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THE WORKS OF 
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THOMAS HART BENTON 
 
 GOUVERNEUR MORRIS 
 
 BY 
 
 THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
 
 NEW YORK 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
 MCMXXIV 
 
Thomas Hart Benton and Gouverneur Morris have been included in this 
 edition by special arrangement with Houghton Mifflin Company 
 
 Copyright, 1886, 1SS8, 1914, 1916, by Theodore Roosevelt 
 
 Copyright, 1898, by Theodore Rooseielt and Houghton Mifflin Company 
 
 Copyright, 1921, by Charier Scribner'r Sons 
 
 Printed in the United Staler of America 
 
 red from 
 
 : Office 
 
 MAY 22 '24 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 VOLUME VIII 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Statesmanship of Theodore Roosevelt 
 
 ALBERT J. BEVERIDGE ix 
 
 Thomas Hart Benton 1 
 
 gouverneur morris 271 
 
THE STATESMANSHIP OF THEODORE 
 
 ROOSEVELT* 
 
 By Albert J. Beveridge 
 
 The statesmanship of Theodore Roosevelt consisted 
 in the interpretation of a great period in American his- 
 tory. The policies he championed were but the expres- 
 sions of public will which itself flowed from profound 
 and elemental economic and social changes. Theodore 
 Roosevelt led an historic movement. Long before he 
 became President he saw that America had reached the 
 point where a transition from an outworn to a modern 
 economic and social order was indispensable. To effect 
 this transition was the great work of his life, and it is 
 the accomplishment of that fundamental advance that 
 makes his career epochal. 
 
 He became President of the United States just after 
 one of the most serious developments in American his- 
 tory. This development was the disappearance of free 
 land. Until that point of time which marks the begin- 
 ning of what always will be called "The Roosevelt 
 Period," anybody could get a farm and a home of his 
 own by the simple process of taking up substantially 
 free land and living upon it. This process indeed had 
 been going on since before the Revolution. Those who 
 were in debt or felt the pressure of taxes or who wanted 
 to own the land they tilled simply moved out into the 
 
 * Copyright, 1919, by the Curtis Publishing Company; copyright, 1924, by the 
 Roosevelt Memorial Association. 
 
 ix 
 
THE STATESMANSHIP 
 
 wilderness or settled upon the prairies. So it was that 
 such a thing as industrial pressure, in the sense we now 
 understand that term, did not exist. 
 
 Immediately after the Civil War, moreover, there 
 was a prodigious outburst of constructive energy. A 
 great part of the continent still was to be occupied. 
 Railroads were to be built; bridges to be constructed; 
 cities erected. There was more than enough work for 
 everybody in this country and for all of the immigrants 
 from other lands. Indeed the necessity for labor was 
 so great that manufacturing and other industries that 
 suddenly took on immense proportions resorted to every 
 expedient— some of them very bad — to bring cheap 
 European labor to America. For a long time, however, 
 there was no labor congestion — first because there was 
 so much work to be done, and secondly because free 
 land constantly drew people away from industrial cen- 
 tres. Free land was an outlet for discontent. 
 
 Finally this outlet was closed. Free land was all 
 gone. The human tide had reached its last frontier, 
 the Pacific Ocean, and was turned back upon itself. 
 Such was the beginning of those economic and social 
 conditions that had developed by the time Colonel 
 Roosevelt had become President. These conditions 
 were indicated by labor troubles growing out of indus- 
 trial congestion and by a general unrest among the 
 masses of the people. It became necessary for the na- 
 tion to adjust itself to an entirely new situation which 
 the disappearance of free land had brought about. Not 
 only had millions upon millions of unoccupied acres 
 prevented those industrial blood clots which old and 
 thickly settled countries always had experienced, and 
 thus created an economic and social state of things 
 peculiar to America and entirely abnormal; but this 
 
OF THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
 
 fact, continuing through more than a century, had also 
 built up an individualism such as the world never had 
 seen before. Men thought and acted solely from the 
 view-point of what they believed to be their personal 
 advantage. The common talk was of rights rather than 
 of duties, of individual rather than of collective effort. 
 Social ideals were scarcely recognized and the com- 
 munity spirit was very frail. 
 
 The first manifestation of the co-operative idea came 
 in the form of great business organizations and the con- 
 solidation of railroad companies owning parts of the 
 same lines into large corporations, controlling and 
 operating long and unified systems. All this was natu- 
 ral and inevitable. Indeed the very necessities of the 
 people themselves called for and created these great 
 economic units. Without them it was impossible to 
 supply promptly and adequately the needs of the peo- 
 ple. For instance, the increase of what is called the 
 laboring population — those employed in other indus- 
 tries than agriculture — required food-supplies, the prep- 
 aration and distribution of which could be accomplished 
 only by immense organizations. Speaking by and large, 
 the same was true of course of other forms of industry. 
 
 This economic evolution went forward, however, un- 
 der the individualist principles which an entirely differ- 
 ent state of things had created. In short, while natural 
 forces had totally revolutionized industry the old ideals 
 still prevailed, though they no longer applied to the 
 existing facts of life. We had emerged into a new period, 
 but we still clung to ancient formulas of thinking. The 
 heads of great business organizations insisted upon run- 
 ning them according to ancient individualist maxims. 
 No matter how great a business organization became, 
 no matter how extensive its dealings with the people, 
 
 xi 
 
THE STATESMANSHIP 
 
 no matter how dependent millions of human beings were 
 upon these organizations, the managers of these mam- 
 moth concerns conducted them as though the concerns 
 themselves were individuals. No moral or legal duty 
 to the public was admitted — a fact which, recent though 
 it is, is hard now for us to realize. 
 
 A great packing plant, for example, did its business 
 with the public on the same economic principles as an 
 individual butcher dealing with individual customers. 
 Immense railroad systems did the transporting of the 
 nation upon the same legal basis that an old-time wag- 
 oner or a stage-coach owner hauled small parcels of 
 merchandise or carried a few passengers. The kind of 
 service rendered, the rates fixed, the quality of food 
 and the manner of its preparation and the prices charged 
 for it were held to be none of the people's business, but 
 solely the affair of the producing and transporting com- 
 panies. 
 
 Thus American business became obsessed of a frenzy 
 for gain. The spirit of greed ruled American industry. 
 This showed itself in shocking form in many other ways 
 than the illustrations already given. Hundreds of thou- 
 sands — millions, in fact — of children were put to work 
 in factories, mines, and sweat-shops at a period in their 
 lives when such labor meant their physical and intellec- 
 tual ruin. Labor, in fact, was regarded as a commodity. 
 The economic theories of Adam Smith governed the 
 treatment of working men by employers. Labor con- 
 ditions, therefore, became worse as industrial conges- 
 tion increased. The human element of the problem of 
 labor received less and less consideration; indeed the 
 "humanities" were not recognized by the ancient eco- 
 nomic philosophy upon which modern industry still 
 continued to be operated. The courts continued to de- 
 
 xn 
 
OF THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
 
 cide controversies arising from these new conditions by 
 old rules which no longer fitted them. 
 
 Thus is revealed the vast, complicated, and delicate 
 problem, national in its scope, which required solution 
 when Theodore Roosevelt became President. There 
 was, too, a collateral problem to be worked out; and 
 this, though the inevitable result of the state of things 
 that I have tried to outline, was peculiarly ugly and 
 formidable. 
 
 In order to resist the growing demand for some sort 
 of check upon their practices, in order to safeguard what 
 they felt to be their privileges, and indeed to secure 
 even greater and more unjust privileges, the great trans- 
 porting, manufacturing, and other industrial corpora- 
 tions went into politics. In a very practical way they 
 were united. They always acted in concert, with per- 
 fect understanding, and they knew what they wanted 
 to prevent and what they wanted to get. Their agents 
 were present at the meetings of every State legislature 
 and every session of Congress. Expensive lobbies were 
 maintained permanently, and a certain class of men 
 developed who made legislative manipulation their pro- 
 fession. Moreover, these closely allied business con- 
 cerns, acting under the old theory that they ought to do 
 as they pleased, became, for the purposes above stated, 
 very active and potent in the management of political 
 parties. As is now well known they often were able to 
 elect or defeat candidates for State legislatures and also 
 candidates for the national House and Senate. In 
 brief, a powerful and utterly non-public influence grew 
 up, the workings of which, though unseen, had a great 
 deal to do with the making and execution of laws, both 
 State and national. 
 
 The economic wrongs suffered by the people afforded 
 
 xiii 
 
THE STATESMANSHIP 
 
 enced were the men who opposed them, so unorganized 
 was public opinion, on the one hand, and so perfectly 
 disciplined the forces which wished to keep things as 
 they were, on the other hand, that it seemed a hopeless 
 task to attempt to accomplish anything. 
 
 The interplay within the two great political parties 
 of the allied reactionary forces made any effort to secure 
 liberal legislation infinitely difficult; and this difficulty 
 was increased by demagogic resistance to any measures, 
 however scientific and approved, that so much as recog- 
 nized the legal existence of great corporations. Absurd 
 as it now appears, it nevertheless was a fact that the 
 extremists of reaction and the extremists of radicalism 
 worked together, without intending to do so, for the 
 defeat of every common-sense and up-to-date reform 
 that conditions imperatively demanded. True states- 
 manship — the moderate, the reasonable, and the just — 
 sometimes has had hard sledding even in a republic. 
 
 II 
 
 It was in waging this long-continued warfare that 
 the character, strength, and personality of Theodore 
 Roosevelt were most fully revealed. He was a very 
 able politician and understood from experience in New 
 York the working of political organizations and the 
 methods employed by those who then controlled them. 
 He knew that to accomplish anything really practical, 
 at that particular time, he must work with the political 
 system as he found it, bring the leaders to agreement 
 with him as far as possible, and hold, over organiza- 
 tions and leaders alike, that appeal to public opinion, of 
 the art of making which he was so great a master. 
 
 In short, he had to act as a statesman. He could not, 
 
 xvi 
 
OF THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
 
 therefore, become what one might term a professional 
 crusader — could not engage in the business of a civic 
 evangelist. He went to the people only when it was 
 necessary to arouse them and to crystallize their will 
 upon specific and practical purposes. 
 
 So in dealing with the strong men of Congress, who, 
 generally speaking, were against him and his policies, 
 he did not, except in a very few instances, close and 
 bolt the door against them. Most of them could always 
 enter and work with him when, no matter for what 
 reason, they were ready to help him with any measure 
 the enactment of which, at the moment, happened to 
 be the particular task he had in hand. He consulted 
 freely with other men. The late Senator Eugene Hale, 
 of Maine, who during the two Roosevelt Administra- 
 tions was the real leader of the Senate whenever he saw 
 fit to take the trouble, and who sincerely and stubbornly 
 opposed nearly all the Roosevelt reforms, once told me 
 that in all his very long experience in public life he had 
 never known a man who sought counsel so much as did 
 President Roosevelt. 
 
 "And yet," said Senator Hale, "most people think 
 that he is impulsive and won't even listen to advice, 
 much less take it. I can't imagine," said he, "how such 
 an idea got out." 
 
 This erroneous public conception of Colonel Roose- 
 velt was undoubtedly due to his quick and emphatic 
 manner of speaking, to his strenuous physical habits 
 and actions, and to his apparently abrupt decisions. 
 Also, of course, by methods so well known to the poli- 
 tician, his enemies in both parties, his own party as 
 well as the opposition party, spread reports of his "im- 
 pulsiveness." 
 
 It is one of the small defects of democracies that a 
 
 xvii 
 
THE STATESMANSHIP 
 
 totally false idea can be planted in the minds of the 
 people concerning one who is fighting the people's bat- 
 tles. 
 
 As a matter of fact Theodore Roosevelt never took 
 an important step until he had asked for the opinion 
 and collected the judgment of a large number of men. 
 While in the White House his consultations were almost 
 incessant. Sometimes he asked several men to gather 
 about him at the same time and compare views; some- 
 times he would ask one man to come to the White 
 House and go over thoroughly the matter to be decided. 
 Often these conferences would last for hours. 
 
 What he required on such occasions was clear, cold, 
 practical thinking. A display of emotion usually made 
 a bad impression upon him. Many men whom Colonel 
 Roosevelt liked and trusted were dropped from his list 
 of advisers after two or three interviews because their 
 comment had more heat than light. 
 
 This unemotional quality of Theodore Roosevelt was 
 also well illustrated in controversies over patronage. 
 When senators, representatives, and influential poli- 
 ticians would urge a certain appointment chiefly on 
 grounds of political expediency or factional favoritism, 
 on the one hand, or as a means of conciliating opposi- 
 tion with veiled threats of retaliation if the President 
 did not yield, President Roosevelt reacted strongly 
 against both such pleas— especially if they were pre- 
 sented with fervor. 
 
