possibility that Burr may ultimately obtain nine States,” writes Bayard.[1255] In addition to the solid Federalist strength in the House, there were at least three Republican members, two corrupt and the other light-minded, who might by ”management” be secured for Burr.[1256] The Federalist managers felt that ”the high Destinies ... of this United & enlightened people are up”;[1257] and resolved upon the hazard. Thus the election of Burr, or, at least, a deadlock, faced the Republican chieftain.
At this critical hour there was just one man who still had the confidence of all Federalists from Adams to Hamilton. John Marshall, Secretary of State, had enough influence to turn the scales of Federalist action. Hamilton approached Marshall indirectly at first.
”You may communicate this letter to _Marshall_,” he instructed Wolcott, in one of his most savage denunciations of Burr.[1258] Wolcott obeyed and reported that Marshall ”has yet expressed no opinion.”[1259]