K.^ ^rVV^ Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2010 with funding from The Library of Congress http://www.archive.org/details/centennialofelecOOmead THE CENTENNIAL OF THE ELECTION OF JEFFERSON. By Edivhi D. Mead. Reprinted fiom the Editor's Talkie of the In^ew Enc.i.and Magazine, October, 1900. THO:.IAS JEFFERSON was the first Nineteenth Century president. His administration began just as the century began. The observance of the centennial of his election involves a review of the century. It has been a mo- mentous century for the whole world. And when all deductions have been made, and with all misgivings and sorrows at evil tendencies which have become prom- inent and threatening in the present time and which we do not whitewash nor close our eyes to, who does not see that the world is a better place to live in at the close of the Nineteenth Century than at its beginning; who does not see that it has been a cen- tury of progress ; who does not find the pages which picture its last dec- ade — up to the time, at least, of the beginning of the wickedness in the Philippines and the Transvaal — more cheerful pages than those which picture its first? There is a better England, a better France, a better Germany, a better Italy, a better Russia and a better Spain. Would we realize how great the strides which the United States has taken in the century, we should cre- ate for ourselves a picture of the United States of 1800. Fortunately it has bieen done for us in a masterly manner, by Henry Adams, in his His- tory of the United States in the Ad- ministrations of Jefferson and Madi- son. This history altogether is a great work, one of the few works in American history which covers the period which it treats in a thoroughly satisfactory and adequate way. It possesses every characteristic of the (best historical writing — splendid Ischolarship, a familiarity with the pe- riod born of indefatigable and sym- pathetic study, a rare grasp of the principles which were then working (themselves out in our politics, a ^^enius for portrait painting which i[aakes Jeliferson and his contempo- ijaries live and breathe in its pages, and a literary style surpassed by that df Parkman alone among our Ameri- can historians, if surpassed at all. It is preeminently the work which s.'hould be read by the student who would understand our poHtical Hfe at the beginning of the centur_, t^'^^nd the first half of its first volume is^gr:- voted to painting a general picture of American life in its various aspects, in 1800, when Jeft'erson was elected President, which is a worthy counter- part of the famous chapter in which Macaulay, in the first volume of his history, depicts the condition of England in the seventeenth century. iVVe could wish that these two hun- dred pages might be bound separate- ly as a little book on "The United States a Hundred Years Ago." A comparison of this picture of 1800 with the present time tells the story of our advance. The election of Jefferson in 1800 marked an epoch in our history. "The revolution of 1800." Jefferson himself believed and wrote many years after- wards, "was as real a revolution in the principles of our government as that of 1776 was in its form." This may be extravagant ; but the revolu- \^ THE CENTENNIAL OF THE ELECTION OF JEFFERSON tion was a real and great one — and most of us agree that it was impera- tive and salutary. Not many to-day will be disposed to controvert Jeffer- son's biographer when he declares that "the best chance of republican America is an adherence to the gen- eral line of politics of which he was the embodiment. If Jefferson was wrong, America is wrong ; if Ameri- ca is right, Jefferson was right." Perhaps the most welcome and use- ful of the Old South leaflets of the summer, to which we have referred, is that which reprints Jefferson's 'In- augural, with the notes, largel}' drawn from Henry Adams's first vol- ume, which make clearer to us its his- torical character and setting. "Time, which has laid its chastening hand or many reputations, and has given tc many once famous formulas a mean- ing unsuspected by their authors, has not altogether spared Jefferson's first Inaugural Address, although it was for a long time almost as well known as the Declaration of Independence. Ye^ Ms address was one of the few st/ , papers which should have losi, little of its interest by age. As the starting-point of a powerful political party, the first Inaugural was a standard by which future movements were measured ; and it went out of fashion only when its principles were fully accepted or thrown aside." So much a part of the common stock have the political doctrines become for which Jefferson stood, that we to-day read their brief summary in his Inaugural with less interest than the magnanimous words in which Jefferson lifts himself and seeks to lift his countrymen above partisan ani- mosities and rancor into the atmos- phere of a common patriotism and duty. His plea to the extreme Fed- eralists of the North reminds us of Lincoln's noble and tender plea sixty years later to the Secessionists of the South ; it is an expression of the same charity and catholicity, and it was addressed to a bitterness, sus- picion and misrepresentation which had pursued him during the previous campaign as inexorably as they after- wards pursued Lincoln and as they pursued no man between Jefferson and Lincoln. Truisms as the doctrines of Jeffer- son have become to most simple Americans, it is still salutary to read his famous summary of them in his Inaugural and reflect upon the best program of democracy a hundred years ago. "Let us, then, with courage and confi- dence pursue our own Federal and Repub- lican principles, our attachment to union and representative government. Kindly separated by nature and a wide ocean from the exterminating havoc of one-quarter of the globe; too high-minded to endure the degradations of the others; possessing a chosen country, with room enough for our descendants to the thousandth and thou- sandth generation; entertaining a due sense of our equal right to the use of our own