 I have known of instances in more than one State 
 where he rebuked an entire Congressional delegation 
 who demanded appointments as matters of political 
 right or rather as matters of political pull, and instead 
 appointed a man whose friends did no more than coldly 
 lay before the President the candidate's superior quali- 
 
 xviii 
 
OF THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
 
 fications for the office. And I have known of many- 
 cases where supporters failed because enthusiasm in- 
 stead of facts was advanced. Unemotional argument 
 based on proof was the surest road to his approval. 
 
 In consultation as to measures which he wished Con- 
 gress to pass or policies which he was formulating or 
 political steps to be taken, he was the easiest man to 
 talk to I ever knew. If he was convinced of your sin- 
 cerity you could say anything to him you liked. You 
 could even criticise him personally. His close friends 
 often thought he actually invited personal criticism. 
 He would argue the subject out with the greatest pos- 
 sible frankness and without the slightest trace of re- 
 sentment or irritation. 
 
 On the contrary, no man could be more wary than 
 he, no man could fence with more skill if he suspected 
 that the person with whom he was talking was un- 
 friendly, insincere, or even subtle. If he detected false- 
 hood or sharp practices his anger instantly was aroused. 
 
 He usually accepted the judgment of the majority of 
 his advisers. While he was President he had about him 
 a number of men who were sound counsellors and fear- 
 less friends, and no man could have more generously 
 acknowledged indebtedness to others than President 
 Roosevelt to these men. Much of his success, indeed, 
 was due to his open-mindedness. He had a boundless 
 hospitality for ideas. He welcomed thought from 
 whatever source, especially constructive thought. He 
 was quick to adopt the ideas of others, but he did not 
 fail to give them the credit. There was something 
 chivalrous about his generosity. Friends and even ene- 
 mies were frequently surprised by the most unexpected 
 exhibitions of this quality. 
 
 Few men ever lived who had so many and such at- 
 
 xix 
 
THE STATESMANSHIP 
 
 tractive phases of mind and character. It seemed im- 
 possible that one person could have read so much, so 
 variously, and with such understanding. On one long 
 campaign trip I found him reading, between stops, 
 Moreau's "Memoirs" in French. He never went any- 
 where without taking several books with him. While 
 his extensive reading gave him an immense fund of that 
 knowledge which books afford, his experiences with men 
 and the world had been so manifold, vivid, and intense 
 that he knew life at first-hand from many angles. 
 
 He liked to talk of literature, of sport, of science, of 
 travel, and especially of history, more than of politics 
 or business in the narrow sense of those terms. It is 
 not possible to imagine one more attractive and engag- 
 ing in social intercourse. Misused as the word "charm" 
 is, there is no other term that describes the effect of 
 his personality on others. His talk and manner were as 
 easy and as casual as they were sparkling and vital. 
 
 It is not difficult to bore a man so widely cultured, 
 and this was true of Theodore Roosevelt. Stupidity 
 disgusted him; even when one who was his friend would 
 do or say anything stupid he could be very harsh. And 
 dulness irritated him. It was hard for him not to show 
 his impatience with the pallid and the commonplace. 
 He abhorred banal conversation as much as he delighted 
 in bright, witty, thoughtful, and informed talk. When 
 even a man who was his supporter but who had sup- 
 ported nothing in common with him except the politics 
 of the day would insist on unnecessary conferences, 
 Colonel Roosevelt, though appreciating that friend's 
 fidelity and assistance, was nevertheless frequently ill 
 at ease with him. 
 
 Sometimes such a person would lose favor because of 
 the incessant monotony of the topics brought up and 
 
 xx 
 
OF THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
 
 the conversations about them. On the other hand, their 
 mutual love of literature was one of the many bonds 
 between Colonel Roosevelt and Senator Lodge. "I 
 should talk to Lodge about books if we disagreed on 
 the Ten Commandments," he said to a too fervid sup- 
 porter who was protesting against the President's inti- 
 macy with the Massachusetts senator when the latter, 
 with fine independence, was opposing some measure of 
 the Administration. 
 
 Ill 
 
 The "progressive" movement led by Theodore 
 Roosevelt was to him a sacred cause. The spirit with 
 which he led it was that of a soldier. His leadership 
 was marked by a terrible fervor and also by an august 
 dignity. He was absolutely unselfish and profoundly 
 sincere about it. Indeed his sincerity and unselfishness 
 had a kind of exaltation. This is proved by the message 
 he sent to the people just after he was shot in the cam- 
 paign of 1912, and at an hour when it was not certain 
 whether he would live or die. 
 
 As soon as he had been taken from Milwaukee to the 
 hospital in Chicago the secretary of the National Com- 
 mittee, Mr. Oscar King Davis, who was with him, tele- 
 phoned to me in the southern part of my State, where I 
 was speaking, to cancel all engagements and come to 
 Chicago immediately. When I arrived at the hospital 
 I asked Doctor Murphy, the surgeon in charge, what 
 were the prospects of recovery. He answered that 
 nothing certain could be predicted at that time, but 
 that he believed Colonel Roosevelt would survive. 
 When I went to his bedside he greeted me as though 
 nothing had happened, and then said: 
 
 The meeting at Louisville, Ky., to-morrow night, 
 
 xxi 
 
 tti 
 
THE STATESMANSHIP 
 
 where I was to have spoken, must not be abandoned. 
 One of my written speeches was to have been made 
 there. I have sent for you to ask you to fill that en- 
 gagement. You ought not, of course, to read my pre- 
 pared speech. But I want you to give a certain part 
 of it — less than a page. Principally, however, I wish 
 you to give a message from me to the people. I am not 
 strong enough to dictate it, but I can outline the gen- 
 eral idea." 
 
 I took his manuscript and that night and the next 
 day wrote the speech he asked me to deliver, including 
 in it the brief paragraphs from his written address which 
 he had requested to be given out. I drafted the mes- 
 sage he sent to the people, telephoned it to Mr. Davis, 
 who submitted it to Colonel Roosevelt, and received 
 his approval; and that night I delivered it. 
 
 It was in such fashion that the wounded leader in 
 Chicago thus spoke to the nation from the platform of 
 Phoenix Hall, Louisville, Ky., on the night of October 
 17, 1912. I quote from the report in the Louisville 
 Herald of the following day: 
 
 "It matters little about me, but it matters all about 
 the cause we fight for. If one soldier who happens to 
 carry the flag is stricken, another will take it from his 
 hands and carry it on. One after another the standard- 
 bearers may be laid low, but the standard itself will 
 never fall. 
 
 ' You know that personally I did not want ever again 
 to be a candidate for office. And you know that only 
 the call that came to the men of the Sixties made me 
 answer it in our day as they did more nobly in their day. 
 And now, as then, it is not important whether one 
 leader lives or dies. It is important only that the cause 
 shall live and win. 
 
 xxii 
 
OF THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
 
 "Tell the people not to worry about me; for if I go 
 down, another will take my place. Always the army 
 is there. Always the cause is there; and it is the cause 
 for which the people should care, for it is the people's 
 cause." 
 
 These sentences from a man who had no assurance 
 that he would be alive when they were spoken prove 
 his deep sincerity and reveal his conception of that 
 great American advance movement of which he was the 
 captain. 
 
 Theodore Roosevelt was infinitely proud of the fact 
 that the new party which he tried to establish polled 
 a great majority of the Republican votes of the coun- 
 try, and a large number of Democratic votes. Earnest 
 as he was to found a liberal party in America, just as 
 Jefferson may be said to have founded the original Re- 
 publican Party, Jackson the Democratic Party, and 
 Lincoln the new Republican Party, and keen as was 
 his disappointment that his efforts were not successful, 
 he did not think that they had been in vain. 
 
 He was convinced that the historic movement of 
 which he was the supreme exponent saved the Re- 
 publican Party from the doom that overtook the Fed- 
 eralist and Whig Parties. He believed that but for the 
 great liberal advance of which he was the standard- 
 bearer the Republican Party would have become hope- 
 lessly reactionary, just as was the case with the Federal- 
 ist and Whig Parties, and just as has been the case with 
 old political parties in other free countries. 
 
 Since the spirit of the whole world was distinctly 
 liberal, since indeed the very elements of our industrial 
 and social development required that political parties 
 keep pace with that development, Theodore Roosevelt 
 believed that for any political party to resist the transi- 
 
 xxiii 
 
THE STATESMANSHIP 
 
 tion which the American people were undergoing meant 
 the inevitable decline and early extinction of that party. 
 
 "We have put life into our party," meaning the Re- 
 publican Party, he remarked to me not long before his 
 last illness. "We have made it a party of to-day — a 
 party that young men and women can come into with 
 good heart. So our work has borne sound fruit." 
 
 He felt indeed that his labors during The Roosevelt 
 Period had permanently ended outworn political meth- 
 ods and liberalized the Democratic as well as the Re- 
 publican Party. He believed that he had destroyed 
 reactionary influences in American life for a long time 
 to come. 
 
 That part of his work accomplished, he again became 
 the most active of Republicans, and soon was accorded 
 by common consent the leadership of the rejuvenated 
 and reunited party. Had he lived, there can be little 
 doubt that in 1920 the Republican Party would have 
 nominated him by acclamation for the presidency. 
 
 IV 
 
 His foreign statesmanship was singularly clear and 
 simple. It was based on two principles : First, that of 
 nationalism — "the most intense American nationalism," 
 as he put it; and, second, that our particular province 
 is the Western Hemisphere. From these conceptions of 
 America's place and mission in the world flowed the 
 Roosevelt South American policy, the Roosevelt Cuban 
 policy, the Roosevelt Canal policy, the Roosevelt Mexi- 
 can policy — that American world policy, in short, which 
 grew naturally out of our history and our geographical 
 situation, and of which Colonel Roosevelt was the 
 latest champion. 
 
 xxiv 
 
OF THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
 
 His crowning achievement was his Herculean labor 
 to compel the United States to take part in the Euro- 
 pean War. Strenuous as was his whole life, he put more 
 energy into his appeals to the people during the two 
 years preceding our entrance into that conflict than he 
 displayed at any other period of his career. During 
 that time he did indeed become a crusader. At no time 
 in his life was he ever so passionate, so powerful. 
 
 After we declared war Colonel Roosevelt was all 
 anxiety that we should strike with all our might. He 
 was sure that Germany would be defeated ultimately — 
 he knew that this country never would stop until it was 
 victorious. But from the Battle of Chateau-Thierry he 
 knew that the triumphant end was in sight. 
 
 Characteristically he then turned his mind to the con- 
 ditions in which the country would find itself within two 
 or three years from the ending of the war. He was 
 convinced that the period through which the country 
 would pass during the present and succeeding decades 
 would be of the very gravest character — more serious 
 than any since the Civil War — and that we should get 
 ready for that period not only by devising practical 
 measures and methods to deal with the conditions that 
 would soon and now do confront us, but also by putting 
 ourselves into the proper state of mind to endure the 
 trials we must undergo. 
 
 I do not think that his mind ever worked with greater 
 precision than in differentiating that species of anarch- 
 ism which we popularly term "Bolshevism" from that 
 form of normal progress called liberalism. On this 
 point he had great fear that the protest against "Bol- 
 shevism" would throw liberal men into the ranks of re- 
 action — a result that, in turn, would surely strengthen 
 the very "Bolshevism" it was intended to defeat. He 
 
 xxv 
 
THE STATESMANSHIP 
 
 believed that the road ahead of us was perilous and 
 that only by exercise of steady common sense and self- 
 restraint could we travel it without disaster. 
 
 So much for his statesmanship. Let us now turn to 
 a phase of his activities in which he took far more plea- 
 sure than in the handling of current public affairs — 
 literature. Indeed his reading, study, and writing, espe- 
 cially of history, was a principal source of his knowl- 
 edge, vision, and courage in statesmanship and politics. 
 While not the best, the two biographies within these 
 covers are fair illustrations of his interest in historical 
 work. 
 
 These two volumes cover American history from be- 
 fore the Revolution down nearly to the beginning of the 
 Civil War. This was the founding and first phase of 
 the building period of the American Nation. 
 
 Theodore Roosevelt weaves the story of these im- 
 portant and thrilling decades about the lives and careers 
 of two of the most brilliant and notable of American 
 statesmen of the second class; for Gouverneur Morris 
 and Thomas Hart Benton are leaders among those who 
 stand just below such men as Webster and Clay. Of 
 course Washington and Lincoln are "like stars and 
 dwell apart"; while Hamilton, Marshall, and Jefferson 
 form the first rank under these two super-characters. 
 
