Volume II Part 58 (2/2)
Thereupon Hamilton wrote Marshall personally.
This letter is lost; but undoubtedly it was in the same vein as were those to Wolcott, Bayard, Sedgwick, Morris, and other Federalists. But Hamilton could not persuade Marshall to throw his influence to Jefferson. The most Marshall would do was to agree to keep hands off.
”To Mr. Jefferson,” replies Marshall, ”whose political character is better known than that of Mr. Burr, I have felt almost insuperable objections. His foreign prejudices seem to me totally to unfit him for the chief magistracy of a nation which cannot indulge those prejudices without sustaining deep and permanent injury.
”In addition to this solid and immovable objection, Mr. Jefferson appears to me to be a man, who will embody himself with the House of Representatives.[1260] By weakening the office of President, he will increase his personal power. He will diminish his responsibility, sap the fundamental principles of the government, and become the leader of that party which is about to const.i.tute the majority of the legislature.
The morals of the author of the letter to Mazzei[1261] cannot be pure....
”Your representation of Mr. Burr, with whom I am totally unacquainted, shows that from him still greater danger than even from Mr. Jefferson may be apprehended. Such a man as you describe is more to be feared, and may do more immediate, if not greater mischief.
”Believing that you know him well, and are impartial, my preference would certainly not be for him, but I can take no part in this business.
I cannot bring myself to aid Mr. Jefferson. Perhaps respect for myself should, in my present situation, deter me from using any influence (if, indeed I possessed any) in support of either gentleman.
”Although no consideration could induce me to be the Secretary of State while there was a President whose political system I believed to be at variance with my own; yet this cannot be so well known to others, and it might be suspected that a desire to be well with the successful candidate had, in some degree, governed my conduct.”[1262]
Marshall had good personal reasons for wis.h.i.+ng Burr to be elected, or at least that a deadlock should be produced. He did not dream that the Chief Justices.h.i.+p was to be offered to him; his law practice, neglected for three years, had pa.s.sed into other hands; the head of the Cabinet was then the most important[1263] office in the Government, excepting only the Presidency itself; and rumor had it that Marshall would remain Secretary of State in case Burr was chosen as Chief Magistrate. If the tie between Jefferson and Burr were not broken, Marshall might even be chosen President.[1264]
”I am rather inclined to think that Mr. Burr will be preferred....
General Marshall will then remain in the department of state; but if Mr.
Jefferson be chosen, Mr. Marshall will retire,” writes Pickering.[1265]
But if Marshall cherished the ambition to continue as Secretary of State, as seems likely, he finally stifled it and stood aloof from the struggle. It was a decision which changed Marshall's whole life and affected the future of the Republic. Had Marshall openly worked for Burr, or even insisted upon a permanent deadlock, it is reasonably certain that the Federalists would have achieved one of their alternate purposes.
Although Marshall refrained from a.s.sisting the Federalists in their plan to elect Burr, he did not oppose it. The ”Was.h.i.+ngton Federalist,” which was the Administration organ[1266] in the Capital, presented in glowing terms the superior qualifications of Burr over Jefferson for the Presidency, three weeks after Marshall's letter to Hamilton.[1267] The Republicans said that Marshall wrote much that appeared in this newspaper.[1268] If he was influential with the editor, he did not exercise his power to exclude the paper's laudation of the New York Republican leader.
It was reported that Marshall had declared that, in case of a deadlock, Congress ”may appoint a Presidt. till another election is made.”[1269]
The rumor increased Republican alarm and fanned Republican anger. From Richmond came the first tidings of the spirit of popular resistance to ”such a usurpation,”[1270] even though it might result in the election of Marshall himself to the Presidency. If they could not elect Burr, said Jefferson, the Federalists planned to make Marshall or Jay the Chief Executive by a law to be pa.s.sed by the expiring Federalist Congress.[1271]
Monroe's son-in-law, George Hay, under the _nom de guerre_ of ”Hortensius,” attacked Marshall in an open letter in the ”Richmond Examiner,” which was copied far and wide in the Republican press.
Whether Congress will act on Marshall's opinion, says Hay, ”is a question which has already diffused throughout America anxiety and alarm; a question on the decision of which depends not only the peace of the nation, but the existence of the Union.” Hay recounts the many indications of the Federalists' purpose and says: ”I understand that you, Sir, have not only examined the Const.i.tution, but have given an opinion in exact conformity with the wishes of your party.” He challenges Marshall to ”come forward ... and defend it.” If a majority of the House choose Burr the people will submit, says Hay, because such an election, though contrary to their wishes, would be const.i.tutional.
