CHAPTER VIII
WELDING THE NATION
The doubt, the drifting, the incongruities and inconsistencies, the mistakes and follies which marked the five years after 1783 form what has been well called "The Critical Period of American History." They proved that the conquests of peace may not only be more difficult than the conquests of war, but that they may outlast those of war. Who should be the builders of the Ship of State? Those who had courage and clear vision, who loved justice, who were patient and humble and unflagging, and who believed with an ineluctable conviction that righteousness exalteth a nation; they were the simple fishermen who in the little church at Torcello predicted the splendor and power of Venice; they were the stern pioneers of Plymouth and Boston who laid the foundations of an empire greater than that of Rome.
It happened that during the American Revolution and immediately afterward, a larger number of such men existed in what had been the American Colonies than anywhere else at any other time in history. At the beginning of the Revolution, within a few weeks of the Declaration of Independence, some of these men, impelled by a common instinct, adopted Articles of Confederation which should hold the former Colonies together and enable them to maintain a common front against the enemy during the war. The Congress controlled military and civic affairs, but the framers of the Articles were wary and too timid to grant the Congress sufficient powers, with the result that Washington, who embodied the dynamic control of the war, was always most inadequately supported; and as he fared, so fared his subordinates.
At the end of the war the Americans found that they had won, not only freedom, but also Independence, the desire for which was not among their original motives. Each of the thirteen States was independent; they all felt the need of a union which would enable them to protect themselves; of a common coinage and postage; of certain common laws for criminal and similar cases; of a common government to direct their affairs with other nations. But by habit and by training each was local rather than National in its outlook. The Georgian had nothing in common with the men of Massachusetts Bay whose livelihood depended upon fisheries, or with the Virginian of the Western border, to whom his relations with the Indians were his paramount concern. The Rhode Islander, busy with his manufactures, knew and cared nothing for the South Carolinian with his rice plantations. How to find a common denominator for all these? That was the business of them all.
The one thing which Washington regarded as likely and against which he wished to have every precaution taken, was a possible attempt of the English to pick a quarrel over some small matter and bring on a renewal of the war. Fortunately for the Americans, this did not happen. Washington knew our weakness so well that he could see how easy it would be for a bold and determined enemy to do us great if not fatal harm. But he did not know that the English themselves were in an almost desperate plight. By Rodney's decisive victory at sea they began to recover their ascendancy against the Coalition, but it was then too late to disavow the treaty. In Parliament George III had been defeated; the defeat meaning a very serious check to the policy which he had pursued for more than twenty years to fix royal tyranny on the British people. King George's system of personal government, himself being the person, had broken down and he could not revive it. Nearly seventy years were to elapse before Queen Victoria, who was as putty in the hands of her German husband, Prince Albert, rejoiced that she had restored the personal power of the British sovereign to a pitch it had not known since her grandfather George III.
The American Revolution had illustrated the fatal weakness of the Congress as an organ of government, and the Articles merely embodied the vagueness of the American people in regard to any real régime. The Congress has been much derided for its shortcomings and its blunders, although in truth not so much the Congress, as those who made it, was to blame. They had refused, in their timidity, to give it power to exercise control. It might not compel or enforce obedience. It did require General Washington during the war to furnish a regular report of his military actions and it put his suggestions on file where many of them grew yellow and dusty; but he might not strike, do that decisive act by which history is born. Their timidity made them see what he had accomplished not nearly so plainly as the dictator on horseback whom their fears conjured up.
During the war the sense of a common danger had lent the Congress a not easily defined but quite real coherence, which vanished when peace came, and the local ideals of the States took precedence. Take taxation. Congress could compute the quota of taxes which each State ought to pay, but it had no way of collecting or of enforcing payment. It took eighteen months to collect five per cent of the taxes laid in 1783. Of course a nation could not go on with such methods. No law binding all the States could be adopted unless every one of the thirteen States assented. Unanimity was almost unattainable; as when Governor Clinton of New York withheld his approval of a measure to improve a system of taxation to which the other twelve States had assented; so Rhode Island, the smallest of all, blocked another reform which twelve States had approved. Our foreign relations must be described as ignominious. Jefferson had taken Franklin's place as Minister to France, but we had no credit and he could not secure the loan he was seeking. John Adams in London, and John Jay in Madrid, were likewise balked. Jay had to submit to the closing of the lower Mississippi to American shipping. He did this in the hope of thereby conciliating Spain to make a commercial treaty which he thought was far more important than shipping. Our people in the Southwest, however, regarded the closing of the river as portending their ruin, and they threatened to secede if it were persisted in. Pennsylvania and New Jersey threw their weight with the Southerners and Congress voted against the Jay treaty. That was the time when the corsairs of the Barbary States preyed upon American shipping in the Mediterranean and seized crews of our vessels and sold them into slavery in Northern Africa. That there was not in the thirteen States sufficient feeling of dignity to resent and punish these outrages marks both their dispersed power and lack of regard for National honor.
After 1783 the States, virtually bankrupt at home, discordant, fickle, and aimless, and without credit or prestige abroad, were filled with many citizens who recognized that the system was bad and must be amended. The wise among them wrote treatises on the remedies they proposed. The wisest went to school of experience and sought in history how confederations and other political unions had fared. Washington wrote for his own use an account of the classical constitutions of Greece and Rome and of the more modern states; of the Amphictyonic Council among the ancient, and the Helvetic, Belgic, and Germanic among the more recent. John Adams devoted two massive volumes to an account of the medieval Italian republics. James Madison studied the Achaian League and other ancient combinations. There were many other men less eminent than these—there was a Peletiah Webster, for instance.
Washington viewed the situation as a pessimist. Was it because the high hopes that he had held during the war, that America should be the noblest among the nations, had been disappointed, or was it because he saw farther into the future than his colleagues saw? On May 18, 1786, he writes intimately to John Jay:
… We are certainly in a delicate situation; but my fear is that the people are not yet sufficiently misled to retract from error. To be plainer, I think there is more wickedness than ignorance mixed in our councils. Under this impression I scarcely know what opinion to entertain of a general convention. That it is necessary to revise and amend the Articles of Confederation, I entertain no doubt; but what may be the consequences of such an attempt is doubtful. Yet something must be done, or the fabric must fall, for it certainly is tottering.
Ignorance and design are difficult to combat. Out of these proceed illiberal sentiments, improper jealousies, and a train of evils which oftentimes in republican governments must be sorely felt before they can be removed. The former, that is ignorance, being a fit soil for the latter to work in, tools are employed by them which a generous mind would disdain to use; and which nothing but time, and their own puerile or wicked productions, can show the inefficacy and dangerous tendency of. I think often of our situation, and view it with concern. From the high ground we stood upon, from the plain path which invited our footsteps, to be so fallen! so lost! it is really mortifying.[1]
[Footnote 1: Ford, xi, 31.]
