Standard Library Edition

AMERICAN STATESMEN

EDITED BY

JOHN T. MORSE, JR.

IN THIRTY-TWO VOLUMES VOL. XIII.

THE JEFFERSONIAN DEMOCRACY

ALBERT GALLATIN

[!-- Image 1 --]

[ToC]

[!-- Image 2 --]

[Click for list of Illustrations]

American Statesmen

STANDARD LIBRARY EDITION

The Home of Albert Gallatin

[!-- Image 3 --]

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO.

American Statesmen

ALBERT GALLATIN

BY

JOHN AUSTIN STEVENS

BOSTON AND NEW YORK

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY

The Riverside Press, Cambridge

Copyright, 1883 and 1898

BY HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO.

All rights reserved

.

PREFACE

Every generation demands that history shall be rewritten. This is not alone because it requires that the work should be adapted to its own point of view, but because it is instinctively seeking those lines which connect the problems and lessons of the past with its own questions and circumstances. If it were not for the existence of lines of this kind, history might be entertaining, but would have little real value. The more numerous they are between the present and any earlier period, the more valuable is, for us, the history of that period. Such considerations establish an especial interest just at present in the life of Gallatin.

The Monroe Doctrine has recently been the pivot of American statesmanship. With that doctrine Mr. Gallatin had much to do, both as minister to France and envoy to Great Britain. Indeed, in 1818, some years before the declaration of that doctrine, when the Spanish colonies of South America were in revolt, he declared that the United States would not even aid France in a mediation. Later, in May, 1823, six months before the famous message of President Monroe, Mr. Gallatin had already uttered its idea; when about leaving Paris, on his return from the French mission, he said to Chateaubriand, the French minister of foreign affairs (May 13, 1823): “The United States would undoubtedly preserve their neutrality, provided it were respected, and avoid any interference with the politics of Europe.... On the other hand, they would not suffer others to interfere against the emancipation of America.” With characteristic vanity Canning said that it was he himself who “called the new world into existence to redress the balance of the old.” Yet precisely this had already for a long while been a cardinal point of the policy of the United States. So early as 1808, Jefferson, alluding to the disturbed condition of the Spanish colonies, said: “We consider their interest and ours as the same, and that the object of both must be to exclude all European influence in this hemisphere.”

Matters of equal interest are involved in the study of Mr. Gallatin's actions and opinions in matters of finance. Every one knows that he ranks among the distinguished financiers of the world, and problems which he had to consider are still agitating the present generation. He was opposed alike to a national debt and to paper money. Had the metallic basis of the United States been adequate, he would have accepted no other circulating medium, and would have consented to the use of paper money only for purposes of exchange and remittance. In 1830 he urged the restriction of paper money to notes of one hundred dollars each, which were to be issued by the government. Obviously these must be used chiefly for transmitting funds, and would be of little use for the daily transactions of the people. Yet even this concession was due to the fact that the United States was then a debtor country, and so late as 1839, as Mr. Gallatin said, “specie was a foreign product.” For subsidiary money he favored silver coins at eighty-five per cent. of the dollar value, a sufficient alloy to hold them in the country. Silver was then the circulating medium of the world, the people's pocket money, and gold was the basis and the solvent of foreign exchanges.

Great interest attaches to the application of some other of Gallatin's financial principles to more modern problems; and a careful study of his papers may fairly enable us to form a few conclusions. It may be safely said that he would not have favored a national bank currency based on government bonds. This, however, would not have been because of any objection to the currency itself, but because the scheme would insure the continuance of a national debt. He was too practical, also, not to see that the ultimate security is the faith of the government, and that no filtering of that responsibility through private banks could do otherwise than injure it. Further, it is reasonably safe to say that he would favor the withdrawal both of national bank notes and of United States notes, the greenbacks so-called; and that he would consent to the use of paper only in the form of certificates directly representing the precious metals, gold and silver; also that he would limit the use of silver to its actual handling by the people in daily transactions. He would feel safe to disregard the fluctuations of the intrinsic value of silver, when used in this limited way as a subordinate currency, on the ground that the stamp of the United States was sufficient for conferring the needed value, when the obligation was only to maintain the parity, not of the silver, but of the coin, with gold. He understood that, in the case of a currency which is merely subordinate, parity arises from the guaranty of the government, and not from the quality of the coin; and that only such excess of any subordinate currency as is not needed for use in daily affairs can be presented for redemption. This principle, well understood by him, is recognized in European systems, wherein the minimum of circulation is recognized as a maximum limit of uncovered issues of paper. The circulation of silver, or of certificates based upon it, comes within the same rule.

At the time of the publication of this volume objection was taken to the author's statement that, until the publication of Gallatin's writings, his fame as a statesman and political leader was a mere tradition. Yet in point of fact, not only is his name hardly mentioned by the early biographers of Jefferson, Madison, and J. Q. Adams, but even by the later writers in this very Series, his work, varied and important as it was, has been given but scant notice. The historians of the United States, and those who have made a specialty of the study of political parties, have been alike indifferent or derelict in their investigations to such a degree that it required months of original research in the annals of Congress to ascertain Gallatin's actual relations towards the Federalist party which he helped to overthrow, and towards the Republican party which he did so much to found, and of which he became the ablest champion, in Congress by debate, and in the cabinet by administration.

Invited by the publishers of the Statesmen Series to bring this study “up to date,” the author has found no important changes to make in his work as he first prepared it. In the original investigation every source of information was carefully explored, and no new sources have since then been discovered. Mr. Gallatin's writings, carefully preserved in originals and copies, and well arranged, supplied the details; while the family traditions, with which the author was familiar, indicated the objects to be obtained. But so wide was the general field of Mr. Gallatin's career, so varied were his interests in all that pertained to humanity, philanthropy, and science, and so extensive were his relations with the leaders of European and American thought and action, that the subject could only be treated on the broadest basis. With this apology this study of one of the most interesting characters of American life is again commended to the indulgence of the American people.

Newport, April, 1898.

CONTENTS

[ILLUSTRATIONS]

ALBERT GALLATIN

CHAPTER I[ToC]

EARLY LIFE

Of all European-born citizens who have risen to fame in the political service of the United States, Albert Gallatin is the most distinguished. His merit in legislation, administration, and diplomacy is generally recognized, and he is venerated by men of science on both continents. Not, however, until the publication of his writings was the extent of his influence upon the political life and growth of the country other than a vague tradition. Independence and nationality were achieved by the Revolution, in which he bore a slight and unimportant part; his place in history is not, therefore, among the founders of the Republic, but foremost in the rank of those early American statesmen, to whom it fell to interpret and administer the organic laws which the founders declared and the people ratified in the Constitution of the United States. A study of his life shows that, from the time of the peace until his death, his influence, either by direct action or indirect counsel, may be traced through the history of the country.

The son of Jean Gallatin and his wife, Sophie Albertine Rollaz, he was born in the city of Geneva on January 29, 1761, and was baptized by the name of Abraham Alfonse Albert Gallatin. The name Abraham he received from his grandfather, but it was early dropped, and he was always known by his matronymic Albert. The Gallatin family held great influence in the Swiss Republic, and from the organization of the State contributed numerous members to its magistracy; others adopted the military profession, and served after the manner of their country in the Swiss contingents of foreign armies. The immediate relatives of Albert Gallatin were concerned in trade. Abraham, his grandfather, and Jean, his father, were partners. The latter dying in 1765, his widow assumed his share in the business. She died in March, 1770, leaving two children,—Albert, then nine years of age, and an invalid daughter who died a few years later. The loss to the orphan boy was lessened, if not compensated, by the care of a maiden lady—Mademoiselle Pictet—who had taken him into her charge at his father's death. This lady, whose affection never failed him, was the intimate friend of his mother as well as a distant relative of his father. Young Gallatin remained in this kind care until January, 1773, when he was sent to a boarding-school, and in August, 1775, to the academy of Geneva, from which he was graduated in May, 1779. The expenses of his education were in great part met by the trustees of the Bourse Gallatin,—a sum left in 1699 by a member of the family, of which the income was to be applied to its necessities. The course of study at the academy was confined to Latin and Greek. These were taught, to use the words of Mr. Gallatin, “Latin thoroughly, Greek much neglected.” Fortunately his preliminary home training had been careful, and he left the academy the first in his class in mathematics, natural philosophy, and Latin translation. French, a language in general use at Geneva, was of course familiar to him. English he also studied. He is not credited with special proficiency in history, but his teacher in this branch was Muller, the distinguished historian, and the groundwork of his information was solid. No American statesman has shown more accurate knowledge of the facts of history, or a more profound insight into its philosophy, than Mr. Gallatin.

Education, however, is not confined to instruction, nor is the influence of an academy to be measured by the extent of its curriculum, or the proficiency of its students, but rather by its general tone, moral and intellectual. The Calvinism of Geneva, narrow in its religious sense, was friendly to the spread of knowledge; and had this not been the case, the side influences of Roman Catholicism on the one hand, and the liberal spirit of the age on the other, would have tempered its exclusive tendency.

While the academy seems to have sent out few men of extraordinary eminence, its influence upon society was happy. Geneva was the resort of distinguished foreigners. Princes and nobles from Germany and the north of Europe, lords and gentlemen from England, and numerous Americans went thither to finish their education. Of these Mr. Gallatin has left mention of Francis Kinloch and William Smith, who later represented South Carolina in the Congress of the United States; Smith was afterwards minister to Portugal; Colonel Laurens, son of the president of Congress, and special envoy to France during the war of the American Revolution; the two Penns, proprietors of Pennsylvania; Franklin Bache, grandson of Dr. Franklin; and young Johannot, grandson of Dr. Cooper of Boston. Yet no one of these followed the academic course. To use again the words of Mr. Gallatin, “It was the Geneva society which they cultivated, aided by private teachers in every branch, with whom Geneva was abundantly supplied.” “By that influence,” he says, he was himself “surrounded, and derived more benefit from that source than from attendance on academical lectures.” Considered in its broader sense, education is quite as much a matter of association as of scholarly acquirement. The influence of the companion is as strong and enduring as that of the master. Of this truth the career of young Gallatin is a notable example. During his academic course he formed ties of intimate friendship with three of his associates. These were Henri Serre, Jean Badollet, and Etienne Dumont. This attachment was maintained unimpaired throughout their lives, notwithstanding the widely different stations which they subsequently filled. Serre and Badollet are only remembered from their connection with Gallatin. Dumont was of different mould. He was the friend of Mirabeau, the disciple and translator of Bentham,—a man of elegant acquirement, but, in the judgment of Gallatin, “without original genius.” De Lolme was in the class above Gallatin. He had such facility in the acquisition of languages that he was able to write his famous work on the English Constitution after the residence of a single year in England. Pictet, Gallatin's relative, afterwards celebrated as a naturalist, excelled all his fellows in physical science.

During his last year at the academy Gallatin was engaged in the tuition of a nephew of Mademoiselle Pictet, but the time soon arrived when he felt called upon to choose a career. His state was one of comparative dependence, and the small patrimony which he inherited would not pass to his control until he should reach his twenty-fifth year,—the period assigned for his majority. It would be hardly just to say that he was ambitious. Personal distinction was never an active motor in his life. Even his later honors, thick and fast though they fell, were rather thrust upon than sought by him. But his nature was proud and sensitive, and he chafed under personal control. The age was restless. The spirit of philosophic inquiry, no longer confined within scholastic limits, was spreading far and wide. From the banks of the Neva to the shores of the Mediterranean, the people of Europe were uneasy and expectant. Men everywhere felt that the social system was threatened with a cataclysm. What would emerge from the general deluge none could foresee. Certainly, the last remains of the old feudality would be engulfed forever. Nowhere was this more thoroughly believed than at the home of Rousseau. Under the shadow of the Alps, every breeze from which was free, the Genevese philosopher had written his “Contrat social,” and invited the rulers and the ruled to a reorganization of their relations to each other and to the world. But nowhere, also, was the conservative opposition to the new theories more intense than here.

The mind of young Gallatin was essentially philosophic. The studies in which he excelled in early life were in this direction, and at no time in his career did he display any emotional enthusiasm on subjects of general concern. But, on the other hand, he was unflinching in his adherence to abstract principle. Though not carried away by the extravagance of Rousseau, he was thoroughly discontented with the political state of Geneva. He was by early conviction a Democrat in the broadest sense of the term. Indeed, it would be difficult to find a more perfect example of what it was then the fashion to call a citoyen du monde. His family seem, on the contrary, to have been always conservative, and attached to the aristocratic and oligarchic system to which they had, for centuries, owed their position and advancement.

Abraham Gallatin, his grandfather, lived at Pregny on the northern shore of the lake, in close neighborhood to Ferney, the retreat of Voltaire. Susanne Vaudenet Gallatin, his grandmother, was a woman of the world, a lady of strong character, and the period was one when the influence of women was paramount in the affairs of men; among her friends she counted Voltaire, with whom her husband and herself were on intimate relations, and Frederick, Landgrave of Hesse-Cassel, with whom she corresponded. So sincere was this latter attachment that the sovereign sent his portrait to her in 1776, an honor which, at her instance, Voltaire acknowledged in a verse characteristic of himself and of the time:—

“J'ai baisé ce portrait charmant,
Je vous l'avoûrai sans mystère,
Mes filles en out fait autant,
Mais c'est un secret qu'il faut taire.
Vous trouverez bon qu'une mère
Vous parle un peu plus hardiment,
Et vous verrez qu'également,
En tous les temps vous savez plaire.”

At Pregny young Gallatin was the constant guest of his nearest relatives on his father's side, and he was a frequent visitor at Ferney. Those whose fortune it has been to sit at the feet of Mr. Gallatin himself, in the serene atmosphere of his study, after his retirement from active participation in public concerns, may well imagine the influence which the rays of the prismatic character of Voltaire must have had upon the philosophic and receptive mind of the young student.

There was and still is a solidarity in European families which can scarcely be said to have ever had a counterpart in those of England, and of which hardly a vestige remains in American social life. The fate of each member was a matter of interest to all, and the honor of the name was of common concern. Among the Gallatins, the grandmother, Madame Gallatin-Vaudenet, as she was called, appears to have been the controlling spirit. To her the profession of the youthful scion of the stock was a matter of family consequence, and she had already marked out his future course. The Gallatins, as has been already stated, had acquired honor in the military service of foreign princes. Her friend, the Landgrave of Hesse, was engaged in supporting the uncertain fortunes of the British army in America with a large military contingent, and she had only to ask to obtain for her grandson the high commission of lieutenant-colonel of one of the regiments of Hessian mercenaries. To the offer made to young Gallatin, and urged with due authority, he replied, that “he would never serve a tyrant;” a want of respect which was answered by a cuff on the ear. This incident determined his career. Whether it crystallized long-cherished fancies into sudden action, or whether it was of itself the initial cause of his resolve, is now mere matter of conjecture; probably the former. The three friends, Gallatin, Badollet, and Serre seem to have amused their leisure in planning an ideal existence in some wilderness. America offered a boundless field for the realization of such dreams, and the spice of adventure could be had for the seeking. Here was the forest primeval in its original grandeur. Here the Indian roamed undisputed master; not the tutored Huron of Voltaire's tale, but the savage of torch and tomahawk. The continent was as yet unexplored. In uncertainty as to motives for man's action the French magistrate always searches for the woman,—“cherchez la femme!” One single allusion in a letter written to Badollet, in 1783, shows that there was a woman in Gallatin's horoscope. Who she was, what her relation to him, or what influence she had upon his actions, nowhere appears. He only says that besides Mademoiselle Pictet there was one friend, “une amie,” at Geneva, from whom a permanent separation would be hard.

Confiding his purpose to his friend Serre, Gallatin easily persuaded this ardent youth to join him in his venturesome journey, and on April 1, 1780, the two secretly left Geneva. It certainly was no burning desire to aid the Americans in their struggle for independence, such as had stirred the generous soul of Lafayette, that prompted this act. In later life he repeatedly disclaimed any such motive. It was rather a longing for personal independence, for freedom from the trammels of a society in which he had little faith or interest. Nor were his political opinions at this time matured. He had a just pride in the Swiss Republic as a free State (Etat libre), and his personal bias was towards the “Négatif” party, as those were called who maintained the authority of the Upper Council (Petit Conseil) to reject the demands of the people. To this oligarchic party his family belonged. In a letter written three years later, he confesses that he was “Négatif” when he abandoned his home, and conveys the idea that his emigration was an experiment, a search for a system of government in accordance with his abstract notions of natural justice and political right. To use his own words, he came to America to “drink in a love for independence in the freest country of the universe.” But there was some method in this madness. The rash scheme of emigration had a practical side; land speculation and commerce were to be the foundation and support of the settlement in the wilderness where they would realize their political Utopia.

From Geneva the young adventurers hurried to Nantes, on the coast of France, where Gallatin soon received letters from his family, who seem to have neglected nothing that could contribute to their comfort or advantage. Monsieur P. M. Gallatin, the guardian of Albert, a distant relative in an elder branch of the family, addressed him a letter which, in its moderation, dignity, and kindness, is a model of well-tempered severity and reproach. It expressed the pain Mademoiselle Pictet had felt at his unceremonious departure, and his own affliction at the ingratitude of one to whom he had never refused a request. Finally, as the trustee of his estate till his majority, the guardian assures the errant youth that he will aid him with pecuniary resources as far as possible, without infringing upon the capital, and within the sworn obligation of his trust. Letters of recommendation to distinguished Americans were also forwarded, and in these it is found, to the high credit of the family, that no distinction was made between the two young men, although Serre seems to have been considered as the originator of the bold move. The intervention of the Duke de la Rochefoucauld d'Enville was solicited, and a letter was obtained by him from Benjamin Franklin—then American minister at the Court of Versailles—to his son-in-law, Richard Bache. Lady Juliana Penn wrote in their behalf to John Penn at Philadelphia, and Mademoiselle Pictet to Colonel Kinloch, member of the Continental Congress from South Carolina. Thus supported in their undertaking the youthful travelers sailed from L'Orient on May 27, in an American vessel, the Kattie, Captain Loring. Of the sum which Gallatin, who supplied the capital for the expedition, brought from Geneva, one half had been expended in their land journey and the payment of the passages to Boston; one half, eighty louis d'or—the equivalent of four hundred silver dollars—remained, part of which they invested in tea. Reaching the American coast in a fog, or bad weather, they were landed at Cape Ann on July 14. From Gloucester they rode the next day to Boston on horseback, a distance of thirty miles. Here they put up at a French café, “The Sign of the Alliance,” in Fore Street, kept by one Tahon, and began to consider what step they should next take in the new world.

The prospects were not encouraging; the military fortunes of the struggling nation were never at a lower ebb than during the summer which intervened between the disaster of Camden and the discovery of Arnold's treason. Washington's army lay at New Windsor in enforced inactivity; enlistments were few, and the currency was almost worthless. Such was the stagnation in trade, that the young strangers found it extremely difficult to dispose of their little venture in tea. Two months were passed at the café, in waiting for an opportunity to go to Philadelphia, where Congress was in session, and where they expected to find the influential persons to whom they were accredited; also letters from Geneva. But this journey was no easy matter. The usual routes of travel were interrupted. New York was the fortified headquarters of the British army, and the Middle States were only to be reached by a détour through the American lines above the Highlands and behind the Jersey Hills.

The homesick youths found little to amuse or interest them in Boston, and grew very weary of its monotonous life and Puritanic tone. They missed the public amusements to which they were accustomed in their own country, and complained of the superstitious observance of Sunday, when “singing, fiddling, card-playing and bowling were forbidden.” Foreigners were not welcome guests in this town of prejudice. The sailors of the French fleet had already been the cause of one riot. Gallatin's letters show that this aversion was fully reciprocated by him.

The neighboring country had some points of interest. No Swiss ever saw a hill without an intense desire to get to its top. They soon felt the magnetic attraction of the Blue Hills of Milton, and, descrying from their summit the distant mountains north of Worcester, made a pedestrian excursion thither the following day. Mr. Gallatin was wont to relate with glee an incident of this trip, which Mr. John Russell Bartlett repeats in his “Reminiscences.”

“The tavern at which he stopped on his journey was kept by a man who partook in a considerable degree of the curiosity even now-a-days manifested by some landlords in the back parts of New England to know the whole history of their guests. Noticing Mr. Gallatin's French accent he said, 'Just from France, eh! You are a Frenchman, I suppose.' 'No!' said Mr. Gallatin, 'I am not from France.' 'You can't be from England, I am sure?' 'No!' was the reply. 'From Spain?' 'No!' 'From Germany?' 'No!' 'Well, where on earth are you from then, or what are you?' eagerly asked the inquisitive landlord. 'I am a Swiss,' replied Mr. Gallatin. 'Swiss, Swiss, Swiss!' exclaimed the landlord, in astonishment. 'Which of the ten tribes are the Swiss?'”

Nor was this an unnatural remark. At this time Mr. Gallatin did not speak English with facility, and indeed was never free from a foreign accent.

