Part 4 (1/2)
When he appeared to take his seat in the a.s.sembly he found that his election was contested. A pet.i.tion was presented from thirty-four persons calling themselves peaceable citizens of Was.h.i.+ngton County, which stated that their votes had not been cast, because of the disturbed condition of the country, and requested the a.s.sembly to declare the district to have been in a state of insurrection at the time of the election, and to vacate the same. Mr. Gallatin knew the person who procured the signatures, and also that the business originated in the army. It was couched in terms insulting to all the members elect from that district. After a protracted debate the election was declared void on January 9, 1795. It was during this debate that Mr. Gallatin made the celebrated speech called ”The speech on the western elections,”
in which occurs the confession already alluded to. Speaking of the Pittsburgh resolutions of 1792, he said:--
”I might say that those resolutions did not originate at Pittsburgh, as they were almost a transcript of the resolutions adopted at Was.h.i.+ngton the preceding year; and I might even add that they were not introduced by me at the meeting. But I wish not to exculpate myself where I feel I have been to blame. The sentiments thus expressed were not illegal or criminal; yet I will freely acknowledge that they were violent, intemperate, and reprehensible.
For, by attempting to render the office contemptible, they tended to diminish that respect for the execution of the laws which is essential to the maintenance of a free government; but whilst I feel regret at the remembrance, though no hesitation in this open confession of that _my only political sin_, let me add that the blame ought to fall where it is deserved.”
This was the first speech of Gallatin that appeared in print--simple, lucid, convincing. The result of the new a.s.sembly election would naturally determine the right of the representatives of the contested district to their seats in Congress. Word had gone forth from the Treasury Department that Gallatin must not take his seat in Congress, and the whippers-in took heed of the desire of their chief. A line of instruction to Badollet, who lived at Greensburg in Was.h.i.+ngton County, across the river from Gallatin's residence, determined the matter.
Gallatin warned him against the attempt that would be made to disaffect that district because none of the representatives whose seats had been vacated were residents of it. ”Fall not into the snare,” he wrote; ”take up n.o.body from your own district; reelect unanimously the same members, whether they be your favorites or not. It is necessary for the sake of our general character.” Here is an instance of that true political instinct which made of him ”the ideal party leader.” His advice was followed, and all the members were reelected but one, who declined. Mr.
Gallatin returned to his seat in the a.s.sembly on February 14, and retained it until March 12, when he asked and obtained leave of absence.
He does not appear to have taken further part in the session. The subjects, personal to himself, which occupied his attention during the summer will be touched upon elsewhere.
The pitiful business of the trial of the western prisoners needs only brief mention. In May Gallatin was summoned before the grand jury as a witness on the part of the government. The inquiry was finished May 12, and twenty-two bills were found for treason. Against Fayette two bills were found; one for misdemeanor in raising the liberty pole in Uniontown. The pet.i.t jury was composed of twelve men from each of the counties of Fayette, Was.h.i.+ngton, Allegheny, and Northumberland, but none from Westmoreland. One man, a German from Westmoreland, who was concerned in a riot in Fayette, was found guilty and condemned to death.
Mr. Gallatin, at the request of the jury, drew a pet.i.tion to the President, who granted a pardon. Was.h.i.+ngton extended mercy to the only other offender who incurred the same penalty.
To the close of this national episode, which, in its various phases of incident and character, is of dramatic interest, Gallatin, through good repute and ill repute, stood manfully by his const.i.tuents and friends.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 3: Hamilton's _History of the Republic_, vi. 96.]
CHAPTER V
MEMBER OF CONGRESS
The first session of the fourth Congress began at Philadelphia on Monday, December 7, 1795. Was.h.i.+ngton was president, John Adams vice-president. No one of Was.h.i.+ngton's original const.i.tutional advisers remained in his cabinet. Jefferson retired from the State Department at the beginning of the first session of the third Congress. Edmund Randolph, appointed in his place, resigned in a cloud of obloquy on August 19, 1795, and the portfolio was temporarily in charge of Timothy Pickering, secretary of war. Hamilton resigned the department of the Treasury on January 31, 1795, and Oliver Wolcott, Jr., succeeded him in that most important of the early offices of the government. General Henry Knox, the first secretary of war, pressed by his own private affairs and the interests of a large family, withdrew on December 28, 1794, and Timothy Pickering, the postmaster-general, had been appointed in his stead January 2, 1795. The Navy Department was not as yet established (the act creating it was pa.s.sed April 30, 1798), but the affairs which concerned this branch of the public service were under the direction of the secretary of war. The administration of Was.h.i.+ngton was drawing to a close. In the lately reconstructed cabinet, honest, patriotic, and thorough in administration, there was no man of s.h.i.+ning mark. The Senate was still in the hands of the Federal party. The bare majority which rejected Gallatin in the previous Congress had increased to a sufficient strength for party purposes, but neither in the ranks of the administration nor the opposition was there in this august a.s.semblage one commanding figure.
