1796]

WASHINGTON'S COUNSEL

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President; he received sixty-eight votes, only three less than Adams. There was no convention, no political platform, no nomination of candidates. In ten states the electors were chosen by popular vote; in Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Delaware, South Carolina, and Georgia, they were chosen by the legislatures.

Washington, who had now been in public life for nearly twenty years, declined a re-election. If we go back as early as the French wars, he had been serving the public forty-five years. He felt that he had earned repose. Before retiring from office, he issued a farewell address, full of wisdom, to his countrymen. He had tried to be free and non-partisan as President, but he had found it impossible. His two great cabinet ministers constantly disagreed. Jefferson resigned in 1794, Hamilton in 1795. But Hamilton never lost his influence with Washington. His administrations were Federalist. With wisdom unexcelled in history, he had started the new government, and had firmly laid its foundations. In doing this he was aided chiefly by the eminent men whom he had learned to trust during the Revolutionary War, and especially during the making and the ratification of the Constitution. The world is now full of his fame. In his farewell address to the American people, he urged upon them "the immense value of national union, unrestrained intercourse between North, South, East, and West; the continuance of the Union as the primary object of patriotic desire; the maintenance of public credit and good faith, and justice toward all nations; entangling alliances with none. The great rule of conduct for us," said he, "in regard to foreign nations is, in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible; if we remain one people, under an efficient government, the period is not far off when we may defy material injury from external annoyance; when we may take such an attitude as will cause the neutrality we may at any time resolve upon, to be scrupulously respected; it is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world."

CHAPTER XXI

THE FALL OF THE FEDERALIST PARTY

1797-1801

Though Washington's administration left the country prosperous and he had given the people good advice, the Union was yet weak, and neutrality seemed, as yet, only a piece of Federalist policy. Adams was inaugurated March 4, 1797. He retained Washington's Cabinet, a grievous error, as that body was not harmonious, and the Federalist party was already rent by factions. France was angry at us for making a treaty with England instead of fighting her. Washington, greatly desiring peace, had sent Charles Cotesworth Pinckney as minister to France, but the French Directory refused to receive him unless he could promise that the United States would practically join the French Republic in its war with England. Moreover, the Directory gave notice that no American minister would be received on any other terms. Here was a sudden and severe test of the doctrine of neutrality and peace. Adams was indignant at this insult to our minister. Congress was summoned, and war was imminent; but at last the President decided to send a special mission to France.

John Marshall, a Federalist, and Elbridge Gerry, a Republican but long a personal friend of Adams, were sent to join Pinckney. Now, the special mission was a suggestion of the Republicans. Soon after arriving in Paris, in October, 1797, our commissioners were met by three persons who claimed to represent the Directory. Interviews and diplomatic notes followed. Finally, the French agents spoke out plainly: "It is money; it is expected you will offer money, fifty thousand pounds, for the pockets of the Directory.' That meant fifty thousand dollars to each director. Moreover, the American envoys should officially apologize for the President's message to

1799]

COMPLICATIONS WITH FRANCE

305

Congress in which he had said that "we shall convince France and the whole world that we are not a degraded people, humiliated under a colonial spirit of fear and sense of inferiority." When the American envoys finally comprehended the French demand, Pinckney replied, "No, not a sixpence." The envoys sent all the correspondence to the President, the names of Talleyrand's agents being altered to Mr. X, Mr. Y, and Mr. Z. As soon as the dispatches were made public, they and the mission were nicknamed "X, Y, Z," and the reply of our envoys was echoed in the popular cry, "Millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute."

When news of all this reached America, the people united as never before, Federalists and Republicans vying with one another in expressing indignation against France. The tricolors which had been hung in the coffee-houses three years before were torn down and trampled in the street. Resolutions from hundreds of mass-meetings all over the land poured in upon Congress. The two French treaties were suspended. The cry was, "War with France!" And the Federalists secretly smiled as they saw the old black cockades of Revolutionary days-the Federal party badgeworn by the Democratic Republicans. Party distinctions were for the time forgotten. Congress did not declare war, but it prepared for one. Washington was made lieutenantgeneral, a navy was begun, and the Navy Department created. Troops were enrolled, and all the principal coast towns were busy building forts and throwing up earthworks.

