Part 12 (2/2)

Hamilton's reply to this bill of indictment was simple and straightforward. Some rascally speculators had profited from the funding of the debt at face value, but that was only an incident in the restoration of public credit. In view of the jealousies of the states it was a good thing to reduce their powers and pretensions. The Const.i.tution was not to be interpreted narrowly but in the full light of national needs. The bank would enlarge the amount of capital so sorely needed to start up American industries, giving markets to farmers and planters. The tariff by creating a home market and increasing opportunities for employment would benefit both land and labor. Out of such wise policies firmly pursued by the government, he concluded, were bound to come strength and prosperity for the new government at home, credit and power abroad. This view Was.h.i.+ngton fully indorsed, adding the weight of his great name to the inherent merits of the measures adopted under his administration.

The Sharpness of the Partisan Conflict.-As a result of the clash of opinion, the people of the country gradually divided into two parties: Federalists and Anti-Federalists, the former led by Hamilton, the latter by Jefferson. The strength of the Federalists lay in the cities-Boston, Providence, Hartford, New York, Philadelphia, Charleston-among the manufacturing, financial, and commercial groups of the population who were eager to extend their business operations. The strength of the Anti-Federalists lay mainly among the debt-burdened farmers who feared the growth of what they called ”a money power” and planters in all sections who feared the dominance of commercial and manufacturing interests. The farming and planting South, outside of the few towns, finally presented an almost solid front against a.s.sumption, the bank, and the tariff. The conflict between the parties grew steadily in bitterness, despite the conciliatory and engaging manner in which Hamilton presented his cause in his state papers and despite the constant efforts of Was.h.i.+ngton to soften the asperity of the contestants.

The Leaders.h.i.+p and Doctrines of Jefferson.-The party dispute had not gone far before the opponents of the administration began to look to Jefferson as their leader. Some of Hamilton's measures he had approved, declaring afterward that he did not at the time understand their significance. Others, particularly the bank, he fiercely a.s.sailed. More than once, he and Hamilton, shaking violently with anger, attacked each other at cabinet meetings, and nothing short of the grave and dignified pleas of Was.h.i.+ngton prevented an early and open break between them. In 1794 it finally came. Jefferson resigned as Secretary of State and retired to his home in Virginia to a.s.sume, through correspondence and negotiation, the leaders.h.i.+p of the steadily growing party of opposition.

Shy and modest in manner, halting in speech, disliking the turmoil of public debate, and deeply interested in science and philosophy, Jefferson was not very well fitted for the strenuous life of political contest. Nevertheless, he was an ambitious and shrewd negotiator. He was also by honest opinion and matured conviction the exact opposite of Hamilton. The latter believed in a strong, active, ”high-toned” government, vigorously compelling in all its branches. Jefferson looked upon such government as dangerous to the liberties of citizens and openly avowed his faith in the desirability of occasional popular uprisings. Hamilton distrusted the people. ”Your people is a great beast,” he is reported to have said. Jefferson professed his faith in the people with an abandon that was considered reckless in his time.

On economic matters, the opinions of the two leaders were also hopelessly at variance. Hamilton, while cheris.h.i.+ng agriculture, desired to see America a great commercial and industrial nation. Jefferson was equally set against this course for his country. He feared the acc.u.mulation of riches and the growth of a large urban working cla.s.s. The mobs of great cities, he said, are sores on the body politic; artisans are usually the dangerous element that make revolutions; workshops should be kept in Europe and with them the artisans with their insidious morals and manners. The only substantial foundation for a republic, Jefferson believed to be agriculture. The spirit of independence could be kept alive only by free farmers, owning the land they tilled and looking to the sun in heaven and the labor of their hands for their sustenance. Trusting as he did in the innate goodness of human nature when nourished on a free soil, Jefferson advocated those measures calculated to favor agriculture and to enlarge the rights of persons rather than the powers of government. Thus he became the champion of the individual against the interference of the government, and an ardent advocate of freedom of the press, freedom of speech, and freedom of scientific inquiry. It was, accordingly, no mere factious spirit that drove him into opposition to Hamilton.