One of the chief causes of the discontents which troubled the public was the increasing number of persons who had been made debtors after the war by the more and more pressing demands of their creditors. These debtors knew nothing about economics; they only knew that they were being crushed by persons more lucky than themselves. In Massachusetts they broke out in actual rebellion named after the man who led it, Daniel Shays. They were put down by the more or less doubtful appeal to veterans of the National Army, but their ebullition was not forgotten as a symptom of a very dangerous condition. In 1786 representatives from five States met in a convention at Annapolis to consider the hard times and the troubles in trade. Washington, Hamilton, and Madison were thought to be behind the convention, which accomplished little, but made it clear that a large general convention ought to meet and to discuss the way of securing a strong central government. This convention was discussed during that summer and autumn, and a call was issued for a meeting in the following spring at Philadelphia. Virginia turned first to Washington to be one of its delegates, but he had sincere scruples against entering public life again. He wrote to James Madison on November 18th:
Although I had bid adieu to the public walks of life in a public manner, and had resolved never more to tread upon public ground, yet if, upon an occasion so interesting to the well-being of the confederacy, it should have appeared to have been the wish of the Assembly to have employed me with other associates in the business of revising the federal system, I should, from a sense of obligation I am under for repeated proof of confidence in me, more than from any opinion I should have entertained of my usefulness, have obeyed its call; but it is now out of my power to do so with any degree of consistency.[1]
[Footnote 1: Ford, XI, 87.]
Washington's disinclination to abandon the quiet of Mount Vernon and the congenial work he found there, and to be plunged again into political labors, was perhaps his strongest reason for making this decision. But a temporary aggravation ruled him. The Society of the Cincinnati, of which he was president, had aroused much odium in the country among those who were jealous or envious that such a special privileged class should exist, and among those who really believed that it had the secret design of establishing an aristocracy if not actually a monarchy. Washington held that its original avowed purpose, to keep the officers who had served in the Revolution together, would perpetuate the patriotic spirit which enabled them to win, and might be a source of strength in case of further ordeals. But when he found that public sentiment ran so strongly against the Cincinnati, he withdrew as its president and he told Madison that he would vote to have the Society disbanded if it were not that it counted a minority of foreign members. Stronger than a desire for a private life and for the ease of Mount Vernon was his sense of duty as a patriot; so that when this was strongly urged upon him he gave way and consented.
Spring came, the snows melted in the Northern States, and through the month of April the delegates to this Convention started from their homes in the North and in the South for Philadelphia. The first regular session was held on May 25th, although some of the delegates did not arrive until several weeks later. They sat in Independence Hall in the same room where, eleven years before, the Declaration of Independence had been adopted and signed. Of the members in the new Convention, George Washington was easily the first. His commanding figure, tall and straight and in no wise impaired by eight years' campaigns and hardships, was almost the first to attract the attention of any one who looked upon that assembly. He was fifty-five years old. Next in reputation was the patriarch, Benjamin Franklin, twenty-seven years his senior, shrewd, wise, poised, tart, good-natured; whose prestige was thought to be sufficient to make him a worthy presiding officer when Washington was not present. James Madison of Virginia was among the young men of the Convention, being only thirty-six years old, and yet almost at the top of them all in constitutional learning. More precocious still was Alexander Hamilton of New York, who was only thirty, one of the most remarkable examples of a statesman who developed very early and whom Death cut off before he showed any signs of a decline. One figure we miss—that of Thomas Jefferson of Virginia, tall and wiry and red-curled, who was absent in Paris as Minister to France.
Massachusetts sent four representatives, important but not preëminent—Elbridge Gerry, Nathaniel Gorham, Rufus King, and Caleb Strong. New York had only two besides Hamilton; Robert Yates and John Lansing. Pennsylvania trusted most to Benjamin Franklin, but she sent the financier of the Revolution, Robert Morris, and Gouverneur Morris; and with them went Thomas Mifflin, George Clymer, Thomas Fitzsimmons, Jared Ingersoll, James Wilson—all conspicuous public men at the time, although their fame is bedraggled or quite faded now. Wilson ranked as the first lawyer of the group. Of the five from little Delaware sturdy John Dickinson, a man who thought, was no negligible quantity.
Connecticut also had as spokesmen two strong individualities—Roger Sherman and Oliver Ellsworth. Maryland spoke through James McHenry and Daniel Carroll and three others of greater obscurity. Virginia had George Washington, President of the Convention, and James Madison, active, resourceful, and really accomplishing; and in addition to these two: Edmund Randolph, the Governor; George Mason, Washington's hard-headed and discreet lawyer friend; John Blair, George Wythe, and James McClurg. From South Carolina went three unusual orators, John Rutledge, C.C. Pinckney and Charles Pinckney, and Pierce Butler. Georgia named four mediocre but useful men.
In this gathering of fifty-five persons, the proportion between those who were preëminent for common sense and those who were remarkable for special knowledge and talents was very fairly kept. Most of them had had experience in dealing with men either in local government offices or in the army. Socially, they came almost without exception from respectable if not aristocratic families. Of the fifty-five, twenty-nine were university or college bred, their universities comprising Oxford, Glasgow, and Edinburgh besides the American Harvard, William and Mary, Yale, Princeton, and Columbia. The two foremost members, Washington and Franklin, were not college bred. Among the fifty-five we do not find John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, who, as I have said, were in Europe on official business. John Jay also was lacking, because, as it appears, the Anti-Federalists did not wish him to represent them in the Convention; but his influence permeated it and the wider public, who later read his unsigned articles in "The Federalist." Samuel Adams, Patrick Henry, and Richard Henry Lee stayed at home. General Nathanael Greene, the favorite son of Rhode Island, would have been at the Convention but for his untimely death a few weeks before the preceding Christmas.
Owing to delays the active business of the Convention halted, although for at least a fortnight the members who had come promptly carried on unofficial discussions. Washington, being chosen President without a competitor, presided, with perhaps more than his habitual gravity and punctilio. The members took their work very seriously. The debates lasted five or six hours a day, and, as they were continued consecutively until the autumn, there was ample time to discuss many subjects. The Convention adopted strict secrecy as its rule, so that its proceedings were not known by the public nor was any satisfactory report of them kept and published. At the time there was objection to this provision, and now, after more than a century and a third, we must regret that we can never know many points in regard to the actual give and take of discussion in this the most fateful of all assemblies. But from Madison's memoranda and reminiscences we can infer a good deal as to what went on.