Hardly was all this preparation begun before the ocean was dotted with American privateers, this time in search of French merchantmen. The French West Indies were the objective of our attack. Besides this swarm of privateers, our navy of thirty-four frigates and lesser vessels was scouring the seas in search of French ships. Most famed of our frigates was the Constellation, thirty-eight guns, Captain Thomas Truxton. In February, 1799, he captured the thirty-eight-gun frigate L'Insurgente in the Caribbean Sea, and a little later captured the Vengeance, fifty-four guns, after a fierce fight.

The Directory began to realize that President Adams

would not apologize for his message to Congress, but would make good his words, and it notified our government that it would receive envoys if they were sent. Nowadays, we would say under the circumstances, "No, send us a mission first"; but as war had not been formally declared and as we wanted peace, the President, in 1799, sent Oliver Ellsworth, famed as the author of the judiciary act, and then chief justice; William Richardson Davie, one of the signers of the Constitution, and a popular governor of North Carolina, and William Vans Murray, an able lawyer, as special envoys. When they reached Paris, they found that another revolution had swept the Directory out of existence. Napoleon Bonaparte was first consul of France. On the 30th of September, he concluded a treaty with our envoys of "peace, commerce, navigation, and fisheries." We were destined to have transactions of vast importance with Napoleon during the next few years.

The current of feeling hostile to France swept a Democratic majority out of Congress and a Federalist majority in. Believing that the opportunity had now come to weaken their opponents and to strengthen themselves permanently, the Federalists determined to strike at what they thought was the source of Democratic strength-the foreign vote, and the newspapers, the pamphleteers, and orators who were accustomed to abuse Washington, Adams, Hamilton, the Federalist party, and Federalist measures generally. Immigration had scarcely begun, but most of the aliens in the country were hostile to the Federalists, because the Federalists were friendly to England, and most of the aliens were Irishmen or Frenchmen. After an exciting discussion, in and out of Congress, two acts were passed, June, 1798.

The alien act empowered the President, at his discretion, to order any alien out of the country if he thought him "dangerous to the peace and safety of the United States," or "concerned in any treasonable or secret machinations against the government." In case the alien, warned to depart, was found in the country, he could be fined and imprisoned for three years. The act was to expire in 1800.

The sedition act was more severe. Any person who

1798-1799] THE ALIEN AND SEDITION LAWS

307

defamed the President, or either house of Congress, or stirred up sedition against them, should be liable, in any national court, to a fine of two thousand dollars and imprisonment for two years. Hereafter, in order to become a United States citizen, a foreigner must reside in the country fourteen years.

The sedition law was immediately enforced, and a few editors of Democratic Republican papers, and among them a noted pamphleteer and writer, a friend of Jefferson, named Callender, were arrested. Hamilton had not approved of the laws. "Let us not establish tyranny," he wrote concerning it. While the Democratic editors were silenced, the Federalist editors were allowed to say what they chose. Little did the authors of the alien and sedition laws foresee the consequence of their legislation.

Amidst the excitement of the French war and the discussion of the alien and sedition acts, on January 8, 1798, President Adams, in a message to Congress, announced the adoption of the Eleventh Amendment to the Constitution. It originated in 1794, from a decision of the Supreme Court that a private citizen could sue a state of which he was not a resident. The amendment takes the question entirely out of the judicial power of the United States and leaves it wholly with the state. This was a fatal blow to one of the doctrines of the Federalist party-the supremacy of the national judiciary power.

The alien and sedition laws, in Jefferson's opinion, violated the principles of American government. He determined to organize public opinion against them and to overthrow the party that had enacted them. This he would do through the ancient sources of power, the assemblies. He wrote a set of resolutions, which the Kentucky legislature adopted; and another set, written at his instigation by Madison, was adopted by the legislature of Virginia. Though varying in their language, the two resolutions agreed: that the Constitution of the United States is a compact, or agreement, to which the states were equal parties, and that "each party has an equal right to judge for itself" whether the Constitution had been violated, and what the redress should be.