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Jefferson and his Colleagues, A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty
Chapter II. Putting the Ship on Her Republican Tack
by Johnson, Allen
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President Jefferson took office in a spirit of exultation which
he made no effort to disguise in his private letters. "The tough
sides of our Argosie," he wrote to John Dickinson, "have been
thoroughly tried. Her strength has stood the waves into which she
was steered with a view to sink her. We shall put her on her
Republican tack, and she will now show by the beauty of her
motion the skill of her builders." In him as in his two
intimates, Gallatin and Madison, there was a touch of that
philosophy which colored the thought of reformers on the eve of
the French Revolution, a naive confidence in the perfectability
of man and the essential worthiness of his aspirations. Strike
from man the shackles of despotism and superstition and accord to
him a free government, and he would rise to unsuspected felicity.
Republican government was the strongest government on earth,
because it was founded on free will and imposed the fewest checks
on the legitimate desires of men. Only one thing was wanting to
make the American people happy and prosperous, said the President
in his Inaugural Address "a wise and frugal government, which
shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave
them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry
and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the
bread it has earned." This, he believed, was the sum of good
government; and this was the government which he was determined
to establish. Whether government thus reduced to lowest terms
would prove adequate in a world rent by war, only the future
could disclose.
It was only in intimate letters and in converse with Gallatin and
Madison that Jefferson revealed his real purposes. So completely
did Jefferson take these two advisers into his confidence, and so
loyal was their cooperation, that the Government for eight years
has been described as a triumvirate almost as clearly defined as
any triumvirate of Rome. Three more congenial souls certainly
have never ruled a nation, for they were drawn together not
merely by agreement on a common policy but by sympathetic
understanding of the fundamental principles of government.
Gallatin and Madison often frequented the President's House, and
there one may see them in imagination and perhaps catch now and
then a fragment of their conversation:
Gallatin: We owe much to geographical position; we have been
fortunate in escaping foreign wars. If we can maintain peaceful
relations with other nations, we can keep down the cost of
administration and avoid all the ills which follow too much
government.
The President: After all, we are chiefly an agricultural people
and if we shape our policy accordingly we shall be much more
likely to multiply and be happy than as if we mimicked an
Amsterdam, a Hamburg, or a city like London.
Madison (quietly): I quite agree with you. We must keep the
government simple and republican, avoiding the corruption which
inevitably prevails in crowded cities.
Gallatin (pursuing his thought): The moment you allow the
national debt to mount, you entail burdens on posterity and
augment the operations of government.
The President (bitterly): The principle of spending money to be
paid by posterity is but swindling futurity on a large scale.
That was what Hamilton --
Gallatin: Just so; and if this
administration does not reduce taxes, they will never be reduced.
We must strike at the root of the evil and avert the danger of
multiplying the functions of government. I would repeal all
internal taxes. These pretended tax-preparations,
treasure-preparations, and army-preparations against contingent
wars tend only to encourage wars.
The President (nodding his head in agreement): The discharge of
the debt is vital to the destinies of our government, and for the
present we must make all objects subordinate to this. We must
confine our general government to foreign concerns only and let
our affairs be disentangled from those of all other nations,
except as to commerce. And our commerce is so valuable to other
nations that they will be glad to purchase it, when they know
that all we ask is justice. Why, then, should we not reduce our
general government to a very simple organization and a very
unexpensive one--a few plain duties to be performed by a few
servants?
It was precisely the matter of selecting these few servants which
worried the President during his first months in office, for the
federal offices were held by Federalists almost to a man. He
hoped that he would have to make only a few removals any other
course would expose him to the charge of inconsistency after his
complacent statement that there was no fundamental difference
between Republicans and Federalists. But his followers thought
otherwise; they wanted the spoils of victory and they meant to
have them. Slowly and reluctantly Jefferson yielded to pressure,
justifying himself as he did so by the reflection that a due
participation in office was a matter of right. And how, pray,
could due participation be obtained, if there were no removals?
Deaths were regrettably few; and resignations could hardly be
expected. Once removals were decided upon, Jefferson drifted
helplessly upon the tide. For a moment, it is true, he wrote
hopefully about establishing an equilibrium and then returning
"with joy to that state of things when the only questions
concerning a candidate shall be: Is he honest? Is he capable? Is
he faithful to the Constitution?" That blessed expectation was
never realized. By the end of his second term, a Federalist in
office was as rare as a Republican under Adams.