faculties, to the acquisitions of our own industry, to honor and confidence from our fellow-citizens, resulting not from birth, but from our actions and their sense of them; enlightened by a benign re- ligion, professed, indeed, and practised in various forms, yet all of them inculcating honesty, truth, temperance, gratitude, and the love of man; acknowledging and ador- ing an overruling Providence, which by all its dispensations proves that it delights in the happiness of man here and his greater happiness hereafter, — with all these bless- ings, what more is necessary to make us a happy and a prosperous people? Still one thing more, fellow-citizens, — a wise and frugal government, which shall re- strain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicities. "About to enter, fellow-citizens, on the exercise of duties which comprehend everything dear and valuable to you, it is proper you should understand what I deem the essential principles of our government, and consequently those which ought to shape its administration. I will compress them within the narrowest compass they will bear, stating the' general principle, but not all its limitations: equal and exact justice to all men, of whatever state or H.O.LoclgO 18 Ja. 'OO THE CEXTENNIAL OE THE ELECT I OX OE JEEEERSOX. 3 persuasion, religious or political; peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none, the support of the state governments in all their rights, as the most competent admin- istrations for our domestic concerns and the surest bulwarks against anti-republi- can tendencies; the preservation of the general government in its whole constitu- tional vigor, as the sheet anchor of our peace at home and safety abroad; a jealous care of the right of election by the people, — a mild and safe corrective of abuses whiclr are lopped by the sword of revolu- tion where peaceable remedies are unpro- vided; absolute acquiescence in the deci- sions of the majority, the vital principle of republics, from which is no appeal but to force, the vital principle and immediate parent of despotism; a well-disciplined militia, our best reliance in peace and for the first moments of war, till regulars may relieve them; the supremacy of the civil over the military authority; economy in the public expense, that labor may be lightly burthened; the honest payment of our debts and sacred preservation of the public faith; encouragement of agriculture, and of commerce as its handmaid; the dif- fusion of information and arraignment of all abuses at the bar of the public reason; ^freedom of religion; freedom of the press, and freedom of person under the protec- tion of the habeas corpus, and trial by juries impartially selected. These princi- ples form the bright constellation which has gone before us and guided our steps through an age of revolution and reforma- tion. The wisdom of our sages and blood of our heroes have been devoted to their attainment. They should be the creed of our political faith, the text of civic instruc- tion, the touchstone by which to try the services of those we trust; and, should .ve wander from them in moments of error or of alarm, let us hasten to retrace our steps and to regain the road which alone leads to peace, liberty, and safety." This simple creed and proo^ram ijains double impressiveness and sig- nificance from the character of its great author and his ideals of human history and the vocation among the nations of the new republic. No- where are those ideals stated more truly or in words more commanding -for the republic to-day than by Mr. Adams in his liistory. "Jeflferson aspired beyond the ambition <^f a nationality, and embraced in his view the whole future of man. That the United States should become a nation like France, England, or Russia, should conquer the world like Rome, or develop a typical race like the Chinese, was no part of his scheme. He wished to begin a new era. Hoping for a time when the world's ruling interests should cease to be local and should become universal; when questions of boundary and nationality should be- come insignificant; when armies and navies should be reduced to the work of police, and politics should consist only in non-intervention, — he set himself to the task of governing, with this golden age in view. Few men have dared to legislate as though eternal peace were at hand, in a world torn by wars and convulsions and drowned in blood; but this was what Jef- ferson aspired to do. Even in such dangers, he believed that Americans might safely set an example which the Christian world should be led by interest to respect and at length to imitate. As he conceived a true American policy, war was a blunder, an unnecessary risk; and even in case of robbery and aggression the United States, he believed, had only to stand on the defensive in order to obtain justice in the end. He would not consent to build tip a new nationality merely to create more navies and armies, to perpet- uate the crimes and follies of Europe; the central government at Washington should not be permitted to indulge in the miser- able ambitions that had made the Old World a hell, and frustrated the hopes of humanity." * * Perhaps there has been no presi- dential campaign in our history which points more morals for us than the campaign of 1800, which resulted in the election of Jefiferson. A few days ago we read in one of our ablest and most respectable journals — abler and more respectable than any journal of Boston or Philadelphia in 1800 — an extraordinary tirade against one of the candidates for the presidency in the present year of grace. "His supporters are general- ly the lawless and the discontented. The men who think that they have nothing to lose by revolution and im- agine that they have much to gain by it, who are ready to overturn our present commercial and industrial system and take their chances, who are without property and withottt the THE CENTENNIAL OF THE ELECTION OE JEEEERSON talents and the industry to acquire property, who desire to control the conditions of labor in America by means of secret organizations neither known to the