 Although embarrassed by the very limited size of the 
 volume required by the publishers, Colonel Roosevelt 
 narrates the weighty, albeit picturesque, events in the 
 life of Morris with more completeness and accuracy 
 than one could expect in so small a book. Few pages 
 of our history are more attractive in a placid way than 
 
 xxvi 
 
OF THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
 
 those which deal with "colonial New York," and the 
 hasty sketch of that mediaeval condition in a new, raw 
 country, which Colonel Roosevelt draws so surprisingly 
 distinct and sufficiently informing. 
 
 The outbreak of the Revolution, Independence, the 
 transition through anarchy to the Constitution, our 
 foreign problems, especially those flowing from our 
 grave difficulties with republican France, the fall of the 
 great Federalist Party, the War of 1812, and the New 
 England secession movement are set forth in swiftly 
 moving narrative. 
 
 We get a good deal of Theodore Roosevelt's char- 
 acter and basic ideas in his " Morris." For instance, his 
 pure and forthright Americanism is revealed by his 
 comment on our second war with Great Britain: "The 
 War of 1812 was eminently justifiable, and was of the 
 greatest service to the nation. . . . We very properly 
 singled out our chief aggressor. . . . The war was dis- 
 tinctly worth fighting, and resulted in good to the coun- 
 try." It should be said, by the way, that Colonel 
 Roosevelt's book "Naval War of 1812," written when 
 he was just out of college, is the best account of that 
 conflict except, of course, the monumental work of Ad- 
 miral Mahan. Roosevelt's "Morris" is full of expres- 
 sions of the author's robust and aggressive American- 
 ism such as this: "Subservience to foreigners was a 
 feature of our early party history"; or "our politics 
 were still French or English, but not yet American." 
 
 Roosevelt's abhorrence of disorder, violence, blood- 
 shed, and mob rule fairly flames in his description of 
 the brutal beastliness of the French Revolution with its 
 "denial of all religion." Such phrases as "base mob," 
 "raving furious horde," "maddened savages" whose 
 leaders were "black-hearted wretches," and the like, 
 
 xxvii 
 
THE STATESMANSHIP 
 
 snap and flash throughout the pages dealing with Morris 
 as American Minister to France. 
 
 The Revolutionary government of France was, avows 
 Roosevelt, "a despotism as well as an anarchy"; and 
 "the early tribunals ruled red-handed with a whimsical 
 and ferocious tyranny." He even finds it in his heart 
 to pity the King— "poor Louis XVI" he calls him more 
 than once. And Roosevelt took the measure of the 
 noble-minded, brave, and well-meaning but vain, weak, 
 and shallow Lafayette. Admirable is the author's short 
 statement of the methods and purposes of the French 
 Revolution, which occupies less than a single page. 
 
 Roosevelt's love of bright and sprightly talk is shown 
 by the keen relish with which he writes of the experi- 
 ence of Morris in the scintillant society of Paris. In- 
 deed, engaging as these particular pages are, they are 
 somewhat too many for the proportions of the vol- 
 ume. 
 
 Although the "Life of Thomas H. Benton" was 
 written two years before Colonel Roosevelt produced his 
 "Morris," it is more solid and careful than the later 
 book. Both volumes were done at a very early age, 
 the "Benton" when Roosevelt was only twenty-eight 
 and the " Morris" when he was thirty years old. More- 
 over, he was, at that time, engaged with feverish 
 energy in politics; and to the mere scholar and student 
 it is amazing that Roosevelt could do any worth-while 
 writing at all in such a period, at such an age, and un- 
 der such conditions. 
 
 Benton was thirty-four years old at the time Morris 
 died; and, of course, his active political life embraced 
 a continuation of the period covered by the career of 
 Morris. And a vital period of American history it was, 
 now tranquil, now stormy, but always full of move- 
 
 xxviii 
 
OF THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
 
 ment, color, and things that were really fresh and new 
 in the world. 
 
 The author's love of "the West," which always al- 
 lured him and by which, indeed, it is perhaps not too 
 much to say that he was obsessed, sparkles from almost 
 every page. The first three chapters of Roosevelt's 
 "Benton" are as good a brief and highly condensed 
 statement of our early Western development as has 
 been written. 
 
 Again Roosevelt himself appears in these pages just as 
 was the case in his "Morris." Slavery was not the only 
 cause of the Mexican War, he says — perhaps not even 
 the principal moving force that brought on that con- 
 flict, so fortunate for America; love of adventure, lust 
 for land, "manifest destiny" also and perhaps more, 
 were causes of the war with Mexico: 'Where the 
 Western men had gone as traders, who could on occa- 
 sion fight, they all hoped on some day to go as warriors, 
 who would acquire gain by their conquests." Plainly 
 young Roosevelt liked this, albeit he is highly sensitive 
 to the lack of the ethical in these hard-fighting, land- 
 grabbing patriots who, he admits, "had very little 
 more idea of right or wrong in the matter than so many 
 Norse Vikings might have felt." 
 
 In fact, while obviously attracted by the imperialism 
 of our "manifest destiny," yet Roosevelt fairly blazes 
 with wrath in his denunciation of the dishonesty which 
 sometimes accompanied that doctrine. On the other 
 hand, consider this as an outgiving of feelings so strong 
 that he could not repress them. 
 
 "Yet the arrogant attitude he [Benton] assumed on 
 the Oregon question was more than justified by the 
 destiny of the great Republic; and it would have been 
 well for all America if we had insisted even more than 
 
 xxix 
 
THE STATESMANSHIP 
 
 we did upon the extension northward of our boundaries. 
 Not only the Columbia but also the Red River of the 
 North — and the Saskatchewan and Fraser as well — 
 should lie wholly within our limits. Columbia, Sas- 
 katchewan, and Manitoba would, as states of the Amer- 
 ican Union, hold positions incomparably more impor- 
 tant, grander, and more dignified than they can ever 
 hope to reach, either as independent communities or as 
 provincial dependencies of a foreign power. No foot of 
 soil to which we had any title in the Northwest should 
 have been given up; we were the people who could use 
 it best and we ought to have taken it all." Yet, con- 
 versely: "The Conquest of Texas should properly be 
 classed with conquests like those of the Norse Sea- 
 rovers. The virtues and faults alike of the Texans were 
 those of a barbaric age." 
 
 Another curious complex in Roosevelt's character 
 may be seen in the praise and evident admiration for 
 the aristocratic personages who led the Revolution, 
 founded and for more than a generation ran our gov- 
 ernment; and yet his approval of that "fierce demo- 
 cratic," springing from the grass roots, that brought 
 leaders like Jackson and Lincoln. 
 
 Roosevelt's dislike of and disgust with extremists who 
 insist that their particular plans and views are wholly 
 moral, peculiarly exalted, and altogether inspired of 
 God, is manifested in his contempt for the "professional 
 abolitionists" whose cause, he asserts, "has had such a 
 halo shed round it by the after-course of events which 
 they themselves in reality did very little to shape, that 
 it has been usual to speak of them with absurdly exag- 
 gerated praise. . . . The influence of the professional 
 abolitionists upon the growth of the antislavery senti- 
 ment as often as not merely warped it and twisted it 
 
 xxx 
 
OF THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
 
 out of proper shape. . . . Lincoln bad to dread the 
 influence of the extreme abolitionists only less than that 
 of the Copperheads. Many of their leaders possessed 
 no good qualities beyond their fearlessness and truth — 
 qualities that were also possessed by the Southern fire- 
 eaters. They belonged to that class of men that is al- 
 ways engaged in some agitation or other." Still the 
 author admits that, despite their unpleasing and, in- 
 deed, repellent qualities, these abolitionists "were at 
 least working in the right direction on the main 
 issue." 
 
 The rise of Jacksonian democracy, the eight years' 
 reign of that harsh but patriotic ruler, the outburst of 
 nullification, the war on the Second Bank of the United 
 States, the emergence of the slavery question, Texas, 
 Mexico, Oregon (glorious epoch of national expansion), 
 the repeal of the Great Compromise — all the profound 
 movements of the critical thirty years of Benton's mem- 
 bership in the Senate are outlined as well as possible in 
 so short a space. 
 
 And through it all Roosevelt interprets himself, not 
 consciously of course, but none the less distinctly. By 
 comment on characters, issues, and events and by com- 
 parisons of the past with the present, the vivid and ar- 
 dent author describes his own state of mind and bent of 
 heart better than could be done by an essayist on Roose- 
 velt. 
 
 It has been remarked so often that the observation is 
 trite and tasteless, that European politicians and states- 
 men are often also writers, some of them of great excel- 
 lence; whereas American politicians and statesmen have 
 shown little or no aptitude for letters or any other form 
 of culture. Yet dulled by repetition as this fact is, it is 
 nevertheless so notable and important that mention of 
 
 xxxi 
 
THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
 
 it must again be made especially in connection with the 
 life-work of Theodore Roosevelt. 
 
 For he broke this unworthy custom of American 
 public men. He not only read with voracious eagerness 
 but he also produced many acceptable books. The 
 marvel is that a man of action so incessant, intense, and 
 tremendous was also a student and a writer of wide 
 range and variety. Not the least of Theodore Roose- 
 velt's services to America was the precedent he made 
 that our public men can devote themselves to literature 
 as well as to politics and be better public servants for 
 having done so. He demonstrated that, even in politics, 
 learning need not, necessarily, be a handicap; and that 
 knowledge of the Past may even be helpful in the 
 effort to interpret the present. 
 
 xxxn 
 
THOMAS HART BENTON 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 
 
 Thomas Hart Benton. By Theodore Roosevelt. Boston and New 
 York: Houghton Mifflin Company. The Riverside Press, Cambridge, 
 1887. 
 
 vi, 372 pp., 12mo, blue cloth. 
 
 This volume was specially written for the "American Statesmen" series and did not 
 appear in magazine form. It has been frequently reprinted. A large paper illus- 
 trated edition, limited to five hundred copies, none of which were sold except as 
 part of the complete series, appeared in 1898-1899. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. The Young West 3 
 
 II. Benton's Early Life and Entry into the Senate 19 
 
 III. Early Years in the Senate 37 
 
 IV. The Election of Jackson, and the Spoils System 53 
 V. The Struggle with the Nullifiers .... 67 
 
 VI. Jackson and Benton Make War on the Bank 86 
 
 VII. The Distribution of the Surplus .... 107 
 
 VLLI. The Slave Question Appears in Politics . . 117 
 
 IX. The Children's Teeth Are Set on Edge . . 137 
 
 X. Last Days of the Jacksonian Democracy . . 155 
 
 XL The President Without a Party 176 
 
 XII. Boundary Troubles with England . . . .193 
 
 XIII. The Abolitionists Dance to the Slave Barons' 
 
 Piping 215 
 
 XIV. Slavery in the New Territories 235 
 
 XV. The Losing Fight 252 
 
THOMAS HART BENTON 
 
CHAPTER I 
 THE YOUNG WEST 
 
 VEN before the end of the Revolution- 
 ary War the movement had begun 
 which was to change in form a strag- 
 gling chain of seaboard republics into 
 a mighty continental nation, the great 
 bulk of whose people would live to the 
 westward of the Appalachian Mountains. The hardy 
 and restless backwoodsmen, dwelling along the eastern 
 slopes of the Alleghanies, were already crossing the 
 mountain crests and hewing their way into the vast, 
 sombre forests of the Mississippi basin ; and for the first 
 time English-speaking communities were growing up 
 along waters whose outlet was into the Gulf of Mexico 
 and not into the Atlantic Ocean. Among these com- 
 munities Kentucky and Tennessee were the earliest to 
 form themselves into States; and around them, as a 
 nucleus, other States of the woodland and the prairie 
 were rapidly developed, until, by the close of the second 
 decade in the present century, the region between the 
 Great Lakes and the Gulf was almost solidly filled in, 
 and finally, in 1820, by the admission of Missouri, the 
 Union held within its borders a political body whose 
 whole territory lay to the west of the Mississippi. 
 
 All the men who founded these States were of much 
 the same type; they were rough frontiersmen, of strong 
 will and adventurous temper, accustomed to the hard, 
 barren, and yet strangely fascinating life of those who 
 dwell as pioneers in the wilderness. Moreover, they 
 
 3 
 
THOMAS HART BENTON 
 
 were nearly all of the same blood. The people of New 
 York and New England were as yet filling out their 
 own territory; it was not till many years afterward 
 that their stock became the predominant one in the 
 northwestern country. Most of the men who founded 
 the new States north of the Ohio came originally from 
 the old States south of the Potomac ; Virginia and North 
 Carolina were the first of the original thirteen to thrust 
 forth their children in masses, that they might shift for 
 themselves in the then untrodden West. 
 