The removal of the Collector of the Port at New Haven and the
appointment of an octogenarian whose chief qualification was his
Republicanism brought to a head all the bitter animosity of
Federalist New England. The hostility to Jefferson in this region
was no ordinary political opposition, as he knew full well, for
it was compounded of many ingredients. In New England there was a
greater social solidarity than existed anywhere else in the
Union. Descended from English stock, imbued with common religious
and political traditions, and bound together by the ties of a
common ecclesiastical polity, the people of this section had, as
Jefferson expressed it, "a sort of family pride." Here all the
forces of education, property, religion, and respectability were
united in the maintenance of the established order against the
assaults of democracy. New England Federalism was not so much a
body of political doctrine as a state of mind. Abhorrence of the
forces liberated by the French Revolution was the dominating
emotion. To the Federalist leaders democracy seemed an aberration
of the human mind, which was bound everywhere to produce
infidelity, looseness of morals, and political chaos. In the
words of their Jeremiah, Fisher Ames, "Democracy is a troubled
spirit, fated never to rest, and whose dreams, if it sleeps,
present only visions of hell." So thinking and feeling, they had
witnessed the triumph of Jefferson with genuine alarm, for
Jefferson they held to be no better than a Jacobin, bent upon
subverting the social order and saturated with all the heterodox
notions of Voltaire and Thomas Paine.
The appointment of the aged Samuel Bishop as Collector of New
Haven was evidence enough to the Federalist mind, which fed upon
suspicion, that Jefferson intended to reward his son, Abraham
Bishop, for political services. The younger Bishop was a stench
in their nostrils, for at a recent celebration of the Republican
victory he had shocked the good people of Connecticut by
characterizing Jefferson as "the illustrious chief who, once
insulted, now presides over the Union," and comparing him with
the Saviour of the world, "who, once insulted, now presides over
the universe." And this had not been his first transgression: he
was known as an active and intemperate rebel against the standing
order. No wonder that Theodore Dwight voiced the alarm of all New
England Federalists in an oration at New Haven, in which he
declared that according to the doctrines of Jacobinism "the
greatest villain in the community is the fittest person to make
and execute the laws." "We have now," said he, "reached the
consummation of democratic blessedness. We have a country
governed by blockheads and knaves." Here was an opposition which,
if persisted in, might menace the integrity of the Union.
Scarcely less vexatious was the business of appointments in New
York where three factions in the Republican party struggled for
the control of the patronage. Which should the President support?
Gallatin, whose father-in-law was prominent in the politics of
the State, was inclined to favor Burr and his followers; but the
President already felt a deep distrust of Burr and finally
surrendered to the importunities of DeWitt Clinton, who had
formed an alliance with the Livingston interests to drive Burr
from the party. Despite the pettiness of the game, which
disgusted both Gallatin and Jefferson, the decision was fateful.
It was no light matter, even for the chief magistrate, to offend
Aaron Burr.
From these worrisome details of administration, the President
turned with relief to the preparation of his first address to
Congress. The keynote was to be economy. But just how economies
were actually to be effected was not so clear. For months
Gallatin had been toiling over masses of statistics, trying to
reconcile a policy of reduced taxation, to satisfy the demands of
the party, with the discharge of the public debt. By laborious
calculation he found that if $7,300,000 were set aside each year,
the debt--principal and interest--could be discharged within
sixteen years. But if the unpopular excise were abandoned, where
was the needed revenue to be found? New taxes were not to be
thought of. The alternative, then, was to reduce expenditures.
But how and where?
Under these circumstances the President and his Cabinet adopted
the course which in the light of subsequent events seems to have
been woefully ill-timed and hazardous in the extreme. They
determined to sacrifice the army and navy. In extenuation of this
decision, it may be said that the danger of war with France,
which had forced the Adams Administration to double expenditures,
had passed; and that Europe was at this moment at peace, though
only the most sanguine and shortsighted could believe that
continued peace was possible in Europe with the First Consul in
the saddle. It was agreed, then, that the expenditures for the
military and naval establishments should be kept at about
$2,500,000--somewhat below the normal appropriation before the
recent war-flurry; and that wherever possible expenses should be
reduced by careful pruning of the list of employees at the navy
yards. Such was the programme of humdrum economy which President
Jefferson laid before Congress. After the exciting campaign of
1800, when the public was assured that the forces of Darkness and
Light were locked in deadly combat for the soul of the nation,
this tame programme seemed like an anticlimax. But those who knew
Thomas Jefferson learned to discount the vagaries to which he
gave expression in conversation. As John Quincy Adams once
remarked after listening to Jefferson's brilliant table talk,
Yet Thomas Jefferson,
philosopher, was a very different person from Thomas Jefferson,
practical politician. Paradoxical as it may seem, the new
President, of all men of his day, was the least likely to
undertake revolutionary policies; and it was just this
acquaintance with Jefferson's mental habits which led his
inveterate enemy, Alexander Hamilton, to advise his party
associates to elect Jefferson rather than Burr.
The President broke with precedent, however, in one small
particular. He was resolved not to follow the practice of his
Federalist predecessors and address Congress in person. The
President's speech to the two houses in joint session savored too
much of a speech from the throne; it was a symptom of the
Federalist leaning to monarchical forms and practices. He sent
his address, therefore, in writing, accompanied with letters to
the presiding officers of the two chambers, in which he justified
this departure from custom on the ground of convenience and
economy of time. "I have had principal regard," he wrote, "to the
convenience of the Legislature, to the economy of their time, to
the relief from the embarrassment of immediate answers on
subjects not yet fully before them, and to the benefits thence
resulting to the public affairs." This explanation deceived no
one, unless it was the writer himself. It was thoroughly
characteristic of Thomas Jefferson that he often explained his
conduct by reasons which were obvious afterthoughts --an
unfortunate habit which has led his contemporaries and his
unfriendly biographers to charge him with hypocrisy. And it must
be admitted that his preference for indirect methods of achieving
a purpose exposed him justly to the reproaches of those who liked
frankness and plain dealing. It is not unfair, then, to wonder
whether the President was not thinking rather of his own
convenience when he elected to address Congress by written
message, for he was not a ready nor an impressive speaker. At all
events, he established a precedent which remained unbroken until
another Democratic President, one hundred and twelve years later,
returned to the practice of Washington and Adams.