At the little café they met a Swiss woman, the wife of a Genevan, one De Lesdernier, who had been for thirty years established in Nova Scotia, but, becoming compromised in the attempt to revolutionize the colony, was compelled to fly to New England, and had settled at Machias, on the northeastern extremity of the Maine frontier. Tempted by her account of this region, and perhaps making a virtue of necessity, Gallatin and Serre bartered their tea for rum, sugar, and tobacco, and, investing the remainder of their petty capital in similar merchandise, they embarked October 1, 1780, upon a small coasting vessel, which, after a long and somewhat perilous passage, reached the mouth of the Machias River on the 15th of the same month. Machias was then a little settlement five miles from the mouth of the stream of the same name. It consisted of about twenty houses and a small fortification, mounting seven guns and garrisoned by fifteen or twenty men. The young travelers were warmly received by the son of Lesdernier, and made their home under his roof. This seems to have been one of the four or five log houses in a large clearing near the fort. Gallatin attempted to settle a lot of land, and the meadow where he cut the hay with his own hands is still pointed out. This is Frost's meadow in Perry, not far from the site of the Indian village. A single cow was the beginning of a farm, but the main occupation of the young men was woodcutting. No record remains of the result of the merchandise venture. The trade of Machias was wholly in fish, lumber, and furs, which, there being no money, the settlers were ready enough to barter for West India goods. But the outlet for the product of the country was, in its unsettled condition, uncertain and precarious, and the young traders were no better off than before. One transaction only is remembered, the advance by Gallatin to the garrison of supplies to the value of four hundred dollars; for this he took a draft on the state treasury of Massachusetts, which, there being no funds for its payment, he sold at one fourth of its face value.

The life, rude as it was, was not without its charms. Serre seems to have abandoned himself to its fascination without a regret. His descriptive letters to Badollet read like the “Idylls of a Faun.” Those of Gallatin, though more tempered in tone, reveal quiet content with the simple life and a thorough enjoyment of nature in its original wildness. In the summer they followed the tracks of the moose and deer through the primitive forests, and explored the streams and lakes in the light birch canoe, with a woodsman or savage for their guide. In the winter they made long journeys over land and water on snowshoes or on skates, occasionally visiting the villages of the Indians, with whom the Lesderniers were on the best of terms, studying their habits and witnessing their feasts. Occasional expeditions of a different nature gave zest and excitement to this rustic life. These occurred when alarms of English invasion reached the settlement, and volunteers marched to the defence of the frontier. Twice Gallatin accompanied such parties to Passamaquoddy, and once, in November, 1780, was left for a time in command of a small earthwork and a temporary garrison of whites and Indians at that place. At Machias Gallatin made one acquaintance which greatly interested him, that of La Pérouse, the famous navigator. He was then in command of the Amazone frigate, one of the French squadron on the American coast, and had in convoy a fleet of fishing vessels on their way to the Newfoundland banks. Gallatin had an intense fondness for geography, and was delighted with La Pérouse's narrative of his visit to Hudson's Bay, and of his discovery there (at Fort Albany, which he captured) of the manuscript journal of Samuel Hearne, who some years before had made a voyage to the Arctic regions in search of a northwest passage. Gallatin and La Pérouse met subsequently in Boston.

The winter of 1780-81 was passed in the cabin of the Lesderniers. The excessive cold does not seem to have chilled Serre's enthusiasm. Like the faun of Hawthorne's mythical tale, he loved Nature in all her moods; but Gallatin appears to have wearied of the confinement and of his uncongenial companions. The trading experiment was abandoned in the autumn, and with some experience, but a reduced purse, the friends returned in October to Boston, where Gallatin set to work to support himself by giving lessons in the French language. What success he met with at first is not known, though the visits of the French fleet and the presence of its officers may have awakened some interest in their language. However this may be, in December Gallatin wrote to his good friend, Mademoiselle Pictet, a frank account of his embarrassments. Before it reached her, she had already, with her wonted forethought, anticipated his difficulties by providing for a payment of money to him wherever he might be, and had also secured for him the interest of Dr. Samuel Cooper, whose grandson, young Johannot, was then at school in Geneva. Dr. Cooper was one of the most distinguished of the patriots in Boston, and no better influence could have been invoked than his. In July, 1782, by a formal vote of the President and Fellows of Harvard College, Mr. Gallatin was permitted to teach the French language. About seventy of the students availed themselves of the privilege. Mr. Gallatin received about three hundred dollars in compensation. In this occupation he remained at Cambridge for about a year, at the expiration of which he took advantage of the close of the academic course to withdraw from his charge, receiving at his departure a certificate from the Faculty that he had acquitted himself in his department with great reputation.

The war was over, the army of the United States was disbanded, and the country was preparing for the new order which the peace would introduce into the habits and occupations of the people. The long-sought opportunity at last presented itself, and Mr. Gallatin at once embraced it. He left Boston without regret. He had done his duty faithfully, and secured the approbation and esteem of all with whom he had come in contact, but there is no evidence that he cared for or sought social relations either in the city or at the college. Journeying southward he passed through Providence, where he took sail for New York. Stopping for an hour at Newport for dinner, he reached New York on July 21, 1783. The same day the frigate Mercury arrived from England with news of the signature of the definitive treaty of peace. He was delighted with the beauty of the country-seats above the city, the vast port with its abundant shipping, and with the prospect of a theatrical entertainment. The British soldiers and sailors, who were still in possession, he found rude and insolent, but the returning refugees civil and honest people. At Boston Gallatin made the acquaintance of a French gentleman, one Savary de Valcoulon, who had crossed the Atlantic to prosecute in person certain claims against the State of Virginia for advances made by his house in Lyons during the war. He accompanied Gallatin to New York, and together they traveled to Philadelphia; Savary, who spoke no English, gladly attaching to himself as his companion a young man of the ability and character of Gallatin.

At Philadelphia Gallatin was soon after joined by Serre, who had remained behind, engaged also in giving instruction. The meeting at Philadelphia seems to have been the occasion for the dissolution of a partnership in which Gallatin had placed his money, and Serre his enthusiasm and personal charm. A settlement was made; Serre giving his note to Gallatin for the sum of six hundred dollars,—one half of their joint expenses for three years,—an obligation which was repaid more than half a century later by his sister. Serre then joined a fellow-countryman and went to Jamaica, where he died in 1784. At Philadelphia Gallatin and Savary lodged in a house kept by one Mary Lynn. Pelatiah Webster, the political economist, who owned the house, was also a boarder. Later he said of his fellow-lodgers that “they were well-bred gentlemen who passed their time conversing in French.” Gallatin, at the end of his resources, gladly acceded to Savary's request to accompany him to Richmond.

Whatever hesitation Gallatin may have entertained as to his definitive expatriation was entirely set at rest by the news of strife between the rival factions in Geneva and the interposition of armed force by the neighboring governments. This interference turned the scale against the liberal party. Mademoiselle Pictet was the only link which bound him to his family. For his ingratitude to her he constantly reproached himself. He still styled himself a citizen of Geneva, but this was only as a matter of convenience and security to his correspondence. His determination to make America his home was now fixed. The lands on the banks of the Ohio were then considered the most fertile in America,—the best for farming purposes, the cultivation of grain, and the raising of cattle. The first settlement in this region was made by the Ohio Company, an association formed in Virginia and London, about the middle of the century, by Thomas Lee, together with Lawrence and Augustine, brothers of George Washington. The lands lay on the south side of the Ohio, between the Monongahela and Kanawha rivers. These lands were known as “Washington's bottom lands.” In this neighborhood Gallatin determined to purchase two or three thousand acres, and prepare for that ideal country home which had been the dream of his college days. Land here was worth from thirty cents to four dollars an acre. His first purchase was about one thousand acres, for which he paid one hundred pounds, Virginia currency. Land speculation was the fever of the time. Savary was early affected by it, and before the new friends left Philadelphia for Richmond he bought warrants for one hundred and twenty thousand acres in Virginia, in Monongalia County, between the Great and Little Kanawha rivers, and interested Gallatin to the extent of one quarter in the purchase. Soon after the completion of this transaction the sale of some small portions reimbursed them for three fourths of the original cost. This was the first time when, and Savary was the first person to whom, Gallatin was willing to incur a pecuniary obligation. Throughout his life he had an aversion to debt; small or large, private or public. It was arranged that Gallatin's part of the purchase money was not to be paid until his majority,—January 29, 1786,—but in the meanwhile he was, in lieu of interest money, to give his services in personal superintendence. Later Savary increased Gallatin's interest to one half. Soon after these plans were completed, Savary and Gallatin moved to Richmond, where they made their residence.

In February, 1784, Gallatin returned to Philadelphia, perfected the arrangements for his expedition, and in March crossed the mountains, and, with his exploring party, passed down the Ohio River to Monongalia County in Virginia. The superior advantages of the country north of the Virginia line determined him to establish his headquarters there. He selected the farm of Thomas Clare, at the junction of the Monongahela River and George's Creek. This was in Fayette County, Pennsylvania, about four miles north of the Virginia line. Here he built a log hut, opened a country store, and remained till the close of the year. It was while thus engaged at George's Creek, in September of the year 1784, that Gallatin first met General Washington, who was examining the country, in which he had large landed interests, to select a route for a road across the Alleghanies. The story of the interview was first made public by Mr. John Russell Bartlett, who had it from the lips of Mr. Gallatin. The version of the late Hon. William Beach Lawrence, in a paper prepared for the New York Historical Society, differs slightly in immaterial points. Mr. Lawrence says:—

“Among the incidents connected with his (Mr. Gallatin's) earliest explorations was an interview with General Washington, which he repeatedly recounted to me. He had previously observed that of all the inaccessible men he had ever seen, General Washington was the most so. And this remark he made late in life, after having been conversant with most of the sovereigns of Europe and their prime ministers. He said, in connection with his office, he had a cot-bed in the office of the surveyor of the district when Washington, who had lands in the neighborhood, and was desirous of effecting communication between the rivers, came there. Mr. Gallatin's bed was given up to him,—Gallatin lying on the floor, immediately below the table at which Washington was writing. Washington was endeavoring to reduce to paper the calculations of the day. Gallatin, hearing the statement, came at once to the conclusion, and, after waiting some time, he himself gave the answer, which drew from Washington such a look as he never experienced before or since. On arriving by a slow process at his conclusion, Washington turned to Gallatin and said, 'You are right, young man.'”

The points of difference between the two accounts of this interview are of little importance. The look which Washington is said to have given Mr. Gallatin has its counterpart in that with which he is also said to have turned upon Gouverneur Morris, when accosted by him familiarly with a touch on the shoulder. Bartlett, in his recollection of the anecdote, adds that Washington, about this period, inquired after the forward young man, and urged him to become his land agent,—an offer which Gallatin declined.

The winter of 1784-85 was passed in Richmond, in the society of which town Mr. Gallatin began to find a relief and pleasure he had not yet experienced in America. At this period the Virginia capital was the gayest city in the Union, and famous for its abundant hospitality, rather facile manners, and the liberal tendency of its religious thought. Gallatin brought no prudishness and no orthodoxy in his Genevese baggage. One of the last acts of his life was to recognize in graceful and touching words the kindness he then met with:—

“I was received with that old proverbial Virginia hospitality to which I know no parallel anywhere within the circle of my travels. It was not hospitality only that was shown to me. I do not know how it came to pass, but every one with whom I became acquainted appeared to take an interest in the young stranger. I was only the interpreter of a gentleman, the agent of a foreign house, that had a large claim for advances to the State, and this made me known to all the officers of government, and some of the most prominent members of the Legislature. It gave me the first opportunity of showing some symptoms of talent, even as a speaker, of which I was not myself aware. Every one encouraged me, and was disposed to promote my success in life. To name all those from whom I received offers of service would be to name all the most distinguished residents at that time in Richmond.”

In the spring of 1785, fortified with a certificate from Governor Patrick Henry, commending him to the county surveyor, and intrusted by Henry with the duty of locating two thousand acres of lands in the western country for a third party, he set out from Richmond, on March 31, alone, on horseback. Following the course of the James River he crossed the Blue Ridge at the Peaks of Otter, and reached Greenbrier Court House on April 18. On the 29th he arrived at Clare's, on George's Creek, where he was joined by Savary. Their surveying operations were soon begun, each taking a separate course. An Indian rising broke up the operations of Savary, and both parties returned to Clare's. Gallatin appeared before the court of Monongalia County, at its October term, and took the “oath of allegiance and fidelity to the Commonwealth of Virginia.” Clare's, his actual residence, was north of the Virginia line, but his affections were with the old Dominion. In November the partners hired from Clare a house at George's Creek, in Springfield township, and established their residence, after which they returned to Richmond by way of Cumberland and the Potomac. In February, 1786, Gallatin made his permanent abode at his new home.

Mention has been made of the intimacy of the young emigrants with Jean Badollet, a college companion. When they left Geneva he was engaged in the study of theology, and was now a teacher. He was included in the original plan of emigration, and the first letters of both Gallatin and Serre, who had for him an equal attachment, were to him, and year by year, through all the vicissitudes of their fortune, they kept him carefully informed of their movements and projects. For two years after their departure no word was received from him. At last, spurred by the sharp reproaches of Serre, he broke silence. In a letter written in March, 1783, informing Gallatin of the troubles in Switzerland, he excused himself on the plea that their common friend, Dumont, retained him at Geneva. In answer, Gallatin opened his plans of western settlement, which included the employment of his fortune in the establishment of a number of families upon his lands. He suggested to Badollet to bring with him the little money he had, to which enough would be added to establish him independently. Dumont was invited to accompany him. But with a prudence which shows that his previous experience had not been thrown away upon him, Gallatin recommends his friend not to start at once, but to hold himself ready for the next, or, at the latest, the year succeeding, at the same time suggesting the idea of a general emigration of such Swiss malcontents as were small capitalists and farmers; that of manufacturers and workmen he discouraged. It was not, however, until the spring of 1785, on the eve of leaving Richmond with some families which he had engaged to establish on his lands, that he felt justified in asking his old friend to cross the seas and share his lot. This invitation was accepted, and Badollet joined him at George's Creek.

The settlement beginning to spread, Gallatin bought another farm higher up the river, to which he gave the name of Friendship Hill. Here he later made his home.

The western part of Pennsylvania, embracing the area which stretches from the Alleghany Mountains to Lake Erie, is celebrated for the wild, picturesque beauty of its scenery. Among its wooded hills the head waters of the Ohio have their source. At Fort Duquesne, or Pittsburgh, where the river takes a sudden northerly bend before finally settling in swelling volume on its southwesterly course to the Mississippi, the Monongahela adds its mountain current, which separates in its entire course from the Virginia line the two counties of Fayette and Washington. The Monongahela takes its rise in Monongalia County, Virginia, and flows to the northward. Friendship Hill is one of the bluffs on the right bank of the river, and faces the Laurel Ridge to the eastward. Braddock's Road, now the National Road, crosses the mountains, passing through Uniontown and Red Stone Old Fort (Brownsville), on its course to Pittsburgh. The county seat of Fayette is the borough of Union or Uniontown. Gallatin's log cabin, the beginning of New Geneva, was on the right bank of the Monongahela, about twelve miles to the westward of the county seat. Opposite, on the other side of the river, in Washington County, was Greensburg, where his friend Badollet was later established.

Again for a long period Gallatin left his family without any word whatever. His most indulgent friend, Mademoiselle Pictet, could hardly excuse his silence, and did not hesitate to charge that it was due to misfortunes which his pride prompted him to conceal. In the early days of 1786 a rumor of his death reached Geneva, and greatly alarmed his family. Mr. Jefferson, then minister at Paris, wrote to Mr. Jay for information. This was Jefferson's first knowledge of the existence of the young man who was to become his political associate, his philosophic companion, and his truest friend. Meanwhile Gallatin had attained his twenty-fifth year and his majority. His family were no longer left in doubt as to his existence, and in response to his letters drafts were at once remitted to him for the sum of five thousand dollars, through the banking-house of Robert Morris. This was, of course, immediately applied to his western experiment. The business of the partnership now called for his constant attention. It required the exercise of a great variety of mental powers, a cool and discriminating judgment, combined with an incessant attention to details. Nature, under such circumstances, is not so attractive as she appears in youthful dreams; admirable in her original garb, she is annoying and obstinate when disturbed. The view of country which Friendship Hill commands is said to rival Switzerland in its picturesque beauty, but years later, when the romance of the Monongahela hills had faded in the actualities of life, Gallatin wrote of it that “he did not know in the United States any spot which afforded less means to earn a bare subsistence for those who could not live by manual labor.”

Gallatin has been blamed for “taking life awry and throwing away the advantages of education, social position, and natural intelligence,” by his removal to the frontier, and his career compared with that of Hamilton and Dallas, who, like him, foreign born, rose to eminence in politics, and became secretaries of the treasury of the United States. But both of these were of English-speaking races. No foreigner of any other race ever obtained such distinction in American politics as Mr. Gallatin, and he only because he was the choice of a constituency, to every member of which he was personally known. It is questionable whether in any other condition of society he could have secured advancement by election—the true source of political power in all democracies. John Marshall, afterwards Chief Justice, recognized Gallatin's talent soon after his arrival in Richmond, offered him a place in his office without a fee, and assured him of future distinction in the profession of the law; but Patrick Henry was the more sagacious counselor; he advised Gallatin to go to the West, and predicted his success as a statesman. Modest as the beginning seemed in the country he had chosen, it was nevertheless a start in the right direction, as the future showed. It was in no sense a mistake.

Neither did the affairs of the wilderness wholly debar intercourse with the civilized world. Visiting Richmond every winter, he gradually extended the circle of his acquaintance, and increased his personal influence; he also occasionally passed a few weeks at Philadelphia. Two visits to Maine are recorded in his diary, but whether they were of pleasure merely does not appear. One was in 1788, in midwinter, by stage and sleigh. On this excursion he descended the Androscoggin and crossed Merrymeeting Bay on the ice, returning by the same route in a snowstorm, which concealed the banks on either side of the river, so that he governed his course by the direction of the wind. With the intellect of a prime minister he had the constitution of a pioneer. On one of these occasions he intended to visit his old friends and hosts, the Lesderniers, but the difficulty of finding a conveyance, and the rumor that the old gentleman was away from home, interfered with his purpose. He remembered their kindness, and later attempted to obtain pensions for them from the United States government.

But the time now arrived when the current of his domestic life was permanently diverted, and set in other channels. In May, 1789, he married Sophie Allègre, the daughter of William Allègre of a French Protestant family living at Richmond. The father was dead, and the mother took lodgers, of whom Gallatin was one. For more than a year he had addressed her and secured her affections. Her mother now refused her consent, and no choice was left to the young lovers but to marry without it. Little is known of this short but touching episode in Mr. Gallatin's life. The young lady was warmly attached to him, and the letter written to her mother asking forgiveness for her marriage is charmingly expressed and full of feeling. They passed a few happy months at Friendship Hill, when suddenly she died. From this time Mr. Gallatin lost all heart in the western venture, and his most earnest wish was to turn his back forever upon Fayette County. In his suffering he would have returned to Geneva to Mademoiselle Pictet, could he have sold his Virginia lands. But this had become impossible at any price, and he had no other pecuniary resource but the generosity of his family.

Meanwhile the revolution had broken out in France. The rights of man had been proclaimed on the Champ de Mars. All Europe was uneasy and alarmed, and nowhere offered a propitious field for peaceful labor. But Gallatin did not long need other distraction than he was to find at home.

CHAPTER II[ToC]

PENNSYLVANIA LEGISLATURE

Political revolutions are the opportunity of youth. In England, Pitt and Fox; in America, Hamilton and Gouverneur Morris; in Europe, Napoleon and Pozzo di Borgo, before they reached their thirtieth year, helped to shape the political destiny of nations. The early maturity of Gallatin was no less remarkable. In his voluminous correspondence there is no trace of youth. At nineteen his habits of thought were already formed, and his moral and intellectual tendencies were clearly marked in his character, and understood by himself. His tastes also were already developed. His life, thereafter, was in every sense a growth. The germs of every excellence, which came to full fruition in his subsequent career, may be traced in the preferences of his academic days. From youth to age he was consistent with himself. His mind was of that rare and original order which, reasoning out its own conclusions, seldom has cause to change.

His political opinions were early formed. A letter written by him in October, 1783, before he had completed his twenty-third year, shows the maturity of his intellect, and his analytic habit of thought. An extract gives the nature of the reasons which finally determined him to make his home in America:—

“This is what by degrees greatly influenced my judgment. After my arrival in this country I was early convinced, upon a comparison of American governments with that of Geneva, that the latter is founded on false principles; that the judicial power, in civil as well as criminal cases, the executive power wholly, and two thirds of the legislative power being lodged in two bodies which are almost self-made, and the members of which are chosen for life,—it is hardly possible but that this formidable aristocracy should, sooner or later, destroy the equilibrium which it was supposed could be maintained at Geneva.”

The period from the peace of 1783 to the adoption of the federal Constitution in 1787 was one of political excitement. The utter failure of the old Confederation to serve the purposes of national defense and safety for which it was framed had been painfully felt during the war. Independence had been achieved under it rather than by it, the patriotic action of some of the States supplying the deficiencies of others less able or less willing. By the radical inefficiency of the Confederation the war had been protracted, its success repeatedly imperiled, and, at its close, the results gained by it were constantly menaced. The more perfect union which was the outcome of the deliberations of the federal convention was therefore joyfully accepted by the people at large. Indeed, it was popular pressure, and not the arguments of its advocates, that finally overcame the formidable opposition in and out of the convention to the Constitution. No written record remains of Mr. Gallatin's course during the sessions of the federal convention. He was not a member of the body, nor is his name connected with any public act having any bearing upon its deliberations. Of the direction of his influence, however, there can be no doubt. He had an abiding distrust of strong government,—a dread of the ambitions of men. Precisely what form he would have substituted for the legislative and executive system adopted nowhere appears in his writings, but certainly neither president nor senate would have been included. They bore too close a resemblance to king and lords to win his approval, no matter how restricted their powers. He would evidently have leaned to a single house, with a temporary executive directly appointed by itself; or, if elected by the people, then for a short term of office, without renewal; and he would have reduced its legislative powers to the narrowest possible limit. The best government he held to be that which governs least; and many of the ablest of that incomparable body of men who welded this Union held these views. But the yearning of the people was in the other direction. They felt the need of government. They wanted the protection of a strong arm. It must not be forgotten that the thirteen colonies which declared their independence in 1776 were all seaboard communities, each with its port. They were all trading communities. The East, with its fisheries and timber; the Middle States, with their agricultural products and peltries; the South, with its tobacco; each saw, in that freedom from the restrictions of the English navigation laws which the treaty of peace secured, the promise of a boundless commerce. To protect commerce there must be a national power somewhere. Since the peace the government had gained neither the affection of its own citizens nor the respect of foreign powers.

