Volume I Part 7 (1/2)
With Was.h.i.+ngton and Greene he opposed the Conway cabal; with Jay and Livingston he drafted the Const.i.tution of the State; with Hamilton and Madison he stood for the Federal Const.i.tution, the revision of its style being committed to his pen. Then Was.h.i.+ngton needed him, first in England, afterward as minister to France; and when Monroe relieved him in 1794 he travelled leisurely through Europe for four years, meeting its distinguished writers and statesmen, forming friends.h.i.+ps with Madame De Stael and the Neckers, aiding and witnessing the release of Lafayette from Olmutz prison, and finally a.s.sisting the young and melancholy, but gentle and una.s.suming Duke of Orleans, afterward King of France, to find a temporary asylum in the United States. He returned to America ten years after he had sailed from the Delaware capes, just in time to be called to the United States Senate.]
Into the life of Jay's peaceful administration came another interesting character, the champion of every project known to the inventive genius of his day. We shall hear much of Samuel Latham Mitchill during the next three decades. He was now thirty-five years old, a sort of universal eccentric genius, already known as philosopher, scientist, teacher, and critic, a professor in Columbia, the friend of Joseph Priestley, the author of scientific essays, and the first in America to make mineralogical explorations. Perhaps if he had worked in fewer fields he might have won greater renown, making his name familiar to the general student of our own time; but he belonged to an order of intellect far higher than most of his a.s.sociates, filling the books with his doings and sayings. Although his influence, even among specialists, has probably faded now, he inspired the scientific thought of his time, and established societies which still exist, and whose history, up to the time of his death in 1831, was largely his own. Mitchill belonged to the Republican party because it was the party of Jefferson, and he followed Jefferson because Jefferson was a philosopher. For the same reason he became the personal friend of Chancellor Livingston, with whom, among other things, he founded the Society for the Promotion of Agriculture, Manufactures, and the Useful Arts. It was said of Mitchill that ”he was equally at home in studying the geology of Niagara, or the anatomy of an egg; in offering suggestions as to the angle of a windmill, or the shape of a gridiron; in deciphering a Babylonian brick, or in advising how to apply steam to navigation.”
Mitchill became a member of the a.s.sembly in 1798, and it was his interest in the experiments then being made of applying steam to navigation, that led him to introduce a bill repealing the act of 1787, giving John Fitch the sole right to use steamboats on the Hudson, and granting the privilege to Chancellor Livingston for a term of twenty years, provided that within a year he should build a boat of twenty tons capacity and propel it by steam at a speed of four miles an hour. John Fitch had disappeared, and with him his idea of applying steam to paddles. He had fitted a steam engine of his own invention into a ferry-boat of his own construction, and for a whole summer this creation of an uneducated genius had been seen by the people of Philadelphia moving steadily against wind and tide; but money gave out, the experiment was unsatisfactory, and Fitch wandered to the banks of the Ohio, where opium helped him end his life in an obscure Kentucky inn, while his steamboat rotted on the sh.o.r.es of the Delaware. Then John Stevens of Hoboken began a series of experiments in 1791, trying elliptical paddles, smoke-jack wheels, and other ingenious contrivances, which soon found the oblivion of Fitch's inventions. Subsequently Rumsey, another ingenious American, sought with no better success to drive a boat by expelling water from the stern. When it was announced that the great Chancellor also had a scheme, it is not surprising, perhaps, that the wags of the a.s.sembly ridiculed the project as idle and whimsical. ”Imagine a boat,” said one, ”trying to propel itself by squirting water through its stern.”
Another spoke of it as ”an application of the skunk principle.” Ezra L'Hommedieu, then a state senator, declared that Livingston's ”steamboat bill” was a standing subject of ridicule throughout the entire session.
But there were others than legislators who made sport of these apparently visionary projects to settle the value of steam as a locomotive power. Benjamin H. Latrobe, the most eminent engineer in America, did not hesitate to overwhelm such inventions with objections that, in his opinion, could never be overcome. ”There are indeed general objections to the use of the steam engine for impelling boats,” he wrote, in 1803, ”from which no particular mode of application can be free. These are, first, the weight of the engine and of the fuel; second, the large s.p.a.ce it occupies; third, the tendency of its action to rack the vessel and render it leaky; fourth, the expense of maintenance; fifth, the irregularity of its motion and the motion of the water in the boiler and cistern, and of the fuel-vessel in rough water; sixth, the difficulty arising from the liability of the paddles or oars to break, if light, and from the weight, if made strong. Perhaps some of the objections against it may be obviated. That founded on the expense and weight of the fuel may not for some years exist in the Mississippi, where there is a redundance of wood on the banks; but the cutting and loading will be almost as great an evil.”[80]
[Footnote 80: Rep. to the Am. Philosophical Society, Phila., May, 1803. Within four years the steamboat was running. Latrobe was architect of the Capitol at Was.h.i.+ngton, which he also rebuilt after the British burned it in 1814.]