 But though these early Western pioneers were for the 
 most part of Southern stock, they were by no means of 
 the same stamp as the men who then and thereafter 
 formed the ruling caste in the old slaveholding States. 
 They were the mountaineers, the men of the foot-hills 
 and uplands, who lived in what were called the back- 
 water counties. Many of them were themselves of 
 Northern origin. In striking contrast to the somewhat 
 sluggish and peaceful elements going to make up the 
 rest of its heterogeneous population, Pennsylvania also 
 originally held within its boundaries many members 
 of that most fiery and restless race, the Scotch-Irish. 
 These naturally drew toward the wilder, western parts 
 of the State, settling along the slopes of the numerous 
 inland mountain ridges running parallel to the Atlantic 
 coast; and from thence they drifted southward through 
 the long valleys, until they met and mingled with their 
 kinsfolk of Virginia and the Carolinas, when the move- 
 ment again trended toward the West. In a generation 
 or two, all, whether their forefathers were English, 
 Scotch, Irish, or, as was often the case, German and 
 Huguenot, were welded into one people; and in a very 
 short time the stern and hard surroundings of their life 
 had hammered this people into a peculiar and charac- 
 
 4 
 
THE YOUNG WEST 
 
 teristically American type, which to this day remains 
 almost unchanged. In their old haunts we still see the 
 same tall, gaunt men, with strongly marked faces and 
 saturnine, resolute eyes; men who may pass half their 
 days in listless idleness, but who are also able to show 
 on occasion the fiercest intensity of purpose and the 
 most sustained energy of action. We see them, more- 
 over, in many places, even across to the Pacific coast 
 and down to the Rio Grande. For after thronging 
 through the gaps and passes of the Appalachians, and 
 penetrating the forest region to the outskirts of the 
 treeless country beyond, the whilom mountaineers 
 and woodsmen, the wielders of the axe and rifle, then 
 streamed off far to the West and South and even to 
 the Northwest, their lumbering, white-topped wagons 
 being, even to the present moment, a familiar sight to 
 those who travel over the prairies and the great plains; 
 while it is their descendants who, in the saddle instead 
 of afoot, and with rope and revolver instead of axe and 
 rifle, now form the bulk of the reckless horsemen who 
 spend their lives in guarding the wandering cattle-herds 
 that graze over the vast, arid plains of the "far West." 
 The method of settlement of these States of the Mis- 
 sissippi valley had nothing whatever in common with 
 the way in which California and the Australian colonies 
 were suddenly filled up by the promiscuous overflow of 
 a civilized population, which had practically no fear of 
 any resistance from the stunted and scanty native races. 
 It was far more closely akin to the tribe movements of 
 the Germanic peoples in time past; to that movement, 
 for example, by which the Juttish and Low Dutch sea- 
 thieves on the coast of Britain worked their way inland 
 at the cost of the Cymric Celts. The early settlers of 
 the territory lying immediately west of the Alleghanies 
 
 5 
 
THOMAS HART BENTON 
 
 were all of the same kind; they were in search of homes, 
 not of riches, and their actions were planned accord- 
 ingly, except in so far as they were influenced by mere 
 restless love of adventure and excitement. Individuals 
 and single families, of course, often started off by them- 
 selves; but for the most part the men moved in bands, 
 with their wives and their children, their cattle and 
 their few household goods; each settler being from the 
 necessity of the case also a fighter, ready, and often 
 forced, to do desperate battle in defense of himself and 
 his family. Where such a band or little party settled, 
 there would gradually grow up a village or small town; 
 for instance, where those renowned pioneers and heroes 
 of the backwoods, Boone and Harrod, first formed per- 
 manent settlements after they had moved into Ken- 
 tucky, now stand the towns of Boonsboro and Harrods- 
 burg. 
 
 The country whither these settlers went was not one 
 into which timid men would willingly venture, and the 
 founders of the West were perforce men of stern stuff, 
 who from the very beginning formed a most warlike 
 race. It is impossible to understand aright the social 
 and political life of the section, unless we keep promi- 
 nently before our minds that it derived its distinguishing 
 traits largely from the extremely militant character ac- 
 quired by all the early settlers during the long-drawn- 
 out warfare in which the first two generations were en- 
 gaged. The land was already held by powerful Indian 
 tribes and confederacies, who waged war after war, of 
 the most ferocious and bloody character, against the 
 men of the border, in the effort to avert their inevitable 
 doom, or at least to stem for the time being the invasion 
 of the swelling tide of white settlement. At the present 
 time, when an Indian uprising is a matter chiefly of an- 
 
 6 
 
THE YOUNG WEST 
 
 noyance, and dangerous only to scattered, outlying set- 
 tlers, it is difficult to realize the formidable nature of 
 the savage Indian wars waged at the end of the last and 
 the beginning of the present centuries. The red nations 
 were then really redoubtable enemies, able to send into 
 the field thousands of well-armed warriors, whose fero- 
 cious bravery and skill rendered them quite as formida- 
 ble antagonists as trained European soldiers would have 
 been. Warfare with them did not affect merely out- 
 lying farms or hamlets; it meant a complete stoppage 
 of the white movement westward, and great and immi- 
 nent danger even to the large communities already in 
 existence; a state of things which would have to con- 
 tinue until the armies raised among the pioneers were 
 able, in fair shock of battle, to shatter the strength of 
 their red foes. The victories of Wayne and Harrison 
 were conditions precedent to the opening of the Ohio 
 valley; Kentucky was won by a hundred nameless and 
 bloody fights, whose heroes, like Shelby and Sevier, 
 afterward rose to prominent rank in civil life; and it 
 was only after a hard-fought campaign and slaughtering 
 victories that the Tennesseeans were able to break the 
 power of the great Creek confederacy, which was thrust 
 in between them and what were at that time the French 
 and Spanish lands lying to the south and southwest. 
 
 The founders of our Western States were valiant war- 
 riors as well as hardy pioneers, and from the very first 
 their fighting was not confined to uncivilized foes. It 
 was they who at Kings Mountain slew gallant Fergu- 
 son, and completely destroyed his little army; it was 
 from their ranks that most of Morgan's men were 
 recruited, when that grizzled old bush-fighter smote 
 Tarleton so roughly at the battle of the Cowpens. 
 These two blows crippled Cornwallis, and were among 
 
 7 
 
THOMAS HART BENTON 
 
 the chief causes of his final overthrow. At last, during 
 the War of 1812, there was played out the final act in 
 the military drama of which the West had been the stage 
 during the lifetime of a generation. For this war had a 
 twofold aspect: on the seaboard it was regarded as a 
 contest for the rights of our sailors and as a revolt 
 against Great Britain's domineering insolence; west of 
 the mountains, on the other hand, it was simply a re- 
 newal on a large scale of the Indian struggles, all the 
 red-skinned peoples joining together in a great and last 
 effort to keep the lands which were being wrested from 
 them; and there Great Britain's part was chiefly that 
 of ally to the savages, helping them with her gold and 
 with her well-drilled mercenary troops. The battle of 
 the Thames is memorable rather because of the defeat 
 and death of Tecumseh, than because of the flight of 
 Proctor and the capture of his British regulars; and for 
 the opening of the Southwest the ferocious fight at the 
 Horseshoe Bend was almost as important as the far 
 more famous conflict of New Orleans. 
 
 The War of 1812 brought out conspicuously the soli- 
 darity of interest in the West. The people there were 
 then all pretty much of the same blood; and they made 
 common cause against outsiders in the military field 
 exactly as afterward they for some time acted together 
 politically. Further eastward, on the Niagara frontier, 
 the fighting was done by the troops of New York and 
 New England, unassisted by the Southern States; and 
 in turn the latter had to shift for themselves when Wash- 
 ington was burned and Baltimore menaced. It was far 
 otherwise in the regions lying beyond the Appalachians. 
 Throughout all the fighting in the Northwest, where 
 Ohio was the State most menaced, the troops of Ken- 
 tucky formed the bulk of the American army, and it 
 
 8 
 
THE YOUNG WEST 
 
 was the charge of their mounted riflemen which at a 
 blow won the battle of the Thames. Again, on that 
 famous January morning, when it seemed as if the fair 
 Creole city was already in Packenham's grasp, it was 
 the wild soldiery of Tennessee who, lolling behind their 
 mud breastworks, peered out through the lifting fog at 
 the scarlet array of the English veterans, as the latter, 
 fresh from their long and unbroken series of victories 
 over the best troops of Europe, advanced, for the first 
 time, to meet defeat. 
 
 This solidarity of interest and feeling on the part of 
 the trans-Appalachian communities is a factor often 
 not taken into account in relating the political history 
 of the early part of this century; most modern writers 
 (who keep forgetting that the question of slavery was 
 then not one-tenth as absorbing as it afterward be- 
 came) apparently deeming that the line of demarcation 
 between North and South was at that period, as it has 
 since in reality become, as strongly defined west of the 
 mountains as east of them. That such was not the case 
 was due to several different causes. The first comers 
 into Tennessee and Kentucky belonged to the class of 
 so-called poor whites, who owned few or no slaves, and 
 who were far less sectionally Southern in their feelings 
 than were the rich planters of the low, alluvial plains 
 toward the coast of the Atlantic; and though a slave- 
 owning population quickly followed the first pioneers, 
 yet the latter had imprinted a stamp on the character 
 of the two States which was never wholly effaced — as 
 witness the tens of thousands of soldiers which both, 
 even the more southern of the two, furnished to the 
 Union army in the Civil War. 
 
 If this immigration made Kentucky and Tennessee, 
 and afterward Missouri, less distinctively Southern in 
 
 9 
 
THOMAS HART BENTON 
 
 character than the South Atlantic States, it at the same 
 time, by furnishing the first and for some time the most 
 numerous element in the population of the States north 
 of the Ohio, made the latter less characteristically 
 Northern than was the case with those lying east of 
 them. Up to 1810 Indiana kept petitioning Congress 
 to allow slavery within her borders; Illinois, in the early 
 days, felt as hostile toward Massachusetts as did Mis- 
 souri. Moreover, at first the Southern States west of 
 the mountains greatly outweighed the Northern, both 
 in numbers and importance. 
 
 Thus several things came about. In the first place, 
 all the communities across the Alleghanies originally 
 felt themselves to be closely knit together by ties of 
 blood, sentiment, and interest; they felt that they were, 
 taking them altogether, Western as opposed to Eastern. 
 In the next place, they were at first Southern rather 
 than Northern in their feeling. But, in the third place, 
 they were by no means so extremely Southern as were 
 the Southern Atlantic States. This was the way in 
 which they looked at themselves; and this was the way 
 in which at that time others looked at them. In our 
 day Kentucky is regarded politically as being simply an 
 integral portion of the solid South; but the greatest of 
 her sons, Clay, was known to his own generation, not 
 as a Southern statesman, but as "Harry of the West." 
 Of the two Presidents, Harrison and Taylor, whom the 
 Whigs elected, one lived in Ohio and one in Louisiana; 
 but both were chosen simply as Western men, and, as 
 a matter of fact, both were born in Virginia. Andrew 
 Jackson's victory over Adams was in some slight sense 
 a triumph of the South over the North, but it was far 
 more a triumph of the West over the East. Webster's 
 famous sneer at old Zachary Taylor was aimed at him 
 
 10 
 
THE YOUNG WEST 
 
 as a "frontier colonel"; in other words, though Taylor 
 had a large plantation in Louisiana, Webster, and many 
 others besides, looked upon him as the champion of the 
 rough democracy of the West rather than as the repre- 
 sentative of the polished slaveholders of the South. 
 
 Thus, during the first part of this century, the term 
 "Western" was as applicable to the States lying south 
 of the Ohio as to those lying north of it. Moreover, at 
 first the Central, or, as they were more usually termed, 
 the Border States, were more populous and influential 
 than were those on either side of them, and so largely 
 shaped the general tone of Western feeling. While the 
 voters in these States, whether Whigs or Democrats, ac- 
 cepted as their leaders men like Clay in Kentucky, 
 Benton in Missouri, and Andrew Jackson in Tennessee, 
 it could be taken for granted that on the whole they 
 felt for the South against the North, but much more 
 for the West against the East, and most strongly of all 
 for the Union as against any section whatsoever. Many 
 influences came together to start and keep alive this feel- 
 ing; but one, more potent than all the others combined, 
 was working steadily, and with ever-increasing power, 
 against it; and when slavery finally brought about a 
 break between the Northern and Southern States of the 
 West as complete as that in the East, then the Demo- 
 crats of the stamp of Jackson and Benton disappeared 
 as completely from public life as did the Whigs of the 
 stamp of Clay. 
 