The federal Constitution was adopted September 17, 1787. The first State to summon a convention of ratification was Pennsylvania. No one of the thirteen original States was more directly interested than herself. The centre of population lay somewhere in her limits, and there was reasonable ground for hope that Philadelphia would become once more the seat of government. The delegates met at Philadelphia on November 2. An opposition declared itself at the beginning of the proceedings. Regardless of the popular impatience, the majority allowed full scope to adverse argument, and it was not until December 12 that the final vote was taken and the Constitution ratified, without recommendations, by a majority of two to one. In this body Fayette County was represented by Nicholas Breading and John Smilie. The latter gentleman, of Scotch-Irish birth, an adroit debater, led the opposition. In the course of his criticisms he enunciated the doctrines which were soon to become a party cry; the danger of the Constitution “in inviting rather than guarding against the approaches of tyranny;” “its tendency to a consolidation, not a confederation, of the States.” Mr. Gallatin does not appear to have sought to be a delegate to this body, but his hand may be traced through the speeches of Smilie in the precision with which the principles of the opposition were formulated and declared; and his subsequent course plainly indicates that his influence was exerted in the interest of the dissatisfied minority. The ratification was received by the people with intense satisfaction, but the delay in debate lost the State the honor of precedence in the honorable vote of acquiescence,—the Delaware convention having taken the lead by a unanimous vote. For the moment the Pennsylvania Anti-Federalists clung to the hope that the Constitution might yet fail to receive the assent of the required number of States, but as one after another fell into line, this hope vanished.

One bold expedient remained. The ratification of some of the States was coupled with the recommendation of certain amendments. Massachusetts led the way in this, Virginia followed, and New York, which, in the language of the day, became the eleventh pillar of the federal edifice, on July 26, 1788, accompanied her ratification with a circular letter to the governors of all the States, recommending that a general convention be called.[1]

The argument taken in this letter was the only one which had any chance of commending itself to popular favor. It was in these words: “that the apprehension and discontents which the articles occasion cannot be removed or allayed unless an act to provide for the calling of a new convention be among the first that shall be passed by the next Congress.” This document, made public at once, encouraged the Pennsylvania Anti-Federalists to a last effort to bring about a new convention, to undo or radically alter the work of the old. A conference held at Harrisburg, on September 3, 1788, was participated in by thirty-three gentlemen, from various sections of the State, who assembled in response to the call of a circular letter which originated in the county of Cumberland in the month of August. The city of Philadelphia and thirteen counties were represented; six of the dissenting members of the late convention were present, among whom was Smilie. He and Gallatin represented the county of Fayette.

Smilie, Gallatin's earliest political friend, was born in 1742, and was therefore about twenty years his senior. He came to the United States in youth, and had grown up in the section he now represented. His popularity is shown by his service in the state legislature, and during twelve years in Congress as representative or as senator. In any estimate of Mr. Gallatin, this early influence must be taken into account. The friendship thus formed continued until Smilie's death in 1816. From the adviser he became the ardent supporter of Mr. Gallatin.

Blair McClanachan, of Philadelphia County, was elected chairman of the conference. The result of this deliberation was a report in the form of a series of resolutions, of which two drafts, both in Mr. Gallatin's handwriting, are among his papers now in the keeping of the New York Historical Society. The original resolutions were broad in scope, and suggested a plan of action of a dual nature; the one of which failing, resort could be had to the other without compromising the movement by delay. In a word, it proposed an opposition by a party organization. The first resolution was adroitly framed to avoid the censure with which the people at large, whose satisfaction with the new Constitution had grown with the fresh adhesions of State after State to positive enthusiasm, would surely condemn any attempt to dissolve the Union formed under its provisions. This resolution declared that it was in order to prevent a dissolution of the Union and to secure liberty, that a revision was necessary. The second expressed the opinion of the conference to be, that the safest manner to obtain such revision was to conform to the request of the State of New York, and to urge the calling of a new convention, and recommended that the Pennsylvania legislature be petitioned to apply for that purpose to the new Congress. These were declaratory. The third and fourth provided, first, for an organization of committees in the several counties to correspond with each other and with similar committees in other States; secondly, invited the friends to amendments in the several States to meet in conference at a fixed time and place. This plan of committees of correspondence and of a meeting of delegates was simply a revival of the methods of the Sons of Liberty, from whose action sprung the first Continental Congress of 1774.

The formation of such an organization would surely have led to disturbance, perhaps to civil war. During the progress of the New York convention swords and bayonets had been drawn, and blood had been shed in the streets of Albany, where the Anti-Federalists excited popular rage by burning the new Constitution. But the thirty-three gentlemen who met at Harrisburg wisely tempered these resolutions to a moderate tone. Thus modified, they recommended, first, that the people of the State should acquiesce in the organization of the government, while holding in view the necessity of very considerable amendments and alterations essential to preserve the peace and harmony of the Union. Secondly, that a revision by general convention was necessary. Thirdly, that the legislature should be requested to apply to Congress for that purpose. The petition recommended twelve amendments, selected from those already proposed by other States. These were of course restrictive. The report was made public in the “Pennsylvania Packet” of September 15. With this the agitation appears to have ceased. On September 13 Congress notified the States by resolution to appoint electors under the provisions of the Constitution. The unanimous choice of Washington as president hushed all opposition, and for a time the Anti-Federalists sunk into insignificance.

The persistent labors of the friends of revision were not without result. The amendments proposed by Virginia and New York were laid before the House of Representatives. Seventeen received the two thirds vote of the House. After conference with the Senate, in which Mr. Madison appeared as manager for the House, these, reduced in number to twelve by elimination and compression, were adopted by the requisite two thirds vote, and transmitted to the legislatures of the States for approval. Ratified by a sufficient number of States, they became a part of the Constitution. They were general, and declaratory of personal rights, and in no instance restrictive of the power of the general government.

In 1789, the Assembly of Pennsylvania calling a convention to revise the Constitution of the State, Mr. Gallatin was sent as a delegate from Fayette County. To the purposes of this convention he was opposed, as a dangerous precedent. He had endeavored to organize an opposition to it in the western counties, by correspondence with his political friends. His objections were the dangers of alterations in government, and the absurdity of the idea that the Constitution ever contemplated a change by the will of a mere majority. Such a doctrine, once admitted, would enable not only the legislature, but a majority of the more popular house, were two established, to make another appeal to the people on the first occasion, and, instead of establishing on solid foundations a new government, would open the door to perpetual change, and destroy that stability which is essential to the welfare of a nation; since no constitution acquires the permanent affection of the people, save in proportion to its duration and age. Finally, such changes would sooner or later conclude in an appeal to arms,—the true meaning of the popular and dangerous words, “an appeal to the people.” The opposition was begun too late, however, to admit of combined effort, and was not persisted in; and Mr. Gallatin himself, with practical good sense, consented to serve as a delegate. Throughout his political course the pride of mastery never controlled his actions. When debarred from leadership he did not sulk in his tent, but threw his weight in the direction of his principles. The convention met at Philadelphia on November 24, 1789, and closed its labors on September 2, 1790. This was Gallatin's apprenticeship in the public service. Among his papers are a number of memoranda, some of them indicating much elaboration of speeches made, or intended to be made, in this body. One is an argument in favor of enlarging the representation in the House; another is against a plan of choosing senators by electors; another concerns the liberty of the press. There is, further, a memorandum of his motion in regard to the right of suffrage, by virtue of which “every freeman who has attained the age of twenty-one years, and been a resident and inhabitant during one year next before the day of election, every naturalized freeholder, every naturalized citizen who had been assessed for state or county taxes for two years before election day, or who had resided ten years successively in the State, should be entitled to the suffrage, paupers and vagabonds only being excluded.” Certainly, in his conservative limitations upon suffrage, he did not consult his own interest as a large landholder inviting settlement, nor pander to the natural desires of his constituency.

In an account of this convention, written at a later period, Mr. Gallatin said that it was the first public body to which he was elected, and that he took but a subordinate share in the debates; that it was one of the ablest bodies of which he was ever a member, and with which he was acquainted, and, excepting Madison and Marshall, that it embraced as much talent and knowledge as any Congress from 1795 to 1812, beyond which his personal knowledge did not extend. Among its members were Thomas McKean, signer of the Declaration of Independence and president of the Continental Congress, Thomas Mifflin and Timothy Pickering, of the Revolutionary army, and Smilie and Findley, Gallatin's political friends. General Mifflin was its president.

But mental distraction brought Mr. Gallatin no peace of heart at this period, and when the excitement of the winter was over he fell into a state of almost morbid melancholy. To his friend Badollet he wrote from Philadelphia, early in March, that life in Fayette County had no more charms for him, and that he would gladly leave America. But his lands were unsalable at any price, and he saw no means of support at Geneva. Some one has said, with a profound knowledge of human nature, that no man is sure of happiness who has not the capacity for continuous labor of a disagreeable kind. The occasional glimpses into Mr. Gallatin's inner nature, which his correspondence affords, show that up to this period he was not supposed by his friends or by himself to have this capacity. In the letter which his guardian wrote to him after his flight from home, he was reproached with his “natural indolence.” His good friend, Mademoiselle Pictet, accused him of being hard to please, and disposed to ennui; and again, as late as 1787, repeats to him, in a tone of sorrow, the reports brought to her of his “continuance in his old habit of indolence,” his indifference to society, his neglect of his dress, and general indifference to everything but study and reading, tastes which, she added, he might as well have cultivated at Geneva as in the new world; and he himself, in the letter to Badollet just mentioned, considers that his habits and his laziness would prove insuperable bars to his success in any profession in Europe. In estimation of this self-condemnation, it must be borne in mind that the Genevans were intellectual Spartans. Gallatin must be measured by that high standard. But if the charge of indolence could have ever justly lain against Gallatin,—a charge which his intellectual vigor at twenty-seven seems to challenge,—it certainly could never have been sustained after he fairly entered on his political and public career. In October, 1790, he was elected by a two thirds majority to represent Fayette County in the legislature of the State of Pennsylvania; James Findley was his colleague, John Smilie being advanced to the state Senate. Mr. Gallatin was reëlected to the Assembly in 1791 and 1792, without opposition.

Among his papers there is a memorandum of his legislative service during these three years, and a manuscript volume of extracts from the Journals of the House, from January 14, 1791, to December 17, 1794. They form part of the extensive mass of documents and letters which were collected and partially arranged by himself, with a view to posthumous publication. Here is an extract from the memorandum:—

“I acquired an extraordinary influence in that body [the Pennsylvania House of Representatives]; the more remarkable as I was always in a party minority. I was indebted for it to my great industry and to the facility with which I could understand and carry on the current business. The laboring oar was left almost exclusively to me. In the session of 1791-1792, I was put on thirty-five committees, prepared all their reports, and drew all their bills. Absorbed by those details, my attention was turned exclusively to administrative laws, and not to legislation properly so called.... I failed, though the bill I had introduced passed the House, in my efforts to lay the foundation for a better system of education. Primary education was almost universal in Pennsylvania, but very bad, and the bulk of schoolmasters incompetent, miserably paid, and held in no consideration. It appeared to me that in order to create a sufficient number of competent teachers, and to raise the standard of general education, intermediate academical education was an indispensable preliminary step, and the object of the bill was to establish in each county an academy, allowing to each out of the treasury a sum equal to that raised by taxation in the county for its support. But there was at that time in Pennsylvania a Quaker and a German opposition to every plan of general education.

“The spirit of internal improvements had not yet been awakened. Still, the first turnpike-road in the United States was that from Philadelphia to Lancaster, which met with considerable opposition. This, as well as every temporary improvement in our communications (roads and rivers) and preliminary surveys, met, of course, with my warm support. But it was in the fiscal department that I was particularly employed, and the circumstances of the times favored the restoration of the finances of the State.

“The report of the Committee of Ways and Means of the session 1790-91 was entirely prepared by me, known to be so, and laid the foundation of my reputation. I was quite astonished at the general encomiums bestowed upon it, and was not at all aware that I had done so well. It was perspicuous and comprehensive; but I am confident that its true merit, and that which gained me the general confidence, was its being founded in strict justice, without the slightest regard to party feelings or popular prejudices. The principles assumed, and which were carried into effect, were the immediate reimbursement and extinction of the state paper-money, the immediate payment in specie of all the current expenses, or warrants on the treasury (the postponement and uncertainty of which had given rise to shameful and corrupt speculations), and provision for discharging without defalcation every debt and engagement previously recognized by the State. In conformity with this, the State paid to its creditors the difference between the nominal amount of the state debt assumed by the United States and the rate at which it was funded by the act of Congress.

“The proceeds of the public lands, together with the arrears, were the fund which not only discharged all the public debts, but left a large surplus. The apprehension that this would be squandered by the legislature was the principal inducement for chartering the Bank of Pennsylvania, with a capital of two millions of dollars, of which the State subscribed one half. This, and similar subsequent investments, enabled Pennsylvania to defray, out of the dividends, all the expenses of government without any direct tax during the forty ensuing years, and till the adoption of the system of internal improvement, which required new resources.

“It was my constant assiduity to business, and the assistance derived from it by many members, which enabled the Republican party in the legislature, then a minority on a joint ballot, to elect me, and no other but me of that party, senator of the United States.”

Among the reports enumerated by Mr. Gallatin, as those of which he was the author, is one made by a committee on March 22, 1793, that they ... are of opinion slavery is inconsistent with every principle of humanity, justice, and right, and repugnant to the spirit and express letter of the Constitution of the Commonwealth. Added to this was a resolution for its abolition in the Commonwealth.

The seat of government was changed from New York to Philadelphia in 1790, and the first Congress assembled there in the early days of December for its final session. Philadelphia was in glee over the transfer of the departments. The convention which framed the new state Constitution met here in the fall, and the legislature was also holding its sessions. The atmosphere was political. The national and local representatives met each other at all times and in all places, and the public affairs were the chief topic in and out of doors. In this busy whirl Gallatin made many friends, but Philadelphia was no more to his taste as a residence than Boston. He was disgusted with the ostentatious display of wealth, the result not of industry but of speculation, and not in the hands of the most deserving members of the community. Later he became more reconciled to the tone of Pennsylvania society, comparing it with that of New York; he was especially pleased with its democratic spirit, and the absence of family influence. “In Pennsylvania,” he says, “not only we have neither Livingstons, nor Rensselaers, but from the suburbs of Philadelphia to the banks of the Ohio I do not know a single family that has any extensive influence. An equal distribution of property has rendered every individual independent, and there is amongst us true and real equality. In a word, as I am lazy, I like a country where living is cheap; and as I am poor, I like a country where no person is very rich.”

Hamilton's excise bill was a bone of contention in the national and state legislatures throughout the winter. Direct taxation upon anything was unpopular, that on distilled spirits the most distasteful to Pennsylvania, where whiskey stills were numerous in the Alleghanies. To the bill introduced into Congress a reply was immediately made January 14, 1791, by the Pennsylvania Assembly in a series of resolutions which are supposed to have been drafted by Mr. Gallatin, and to have been the first legislative paper from his pen. They distinctly charged that the obnoxious bill was “subversive of the peace, liberty, and rights of the citizen.”

Tax by excise has always been offensive to the American people, as it was to their ancestors across the sea. It was characterized by the first Continental Congress of 1774 as “the horror of all free States.” Notwithstanding their warmth, these resolutions passed the Assembly by a vote of 40 to 16. The course of this excitement must be followed; as it swept Mr. Gallatin in its mad current, and but for his self-control, courage, and adroitness would have wrecked him on the breakers at the outset of his political voyage. The excise law passed Congress on March 3, 1791. On June 22 the state legislature, by a vote of 36 to 11, requested their senators and representatives in Congress to oppose every part of the bill which “shall militate against the rights and liberties of the people.”

The western counties of Pennsylvania—Westmoreland, Fayette, Washington, and Allegheny—lie around the head-waters of the Ohio in a radius of more than a hundred miles. At this time they contained a population of about seventy thousand souls. Pittsburgh, the seat of justice, had about twelve hundred inhabitants. The Alleghany Mountains separate this wild region from the eastern section of the State. There were few roads of any kind, and these lay through woods. The mountain passes could be traveled only on foot or horseback. The only trade with the East was by pack-horses, while communication with the South was cut off by hostile Indian tribes who held the banks of the Ohio. This isolation from the older, denser, and more civilized settlements bred in the people a spirit of self-reliance and independence. They were in great part Scotch-Irish Presbyterians, a religious and warlike race to whom the hatred of an exciseman was a tradition of their forefathers. Having no market for their grain, they were compelled to preserve it by converting it into whiskey. The still was the necessary appendage of every farm. The tax was light, but payable in money, of which there was little or none. Its imposition, therefore, coupled with the declaration of its oppressive nature by the Pennsylvania legislature, excited a spirit of determined opposition near akin to revolution.

Unpopular in all the western part of the State, Hamilton's bill was especially odious to the people of Washington County. The first meeting in opposition to it was held at Red Stone Old Fort or Brownsville, the site of one of those ancient remains of the mound-builders which abound in the western valleys. It was easily reached by Braddock's Road, the chief highway of the country. Here gathered on July 27, 1791, a number of persons opposed to the law, when it was agreed that county committees should be convened in the four counties at the respective seats of justice. Brackenridge, in his “Incidents of the Western Insurrection,” says that Albert Gallatin was clerk of the meeting. One of these committees met in the town of Washington on August 23, when violent resolutions were adopted. Gallatin, engaged at Philadelphia, was not present at this assemblage, three of whose members were deputed to meet delegates from the counties of Westmoreland, Fayette, and Allegheny, at Pittsburgh, on the first Tuesday in September following, to agree upon an address to the legislature on the subject of excise and other grievances. At the Pittsburgh meeting eleven delegates appeared for the four counties. The resolutions adopted by them, general in character, read more like a declaration of grievances as a basis for revolution than a petition for special redress. No wonder that the secretary of the treasury stigmatized them as “intemperate.” They charge that in the laws of the late Congress hasty strides had been made to all that was unjust and oppressive. They complain of the increase in the salaries of officials, of the unreasonable interest of the national debt, of the non-discrimination between original holders and transferees of the public securities, of the National Bank as a base offspring of the funding system; finally, in detail, of the excise law of March 3, 1791. At this meeting James Marshall and David Bradford represented Washington County.

In August government offices of inspection were opened. The spirit of resistance was now fully aroused, and in the early days of September the collectors for Washington, Westmoreland, and Fayette were treated with violence. Unwilling to proceed to excessive measures, and no doubt swayed by the attitude of the Pennsylvania legislature, Congress in October referred the law back to Hamilton for revision. He reported an amended act on March 6, 1792, which was immediately passed, and became a law March 8. It was to take effect on the last day of June succeeding. By it the rate of duty was reduced, a privilege of time as to the running of licenses of stills granted, and the tax ordered only for such time as they were actually used.

But these modifications did not satisfy the malcontents of the four western counties, and they met again on August 21, 1792, at Pittsburgh. Of this second Pittsburgh meeting Albert Gallatin was chosen secretary. Badollet went up with Gallatin. John Smilie, James Marshall, and James Bradford of Washington County were present. Bradford, Marshall, Gallatin, and others were appointed to draw up a remonstrance to Congress. In order to carry out with regularity and concert the measures agreed upon, a committee of correspondence was appointed, and the meeting closed with the adoption of the violent resolutions passed at the Washington meeting of 1791:—

“Whereas, some men may be found among us so far lost to every sense of virtue and feeling for the distresses of this country as to accept offices for the collection of the duty.

“Resolved, therefore, that in future we will consider such persons as unworthy of our friendship; have no intercourse or dealings with them; withdraw from them every assistance, and withhold all the comforts of life which depend upon those duties that as men and fellow citizens we owe to each other; and upon all occasions treat them with that contempt they deserve; and that it be, and it is hereby, most earnestly recommended to the people at large, to follow the same line of conduct towards them.”

If such an excommunication were to be meted out to an offending neighbor, what measure would the excise man receive if he came from abroad on his unwelcome errand?

These resolutions were signed by Mr. Gallatin as clerk, and made public through the press. Resolutions of this character, if not criminal, reach the utmost limit of indiscretion, and political indiscretion is quite as dangerous as crime. The petition to Congress, subscribed by the inhabitants of western Pennsylvania, was drawn by Gallatin; while explicit in terms, it was moderate in tone. It represented the unequal operation of the act. “A duty laid on the common drink of a nation, instead of taxing the citizens in proportion to their property, falls as heavy on the poorest class as on the rich;” and it ingeniously pointed out that the distance of the inhabitants of the western counties from market prevented their bringing the produce of their lands to sale, either in grain or meal. “We are therefore distillers through necessity, not choice; that we may comprehend the greatest value in the smallest size and weight.”