The Whisky Rebellion.-The political agitation of the Anti-Federalists was accompanied by an armed revolt against the government in 1794. The occasion for this uprising was another of Hamilton's measures, a law laying an excise tax on distilled spirits, for the purpose of increasing the revenue needed to pay the interest on the funded debt. It so happened that a very considerable part of the whisky manufactured in the country was made by the farmers, especially on the frontier, in their own stills. The new revenue law meant that federal officers would now come into the homes of the people, measure their liquor, and take the tax out of their pockets. All the bitterness which farmers felt against the fiscal measures of the government was redoubled. In the western districts of Pennsylvania, Virginia, and North Carolina, they refused to pay the tax. In Pennsylvania, some of them sacked and burned the houses of the tax collectors, as the Revolutionists thirty years before had mobbed the agents of King George sent over to sell stamps. They were in a fair way to nullify the law in whole districts when Was.h.i.+ngton called out the troops to suppress ”the Whisky Rebellion.” Then the movement collapsed; but it left behind a deep-seated resentment which flared up in the election of several obdurate Anti-Federalist Congressmen from the disaffected regions.

Foreign Influences and Domestic Politics

The French Revolution.-In this exciting period, when all America was distracted by partisan disputes, a storm broke in Europe-the epoch-making French Revolution-which not only shook the thrones of the Old World but stirred to its depths the young republic of the New World. The first scene in this dramatic affair occurred in the spring of 1789, a few days after Was.h.i.+ngton was inaugurated. The king of France, Louis XVI, driven into bankruptcy by extravagance and costly wars, was forced to resort to his people for financial help. Accordingly he called, for the first time in more than one hundred fifty years, a meeting of the national parliament, the ”Estates General,” composed of representatives of the ”three estates”-the clergy, n.o.bility, and commoners. Acting under powerful leaders, the commoners, or ”third estate,” swept aside the clergy and n.o.bility and resolved themselves into a national a.s.sembly. This stirred the country to its depths.

From an old print Louis XVI in the Hands of the Mob Great events followed in swift succession. On July 14, 1789, the Bastille, an old royal prison, symbol of the king's absolutism, was stormed by a Paris crowd and destroyed. On the night of August 4, the feudal privileges of the n.o.bility were abolished by the national a.s.sembly amid great excitement. A few days later came the famous Declaration of the Rights of Man, proclaiming the sovereignty of the people and the privileges of citizens. In the autumn of 1791, Louis XVI was forced to accept a new const.i.tution for France vesting the legislative power in a popular a.s.sembly. Little disorder accompanied these startling changes. To all appearances a peaceful revolution had stripped the French king of his royal prerogatives and based the government of his country on the consent of the governed.

American Influence in France.-In undertaking their great political revolt the French had been encouraged by the outcome of the American Revolution. Officers and soldiers, who had served in the American war, reported to their French countrymen marvelous tales. At the frugal table of General Was.h.i.+ngton, in council with the unpretentious Franklin, or at conferences over the strategy of war, French n.o.blemen of ancient lineage learned to respect both the talents and the simple character of the leaders in the great republican commonwealth beyond the seas. Travelers, who had gone to see the experiment in republicanism with their own eyes, carried home to the king and ruling cla.s.s stories of an astounding system of popular government.

On the other hand the dalliance with American democracy was regarded by French conservatives as playing with fire. ”When we think of the false ideas of government and philanthropy,” wrote one of Lafayette's aides, ”which these youths acquired in America and propagated in France with so much enthusiasm and such deplorable success-for this mania of imitation powerfully aided the Revolution, though it was not the sole cause of it-we are bound to confess that it would have been better, both for themselves and for us, if these young philosophers in red-heeled shoes had stayed at home in attendance on the court.”