 Benton's long political career can never be thoroughly 
 understood unless it is kept in mind that he was prima- 
 rily a Western and not a Southern statesman; and it 
 owes its especial interest to the fact that during its con- 
 tinuance the West first rose to power, acting as a unit, 
 and to the further fact that it was brought to a close 
 
 11 
 
THOMAS HART BENTON 
 
 by the same causes which soon afterward broke up the 
 West exactly as the East was already broken. Benton 
 was not one of the few statesmen who have left the 
 indelible marks of their own individuality upon our 
 history; but he was, perhaps, the most typical repre- 
 sentative of the statesmanship of the Middle West at 
 the time when the latter gave the tone to the political 
 thought of the entire Mississippi valley. The political 
 school which he represented came to its fullest develop- 
 ment in the so-called Border States of Kentucky, Ten- 
 nessee, and Missouri, and swayed the destinies of the 
 West so long as the States to the north as well as the 
 States to the south were content to accept the leader- 
 ship of those that lay between them. It came to an 
 end and disappeared from sight when people north of 
 the Ohio at last set up their own standard, and when, 
 after some hesitation, the Border States threw in their 
 lot with the other side and concluded to follow the 
 Southern communities, which they had hitherto led. 
 Benton was one of those public men who formulate and 
 express, rather than shape, the thought of the people 
 who stand behind them and whom they represent. A 
 man of strong intellect and keen energy, he was for 
 many years the foremost representative of at least one 
 phase of that thought; being, also, a man of high prin- 
 ciple and determined courage, when a younger genera- 
 tion had grown up and the bent of the thought had 
 changed, he declined to change with it, bravely accept- 
 ing political defeat as the alternative, and going down 
 without flinching a hair's breadth from the ground on 
 which he had always stood. 
 
 To understand his public actions as well as his polit- 
 ical ideas and principles it is, of course, necessary to 
 know at least a little of the men among whom he lived 
 
 12 
 
THE YOUNG WEST 
 
 and from whom he sprang: the men who were the first 
 of our people to press out beyond the limits of the thir- 
 teen old States; who filled Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkan- 
 sas, and Missouri, and who for so long a time were the 
 dominant class all through the West, until, at last, the 
 flood of northeastern immigration completely swamped 
 their influence north of the Ohio, while along the Gulf 
 coast the political control slipped from their hands into 
 the grasp of the great planter class. 
 
 The wood choppers, game hunters, and Indian 
 fighters, who first came over the mountains, were only 
 the forerunners of the more regular settlers who fol- 
 lowed them; but these last had much the same attri- 
 butes as their predecessors. For many years after the 
 settlements were firmly rooted, the life of the settlers 
 was still subject to all the perils of the wilderness. 
 Above all, the constant warfare in which they were en- 
 gaged for nearly thirty-five years, and which culminated 
 in the battle of New Orleans, left a deep and lasting 
 imprint on their character. Their incessant wars were 
 waged almost wholly by the settlers themselves, with 
 comparatively little help from the federal government, 
 and with hardly any regular troops as allies. A back- 
 woods levy, whether raised to meet an Indian inroad 
 or to march against the disciplined armies of the Brit- 
 ish, was merely a force of volunteers, made up from 
 among the full-grown male settlers, who were induced 
 to join either from motives of patriotism, or from love 
 of adventure, or because they felt that their homes and 
 belongings were in danger from which they could only 
 extricate them by their own prowess. Every settler 
 thus became more or less of a soldier, was always ex- 
 pert with the rifle, and was taught to rely upon his own 
 skill and courage for his protection. But the military 
 
 13 
 
THOMAS HART BENTON 
 
 service in which he was from time to time engaged was 
 of such a lawless kind, and was carried on with such 
 utter absence of discipline, that it did not accustom 
 him in the least to habits of self-command, or render 
 him inclined to brook the exercise of authority by an 
 outsider; so that the Western people grew up with war- 
 like traditions and habits of thought, accustomed to 
 give free rein to their passions, and to take into their 
 own hands the avenging of real or supposed wrongs, but 
 without any of the love for order and for acting in con- 
 cert with their fellows which characterize those who 
 have seen service in regular armies. On the contrary, 
 the chief effect of this long-continued and harassing 
 border warfare was to make more marked the sullen 
 and almost defiant self-reliance of the pioneer, and to 
 develop his peculiarly American spirit of individual 
 self-sufficiency, his impatience of outside interference 
 or control, to a degree not known elsewhere, even on 
 this continent. It also gave a distinct military cast to 
 his way of looking at territory which did not belong to 
 him. He stood where he was because he was a con- 
 queror; he had wrested his land by force from its right- 
 ful Indian lords; he fully intended to repeat the same 
 feat as soon as he should reach the Spanish lands lying 
 to the west and southwest; he would have done so in 
 the case of French Louisiana if it had not been that 
 the latter was purchased, and was thus saved from be- 
 ing taken by force of arms. This belligerent, or, more 
 properly speaking, piratical way of looking at neighbor- 
 ing territory, was very characteristic of the West, and 
 was at the root of the doctrine of "manifest destiny." 
 All the early settlers, and most of those who came 
 after them, were poor, living narrow lives fraught with 
 great hardship, and varying between toil and half-aim- 
 
 14 
 
THE YOUNG WEST 
 
 less roving; even when the conditions of their life be- 
 came easier it was some time before the influence of 
 their old existence ceased to make itself felt in their 
 way of looking at things. The first pioneers were, it is 
 true, soon followed by great slave-owners; and by de- 
 grees there grew up a clan of large landed proprietors 
 and stock-raisers, akin to the planter caste which was 
 so all-powerful along the coast; but it was never rela- 
 tively either so large or so influential as the latter, and 
 was not separated from the rest of the white population 
 by anything like so wide a gap as that which, in the 
 Southern Atlantic and Gulf States, marked the differ- 
 ence between the rich growers of cotton, rice, and sugar, 
 and the squalid "poor whites" or "crackers." 
 
 The people of the Border States were thus mainly 
 composed of small landowners, scattered throughout 
 the country; they tilled their small farms for themselves, 
 were hewers of their own wood, and drawers of their 
 own water, and for generations remained accustomed to 
 and skilful in the use of the rifle. The pioneers of the 
 Middle West were not dwellers in towns; they kept to 
 the open country, where each man could shift for him- 
 self without help or hindrance from his neighbors, 
 scorning the irksome restraints and the lack of indi- 
 vidual freedom of city life. They built but few cities 
 of any size; the only two really important ones of whose 
 inhabitants they formed any considerable part, St. 
 Louis and New Orleans, were both founded by the 
 French long before our people came across the moun- 
 tains into the Mississippi valley. Their life was essen- 
 tially a country life, alike for the rich and for the bulk 
 of the population. The few raw frontier towns and 
 squalid, straggling villages were neither seats of superior 
 culture nor yet centres for the distribution of educated 
 
 15 
 
THOMAS HART BENTON 
 
 thought, as in the North. Large tracts of land remained 
 always populated by a class of backwoodsmen differing 
 but little from the first comers. Such was the district 
 from which grand, simple old Davy Crockett went to 
 Washington as a Whig congressman ; and perhaps there 
 was never a quainter figure in our national legislature 
 than that of the grim old rifleman, who shares with 
 Daniel Boone the honor of standing foremost in the list 
 of our mighty hunters. Crockett and his kind had little 
 in common with the men who ruled supreme in the 
 politics of most of the Southern States; and even at 
 this day many of their descendants in the wooded moun- 
 tain land are Republicans; for when the Middle States 
 had lost the control of the West, and when those who 
 had hitherto followed such leaders as Jackson, Clay, 
 and Benton drifted with the tide that set so strongly 
 to the South, it was only the men of the type of dogged, 
 stubborn old Crockett who dared to make head against 
 it. But, indeed, one of the characteristics of the people 
 with whom we are dealing was the slowness and sus- 
 picion with which they received a new idea, and the 
 tenacity with which they clung to one that they had 
 at last adopted. 
 
 They were above all a people of strong, virile char- 
 acter, certain to make their weight felt either for good 
 or for evil. They had many virtues which can fairly 
 be called great, and their faults were equally strongly 
 marked. They were not a thrifty people, nor one given 
 to long-sustained, drudging work; there were not then, 
 nor are there now, to be found in this land such com- 
 fortable, prosperous homes and farms as those which 
 dot all the country where dwell the men of northeastern 
 stock. They were not, as a. rule, even ordinarily well 
 educated; the public school formed no such important 
 
 16 
 
THE YOUNG WEST 
 
 feature in their life as it did in the life of their fellow 
 citizens farther north. They had narrow, bitter prej- 
 udices and dislikes; the hard and dangerous lives they 
 had led had run their character into a stern and almost 
 forbidding mould. They valued personal prowess very 
 highly, and respected no man who did not possess the 
 strongest capacity for self-help, and who could not shift 
 for himself in any danger. They felt an intense, al- 
 though perhaps ignorant, pride in and love for their 
 country, and looked upon all the lands hemming in the 
 United States as territory which they or their children 
 should some day inherit; for they were a race of master- 
 ful spirit, and accustomed to regard with easy tolerance 
 any but the most flagrant violations of law. They 
 prized highly such qualities as courage, loyalty, truth, 
 and patriotism, but they were, as a whole, poor, and 
 not overscrupulous of the rights of others, nor yet with 
 the nicest sense of money obligations; so that the his- 
 tory of their State legislation affecting the rights of 
 debtor and creditor, whether public or private, in hard 
 times, is not pleasant reading for an American who is 
 proud of his country. Their passions, once roused, were 
 intense, and if they really wished anything they worked 
 for it with indomitable persistency. There was little 
 that was soft or outwardly attractive in their character : 
 it was stern, rude, and hard, like the lives they led; but it 
 was the character of those who were every inch men, and 
 who were Americans through to the very heart's core. 
 
 In their private lives their lawless and arrogant free- 
 dom and lack of self-restraint produced much gross 
 licentiousness and barbarous cruelty; and every little 
 frontier community could tell its story of animal sav- 
 agery as regards the home relations of certain of its 
 members. Yet in spite of this they, as a whole, felt the 
 
 17 
 
THOMAS HART BENTON 
 
 family ties strongly, and in the main had quite a high 
 standard of private morality. Many of them, at any 
 rate, were, according to their lights, deeply and sin- 
 cerely religious; though even their religion showed their 
 strong, coarse-fibred, narrow natures. Episcopalianism 
 was the creed of the rich slave-owner, who dwelt along 
 the seaboard ; but the Western settlers belonged to some 
 one or other of the divisions of the great Methodist and 
 Baptist churches. They were as savagely in earnest 
 about this as about everything else; meekness, mild- 
 ness, broad liberality, and gentle tolerance of difference 
 in religious views were not virtues they appreciated. 
 They were always ready to do battle for their faith, 
 and, indeed, had to do it, as it was quite a common 
 amusement for the wilder and more lawless members of 
 the community to try to break up by force the great 
 camp-meetings, which formed so conspicuous a feature 
 in the social and religious life of the country. For even 
 irreligion took the form of active rebellion against God, 
 rather than disbelief in his existence. 
 
 Physically they were, and are, especially in Kentucky, 
 the finest members of our race; an examination of the 
 statistics relating to the volunteers in the Civil War 
 shows that the natives of no other State, and the men 
 from no foreign country whatsoever, came up to them 
 in bodily development. 
 
 Such a people, in choosing men to represent them in 
 the national councils, would naturally pay small heed 
 to refined, graceful, and cultivated statesmanship; their 
 allegiance would be given to men of abounding vitality, 
 of rugged intellect, and of indomitable will. No better 
 or more characteristic possessor of these attributes 
 could be imagined than Thomas Benton. 
 
 18 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 BENTON'S EARLY LIFE AND ENTRY INTO THE 
 
 SENATE 
 
 Thomas Hart Benton was born on March 14, 1782, 
 near Hillsborough, in Orange County, North Carolina 
 — the same State that fifteen years before, almost to a 
 day, had seen the birth of the great political chief whose 
 most prominent supporter he in after life became. Ben- 
 ton, however, came of good colonial stock; and his early 
 surroundings were not characterized by the squalid 
 poverty that marked Jackson's, though the difference 
 in the social condition of the two families was of small 
 consequence on the frontier, where caste was, and is, 
 almost unknown, and social equality is not a mere 
 figure of speech — particularly it was not so at that time 
 in the Southwest, where there were no servants, except 
 black slaves, and where even what in the North would 
 be called "hired help" was almost an unknown quan- 
 tity. 
 
 Benton's father, who was a lawyer in good standing 
 at the North Carolina bar, died when the boy was very 
 young, leaving him to be brought up by his Virginian 
 mother. She was a woman of force, and, for her time, 
 of much education. She herself began the training of 
 her son's mind, studying with him history and biog- 
 raphy, while he also, of course, had access to his father's 
 law library. The home in which he was brought up 
 was, for that time and for that part of the country, 
 strait-laced ; his mother, though a Virginian, had many 
 traits which belonged rather to the descendants of the 
 
 19 
 
THOMAS HART BENTON 
 
 Puritans, and possessed both their strength of char- 
 acter and their austerely religious spirit. Although liv- 
 ing in a roistering age, among a class peculiarly given to 
 all the coarser kinds of pleasure, and especially to drink 
 and every form of gambling, she nevertheless preserved 
 the most rigid decorum and morality in her own house- 
 hold, frowning especially upon all intemperance, and 
 never permitting a pack of cards to be found within 
 her doors. She was greatly beloved and respected by 
 the son, whose mind she did so much to mould, and she 
 lived to see him become one of the foremost statesmen 
 of the country. 
 