If the Federalists of New England are to be believed, hypocrisy
marked the presidential message from the very beginning to the
end. It began with a pious expression of thanks "to the
beneficent Being" who had been pleased to breathe into the
warring peoples of Europe a spirit of forgiveness and
conciliation. But even the most bigoted Federalist who could not
tolerate religious views differing from his own must have been
impressed with the devout and sincere desire of the President to
preserve peace. Peace! peace! It was a sentiment which ran
through the message like the watermark in the very paper on which
he wrote; it was the condition, the absolutely indispensable
condition, of every chaste reformation which he advocated. Every
reduction of public expenditure was predicated on the supposition
that the danger of war was remote because other nations would
desire to treat the United States justly. "Salutary reductions in
habitual expenditures" were urged in every branch of the public
service from the diplomatic and revenue services to the judiciary
and the naval yards. War might come, indeed, but "sound
principles would not justify our taxing the industry of our
fellow-citizens to accumulate treasure for wars to happen we know
not when, and which might not, perhaps, happen but from the
temptations offered by that treasure."
On all concrete matters the President's message cut close to the
line which Gallatin had marked out. The internal taxes should now
be dispensed with and corresponding reductions be made in "our
habitual expenditures." There had been unwise multiplication of
federal offices, many of which added nothing to the efficiency of
the Government but only to the cost. These useless offices should
be lopped off, for "when we consider that this Government is
charged with the external and mutual relations only of these
States, . . . we may well doubt whether our organization is not
too complicated, too expensive." In this connection Congress
might well consider the Federal Judiciary, particularly the
courts newly erected, and "judge of the proportion which the
institution bears to the business it has to perform."[*] And
finally, Congress should consider whether the law relating to
naturalization should not be revised. "A denial of citizenship
under a residence of fourteen years is a denial to a great
proportion of those who ask it"; and "shall we refuse to the
unhappy fugitives from distress that hospitality which savages of
the wilderness extended to our fathers arriving in this land?"
[ The studied moderation of the message gave no hint of
Jefferson's resolute purpose to procure the repeal of the
Judiciary Act of 1801. The history of this act and its repeal, as
well as of the attack upon the judiciary, is recounted by Edward
S. Corwin in "John Marshall and the Constitution" in "The
Chronicles of America."]
The most inveterate foe could not characterize this message as
revolutionary, however much he might dissent from the policies
advocated. It was not Jefferson's way, indeed, to announce his
intentions boldly and hew his way relentlessly to his objective.
He was far too astute as a party leader to attempt to force his
will upon Republicans in Congress. He would suggest; he would
advise; he would cautiously express an opinion; but he would
never dictate. Yet few Presidents have exercised a stronger
directive influence upon Congress than Thomas Jefferson during
the greater part of his Administration. So long as he was en
rapport with Nathaniel Macon, Speaker of the House, and with John
Randolph, Chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means, he could
direct the policies of his party as effectively as the most
autocratic dictator. When he had made up his mind that Justice
Samuel Chase of the Supreme Court should be impeached, he simply
penned a note to Joseph Nicholson, who was then managing the
impeachment of Judge Pickering, raising the question whether
Chase's attack on the principles of the Constitution should go
unpunished. "I ask these questions for your consideration," said
the President deferentially; "for myself, it is better that I
should not interfere." And eventually impeachment proceedings
were instituted.
In this memorable first message, the President alluded to a
little incident which had occurred in the Mediterranean, "the
only exception to this state of general peace with which we have
been blessed." Tripoli, one of the Barbary States, had begun
depredations upon American commerce and the President had sent a
small squadron for protection. A ship of this squadron, the
schooner Enterprise, had fallen in with a Tripolitan man-of-war
and after a fight lasting three hours had forced the corsair to
strike her colors. But since war had not been declared and the
President's orders were to act only on the defensive, the crew
of the Enterprise dismantled the captured vessel and let her go.
Would Congress, asked the President, take under consideration the
advisability of placing our forces on an equality with those of
our adversaries? Neither the President nor his Secretary of the
Treasury seems to have been aware that this single cloud on the
horizon portended a storm of long duration. Yet within a year it
became necessary to delay further reductions in the naval
establishment and to impose new taxes to meet the very
contingency which the peace-loving President declared most
remote. Moreover, the very frigates which he had proposed to lay
up in the eastern branch of the Potomac were manned and
dispatched to the Mediterranean to bring the Corsairs to terms.
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