The wisdom of keeping the proceedings secret was fully justified. The framers of the Constitution knew that it was to a large degree a new experiment, that it would be subjected to all kinds of criticism, but that it must be judged by its entirety and not by its parts; and that therefore it must be presented entire. At the outset some of the members, foreseeing opposition, were for suggesting palliatives and for sugar-coating. Some of the measures they feared might excite hostility. To these suggestions Washington made a brief but very noble remonstrance which seemed deeply to impress his hearers. And no one could question that it gave the keynote on which he hoped to maintain the business of the Convention. "It is too probable that no plan we propose will be adopted," Washington said very gravely. "Perhaps another dreadful conflict is to be sustained. If, to please the people, we offer what we ourselves disapprove, how can we afterward defend our work? Let us raise a standard to which the wise and honest can repair; the event is in the hand of God."[1] Among the obstacles which seemed very serious—and many believed they would wreck the Convention—was the question of slavery. By this time all the northern part of the country favored its abolition. Even Virginia was on that side. For practical planters like George Washington knew that it was the most costly and least productive form of labor. They opposed it on economic rather than moral grounds. Farther South, however, especially in South Carolina where the negroes seemed to be the only kind of laborers for the rice-fields, and in those regions where they harvested the cotton, the whites insisted that slavery should be maintained. The contest seemed likely to be very fierce between the disputants, and then, with true Anglo-Saxon instinct, they sought for a compromise. The South had regarded slaves as chattels. The compromise brought forward by Madison consisted in agreeing that five slaves should count in population as three. By this curious device a negro was equivalent to three fifths of a white man. Such a compromise was, of course, illogical, leaving the question whether negroes were chattels or human beings with even a theoretical civil character undecided. But many of the members, who saw the illogic quite plainly, voted for it, being dazzled if not seduced by the thought that it was a compromise which would stave off an irreconcilable conflict at least for the present; so Washington, who wished the abolition of slavery, voted for the compromise along with Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, the South Carolinian who regarded slavery as higher than any of the Ten Commandments.
[Footnote 1: Fiske, Critical Period, 250.]
The second compromise referred to the slave trade, which was particularly defended by South Carolina and Georgia. The raising of rice and indigo in those States caused an increasing death-rate among the slaves. The slave trade, which brought many kidnapped slaves from Africa to those States was needed to replenish the number of slaves who died. Virginia had not yet become an important breeding-place of slaves who were sold to planters farther south. The members of the Convention who wished to put an end to this hideous traffic proposed that it should be prohibited, and that the enforcement of the prohibition should be assigned to the General Government. Pinckney, however, keen to defend his privileged institution and the special interests of his State, bluntly informed the Convention that if they voted to abolish the slave trade, South Carolina would regard it as a polite way of telling her that she was not wanted in the new Union. To think of attempting to form a Union without South Carolina amazed them all and made them pliable. Although there was considerable opposition to giving the General Government control over shipping, this provision was passed. The Northerners saw in it the germs of a tariff act which would benefit their manufacturers, and they agreed that the slave trade should not be interfered with before 1808 and that no export tax should be authorized.
The third compromise affected representation. The Convention had already voted that the Congress should consist of two parts, a Senate and a House of Representatives. By a really clever device each State sent two members to the Senate, thus equalizing the small and large States in that branch of the Government. The House, on the other hand, represented the People, and the number of members elected from each State corresponded, therefore, to the population.
As I do not attempt to make even a summary of the details of the Convention, I should pass over many of the other topics which it considered, often with very heated discussion. The fundamental problem was how to preserve the rights of the States and at the same time give the Central Government sufficient power. By devices which actually worked, and for many years continued to work, this conflict was smoothed over, although sixty years later the question of State rights, intertwined with that of slavery, nearly split the Nation in the War of Secession. There was much question as to the term for which the President should be elected and whether by the People or by Congress. Some were for one, two, three, four, ten, and even fifteen years. Rufus King, grown sarcastic, said: "Better call it twenty—it's the average reign of princes." Alexander Hamilton and Gouverneur Morris stood for a life service with provision for the President's removal in case of malfeasance. These gentlemen, in spite of their influence in the Convention, stirred up a deep-seated enmity to their plan. Few instincts were more general than that which drew back from any arrangement which might embolden the monarchists to make a man President for a ten or fifteen years' term or for life. This could not fail to encourage those who wished for the equivalent of an hereditary prince. The Convention soon made it evident that they would have none but a short term, and they chose, finally, four years. There was a debate over the question of his election; should he be chosen directly by the legislature, or by electors? The strong men—Mason, Rutledge, Roger Sherman, and Strong—favored the former; stronger men—Washington, Madison, Gerry, and Gouverneur Morris—favored the latter, and it prevailed. Nevertheless, the Electoral College thus created soon became, and has remained, as useless as a vermiform appendix.
Towards the end of the summer the Convention had completed its first draft of the Constitution; then they handed their work over to a Committee for Style and Arrangement, composed of W.S. Johnson of North Carolina, Hamilton, Gouverneur Morris, Madison, and King. Then, on September 17th, the Constitution of the United States was formally published. This document, done "by the Unanimous Consent of the States present," was sent to the Governor or Legislature of each State with the understanding that its ratification by nine States would be required before it was proclaimed the law of the land.
In his diary for Monday, the seventeenth of September, 1787,
Washington makes this entry:
Met in Convention, when the Constitution received the unanimous consent of 11 States and Colo. Hamilton's from New York [the only delegate from thence in Convention], and was subscribed to by every member present, except Governor Randolph and Colo. Mason from Virginia, & Mr. Gerry from Massachusetts.
The business being thus closed, the members adjourned to the City Tavern, dined together, and took a cordial leave of each other. After which I returned to my lodgings, did some business with, and received the papers from the Secretary of the Convention, and retired to meditate on the momentous wk. which had been executed, after not less than five, for a large part of the time six and sometimes 7 hours sitting every day, [except] Sundays & the ten days adjournment to give a Comee. [Committee] opportunity & time to arrange the business for more than four months.[1]
[Footnote 1: Ford, XI, 155.]
One likes to think of Washington presiding over that Convention for more than four months, seeing one suggestion after another brought forward and debated until finally disposed of, he saying little except to enforce the rules of parliamentary debate. No doubt his asides (and part of his conversation) frankly gave his opinion as to each measure, because he never disguised his thoughts and he seems to have voted when the ballots were taken—a practice unusual to modern presiding officers except in case of a tie. His summing-up of the Constitution, which he wrote on the day after the adjournment in a hurried letter to Lafayette, is given briefly in these lines:
It is the result of four months' deliberation. It is now a child of fortune, to be fostered by some and buffeted by others. What will be the general opinion, or the reception of it, is not for me to decide; nor shall I say anything for or against it. If it be good, I suppose it will work its way; if bad, it will recoil on the framers.