 Young Benton was always fond of reading. He be- 
 gan his studies at home, and continued them at a gram- 
 mar-school taught by a young New Englander of good 
 ability, a very large proportion of the school-teachers 
 of the country then coming from New England; indeed, 
 school-teachers and peddlers were, on the whole, the 
 chief contributions made by the Northeast to the per- 
 sonnel of the new Southwest. Benton then began a 
 course at Chapel Hill, the University of North Carolina, 
 but broke off before completing it, as his mother de- 
 cided to move her family westward to the almost un- 
 broken wilderness near Nashville, Tennessee, where his 
 father had left them a large tract of land. But he was 
 such an insatiable student and reader that he rapidly 
 acquired a very extensive knowledge, not only of law, 
 but of history and even of Latin and English literature, 
 and thus became a well-read and cultivated, indeed a 
 learned, man; though his frequent displays of learning 
 and knowledge were sometimes marked by a trace of 
 that self-complacent, amusing pedantry so apt to char- 
 acterize a really well-educated man who lives in a com- 
 munity in which he believes, and with which he has 
 
 20 
 
EARLY LIFE 
 
 thoroughly identified himself, but whose members are 
 for the most part below the average in mental cultiva- 
 tion. 
 
 The Bentons founded a little town named after them, 
 and in which, of course, they took their position as 
 leaders and rich landed proprietors. It lay on the very 
 outskirts of the Indian country; indeed, the great war 
 trail of the Southern Indians led right through the set- 
 tlement, and they at all times swarmed around it. The 
 change from the still somewhat rude civilization of 
 North Carolina to the wildness on the border was far 
 less abrupt and startling then than would be the case 
 under similar circumstances now, and the Bentons soon 
 identified themselves completely with the life and in- 
 terests of the people around them. They even aban- 
 doned the Episcopalianism of their old home, and be- 
 came Methodists, like their neighbors. Young Benton 
 himself had his hands full, at first, in attending to his 
 great backwoods farm, tilled by slaves, and in pushing 
 the growth of the settlement by building first a rude log 
 schoolhouse (he himself taught school at one time, while 
 studying law), and a meeting-house of the same primi- 
 tive construction, then mills, roads, bridges, and so 
 forth. The work hardened and developed him, and he 
 readily enough turned into a regular frontiersman of 
 the better and richer sort. The neighboring town of 
 Nashville was a raw, pretentious place, where horse- 
 racing, cock-fighting, gambling, whiskey-drinking, and 
 the various coarse vices which masquerade as pleasures 
 in frontier towns, all throve in rank luxuriance. It was 
 somewhat of a change from Benton's early training, but 
 he took to it kindly, and though never a vicious or de- 
 bauched man, he bore his full share in the savage brawls, 
 the shooting and stabbing affrays, which went to make 
 
 21 
 
THOMAS HART BENTON 
 
 up one of the leading features in the excessively unat- 
 tractive social life of the place and epoch. 
 
 At that time duelling prevailed more or less through- 
 out the United States, and in the South and West to 
 an extent never before or since attained. On the fron- 
 tier, not only did every man of spirit expect now and 
 then to be called on to engage in a duel, but he also 
 had to make up his mind to take occasional part in 
 bloody street fights. Tennessee, the State where Ben- 
 ton then had his home, was famous for the affrays that 
 took place within its borders; and that they were com- 
 mon enough among the people at large may be gathered 
 from the fact that they were of continual occurrence 
 among judges, high State officials, and in the very legis- 
 lature itself, where senators and assemblymen were al- 
 ways becoming involved in undignified rows and foolish 
 squabbles, apparently without fear of exciting any un- 
 favorable comment, as witness Davy Crockett's naive 
 account of his early experiences as a backwoods mem- 
 ber of the Tennessee assembly. Like Jackson, Benton 
 killed his man in a duel. This was much later, in 1817, 
 when he was a citizen of Missouri. His opponent was 
 a lawyer named Lucas. They fought twice, on Bloody 
 Island, near St. Louis. On the first occasion both were 
 wounded; on the second Lucas was killed. The latter 
 came of a truculent family. A recent biographer of his 
 father, Judge John R. Lucas, remarks, with refreshing 
 unconsciousness of the grotesque humor of the chronicle : 
 'This gentleman was one of the most remarkable men 
 who ever settled west of the Mississippi River. . . . 
 Toward the close of his life Judge Lucas became melan- 
 choly and dejected — the result of domestic affliction, 
 for six of his sons met death by violence." One feels 
 curious to know how the other sons died. 
 
 22 
 
EARLY LIFE 
 
 But the most famous of Benton's affrays was that 
 with Jackson himself, in 1813. This rose out of a duel 
 of laughable rather than serious character, in which 
 Benton's brother was worsted by General Carroll, after- 
 ward one of Jackson's lieutenants at New Orleans. The 
 encounter itself took place between the Benton brothers 
 on one side, and on the other, Jackson, General Coffee, 
 also of New Orleans fame, and another friend. The 
 place was a great rambling Nashville inn, and the de- 
 tails were so intricate that probably not even the par- 
 ticipants themselves knew exactly what had taken place, 
 while all the witnesses impartially contradicted each 
 other and themselves. At any rate, Jackson was shot 
 and Benton was pitched headlong down-stairs, and all 
 the other combatants were more or less damaged; but 
 it ended in Jackson being carried off by his friends, leav- 
 ing the Ben tons masters of the field, where they strutted 
 up and down and indulged in a good deal of loud bra- 
 vado. Previous to this Benton and Jackson had been 
 on the best of terms, and although there was naturally 
 a temporary break in their friendship, yet it proved 
 strong enough in the end to stand even such a violent 
 wrench as that given by this preposterously senseless 
 and almost fatal brawl. They not only became com- 
 pletely reconciled, but eventually even the closest and 
 warmest of personal and political friends; for Benton 
 was as generous and forgiving as he was hot-tempered, 
 and Jackson's ruder nature was at any rate free from 
 any small meanness or malice. 
 
 In spite of occasional interludes of this kind, which 
 must have given a rather ferocious fillip to his otherwise 
 monotonous life, Benton completed his legal studies, 
 was admitted to the bar, and began to practise as a 
 frontier lawyer at Franklin. Very soon, however, he 
 
 23 
 
THOMAS HART BENTON 
 
 for the first time entered the more congenial field of 
 politics, and in 1811 served a single term in the lower 
 house of the Tennessee legislature. Even thus early he 
 made his mark. He had a bill passed introducing the 
 circuit system into the State judiciary, a reform of much 
 importance, especially to the poorer class of litigants; 
 and he also introduced, and had enacted into a law, a 
 bill providing that a slave should have the same right 
 to the full benefit of a jury trial as would a white man 
 suffering under the same accusation. This last measure 
 is noteworthy as foreshadowing the position which Ben- 
 ton afterward took in national politics, where he ap- 
 peared as a slaveholder, it is true, but as one of the most 
 enlightened and least radical of his class. Its passage 
 also showed the tendency of Southern opinion at the 
 time, which was undoubtedly in the direction of better- 
 ing the condition of the blacks, though the events of 
 the next few years produced such a violent revulsion of 
 feeling concerning the negro race that this current of 
 public opinion was completely reversed. Benton, how- 
 ever, was made of sturdy stuff, and as he grew older his 
 views on the question did not alter as did those of most 
 of his colleagues. 
 
 Shortly after he left the legislature the War of 1812 
 broke out, and its events impressed on Benton another 
 of what soon became his cardinal principles. The war 
 was brought on by the South and West, the Democrats 
 all favoring it, while the Federalists, forming the then 
 anti-Democratic party, especially in the Northeast, op- 
 posed it; and finally their more extreme members, at 
 the famous Hartford Convention, passed resolutions 
 supposed to tend toward the dissolution of the Union, 
 and which brought upon the party the bitter condemna- 
 tion of their antagonists. Says Benton himself: "At 
 
 24 
 
EARLY LIFE 
 
 the time of its first appearance the right of secession 
 was repulsed and repudiated by the Democracy gen- 
 erally. . . . The leading language in respect to it south 
 of the Potomac was that no State had a right to with- 
 draw from the Union, . . . and that any attempt to 
 dissolve it, or to obstruct the action of constitutional 
 laws, was treason. If since that time political parties 
 and sectional localities have exchanged attitudes on 
 this question, it cannot alter the question of right." 
 For, having once grasped an idea and made it his own, 
 Benton clung to it with unyielding tenacity, no matter 
 whether it was or was not abandoned by the majority 
 of those with whom he had been in the habit of acting. 
 
 Thus early Benton's political character became 
 moulded into the shape which it ever afterward retained. 
 He was a slaveholder, but as advanced as a slaveholder 
 could be; he remained to a certain extent a Southerner, 
 but his Southernism was of the type prevalent imme- 
 diately after the Revolution, and not of the kind that 
 came to the fore prior to the Rebellion. He was much 
 more a Westerner in his feelings, and more than all else 
 he was emphatically a Union man. 
 
 Like every other hot spirit of the West — and the 
 West was full of little but hot spirits — Benton heartily 
 favored the War of 1812. He served as a colonel of 
 volunteers under Jackson, but never saw actual fight- 
 ing, and his short term of soldiership was of no further 
 account than to furnish an excuse to Polk, thirty-five 
 years later, for nominating him commanding general in 
 the time of the Mexican War — an incident which, as 
 the nomination was rejected, may be regarded as merely 
 ludicrous, the gross impropriety of the act safely defy- 
 ing criticism. He was of genuine use, however, in call- 
 ing on and exciting the volunteers to come forward; for 
 
 25 
 
THOMAS HART BENTON 
 
 he was a fluent speaker, of fine presence, and his pom- 
 pous self-sufficiency was rather admired than otherwise 
 by the frontiersmen, while his force, energy, and earnest- 
 ness commanded their respect. He also, when Jackson's 
 reckless impetuosity got him into a snarl with the feeble 
 national administration, whose imbecile incapacity to 
 carry on the war became day by day more painfully 
 evident, went to Washington, and there finally ex- 
 tricated his chief by dint of threatening that, if "jus- 
 tice" was not done him, Tennessee would, in future 
 political contests, be found ranged with the adminis- 
 tration's foes. For Benton already possessed political 
 influence, and being, like most of his class, anti-Federal- 
 ist, or Democratic, in sentiment, was therefore of the 
 same party as the people at Washington, and was a 
 man whose representations would have some weight 
 with them. 
 
 During his stay in Tennessee Benton's character was 
 greatly influenced by his being thrown into close con- 
 tact with many of the extraordinary men who then or 
 afterward made their mark in the strange and pictur- 
 esque annals of the Southwest. Jackson even thus early 
 loomed up as the greatest and arch-typical representa- 
 tive of his people and his section. The religious bent of 
 the time was shown in the life of the grand, rugged old 
 Methodist, Peter Cartwright, who, in the far-off back- 
 woods, was a preacher and practical exponent of "mus- 
 cular Christianity" half a century before the day when, 
 under Bishop Selwyn and Charles Kingsley, it became 
 a cult among the most highly civilized classes of Eng- 
 land. There was David Crockett, rifleman and con- 
 gressman, doomed to a tragic and heroic death in that 
 remarkable conflict of which it was said at the time, 
 that "Thermopylae had its messengers of death, but the 
 
 26 
 
EARLY LIFE 
 
 Alamo had none"; and there was Houston, who, after 
 a singular and romantic career, became the greatest of 
 the statesmen and soldiers of Texas. It was these men, 
 and their like, who, under the shadow of world-old for- 
 ests and in the sunlight of the great, lonely plains, 
 wrought out the destinies of a nation and a continent, 
 and who, with their rude war-craft and statecraft, solved 
 problems that, in the importance of their results, dwarf 
 the issues of all European struggles since the day of 
 Waterloo as completely as the Punic wars in their out- 
 come threw into the shade the consequences of the wars 
 waged at the same time between the different Greek 
 monarchies. 
 