Early American Opinion of the French Revolution.-So close were the ties between the two nations that it is not surprising to find every step in the first stages of the French Revolution greeted with applause in the United States. ”Liberty will have another feather in her cap,” exultantly wrote a Boston editor. ”In no part of the globe,” soberly wrote John Marshall, ”was this revolution hailed with more joy than in America.... But one sentiment existed.” The main key to the Bastille, sent to Was.h.i.+ngton as a memento, was accepted as ”a token of the victory gained by liberty.” Thomas Paine saw in the great event ”the first ripe fruits of American principles transplanted into Europe.” Federalists and Anti-Federalists regarded the new const.i.tution of France as another vindication of American ideals.

The Reign of Terror.-While profuse congratulations were being exchanged, rumors began to come that all was not well in France. Many n.o.blemen, enraged at the loss of their special privileges, fled into Germany and plotted an invasion of France to overthrow the new system of government. Louis XVI entered into negotiations with his brother monarchs on the continent to secure their help in the same enterprise, and he finally betrayed to the French people his true sentiments by attempting to escape from his kingdom, only to be captured and taken back to Paris in disgrace.

A new phase of the revolution now opened. The working people, excluded from all share in the government by the first French const.i.tution, became restless, especially in Paris. a.s.sembling on the Champs de Mars, a great open field, they signed a pet.i.tion calling for another const.i.tution giving them the suffrage. When told to disperse, they refused and were fired upon by the national guard. This ”ma.s.sacre,” as it was called, enraged the populace. A radical party, known as ”Jacobins,” then sprang up, taking its name from a Jacobin monastery in which it held its sessions. In a little while it became the master of the popular convention convoked in September, 1792. The monarchy was immediately abolished and a republic established. On January 21, 1793, Louis was sent to the scaffold. To the war on Austria, already raging, was added a war on England. Then came the Reign of Terror, during which radicals in possession of the convention executed in large numbers counter-revolutionists and those suspected of sympathy with the monarchy. They shot down peasants who rose in insurrection against their rule and established a relentless dictators.h.i.+p. Civil war followed. Terrible atrocities were committed on both sides in the name of liberty, and in the name of monarchy. To Americans of conservative temper it now seemed that the Revolution, so auspiciously begun, had degenerated into anarchy and mere bloodthirsty strife.

Burke Summons the World to War on France.-In England, Edmund Burke led the fight against the new French principles which he feared might spread to all Europe. In his Reflections on the French Revolution, written in 1790, he attacked with terrible wrath the whole program of popular government; he called for war, relentless war, upon the French as monsters and outlaws; he demanded that they be reduced to order by the restoration of the king to full power under the protection of the arms of European nations.

Paine's Defense of the French Revolution.-To counteract the campaign of hate against the French, Thomas Paine replied to Burke in another of his famous tracts, The Rights of Man, which was given to the American public in an edition containing a letter of approval from Jefferson. Burke, said Paine, had been mourning about the glories of the French monarchy and aristocracy but had forgotten the starving peasants and the oppressed people; had wept over the plumage and neglected the dying bird. Burke had denied the right of the French people to choose their own governors, blandly forgetting that the English government in which he saw final perfection itself rested on two revolutions. He had boasted that the king of England held his crown in contempt of the democratic societies. Paine answered: ”If I ask a man in America if he wants a king, he retorts and asks me if I take him for an idiot.” To the charge that the doctrines of the rights of man were ”new fangled,” Paine replied that the question was not whether they were new or old but whether they were right or wrong. As to the French disorders and difficulties, he bade the world wait to see what would be brought forth in due time.

The Effect of the French Revolution on American Politics.-The course of the French Revolution and the controversies accompanying it, exercised a profound influence on the formation of the first political parties in America. The followers of Hamilton, now proud of the name ”Federalists,” drew back in fright as they heard of the cruel deeds committed during the Reign of Terror. They turned savagely upon the revolutionists and their friends in America, denouncing as ”Jacobin” everybody who did not condemn loudly enough the proceedings of the French Republic. A Ma.s.sachusetts preacher roundly a.s.sailed ”the atheistical, anarchical, and in other respects immoral principles of the French Republicans”; he then proceeded with equal pa.s.sion to attack Jefferson and the Anti-Federalists, whom he charged with spreading false French propaganda and betraying America. ”The editors, patrons, and abettors of these vehicles of slander,” he exclaimed, ”ought to be considered and treated as enemies to their country.... Of all traitors they are the most aggravatedly criminal; of all villains, they are the most infamous and detestable.”