Hamilton, indignant, reported the proceedings to the President on September 9, 1792, and demanded instant punishment. Washington, who was at Mount Vernon, was unwilling to go to extremes, but consented to issue a proclamation, which, drafted by Hamilton, and countersigned by Jefferson, was published September 15, 1792. It earnestly admonished all persons to desist from unlawful combinations to obstruct the operations of the laws, and charged all courts, magistrates, and officers with their enforcement. There was no mistaking Hamilton's intention to enforce the law. Prosecutions in the Circuit Court, held at Yorktown in October, were ordered against the Pittsburgh offenders, but no proof could be had to sustain an indictment.

The President's proclamation startled the western people, and some uneasiness was felt as to how such of their representatives as had taken part in the Pittsburgh meeting would be received when they should go up to the legislature in the winter. Bradford and Smilie accompanied Gallatin; Smilie to take his seat in the state Senate, and Bradford to represent Washington County in the House, where he “cut a poor figure.” Gallatin despised him, and characterized him as a “tenth-rate lawyer and an empty drum.” Gallatin found, however, that although the Pittsburgh meeting had hurt the general interest of his party throughout the State, and “rather defeated” the repeal of the excise law, his eastern friends did not turn the cold shoulder to him. He said to every one whom he knew that the resolutions were perhaps too violent and undoubtedly highly impolitic, but, in his opinion, contained nothing illegal. Meanwhile federal officers proceeded to enforce the law in Washington County. A riot ensued, and the office was forcibly closed. Bills were found against two of the offenders in the federal court, and warrants to arrest and bring them to Philadelphia for trial were issued. Gallatin believed the men innocent, and did not hesitate to advise Badollet to keep them out of the way when the marshal should go to serve the writs, but deprecated any insult to the officer. He thought “the precedent a very dangerous one to drag people such a distance in order to be tried on governmental prosecutions.” Here the matter rested for a season.

At this session of the legislature Gallatin introduced a new system of county taxation, proposed a clause providing for “trustees yearly elected, one to each township, without whose consent no tax is to be raised, nor any above one per cent. on the value of lands,” which he hoped would “tend to crush the aristocracy of every town in the State.” Also he proposed a plan to establish a school and library in each county, with a sufficient immediate sum in money, and a yearly allowance for a teacher in the English language.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] The drafting of this letter was, notwithstanding his protest, intrusted to John Jay, one of the strongest of the Federal leaders, and a warm supporter of the Constitution as it stood.

CHAPTER III[ToC]

UNITED STATES SENATE

The death of the grandfather of Mr. Gallatin, and soon after of his aunt, strongly tempted him to make a journey to Geneva in the summer of 1793. The political condition of Europe at that time was of thrilling interest. On January 21 the head of Louis XVI. fell under the guillotine, to which Marie Antoinette soon followed him. The armies of the coalition were closing in upon France. Of the political necessity for these state executions there has always been and will always be different judgments. That of Mr. Gallatin is of peculiar value. It is found expressed in intimate frankness in a letter to his friend Badollet, written at Philadelphia, February 1, 1794.

“France at present offers a spectacle unheard of at any other period. Enthusiasm there produces an energy equally terrible and sublime. All those virtues which depend upon social or family affections, all those amiable weaknesses, which our natural feelings teach us to love or respect, have disappeared before the stronger, the only, at present, powerful passion, the Amor Patriæ. I must confess my soul is not enough steeled, not sometimes to shrink at the dreadful executions which have restored at least apparent internal tranquillity to that republic. Yet upon the whole, as long as the combined despots press upon every frontier, and employ every engine to destroy and distress the interior parts, I think they, and they alone, are answerable for every act of severity or injustice, for every excess, nay for every crime, which either of the contending parties in France may have committed.”

Within a few years the publication of the correspondence of De Fersen, the agent of the king and queen, has supplied the proof of the charge that they were in secret correspondence with the allied sovereigns to introduce foreign troops upon the soil of France,—a crime which no people has ever condoned.

The French Revolution, which from its beginning in 1789 reacted upon the United States with fully the force that the American Revolution exerted upon France, had become an important factor in American politics. The intemperance of Genet, the minister of the French Convention to the United States on the one hand, and the breaches of neutrality by England on the other, were dividing the American people into English and French parties. The Federalists sympathized with the English, the late enemies, and the Republicans with the French, the late allies, of the United States.

Mr. Gallatin had about made up his mind to visit Europe, when an unexpected political honor changed his plans. The Pennsylvania legislature elected him a senator of the United States on joint ballot, a distinction the more singular in that the legislature was Federalist and Mr. Gallatin was a representative of a Republican district, and strong in that faith. Moreover, he was not a candidate either of his own motion or by that of his friends, but, on the contrary, had doubts as to his eligibility because of insufficient residence. This objection, which he himself stated in caucus, was disregarded, and on February 28, 1793, by a vote of 45 to 37, he was chosen senator. Mr. Gallatin had just completed his thirty-second year, and now a happy marriage came opportunely to stimulate his ambition and smooth his path to other honors.

Among the friends made at Philadelphia was Alexander J. Dallas, a gentleman two years Gallatin's senior, whose career, in some respects, resembled his own. He was born in Jamaica, of Scotch parents; had been thoroughly educated at Edinburgh and Westminster, and, coming to the United States in 1783, had settled in Philadelphia. He now held the post of secretary of state for Pennsylvania. Mr. Gallatin's constant committee service brought him into close relations with the secretary, and the foundation was laid of a lasting political friendship and social intimacy. In the recess of the legislature, Mr. Gallatin joined Mr. Dallas and his wife in an excursion to the northward. Mr. Gallatin's health had suffered from close confinement and too strict attention to business, and he needed recreation and diversion. In the course of the journey the party was joined by some ladies, friends of Mrs. Dallas, among whom was Miss Hannah Nicholson. The excursion lasted nearly four weeks. The result was that Mr. Gallatin returned to Philadelphia the accepted suitor of this young lady. He describes her in a letter to Badollet as “a girl about twenty-five years old, who is neither handsome nor rich, but sensible, well-informed, good-natured, and belonging to a respectable and very amiable family.” Nor was he mistaken in his choice,—a more charming nature, a more perfect, well-rounded character than hers is rarely found. They were married on November 11, 1793. She was his faithful companion throughout his long and honorable career, and death separated them but by a few months. This alliance greatly widened his political connection.

Commodore James Nicholson, his wife's father, famous in the naval annals of the United States as the captain of the Trumbull, the first of American frigates, at the time resided in New York, and was one of the acknowledged leaders of the Republican party in the city. His two brothers—Samuel and John—were captains in the naval service. His two elder daughters were married to influential gentlemen;—Catharine to Colonel Few, senator from Georgia; Frances, to Joshua Seney, member of Congress from Maryland; Maria later (1809) married John Montgomery, who had been member of Congress from Maryland, and was afterwards mayor of Baltimore. A son, James Witter Nicholson, then a youth of twenty-one, was, in 1795, associated with Mr. Gallatin in his Western Company, and, removing to Fayette, made his home in what was later and is now known as New Geneva. Here, in connection with Mr. Gallatin and the brothers Kramer, Germans, he established extensive glass works, which proved profitable.

Mr. Gallatin's election to the United States Senate did not disqualify him for his unfinished legislative term, and, on his return to Philadelphia, he was again plunged in his manifold duties. The few days which intervened between his marriage and the meeting of Congress—a short honeymoon—were spent under the roof of Commodore Nicholson in New York.

On February 28, 1793, the Vice-President laid before the Senate a certificate from the legislature of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania to the election of Albert Gallatin as senator of the United States. Mr. Gallatin took his seat December 2, 1793. The business of the session was opened by the presentation of a petition signed by nineteen individuals of Yorktown, Pennsylvania, stating that Mr. Gallatin had not been nine years a citizen of the United States. This petition had been handed to Robert Morris, Mr. Gallatin's colleague for Pennsylvania, by a member of the legislature for the county of York, but he had declined to present it, and declared to Mr. Gallatin his intention to be perfectly neutral on the occasion—at least so Mr. Gallatin wrote to his wife the next day; but Morris did not hold fast to this resolution, as the votes in the sequel show. The petition was ordered to lie upon the table. On December 11 Messrs. Rutherford, Cabot, Ellsworth, Livermore, and Mitchell were appointed a committee to consider the petition. These gentlemen, Gallatin wrote, were undoubtedly “the worst for him that could have been chosen, and did not seem to him to be favorably disposed.” He himself considered the legal point involved as a nice and difficult one, and likely to be decided by a party vote. The fourth article of the Constitution of the first Confederation of the United States reads as follows:—

“The better to secure and perpetuate mutual friendship and intercourse among the people of the different States in this Union, the free inhabitants of each of these States, paupers, vagabonds, and fugitives from justice excepted, shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of free citizens in the several States.”

Article 1, section 3, of the new Constitution declares:—

“No person shall be a senator who shall not have attained to the age of thirty years, and been nine years a citizen of the United States, and who shall not, when elected, be an inhabitant of that State for which he shall be chosen.”

Mr. Gallatin landed in Massachusetts in July, 1780, while still a minor. His residence, therefore, which had been uninterrupted, extended over thirteen years. He took the oath of citizenship and allegiance to Virginia in October, 1785, since which, until his election in 1793, nine years, the period called for by the United States Constitution, had not elapsed. On the one hand, his actual residence exceeded the required period of citizenship; on the other, his legal and technical residence as a citizen was insufficient. In point of fact, his intention to become a citizen dated from the summer of 1783.

To take from the case the air of party proscription, which it was beginning to assume, the Senate discharged its special committee, and raised a general committee on elections to consider this and other cases. On February 10, 1794, the report of this committee was submitted, and a day was set for a hearing by the Senate, with open doors. On that day Mr. Gallatin exhibited a written statement of facts, agreed to between himself and the petitioners, and the case was left to the Senate on its merits. On the 28th a test vote was taken upon a motion to the effect that “Albert Gallatin, returned to this House as a member for the State of Pennsylvania, is duly qualified for and elected to a seat in the Senate of the United States,” and it was decided in the negative—yeas, 12; nays, 14.[2]

Motion being made that the election of Albert Gallatin to be a senator of the United States was void,—he not having been a citizen of the United States for the term of years required as a qualification to be a senator of the United States,—it was further moved to divide the question at the word “void;” and the question being then taken on the first paragraph, it passed in the affirmative—yeas, 14; nays, 12. The yeas and nays were required, and the Senate divided as before. The resolution was then put and adopted by the same vote. Thus Mr. Gallatin, thirteen years a resident of the country, a large land-holder in Virginia, and for several terms a member of the Pennsylvania legislature, was excluded from a seat in the Senate of the United States.

Mr. Gallatin conducted his case with great dignity. On being asked whether he had any testimony to produce, he replied, in writing, that there was not sufficient matter charged in the petition and proved by the testimony to vacate his seat, and declined to go to the expense of collecting evidence until that preliminary question was settled.

Short as the period was during which Mr. Gallatin held his seat, it was long enough for him seriously to annoy the Federal leaders. Indeed, it is questionable whether, if he had delayed his embarrassing motion, a majority of the Senate could have been secured against him. Certain it is that the Committee on Elections, appointed on December 11, did not send in its report until the day after Mr. Gallatin moved his resolution, calling upon the secretary of the treasury for an elaborate statement of the debt on January 1, 1794, under distinct heads, including the balances to creditor States, a statement of loans, domestic and foreign, contracted from the beginning of the government, statements of exports and imports; finally for a summary statement of the receipts and expenditures to the last day of December, 1790, distinguishing the moneys received under each branch of the revenue and the moneys expended under each of the appropriations, and stating the balances of each branch of the revenue remaining unexpended on that day, and also calling for similar and separate statements for the years 1791, 1792, 1793. This resolution, introduced on January 8, was laid over. On the 20th it was adopted. It was not until February 10 that a reply from the secretary of the treasury was received by the Senate, and on the 11th submitted to Gallatin, Ellsworth, and Taylor for consideration and report. In this letter (February 6, 1794) Hamilton stated the difficulty of supplying the precise information called for, with the clerical forces of the department, the interruption it would cause in the daily routine of the service, and deprecated the practice of such unexpected demands.

With this response of the secretary the inquiry fell to the ground, but it was neither forgotten nor forgiven by his adherents, and Mr. Gallatin paid the penalty on at least one occasion. This was years later, when he himself was secretary of the treasury. On March 2, 1803, the day before the adjournment of Congress, Mr. Griswold, Federalist from Connecticut, attacked the correctness of the accounts of the sinking fund, and demanded an answer to a resolution of the House on the management of this bureau. Had such been his desire, Mr. Gallatin was foreclosed from Hamilton's excuse. On the night of the 3d he sent in an elaborate statement which set accusation at rest and criticism at defiance.

Mr. Gallatin's short stay in the Senate revealed to the Federalists the character of the man, who, disdaining the lesser flight, checked only at the highest game. He accepted his exclusion with perfect philosophy. Soon after the session opened he said, “My feelings cannot be much hurt by an unfavorable decision, since having been elected is an equal proof of the confidence the legislature of Pennsylvania reposed in me, and not being qualified, if it is so decided, cannot be imputed to me as a fault.” His exclusion was by no means a disadvantage to him. It made common cause of the honor of Pennsylvania and his own; it endeared him to the Republicans of his State as a martyr to their principles. It “secured him,” to use his own words, “many staunch” friends throughout the Union, and extended his reputation, hitherto local and confined, over the entire land; more than all, it led him to the true field of political contest—the House of Representatives of the people of the United States.

FOOTNOTES:

[2] The yeas and nays being required by one fifth of the senators present, there were: Affirmative.—Bradley, Brown, Burr, Butler, Edwards, Gunn, Jackson, Langdon, Martin, Monroe, Robinson, Taylor; 12.

Negative.—Bradford, Cabot, Ellsworth, Foster, Frelinghuysen, Hawkins, Izard, King, Livermore, Mitchell, Morris, Potts, Strong, Vining; 14.

CHAPTER IV[ToC]

THE WHISKEY INSURRECTION

Mr. Gallatin was now out of public life. For eighteen months since he came up to the legislature with his friends of the Pittsburgh convention, he had not returned to Fayette. His private concerns were suffering in his absence. Neither his barn, his meadow, nor his house was finished at the close of 1793. In May, 1794, he took his wife to his country home. Their hopes of a summer of recreation and domestic comfort in the wild beauties of the Monongahela were not to be realized. Before the end of June the peaceful country was in a state of mad agitation.

The seeds of political discontent, sown at Pittsburgh in 1792, had ripened to an abundant harvest. An act passed by Congress June 5, 1794, giving to the state courts concurrent jurisdiction in excise cases, removed the grievance of which Gallatin complained, the dragging of accused persons to Philadelphia for trial, but was not construed to be retroactive in its operation. The marshal, accordingly, found it to be his duty to serve the writs of May 31 against those who had fallen under their penalties. These writs were returnable in Philadelphia. They were served without trouble in Fayette County. Not so in Allegheny. Here on July 15, 1794, the marshal had completed his service, when, while still in the execution of his office, and in company with the inspector, he was followed and fired upon. The next day a body of men went to the house of the marshal and demanded that he should deliver up his commission. They were fired upon and dispersed, six were wounded, and the leader killed. A general rising followed. The marshal's house, though defended by Major Kirkpatrick, with a squad from the Pittsburgh garrison, was set on fire, with the adjacent buildings, and burned. On July 18 the insurgents sent a deputation of two or three to Pittsburgh, to require of the marshal a surrender of the processes in his possession, and of the inspector the resignation of his office. These demands were, of course, rejected; but the officers, alarmed for their personal safety, left the town, and, descending the Ohio by boat to Marietta, proceeded by a circuitous route to Philadelphia, and made their report to the United States authorities.

This was the outbreak of the Western or Whiskey Insurrection. The excitement spread rapidly through the western counties. Fayette County was not exempt from it. The collector's house was broken into, and his commission taken from him by armed men; the sheriff refused to serve the writs against the rioters of the spring. Since these disturbances there had been no trouble in this county. But the malcontents elsewhere rose in arms, riots ensued, and the safety of the whole community was compromised. The news reaching Fayette, the distillers held a meeting at Uniontown, the county seat, on July 20. Both Gallatin and Smilie were present, and by their advice it was agreed to submit to the laws. The neighboring counties were less fortunate. On July 21 the Washington County committee was summoned to meet at Mingo Creek Meeting-house. On the 23d there was a large assemblage of people, including a number of those who had been concerned in burning the house of the Pittsburgh inspector. James Marshall, the same who opposed the ratification of the federal Constitution, David Bradford, the “empty drum,” and Judge Brackenridge of Pittsburgh, attended this meeting. Bradford, the most unscrupulous of the leaders, sought to shirk his responsibility, but was intimidated by threats, and thereafter did not dare to turn back. Brackenridge was present to counsel the insurgents to moderation. In spite of his efforts the meeting ended in an invitation, which the officers had not the boldness to sign, to the townships of the four western counties of Pennsylvania and the adjoining counties of Virginia to send representatives to a general meeting on August 14, at Parkinson's Ferry on the Monongahela, in Washington County. Bradford, determined to aggravate the disturbance, stopped the mail at Greensburg, on the road between Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, and robbed it of the Washington and Pittsburgh letters, some of which he published, to the alarm of their authors.

On July 28 a circular signed by Bradford, Marshall, and others was sent out from Cannonsburg to the militia of the county, whom it summoned for personal service, and likewise called for volunteers to rendezvous the following Wednesday, July 30, at their respective places of meeting, thence to march to Braddock's Field, on the Monongahela, the usual rendezvous of the militia, about eight miles south of Pittsburgh, by two o'clock of Friday, August 1. It closed in these words, “Here is an expedition proposed in which you will have an opportunity for displaying your military talents and of rendering service to your country.” Nothing less was contemplated by the more extreme of these men than an attack upon Fort Pitt and the sack of Pittsburgh. Thoroughly aroused at last, the moderate men of Washington determined to breast the storm. A meeting was held; James Ross of the United States Senate made an earnest appeal, and was supported by Scott of the House of Representatives and Stokely of the Senate of Pennsylvania. Marshall and Bradford yielded, and consented to countermand the order of rendezvous. But the excited population poured into the town from all quarters, and Bradford, who found that he had gone too far to retreat, again took the lead of the movement, already beyond restraint.

There are accounts of this formidable insurrection by H. H. Brackenridge and William Findley, eye-witnesses. These supply abundant details. Findley says that he knew that the movement would not stop at the limit apparently set for it. “The opposing one law would lead to oppose another; they would finally oppose all, and demand a new modeling of the Constitution, and there would be a revolution.” There was great alarm in Pittsburgh. A meeting was held there Thursday evening, July 31, at which a message from the Washington County insurgents was read, violent resolutions adopted, and the 9th of August appointed as the day for a town meeting for election of delegates to a general convention of the counties at Parkinson's Ferry; Judge Brackenridge of Pittsburgh, a man of education, influence, and infinite jest and humor, was present at this meeting. Of Scotch-Irish birth himself, his sympathies of race were with his countrymen, but in political sentiments he was not in harmony with their leaders. They were nearly all Republicans, while he had sided with the Federalists in the convention which adopted the new Constitution of the United States. He was a man of peace, and of too much sagacity not to foresee the inevitable ruin upon which they were rushing. At Mingo Creek he had thwarted the plans of immediate revolution. The evident policy of moderate men was to prevent any violence before the convention at Parkinson's Ferry should meet, and to bend all their energies to control the deliberations of that body. The people of Pittsburgh were intensely excited by the armed gathering almost at their doors.

Brackenridge felt that the only safe issue from the situation was to take part in and shape the action of that gathering. Under his lead a committee from the Pittsburgh meeting, followed by a large body of the citizens, went out to the rendezvous. Here they found a motley assemblage, arrayed in the picturesque campaign costume which the mountaineers wore when they equipped themselves to meet the Indians,—yellow hunting-shirts, handkerchiefs tied about their heads, and rifles on the shoulder; the militia were on foot, and the light horse of the counties were in military dress. Conspicuous about the field, “haughty and pompous,” as Gallatin described him in the legislature, was David Bradford, who had assumed the office of major-general. Brackenridge draws a lifelike picture of him as, mounted on a superb horse in splendid trappings, arrayed in full uniform, with plume floating in the air and sword drawn, he rode over the ground, gave orders to the military, and harangued the multitude. On the historic ground where Washington plucked his first military laurels were gathered about seven thousand men, of whom two thousand militia were armed and accoutred as for a campaign,—a formidable and remarkable assemblage, when it is considered that the entire male population of sixteen years of age and upwards of the four counties did not exceed sixteen thousand, and was scattered over a wide and unsettled country. This is Brackenridge's estimate of the numbers. Later, Gallatin, on comparison of the best attainable information, estimated the whole body at from fifteen hundred to two thousand men. Whatever violence Bradford may have intended, none was accomplished. That he read aloud the Pittsburgh letters, taken from the mail, shows his purpose to inflame the people to vindictive violence. He was accused by contemporary authorities of imitation of the methods of the French Jacobins, which were fresh examples of revolutionary vigor. But the mass was not persuaded. After desultory conversation and discussion, the angry turn of which was at times threatening to the moderate leaders, the meeting broke up on August 2; about one third dispersed for their homes, and the remainder, marching to Pittsburgh, paraded through the streets, and finally crossing the river in their turn scattered. They did no damage to the town beyond the burning of a farm belonging to Major Kirkpatrick of the garrison. The taverns were all closed, but the citizens brought whiskey to their doors. Judge Brackenridge reports that his sacrifice to peace on this occasion cost him four barrels of his best old rye.