A month later, in the seclusion of Mount Vernon, he spread the same news before his friend General Knox:
… The Constitution is now before the judgment-seat. It has, as was expected, its adversaries and supporters. Which will preponderate is yet to be decided. The former more than probably will be most active, as the major part of them will, it is to be feared, be governed by sinister and self-important motives, to which everything in their breasts must yield….
The other class, he said, would probably ask itself whether the Constitution now submitted was not better than the inadequate and precarious government under which they had been living. If there were defects, as doubtless there were, did it not provide means for amending them? Then he concludes with a gleam of optimism:
… Is it not likely that real defects will be as readily discovered after as before trial? and will not our successors be as ready to apply the remedy as ourselves, if occasion should require it? To think otherwise will, in my judgment, be ascribing more of the amor patriae, more wisdom and more virtue to ourselves, than I think we deserve.[1]
[Footnote 1: Ford, XI, 173.]
Nearly five months later, February 7, 1788, he wrote Lafayette what we may consider a more deliberate opinion:
As to my sentiments with respect to the merits of the new constitution, I will disclose them without reserve, (although by passing through the post-office they should become known to all the world,) for in truth I have nothing to conceal on that subject. It appears to me, then, little short of a miracle, that the delegates from so many different States (which States you know are also different from each other), in their manners, circumstances, and prejudices, should unite in forming a system of national government, so little liable to well-founded objections. Nor am I yet such an enthusiastic, partial, or indiscriminating admirer of it, as not to perceive it is tinctured with some real (though not radical) defects. The limits of a letter would not suffer me to go fully into an examination of them; nor would the discussion be entertaining or profitable. I therefore forbear to touch upon it. With regard to the two great points (the pivots upon which the whole machine must move), my creed is simply,
1st. That the general government is not invested with more powers, than are indispensably necessary to perform the functions of a good government; and consequently, that no objection ought to be made against the quantity of power delegated to it.
2nd. That these powers (as the appointment of all rulers will for ever arise from, and at short, stated intervals recur to, the free suffrage of the people), are so distributed among the legislative, executive, and judicial branches, into which the general government is arranged, that it can never be in danger of degenerating into a monarchy, an oligarchy, an aristocracy, or any other despotic or oppressive form, so long as there shall remain any virtue in the body of the people.
I would not be understood, my dear Marquis, to speak of consequences, which may be produced in the revolution of ages, by corruption of morals, profligacy of manners and listlessness for the preservation of the natural and unalienable rights of mankind, nor of the successful usurpations, that may be established at such an unpropitious juncture upon the ruins of liberty, however providently guarded and secured; as these are contingencies against which no human prudence can effectually provide. It will at least be a recommendation to the proposed constitution, that it is provided with more checks and barriers against the introduction of tyranny, and those of a nature less liable to be surmounted, than any government hitherto instituted among mortals hath possessed. We are not to expect perfection in this world; but mankind, in modern times, have apparently made some progress in the science of government. Should that which is now offered to the people of America, be found on experiment less perfect than it can be made, a constitutional door is left open for its amelioration.[1]
[Footnote 1: Ford, XI, 218-21.]
Thus was accomplished the American Constitution. Gladstone has said of it in well-known words that, just "as the British Constitution is the most subtle organism which has proceeded from the womb and the long gestation of progressive history, so the American Constitution is so far as I can see the most wonderful work ever struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man."[1] Note that Gladstone does not name a single or an individual man, which would have been wholly untrue, for the American Constitution was struck off by the wisdom and foresight of fifty-five men collectively. There were among them two or three who might be called transcendent men. It gained its peculiar value from the fact that it represents the composite of many divergent opinions and different characters.
[Footnote 1: W.E. Gladstone, North American Review, September, 1878.]
Just before the members broke up at their final meeting in Independence Hall, Benjamin Franklin amused them with a characteristic bit of raillery. On the back of the President's black chair, a half sun was carved and emblazoned. "During all these weeks," said Franklin, "I have often wondered whether that sun was rising or setting. I know now that it is a rising sun."
The first State to ratify the Constitution was Delaware, on December 6, 1787. Pennsylvania followed on December 12th, and New Jersey on December 18th. Ratifications continued without haste until New Hampshire, the ninth State, signed on June 21, 1788. Four days later, Virginia, a very important State, ratified. New York, which had been Anti-Federalist throughout, joined the majority on July 26th. North Carolina waited until November 21st, and little Rhode Island, the last State of all, did not come in until May 29, 1790. But, as the adherence of nine States sufficed, the affirmative action of New Hampshire on June 21, 1788, constituted the legal beginning of the United States of America.
No test could be more winnowing than that to which the Constitution was subjected during more than eighteen months before its adoption. In each State, in each section, its friends and enemies discussed it at meetings and in private gatherings. In New York, for instance, it was only the persistence of Alexander Hamilton and his unfailing oratory, unmatched until then in this country, that routed the Anti-Federalists at Poughkeepsie and caused the victory of the Federalists in the State. In Virginia, Patrick Henry, who had said on the eve of the Revolution, "I am not a Virginian, but an American," still held out. Nevertheless, the more the people of the country discussed the matter, the surer was their conviction that Washington was right when he intimated that they must prefer the new Constitution unless they could show reason for supposing that the anarchy towards which the old order was swiftly driving them was preferable.
During the autumn of 1788 peaceful electioneering went on throughout the country. Among the last acts of that thin wraith, the Continental Congress, was a decree that Presidential Electors should be chosen on the first Wednesday of January, 1789; that they should vote for President on the first Wednesday in February, and that the new Congress should meet on the first Wednesday in March. The State of New York, where Anti-Federalists swarmed, did not follow the decree—with the result that that State, which had been behindhand in signing the Declaration of Independence, failed through the intrigues of the Anti-Federalists to choose electors, and so had no part in the choice of Washington as President of the United States. The other ten States performed their duty on time. They elected Washington President by a unanimous vote of sixty-nine out of sixty-nine votes cast.
The Vice-Presidential contest was perplexing, there being many candidates who received only a few votes each. Many persons thought that it would be fitting that Samuel Adams, the father of the Revolution, should be chosen to serve with Washington, the father of his country; but too many remembered that he had been hostile to the Federalists until almost the end of the preliminary canvass and so they did not think that he ought to be chosen. The successful man was John Adams, who had been a robust Patriot from the beginning and had served honorably and devotedly in every position which he had held since 1775.