law nor regulated by it," who denotmce the Supreme Court, glory in lynch law, get up mobs, and do all manner of dreadful things, which time and space would fail us to repeat, — of this "excessive and uncontrolled individualism," de- clared the journal, this man is the "chosen representative." Hear now Mr. Adams's summing up of the tirades against J ;fiferson by the Federalists of New England anc New York in 1800: "Every dissolute intriguer, loose-liver, forger, false- coiner, and prison-bird ; every hair- brained, loud-talking demagogue every speculator, scofifer and athe- ist, was a follower of Jeflferson ; and Jefferson was himself the incarna- tion of their theories." The parallel- ism is didactic. The one arraignment is just as true as the other — and jus* as false ; and the falsehood is chiefly not in what is said, but in what is no:: said. The new faith of every age, political and religious faith alike, wil! always draw the faithless to its stand- ard, not because they apprehend the faith, but because they are tickled by the slights to the established, by the non-conformity and the idol-break- ing; and the new faith must pay the penalty of their following until it, in turn, becomes customary, fashion- able and orthodox, as Jefferson's democracy became, and as many po- litical and social doctrines, so shock- ing to many respectable and proper folk in this year 1900, will become before the year 2000. Democracy altogether, as we un- derstand democracy, and as Jefferson understood it, was under suspicion in .1800. It is not strange, because America, like the rest of the world, had just been witnessing the excesses of the French Revolution, perpe- trated in the name of democracy. "Thenceforward the mark of a wise and good man was that he abhorred the French Revolution and believed democracy to be its cause. The an- swer to every democratic suggestion ran in a set phrase, "Look at France!' '" The wild and morbid talk of Fisher Ames at the time of Jeffer- son's election is almost incredible. "I hold democracy," George Cabot wrote as late as 1804, "In its natural opera- tion to be the government of the worst." "If no man in New Eng- land," he said, "could vote for legis- lators, who was not possessed in his own right of two thousand dollars' valtie in land, we could do something better." "Your people, sir," ex- claimed Alexander Hamilton, strik- ing his hand on the table at a New York dinner, — "your people is a great beast!" Jefferson, firm in his faith in democracy through all its rudenesses and crudenesses, knowing well what the real cause of the French Revolu- tion was, and what the classes and the forces are which most persistent- ly threaten free states, was almost a representative of the Red Terror to the pious parsons of New England and New York, who assumed that the people of America were "in the same social condition as the con- temporaries of Catiline and the ad- herents of Robespierre." "I should as soon have expected to see a cow in a drawing-room as a Jacobin," said a lady of the time ; and certain it is that few Boston or New York par- lors would have been open to Thom- as Jefferson in 1800. Men proved in pamphlets, to their own satisfaction, that Mr. Jefferson "hated the Consti- tution" and was "pledged to subvert it." He would "tumble the financial system of the country into ruin at one stroke," which would stop all pay- ments of interest on the public debt and bring on "universal bankruptcy and beggary." These were the most respectable of his prophesied sins. There were few pulpits from which he was not denounced. "A literature belonging to this sub- THE CEXTEXXIAL OF THE ELECTION OF JEFFERSON. ject exists," says Mr. Adams, "stacks of newspapers and sermons, mostly dull, and wanting literary merit. In a few of them Jefferson fig- ured under the well remembered disguises of Puritan politics: he was Ephraim, and had mixed himself among the people ; had apostatized from his God and religion ; gone to Assyria, and mingled himself among the. heathen; or he was Jeroboam, who drove Israel from following the Lord and made them sin a great sin." The accounts of the campaign given by Tucker in his Life of JefTerson (II, 70-80), and especially by Randall, should be read, and the passages in the charming "Domestic Life of Thomas JefYerson," by Miss Ran- dolph, who prints the indignant letter from JefTerson to Uriah Mc Gregory, of Connecticut, concerning certain aspersions upon his common honesty — the one only sign of resentment into which he was stung by his swarm of malevolent critics. "During the political campaign of the simimer of 1800," writes Miss Randolph, ''Jef- ferson was denounced by many di- vines as an atheist and a French in- fidel. These attacks were made upon him by half the clergy of New Eng- land, and by a few in other northern states ; in the former section, however, they were most virulent. The common people of the country were told that should he be elected their Bibles would be taken from them. In New York the Rev. Dr. John M. Mason published a pamphletattackingjeffer- son, which was entitled 'The Voice of Warning to Christians on the En- suing Election.' In New England sermons against JelYerson were print- ed and scattered through the land." But altogether the most compre- hensive and vivacious summary of the slanders upon Jefferson in this memorable campaign is that by Mr. Parton, who devotes an entire chap- ter in his Life of Jefiferson to "The Campaign Lies of 1800." "That product of the human intellect," he says, "which we denominate Cam- paign Lies, though it did not orig- inate in the United States, hashere at- tained a development unknown in other lands. Thomas Jefferson, who began so many things in the early career of the United States, was the first object upon whom the Campaign Liar tried his unpractised talents. The art, indeed, may be said to have been introduced in 1796 to prevent his election to the Presidency ; but it was in 1800 that it was clearly de- veloped into a distinct species of falsehood. The Campaign Liar was hard put to it. Jefferson's life pre- sented to his view a most