Mitchill, however, would not be suppressed by the fun-making legislators or the reasoning of a conservative engineer. ”I had to encounter all their jokes and the whole of their logic,” he wrote a friend. His bill finally became a law, and Livingston, with the help of the Doctor, placed a horizontal wheel in a well in the bottom and centre of a boat, which propelled the water through an aperture in the stern. The small engine, however, having an eighteen-inch cylinder and three feet stroke, could obtain a speed of only three miles an hour, and finding that the loss of power did not compensate for the enc.u.mbrance of external wheels and the action of the waves, which he hoped to escape, Livingston relinquished the plan. Four years later, however, the Chancellor's money and Robert Fulton's genius were to enrich the world with a discovery that has immortalised Fulton and placed Livingston's name among the patrons of the greatest inventors.
CHAPTER VIII
OVERTHROW OF THE FEDERALISTS
1798-1800
It is difficult to select a more popular or satisfactory administration than was Jay's first three years as governor.
Opposition growing out of his famous treaty had entirely subsided, salutary changes in laws comforted the people, and with Hamilton's financial system, then thoroughly understood and appreciated, came unprecedented good times. To all appearances, therefore, Jay's re-election in 1798 seemed a.s.sured by an increased majority, and the announcement that Chancellor Livingston was a voluntary rival proved something of a political shock.[81] For many years the relations between Jay and Livingston were intimate. They had been partners in the law, a.s.sociates in the Council of Revision, colleagues in Congress, co-workers in the formation of a state const.i.tution, and companions in the Poughkeepsie convention. Jay had succeeded Livingston in 1784 as secretary of foreign affairs under the Confederation, and while the charming Mrs. Jay was giving her now historic dinners and suppers at 133 Broadway, her cousin, Robert R.
Livingston, of No. 3 Broadway, was among her most distinguished guests. In her home Livingston made those arrangements with Hamilton and Jay, the Morrises and the Schuylers, that resulted in the overthrow of Governor Clinton and his supporters in the convention which ratified the Federal Const.i.tution.
[Footnote 81: William Jay, _Life of John Jay_, Vol. 1, p. 400.]
But after Was.h.i.+ngton's inauguration, and Jay's appointment as chief justice of the United States Supreme Court, the Chancellor had been as intense, if not as violent an opponent of Federalism as Brockholst Livingston. In their criticism of Jay's treaty these two cousins had been especially bitter. The Chancellor attacked it as ”Cato,”
Brockholst as ”Decius;” the one spoke against it on the platform with Aaron Burr, the other voluntarily joined the mob--if he did not actually throw the stone--that wounded Hamilton; while the Chancellor saw a copy of the treaty slowly destroyed at Bowling Green, Brockholst coolly witnessed its distinguished author burned in effigy ”in the Fields.” Relations.h.i.+p did not spare John Jay. Cousin and brother-in-law had the ”love frenzy for France,” which finally culminated in celebrating the ninth anniversary of the treaty of alliance between France and America, at which Brockholst became proudly eloquent, and the Chancellor most happy in the felicity of an historic toast: ”May the present coolness between France and America produce, like the quarrels of lovers, a renewal of love.”
Chancellor Livingston was now in the fifty-first year of his age, tall and handsome, with an abundance of hair already turning gray, which fell in ringlets over a square high forehead, lending a certain dignity that made him appear as great in private life as he was when gowned and throned in his important office.[82] In the estimation of his contemporaries he was one of the most gifted men of his time, and the judgment of a later age has not reversed their decision. He added learning to great natural ability, and brilliancy to profound thought; and although so deaf as to make communication with him difficult, he nearly concealed the defect by his remarkable eloquence and conversational gifts. Benjamin Franklin called him ”the Cicero of America.” His love for the beautiful attracted Edmund Burke. It is doubtful if he had a superior in the State in the knowledge of history and the cla.s.sics, and in the study of science Samuel L.
Mitchill alone stood above him. He lacked the creative genius of Hamilton, the prescient gifts of Jay, and the skill of Burr to marshal men for selfish purposes, but he was at home in debate with the ablest men of his time, a master of sarcasm, of trenchant wit, and of felicitous rhetoric.
[Footnote 82: ”The tall and graceful figure of Chancellor Livingston, and his polished wit and cla.s.sical taste, contributed not a little to deepen the impression resulting from the ingenuity of his argument, the vivacity of his imagination, and the dignity of his station.”--Chancellor Kent's address before The Law a.s.sociation of New York, October 21, 1836. George Shea, _Life of Alexander Hamilton_, Appendix.]