On April 14th Washington's election was notified to him, and on the 16th he bade farewell to Mount Vernon, where he had hoped to pass the rest of his days in peace and home duties and agriculture, and he rode in what proved to be a triumphal march to New York. That city was chosen the capital of the new Nation. Streams of enthusiastic and joyous citizens met and acclaimed him at every town through which he passed. At Trenton a party of thirteen young girls decked out in muslin and wreaths represented the thirteen States, and perhaps brought to his mind the contrast between that day and thirteen years before when he crossed the Delaware on boats amid floating cakes of ice and the pelting of sleet and rain. On April 23d he entered New York City. A week later at noon a military escort attended him from his lodging to Federal Hall at the corner of Wall and Nassau Streets, where a vast crowd awaited him. Washington stood on a balcony. All could witness the ceremony. The Secretary of the Senate bore a Bible upon a velvet cushion, and Chancellor Livingston administered the oath of office. Washington's head was still bowed when Livingston shouted: "Long live George Washington, President of the United States!" The crowds took up the cheer, which spread to many parts of the city and was repeated in all parts of the United States.
CHAPTER IX
THE FIRST AMERICAN PRESIDENT
The inauguration of Washington on April 30, 1789, brought a new type of administration into the world. The democracy which it initiated was very different from that of antiquity, from the models of Greece and of Rome, and quite different from that of the Italian republics during the Middle Age. The head of the new State differed essentially from the monarchs across the sea. Although there were varieties of traditions and customs in what had been the Colonies, still their dominant characteristic was British. According to the social traditions of Virginia, George Washington was an aristocrat, but in contrast with the British, he was a democrat.
He believed, however, that the President must guard his office from the free-and-easy want of decorum which some of his countrymen regarded as the stamp of democracy. At his receptions he wore a black velvet suit with gold buckles at the knee and on his shoes, and yellow gloves, and profusely powdered hair carried in a silk bag behind. In one hand he held a cocked hat with an ostrich plume; on his left thigh he wore a sword in a white scabbard of polished leather. He shook hands with no one; but acknowledged the courtesy of his visitors by a very formal bow. When he drove, it was in a coach with four or six handsome horses and outriders and lackeys dressed in resplendent livery.
After his inauguration he spoke his address to the Congress, and several days later members of the House and of the Senate called on him at his residence and made formal replies to his Inaugural Address. After a few weeks, experience led him to modify somewhat his daily schedule. He found that unless it was checked, the insatiate public would consume all his time. Every Tuesday afternoon, between three and four o'clock, he had a public reception which any one might attend. Likewise, on Friday afternoons, Mrs. Washington had receptions of her own. The President accepted no invitations to dinner, but at his own table there was an unending succession of invited guests, except on Sunday, which he observed privately. Interviews with the President could be had at any time that suited his convenience. Thus did he arrange to transact his regular or his private business.
Inevitably, some of the public objected to his rules and pretended to see very strong monarchical leanings in them. But the country took them as he intended, and there can be no doubt that it felt the benefit of his promoting the dignity of his office. Equally beneficial was his rule of not appointing to any office any man merely because he was the President's friend. Washington knew that such a consideration would give the candidate an unfair advantage. He knew further that office-holders who could screen themselves behind the plea that they were the President's friends might be very embarrassing to him. As office-seekers became, with the development of the Republic, among the most pernicious of its evils and of its infamies, we can but feel grateful that so far as in him lay Washington tried to keep them within bounds.
In all his official acts he took great pains not to force his personal wishes. He knew that both in prestige and popularity he held a place apart among his countrymen, and for this reason he did not wish to have measures passed simply because they were his. Accordingly, in the matter of receiving the public and in granting interviews and of ceremonials at the Presidential Residence, he asked the advice of John Adams, John Jay, Hamilton, and Jefferson, and he listened to many of their suggestions. Colonel Humphreys, who had been one of his aides-de-camp and was staying in the Presidential Residence, acted as Chamberlain at the first reception. Humphreys took an almost childish delight in gold braid and flummery. At a given moment the door of the large hall in which the concourse of guests was assembled was opened and he, advancing, shouted, with a loud voice: "The President of the United States!" Washington followed him and went through the paces prescribed by the Colonel with punctilious exactness, but with evident lack of relish. When the levee broke up and the party had gone, Washington said to Colonel Humphreys: "Well, you have taken me in once, but, by God, you shall never take me in a second time."[1] Irving, who borrows this story from Jefferson, warns us that perhaps Jefferson was not a credible witness.
[Footnote 1: Irving, V, 14.]
Congress transacted much important business at this first session. It determined that the President should have a Cabinet of men whose business it was to administer the chief departments and to advise the President. Next in importance were the financial measures proposed by the Secretary of the Treasury. Washington chose for his first Cabinet Ministers: Thomas Jefferson, who had not returned from Paris, as Secretary of State, or Foreign Minister as he was first called; Alexander Hamilton, Secretary of the Treasury; General Henry Knox, Secretary of War; and Edmund Randolph, Attorney-General. Of these, Hamilton had to face the most bitter opposition. Throughout the Revolution the former Colonies had never been able to collect enough money to pay the expense of the war and the other charges of the Confederation. The Confederation handed over a considerable debt to the new Government. Besides this many of the States had paid each its own cost of equipping and maintaining its contingent. Hamilton now proposed that the United States Government should assume these various State debts, which would aggregate $21,000,000 and bring the National debt to a total of $75,000,000. Hamilton's suggestion that the State debts be assumed caused a vehement outcry. Its opponents protested that no fair adjustment could be reached. The Assumptionists retorted that this would be the only fair settlement, but the Anti-Assumptionists voted them down by a majority of two. In other respects, Hamilton's financial measures prospered, and before many months he seized the opportunity of making a bargain by which the next Congress reversed its vote on Assumption. In less than a year the members of Congress and many of the public had reached the conclusion that New York City was not the best place to be the capital of the Nation. The men from the South argued that it put the South to a disadvantage, as its ease of access to New York, New Jersey, and the Eastern States gave that section of the country a too favorable situation. There was a strong party in favor of Philadelphia, but it was remembered that in the days of the Confederation a gang of turbulent soldiers had dashed down from Lancaster and put to flight the Convention sitting at Philadelphia. Nevertheless, Philadelphia was chosen temporarily, the ultimate choice of a situation being farther south on the Potomac.