discourag- ing monotony of innocent and bene- ficial actions, — twenty-five years of laborious and unrecompensed public service, relieved by the violin, science, invention, agriculture, the education of his nephews and the love of his daughters. A life so ex- ceptionally blameless did not give fair scope to talent ; still the Cam- paign Liar of 1800 did very well for a beginner;" — and Mr. Parton follows him through his political, personal and religious attacks. He tells, as Miss Randolph does, only much more fully, about Dr. Mason's pamphlet and his frantic prayers ; he reports the sermon upon the "Claims of Thomas Jefferson to the Presidency exam- ined at the bar of Christianity," and tells of the other sermons and of the sundry syllogisms which issued in assurances that Jefferson "aimed at the destruction of the Christian reli- gion." So widely was this notion spread that tradition reports that, "when the news of Jefferson's elec- tion reached New England, some old ladies in wild consternation hung their Bibles down the well, in the butter-cooler." The truth is, of course, that Jefferson was a reverent, religious man, and a Christian. "I am a Christian," he once wrote, "in the only sense in which Jesus wished any one to be, — sincerely attached to his doctrines in prefernce to all others." He loved most warmly the words of Jesus ; he once carefully cut THE CEXTEXXLIL OF THE ELECT! OX OE JEEEEKSOX all of the very words of Jesus from copies of the New Testament, and pasted them together in a little book, which he kept and pondered. His firm belief in immortality and the great fundamental truths of religious philosophy appears from his letters. But he was a rational man, and held the same attitude with reference to the superstitions of the church in 1800 that Emerson and Parker and Martineau have held in our own time. The curious thing about it all is that the pulpit should have fulminated as it did against Jefferson, while it let Adams alone ; for, as Mr. Partori truly says, "there was not a pin to choose between the heterodoxy of the two candidates ; indeed, Mr. Adams was sometimes in his familiar letters more pronounced in his dissent fron established beliefs than Jefferson; h( was by far the more impatient of the two with popular creeds ; and as for the doctrine of the Trinity, he greatl) surpassed Jefiferson in his aversion t(i it." Of the popular doctrine of th<; person of Christ he once declared that "until this awful blasphemy was go: rid of, there will never be any liberal science in this world." "And yet hi' escaped anathema!" Undoubtedly the great reason why Jefiferson earned such enmity from the clergy was the conspicuous part he had taken in the separation of Church and State in Virginia. This divorce was vehe- mently opposed by the clergy in every state. In was not until 1834 that it was made complete in Massachusetts ; and many students will remember how Lyman Beecher fought it in Connecticut. Some of the clergy, even in Virginia, cherished hopes of undoing Jefferson's work there ; but, said he, "the returning good sense of our country threatens abortion to their hopes, and they believe that any portion of power confided to me will be exerted in opposition to their claims. And they believe rightly ; for I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man." Tyranny in every form Thomas Jef- ferson hated with a perfect hatred ; and he hated religious tyranny with the rest. "I never will," he once wrote, "by any word or act bow to the shrine of intolerance or admit a right of inquiry into the religious opinions of others. On the contrary, we are bound, you, I and every one, to make common cause, even with error itself, to maintain the common right of freedom of conscience. We ought with one heart and one hand to hew down the daring and dangerous efforts of those who would seduce the public opinion to substitute itself into that tyranny over religious faith which the laws have so justly abdi- cated. For this reason, were my opinions up to the standard of those who arrogate the right of questioning them, I would not countenance that arrogance by descending to an expla- nation." The more violent Federalists, in the exceeding greatness of their rage against Jefferson, even conspired for the election of Aaron Burr, when the election was thrown into the House of Representatives, wiUing to make terms with him and thinking he would be more pliant to their wishes. Cabot and Otis, in Massachusetts, wrote to Hamilton, favoring this idea. No less a man than Marshall, then secretary of state, actually balanced between Jefferson and Burr, writing to Hamilton while the matter was pending that he had not determined in his own mind to which the prefer- ence was due. He finally concluded that "still greater danger may be ap- prehended from Mr. Burr than from Mr. Jefferson ;" but he "could not bring himself to aid Mr. Jefferson," to whom he had "almost insuperable objections." "His foreign prejudices seem to me totally to unfit him for the chief magistracy. In addition, Mr. Jefferson appears to me to be a man who will embody himself with the House of Representatives. By THE CEXTENXIAL OF THE ELECTION OF JEFFERSOX / weakening the office of President, he will increase his personal power ; he will diminish his responsibility, and sap the fundamental principles of the government." How groundless this fear of Marshall's was Jefferson's ad- ministration well proved. The cen- tennial of Jefiferson's inauguration is also the centennial of Marshall's ap- pointment as chief justice ; and the republic cherishes, as it ever will, feelings of profound gratitude to him for that long line of judicial decisions and opinions by which, in that for- mative period, he did so much to consolidate our national life and character. But he did not, in this great work, find Jefferson across his path — nor Madison ; in the hands of neither was the position or power of the executive "weakened," or the administration conducted in a man- ner to jeopardize or prejudice in any manner the true national prestige and integrity; whatever prejudice or jeopardy these