Part 5 (2/2)
[Map: Presidential Election of 1800 Popular Vote by Counties]
The effect of Hamilton's indiscretion was probably slight. Adams carried all the electoral votes in the New England States, leading Pinckney by a single vote. The Federalists were completely successful also in New Jersey and Delaware. Through the tactics of thirteen Federalists in the Senate of Pennsylvania, they won seven of the fifteen electoral votes of that State. In Maryland they divided the electoral vote evenly with their opponents. In North Carolina, they secured four of the twelve votes; but in South Carolina they were completely discomfited. Instead of carrying his own State for the ticket, Pinckney was outgeneraled by the strategy of his cousin Charles Pinckney, who effected an irresistible combination of the Piedmont farmers and the artisans of Charleston. The loss of South Carolina was irretrievable and decisive.
The Federalists had to concede the defeat of their ticket.
The exultation of the Republicans was at first unbounded. ”The election of a Republican President,” wrote the editor of the Schenectady _Cabinet_ triumphantly, ”is a new Declaration of Independence, as important in its consequences as that of '76, and of much more difficult achievement.” But the elation of the Jeffersonians was somewhat tempered by the information that Jefferson and Burr had an equal number of votes in the electoral college. Adams was defeated, to be sure, but was Thomas Jefferson elected? Neither Jefferson nor Burr had ”the highest number of votes” which the Const.i.tution required for an election. The House of Representatives, therefore, must choose between them. But the House was Federalist! Coincidently with these tidings came rumors that the Federalists would prevent an election by the House until the 4th of March pa.s.sed, when the Presidency and Vice-Presidency would fall vacant, necessitating a new election. Scarcely less ominous was the report that the Federalists would endeavor to seat Burr in the presidential chair.
When balloting began in the House on February 11, 1801, enough Federalists had been involved in an intrigue to defeat Jefferson to give the vote of six States to Burr. Jefferson received the vote of eight States, but not the majority which was needed to elect, inasmuch as the delegations of two States were evenly divided. The result was the same on thirty-five successive ballots. On the thirty-sixth, February 17, Jefferson received the votes of ten States and Burr of four. The votes of Delaware and South Carolina were blank, the Federalists having agreed to produce a tie by not voting. A similar abstention from voting on the part of Federalists from Vermont and Maryland gave the votes of those States to Jefferson.
More than any other man, Bayard, of Delaware, was responsible for the election of Jefferson. Finding that Burr would not ”commit himself,”
Bayard announced that he would cast the single vote of his State for Jefferson. ”You cannot well imagine the clamor and vehement invective to which I was subjected for some days,” he wrote to Hamilton. ”We had several caucuses. All acknowledged that nothing but desperate measures remained, which several were disposed to adopt, and but few were willing openly to disapprove. We broke up each time in confusion and discord, and the manner of the last ballot was arranged but a few minutes before the ballot was taken.” How narrowly the Federalists escaped the folly of electing Burr may be inferred from the further statement of Bayard, that ”the means existed of electing Burr, but this required his cooperation. By deceiving one man (a great blockhead), and tempting two (not incorruptible), he might have secured a majority of the States.”
In after years Jefferson was wont to speak of his election as ”the Revolution of 1800.” To his mind, it was ”as real a revolution in the principles of our government as that of 1776 was in its form; not effected, indeed, by the sword, as that, but by the rational and peaceable instrument of reform, the suffrage of the people.” In one sense, at least, Jefferson was right. Taken collectively, the events of 1800 do const.i.tute a revolution--the first party revolution in American history. For a season it seemed as though the Republican party was to be denied the right to exist as a legal opposition, ent.i.tled to attain power by persuasion. At the risk of incurring the suspicion of disloyalty, if not of treason, the Republicans clung tenaciously to their rights as a minority. By persistent use of the press, by unremitting personal efforts, and by adroit electioneering, the leaders succeeded in arousing the apathetic ma.s.ses and converted their minority into an actual majority. They won, therefore, for all time that recognition of the right of legal opposition which is the primary condition of successful popular government.
The change in political weather was foreshadowed during the summer of 1800 by the removal of the seat of government to the banks of the Potomac. For ten years Philadelphia had been the center of the political and the social worlds, which for the only time in American history were then identical. Even those who knew the court life of Europe marveled at the display of wealth and fas.h.i.+on at this republican court. Of this social world, the ”President and his Lady” were not merely the t.i.tular and official leaders, but the real leaders. Between the Virginia aristocracy and the wealthy families of Philadelphia there were natural affinities. And if the second Federalist President and his consort did not become leaders in quite the same sense, it was because John and Abigail Adams belonged temperamentally to a more restrained society.
Those who had enjoyed the hospitalities of the Morrises, the Binghams, and the Willings, and the bodily comforts of Philadelphia hotels and inns, were not likely to find any compensations in the unkempt, straggling village which the Government and private speculators were trying to convert into a fitting abode for the National Government.
There were few comfortable private dwellings. Most of the houses were mere huts occupied by laborers. Great tracts were left unfenced and uncultivated, in the firm expectation that an extraordinary rise in land value was about to take place. That craze for speculation in land which had possessed those with any idle capital afflicted every landowner in or near the new city.