The Anti-Federalists, as a matter of fact, were generally favorable to the Revolution although they deplored many of the events a.s.sociated with it. Paine's pamphlet, indorsed by Jefferson, was widely read. Democratic societies, after the fas.h.i.+on of French political clubs, arose in the cities; the coalition of European monarchs against France was denounced as a coalition against the very principles of republicanism; and the execution of Louis XVI was openly celebrated at a banquet in Philadelphia. Harmless t.i.tles, such as ”Sir,” ”the Honorable,” and ”His Excellency,” were decried as aristocratic and some of the more excited insisted on adopting the French t.i.tle, ”Citizen,” speaking, for example, of ”Citizen Judge” and ”Citizen Toastmaster.” Pamphlets in defense of the French streamed from the press, while subsidized newspapers kept the propaganda in full swing.

The European War Disturbs American Commerce.-This battle of wits, or rather contest in calumny, might have gone on indefinitely in America without producing any serious results, had it not been for the war between England and France, then raging. The English, having command of the seas, claimed the right to seize American produce bound for French ports and to confiscate American s.h.i.+ps engaged in carrying French goods. Adding fuel to a fire already hot enough, they began to search American s.h.i.+ps and to carry off British-born sailors found on board American vessels.

The French Appeal for Help.-At the same time the French Republic turned to the United States for aid in its war on England and sent over as its diplomatic representative ”Citizen” Genet, an ardent supporter of the new order. On his arrival at Charleston, he was greeted with fervor by the Anti-Federalists. As he made his way North, he was wined and dined and given popular ovations that turned his head. He thought the whole country was ready to join the French Republic in its contest with England. Genet therefore attempted to use the American ports as the base of operations for French privateers preying on British merchant s.h.i.+ps; and he insisted that the United States was in honor bound to help France under the treaty of 1778.

The Proclamation of Neutrality and the Jay Treaty.-Unmoved by the rising tide of popular sympathy for France, Was.h.i.+ngton took a firm course. He received Genet coldly. The demand that the United States aid France under the old treaty of alliance he answered by proclaiming the neutrality of America and warning American citizens against hostile acts toward either France or England. When Genet continued to hold meetings, issue manifestoes, and stir up the people against England, Was.h.i.+ngton asked the French government to recall him. This act he followed up by sending the Chief Justice, John Jay, on a pacific mission to England.

The result was the celebrated Jay treaty of 1794. By its terms Great Britain agreed to withdraw her troops from the western forts where they had been since the war for independence and to grant certain slight trade concessions. The chief sources of bitterness-the failure of the British to return slaves carried off during the Revolution, the seizure of American s.h.i.+ps, and the impressment of sailors-were not touched, much to the distress of everybody in America, including loyal Federalists. Nevertheless, Was.h.i.+ngton, dreading an armed conflict with England, urged the Senate to ratify the treaty. The weight of his influence carried the day.

At this, the hostility of the Anti-Federalists knew no bounds. Jefferson declared the Jay treaty ”an infamous act which is really nothing more than an alliance between England and the Anglo-men of this country, against the legislature and the people of the United States.” Hamilton, defending it with his usual courage, was stoned by a mob in New York and driven from the platform with blood streaming from his face. Jay was burned in effigy. Even Was.h.i.+ngton was not spared. The House of Representatives was openly hostile. To display its feelings, it called upon the President for the papers relative to the treaty negotiations, only to be more highly incensed by his flat refusal to present them, on the ground that the House did not share in the treaty-making power.

Was.h.i.+ngton Retires from Politics.-Such angry contests confirmed the President in his slowly maturing determination to retire at the end of his second term in office. He did not believe that a third term was unconst.i.tutional or improper; but, worn out by his long and arduous labors in war and in peace and wounded by harsh attacks from former friends, he longed for the quiet of his beautiful estate at Mount Vernon.

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