suffered in those six- teen years came from the men who in 1800 were talking so vehemently of the danger that Jeflferson would "sap the fundamental principles of the government." As to respect for the dignity of the presidential office, it is edifying to compare the courses of Jefferson and Marshall during the trial of Burr, which is done so well by Schouler in the following passage: "Marshall's partisan resentment had not wholly passed away, we may well surmise, when Aaron Burr, bankrupt in purse and reputation, came in peril of the gallows after the exposure of his treasonable Western conspiracy during Jefferson's second term. If the President had urged on the prosecution, too eager, as it seemed, to crush the man who had once played treacherously to supplant him, ftiarshall appeared not less sedulous to protect the culprit. Whether upon sound reasoning or otherwise, the chief justice at Burr's trial so laid down the law and strained the admission of testimony, that prosecutions for treason against the Union must since have been scarcely worth at- tempting, on the strength of such a prece- dent. And while the case was pending he sent a subpoena ordering the President himself to appear at the trial and bring a certain paper with him. What process had the common law ever invoked to sub- ordinate the sovereign to the courts? Jefferson sustained well the dignity of his station as the American chief executive. He gave the summons no notice; he would not go, but informed the district attorney that the paper might be obtained some other way. Marshall was wise enough to press the experiment no further; and our Supreme Court, in a later and wiser gen- eration, has refused to issue mandates to the President of the United States, when convinced of its own powerlessness to compel obedience." It should be said that Hamilton, during the consultations of the Fed- eralist leaders about throwing their influence for Burr against Jefferson, advised steadily against it. Jefferson, he conceded, although he called him "a contemptible hypocrite," had "pretensions to character." He wrote to Bayard, "very, very confidential- ly," that in his opinion Burr was "in- ferior in real ability to Mr. Jefferson." "As to Burr, there is nothing in his favor. . . . He is truly the Cati- line of America. . . . Yet," he added, in a letter to Wolcott, "it may he well enoitgh to throw out a line for him, in order to tempt him to start for the plate, and then lay the foundation of dissension between the two chiefs. You may communicate this letter to Marshall and Sedg- zvick.'' Sedgwick's opinion of Jeffer- son was that he was "a feeble and false enthusiastic theorist, . . . plausi- l)le in manners, crafty in conduct, persevering in the pursuit of his ob- ject, regardless of the means by which it is attained, and equally re- gardless of an adherence to truth." It should be remembered, however, that Sedgwick pronounced John Adams "a semi-maniac, who, in his soberest senses, was the greatest marplot in nature." He believed that Jefferson was "a sincere and enthusi- astic democrat in principle." Hamil- ton too admitted that Jefferson was "too much in earnest in his democ- racy;" "his politics were tinctured with fanaticism," he said. The people generally did not have much THE CEXTEXMAL OF THE ELECTIOX OF JEFFERSON. doubt about Jefferson being "in ear- nest in his democracy." , It was pre- cisely because they did beHeve this that violent Federalists, not so scru- pulous or politic as the eminent gen- tlemen whom we have named, actually conspired to prevent his in- auguration by force. The more repu- table sought to "make terms" with Jefferson, to get pledges from him to preserve the actual fiscal system, to preserve and enlarge the navy, and continue their friends in the ofBces they filled. Hamilton labored on these points. "Coming out of the Senate Chamber one day," Jefferson writes, while the presidential election was in suspense in Congress, "I found Gouverneur Morris on the steps. He stopped me and began a conversatior on the strange and portentous state of things then existing, and went on to observe that the reasons why th*- minority of states was so opposed to my being elected were that they ap- prehended that (i) I would turn all Federalists out of office, (2) put dow;i the navy, (3) wipe off the public debt ; that I need only to declare, or author- ize my friends to declare, that I would not take these steps, and in- stantly the event of the election would be fixed. I told him that I should leave the world to judge of the course I meant to pursue by that which I had pursued hitherto, believ- ing it to be my duty to be passive and silent during the present scene ; that I should certainly make no terms, should never go into the office of President by capitulation, nor with my hands tied by any conditions which would hinder me from pursu- ing the measures which I should deem for the public good." When the report of this declaration of inde- pendence spread, there doubtless spread with it declarations galore that the "contemptible hypocrite" was secretly resolved to loot the offices and wreck the finances of the country; and in this con- nection the study of the actual condition of the finances under his administration and the comparison of his attitude toward the civil ser- vice with that of present day admin- istrations become didactic indeed. But the more violent and less repu- table, we say, were not content to talk about pledges and concessions ; they talked about guns, and were never going to permit a man so men- acing to law and order and all good American institutions as was Thomas Jefferson to take his seat in the presi- dential chair. The general facts are of course well known ; but it is even yet profitable to read the details as given by Randall in his Life of Jeffer- son (II, 602. etc.) and elsewhere. Sur- veying with Randall the whole course of Jefferson's opponents toward him during that memorable campaign, no just and sober man can withhold his Amen to this final word of his: "If men have a right, as moral beings and patriots, to violate the spirit