Jefferson returned from France in the early winter. The discussion over Assumption was going on very virulently. It happened that one day Jefferson met Hamilton, and this is his account of what followed:
As I was going to the President's one day, I met him [Hamilton] in the street. He walked me backwards and forwards before the President's door for half an hour. He painted pathetically the temper into which the legislature had been wrought; the disgust of those who were called the creditor States; the danger of the secession of their members, and the separation of the States. He observed that the members of the administration ought to act in concert; that though this question was not of my department, yet a common duty should make it a common concern; that the President was the centre on which all administrative questions ultimately rested, and that all of us should rally around him and support, with joint efforts, measures approved by him; and that the question having been lost by a small majority only, it was probable that an appeal from me to the judgment and discretion of some of my friends, might effect a change in the vote, and the machine of government now suspended, might be again set into motion. I told him that I was really a stranger to the whole subject, that not having yet informed myself of the system of finance adopted, I knew not how far this was a necessary sequence; that undoubtedly, if its rejection endangered a dissolution of our Union at this incipient stage, I should deem it most unfortunate of all consequences to avert which all partial and temporary evils should be yielded, I proposed to him, however, to dine with me the next day, and I would invite another friend or two, bring them into conference together, and I thought it impossible that reasonable men, consulting together coolly, could fail, by some mutual sacrifices of opinion, to form a compromise which was to save the Union. The discussion took place. I could take no part in it but an exhortatory one, because I was a stranger to the circumstances which should govern it. But it was finally agreed, that whatever importance had been attached to the rejection of this proposition, the preservation of the Union and of concord among the States was more important, and that, therefore, it would be better that the vote of rejection should be rescinded, to effect which some members should change their votes. But it was observed that this pill would be peculiarly bitter to the Southern States, and that some concomitant measure should be adopted to sweeten it a little to them. There had before been projects to fix the seat of government either at Philadelphia or at Georgetown on the Potomac; and it was thought that, by giving it to Philadelphia for ten years, and to Georgetown permanently afterwards, this might, as an anodyne, solve in some degree the ferment which might be excited by the other measure alone. So two of the Potomac members (White and Lee, but White with a revulsion of stomach almost convulsive) agreed to change their votes, and Hamilton undertook to carry the other point. In doing this, the influence he had established over the eastern members, with the agency of Robert Morris with those of the Middle States, effected his side of the engagement.[1]
[Footnote 1: Jefferson's Works, IX, 93.]
As a result of Hamilton's bargain, the bill for Assumption was passed, and it was agreed that Philadelphia should be the capital for ten years and that afterwards a new city should be built on the banks of the Potomac and made the capital permanently.
During the summer of 1789 Washington suffered the most serious sickness of his entire life. The cause was anthrax in his thigh, and at times it seemed that it would prove fatal. For many weeks he was forced to lie on one side, with frequent paroxysms of great pain. After a month and a half he began to mend, but very slowly, so that autumn came before he got up and could go about again. His medical adviser was Dr. Samuel Bard of New York, and Irving reports the following characteristic conversation between him and his patient: "Do not flatter me with vain hopes," said Washington, with placid firmness; "I am not afraid to die, and therefore can bear the worst." The doctor expressed hope, but owned that he had apprehensions. "Whether to-night or twenty hence, makes no difference," observed Washington. "I know that I am in the hands of a good Providence."[1] His friends thought that he never really recovered his old-time vigor. That autumn, as soon as Congress had adjourned, he took a journey through New England, going as far as Portsmouth and returning in time for the opening of the Second Congress.
[Footnote 1: Irving, V, 22.]
The Government was now settling down into what became its normal routine. The Cabinet was completed by the appointment of Jefferson as Secretary of State and Edmund Randolph as Attorney-General. Jefferson would have preferred to go back to France as American Minister, but in a fulsome letter he declared himself willing to accept any office which Washington wished him to fill. The Supreme Court was organized with John Jay as Chief Justice, and five Associate Justices. Washington could not fail to be aware that parties were beginning to shape themselves. At first the natural divisions consisted of the Federalists, who believed in adopting the Constitution, and those who did not. As soon as the thirteen States voted to accept the Constitution, the Anti-Federalists had no definite motive for existing. Their place was taken principally by the Republicans over against whom were the Democrats. A few years later these parties exchanged names. A fundamental difference in the ideas of the Americans sprang from their views in regard to National and State rights. Some of them regarded the State as the ultimate unit. Others insisted that the Nation was sovereign. These two conflicting views run through American history down to the Civil War, and even in Washington's time they existed in outline. Washington himself was a Federalist, believing that the Federation of the former Colonies should be made as compact and strongly knit as possible. He had had too much evidence during the Revolution of the weakness of uncentralized government, and yet his Virginia origin and training had planted in him a strong sympathy for State rights. In Washington's own Cabinet dwelt side by side the leaders of the two parties: Thomas Jefferson, the Secretary of State, though born in Virginia of high aristocratic stock, was the most aggressive and infatuated of Democrats. Alexander Hamilton, born in the West Indies and owing nothing to family connections, was a natural aristocrat. He believed that the educated and competent few must inevitably govern the incompetent masses. His enemies suspected that he leaned strongly towards monarchy and would have been glad to see Washington crowned king.
President Washington, believing in Assumption, took satisfaction in Hamilton's bargain with Jefferson which made Assumption possible. For the President saw in the act a power making for union, and union was one of the chief objects of his concern. The foremost of Hamilton's measures, however, for good or for ill, was the protective tariff on foreign imports. Experience has shown that protection has been much more than a financial device. It has been deeply and inextricably moral. It has caused many American citizens to seek for tariff favors from the Government. Compared with later rates, those which Hamilton's tariff set were moderate indeed. The highest duties it exacted on foreign imports were fifteen per cent, while the average was only eight and a half per cent. And yet it had not been long in force when the Government was receiving $200,000 a month, which enabled it to defray all the necessary public charges. Hamilton, in the words of Daniel Webster, "smote the rock of National resources and copious streams of wealth poured forth. He touched the dead corpse of public credit and it stood forth erect with life." The United States of all modern countries have been the best fitted by their natural resources to do without artificial stimulation, in spite of which fact they still cling, after one hundred and thirty-five years, to the easy and plausible tariff makeshift. Washington himself believed that the tariff should so promote industries as to provide for whatever the country needed in time of war.
Two other financial measures are to be credited to Hamilton. The first was the excise, an internal revenue on distilled spirits. It met with opposition from the advocates of State rights, but was passed after heated debate. The last was the establishment of a United States Bank. All of Hamilton's measures tended directly to centralization, the object which he and Washington regarded as paramount.
In 1790 Washington made a second trip through the Eastern States, taking pains to visit Rhode Island, which was the last State to ratify the Constitution (May 29, 1790). These trips of his, for which the hostile might have found parallels in the royal progresses of the British sovereigns, really served a good purpose; for they enabled the people to see and hear their President; which had a good effect in a newly established nation. Washington lost no opportunity for teaching a moral. Thus, when he came to Boston, John Hancock, the Governor of Massachusetts, seemed to wish to indicate that the Governor was the highest personage in the State and not at all subservient even to the President of the United States. He wished to arrange it so that Washington should call on him first, but this Washington had no idea of doing. Hancock then wrote and apologized for not greeting the President owing to an unfortunate indisposition. Washington replied regretting the Governor's illness and announcing that the schedule on which he was travelling required him to quit Boston at a given time. Governor Hancock, whose spectacular signature had given him prominence everywhere, finding that he could not make the President budge, sent word that he was coming to pay his respects. Washington replied that he should be much pleased to welcome him, but expressed anxiety lest the Governor might increase his indisposition by coming out. This little comedy had a far-reaching effect. It settled the question as to whether the Governor of a State or the President of the United States should take precedence. From that day to this, no Governor, so far as I am aware, has set himself above the President in matters of ceremonial.