This moderation was no augury of permanent quiet. Brackenridge, who was a keen observer of men, says of the temper of the western population at this period: “I had seen the spirit which prevailed at the Stamp Act, and at the commencement of the revolution from the government of Great Britain, but it was by no means so general and so vigorous amongst the common people as the spirit which now existed in the country.” Nor did the armed bands all return peaceably to their homes. The house of the collector for Fayette and Washington counties was burned, and warnings were given to those who were disposed to submit to the law. The disaffected were called “Tom the tinker” men, from the signature affixed to the threatening notices. From a passage in one of Gallatin's letters it appears that there was a person of that name, a New England man, who had been concerned in Shays's insurrection. Liberty poles, with the device, “An equal tax and no excise law,” were raised, and the trees placarded with the old revolutionary motto, “United we stand, divided we fall,” with a divided snake as an emblem. Mr. Gallatin's neighborhood was not represented at Braddock's Field, and not more than a dozen were present from the entire county. But now the flame spread there also, and liberty poles were raised. Mr. Gallatin himself, inquiring as to their significance and expressing to the men engaged the hope that they would not behave like a mob, was asked, in return, if he was not aware of the Westmoreland resolution that any one calling the people a mob should be tarred and feathered,—an amusing example of that mob logic which proves the affirmative of the proposition it denies.

Mr. Gallatin did not attend the meeting at Braddock's Field. Somewhat isolated at his residence at the southerly border of the county, engaged in the care of his long neglected farm, and in the full enjoyment of release from the bustle and excitement of public life, he had paid little attention to passing events. He was preparing definitively to abandon political pursuits and to follow some kind of mercantile business, or take up some land speculation and study law in his intervals of leisure. It was not a year since he had given hostages to fortune. He was now in the full tide of domestic happiness, which was always to him the dearest and most coveted. He might well have hesitated before again engaging upon the dangerous and uncertain task of controlling an excited and aggrieved population. But he did not hesitate.

The people among whom he had made his home, and whose confidence had never failed him, were his people. By them he would stand in their extremity, and if hurt or ruin befell them, it should not be for want of the interposition of his counsel. He knew his powers, and he determined to bring them into full play. He knew the danger also, but it only nerved him to confront and master it. He knew his duty, and did not swerve one hair from the line it prompted. In no part of his long, varied, and useful political life does he appear to better advantage than in this exciting episode of the Whiskey Insurrection. His self-possession, his cool judgment, swayed neither by timidity nor rashness, never for a moment failed him. Here he displayed that remarkable combination of persuasion and control,—the indispensable equipment of a political chief,—which, in later days, gave him the leadership of the Republican party. With intuitive perception of the political situation he saw that the only path to safety, beset with difficulty and danger though it were, was through the convention at Parkinson's Ferry. He did not believe that any revolutionary proceedings had yet been taken, or that the convention was an illegal body, but he was determined to separate the wheat from the chaff, and disengage the moderate and the law-abiding from the disorderly. By the light of his own experience he had learned wisdom. He also had drawn a lesson from the French Revolution, and knew the uncontrollable nature of large popular assemblages. The news from Philadelphia, the seat of government, was of a kind to increase his alarm. Washington was not the man to overlook such an insult to authority as the resistance to the marshal and inspector; nor was it probable that Hamilton would let pass such an occasion for showing the strength and vigor of the government.

Before the meeting at Braddock's Field, the secretary's plans for a suppression of the insurrection were matured. On August 2 he laid before the President an estimate of the probable armed force of the insurgents, and of that with which he proposed to reduce them to submission. When the question of the use of force came before the cabinet, Edmund Randolph, who was secretary of state, opposed it in a written opinion, one phrase of which deserves repetition:—

“It is a fact well known that the parties in the United States are highly inflamed against each other, and that there is but one character which keeps both in awe. As soon as the sword shall be drawn, who shall be able to retain them.”

Mifflin, the governor of Pennsylvania, deprecated immediate resort to force; the venerable Chief Justice McKean suggested the sending of commissioners on the part of the federal and state governments. Washington, with perfect judgment, combined these plans, and happily allied conciliation with force. A proclamation was issued on August 7 summoning all persons involved in the disturbance to lay down their arms and repair to their homes by September 1. Requisitions were made upon the governors of Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, and New Jersey for fifteen thousand men in all, and a joint commission of five was raised,—three of whom on the part of the United States were appointed by the President, and two on the part of the State of Pennsylvania. This news was soon known at Pittsburgh, and rapidly spread through the adjacent country; and it was clear that in the proceedings to be taken at Parkinson's Ferry the question of resistance or submission must be definitively settled. On August 14, 1794, the convention assembled; two hundred and twenty-six delegates in all, of whom ninety-three were from Washington, forty-nine from Westmoreland, forty-three from Allegheny, thirty-three from Fayette, two from Bedford, five from Ohio County in Virginia, with spectators to about the same number.

Parkinson's Ferry, later called Williamsport, and now Monongahela City, is on the left bank of the Monongahela, about half way between Pittsburgh and Red Stone Old Fort or Brownsville. Brackenridge pictures the scene with his usual local color: “Our hall was a grove, and we might well be called 'the Mountain' (an allusion to the radical left of the French convention), for we were on a very lofty ground overlooking the river. We had a gallery of lying timber and stumps, and there were more people collected there than there was of the committee.” In full view of the meeting stood a liberty pole, raised in the morning by the men who signed the Braddock's Field circular order, and it bore the significant motto, “Liberty and no excise and no asylum for cowards.” Among the delegates, or the committee, to use their own term, were Bradford, Marshall, Brackenridge, Findley, and Gallatin. Before the meeting was organized, Marshall came to Gallatin and showed him the resolutions which he intended to move, intimating at the same time that he wished Mr. Gallatin to act as secretary. Mr. Gallatin told him that he highly disapproved the resolutions, and had come to oppose both him and Bradford, and therefore did not wish to serve. Marshall seemed to waver; but soon the people met, and Edward Cook of Fayette, who had presided at Braddock's Field, was chosen chairman, with Gallatin for secretary. Bradford opened the proceedings with a summary sketch of the action previously taken, declared the purpose of the committee to be to determine on a course of action, and his own views to be the appointment of committees to raise money, purchase arms, enlist volunteers, or draft the militia: in a word, though he did not use it, to levy war.

At this point in the proceedings the arrival of the commissioners from the President was announced, but the progress of the meeting was not interrupted. The commissioners were at a house near the meeting, but there were serious objections against holding a conference at this place.

Marshall then moved his resolutions. The first, declaratory of the grievance of carrying citizens great distances for trial, was unanimously agreed to. The second called for a committee of public safety “to call forth the resources of the western country to repel any hostile attempts that may be made against the rights of the citizens, or of the body of the people.” Had this resolution been adopted, the people were definitively committed to overt rebellion. This brought Mr. Gallatin at once to his feet. He denied that any hostile attempts against the rights of the people were threatened, and drew an adroit distinction between the regular army, which had not been called out, and the militia, who were a part of the people themselves; and to gain time he moved a reference of the resolutions to a committee who should be instructed to wait the action of the government. In the course of his speech Gallatin denied the assertion that resistance to the excise law was legal, or that coercion by the government was necessarily hostile. He was neither supported by his own friends nor opposed by those of Bradford. He stood alone.

But Marshall withdrew his resolution, and a committee of sixty was appointed, with power to summon the people. The only other objectionable resolution was that which pledged the people to the support of the laws, except the excise law and the taking of citizens out of their counties for trial,—an exception which Gallatin succeeded in having stricken out. He then urged the adoption of the resolution, without the exception, as necessary “to the establishment of the laws and the conservation of the peace,” and here he was supported by Brackenridge. The entire resolutions were finally referred to a committee of four,—Gallatin, Bradford, Husbands, and Brackenridge. The meeting then adjourned. The next morning a standing committee of sixty was chosen, one from each township. From these a committee of twelve was selected to confer with the government commissioners. Upon this committee were Cook, the chairman, Bradford, Marshall, Gallatin, Brackenridge, and Edgar. The meeting then adjourned.

Upon this representative body there seems to have been no outside pressure. The proclamation of the President, which arrived while it was in session, showed the determination, while the appointment of the commission showed the moderation, of the government. Gallatin availed of each circumstance with consummate adroitness, pointing out to the desperate the folly of resistance, and to the moderate an issue for honorable retreat.

Meanwhile, the commissioners reached Pittsburgh, where on August 20 the committee of conference was received by them, and an informal understanding arrived at, which was put in writing. The laws were to be enforced with as little inconvenience to the people as possible. All criminal suits for indictable offenses were to be dropped, but civil suits were to take their course. Notice was given that a definitive submission must be made by September 1 following. On the 22d the conference committee answered that they must consult with the committee of sixty. Thursday the 28th was appointed for a meeting at Red Stone Old Fort, the very spot where the original resolutions of opposition were passed in 1791. In the report drawn up every member of the twelve, except Bradford, favored submission.

The hour was critical, the deliberations were in the open air, and under the eyes of a threatening party of seventy riflemen accidentally present from Washington County across the stream. Bradford, who instinctively felt that he had placed himself beyond the pale of pardon, and to whom there was no alternative to revolution but flight, pressed an instant decision and rejection of the written terms of the commissioners. In the presence of personal danger, the conferrees only dared to move that part of their report which advised acceptance of the proffered terms. The question of submission they left untouched. An adjournment was obtained. The next day, to quote the words of Brackenridge, “the committee having convened, Gallatin addressed the chair in a speech of some hours. It was a piece of perfect eloquence, and was heard with attention and without disturbance.” Never was there a more striking instance of intellectual control over a popular assemblage. He saved the western counties of Pennsylvania from anarchy and civil war. He was followed by Brackenridge, who, warned by the example of his companion, or encouraged by the quiet of the assemblage, supported him with vigor. Bradford, on the other hand, faced the issue with directness and savage vehemence. He repelled the idea of submission, and insisted upon an independent government and a declaration of war. Edgar of Washington rejoined in support of the report. Gallatin now demanded a vote, but the twelve conferrees alone supported him. He then proposed an informal vote, but without result. Finally a secret ballot was proposed by a member. A hat was passed, and when the slips of paper were taken out, there were thirty-four yeas and twenty-three nays. The report was declared to be adopted, and amid the scowls of the armed witnesses the meeting adjourned; not, however, before a new committee of conference had been appointed. On this new committee not one of the old leaders was named. They evidently knew the folly of further delay, or of attempting to secure better terms. As his final act Colonel Cook, the chairman of the standing committee of sixty, indorsed the resolution adopted. It declared it to be “to the interest of the people of the country to accede to the proposals made by the commissioners on the part of the United States.” This was duly forwarded, with request for a further conference. The commissioners consented, but declined to postpone the time of taking the sense of the people beyond September 11.

William Findley said of the famous and critical debate at Red Stone: “I had never heard speeches that I more ardently desired to see in print than those delivered on this occasion. They would not only be valuable on account of the oratory and information displayed in all the three, and especially in Gallatin's, who opened the way, but they would also have been the best history of the spirit and the mistakes which then actuated men's minds.” Findley, in his allotment of the honors of the day, considers that “the verbal alterations made by Gallatin saved the question.” Brackenridge thought that his own seeming to coincide with Bradford prevented the declaration of war; and he has been credited with having saved the western counties from the horrors of civil war, Pittsburgh from destruction, and the Federal Union from imminent danger.

Historians have agreed in according to Gallatin the honor of this field day. It was left to John C. Hamilton, half a century later, to charge a want of courage upon Gallatin,—a baseless charge.[3] Not Malesherbes, the noble advocate defending the accused monarch before the angry French convention, with the certainty of the guillotine as the reward of his generosity, is more worthy of admiration than Gallatin boldly pleading the cause of order within rifle range of an excited band of lawless frontiersmen. If, as he confessed later, in his part in the Pittsburgh resolutions he was guilty of “a political sin,” he nobly atoned for it under circumstances that would have tried the courage of men bred to danger and to arms. Sin it was, and its consequences were not yet summed up. For although the back of the insurrection was broken at Red Stone Old Fort, there was much yet to be done before submission could be completed.

Bradford attempted to sign, but found that his course at Red Stone Old Fort had placed him outside the amnesty. Well might the moderate men say in their familiar manner of Scripture allusion, “Dagon is fallen.” He fled down the Ohio and Mississippi to Louisiana, then foreign soil. The commissioners waited at Pittsburgh for the signatures of adhesion on September 10, which was the last day allowed by the terms of amnesty. They required that meetings should be held on this day in the several townships; the presiding officers to report the result to commissioner Ross at Uniontown the 16th of the same month, on which day he would set out for Philadelphia. The time was inadequate, but there was no help. Gallatin hastened the submission of Fayette, and a meeting of committees from the several townships met at the county seat, Uniontown, on September 10, 1794, when a declaration drawn by Mr. Gallatin was unanimously adopted. A passage in this admirable paper shows the comparative order which prevailed in Fayette County during this period of trouble. It is an appeal to the people of the neighboring counties, who, under the influence of their passions and resentment, might blame those of Fayette for their moderation.

“The only reflection we mean to suggest to them is the disinterestedness of our conduct upon this occasion. The indictable offences to be buried in oblivion were committed amongst them, and almost every civil suit that has been instituted under the revenue law, in the federal court, was commenced against citizens of this county. By the terms proposed, the criminal prosecutions are to be dropped, but no condition could be obtained for the civil suits. We have been instrumental in obtaining an amnesty, from which those alone who had a share in the riots derive a benefit, and the other inhabitants of the western country have gained nothing for themselves.”

This declaration was forwarded on September 17 to Governor Mifflin, with reasons for the delay, and advice that signatures were fast being obtained, not only in the neighboring counties, but even in Fayette, where this formality had not been thought necessary. It closes with a forcible appeal to delay the sending of troops until every conciliatory measure should have proved abortive.

But the commissioners, unfortunately, were not favorably impressed with the reception they met with or the scenes they witnessed on their western mission. They had heard of Bradford's threat to establish an independent government west of the mountains, and they had seen a liberty pole raised upon which the people with the greatest difficulty had been dissuaded from hoisting a flag with six stripes—emblematic of the six counties represented in the committee. The flag was made, but set aside for the fifteen stripes with reluctance. This is Findley's recollection, but Brackenridge says that it was a flag of seven stars for the four western counties, Bedford, and the two counties of Virginia. This, he adds, was the first and only manifestation among any class of a desire to separate from the Union. But here his memory failed him.

Hamilton had long been impatient. Again, as in old days, he presented his arguments directly to the people. Under the heading, “Tully to the people of the United States,” he printed a letter on August 26, of which the following is a passage:—

“Your representatives in Congress, pursuant to the commission derived from you, and with a full knowledge of the public exigencies, have laid an excise. At three succeeding sessions they have revised that act ... and you have actually paid more than a million of dollars on account of it. But the four western counties of Pennsylvania undertake to rejudge and reverse your decrees. You have said, 'The Congress shall have power to lay excises.' They say, 'The Congress shall not have this power;' or, what is equivalent, they shall not exercise it, for a power that may not be exercised is a nullity. Your representatives have said, and four times repeated it, 'An excise on distilled spirits shall be collected;' they say, 'It shall not be collected. We will punish, expel, and banish the officers who shall attempt the collection.'”

The peace commissioners returned to Philadelphia and made their report on September 24. The next day, September 25, Washington issued a proclamation calling out the troops. In it he again warned the insurgents. The militia, already armed, accoutred, and equipped, and awaiting marching orders, moved at once. Governor Mifflin at first hesitated about his power to call out the militia, but when the President's requisition was made, he summoned the legislature in special session, and obtained from it a hearty support, with authority to accept volunteers and offer a bounty. Thus fortified, he made a tour through the lower counties of the State, and by his extraordinary popular eloquence soon filled up the ranks. The old soldier led his troops in person. Those of New Jersey were commanded by their governor, Richard Howell of Revolutionary fame. These formed the right wing and marched to rendezvous at Bedford to cross the mountains by the northern and Pennsylvania route. The left wing, composed of the Virginia troops, under the veteran Morgan, and those of Maryland, under Samuel Smith, a brigadier-general in the army of the Revolution, assembled at Cumberland to cross the mountains by Braddock's Road. The chief command was confided to Governor Henry Lee of Virginia. Washington accompanied the army as far as Bedford. Hamilton continued with it to Pittsburgh, which was reached in the last days of October and the first of November, after a wearisome march across the mountains in heavy weather. Arrived in the western counties, the army found no opposition.

Meanwhile, on October 2, the standing committee met again at Parkinson's Ferry, and unanimously adopted resolutions declaring the general submission, and explaining the reasons why signatures to the amnesty had not been general. Findley and Redick were appointed to take these resolutions to the President, and to urge him to stop the march of the troops. They met the left wing at Carlisle. Washington received them courteously, but did not consent to countermand the march. They hurried back for more unequivocal assurances, which they hoped to be able to carry to meet Washington on his way to review the right wing. On October 14, the day of the autumn elections, general submissions were universally signed, and finally, on October 24, a third and last meeting was held at Parkinson's Ferry, at which a thousand people attended, when, with James Edgar, chairman, and Albert Gallatin, secretary, it was resolved, first, that the civil authority was fully competent to punish both past and future breaches of the law; secondly, that surrender should be made of all persons charged with offenses, in default of which the committee would aid in bringing them to justice; thirdly, that offices of inspection might be opened, and that the distillers were willing and ready to enter their stills.

These resolutions were published in the “Pittsburgh Gazette.” Findley carried them to Bedford, but before he reached the army the President had returned to Philadelphia. The march of the army was not stopped. The two wings made a junction at Uniontown. Companies of horse were scattered through the country. New submissions were made, and the oath of allegiance, required by General Lee, was generally taken.

Hamilton now investigated the whole matter of the insurrection, and it was charged against him, and the charge is supported by Findley, with names of persons, that he spared no effort to secure evidence to bring Gallatin within the pale of an indictment. Of course he failed in this purpose, if indeed it were ever seriously entertained. But the belief that Gallatin was the arch-fiend, who instigated the Whiskey Insurrection, had already become a settled article in the Federalist creed, and for a quarter of a century, long after the Federalist party had become a tradition of the past, the Genevan was held up to scorn and hatred, as an incarnation of deviltry—an enemy of mankind.

On the 8th of November, Hamilton, who remained with the army, wrote to the President that General Lee had concluded to take hold of all who are worth the trouble by the military arm, and then to deliver them over to the disposition of the judiciary. In the mean time, he adds, “all possible means are using to obtain evidence, and accomplices will be turned against the others.”

The night of November 13, 1794, was appointed for the arrests; a dreadful night Findley describes it to have been. The night was frosty; at eight o'clock the horse sallied forth, and before daylight arrested in their beds about two hundred men. The New Jersey horse made the seizures in the Mingo Creek settlement, the hot-bed of the insurrection and the scene of the early excesses. The prisoners were taken to Pittsburgh, and thence, mounted on horses, and guarded by the Philadelphia Gentlemen Corps, to the capital. Their entrance into Cannonsburg is graphically described by Dr. Carnahan, president of Princeton College, in his account of the insurrection.

“The contrast between the Philadelphia horsemen and the prisoners was the most striking that can be imagined. The Philadelphians were some of the most wealthy and respectable men of that city. Their uniform was blue, of the finest broadcloth. Their horses were large and beautiful, all of a bay color, so nearly alike that it seemed that every two of them would make a good span of coach horses. Their trappings were superb. Their bridles, stirrups, and martingales glittered with silver. Their swords, which were drawn, and held elevated in the right hand, gleamed in the rays of the setting sun. The prisoners were also mounted on horses of all shapes, sizes, and colors; some large, some small, some long tails, some short, some fat, some lean, some every color and form that can be named. Some had saddles, some blankets, some bridles, some halters, some with stirrups, some with none. The riders also were various and grotesque in their appearance. Some were old, some young, some hale, respectable looking men; others were pale, meagre, and shabbily dressed. Some had great coats,—others had blankets on their shoulders. The countenance of some was downcast, melancholy, dejected; that of others, stern, indignant, manifesting that they thought themselves undeserving such treatment. Two Philadelphia horsemen rode in front and then two prisoners, and two horsemen and two prisoners, actually throughout a line extending perhaps half a mile.... If these men had been the ones chiefly guilty of the disturbance, it would have been no more than they deserved. But the guilty had signed the amnesty, or had left the county before the army approached.”

Dallas, the secretary of state, Gallatin's friend, was one of this troop. Gallatin saw him soon after his return. In a letter to his wife of December 3, Gallatin relates the experience of the trooper who had little stomach for the work he had to do.

“I saw Dallas yesterday. Poor fellow had a most disagreeable campaign of it. He says the spirits, I call it the madness, of the Philadelphia Gentlemen's Corps was beyond conception before the arrival of the President. He saw a list (handed about through the army by officers, nay, by a general officer) of the names of those persons who were to be destroyed at all events, and you may easily guess my own was one of the most conspicuous. Being one day at table with sundry officers, and having expressed his opinion that, if the army were going only to support the civil authority, and not to do any military execution, one of them (Dallas did not tell me his name, but I am told it was one Ross of Lancaster, aide-de-camp to Mifflin) half drew a dagger he wore instead of a sword, and swore any man who uttered such sentiments ought to be dagged. The President, however, on his arrival, and afterwards Hamilton, took uncommon pains to change the sentiments, and at last it became fashionable to adopt, or at least to express, sentiments similar to those inculcated by them.”