of the institutions under which they Hve, to sub- vert or bring to an end the constitution of their country, to invite a resort to civil war, rather than surrender some technical advantage with which the letter of the law chances to clothe them, in an unanticipated contingency, to 'rule or ruin,' then the conduct of the Federalists was moral and patriotic on this occasion; otherwise it was not. And when we take their own showing of the character of the presi- dential candidates, the real ground of their insuperable hostility to Jefferson, we have a still further specimen of the politi- cal morals and real political doctrines of the ultra-Federal leaders. These were the men who railed as much at the want of integrity, as the want of knowledge, in popular constituencies!" The impartial historian, as well as the loving biographer, passes the same severe judgment. That Mr. McMaster, who in his second volume treats the campaign of 1800 so fully, is impartial, that he does not strain points at any rate to do justice to Jefferson, appears from the fact that he gives more space in his pages to reporting the vehement talk of the Republicans against the Federalists than to that of the Federalists against the Republicans ; but he character- THIl CENTEX XIJL OE THE ELECTION OE JEEEERSON. izes the advice of the ultra- Federal- ists in Congress in favor of the sup- port of Burr against JelTerson in the following plain terms: "Advice of this kind was to be expected from the people and the press, but not from the men whose duty it now became to choose a President. The Federalists had been defeated by eight electoral votes. They were cut ofif by the Constitution from every possible hope of electing their " men. They had nothing to do but to choose between Jefferson and Burr. There was no occasion for any constitutional difficulty; the path for them to take lay right before them. No man of either party doubted, or pretended to doubt, that the wish of every Republican was and had been to make Jefferson the next President. Had the Federal repre- sentatives in Congress, therefore, been the honest patriots they pretended to be; had their dread of rebellion been real, and not the idle trumpery of a heated campaign, they would, when the time came, every man of them, have repaired to the House of Representatives and promptly voted for Thomas JefTerson. But these Federalists, who for eight years had been accusing the Republicans of seeking to introduce the revolutionary principles of France, now attempted, from pure political malice, to involve the country in a civil war. Their first plan was to hinder any election, and leave to the Senate the duty of electing the Chief Justice, or some senator, President till Congress met again, or till a new elec- tion could be held by the people. Their second plan was to elect Aaron Burr." And what followed all this hysteria and malice, invocation of dread spectres and prediction of the mob? What was the sequel? "An adminis- tration," a? Schouler justly describes it, "peaceful, progressive and popu- lar beyond all precedent," — especially strong and successful just where the direst disaster had been foreboded, in the management of the finances of the country. "The policy of this remark- able adnn'nistration," writes this ad- mirer of Jefferson, "was at once and steadil}' sf.ccessftil in winning the people ; and the prestige of enthusi- asm became irresistible when con- joined with the prestige of success. An executive, neither the instrument of others nor a betraver of trusts, we may regard Jetiferson as the genuine personator of that to which France's First Consul presented contempora- neously the counterfeit, — a leader of the common people in the direction of their best desires." This verdict is not simply that of Jefferson's admirers. The historians are harmonious. Mr. Morse, in his volume on Jefferson, in the American Statesmen series, — and neither the series as a whole, nor Mr. Morse's volume in particular, will ever be ac- cused of making admiration of Jeffer- son its forte, — uses terms almost identical. Mr. Schouler, in the pas- sage quoted, is writing of a time mid- way in Jefferson's second administra- tion, just before the troubles with England. Mr. Morse is writing of the close of his first administration, when the campaign for his reelection ap- proached. Everything, he says, "re- dounded to his good fame and popu- larity." The nation felt "comfortable and good-natured amid the broad visible facts of the passing time. . . . Were not expenses curtailed and taxes reduced, and debts being rapidly diminished? . . . Had the country been for many years past so free from irritation and anxiety grow- ing out of foreign affairs? . . . Had political kindliness ever before per- meated the nation as it did to-day? Four years of prosperity and tran- quillity left little room for discontent with the government. Amid such in- fluences political opposition pined and almost died. The Federalist party shrank to insignificant dimen- sions ; indeed, since it flourished chiefly in a narrow locality, and was largely recruited from those peculiar spirits who seem to be by nature mal- contents and grumblers, it seemed on the verge of becoming rather a fac- tion than a party." The indorsement of primary inter- est and significance, however, was the indorsement by the nation at the time. In the election of 1804, which made Jefferson president for a sec- ond term, 176 electoral votes were 10 THE CEXriiWLIL OF THE ELECTION OF JEFFERSON. cast; of these, Jefferson received 162. and his opponent 14. And how did it all look after half a century ? The middle of the century found another great struggle for freedom and equality gathering head and another political revolution impending. It found Abraham Lin- coln thinking on the Illinois prairies, and feeding his thought on Thomas Jefferson, — who, he declared, appeal- J ing to Jefferson in one of his strong arraignments of slavery in 1854, "is, and perhaps will continue to be, the most distinguished politician of our history." It was with Jefferson that he fortified himself in his