One of the earliest difficulties which Washington's administration had to overcome was the hostility of the Indians. Indian discontent and even lawlessness had been going on for years, with only a desultory and ineffectual show of vigor on the part of the whites. Washington, who detested whatever was ineffectual and lacking in purpose, determined to beat down the Indians into submission. He sent out a first army under General St. Clair, but it was taken in ambush by the Indians and nearly wiped out—a disaster which caused almost a panic throughout the Western country. Washington felt the losses deeply, but he had no intention of being beaten there. He organized a second army, gave it to General Wayne to command, who finally brought the Six Nations to terms. The Indians in the South still remained unpacified and lawless.
Washington made another prolonged trip, this time through the Southern States, which greatly improved his health and gave an opportunity of seeing many of the public men, and enabled the population to greet for the first time their President. Meanwhile the seeds of partisan feuds grew apace, as they could not fail to do where two of the ablest politicians ever known in the United States sat in the same Cabinet and pursued with unremitting energy ideas that were mutually uncompromising. Thomas Jefferson, although born of the old aristocratic stock of Virginia, had early announced himself a Democrat, and had led that faction throughout the Revolution. His facile and fiery mind gave to the Declaration of Independence an irresistible appeal, and it still remains after nearly one hundred and fifty years one of the most contagious documents ever drawn up. Going to France at the outbreak of the French Revolution, he found the French nation about to put into practice the principles on which he had long fed his imagination—principles which he accepted without qualification and without scruple. Returning to America after the organization of the Government, he accepted with evident reluctance the position of Secretary of State which Washington offered to him. In the Cabinet his chief adversary or competitor was Alexander Hamilton, his junior by fourteen years, a man equally versatile and equally facile—and still more enthralling as an orator. Hamilton harbored the anxiety that the United States under their new Constitution would be too loosely held together. He promoted, therefore, every measure that tended to strengthen the Central Government and to save it from dissolution either by the collapse of its unifying bonds or by anarchy. In the work of the first two years of Washington's administration, Hamilton was plainly victorious. The Tariff Law, the Excise, the National Bank, the National Funding Bill, all centralizing measures, were his. Washington approved them all, and we may believe that he talked them over with Hamilton and gave them his approval before they came under public discussion.
Thus, as Hamilton gained, Jefferson plainly lost. But Washington did not abandon his sound position as a neutral between the two. He requested Jefferson and Edmund Randolph to draw up objections to some of Hamilton's schemes, so that he had in writing the arguments of very strong opponents.
Meanwhile the French Revolution had broken all bounds, and Jefferson, as the sponsor of the French over here, was kept busy in explaining and defending the Gallic horrors. The Americans were in a large sense law-abiding, but in another sense they were lawless. Nevertheless, they heard with horror of the atrocities of the French Revolutionists—of the drownings, of the guillotining, of the imprisonment and execution of the King and Queen—and they had a healthy distrust of the Jacobin Party, which boasted that these things were natural accompaniments of Liberty with which they planned to conquer the world. Events in France inevitably drove that country into war with England. Washington and his chief advisers believed that the United States ought to remain neutral as between the two belligerents. But neutrality was difficult. In spite of their horror at the French Revolution, the memory of our debt to France during our own Revolution made a very strong bond of sympathy, whereas our long record of hostility to England during our Colony days, and since the Declaration of Independence, kept alive a traditional hatred for Great Britain. While it was easy, therefore, to preach neutrality, it was very difficult to enforce it. An occurrence which could not have been foreseen further added to the difficulty of neutrality.
In the spring of 1793 the French Republic appointed Edmond Charles Genêt, familiarly called "Citizen Genêt," Minister to the United States. He was a young man, not more than thirty, of very quick parts, who had been brought up in the Bureau of Foreign Affairs, had an exorbitant idea of his own importance, and might be described without malice as a master of effrontery. The ship which brought him to this country was driven by adverse winds to Charleston and landed him there on April 8th. He lost no time in fitting out a privateer against British mercantile vessels. The fact that by so doing he broke the American rule of neutrality did not seem to trouble him at all; on the contrary, he acted as if he were simply doing what the United States would do if they really did what they wished. As soon as he had made his arrangements, he proceeded by land up the coast to Philadelphia. Jefferson was exuberant, and he wrote in exultation to Madison on the fifth of May, concluding with the phrase, "I wish we may be able to repress the spirit of the people within the limits of a fair neutrality." If there be such things as crocodile tears, perhaps there may also be crocodile wishes, of which this would seem to be one. A friend of Hamilton's, writing about the same time, speaks in different terms, as follows:
He has a good person, a fine ruddy complexion, quite active, and seems always in a bustle, more like a busy man than a man of business. A Frenchman in his manners, he announces himself in all companies as the Minister of the Republic, etc., talks freely of his commission, and, like most Europeans, seems to have adopted mistaken notions of the penetration and knowledge of the people of the United States. His system, I think, is to laugh us into war if he can.[1]
[Footnote 1: Irving, V, 151.]
Citizen Genêt did not allow his progress up the coast to be so rapid that he was deprived of any ovation. The banquets, luncheons, speech-makings, by which he was welcomed everywhere, had had no parallel in the country up to that time. They seemed to be too carefully prepared to be unpremeditated, and probably many of those who took part in them did not understand that they were cheering for a cause which they had never espoused. One wonders why he was allowed to carry on this personal campaign and to show rude unconcern for good manners, or indeed for any manners except those of a wayward and headstrong boy. It might be thought that the Secretary of State abetted him and in his infatuation for France did not check him; but, so far as I have discovered, no evidence exists that Jefferson was in collusion with the truculent and impertinent "Citizen." No doubt, however, the shrewd American politician took satisfaction in observing the extravagances of his fellow countrymen in paying tribute to the representative of France. At Philadelphia, for instance, the city which already was beginning to have a reputation for spinster propriety which became its boast in the next century, we hear that "… before Genêt had presented his credentials and been acknowledged by the President, he was invited to a grand republican dinner, 'at which,' we are told, 'the company united in singing the Marseillaise Hymn. A deputation of French sailors presented themselves, and were received by the guests with the fraternal embrace.' The table was decorated with the 'tree of liberty,' and a red cap, called the cap of liberty, was placed on the head of the minister, and from his travelled in succession from head to head round the table."[1]
[Footnote 1: Jay's Life, I, 30.]