Randolph was, perhaps, not far out of the way in his fear of a civil war should blood be drawn, and in his conviction that the influence of Washington was the only sedative for the fevered political pulse. On November 17 general orders were issued for the return of the army, a detachment of twenty-five hundred men only remaining in the West, under command of General Morgan. There were no further disturbances. The army expenses gave a circulating medium, and the farmers, having now the means to pay their taxes, made no further complaints of the excise law. The total expense of the insurrection to the government was $800,000.

Mr. Gallatin returned with his wife from his western home early in November. He had been again chosen at the October elections to represent Fayette in the Pennsylvania Assembly. Moreover, at the same time, he was elected to represent the congressional district of Washington and Allegheny in the House of Representatives of the United States. Of four candidates Gallatin led the poll. Judge Brackenridge was next in order. No better proof is needed of the firm hold Gallatin had in the esteem and affection of the people. No doubt, either, that they understood his principles, and relied upon his sincere attachment to the country he had made his home.

When he appeared to take his seat in the Assembly he found that his election was contested. A petition was presented from thirty-four persons calling themselves peaceable citizens of Washington County, which stated that their votes had not been cast, because of the disturbed condition of the country, and requested the Assembly 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 Washington 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 Assembly 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 Washington 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 nobody from your own district; reëlect 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 reëlected but one, who declined. Mr. Gallatin returned to his seat in the Assembly 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 petit jury was composed of twelve men from each of the counties of Fayette, Washington, 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 petition to the President, who granted a pardon. Washington 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 constituents and friends.

FOOTNOTES:

[3] Hamilton's History of the Republic, vi. 96.

CHAPTER V[ToC]

MEMBER OF CONGRESS

The first session of the fourth Congress began at Philadelphia on Monday, December 7, 1795. Washington was president, John Adams vice-president. No one of Washington's original constitutional 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 passed 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 Washington was drawing to a close. In the lately reconstructed cabinet, honest, patriotic, and thorough in administration, there was no man of shining 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 assemblage 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 Washington as their chief, were Robert Goodloe Harper of South Carolina, Theodore Sedgwick of Massachusetts, 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 Washington.

Rob. G. Harper

[!-- Image 4 --]

[!-- Image 5 --]

[Click for list of Illustrations]

Hamilton watched the shifting 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 constitutional 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 Massachusetts 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 Constitution, 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 class distinctions returned. The dread of an aristocracy, which did not exist even in name, threw many of the supporters of the Constitution 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 Washington, was languishing, 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 Washington 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 document not reaching America until after the adjournment of Congress in March, Washington 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 ambassador, 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 Washington spared. He was charged with an assumption 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 fashion 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 Washington, 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. Opinions were divided on that subject even in the ranks of the Federalists. The cause of dissatisfaction was the Jay treaty. The address was recommitted without a division. The next day Madison brought in the address with a modification of the clause objected to. In its new form the “very great share” of Washington's zealous and faithful services in securing the national happiness was acknowledged. The address thus amended was unanimously adopted. In this encounter nothing was gained by the Republicans. The people would not have endured an open declaration of want of confidence in Washington. But the entering wedge of the new policy was driven. The treaty was to be assailed. It was, however, the pretext, not the cause of the struggle, the real object of which was to extend the powers of the House, and subordinate the executive to its will. Before beginning the main attack the Republicans developed their general plan in their treatment of secondary issues; of these the principal was a tightening of the control of the House over the Treasury Department.

In this Mr. Gallatin took the lead. His first measure was the appointment of a standing Committee of Finance to superintend the general operations of this nature,—an efficient aid to the Treasury when there is accord between the administration and the House, an annoying censor when the latter is in opposition. This was the beginning of the Ways and Means Committee, which soon became and has since continued to be the most important committee of the House. To it were to be referred all reports from the Treasury Department, all propositions relating to revenue, and it was to report on the state of the public debt, revenue, and expenditures. The committee was appointed without opposition. It consisted of fourteen members, William Smith, Sedgwick, Madison, Baldwin, Gallatin, Bourne, Gilman, Murray, Buck, Gilbert, Isaac Smith, Blount, Patten, and Hillhouse, and represented the strength of both political parties. To this committee the estimates of appropriations for the support of the government for the coming year were referred. The next step was to bring to the knowledge of the House the precise condition of the Treasury. To this end the secretary was called upon to furnish comparative views of the commerce and tonnage of the country for every year from the formation of the department in 1789, with tables of the exports and imports, foreign and domestic, separately stated, and with a division of the nationality of the carrying vessels. Later, comparative views were demanded of the receipts and expenditures for each year; the receipts under the heads of Loans, Revenue in its various forms, and others in their several divisions; the expenditures, also, to be classified under the heads of Civil List, Foreign Intercourse, Military Establishment, Indian Department, Naval, etc. Finally a call was made for a statement of the annual appropriations and the applications of them by the Treasury. The object of Mr. Gallatin was to establish the expenses of the government in each department of service on a permanent footing for which annual appropriations should be made, and for any extraordinary expenditure to insist on a special appropriation for the stated object and none other. By keeping constantly before the House this distinction between the permanent fund and temporary exigencies, he accustomed it to take a practical business view of its legislative duties, and the people to understand the principles he endeavored to apply.

In a debate at the beginning of the session, on a bill for establishing trading houses with the Indians, Mr. Gallatin showed his hand by declaring that he would not consent to appropriate any part of the war funds for the scheme; nor, in view of the need of additional permanent funds for the discharge of the public debt, would he vote for the bill at all, unless there was to be a reduction in the expense of the military establishment; and he would not be diverted from his purpose although Mr. Madison advocated the bill because of its extremely benevolent object. The Federal leaders saw clearly to what this doctrine would bring them, and met it in the beginning. The first struggle occurred when the appropriations for the service of 1796 were brought before the House. Beginning with a discussion upon the salaries of the officers of the mint, the debate at once passed to the principle of appropriations. The Federalists insisted that a discussion of the merits of establishments was not in order when the appropriations were under consideration; that the House ought not, by withholding appropriations, to destroy establishments formed by the whole legislature, that is, by the Senate and House; that the House should vote for the appropriations agreeably to the laws already made. This view was sanctioned by practice. Mr. Gallatin immediately opposed this as an alarming and dangerous principle. He insisted that there was a certain discretionary power in the House to appropriate or not to appropriate for any object whatever, whether that object were authorized or not. It was a power vested in the House for the purpose of checking the other branches of government whenever necessary. He claimed that this power was shown in the making of yearly instead of permanent appropriations for the civil list and military establishments, yet when the House desired to strengthen public credit it had rendered the appropriation for those objects permanent and not yearly. It was, therefore, “contradictory to suppose that the House was bound to do a certain act at the same time that they were exercising the discretionary power of voting upon it.” The debate determined nothing, but it is of interest as the first declaration in Congress of the supremacy of the House of Representatives.

The great debate which, from the principles involved in it as well as the argument and oratory with which they were discussed, made this session of the House famous, was on the treaty with Great Britain. This was the first foreign treaty made since the establishment of the Constitution. The treaty was sent in to the House “for the information of Congress,” by the President, on March 1, with notice of its ratification at London in October. The next day Mr. Edward Livingston moved that the President be requested to send in a copy of the instructions to the minister of the United States who negotiated the treaty, together with the correspondence and other documents. A few days later he amended his resolution by adding an exception of such of said papers as any existing negotiations rendered improper to disclose. The Senate in its ratification of the treaty suspended the operation of the clause regulating the trade with the West Indies, on which Great Britain still imposed the old colonial restriction, and recommended the President to open negotiations on this subject; and in fact such negotiations were in progress. The discussion was opened on the Federal side by a request to the gentlemen in favor of the call to give their reasons. Mr. Gallatin supported the resolution, and expressed surprise at any objection, considering that the exception of the mover rendered the resolution of itself unexceptionable. The President had not informed the House of the reasons upon which the treaty was based. If he did not think proper to give the information sought for, he would say so to them. A question might arise whether the House should get at those secrets even if the President refused the request, but that was not the present question. In reply to Mr. Murray, who asserted that the treaty was the supreme law of the land, and that there was no discretionary power in the House except on the question of its constitutionality, Mr. Gallatin said that Congress possessed the power of regulating trade,—perhaps the treaty-making power clashed with that,—and concluded by observing that the House was the grand inquest of the nation, and that it had the right to call for papers on which to ground an impeachment. At present he did not contemplate an exercise of that right. Mr. Madison said it was now to be decided whether the general power of making treaties supersedes the powers of the House of Representatives, particularly specified in the Constitution, so as to give to the executive all deliberative will and leave the House only an executive and ministerial instrumental agency; and he proposed to amend the resolution so as to read, “except so much of said papers as in his (the President's) judgment it may be inconsistent with the interest of the United States at this time to disclose.” But his motion was defeated by a vote of 47 nays to 37 yeas.

The discussion being resumed in committee of the whole, the expressions of opinion were free on both sides, but so moderate that one of the members made comment on the calmness and temper of the discussion. Nicholas said that, if the treaty were not the law of the land, the President should be impeached. But the parts of the treaty into which the President had not the right to enter, he could not make law by proclamation. Swanwick supported the call as one exercised by the House of Commons. On the Federal side, Harper said that the papers were not necessary, and, being unnecessary, the demand was an improper and unconstitutional interference with the executive department. If he thought them necessary, he would change the milk and water style of the resolutions. In that case the House had a right to them and he had no idea of requesting as a favor what should be demanded as a right. Gallatin, he said, had declared that it was a request, but that in case of refusal it might be considered whether demand should not be made, and he charged that when, at the time the motion was made, the question had been asked, what use was to be made of the papers, Gallatin did not and could not reply. Mr. Gallatin answered that whether the House had a discretionary power, or whether it was bound by the instrument, there was no impropriety in calling for the papers. He hoped to have avoided the constitutional question in the motion, but as the gentlemen had come forward on that ground, he had no objection to rest the decision of the constitutional power of Congress on the fate of the present question. He would therefore state that the House had a right to ask for the papers.

The constitutional question being thus squarely introduced, Mr. Gallatin made an elaborate speech, which, from its conciseness in statement, strength of argument, and wealth of citations of authority, was, to say the least, inferior to no other of those drawn out in this memorable struggle. In its course he compared the opinion of those who had opposed the resolution to the saying of an English bishop, that the people had nothing to do with the law but to obey it, and likened their conduct to the servile obedience of a Parliament of Paris under the old order of things. He concluded with the hope that the dangerous doctrine, that the representatives of the people have not the right to consult their discretion when about exercising powers delegated by the Constitution, would receive its death-blow. Griswold replied in what by common consent was the strongest argument on the Federal side. The call, at first view simple, had, he said, become a grave matter. The gist of his objection to it was that the people in their Constitution had made the treaty power paramount to the legislative, and had deposited that power with the President and Senate.

Mr. Madison once more rose to the constitutional question. He said that, if the passages of the Constitution be taken literally, they must clash. The word supreme, as applied to treaties, meant as over the state Constitutions, and not over the Constitution and laws of the United States. He supported Mr. Gallatin's view of the congressional power as coöperative with the treaty power. A construction which made the treaty power omnipotent he thought utterly inadmissible in a constitution marked throughout with limitations and checks.

Mr. Gallatin again claimed the attention of the House, as the original question of a call for papers had resolved itself into a discussion on the treaty-making power. In the treaty of peace of 1783 there were three articles which might be supposed to interfere with the legislative powers of the several States: 1st, that which related to the payment of debts; 2d, the provision for no future confiscations; 3d, the restitution of estates already confiscated. The first could not be denied. “Those,” he said, “might be branded with the epithet of disorganizers, who threatened a dissolution of the Union in case the measures they dictated were not obeyed; and he knew, although he did not ascribe it to any member of the House, that men high in office and reputation had industriously spread an alarm that the Union would be dissolved if the present motion was carried.” He took the ground that a treaty is not valid, and does not bind the nation as such, till it has received the sanction of the House of Representatives. Mr. Harper closed the argument on the Federal side. On March 24 the resolution calling for the papers was carried by a vote of yeas 62, nays 37, absent 5, the speaker 1 (105). Livingston and Gallatin were appointed to present the request to the President.

On March 30 the President returned answer to the effect that he considered it a dangerous precedent to admit this right in the House; that the assent of the House was not necessary to the validity of a treaty; and he absolutely refused compliance with the request. The letter of instructions to Jay would bear the closest examination, but the cabinet scorned to take shelter behind it, and it was on their recommendation that the President's refusal was explicit. This message, in spite of the opposition of the Federalists, was referred, by a vote of 55 yeas to 37 nays, to the committee of the whole. This reference involved debate. In his opposition to this motion, Mr. Harper said that the motives of the friends of the resolution had been avowed by the “gentleman who led the business, from Pennsylvania;” whereby it appears that Mr. Gallatin led the Republicans in the first debate. During this his first session he shared this distinction with Mr. Madison. At the next he became the acknowledged leader of the Republican party.

On April 3 the debate was resumed. This second debate was led by Mr. Madison, who considered two points: 1st, the application for papers; 2d, the constitutional rights of Congress. His argument was of course calm and dispassionate after his usual manner. The contest ended on April 7, with the adoption of two resolutions: 1st, that the power of making treaties is exclusively with the President and Senate, and the House do not claim an agency in making them, or ratifying them when made; 2d, that when made a treaty must depend for the execution of its stipulations on a law or laws to be passed by Congress; and the House have a right to deliberate and determine the expediency or inexpediency of carrying treaties into effect. These resolutions were carried by a vote of 63 to 27.

There was now a truce of a few days. In the meanwhile the country was agitated to an extent which, if words mean anything, really threatened an attempt at dissolution of the Union, if not civil war itself. The objections on the part of the Republicans were to the treaty as a whole. Their sympathies were with France in her struggle for liberty and democratic institutions and against England, and their real and proper ground of antipathy to the instrument lay in its concession of the right of capture of French property in American vessels, whilst the treaty with France forbade her to seize British property in American vessels. The objections in detail had been formulated at the Boston public meeting the year before. The commercial cities were disturbed by the interference with the carrying trade; the entire coast, by the search of vessels and the impressment of seamen; the agricultural regions, by the closing of the outlet for their surplus product; the upland districts, by the stoppage of the export of timber. But the country was without a navy, was ill prepared for war, and the security of the frontier was involved in the restoration of the posts still held by the British.

The political situation was uncertain if not absolutely menacing. The threats of disunion were by no means vague. The Pendleton Society in Virginia had passed secession resolutions, and a similar disposition appeared in other States. While the treaty was condemned in the United States, British statesmen were not of one opinion as to the advantages they had gained by Grenville's diplomacy. Jay's desire, expressed to Randolph, “to manage so that in case of wars our people should be united and those of England divided,” was not wholly disappointed. And there is on record the expression of Lord Sheffield, when he heard of the rupture in 1812, “We have now a complete opportunity of getting rid of that most impolitic treaty of 1794, when Lord Grenville was so perfectly duped by Jay.”[4] Washington's ratification of the treaty went far to correct the hasty judgment of the people, and to reconcile them to it as a choice of evils. Supported by this modified tone of public opinion, the Federalists determined to press the necessary appropriation bills for carrying the treaties into effect. Besides the Jay treaty there were also before the House the Wayne treaty with the Indians, the Pinckney treaty with Spain, and the treaty with Algiers. With these three the House was entirely content, and the country was impatient for their immediate operation. Wayne's treaty satisfied the inhabitants on the frontier. The settlers along the Ohio, among whom was Gallatin's constituency, were eager to avail themselves of the privileges granted by that of Pinckney, which was a triumph of diplomacy; and all America, while ready to beard the British lion, seems to have been in terror of the Dey of Algiers. Mr. Sedgwick offered a resolution providing for the execution of the four treaties. Mr. Gallatin insisted on and received a separate consideration of each. That with Great Britain was reserved till the rest were disposed of. It was taken up on April 14. Mr. Madison opened the debate. He objected to the treaty as wanting in real reciprocity; 2d, in insufficiency of its provisions as to the rights of neutrals; 3d, because of its commercial restrictions. Other Republican leaders followed, making strong points of the position in which the treaty placed the United States with regard to France, to whom it was bound by a treaty of commercial alliance, which was a part of the contract of aid in the Revolutionary War; and also of the possible injustice which would befall American claimants in the British courts of admiralty.

The Federalists clung to their ground, defended the treaty as the best attainable, and held up as the alternative a war, for which the refusal of the Republicans to support the military establishment and build up a navy left the country unprepared. In justice to Jay, his significant words to Randolph, while doubtful of success in his negotiation, should be remembered: “Let us hope for the best and prepare for the worst.” To the red flag which the Federalists held up, Mr. Gallatin replied, accepting the consequences of war if it should come, and gave voice to the extreme dissatisfaction of the Virginia radicals with Jay and the negotiation. He charged that the cry of war and threats of a dissolution of the government were designed for an impression on the timidity of the House. “It was through the fear of being involved in a war that the negotiation with Great Britain had originated; under the impression of fear the treaty had been negotiated and signed; a fear of the same danger, that of war, had promoted its ratification; and now every imaginary mischief which could alarm our fears was conjured up in order to deprive us of that discretion which this House thought they had a right to exercise, and in order to force us to carry the treaty into effect.” He insisted on the important principle that 'free ships make free goods,' and complained of its abandonment by the negotiators.

In a reply to this attack upon Jay, whose whole life was a refutation of the charge of personal or moral timidity, Mr. Tracy passed the limits of parliamentary courtesy. “The people,” he said, “where he was most acquainted, whatever might be the character of other parts of the Union, were not of the stamp to cry hosannah to-day and crucify to-morrow; they will not dance around a whiskey pole to-day and curse their government, and upon hearing of a military force sneak into a swamp. No,” said he, “my immediate constituents, whom I very well know, understand their rights and will defend them, and if they find the government will not protect them, they will attempt at least to protect themselves;” and he concluded, “I cannot be thankful to that gentleman for coming all the way from Geneva to give Americans a character for pusillanimity.” He held it madness to suppose that if the treaty were defeated war could be avoided. Called to order, he said that he might have been too personal, and asked pardon of the gentleman and of the House.

The brilliant crown of the debate was the impassioned speech of Fisher Ames, the impression of which upon the House and the crowded gallery is one of the traditions of American oratory. The scene, as it has been handed down to us, resembles, in all save its close, that which Parliament presented when Chatham made his last and dying appeal. Like the great earl, Ames rose pale and trembling from illness to address a House angry and divided. Defending himself and the Federal party against the charge of being in English interest, he said, “Britain has no influence, and can have none. She has enough—and God forbid she ever should have more. France, possessed of popular enthusiasm, of party attachments, has had and still has too much influence on our politics,—any foreign influence is too much and ought to be destroyed. I detest the man and disdain the spirit that can ever bend to a mean subserviency to the views of any nation. It is enough to be American. That character comprehends our duties and ought to engross our attachments.” Considering the probable influence on the Indian tribes of the rejection of the treaty, he said, "By rejecting the Posts we light the savage fires, we bind the victims.... I can fancy that I listen to the yells of savage vengeance and shrieks of torture. Already they seem to sigh in the west wind,—already they mingle with every echo from the mountains." His closing words again bring Chatham to mind. “Yet I have perhaps as little personal interest in the event as any one here. There is, I believe, no member who will not think his chance to be a witness of the consequences greater than mine. If, however, the vote should pass to reject, and a spirit should rise, as rise it will, with the public disorders to make confusion worse confounded, even I, slender and almost broken as my hold upon life is, may outlive the government and Constitution of my country.” This appeal, supported by the petitions and letters which poured in upon the House, left no doubt of the result. An adjournment was carried, but the speech was decisive. The next day, April 29, it was resolved to be expedient to make the necessary appropriations to carry the treaty into effect. The vote stood 49 ayes to 49 nays, and was decided in the affirmative by Muhlenberg, who was in the chair. But the House would not be satisfied without an expression of condemnation of the instrument. On April 30 it was resolved that in the opinion of the House the treaty was objectionable.

While Mr. Gallatin in this debate rose to the highest rank of statesmanship, he showed an equal mastery of other important subjects which engaged the attention of the House during the session. He was earnest for the protection of the frontier, but had no good opinion of the Indians. “Twelve years had passed,” he said, “since the peace of 1783; ever since that time he had lived on the frontier of Pennsylvania. Not a year of this period had passed, whether at war or peace, that some murders had not been committed by the Indians, and yet not an act of invasion or provocation by the inhabitants.” In the matter of impressment of American seamen, he urged the lodging of sufficient power in the executive. Men had been impressed, and he held it to be the duty of the House to take notice of it by war or negotiation. In the establishment of land offices for the sale of the western lands he brought to bear upon legislation his practical experience. He urged that the tracts for sale be divided, and distinctions be made between large purchasers and actual settlers—proposing that the large tracts be sold at the seat of government, and the small on the territory itself. He instanced the fact that in 1792 all the land west of the Ohio was disposed of at 1s. 6d. the acre, and a week afterwards was resold at $1.50, so that the money which should have gone into the treasury went to the pockets of speculators. He also suggested that the proceeds of the sales should be a fund to pay the public debt, and that the public stock should always be received at its value in payment for land; a plan by which the land would be brought directly to the payment of the debt, as foreigners would gladly exchange the money obligations of the government for land. On the question of taxation he declared himself in favor of direct taxes, and held that a tax on houses and lands could be levied without difficulty. He would satisfy the people that it was to pay off the public debt, which he held to be a public curse. He supported the excise duty on stills under regulations which would avoid the watching of persons and houses and inspection by officers, and proposed that licenses be granted for the time applied for.

