Volume III Part 9 (2/2)

Nicholson did not care whether the Supreme Court ”p.r.o.nounced the repealing law unconst.i.tutional or not.” The Republican postponement of the session for more than a year ”does not arise from any design ... to prevent the exercise of power by the judges.” But what of the Federalists' solicitude for an early sitting of the court? ”We have as good a right to suppose gentlemen on the other side are as anxious for a session in June, that this power may be exercised, as they have to suppose we wish to avoid it, to prevent the exercise.”[297]

Griswold could not credit the Republicans with so base a purpose: ”I know that it has been said, out of doors, that this is the great object of the bill. I know there have been slanders of this kind; but they are too disgraceful to ascribe to this body. The slander cannot, ought not to be admitted.” So Griswold hoped that Republicans would permit the Supreme Court to hold its summer session. He frankly avowed a wish for an early decision that the Repeal Act was void. ”I think the speedier it [usurpation] is checked the better.”[298]

Bayard at last flatly charged the Republicans with the purpose of preventing the Supreme Court from holding the Repeal Act unconst.i.tutional. ”This act is not designed to amend the Judicial system,” he a.s.serted; ”that is but pretense.... It is to prevent that court from expressing their opinion upon the validity of the act lately pa.s.sed ... until the act has gone into full execution, and the excitement of the public mind is abated.... Could a less motive induce gentlemen to agree to suspend the sessions of the Supreme Court for fourteen months?”[299]

But neither the pleading nor the denunciation of the Federalists moved the Republicans. On Friday, April 23, 1802, the bill pa.s.sed and the Supreme Court of the United States was practically abolished for fourteen months.[300]

At that moment began the movement that finally developed into the plan for the secession of the New England States from the Union. It is, perhaps, more accurate to say that the idea of secession had never been entirely out of the minds of the extreme New England Federalist leaders from the time Theodore Sedgwick threatened it in the debate over the a.s.sumption Bill.[301]

Hints of withdrawing from the Union if Virginia should become dominant crop out in their correspondence. The Republican repeal of the Judiciary Act immediately called forth many expressions in Federalist papers such as this from the Boston _Palladium_ of March 2, 1802: ”Whether the rights and interests of the Eastern States would be perfectly safe when Virginia rules the nation is a problem easy to solve but terrible to contemplate.... As ambitious _Virginia_ will not be just, let valiant _Ma.s.sachusetts_ be zealous.”

Fisher Ames declared that ”the federalists must entrench themselves in the State governments, and endeavor to make State justice and State power a shelter of the wise, and good, and rich, from the wild destroying rage of the southern Jacobins.”[302] He thought the Federalists had neglected the press. ”It is practicable,” said he, ”to rouse our sleeping patriotism--sleeping, like a drunkard in the snow....

The newspapers have been left to the lazy or the ill-informed, or to those who undertook singly work enough for six.”[303]

Pickering, the truculent, brave, and persistent, antic.i.p.ated ”a new confederacy.... There will be--and our children at farthest will see it--a separation.... The British Provinces, even with the a.s.sent of Britain, will become members of the Northern Confederacy.”[304]

The more moderate George Cabot, on the contrary, thought that the strong defense made by the Federalists in Congress would induce the Republicans to cease their attacks on the National courts. ”The very able discussions of the Judiciary Question,” he wrote, ”& great superiority of the Federalists in all the debates & public writings have manifestly checked the career of the _Revolutionists_.”[305] But for once Cabot was wrong; the Republicans were jubilant and hastened to press their a.s.sault more vigorously than ever.

The Federalist newspapers teemed with long arguments against the repeal and laboriously strove, in dull and heavy fas.h.i.+on, to whip their readers into fighting humor. These articles were little more than turgid repet.i.tions of the Federalist speeches in Congress, with a pa.s.sage here and there of the usual Federalist denunciation. For instance, the _Columbian Centinel_, after restating the argument against the Repeal Act, thought that this ”refutes all the absurd doctrines of the Jacobins upon that subject, ... and it will be sooner or later declared by the people, in a tone terrible to the present disorganizing party, to be the true construction of their const.i.tution, and the only one compatible with their safety and happiness.”[306]

The _Independent Chronicle_, on the other hand, was exultant. After denouncing ”the impudence and scurrility of the Federal faction,” a correspondent of that paper proceeded in this fas.h.i.+on: ”The Judiciary!

The Judiciary! like a wreck on Cape Cod is das.h.i.+ng at every wave”; but, thank Heaven, ”instead of the 'Ess.e.x Junto's' Judiciary we are sailing by the grace of G.o.d in the Was.h.i.+ngton _Frigate_--our judges are as at first and Mr. Jefferson has thought fit to practice the old navigation and steer with the same compa.s.s by which _Admiral Was.h.i.+ngton_ regulated his log book. The Ess.e.x Junto may be afraid to trust themselves on board but every true Was.h.i.+ngton American will step on board in full confidence of a prosperous voyage. Huzza for the _Was.h.i.+ngton Judiciary_--no windows broke--no doors burst in--free from leak--tight and dry.”[307]

Destiny was soon again to call John Marshall to the performance of an imperative duty.

FOOTNOTES:

[146] The Senate then met in the chamber now occupied by the Supreme Court.

[147] See _infra_, chap. III.

[148] Jefferson to Congress, Dec. 8, 1801, _Works_: Ford, IX, 321 _et seq._; also _Messages and Papers of the Presidents_: Richardson, I, 331.

[149] Jefferson, Jefferson MSS. Lib. Cong., partly quoted in Beard: _Economic Origins of Jeffersonian Democracy_, 454-55.

[150] For full text of this exposition of Const.i.tutional law by Jefferson see Appendix A.

[151] Ames to King, Dec. 20, 1801, King, IV, 40.

Like most eminent Federalists, except Marshall, Hamilton, and Cabot, Fisher Ames was soon to abandon his Nationalism and become one of the leaders of the secession movement in New England. (See vol. IV, chap. I, of this work.)

[152] See vol. II, 531, 547-48, 550-52, of this work.

[153] _Journal of Samuel Maclay_: Meginness, 90.

[154] _Annals_, 1st Cong. 1st Sess. 862.

[155] _Ib._ 852.

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