denuncia- tions of the Supreme Court, which in those days of th^ slave power had be- come the great bulwark of conserva- tism, compromise and cowardice. For Jefferson in his day had encoun- tered the superstition which it suits certain classes in certain times to en- courage about the courts ; and his "imputations upon the judiciary" Avere one thing which the circum- cised New York and New England Federalists liked to cast in his teeth. Jefferson would hear nothing of the infallibility and indefectibility of courts ; he knew that they were neither more nor much less likely to err than presidents or senates. "You seem," he wrote to one, only six years before his death, "to consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions — a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy. Our judges are as honest as other men, and not more so. They have, with others, the same passions for party, for power, and the privilege of their corps. Their maxim is, 'Boni jitdicis est ampliare jurisdictioncm :' and their power is the more danger- ous as they are in office for life, and not responsible, as the other func- tionaries are, to the elective control. The Constitution has erected no such single tribunal, knowing that, to whatever hands confided, with the corruptions of time and party, its members would become despots. It has more wisely made all the depart- ments co-equal and co-sovereign within themselves." Lincoln never tired of appealing to this strong utterance of red-blooded common sense, especially in his great debates with Douglas ; and he rang the changes on it to the more effect by appealing with it to eloquent facts in Judge Douglas's own legal career. To JefTerson the new Republican party appealed and dedicated itself, in its Philadelphia platform of 1856, which declared "in favor of restoring the action of the Federal government to the principles of Washington and Jefferson ;" and to Jefferson, Lincoln, in 1859, t'l^ year before his election, paid one of the highest tributes ever paid, pronouncing Jefferson the great pioneer and prophet of those princi- ples to which his own life was de- voted. To Henry L. Pierce and others who had invited him to be present at the celebration of Jeffer- son's birthday, in Boston, in April, 1859, ^^^ wrote: "Bearing in mind that about seventy years ago two great political parties were first formed in this country, that Thomas Jefiferson was the head of one of them and Boston the headquarters of the other, it is both curious and interesting that those supposed to descend politically from the party opposed to Jefferson should now be celebrating his birthday in their own original seat of empire, wiiiie those claim- ing political descent from him have nearly ceased to breathe his name everywhere. "Remembering, too, that the Jefferson party was formed upon its supposed su- perior devotion to the personal rights of men, holding the rights of property to be secondary only, and greatly inferior, and assuming that the so-called Democracy of to-day are the Jefferson, and their oppo- nents the anti-Jefferson, party, it will be equally interesting to note how complete- ly the two have changed hands as to the principle upon which they were originally supposed to be divided. The Democracy of to-day hold the liberty of one man to be absolutely nothing, when in conflict with another man's right of property; Republicans, on the contrary, are for both THE CENTENNIAL OF THE ELECTION OF JEFFERSON. ii the man and the dollar, but in case of con- flict the man before the dollar. "I remember being once much amused at seeing two partially intoxicated men en- gaged in a fight with their great-coats on, which fight, after a long and rather harm- less contest, ended in each having fought himself out of his own coat and into that of the other. If the two leading parties of this day are really indentical with the two in the days of Jefferson and Adams, they have performed the same feat as the two drunken men. "But, soberly, it is now no child's play to save the principles of Jefferson from total overthrow in this nation. One would state with great confidence that he could convince any sane child that the simpler propositions of Euclid are true, but never- theless he would fail, utterly, with one who should deny the definitions and axioms. The principles of Jefferson are the defini- tions and axioms of free society. And yet they are denied and evaded, with no small show of success. One dashingly calls them 'glittering generalities.' Another bluntly calls them "self-evident lies.' And others insidiously argue that they apply to 'su- perior races.' These expressions, differing in form, are identical in object and effect — the supplanting the principles of free gov- ernment, and restoring those of classifica- tion, caste and legitimacy. They would delight a convocation of crowned heads plotting against the people. They are the vanguard, the miners and sappers of re- turning despotism. We must repulse them, or they will subjugate us. This is a world of compensation; and he who would be no slave must consent to have no slave. Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves, and, under a just God, can- not long retain it. All honor to Jeffer- son — to the man who, in the concrete pres- sure of a struggle for national independ- ence by a single people, had the coolness, forecast and capacity to introduce into a merely revolutionary document an ab- stract truth, applicable to all men and all times, and so to embalm it there that to- day and in all coming days it shall be a rebuke and a stumbling-block to the very harbingers of reappearing tyranny and op- pression." Another half century has passed, and the centennial of the election of Jefferson has come ; and the republic still knows, as Lincoln knew, and Jefferson, that, whatever dangers threaten it, no serious dangers threaten from any tendencies or ef- forts of the plain people. The lesson of the Jefferson centennial is the les- son of faith in the people and in de- mocracy. One of our great journals published the other day an article on the danger of