The military establishment he opposed in every way, attacked the principle on which it was based, and fought every appropriation in detail, from the pay of a major-general to the cost of uniforms for the private soldiers. He was not afraid of the army, he said, but did not think that it was necessary for the support of the government or dangerous to the liberties of the people; moreover, it cost six hundred thousand dollars a year, which was a sum of consequence in the condition of the finances.

The navy found no more favor in his eyes. He denied that fleets were necessary to protect commerce. He challenged its friends to show, from the history of any nation in Europe as from our own, that commerce and the navy had gone hand in hand. There was no nation except Great Britain, he said, whose navy had any connection with commerce. Navies were instruments of power more calculated to annoy the trade of other nations than to protect that of the nations to which they belonged. The price England had paid for her navy was a debt of three hundred millions of pounds sterling. He opposed appropriations even for the three frigates, United States, Constitution, and Constellation,—the construction of which had been ordered,—the germs of that navy which was later to set his theory at naught, redeem the honor of the flag, protect our commerce, and release the country and the civilized world from ignominious tribute to the Mediterranean pirates, who were propitiated in this very session only at the cost of a million of dollars to the Treasury of the United States, and by the gift of a frigate.

In the debate over the payment of the sum of five millions, which the United States Bank had demanded from the government, the greatest part of which had been advanced on account of appropriations, he lamented the necessity, but urged the liquidation. This was the occasion of another personal encounter. In reply to a charge of Gallatin that the Federalists were in favor of debt, Sedgwick alluded to Gallatin's part in the Whiskey Insurrection, and said that none of those gentlemen whom Gallatin had charged with “an object to perpetuate and increase the public debt” had been known to have combined “in every measure which might obstruct the operation of law,” nor had declared to the world "that the men who would accept of the offices to perform the necessary functions of government were lost to every sense of virtue;" “that from them was to be withheld every comfort of life which depended on those duties which as men and fellow-citizens we owe to each other. If,” he said, “the gentlemen had been guilty of such nefarious practices, there would have been a sound foundation for the charge brought against them.” Gallatin made no reply. This was the one political sin he had acknowledged. His silence was his expiation.

The Treasury Department and its control, past and present, was the object of his unceasing criticism. In April, 1796, he said, “The situation of the gentleman at the head of the department [Wolcott] was doubtless delicate and unpleasant; it was the more so when compared with that of his predecessor [Hamilton]. Both indeed had the same power to borrow money when necessary; but that power, which was efficient in the hands of the late secretary and liberally enough used by him, was become useless at present. He wished the present secretary to be extricated from his present difficulty. Nothing could be more painful than to be at the head of that department with an empty treasury, a revenue inadequate to the expenses, and no means to borrow.” Nevertheless he feared that if it were declared that the payment of the debt incurred by themselves were to be postponed till the present generation were over, it might well be expected that the principle thus adopted by them would be cherished, that succeeding legislatures and administrations would follow in their steps, and that they were laying the foundations of that national curse,—a growing and perpetual debt.

On the last day of the session W. Smith had challenged the correctness of Gallatin's charge that there had been an increase of the public debt by five millions under the present administration, and claimed that there were errors in Gallatin's statement of more than four and a half millions. Gallatin defended his figures. At this day it is impossible to determine the merits of this dispute.

One incident of this session deserves mention as showing the distaste of Gallatin for anything like personal compliment, stimulated in this instance, perhaps, by his sense of Washington's dislike to himself. It had been the habit of the House since the commencement of the government to adjourn for a time on February 22, Washington's birthday, that members might pay their respects to the President. When the motion was made that the House adjourn for half an hour, the Republicans objected, and Gallatin, nothing loath to “bell the cat,” moved that the words “half an hour” be struck out. His amendment was lost without a division. The motion to adjourn was then put and lost by a vote of 50 nays to 38 ayes. The House waited on the President at the close of the business of the day. On June 1 closed this long and memorable session, in which the assaults of the Republicans upon the administration were so persistent and embarrassing as to justify Wolcott's private note to Hamilton, April 29, 1796, that “unless a radical change of opinion can be effected in the Southern States, the existing establishments will not last eighteen months. The influence of Messrs. Gallatin, Madison, and Jefferson must be diminished, or the public affairs will be brought to a stand.” Here is found an early recognition of the political “triumvirate,” and Gallatin is the first named.

Gallatin seems to have had some doubts as to his reëlection to Congress. As he did not reside in the Washington and Allegheny district, his name was not mentioned as a candidate, and, to use his own words, he expected to “be gently dropped without the parade of a resignation.” In his distaste at separation from his wife, the desire to abandon public life grew upon him. But personal abuse of him in the newspapers exasperating his friends, he was taken up again in October, and he arrived on the scene, he says, too late to prevent it. He had no hope, however, of success, and was resolved to resign a seat to which he was in every way indifferent. “Ambition, love of power,” he wrote to his wife on October 16, he had never felt, and he added, if vanity ever made one of the ingredients which impelled him to take an active part in public life, it had for many years altogether vanished away. He was nevertheless reëlected by the district he had represented.

The second session of the fourth Congress began on December 5, 1796. At the beginning of this session Mr. Gallatin took the reins of the Republican party, and held them till its close. The position of the Federalists had been strengthened before the country by the energy of Washington, who, impatient of the delays which Great Britain opposed to the evacuation of the posts, marched troops to the frontier and obtained their surrender. Adet, the new French minister, had dashed the feeling of attachment for France by his impudent notice to the President that the dissatisfaction of France would last until the executive of the United States should return to sentiments and measures more conformable to the interests and friendships of the two nations. In September Washington issued his Farewell Address, in which he gave the famous warning against foreign complications, which, approved by the country, has since remained its policy; but neither the prospect of his final withdrawal from the political and official field, nor the advice of Jefferson to moderate their zeal, availed to calm the bitterness of the ultra Republicans in the House.

The struggle over the answer to the President's message, which Fisher Ames on this occasion reported, was again renewed. An effort was made to strike out the passages complimentary to Washington and expressing regret at his approaching retirement. Giles, who made the motion, went so far as to say that he 'wished him to retire, and that this was the moment for his retirement, that the government could do very well without him, and that he would enjoy more happiness in his retirement than he possibly could in his present situation.' For his part he did not consider Washington's administration either “wise or firm,” as the address said. Gallatin made a distinction between the administration and the legislature, and in lieu of the words, wise, firm, and patriotic administration, proposed to address the compliment directly to the wisdom, firmness, and patriotism of Washington. But Ames defended his report, and it was adopted by a vote of 67 to 12. Gallatin voted with the majority, but Livingston, Giles, and Macon held out with the small band of disaffected, among whom it is amusing also to find Andrew Jackson, who took his seat at this Congress to represent Tennessee, which had been admitted as a State at the last session.[5]

The indebtedness of the States to the general government, in the old balance sheet, on the payment of which Gallatin insisted, was a subject of difference between the Senate and the House. Gallatin was appointed chairman of the committee of conference on the part of the House. The reduction of the military establishment, which he wished to bring down to the footing of 1792, was again insisted upon. Gallatin here ingeniously argued against the necessity for the number of men proposed, that it was a mere matter of opinion, and if it was a matter of opinion, it was not strictly necessary, because if necessary it was no longer a matter of opinion. Naval appropriations were also opposed, on the ground that a navy was prejudicial to commerce. Taxation, direct and indirect, and compensation to public officers were also subjects of debate at this session. On the subject of appropriations, general or special, he was uncompromising. He charged upon the Treasury Department that notwithstanding the distribution of the appropriations they thought themselves at liberty to take money from an item where there was a surplus and apply it to another where it was wanted. To check such irregularity, he secured the passage of a resolution ordering that “the several sums shall be solely applied to the objects for which they are respectively appropriated,” and tacked it to the appropriation bill. The Senate added an amendment removing the restriction, but Gallatin and Nicholas insisting on its retention, the House supported them by a vote of 52 to 36, and the Senate receded.

Notwithstanding the apparent enthusiasm of the House in the early part of the session, when the tricolor of France, a present from the French government to the United States, was sent by Washington to Congress, to be deposited with the archives of the nation, French influence was on the wane. The common sense of the country got the better of its passion. In the reaction the Federalists regained the popular favor for a season.

Whatever latent sympathy the French people may have had for America as the nation which set the example of resistance to arbitrary rule, the French government certainly was moved by no enthusiasm for abstract rights. Its only object was to check the power of their ancient enemy, and deprive it of its empire beyond the seas. Nevertheless, France did contribute materially to American success. The American government and people acknowledged the value of her assistance, and, in spite of the prejudices of race, there was a strong bond of sympathy between the two nations; and when, in her turn, France, in 1789, threw off the feudal yoke, she expected and she received the sympathy of America. Beyond this the government and the people of the United States could not and would not go. The position of France in the winter of 1796-97 was peculiar. She was at war with the two most formidable powers of Europe,—Austria and England, the one the mistress of Central Europe, the other supreme ruler of the seas. The United States was the only maritime power which could be opposed to Great Britain. The French government determined to secure American aid by persuasion, if possible, otherwise by threat. The Directory indiscreetly appealed from the American government to the American people, forgetting that in representative governments these are one. Nor was the precedent cited in defense of this unusual proceeding—namely, the appeal of the American colonists to the people of England, Ireland, and Canada to take part in the struggle against the British government—pertinent; for that was an appeal to sufferers under a common yoke.

The enthusiasm awakened in France by the dramatic reception of the American flag, presented by Monroe to the French Convention, was somewhat dampened by the cooler manner with which Congress received the tricolor, and was entirely dashed by the moderation of the reply of the House to Washington's message. The consent of the House to the appropriations to carry out the Jay Treaty decided the French Directory to suspend diplomatic relations with the United States. The marvelous successes of Bonaparte in Italy over the Austrian army encouraged Barras to bolder measures. The Directory not only refused to receive Charles C. Pinckney, the new American minister, but gave him formal notice to retire from French territory, and even threatened him with subjection to police jurisdiction. In view of this alarming situation, President Adams convened Congress.

The first session of the fifth Congress began at Philadelphia on Monday, May 15, 1797. Jonathan Dayton was reëlected speaker of the House. Some new men now appeared on the field of national debate: Samuel Sewall and Harrison Gray Otis from Massachusetts, James A. Bayard from Delaware, and John Rutledge, Jr., from South Carolina. Madison and Fisher Ames did not return, and their loss was serious to their respective parties. Madison was incontestably the finest reasoning power, and Ames, as an orator, had no equal in our history until Webster appeared to dwarf all other fame beside his matchless eloquence. Parties were nicely balanced, the nominal majority being on the Federal side. Harper and Griswold retained the lead of the administration party. Giles still led the Republican opposition, but Gallatin was its main stay, always ready, always informed, and already known to be in the confidence of Jefferson, its moving spirit. The President's message was, as usual, the touchstone of party. The debate upon it unmasked opinions. It was to all intents a war message, since it asked provision for war. The action of France left no alternative. The Republicans recognized this as well as the Federalists. They must either respond heartily to the appeal of the executive to maintain the national honor, or come under the charge they had brought against the Federalists of sympathy with an enemy. At first they sought a middle ground. Admitting that the rejection of our minister and the manner of it, if followed by a refusal of all negotiation on the subject of mutual complaints, would put an end to every friendly relation between the two countries, they still hoped that it was only a suspension of diplomatic intercourse. Hence, in response to the assurance in the message that an attempt at negotiation would first be made, Nicholas moved an amendment in this vein. The Federalists opposed all interference with the executive, but the Republicans took advantage of the debate to clear themselves of any taint of unpatriotic motives in their semi-opposition. The Federalists, repudiating the charge of British influence, held up Genet to condemnation, as making an appeal to the people, Fauchet as fomenting an insurrection, and Adet as insulting the government. The Republicans retorted upon them Grenville's proposition to Mr. Pinckney, to support the American government against the dangerous Jacobin factions which sought to overturn it. Gallatin deprecated bringing the conduct of foreign relations into debate, and hoped that the majority would resist the rashness which would drive the country into war; he claimed that a disposition should be shown to put France on an equal footing with other nations. He would offer an ultimatum to France. Harper closed the debate in a powerful and brilliant speech, opposing the amendment because he was for peace, and because peace could only be maintained by showing France that we were preparing for war. So the rival leaders based their opposite action on a common ground. Dayton, the speaker, now embodied Gallatin's idea in another form, and introduced a paragraph to the effect that "the House receive with the utmost satisfaction the information of the President that a fresh attempt at negotiation will be instituted, and cherish the hope that a mutual spirit of conciliation and a disposition on the part of the United States to place France on grounds as favorable as other countries will produce an accommodation compatible with the engagements, rights, and honor of our nation.”

Kittera, who was one of the committee on the address, then moved to add after “mutual spirit of conciliation” the clause, “to compensate for any injury done to our neutral rights,” etc. This both Harper and Gallatin opposed. Gallatin objected to being forced to this choice. To vote in its favor was a threat, if compensation were refused; to vote against it was an abandonment of the claim. But he should oppose it, if forced to a choice. The Federal leaders insisted; the previous question was ordered, 51 to 48. Here Mr. Gallatin showed himself the leader of his party. He stated that, the majority having determined the question, it was now a choice of evils, and he should vote for the amendment, and it was adopted, 78 ayes to 21 nays. Among the nays were Harper, the Federalist leader, Giles, the nominal chief of the Republicans, and Nicholas, high in rank in that party. But the last word was not yet said. Edward Livingston, who day by day asserted himself more positively, denied that the conduct of the executive had been “just and impartial to foreign nations,” and moved to strike out the statement; Gallatin was more moderate. Though he did not believe that in every instance the government had been just and impartial, yet, generally speaking, it had been so. He did not approve the British treaty, though he attributed no bad motives to its makers; but he did not think that the laws respecting the subordinate departments of the executive and judiciary had been fairly executed. He therefore would not consent to the sentence in the answer to the address, that the House did not hesitate to declare that “they would give their most cordial support to principles so deliberately and uprightly established.”

What, he asked, were these principles? Otis denounced this as an artful attempt to cast a censure, not only on the executive, but on all the departments of government, and Allen of Connecticut declared “that there was American blood enough in the House to approve this clause and American accent enough to pronounce it.” The rough prejudice of the Saxon against the Latin race showed itself in this language, and expressed the antagonism which Mr. Gallatin found to increase with his political progress. Both the resolution and the amendment were defeated, 53 nays to 45 yeas. But when the final vote came upon the address, Mr. Gallatin, with that practical sense which made him the sheet anchor of his party in boisterous weather, voted with the Federalists and carried the moderate Republicans with him. The vote was 62 to 36. Among the irreconcilables the name of Edward Livingston is recorded.

The answer of the President was a model of good sense. “No event can afford me so much cordial satisfaction as to conduct a negotiation with the French Republic to a removal of prejudices, a correction of errors, a dissipation of umbrages, an accommodation of all differences, and a restoration of harmony and affection to the mutual satisfaction of both nations.”

This was the leading debate of the session. The situation was too grave for trifling. On June 5, two days after the President's reply, resolutions were introduced to put the country in a state of defense. Gallatin struggled hard to keep down the appropriations, and opposed the employment of the three frigates, which as yet had not been equipped or manned. If they got to sea, the President would have no option except to enforce the disputed articles of the French treaty. Gallatin laid down also the law of search in accordance with the law of nations, and pointed out that resistance to search or capture by merchantmen would not only lead to war, but was war. In the remaining acts of the session he was in favor of the defense of ports and harbors, with no preference as to fortification on government territory; in favor of a prohibition of the export of arms; against raising an additional corps of artillery; against expatriation of persons who took service under foreign governments. He opposed the duty on salt as unequal and unnecessary, and sought to have the loan, which became necessary, cut down to the exact sum of the deficiency in the appropriations; and finally, on the impeachment of William Blount, Senator of the United States, charged with having conspired with the British government to attack the Spaniards of St. Augustine, he pointed out the true method of procedure in the preparation of the bill of impeachment and the arraignment of the offender.

The House adjourned on July 10. Jefferson complained of the weakness and wavering of this Congress, the majority of which shifted with the breeze of “panic or prowess.” This was, however, a very narrow view; for at this session the House fairly represented the prevailing sentiment of the country, which was friendly to France as a nation, but indignant with the insolence of her rulers. Gallatin, in the middle of the session, wrote to his wife that the Republicans “were beating and beaten by turns.” He supposed that her father, Commodore Nicholson, 'thought him too moderate and about to trim,' and then declared, 'Moderation and firmness hath ever been, and ever will be, my motto.' Gallatin tells a story of his colleague from Pennsylvania, the old Anti-Federalist, Blair McClanachan, which shows the warmth of party feeling. They were both dining with President Adams, who entertained the members of Congress in turn. “McClanachan told the President that, by God, he would rather see the world annihilated than this country united with Great Britain; that there would not remain a single king in Europe within six months, etc., all in the loudest and most decisive tone.”

Jefferson, who, as vice-president, presided over the debates in the Senate, had no cause to complain of any hesitation in that body, in which the Federalists had regained a clear working majority, giving him no chance of a deciding vote.

The second session of the fifth Congress began on November 13, 1797. The words of the President's address, “We are met together at a most interesting period, the situation of the powers of Europe is singular and portentous,” was not an idle phrase. The star of Bonaparte already dominated the political firmament. Europe lay prostrate at the feet of the armies of the Directory. England, who was supposed to be the next object of attack, was staggering under the load of debt; and the sailors of her channel fleet had risen in mutiny. Even the Federalists, the aristocrats as Mr. Gallatin delighted to call them, believed that she was gone beyond recovery. But the admirers of France were no better satisfied with the threatening attitude of the Directory towards America, and eagerly waited news of the reception given to the envoys extraordinary, Gerry, Pinckney, and Marshall, whom Adams with the consent of the Senate dispatched to Paris in the summer. Even Jefferson lost his taste for a French alliance, and almost wished there were “an ocean of fire between the new and the old world.”

The tone of the President's address was considered wise on all sides, and it was agreed that the answer should be general and not a subject of contention. One of the members asked to be excused from going with the House to the President, but Gallatin showed that, as there was no power to compel attendance, no formal excuse was necessary. When the motion was put as to whether they should go in a body as usual to present their answer, Mr. Gallatin voted in the negative. He nevertheless accompanied the members, who were received pleasantly by President Adams and “treated to cake and wine.”

Harper was made the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee. Though of high talents and a fine speaker, Gallatin found him a “great bungler” in the business of the House, a large share of which fell upon his own shoulders as well as the direction of the Republicans, of whom, notwithstanding the jealousy of Giles, he now was the acknowledged leader. As a member for Pennsylvania, Mr. Gallatin presented a memorial from the Quakers with regard to the arrest of fugitive slaves on her soil; the law of Pennsylvania declaring all men to be free who set foot in that State except only servants of members of Congress. There was already an opposition to hearing any petition with regard to slaves, but Gallatin insisted on the memorial taking the usual course of reference to a committee. He directed the House also in the correct path in its legislation as to foreign coins. It was proposed to take from them the quality of legal tender; but he showed that it was policy not to discriminate against such coins until the mint could supply a sufficiency for the use of the country. In this argument he estimated the entire amount of specie in the United States at eight millions of dollars. At this early period in his political career he was acquiring that precise knowledge of the facts of American finance which later served to establish the principles upon which it is based.

This session was noteworthy by reason of the first personal encounter on the floor of the House. It was between two Northern members, Lyon of Vermont and Griswold of Connecticut. Gallatin stood by Lyon, who was of his party, and showed that the House could not expel him, since it was not at the time in organized session. As the Federalists would not consent to censure Griswold, both offenders escaped even a formal reproof. The general bitterness of feeling which marked the summer session was greatly modified in the expectant state of foreign politics; but the occasion for display of political divergence was not long delayed.

On January 18, 1798, Mr. Harper, who led the business of the House, moved the appropriation for foreign intercourse. This was seized upon by the opposition to advance still further their line of attack by a limitation of the constitutional prerogative of the President. In addition to the usual salaries of the envoys to Great Britain and France, appropriations were asked for the posts at Madrid, Lisbon, and Berlin, which last Mr. Adams had designated as a first-class mission. The discussion on the powers of the President, and the extent to which they might be controlled by paring down the appropriations, lifted the debate from the narrow ground of economy in administration to the higher plane of constitutional powers. Nicholas opened on the Republican side by announcing that it was seasonable to bring back the establishment of the diplomatic corps to the footing it had been on until the year 1796. In all governments like our own he declared that there was a tendency to a union and consolidation of all its parts into the executive, and the limitation and annexion of the parts with each other as settled by the Constitution would be destroyed by this influence unless there were a constant attention on the part of the legislature to resist it. The appointment of a minister plenipotentiary to Prussia, with which we had little or no commercial intercourse, offered an opportunity to determine this limitation. Harper said that this was a renewal of the old charge that foreign intercourse was unnecessary, and the old suggestion that our commerce ought to be given up or left to shift for itself. Mr. Gallatin laid down extreme theories which have never yet found practical application. He took the question at once from party or personal ground by admitting that the government was essentially pure, its patronage not extensive, or its effect upon the legislative or any other branch of the government as yet material. The Constitution had placed the patronage in the executive. There he thought it was wisely placed. The legislature would be more corrupt than the executive were it placed with them. While not willing at once to give up political foreign intercourse, he thought that it should by degrees be altogether declined. To it he ascribed the critical situation of the country. Commercial intercourse could be protected by the consular system. He then argued that the power to provide for expenses was the check intended by the Constitution. To this Griswold answered that this doctrine of checks contained more mischief than Pandora's box; Bayard, that the checks were all directed to the executive, and that they would check and counter-check until they stopped the wheels of government.[6] When the President was manacled and at the mercy of the House they would be satisfied. He held the executive to be the weakest branch of the government, because its powers are defined; but the limits of the House are undefined.