When Mrs. Adams finally reached the city, after a difficult journey through the forest between Baltimore and Was.h.i.+ngton, she met with anything but a cheering welcome. The President's house was not yet finished: the plaster was not even dry on the walls. It was built on a grand and superb scale, but the thrifty New England spirit of the President's wife was appalled at the prospect of having to employ thirty servants to keep the apartments in order and to tend the fires which had everywhere to be kept up to drive away the ague. The ordinary conveniences were wanting. For lack of a yard, Mrs. Adams made a drying-room out of the great unfinished audience room. And the only society which she might enjoy was in Georgetown, two miles away. ”We have, indeed,” she wrote, ”come into _a new country_.” But with true pioneer spirit, she added, ”It is a beautiful spot, capable of every improvement, and, the more I view it, the more I am delighted with it.”
The gloom which enveloped the Federalists after the elections of the year deepened as they straggled into the new capital in November. They approached their labors as men who would save what they could of a falling world. For some time there had been an urgent demand for the reorganization of the federal judiciary. The justices of the Supreme Court objected to circuit duty and urged the erection of a circuit court with a permanent bench of judges. Such a reform was inevitable, it was said; therefore let the Federalists find what consolation they might from the possession of these new judges.h.i.+ps. Patriotism, too, suggested the wisdom of filling the judiciary with men who would uphold the established order. ”In the future administration of our country,”
President Adams wrote to Jay, ”the firmest security we can have against the effects of visionary schemes or fluctuating theories will be in a solid judiciary.”
The Judiciary Act of February 13, 1801, which embodied these aims, added five new districts to those which had been established in 1789, and grouped the twenty-two districts into six circuits. The amount of patronage which thus fell into the President's hands was very considerable, though it was grossly exaggerated by Republicans. The partisan press pictured President John Adams signing the commissions of these new judges.h.i.+ps to the very stroke of twelve on the night of March 3, and then entering his coach and driving in haste from the city.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
On the organization of parties at the close of the century there are two works of importance: G. D. Luetscher, _Early Political Machinery in the United States_ (1903), and M. Ostrogorski, _Democracy and the Organization of Political Parties_ (2 vols., 1902. Vol. II deals with parties in the United States).
Prosecutions under the Sedition Act are reported in F. Wharton, _State Trials of the United States during the Administrations of Was.h.i.+ngton and Adams_ (2 vols., 1846). F. T. Hill, _Decisive Battles of the Law_ (1907), gives an interesting account of the trial of Callender. Two special studies should be mentioned: E. D.
Warfield, _The Kentucky Resolutions of 1798_ (1887), and F. M.
Anderson, ”Contemporary Opinion of the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions,” in the _American Historical Review_, vol. v. The spirit of American politics at this time can be best appreciated by perusing _Porcupine's Works_, the writings of Callender and Tom Paine, and the letters of Fisher Ames, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, and Timothy Pickering.
CHAPTER VII
JEFFERSONIAN REFORMS
The society over whose political destiny Thomas Jefferson was to preside for eight years was for the most part still rural and primitive.
Evidences of a higher culture were wanting outside of communities like Philadelphia, Boston, and Charleston. Even in Philadelphia, the literary as well as the social and political capital, the poet Moore could find only a sacred few whom ”'twas bliss to live with, and 'twas pain to leave.” American life had not yet created an atmosphere in which poetry, or even science, could thrive. The scientific curiosity of the younger generation does not seem to have been whetted in the least by the startling experiments of Franklin; and the figure of Philip Freneau stands almost alone, though Connecticut, to be sure, boasted of her Dwight, her Trumbull, and her Barlow. The ”Connecticut wits” are interesting personalities; but the society which could read, with anything akin to pleasure, Dwight's _Conquest of Canaan_--an epic in eleven books with nearly ten thousand lines--was more admirable for its physical endurance than for its poetical intuitions. Latrobe was quite right when he wrote that in America the labor of the hand took precedence over that of the mind.
The American people were still engaged almost exclusively in agriculture and commerce. Manufacturing was in its infancy. In his report on manufactures in 1791, Hamilton had named seventeen industries which had made notable progress, but most of these were household crafts. In 1790, Samuel Slater had duplicated the inventions of Hargreaves and Arkwright, and had, with Moses Brown, of Rhode Island, set up a successful cotton mill at Pawtucket; but ten years later only four factories were in operation in the whole country.
The wars in Europe had created an unprecedented and ever-increasing demand for American agricultural products. The price of foodstuffs like flour and meal reached a point which made possible enormous profits.
s.h.i.+pping became, therefore, the indispensable handmaid of agriculture, as Jefferson observed. The volume of trade expanded at an astonis.h.i.+ng rate. The total value of exports mounted from $20,000,000 in 1790 to $94,000,000 in the year of Jefferson's inauguration. One half of this amount, however, represented the value of commodities like sugar, coffee, and cocoa, which had been brought into the country for exportation. The easy and almost certain profits of this trade attracted capital which might otherwise have gone into manufacturing.
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