The House was nearly equally divided. The post of speaker was warmly contested. Frederick A. Muhlenberg of Pennsylvania, who had presided over the House at the sessions of the first Congress, 1789-1791, and again over the third, 1793-1795, was the candidate of the Federalists, but was defeated by Jonathan Dayton of New Jersey, whose views in the last session had drifted him into sympathy with the Republican opposition. The House, when full, numbered one hundred and five members, among whom were the ablest men in the country, veterans of debate versed in parliamentary law and skilled in the niceties of party fence. In the Federal ranks, active, conscious of their power, and proud of the great party which gloried in Was.h.i.+ngton as their chief, were Robert Goodloe Harper of South Carolina, Theodore Sedgwick of Ma.s.sachusetts, Roger Griswold and Uriah Tracy of Connecticut, who led the front and held the wings of debate; while in reserve, broken in health but still in the prime of life, the pride of his party and of the House, was Fisher Ames, the orator of his day, whose magic tones held friend and foe in rapt attention, while he mastered the reason or touched the heart. Upon these men the Federal party relied for the vindication of their principles and the maintenance of their power. Supporting them were William Vans Murray of Maryland, Goodrich and Hillhouse of Connecticut, William Smith of South Carolina, Sitgreaves of Pennsylvania, and in the ranks a well-trained party. Opposed to this formidable array of Federal talent was the Republican party, young, vigorous, and in majority, bold in their ideas but as yet hesitating in purpose under the controlling if not overruling influence of the name and popularity of Was.h.i.+ngton.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Rob. G. Harper]
Hamilton watched the s.h.i.+fting fortunes of his party from a distance, and found time in the pressure of a large legal practice to aid each branch of administration in turn with his advice. But though he still inspired its councils, he no longer directed its course. In his Monticello home Jefferson waited till the fruit was ripe for falling, occasionally impatient that his followers did not more roughly shake the tree.
The open rupture of Jefferson with Hamilton was the first great break in the Federal administration; the lukewarmness of Madison, whose leanings were always towards Jefferson, followed.
At the head of the Republican opposition was Madison. Wise in council, convincing in argument, an able and even adroit debater, he was an admirable leader, but his tactics were rather of the closet than the field. He was wanting in the personal vigor which, scorning defense, delights in bold attack upon the central position of the enemy, and carries opposition to the last limit of parliamentary aggression. With this mildness of character, though recognized as the leader of his party, he, as a habit, waived his control upon the floor of the House, and, reserving his interference for occasions when questions of const.i.tutional interpretation arose, left the general direction of debate to William B. Giles of Virginia, a skillful tactician and a ready debater, keen, bold, and troubled by no scruples of modesty, respect, or reverence for friend or foe. Of equal vigor, but of more reserve, was John Nicholas of Virginia--a man of strong intellect, reliable temper, and with the dignity of the old school. To these were now added Albert Gallatin and Edward Livingston. Edward Livingston, from New York, was young, and as yet inexperienced in debate, but of remarkable powers. He was another example of that early intellectual maturity which was a characteristic of the time.
When Congress met, the all-disturbing question was the foreign policy of the United States. The influence of the French Revolution upon American politics was great. The Federalists, conservative in their views, held the new democratic doctrines in abhorrence, and used the terrible excesses of the French Revolution with telling force against their Republican adversaries. The need of a strong government was held up as the only alternative to anarchy. In the struggle which now united Europe against the French republic, the sympathies of the Federalists were with England. Hence they were accused of a desire to establish a monarchy in the United States, and were ignominiously called the British party.
Shays's Rebellion in Ma.s.sachusetts and the Whiskey Insurrection in Pennsylvania gave point to their arguments.
On the other side was the large and powerful party which, throughout the war in the Continental Congress, under the confederation in the national convention which framed and in the state conventions which ratified the Const.i.tution, had opposed the tendency to centralization, but had been defeated by the yearning of the body of the plain people for a government strong enough at least to secure them peace at home and protection abroad. This natural craving being satisfied, the old aversion to cla.s.s distinctions returned. The dread of an aristocracy, which did not exist even in name, threw many of the supporters of the Const.i.tution into the ranks of its opponents, who were democrats in name and in fact. The proclamation of the rights of man awoke this latent sentiment, and aroused an intense sympathy for the people of France.