As the debate advanced, Nicholas declared that the purpose of the Republicans was to define the executive power and to put an end to its extension through their power over appropriations. Later he would bring in a motion to do away with all foreign intercourse. Goodrich answered that the office of foreign minister was created by the Constitution itself, and the power of appointment was placed in the President. The House might speculate upon the propriety of doing away with all intercourse with foreign powers, but could not decide on it, for political intercourse did not depend on the sending of ministers abroad. Foreign ministers would come here and the Constitution required their reception. The idea that we should have no foreign intercourse was taken from Washington's Farewell Address, but his words applied only to alliances offensive and defensive. If ministers were abandoned, envoys extraordinary must be sent, a much more dangerous practice; the only choice was between ministers and spies. In conclusion he accused the Republicans of making one continuous attack upon the administration, and charged that the opposition to the appropriation bill was not a single measure, but connected with others, and intended to clog the wheels of government.

The purpose of the Republicans being thus declared by Nicholas and squarely met by the friends of the administration, Mr. Gallatin, March 1, 1798, summed up the opposition arguments in an elaborate speech three hours and a quarter in length. He denied the novel doctrine that each department had checks within itself, but none upon others; he claimed that the principle of checks is admitted in all mixed governments. Commercial intercourse, he said, is regulated by the law of nations, by the municipal law of respective countries and by treaties of commerce, the application of which is the province of consuls. What advantages, he asked, had our commercial treaties given us, either that with France or that with England? He excepted that part of the treaty with Great Britain which arranged our difference with that power, as foreign to the discussion. He claimed that the restriction which we had laid upon ourselves by our commercial treaties had been attended with political consequences fatal to our tranquillity. Washington had advised a separation of our political from our commercial relations. The message of President Adams intimated a different policy and alluded to the balance of power in Europe as not to be forgotten or neglected. Interesting as that balance may be to Europe, how does it concern us? We shall never throw our weight into the scale. Passing from this to the danger of the absorption of powers by the executive, he cited the examples of the Córtes of Spain, the États Généraux of France, the Diets of Denmark. In all these countries the executive is in possession of legislative, of absolute powers. The fate of the European republics was similar. Venice, Switzerland, and Holland had shown the legislative powers merging into the executive. The object of the Constitution of the United States is to divide and distribute the powers of government. With uncontrolled command over the purse of the people the executive tends to prodigality, to taxes, and to wars. He closed with a hope that a fixed determination to prevent the increase of the national expenditure, and to detach the country from any connection with European politics, would tend to reconcile parties, promote the happiness of America, and conciliate the affection of every part of the Union. No such admirable exposition of the true American doctrine of non-interference with European politics had at that time been heard in Congress.

In reply, Harper insisted on the admission that the purpose of the amendment of Nicholas was to restrain the President; that it was a question of power, not of money. Mr. Gallatin admitted the right of appointment, but denied that the House was bound to appropriate. Harper rejoined that the offices did not originate with the President but with the Constitution, and that they could not be destroyed by the action of the House, and, leaving the general ground of debate, made a brilliant attack upon the Republicans as revolutionists, whom he divided into three classes: the philosophers, the Jacobins, and the sans-culottes. The philosophers are most to be dreaded. “They declaim with warmth on the miseries of mankind, the abuses of government, and the vices of rulers; all which they engage to remove, providing their theories should once be adopted. They talk of the perfectibility of man and of the dignity of his nature; and, entirely forgetting what he is, declaim perpetually about what he should be.” Of Jacobins there are plenty. They profit by the labors of others; tyrants in power, demagogues when not. Fortunately for America there are few or no sans-culottes among her inhabitants. Jefferson, he said, returned from France a missionary to convert Americans to the new faith, and he charged that the system of French alliance and war with Great Britain by the United States was a part of the scheme of the French revolutionists, and was imported into this country. Gallatin and his friends he regarded in the light of an enemy who has commenced a siege against the fortress of the Constitution.

The restricting amendment was lost, and the bill passed by a vote of 52 yeas to 43 nays. Nor is it easy to see how the theory of Mr. Gallatin with regard to diplomatic relations could have been applied successfully with the existing channels of intercourse. Now that the ocean cable brings governments into direct relation with each other, there is a tendency to restrict the authority of ambassadors, for whom there is no longer need, and the entire system will no doubt soon disappear. Mr. Gallatin's speech was the delight of his party and his friends. He was called upon to write it out, and two thousand copies of it were circulated as the best exposition of Republican doctrine.

Early in February the President informed Congress of certain captures and outrages committed by a French privateer within the limits of the United States, including the burning of an English merchantman in the harbor of Charleston. On March 19, in a further special message, he communicated dispatches from the American envoys in France, and also informed Congress that he should withdraw his order forbidding merchant vessels to sail in an armed condition. A collision might, therefore, occur at any moment.

On March 27, 1798, a resolution was introduced that it is not now expedient for the United States to resort to war against the French Republic; a second, to restrict the arming of merchant vessels; and a third, to provide for the protection of the seacoast and the internal defense of the country. Speaking to the first resolution, Mr. Gallatin said that the United States had arrived at a crisis at which a stand must be made, when the House must say whether it will resort to war or preserve peace. If to war, the expense and its evils must be met; if peace continue, then the country must submit: in either case American vessels would be taken. It was a mere matter of calculation which course would best serve the interest and happiness of the country. If he could separate defensive from offensive war, he should be in favor of it; but he could not make the distinction, and therefore he should be in favor of measures of peace. The act of the President was a war measure. Members of the House so designated it in letters to their constituents.

On April 2 the President was requested to communicate the instructions and dispatches from the envoys extraordinary, mention of which he had made in his message of March 19. Gallatin supported the call. He said that the President was not afraid of communicating information, as he had shown in the preceding session, and that to withhold it would endanger the safety of our commerce, or prevent the happy issue of negotiation. On April 3 Mr. Gallatin presented a petition against hazarding the neutrality and peace of the nation by authorizing private citizens to arm and equip vessels. This was signed by forty members of the Pennsylvania legislature. Protests of a similar character were presented from other parts of the country. On the same day the President sent in the famous X Y Z dispatches, in confidence. These letters represented the names of Hottinguer, Bellamy, and Hauteval, the agents of Talleyrand, the foreign minister of the First Consul, which were withheld by the President. The mysterious negotiations contained a distinct demand by Talleyrand of a douceur of 1,200,000 livres to the French officials as a condition of peace. The effect was immediately to strengthen the administration, Dayton, the speaker, passing to the ranks of the Federalists.

On the 18th the Senate sent down a bill authorizing the President to procure sixteen armed vessels to act as convoys. Gallatin still held firm. He admitted that from the beginning of the European contest the belligerent powers had disregarded the law of nations and the stipulations of treaties, but he still opposed the granting of armed convoys, which would lead to a collision. Let us not, he said, act on speculative grounds; if our present situation is better than war, let us keep it. Better even, he said, suffer the French to go on with their depredations than to take any step which may lead to war.

Allen of Connecticut read a passage from the dispatches which envenomed the debate. By it one of the French agents appears to have warned the American envoys that they were mistaken in supposing that an exposition of the unreasonable demands of France would unite the people of the United States. He said, “You should know that the diplomatic skill of France and the means she possesses in your country are sufficient to enable her, with the French party in America, to throw the blame which will attend the rupture of the negotiations on the Federalists, as you term yourselves, but on the British party, as France terms you, and you may assure yourselves this will be done.” Allen then charged upon Gallatin that his language was that of a foreign agent. Gallatin replied that the representatives of the French Republic in this country had shown themselves to be the worst diplomatists that had ever been sent to it, and he asked why the gentlemen who did not come forward with a declaration of war (though they were willing to go to war without the declaration) charge their adversaries with meaning to submit to France. France might declare war or give an order to seize American vessels, but as long as she did not, some hope remained that the state of peace might not be broken; and he said in conclusion "that, notwithstanding all the violent charges and personal abuse which had been made against him, it would produce no difference in his manner of acting, neither prevent him from speaking against every measure which he thought injurious to the public interest, nor, on the other hand, inflame his mind so as to induce him to oppose measures which he might heretofore have thought proper.”

The war feeling ran high in the country; “Millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute,”[7] was the popular cry. On May 28 Mr. Harper introduced a bill to suspend commercial intercourse with France. Gallatin thought this a doubtful measure. Its avowed purpose was to distress France in the West Indies, but he said that in six months that entire trade would be by neutral vessels. In the discussion on the bill to regulate the arming of merchant vessels, he showed that it was the practice of neutral European nations to allow such vessels to arm, but not to regulate their conduct. Bonds are required in cases of letter of marque, and the merchant who arms is bound not to break the laws of nations or the agreements of treaties. Restriction was therefore unnecessary. Government should not interfere. Commercial intercourse with France was suspended June 13.

In the pride of their new triumph and the intensity of their personal feeling the Federalists overleaped their mark, and began a series of measures which ultimately cost them the possession of the government and their political existence. The first of these was the Sedition Bill, which Jefferson believed to be aimed at Gallatin in person. Mr. Gallatin met it at its inception with a statement of the constitutional objections, viz., 1st, that there was no power to make such a law, and 2d, the special provision in the Constitution that the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended except in cases of rebellion and invasion. There was neither. The second, the Alien Bill, gave the President power to expel from the country all aliens. Over this measure Gallatin and Harper had hot words. Gallatin charged upon Harper not only a misrepresentation of the arguments of his opponents, but an arraignment of the motives of others, while claiming all purity for his own. Harper answered in words which show that Gallatin, for once, had met warmth with warmth, and anger with anger. When, Harper said, a gentleman, who is usually so cool, all at once assumes such a tone of passion as to forget all decorum of language, it would seem as if the observation had been properly applied. On the vote to strike out the obnoxious sections, the Federalists defeated their antagonists, and on June 21 the bill itself was passed with all its odious features by 46 to 40.

On June 21 President Adams sent in a message with letters from Gerry, who had remained at Paris after the return of Marshall and Pinckney, on the subject of a loan. They contained an intimation from Talleyrand that he was ready to resume negotiations. In this message Adams said, “I will never send another minister to France without assurances that he will be received, respected, and honored as the representative of a great, free, powerful, and independent nation.” On the 25th an act was passed authorizing the commanders of merchant vessels to defend themselves against search and seizure under regulations by the President. On June 30 a further act authorized the purchase and equipment of twelve vessels as an addition to the naval armament. To all intents and purposes a state of war between the two countries already existed.

The 4th of July (1798) was celebrated with unusual enthusiasm all over the United States, and the black cockade was generally worn. This was the distinctive badge of the Federalists, and a response to the tricolor which Adet had recommended all French citizens to wear in 1794.

On July 5 a resolution was moved to appoint a committee to consider the expediency of declaring, by legislative act, the state of relations between the United States and the French Republic. Mr. Gallatin asked if a declaration of war could not be moved as an amendment, but the speaker, Mr. Dayton, made no reply. Mr. Gallatin objected that Congress could not declare a state of facts by a legislative act. But this view, if tenable then, has long since been abandoned. In witness of which it is only necessary to name the celebrated resolution of the Congress of 1865 with regard to the recognition of a monarchy in Mexico. July 6 the House went into committee of the whole on the state of the Union to consider a bill sent down by the Senate abrogating the treaty with France. The bill was passed on the 16th by a vote of 47 ayes to 37 nays, Gallatin voting in the negative. The House adjourned the same day.

While thus engaged in debates which called into exercise his varied information and displayed not only the extent of his learning but his remarkable powers of reasoning and statement, Mr. Gallatin never lost sight of reform in the administration of the finances of the government. To the success of his efforts to hold the Treasury Department to a strict conformity with his theory of administration, Mr. Wolcott, the secretary, gave ample if unwilling testimony. To Hamilton he wrote on April 5, 1798, “The management of the Treasury becomes more and more difficult. The legislature will not pass laws in gross; their appropriations are minute. Gallatin, to whom they yield, is evidently intending to break down this department by charging it with an impracticable detail.”

During these warm discussions Gallatin rarely lost his self-control. Writing to his old friend Lesdernier at this period, he said, “You may remember I am blessed with a very even temper; it has not been altered by time or politics.”

The third session of the fifth Congress opened on December 3, 1798. On the 8th, when the President was expected, Lieutenant-General Washington and Generals Pinckney and Hamilton entered the hall and took their places on the right of the speaker's chair. They had been recently appointed to command the army of defense.

The President's speech announced no change in the situation. “Nothing,” he said, “is discoverable in the conduct of France which ought to change or relax our measures for defense. On the contrary, to extend and invigorate them is our true policy. An efficient preparation for war can alone insure peace. It must be left to France, if she is indeed desirous of accommodation, to take the requisite steps. The United States will steadily observe the maxims by which they have hitherto been governed.” The reply to this patriotic sentiment was unanimously agreed to, and was most grateful to Adams, who thanked the House for it as “consonant to the characters of representatives of a great and free people.”

On December 27 a peculiar resolution was introduced to punish the usurpation of the executive authority of the government of the United States in carrying on correspondence with the government of any foreign prince or state. Gallatin thought this resolution covered too much ground. The criminality of such acts did not lie in their being usurpations, but in the nature of the crime committed. There was no authority in the Constitution for a grant of such a power to the President. To afford aid and comfort to the enemy was treason, but there was no war, and therefore no enemy. He claimed the right to himself and others to do all in his power to secure a peace, even by correspondence abroad, and he would not admit that the ground taken by the friends of the measure was a proper foundation for a general law. A committee was, however, appointed, in spite of this remonstrance, to consider the propriety of including in the general act all persons who should commence or carry on a correspondence, by a vote of 65 to 23. A bill was reported on January 9, when Gallatin endeavored to attach a proviso that the law should not operate upon persons seeking justice or redress from foreign governments; but his motion was defeated by a vote of 48 to 37. Later, however, a resolution of Mr. Parker, that nothing in the act should be construed to abridge the rights of any citizen to apply for such redress, was adopted by a vote of 69 yeas to 27 nays. On this vote Harper voted yea. Griswold, Otis, Bayard, and Goodrich were found among the nays. Gallatin succeeded in carrying an amendment defining the bill, after which it was passed by a vote of 58 to 36.

Towards the close of January, 1799, a bill was brought in authorizing the President to discontinue the restraints of the act suspending intercourse with the French West India Islands, whenever any persons in authority or command should so request. This was to invite a secession of the French colonies from the mother country. Gallatin deprecated any action which might induce rebellion against authority, or lead to self-government among the people of the islands who were unfit for it. Moreover, such action would remove still further every expectation of an accommodation with France. The bill was passed by a vote of 55 to 37. He objected to the bill to authorize the President to suspend intercourse with Spanish and Dutch ports which should harbor French privateers, as placing an unlimited power to interdict commerce in the hands of the executive. The bill was carried by 55 to 37. On the question of the augmentation of the navy he opposed the building of the seventy-fours.

In February Edward Livingston presented a petition from aliens, natives of Ireland, against the Alien and Sedition laws. Numerous similar petitions followed; one was signed by 18,000 persons in Pennsylvania alone. To postpone consideration of the subject, the Federalists sent these papers to a select committee, against the protests of Livingston and Gallatin. This course was the more peculiar because of the reference of petitions of a similar character in the month previous to the committee of the whole. The Federalists were abusing their majority, and precipitating their unexpected but certain ruin. One more effort was made to repeal the offensive penal act; the constitutional objection was again pleaded, but the repeal was defeated by a vote of 52 in the affirmative. Mr. Gallatin opposed these laws in all their stages, but, failing in this, persistently endeavored to make them as good as possible before they passed. Jefferson later said that nothing could obliterate from the recollection of those who were witnesses of it the courage of Gallatin in the “Days of Terror.”[8] The vote of thanks to Mr. Dayton, the speaker, was carried by a vote of 40 to 22. On March 3, 1800, this Congress adjourned.

The sixth Congress met at Philadelphia on December 2, 1799. The Federalists were returned in full majority. Among the new members of the House, John Marshall and John Randolph appeared for Virginia. Theodore Sedgwick was chosen speaker. President Adams came down to the House on the 3d and made the usual speech. The address in reply, reported by a committee of which Marshall was chairman, was agreed to without amendment. Adams was again delighted with the very respectful terms adopted at the “first assembly after a fresh election, under the strong impression of the public opinion and national sense at this interesting and singular crisis.” At this session it was the sad privilege of Marshall to announce the death of Washington, “the Hero, the Sage, and the Patriot of America.” In the shadow of this great grief, party passion was hushed for a while.

Gallatin again led the Republican opposition; Nicholas and Macon were his able lieutenants. The line of attack of the Republicans was clear. If war could be avoided, the growing unpopularity of the Alien and Sedition laws would surely bring them to power. The foreign-born voter was already a factor in American politics. In January the law providing for an addition to the army was suspended. Macon then moved the repeal of the Sedition Law. He took the ground that it was a measure of defense. Bayard adroitly proposed as an amendment that “the offenses therein specified shall remain punishable as at common law, provided that upon any prosecution it shall be lawful for the defendant to give as his defense the truth of the matter charged as a libel.” Gallatin called upon the chair to declare the amendment out of order, as intended to destroy the resolution, but the speaker declined, and the amendment was carried by a vote of 51 to 47. The resolution thus amended was then defeated by a vote of 87 to 1. The Republicans preferred the odious act in its original form rather than accept the Federal interpretation of it.

On February 11, 1800, a bill was introduced into Congress further to suspend commercial intercourse with France. It passed the House after a short debate by a vote of 68 yeas to 28 nays. On this bill the Republican leaders were divided. Nicholas, Macon, and Randolph opposed it; but Gallatin, separating from his friends, carried enough of his party with him to secure its passage. Returned by the Senate with amendments, it was again objected to by Macon as fatal to the interests of the Southern States, but the House resolved to concur by a vote of 50 to 36.

In March the country was greatly excited by the news of an engagement on the 1st of February, off Guadaloupe, between the United States frigate Constellation, thirty-eight guns, and a French national frigate, La Vengeance, fifty-four guns. The House of Representatives called on the secretary of the navy for information, and, by 84 yeas to 4 nays, voted a gold medal to Captain Truxton, who commanded the American ship. John Randolph's name is recorded in the negative.

Notwithstanding this collision, the relations of the United States and France were gradually assuming a kindlier phase. The Directory had sought to drive the American government into active measures against England. Bonaparte, chosen First Consul, at once adopted a conciliatory tone. Preparing for a great continental struggle, he was concentrating the energies and the powers of France. In May Mr. Parker called the attention of the House to this change of conduct in the French government and offered a resolution instructing the Committee on Commerce to inquire if any amendments to the Foreign Intercourse Act were necessary. Macon moved to amend so that the inquiry should be whether it were not expedient to repeal the act. Gallatin opposed the resolution on the ground that it was highly improper to take any measures at the present time which would change the defensive system of the country. The resolution was negatived,—43 nays to 40 yeas.

One singular opposition of Gallatin is recorded towards the close of the session; the Committee on the Treasury Department reported an amendment to the act of establishment, providing that the secretary of the treasury shall lay before Congress, at the commencement of every session, a report on finance with plans for the support of credit, etc. Gallatin and Nicholas opposed this bill, because it came down from the Senate, which had no constitutional right to originate a money bill; but Griswold and Harper at once took the correct ground that it was not a bill, but a report on the state of the finances, in which the Senate had an equal share with the House. The bill was passed by a vote of 43 to 39. It is worthy of note that the first report on the state of the finances communicated under this act was by Mr. Gallatin himself the next year, and that it was sent in to the Senate. The House adjourned on May 14, 1800.

The second session of the sixth Congress was held at the city of Washington, to which the seat of government had been removed in the summer interval. After two southerly migrations they were now definitively established at a national capital. The session opened on November 17, 1800. On the 22d President Adams congratulated Congress on “the prospect of a residence not to be changed.” The address of the House in reply was adopted by a close vote.

The situation of foreign relations was changed. The First Consul received the American envoys cordially, and a commercial convention was made but secured ratification by the Senate only after the elimination of an article and a limitation of its duration to eight years. While the bill was pending in the Senate, Mr. Samuel Smith moved to continue the act to suspend commercial intercourse with France. Mr. Gallatin opposed this motion; at the last session he had voted for this bill because there was only the appearance of a treaty. Now that the precise state of negotiation was known, why should the House longer leave this matter to the discretion of the President? The House decided to reject the indiscreet bill by a vote of 59 to 37. An effort was also made to repeal a part of the Sedition Law, and continue the rest in force, but the House refused to order the engrossing of the bill, taking wise counsel of Dawson, who said that, supported by the justice and policy of their measures, the approaching administration would not need the aid of either the alien, sedition, or common law. The opponents of the bill would not consent to any modification. The last scenes of the session were of exciting interest.