 Benton, in his mental training, came much nearer to 
 the statesmen of the seaboard, and was far better bred 
 and better educated, than the rest of the men around 
 him. But he was, and was felt by them to be, thor- 
 oughly one of their number, and the most able ex- 
 pounder of their views; and it is just because he is so 
 completely the type of a great and important class, 
 rather than because even of his undoubted and com- 
 manding ability as a statesman, that his life and public 
 services will always repay study. His vanity and boast- 
 fulness were faults which he shared with almost all his 
 people; and, after all, if they overrated the consequence 
 of their own deeds, the deeds, nevertheless, did possess 
 great importance, and their fault was slight compared to 
 that committed by some of us at the present day, who 
 have gone to the opposite extreme and try to belittle the 
 actions of our fathers. Benton was deeply imbued with 
 the masterful, overbearing spirit of the West — a spirit 
 whose manifestations are not always agreeable, but the 
 possession of which is certainly a most healthy sign of 
 the virile strength of a young community. He thor- 
 
 27 
 
THOMAS HART BENTON 
 
 oughly appreciated that he was helping to shape the 
 future of a country, whose wonderful development is 
 the most important feature in the history of the nine- 
 teenth century; the non-appreciation of which fact is 
 in itself sufficient utterly to disqualify any American 
 statesman from rising to the first rank. 
 
 It was not in Tennessee, however, that Benton rose 
 to political prominence, for shortly after the close of the 
 war he crossed the Mississippi and made his permanent 
 home in the Territory of Missouri. Missouri was then 
 our extreme western outpost, and its citizens possessed 
 the characteristic Western traits to an even exaggerated 
 extent. The people were pushing, restless, and hardy; 
 they were lawless and violent to a degree. In spite of 
 the culture and education of some families, society, as 
 a whole, was marked by florid unconventionally and 
 rawness. The general and wide-spread intemperance 
 of the judges and high officials of state was even more 
 marked than their proclivities for brawling. The law- 
 yers, as usual, furnished the bulk of the politicians; suc- 
 cess at the bar depended less upon learning than upon 
 "push" and audacity. The fatal feuds between indi- 
 viduals and families were as frequent and as bloody as 
 among Highland clans a century before. The following 
 quotations are taken at random from a work on the 
 Bench and Bar of Missouri, by an ex-judge of its su- 
 preme court: "A man by the name of Hiram K. Turk, 
 and four sons, settled in 1839 near Warsaw, and a per- 
 sonal difficulty occurred between them and a family of 
 the name of Jones, resulting in the death of one or two. 
 The people began to take sides with one or the other, 
 and finally a general outbreak took place, in which many 
 were killed, resulting in a general reign of terror and of 
 violence beyond the power of the law to subdue." The 
 
 28 
 
EARLY LIFE 
 
 social annals of this pleasant town of Warsaw could not 
 normally have been dull; in 1844, for instance, they 
 were enlivened by Judge Cherry and Senator Major 
 fighting to the death on one of its principal streets, the 
 latter being slain. The judges themselves were by no 
 means bigoted in their support of law and order. "In 
 those days it was common for people to settle their 
 quarrels during court week. . . . Judge Allen took 
 great delight in these exhibitions, and would at any 
 time adjourn his court to witness one. . . . He (Allen) 
 always travelled with a holster of large pistols in front 
 of his saddle, and a knife with a blade at least a foot 
 long." Hannibal Chollop was no mere creature of 
 fancy; on the contrary, his name was legion, and he 
 flourished rankly in every town throughout the Missis- 
 sippi valley. But, after all, this ruffianism was really 
 not a whit worse in its effects on the national character 
 than was the case with certain of the "universal peace" 
 and "non-resistance" developments in the northeast- 
 ern States; in fact, it was more healthy. A class of pro- 
 fessional non-combatants is as hurtful to the real, 
 healthy growth of a nation as is a class of fire-eaters; 
 for a weakness or folly is nationally as bad as a vice, or 
 worse; and, in the long run, a Quaker may be quite as 
 undesirable a citizen as is a duellist. No man who is 
 not willing to bear arms and to fight for his rights can 
 give a good reason why he should be entitled to the 
 privilege of living in a free community. The decline of 
 the militant spirit in the Northeast during the first half 
 of this century was much to be regretted. To it is due, 
 more than to any other cause, the undoubted average 
 individual inferiority of the Northern compared to the 
 Southern troops; at any rate, at the beginning of the 
 great war of the Rebellion. The Southerners, by their 
 
 29 
 
THOMAS HART BENTON 
 
 whole mode of living, their habits, and their love of out- 
 door sports, kept up their warlike spirit; while in the 
 North the so-called upper classes developed along the 
 lines of a wealthy and timid bourgeoisie type, measur- 
 ing everything by a mercantile standard (a peculiarly 
 debasing one if taken purely by itself), and submitting 
 to be ruled in local affairs by low foreign mobs, and in 
 national matters by their arrogant Southern kinsmen. 
 The militant spirit of these last certainly stood them in 
 good stead in the Civil War. The world has never seen 
 better soldiers than those who followed Lee; and their 
 leader will undoubtedly rank as without any exception 
 the very greatest of all the great captains that the Eng- 
 lish-speaking peoples have brought forth — and this, al- 
 though the last and chief of his antagonists may himself 
 claim to stand as the full equal of Marlborough and 
 Wellington. 
 
 The other Western States still kept touch on the old 
 colonial communities of the seacoast, having a second 
 or alternative outlet through Louisiana, newly acquired 
 by the United States, it is true, but which was never- 
 theless an old settled land. Missouri, however, had lost 
 all connection with the seacoast, and though, through 
 her great river towns, swarming with raftsmen and flat- 
 boatmen, she drove her main and most thriving trade 
 with the other Mississippi cities, yet her restless and 
 adventure-loving citizens were already seeking other 
 outlets for their activity, and were establishing trade 
 relations with the Mexicans; being thus the earliest 
 among our people to come into active contact with the 
 Hispano-Indian race from whom we afterward wrested 
 so large a part of their inheritance. Missouri was thrust 
 out beyond the Mississippi into the vast plains country 
 of the far West, and except on the river front was com- 
 
 30 
 
EARLY LIFE 
 
 pletely isolated, being flanked on every side by great 
 stretches of level wilderness, inhabited by roaming 
 tribes of warlike Indians. Thus for the first time the 
 borderers began to number in their ranks plainsmen as 
 well as backwoodsmen. In such a community there 
 were sure to be numbers of men anxious to take part 
 in any enterprise that united the chance of great pe- 
 cuniary gain with the certainty of even greater personal 
 risk, and both these conditions were fulfilled in the trad- 
 ing expeditions pushed out from Missouri across the 
 trackless wastes lying between it and the fringe of Mexi- 
 can settlements on the Rio del Norte. The route fol- 
 lowed by these caravans, which brought back furs and 
 precious metals, soon became famous under the name of 
 the Santa Fe trail; and the story of the perils, hard- 
 ships, and gains of the adventurous traders who fol- 
 lowed it would make one of the most striking chapters 
 of American history. 
 
 Among such people Benton's views and habits of 
 thought became more markedly Western and ultra- 
 American than ever, especially in regard to our en- 
 croachments upon the territory of neighboring powers. 
 The general feeling in the West upon this last subject 
 afterward crystallized into what became known as the 
 "Manifest Destiny" idea, which, reduced to its simplest 
 terms, was : that it was our manifest destiny to swallow 
 up the land of all adjoining nations who were too weak 
 to withstand us; a theory that forthwith obtained im- 
 mense popularity among all statesmen of easy inter- 
 national morality. It cannot be too often repeated that 
 no one can understand even the domestic, and more 
 especially the foreign, policy of Benton and his school 
 without first understanding the surroundings amidst 
 which they had been brought up and the people whose 
 
 31 
 
THOMAS HART BENTON 
 
 chosen representatives they were. Recent historians, 
 for instance, always speak as if our grasping after terri- 
 tory in the Southwest was due solely to the desire of 
 the Southerners to acquire lands out of which to carve 
 new slaveholding States, and as if it was merely a move 
 in the interests of the slave-power. This is true enough 
 so far as the motives of Calhoun, Tyler, and the other 
 public leaders of the Gulf and Southern seaboard States 
 were concerned. But the hearty Western support given 
 to the movement was due to entirely different causes, 
 the chief among them being the fact that the Western- 
 ers honestly believed themselves to be indeed created 
 the heirs of the earth, or at least of so much of it as was 
 known by the name of North America, and were pre- 
 pared to struggle stoutly for the immediate possession 
 of their heritage. 
 
 One of Benton's earliest public utterances was in re- 
 gard to a matter which precisely illustrates this feeling. 
 It was while Missouri was still a Territory, and when 
 Benton, then a prominent member of the St. Louis bar, 
 had by his force, capacity, and power as a public speaker 
 already become well known among his future constitu- 
 ents. The treaty with Spain, by which we secured 
 Florida, was then before the Senate, which body had 
 to consider it several times, owing to the dull irresolu- 
 tion and sloth of the Spanish Government in ratifying 
 it. The bounds it gave us were far too narrow to suit 
 the more fiery Western spirits, and these cheered Ben- 
 ton to the echo when he attacked it in public with fierce 
 vehemence. "The magnificent valley of the Mississippi 
 is ours, with all its fountains, springs, and floods; and 
 woe to the statesman who shall undertake to surrender 
 one drop of its water, one inch of its soil to any foreign 
 power." So he said, his words ringing with the boastful 
 
 32 
 
EARLY LIFE 
 
 confidence so well liked by the masterful men of the 
 West, strong in their youth, and proudly conscious of 
 their strength. The treaty was ratified in the Senate, 
 nevertheless, all the old Southern States favoring it, 
 and the only votes at any stage recorded against it be- 
 ing of four Western senators, coming respectively from 
 Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Louisiana. So that in 
 1818, at any rate, the desire for territorial aggrandize- 
 ment at the expense of Spain or Mexico was common 
 to the West as a whole, both to the free and the slave 
 States, and was not exclusively favored by the Southern- 
 ers. The only effect of Benton's speech was to give 
 rise to the idea that he was hostile to the Southern and 
 Democratic administration at Washington, and against 
 this feeling he had to contend in the course of his suc- 
 cessful candidacy for the United States senatorship the 
 following year, when Missouri was claiming admittance 
 to the Union. 
 
 It was in reference to this matter of admitting Mis- 
 souri that the slavery question for the first time made 
 its appearance in national politics, where it threw every- 
 thing into confusion and for the moment overshadowed 
 all else; though it vanished almost as quickly as it had 
 appeared, and did not again come to the front for sev- 
 eral years. The Northerners, as a whole, desiring to 
 "restrict" the growth of slavery and the slave-power, 
 demanded that Missouri, before being admitted as a 
 State, should abolish slavery within her boundaries. 
 The South was equally determined that she should be 
 admitted as a slave State; and for the first time the 
 politicians of the country divided on geographical rather 
 than on party lines, though the division proved but 
 temporary, and was of but little interest except as fore- 
 shadowing what was to come a score of years later. 
 
 33 
 
THOMAS HART BENTON 
 
 Even within the territory itself the same contest was 
 carried on with the violence bred by political conflicts 
 in frontier States, there being a very respectable "re- 
 striction" party, which favored abolition. Benton was 
 himself a slaveholder, and as the question was in no 
 way one between the East and the West, or between 
 the Union as a whole and any part of it, he naturally 
 gave full swing to his Southern feelings, and entered 
 with tremendous vigor into the contest on the anti- 
 restriction side. So successful were his efforts, and so 
 great was the majority of the Missourians who sym- 
 pathized with him, that the restrictionists were com- 
 pletely routed and succeeded in electing but one dele- 
 gate to the constitutional convention. In Congress the 
 matter was finally settled by the passage of the famous 
 Missouri Compromise bill, a measure Southern in its 
 origin, but approved at the time by many if not most 
 Northerners, and disapproved by not a few Southerners. 
 Benton heartily believed in it, announcing somewhat 
 vaguely that he was "equally opposed to slavery agita- 
 tion and to slavery extension." By its terms Missouri 
 was admitted as a slave State, while slavery was abol- 
 ished in all the rest of the old province of Louisiana 
 lying north and west of it and north of the parallel of 
 36° 30'. Owing to an objectionable clause in its con- 
 stitution, the admission was not fully completed until 
 1821, and then only through the instrumentality of 
 Henry Clay. But Benton took his seat immediately, 
 and entered on his thirty years of service in the United 
 States Senate. His appearance in national politics was 
 thus coincident with the appearance of the question 
 which, it is true, almost immediately sank out of sight 
 for a period of fifteen years, but which then reappeared 
 to stay for good and to become of progressively absorb- 
 
 34 
 
EARLY LIFE 
 
 ing importance, until, combining itself with the still 
 greater question of national unity, it dwarfed all other 
 issues, cleft the West as well as the East asunder, and, 
 as one of its minor results, brought about the political 
 downfall of Benton himself and of his whole school in 
 what were called the Border States. 
 