Livingston's candidacy for governor was clearly a dash for the Presidency. He reasoned, as every ambitious New York statesman has reasoned from that day to this, that if he could carry the State in an off year, he would be needed in a presidential year. This reasoning reduces the governors.h.i.+p to a sort of spring-board from which to vault into the White House, and, although only one man in a century has performed the feat, it has always figured as a popular and potent factor in the settlement of political nominations. George Clinton thought promotion would come to him, and Hamilton inspired Jay with a similar notion, although it is doubtful if the people ever seriously considered the candidacy of either; but Livingston, sanguine of better treatment, was willing voluntarily to withdraw from the professional path along which he had moved to great distinction, staking more than he had a right to stake on success. In his reckoning, as the sequel showed, he miscalculated the popularity of Jay as much as Hamilton did that of George Clinton in 1789.
The Chancellor undoubtedly believed the tide of Federalism, which had been steadily rising for six years, was about to ebb. There were sporadic indications of it. Perhaps Livingston thought it had already turned, since Republicans had recently won several significant elections. Two years before DeWitt Clinton and his a.s.sociates had suffered defeat in a city which now returned four a.s.semblymen and one senator with an average Republican majority of more than one thousand.
This indicated that the constant talk of monarchical tendencies, of Hamilton's centralising measures, and of the court customs introduced by Was.h.i.+ngton and followed by Adams, was beginning to influence the timid into voting with Republicans.
But counteracting influences were also at work, which Livingston, in his zeal for political honours, possibly did not observe. New England Federalists, attracted by the fertile valleys of the Hudson and the Mohawk, had filled the western district, and were now holding it faithful to the party of Jay and Hamilton. Just at this time, too, Federalists were bound to be strengthened by the insulting treatment of American envoys sent to France to restore friendly intercourse between the two republics. President Adams' message, based upon their correspondence, a.s.serted that nothing could be accomplished ”on terms compatible with the safety, honour, and essential interests of the United States,” and advised that immediate steps be taken for the national defence. What the President had withheld for prudential reasons, the public did not know; but it knew that the Cabinet favoured an immediate declaration of war, and that the friends of the Administration in Congress were preparing for such an event. This of itself should have taken Livingston out of the gubernatorial contest; for if war were declared before the April election, the result would a.s.suredly be as disastrous to him as the publication of Jay's treaty in April, 1795, would have been hurtful to the Federalists. But Chancellor Livingston, following the belief of his party that France did not intend to go to war with America, accepted what he had been seeking for months, and entered the campaign with high hopes.
Jay had intended retiring from public life at the close of his first term as governor.[83] For a quarter of a century he had been looking forward to a release from the cares of office, and to the quiet of his country home in Westchester; but ”the indignities which France was at that time heaping upon his country,” says William Jay, his son and biographer, ”and the probability that they would soon lead to war, forbade him to consult his personal gratification.”[84] On the 6th of March, therefore, he accepted renomination on a ticket with Stephen Van Rensselaer for lieutenant-governor.
[Footnote 83: William Jay, _Life of John Jay_, Vol. 1, p. 400.]
[Footnote 84: _Ibid._]
It is significant that the anti-Federalists failed to nominate a lieutenant-governor on the ticket with Livingston. Stephen Van Rensselaer was a Federalist of the old school, a brother-in-law of Hamilton, and a vigorous supporter of his party. It is difficult to accept the theory that none of his opponents wanted the place; it is easier to believe that under existing conditions no one of sufficient prominence cared to make the race, especially after President Adams had published the correspondence of the American envoys, disclosing Talleyrand's demand for $240,000 as a gift and $6,000,000 as a loan, with the threat that in the event of failure to comply, ”steps will be taken immediately to ravage the coast of the United States by French frigates from St. Domingo.” The display of such despicable greed, coupled with the menace, acted very much as the fire of a file of British soldiers did in Boston in 1770, and sent the indignant and eloquent reply of Charles C. Pinckney, then minister to France, ringing throughout the country--”Millions for defence, but not a cent for tribute.” Within four weeks Congress authorised the establishment of a navy department, the construction of ten war vessels, the recapture of American s.h.i.+ps unlawfully seized, the purchase of cannon, arms, and military stores, and the raising of a provisional army of ten thousand, with the acceptance of militia volunteers. The French tri-colour gave place to the black c.o.c.kade, a symbol of patriotism in Revolutionary days, and ”Hail Columbia,” then first published and set to the ”President's March,” was sung to the wildest delight of American audiences in theatres and churches.
In the midst of this excitement occurred the election for governor.