But if, disregarding the popular will and also violating the Const.i.tution, Congress ”shall elect a stranger to rule over us, peace and union are driven from the land.... The usurpation ... will be instantly and firmly repelled. The government will be at an end.”[1272]
Although the ”Was.h.i.+ngton Federalist” denounced as ”a lie”[1273] the opinion attributed to him, Marshall, personally, paid no attention to this bold and menacing challenge. But Jefferson did. After waiting a sufficient time to make sure that this open threat of armed revolt expressed the feeling of the country, he a.s.serted that ”we thought best to declare openly and firmly, one & all, that the day such an act pa.s.sed, the Middle States would arm, & that no such usurpation, even for a single day, should be submitted to.”[1274] The Republicans determined not only to resist the ”usurpation ... by arms,” but to set aside the Const.i.tution entirely and call ”a convention to reorganize and amend the government.”[1275]
The drums of civil war were beating. Between Was.h.i.+ngton and Richmond ”a chain of expresses” was established, the messengers riding ”day and night.”[1276] In Maryland and elsewhere, armed men, wrought up to the point of bloodshed, made ready to march on the rude Capital, sprawling among the Potomac hills and thickets. Threats were openly made that any man appointed President by act of Congress, pursuant to Marshall's reputed opinion, would be instantly a.s.sa.s.sinated. The Governor of Pennsylvania prepared to lead the militia into Was.h.i.+ngton by the 3d of March.[1277]
To this militant att.i.tude Jefferson ascribed the final decision of the Federalists to permit his election. But no evidence exists that they were intimidated in the least, or in any manner influenced, by the ravings of Jefferson's adherents. On the contrary, the Federalists defied and denounced the Republicans and met their threats of armed interference with declarations that they, too, would resort to the sword.[1278]
The proof is overwhelming and decisive that nothing but Burr's refusal to help the Federalists in his own behalf,[1279] his rejection of their proposals,[1280] and his determination, if chosen, to go in as a Republican untainted by any promises;[1281] and, on the other hand, the a.s.surances which Jefferson gave Federalists as to offices and the princ.i.p.al Federalist policies--Neutrality, the Finances, and the Navy[1282]--only all of these circ.u.mstances combined finally made Jefferson president. Indeed, so stubborn was the opposition that, in spite of his bargain with the Federalists and Burr's repulsion of their advances, nearly all of them, through the long and thrillingly dramatic days and nights of balloting,[1283] with the menace of physical violence hanging over them, voted against Jefferson and for Burr to the very end.
The terms concluded with Jefferson, enough Federalists cast blank ballots[1284] to permit his election; and so the curtain dropped on this comedy of shame.[1285] ”Thus has ended the most wicked and absurd attempt ever tried by the Federalists,” said the innocent Gallatin.[1286] So it came about that the party of Was.h.i.+ngton, as a dominant and governing force in the development of the American Nation, went down forever in a welter of pa.s.sion, tawdry politics, and disgraceful intrigue. All was lost, including honor.
But no! All was not lost. The Judiciary remained. The newly elected House and President were Republican and in two years the Senate also would be ”Jacobin”; but no Republican was as yet a member of the National Judiciary. Let that branch of the Government be extended; let new judges.h.i.+ps be created, and let new judges be made while Federalists could be appointed and confirmed, so that, by means, at least, of the National Courts, States' Rights might be opposed and r.e.t.a.r.ded, and Nationalism defended and advanced--thus ran the thoughts and the plans of the Federalist leaders.
Adams, in the speech to Congress in December of the previous year, had urged the enactment of a law to this end as ”indispensably necessary.”[1287] In the President's address to the expiring Federalist Congress on December 3, 1800, which Marshall wrote, the extension of the National Judiciary, as we have seen, was again insistently urged.[1288]
Upon that measure, at least, Adams and all Federalists agreed. ”Permit me,” wrote General Gunn to Hamilton, ”to offer for your consideration, the policy of the federal party _extending the influence of our judiciary_; if neglected by the federalists the ground will be occupied by the enemy, the very next session of Congress, and, sir, we shall see ---- and many other scoundrels placed on the seat of justice.”[1289]
Indeed, extension of the National Judiciary was now the most cherished purpose of Federalism.[1290] A year earlier, after Adams's first recommendation of it, Wolcott narrates that ”the steady men” in the Senate and House were bent upon it, because ”there is no other way to combat the state opposition [to National action] but by an efficient and extended organization of judges.”[1291]
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