Distrust of Adams's Administration

fered little during his two terms as President, his administration was not popular with the country. The Alien and Sedition laws dissipated the little popularity with which Adams's administration began. He and they had defenders, and among them were some of the ablest men in the country. But an unpopular law is rarely preserved by reasoning and argument. The people in Adams's time were far more excitable, severe in criticism, and radical in character than they are to-day. Social efficiency, economic association, nearly all the ameliorating influences which distinguish the life of the nation now were lacking then. Government in a democracy at the close of a war for independence is likely to be relatively feeble. Adams's whole policy was pilloried by the opposition as a monarchical attack on the liberties of the people. However conservative and constructive as a national policy, it was construed as fatal to the rights of man. It, therefore, served to unite the discontented, those whom Jefferson styled the "Republicans, Whigs, Jacobins, Anarchists, Disorganizers." These awaited the skilled hand, the masterful policy of a genius for political organization; and then-farewell Adams and the Federalists. one understood this radical, destructive, individualistic element better than Jefferson. He knew, probably better than Emerson did afterwards, that the State was once a private thought. On this axiom he organized a party destined to control American democracy for sixty years and to affect its course to the latest generation.

No

His plan was simple, effective, and popular. During the Revolution the organs of public opinion were partly old, partly new. The people had been familiar with town meetings, county meetings, and Assemblies for more than a century and a half. The Revolution brought forth the committees of correspondence and public safety, the caucus and the convention. During the excitement over Jay's treaty and Citizen Genet the political mass-meeting came in vogue. Jefferson's method was cumulative. He began with individuals, and, judging from the mass of his correspondence that remains (and he ranks among the world's voluminous letter-writers), his ideas reached every county in the Union and permeated many of them. He chose to follow the successful methods of the Revolution. A few were admitted into his fullest confidence. These he met at his lodgings in Philadelphia and at Monticello. Among them were Madison and Gallatin; Levi Lincoln, of Massachusetts; Nicholas and Breckinridge, of Kentucky; Robert Smith, of Maryland; and Gideon Granger, of Connecticut. But his lesser friendships ran into every city and town and among men of all occupations and professions. Local committees were organized, political committees were summoned, and resolutions, carefully prepared beforehand, were adopted. A favorite time for meeting in the South was on court days at the county seats when the bar assembled; the resolutions could be discussed and appropriately amended, and then be sent up to

The Tories Favor Centralization of Power

the Assemblies. These must be won at any cost. Ultimately all were won. The State Legislatures secure, Congress would be compelled to respond to State sentiment. Ultimately, would not the new party gain control of the federal government itself?

Jefferson's constructive, unifying method had been in operation some nine years when the Alien and Sedition acts brought public matters to a crisis.* Scarcely less odious to him were other federal measures-the stamp tax, the house tax, the naturalization law, the law increasing the number of federal courts, and the cost of the army and navy. Did not all these prove that the American Tories were of the hated British type, and were "bent on strengthening the executive rather than the legislative branches of the government?"

Congress was in session till the 16th of July, 1798, and long before this time Jefferson and the few to whom he confided his most critical measures had perfected a plan of campaign. As each federal measure passed, the alarm was sounded over the country, and local opposition was stirred. The Alien act, passed on the 25th of June, empowered the President, at his discretion, to expel from the country any foreigner whom he judged dangerous to the peace and safety of the United States," or whom he suspected to be "concerned

66

* For the Alien acts, see Statutes at Large, Vol. i., pp. 566, 570, 577; for the Sedition law, id., p. 596.

in any treasonable or secret machinations against the government." Were not the alien enemies of the President and his party the alien friends of the opposition? Who determined citizenship? The States. What right had the President, then, to order citizens to leave the country? The law was a palpable violation of the rights of the States.

This was followed, nineteen days later, by the Sedition act, which, the opposition at once said, was levelled against them and designed to perpetuate the power of the Federalists. If an American presumed to speak of either House or of the President in a way displeasing to some Federalist, he was liable to a suit for libel, to a fine of two thousand dollars, and to imprisonment for two years. Should he meet with his fellowcitizens to discuss public measures, he might be indicted for conspiracy against the government, be fined five thousand dollars, and be imprisoned five years. The truth might be given in evidence, the jury was judge of both law and fact, and the law was to cease on the 3d of March, 1801; but what did these matters signify save that the country was fast settling towards monarchy? Certainly a free man had a right to tell what he thought of the government. When the States ratified the Constitution, had they not with one accord insisted on amendments, which were adopted, and of which the very first forbade Congress to pass any law abridging the freedom of speech or of the press?

The opposition felt that they were on firm ground-that the federal acts were clearly uncon

The Coming of Clay

stitutional. Early in August signs of public sentiment began to appear in the newspapers.

In

the Kentucky Gazette, George Nicholas, soon to deliver a great speech in Congress for the repeal of the Sedition law, now published his political creed and an opinion pronouncing the law unconstitutional. At this time he was professor of law in the Transylvania University, was known as the intimate friend of Jefferson, had an extensive law practice throughout the Southwest, and possessed more influence in Kentucky than the whole Federal party. Public meetings in Kentucky and Virginia formulated similar sentiments. Resolutions, carefully planned, if not carefully drawn, were sent up to the Legislatures in such number as to appear to be the spontaneous and unanimous sentiment of the people of the two States. In both, copies of expostulatory resolutions, drawn from a high source, had been carefully distributed. Faithful hands had copied them. Safely packed, with other briefs, in the saddle-bags of trusted partisans, they found their way over the circuits and were brought home to every constituency.

In Kentucky none were more influential or more active than John Breckinridge and George Nicholas. A young Virginian, Henry Clay, fresh from the law office of Chancellor Wythe, began a political career, lasting over a half century, in a speech at Lexington denouncing the unpopular acts. On the 7th of November, Breckinridge presented a set of resolutions to the Kentucky Legislature condemning the acts. The Governor was