But not all the Americans were delirious enthusiasts. Hamilton kept his head amid the whirling words which, he said, might "do us much harm and could do France no good." In a letter, which deserves to be quoted in spite of its length, he states very clearly the opinions of one of the sanest of Americans. He writes to a friend:
It cannot be without danger and inconvenience to our interests, to impress on the nations of Europe an idea that we are actuated by the same spirit which has for some time past fatally misguided the measures of those who conduct the affairs of France, and sullied a cause once glorious, and that might have been triumphant. The cause of France is compared with that of America during its late revolution. Would to Heaven that the comparison were just! Would to Heaven we could discern, in the mirror of French affairs, the same decorum, the same gravity, the same order, the same dignity, the same solemnity, which distinguished the cause of the American Revolution! Clouds and darkness would not then rest upon the issue as they now do. I own I do not like the comparison. When I contemplate the horrid and systematic massacres of the 2nd and 3rd of September, when I observe that a Marat and a Robespierre, the notorious prompters of those bloody scenes, sit triumphantly in the convention, and take a conspicuous part in its measures—that an attempt to bring the assassins to justice has been obliged to be abandoned—when I see an unfortunate prince, whose reign was a continued demonstration of the goodness and benevolence of his heart, of his attachment to the people of whom he was the monarch, who, though educated in the lap of despotism, had given repeated proofs that he was not the enemy of liberty, brought precipitately and ignominiously to the block without any substantial proof of guilt, as yet disclosed—without even an authentic exhibition of motives, in decent regard to the opinions of mankind; when I find the doctrine of atheism openly advanced in the convention, and heard with loud applause; when I see the sword of fanaticism extended to force a political creed upon citizens who were invited to submit to the arms of France as the harbingers of liberty; when I behold the hand of rapacity outstretched to prostrate and ravish the monuments of religious worship, erected by those citizens and their ancestors; when I perceive passion, tumult, and violence usurping those seats, where reason and cool deliberation ought to preside, I acknowledge that I am glad to believe there is no real resemblance between what was the cause of America and what is the cause of France; that the difference is no less great than that between liberty and licentiousness. I regret whatever has a tendency to confound them, and I feel anxious, as an American, that the ebullitions of inconsiderate men among us may not tend to involve our reputation in the issue.[1]
[Footnote 1: Hamilton's Works, 566.]
Citizen Genêt continued his campaign unabashed. He attempted to force the United States to give arms and munitions to the French. Receiving cool answers to his demands, he lost patience, and intended to appeal to the American People, over the head of the Government. He sent his communication for the two Houses of Congress, in care of the Secretary of State, to be delivered. But Washington, whose patience had seemed inexhaustible, believed that the time had come to act boldly. By his instruction Jefferson returned the communication to Genêt with a note in which he curtly reminded the obstreperous Frenchman of a diplomat's proper behavior. As the American Government had already requested the French to recall Genêt, his amazing inflation collapsed like a pricked bladder. He was too wary, however, to return to France which he had served so devotedly. He preferred to remain in this country, to become an American citizen, and to marry the daughter of Governor Clinton of New York. Perhaps he had time for leisure, during the anticlimax of his career, to recognize that President Washington, whom he had looked down upon as a novice in diplomacy, knew how to accomplish his purpose, very quietly, but effectually. A century and a quarter later, another foreigner, the German Ambassador, Count Bernstorff, was allowed by the American Government to weave an even more menacing plot, but the sound sense of the country awoke in time to sweep him and his truculence and his conspiracies beyond the Atlantic.
The intrigues of Genêt emphasized the fact that a party had arisen and was not afraid to speak openly against President Washington. He held in theory a position above that of parties, but the theory did not go closely with fact, for he made no concealment of his fundamental Federalism, and every one saw that, in spite of his formal neutrality, in great matters he almost always sided with Hamilton instead of with Jefferson. When he himself recognized that the rift was spreading between his two chief Cabinet officers, he warned them both to avoid exaggerating their differences and pursuing any policy which must be harmful to the country. Patriotism was the chief aim of every one, and patriotism meant sinking one's private desires in order to achieve liberty through unity. Washington himself was a man of such strict virtue that he could work with men who in many matters disagreed with him, and as he left the points of disagreement on one side, he used the more effectively points of agreement. I do not think that Jefferson could do this, or Hamilton either, and I cannot rid myself of the suspicion that Jefferson furnished Philip Freneau, who came from New York to Philadelphia to edit the anti-Washington newspaper, with much of his inspiration if not actual articles. The objective of the "Gazette" was, of course, the destruction of Hamilton and his policy of finance. If Hamilton could be thus destroyed, it would be far easier to pull down Washington also. Lest the invectives in the "Gazette" should fail to shake Washington in his regard for Hamilton, Jefferson indited a serious criticism of the Treasury, and he took pains to have friends of his leave copies of the indictment so that Washington could not fail to see them. The latter, however, by a perfectly natural and characteristic stroke which Jefferson could not foresee, sent the indictment to Hamilton and asked him to explain. This Hamilton did straightforwardly and point-blank—and Jefferson had the mortification of perceiving that his ruse had failed. Hamilton, under a thin disguise, wrote a series of newspaper assaults on Jefferson, who could not parry them or answer them. He was no match for the most terrible controversialist in America; but he could wince. And presently B.F. Bache, the grandson of Benjamin Franklin, brought his unusual talents in vituperation, in calumny, and in nastiness to the "Aurora," a blackguard sheet of Philadelphia. Washington doubtless thought himself so hardened to abuse by the experience he had had of it during the Revolution that nothing which Freneau, Bache, and their kind could say or do, would affect him. But he was mistaken. And one cannot fail to see that they saddened and annoyed him. He felt so keenly the evil which must come from the deliberate sowing of dissensions. He cared little what they might say against himself, but he cared immensely for their sin against patriotism. Before his term as President drew to a close, he was already deciding not to be a candidate for a second term. He told his intention to a few intimates—from them it spread to many others. His best friends were amazed. They foresaw great trials for the Nation and a possible revolution. Hamilton tried to move him by every sort of appeal. Jefferson also was almost boisterous in denouncing the very idea. He impressed upon him the importance of his continuing at that crisis. He had not been President long enough to establish precedents for the new Nation. There were many volatile incidents which, if treated with less judgment than his, might do grievous harm. One wonders how sincere all the entreaties to Washington were, but one cannot doubt that the great majority of the country was perfectly sincere in wishing to have him continue; for it had sunk deep into the hearts of Americans that Washington was himself a party, a policy, an ideal above all the rest. And when the election was held in the autumn of 1792, he was reëlected by the equivalent of a unanimous vote.