Imperialism. Such a danger, it said, is possible ; but it does not spring from growing armies nor the extension of our sway over sub- ject or dependent peoples. The transition from a republic to an em- pire iias been through periods of anarchy. The common people be- come lawless ; if democracy has not a government strong enough to put down the mob, the mob overthrows democracy ; and Napoleon is better than Robespierre. A list of strikes and labor troubles in America was given ; and the warning was sounded that a suitable number of such things might provoke the "man on horse- back." Lincoln and Jefferson would have told this journal that a survey of his- tory shows that the cause of the de- |-ay and overthrow of republics has (lOt been that which it assigned, but jJmost without exception the gradual and fatal growth of oligarchies, of po- litical corruption incident to the growing power of privileged classes, and of the injustice and oppression thereby inflicted upon the common people, which have brought their in- evitable results. Greece, Rome, Italy, France and England tell one story. The workingmen. the common peo- ple, may sometimes commit excesses ; they often do commit gross excesses — we have had too many instances of it in America. But a glance at the list given by this reactionary journal — with the same spirit and purpose as those of tiie New York and New England Federalists who stood pitted against Jefferson in 1800 — shows that in hardly a single case was the orig- inal and inciting wrong on the part of the common people. The case of Homestead is referred to in a manner implying that the lawlessness there was all upon the part of the working- men, and unprovoked. But all fair men know that the Homestead cor- ' ofC 12 THE L'ENyiNKlAL OF THE ELECT 10 X OE JEEFERSOX poration, acting in Mr. Carnegie's absence under Mr. Frick, was guilty of the greater lawlessness, by organ- izing as it did a private a'rmy to make war upon the strikers ; Mr. Carnegie has himself frankly conceded the mis- take and wrong. We turn back to the files of this same journal for its dis- cussion of the aflfair at the time, in 1892, when it had no partisan ends to serve. It was then able to do even justice and, blaming the workingmen as they deserved for their excesses, to say also: "The Carnegie works have disregarded the public welfare, if not the public's rights. If they have not been the aggressors, they have pro- voked the aggression. They planted an armed stockade in the midst of a perfectly peaceful community and brought into the community armed mercenaries from abroad. Who fired the first gun is a matter of dispute — the Pinkerton men sa}' the mob fired it ; the newspaper reports say the Pinkerton men fired it. It is doubtful whether even a judicial in- vestigation will determine the ques- tion. But history will hold primarih responsible for the tragedy which fol- lowed the challenge and threat in- volved in bringing a paid and private soldiery upon the scene." We find the following passage also in one of the journal's editorials in 1892, inspired by the facts at Homestead ; and it is no less true in 1900: "We believe in democracy — that is, self- government. We disbelieve in aristocracy — that is, government by the best. Wo believe that the blunders of self-govern- ment are worth more to the world than the wisdom of aristocratic govern- ment. . . . Democracy, having al- ready gained control of church and state, is struggling for the control of industry also. It struggles blindly, as Demos al- ways struggles. It strikes out wildly, in- juring others and itself in its ill-directed eflforts at control, as it always has done. It is miscounselled, misguided, misruled, even in its half-conscious eiiforts to acquire rule. But its real demand is not merely for more wages or less hours, but for a real share in the rulership of the world's industry, as it already shares in the ruler- ship of schools, churches, states. The effort to maintain the labor union is an effort to acquire power. The effort to break up the labor union is an effort to dispossess of power. It is for this reason that the workingmen are more determined to maintain their labor union than their rate of wages. The fight for "recognition' is not the unmeaning fight it sometimes appears to be. It is Demos struggling to get his hand on the industrial sceptre. And this great movement is no more to be measured by the lawless acts of vio- lence which accompany it, and which really retard it, than the uprising of democracy could have been measured by the futile Wat Tyler's rebellion, or the Protestant Reformation by the excesses of the Anabaptists in Germany, the Icono- clasts in Holland, or the anti-popery rioters in London." It is true that there is much law- lessness in this country to-day ; but it is not true that the most conspicuous and dangerous lawlessness is among the workingmen and the common people, — as it was not true that the real foes of the American republic in 1800 were among the followers of Thomas Jefferson. It is profitable for all of us to remember in this cen- tennial year, whatever our several po- litical opinions and whoever our presidential candidate, that campaign of vilification and frenzy, compared with which the worst suspicions and abuse current in this present presiden- tial year are slight indeed. It is profit- able to remember the horrors of the old Federalists and the rest — exceedingly reputable and proper people — at the thought of the election of Jefferson, whose presidency they were sure meant the fall of the republic and the crack of doom ; and to remember that no arguments which they hurled against him helped so much to elect him as those which depicted him as the prince of anarchy, and the great American democracy as all ready to resolve itself into a mob. Our own time has its own dangers ; we shall doubtless make our own mistakes; but Jefferson's great figure rises in timely and salutary prominence to warn us to keep out of ghost-land and not to repeat the mistakes of a hundred vears ago. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 011 838 098 8