This again was strengthened by the memory, still warm, of the services of France in the cause of independence. Lafayette, who represented the true French republican spirit, and held a place in the affections of the American people second only to that of Was.h.i.+ngton, was languis.h.i.+ng, a prisoner to the coalition of sovereigns, in an Austrian dungeon.
Jefferson returned from France deeply imbued with the spirit of the French Revolution. His views were warmly received by his political friends, and the principles of the new school of politics were rapidly spread by an eager band of acolytes, whose ranks were recruited until the feeble opposition became a powerful party. Democratic societies, organized on the plan of the French Jacobin clubs, extended French influence, and no doubt were aided in a practical way by Genet, whose recent marriage with the daughter of George Clinton, the head of the Republican party in New York, was an additional link in the bond of alliance.
During the second session of the third Congress Madison had led the opposition in a mild manner; party lines were not yet strongly defined, and the influence of Was.h.i.+ngton was paramount. In the interim between its expiration and the meeting of the fourth Congress in December, the country was wildly agitated by the Jay treaty. This doc.u.ment not reaching America until after the adjournment of Congress in March, Was.h.i.+ngton convened the Senate in extra and secret session on June 1, and the treaty was ratified by barely two thirds majority. Imprudently withheld for a time, it was at last made public by Senator Mason of Virginia, one of the ten who voted against its ratification. It disappointed the people, and was denounced as a weak and ignominious surrender of American rights. The merchants of Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Charleston protested against it in public meetings. It was burned, and the English flag was trailed in the dust before the British minister's house at the capital. Jay was hung in effigy, and Hamilton, who ventured to defend the treaty at a public meeting, was stoned. To add to the popular indignation that the impressment of American seamen had been ignored in the instrument, came the alarming news that the British ministry had renewed their order to seize vessels carrying provisions to France, whither a large part of the American grain crop was destined. On the other hand, Randolph, the secretary of state, had compromised the dignity of his official position in his intercourse with Fauchet, the late French amba.s.sador, whose correspondence with his government, thrown overboard from a French packet, had been fished up by a British man-of-war, and forwarded to Grenville, by whom it was returned to America. Thus petard answered petard, and the charge by the Republicans upon the Federalists of taking British gold was returned with interest, and the accusation of receiving bribe money was brought close home to Randolph, if not proved.
Hard names were not wanting either; Jefferson was ridiculed as a _sans-culotte_ and red-legged Democrat. Nor was Was.h.i.+ngton spared. He was charged with an a.s.sumption of royal airs, with political hypocrisy, and even with being a public defaulter; a charge which no one dared to father, and which was instantly shown to be false and malicious. It was made by Bache in ”The Aurora,” a contemptible sheet after the fas.h.i.+on of ”L'Ami du Peuple,” Marat's Paris organ.
Such was the temper of the people when the House of Representatives met on December 7, 1795. The speaker, Dayton, was strongly anti-British in feeling. He was a family connection of Burr, but there is no reason to suppose that he was under the personal influence of that adroit and unscrupulous partisan. On the 8th President Was.h.i.+ngton, according to his custom, addressed both houses of Congress. This day for the first time the gallery was thrown open to the public. When the reply of the Senate came up for consideration, the purpose of the Republicans was at once manifest. They would not consent to the approbation it expressed of the conduct of the administration. They would not admit that the causes of external discord had been extinguished ”on terms consistent with our national honor and safety,” or indeed extinguished at all, and they would not acknowledge that the efforts of the President to establish the peace, freedom, and prosperity of the country had been ”enlightened and firm.” Nevertheless the address was agreed to by a vote of 14 to 8.
In the House a resolution was moved that a respectful address ought to be presented. The opposition immediately declared itself. Objection was made to an address, and in its stead the appointment of a committee to wait personally on the President was moved. The covert intent was apparent through the thin veil of expediency, but the Republicans as a body were unwilling to go this length in discourtesy, and did not support the motion. Only eighteen members voted for it. Messrs. Madison, Sedgwick, and Sitgreaves, the committee to report an address, brought in a draft on the 14th which was ordered to be printed for the use of the members. The next day the work of dissection was begun by an objection to the words ”probably unequaled spectacle of national happiness”
applied to the country, and the words ”undiminished confidence” applied to the President. The words ”probably unequaled” were stricken out without decided opposition by a vote of forty-three to thirty-nine.