 Before entering the Senate, Benton did something 
 which well illustrates his peculiar uprightness, and the 
 care which he took to keep his public acts free from the 
 least suspicion of improper influence. When he was at 
 the bar in St. Louis, real-estate litigation was much the 
 most important branch of legal business. The condition 
 of Missouri land titles was very mixed, since many of 
 them were based upon the thousands of "concessions" 
 of land made by the old French and Spanish govern- 
 ments, which had been ratified by Congress, but sub- 
 ject to certain conditions which the Creole inhabitants, 
 being ignorant and lawless, had generally failed to ful- 
 fil. By an act of Congress these inchoate claims were 
 to be brought before the United States recorder of land 
 titles ; and the Missouri bar were divided as to what ac- 
 tion should be taken on them, the majority insisting 
 that they should be held void, while Benton headed the 
 opposite party, which was averse to forfeiting property 
 on technical grounds, and advocated the confirmation 
 of every honest claim. Further and important legis- 
 lation was needed to provide for these claims. Benton, 
 being much the most influential member of the bar who 
 had advocated the confirmation of the claims, and being 
 so able, honest, and energetic, was the favorite counsel 
 of the claimants, and had hundreds of their titles under 
 his professional charge. Of course in such cases the 
 compensation of the lawyer depended solely upon 
 his success; and success to Benton would have meant 
 
 35 
 
THOMAS HART BENTON 
 
 wealth. Nevertheless, and though his action was 
 greatly to his own pecuniary hurt, the first thing he 
 did when elected senator was to convene his clients, 
 and tell them that henceforth he could have nothing 
 more to do, as their attorney, with the prosecution of 
 their claims, giving as his reason that their success 
 largely depended upon the action of Congress, of which 
 he was now himself a member, so that he was bound to 
 consult, not any private interest, but the good of the 
 community as a whole. He even refused to designate 
 his successor in the causes, saying that he was deter- 
 mined not only to be quite unbiassed in acting upon the 
 subject of these claims as senator, but not to have, nor 
 to be suspected of having, any personal interest in the 
 fate of any of them. Many a modern statesman might 
 most profitably copy his sensitiveness. 
 
 36 
 
CHAPTER III 
 EARLY YEARS IN THE SENATE 
 
 When Benton took his seat in the United States 
 Senate, Monroe, the last President of the great house 
 of Virginia, was about beginning his second term. He 
 was a courteous, high-bred gentleman, of no especial 
 ability, but well fitted to act as presidential figurehead 
 during the politically quiet years of that era of good 
 feeling which lasted from 1816 till 1824. The Federalist 
 party, after its conduct during the war, had vanished 
 into well-deserved obscurity, and though influences of 
 various sorts were working most powerfully to split the 
 dominant and all-embracing Democracy into factional 
 fragments, these movements had not yet come to a 
 head. 
 
 The slavery question, it cannot be too often said, was 
 as yet of little or no political consequence. The violent 
 excitement over the admission of Missouri had sub- 
 sided as quickly as it had arisen ; and though the Com- 
 promise bill was of immense importance in itself, and 
 still more as giving a hint of what was to come, it must 
 be remembered that its effect upon general politics, dur- 
 ing the years immediately succeeding its passage, was 
 slight. Later on, the slavery question became of such 
 paramount consequence, and so completely identified 
 with the movement for the dissolution of the Union, 
 that it seems impossible for even the best of recent his- 
 torians of American politics to understand that such 
 was not the case at this time. One writer of note even 
 goes so far as to state that "From the night of March 
 2, 1820, party history is made up without interruption 
 
 37 
 
THOMAS HART BENTON 
 
 or break of the development of geographical [the con- 
 text shows this to mean Northern and Southern] par- 
 ties." There is very little ground for such a sweeping 
 assertion until a considerable time after the date in- 
 dicated; indeed, it was more than ten years later before 
 any symptom of the development spoken of became at 
 all marked. Until then, parties divided even less on 
 geographical lines than had been the case earlier, dur- 
 ing the last years of the existence of the Federalists; 
 and what little division there was had no reference to 
 slavery. Nor was it till nearly a score of years after the 
 passage of the Missouri Compromise bill that the sepa- 
 ratist spirit began to identify itself for good with the 
 idea of the maintenance of slavery. Previously to that 
 there had been outbursts of separatist feeling in differ- 
 ent States, but always due to entirely different causes. 
 Georgia flared up in hot defiance of the federal govern- 
 ment, when the latter rubbed against her on the ques- 
 tion of removing the Cherokees from within her bor- 
 ders. But her having negro slaves did not affect her 
 feelings in the least, and her attitude was just such as 
 any Western State with Indians on its frontier is now 
 apt to assume so far as it dares — such an attitude as 
 Arizona, for example, would at this moment take in 
 reference to the Apaches, if she were able. Slavery was 
 doubtless remotely one of the irritating causes that 
 combined to work South Carolina up to a fever-heat of 
 insanity over the nullification excitement. But in its 
 immediate origin nullification arose from the outcry 
 against the protective tariff, and it is almost as unfair 
 to ascribe it in any way to the influence of slavery as 
 it would be to assign a similar cause for the Virginia 
 and Kentucky resolutions of 1798, or to say that the 
 absence of slavery was the reason for the abortively 
 
 38 
 
EARLY YEARS IN THE SENATE 
 
 disloyal agitation in New England, which culminated 
 in the Hartford Convention. The separatist feeling is 
 ingrained in the fibre of our race, and though in itself 
 a most dangerous failing and weakness, is yet merely 
 a perversion and distortion of the defiant and self- 
 reliant independence of spirit which is one of the chief 
 of the race virtues; and slavery was partly the cause 
 and partly merely the occasion of the abnormal growth 
 of the separatist movement in the South. Nor was the 
 tariff question so intimately associated with that of 
 slavery as has been commonly asserted. This might 
 be easily guessed from the fact that the originator and 
 chief advocate of a high tariff himself came from a slave 
 State, and drew many of his warmest supporters from 
 among the slaveholding sugar-planters. Except in the 
 futile discussion over the proposed Panama Congress 
 it was not till Benton's third senatorial term that slavery 
 became of really great weight in politics. 
 
 One of the first subjects that attracted Benton's at- 
 tention in the Senate was the Oregon question, and on 
 this he showed himself at once in his true character as 
 a Western man, proud alike of every part of his country, 
 and as desirous of seeing the West extended in a north- 
 erly as in a southerly direction. Himself a slaveholder, 
 from a slave State, he was one of the earliest and most 
 vehement advocates of the extension of our free terri- 
 tory northward along the Pacific coast. All the coun- 
 try stretching north and south of the Oregon River was 
 then held by the United States in joint possession with 
 Great Britain. But the whole region was still entirely 
 unsettled, and as a matter of fact our British rivals 
 were the only parties in actual occupation. The title 
 to the territory was doubtful, as must always be the 
 case when it rests upon the inaccurate maps of forgotten 
 
 39 
 
THOMAS HART BENTON 
 
 explorers, or upon the chance landings of stray sailors 
 and traders, especially if the land in dispute is unoc- 
 cupied and of vast but uncertain extent, of little present 
 value, and far distant from the powers claiming it. The 
 real truth is that such titles are of very little practical 
 value, and are rightly enough disregarded by any na- 
 tions strong enough to do so. Benton's intense Ameri- 
 canism, and his pride and confidence in his country and 
 in her unlimited capacity for growth of every sort, 
 gifted him with the power to look much farther into 
 the future, as regarded the expansion of the United 
 States, than did his colleagues; and moreover caused 
 him to consider the question from a much more far- 
 seeing and statesmanlike standpoint. The land be- 
 longed to no man, and yet was sure to become very 
 valuable; our title to it was not very good, but was 
 probably better than that of any one else. Sooner or 
 later it would be filled with the overflow of our popu- 
 lation, and would border on our dominion, and on our 
 dominion alone. It was therefore just, and moreover 
 in the highest degree desirable, that it should be made 
 a part of that dominion at the earliest possible moment. 
 Benton introduced a bill to enable the President to 
 terminate the arrangement with Great Britain and 
 make a definite settlement in our favor; and though the 
 Senate refused to pass it, yet he had the satisfaction of 
 bringing the subject prominently before the people, and, 
 moreover, of outlining the way in which it would have 
 to be and was finally settled. In one of his speeches on 
 the matter he said, using rather highflown language 
 (for he was unfortunately deficient in sense of humor) : 
 "Upon the people of Eastern Asia the establishment 
 of a civilized power on the opposite coast of America 
 could not fail to produce great and wonderful benefits. 
 
 40 
 
EARLY YEARS IN THE SENATE 
 
 Science, liberal principles in government, and the true 
 religion might cast their lights across the intervening 
 sea. The valley of the Columbia might become the 
 granary of China and Japan, and an outlet to their im- 
 prisoned and exuberant population." Could he have 
 foreseen how, in the future, the Americans of the val- 
 ley of the Columbia would greet the "imprisoned and 
 exuberant population" of China, he would probably 
 have been more doubtful as to the willingness of the 
 latter empire to accept our standard of the true religion 
 and liberal principles of government. In the course of 
 the same speech he for the first time, and by what was 
 then considered a bold flight of imagination, suggested 
 the possibility of sending foreign ministers to the Orien- 
 tal nations, to China, Japan, and Persia, "and even to 
 the Grand Turk." 
 
 Better success attended a bill he introduced to estab- 
 lish a trading road from Missouri through the Indian 
 country to New Mexico, which, after much debate, 
 passed both houses and was signed by President Mon- 
 roe. The road thus marked out and established became, 
 and remained for many years, a great thoroughfare, and 
 among the chief of the channels through which our for- 
 eign commerce flowed. Until Benton secured the en- 
 actment of this law, so important to the interests and 
 development of the West, the overland trade with 
 Mexico had been carried on by individual effort and 
 at the cost of incalculable hazard, hardship, and risk of 
 life. Mexico, with its gold and silver mines, its strange 
 physical features, its population utterly foreign to us in 
 race, religion, speech, and ways of life, and especially 
 because of the glamour of mystery which surrounded it 
 and partly shrouded it from sight, always dazzled and 
 strongly attracted the minds of the southwesterners, 
 
 41 
 
THOMAS HART BENTON 
 
 occupying much the same place in their thoughts that 
 the Spanish Main did in the imagination of England 
 during the reign of Elizabeth. The young men of the 
 Mississippi valley looked upon an expedition with one 
 of the bands of armed traders, who wound their way 
 across Indian-haunted wastes, through deep canyons 
 and over lofty mountain passes, to Santa Fe, Chihua- 
 hua, and Sonora, with the same feelings of eager excite- 
 ment and longing that were doubtless felt by some of 
 their forefathers more than two centuries previously in 
 regard to the cruises of Drake and Hawkins. The long 
 wagon-trains or pack-trains of the traders carried with 
 them all kinds of goods, but especially cotton, and 
 brought back gold and silver bullion, bales of furs and 
 droves of mules; and, moreover, they brought back 
 tales of lawless adventure, of great gains and losses, of 
 fights against Indians and Mexicans, and of triumphs 
 and privations, which still further inflamed the minds 
 of the Western men. Where they had already gone as 
 traders, who could on occasion fight, they all hoped on 
 some future day to go as warriors, who would acquire 
 gain by their conquests. These hopes were openly ex- 
 pressed, and with very little more idea of there being 
 any right or wrong in the matter than so many Norse 
 Vikings might have felt. The southwesterners are 
 credited with altogether too complex motives when it is 
 supposed that they were actuated in regard to the con- 
 quest of northern Mexico by a desire to provide for ad- 
 ditional slave States to offset the growth of the North; 
 their emotions in regard to their neighbor's land were 
 in the main perfectly simple and purely piratical. That 
 the Northeast did not share in the greed for new terri- 
 tory felt by the other sections of the country was due 
 partly to the decline in its militant spirit (a decline on 
 
 42 
 
EARLY YEARS IN THE SENATE 
 
 many accounts sincerely to be regretted) and partly 
 to its geographical situation, since it adjoined Canada, 
 an unattractive and already well-settled country, jeal- 
 ously guarded by the might of Great Britain. 
 
 Another question, on which Benton showed himself 
 to be thoroughly a representative of Western sentiment, 
 was the removal of the Indian tribes. Here he took a 
 most active and prominent part in reporting and favor- 
 ing the bills, and in advocating the treaties, by which 
 the Indian tribes of the South and West were forced or 
 induced (for the latter word was very frequently used 
 as a euphemistic synonym of the former) to abandon 
 great tracts of territory to the whites and to move far- 
 ther away from the boundaries of their ever-encroach- 
 ing civilization. Nor was his action wholly limited to 
 the Senate, for it was at his instance that General Clark, 
 at St. Louis, concluded the treaties with the Kansas 
 and Osage tribes, by which the latter surrendered to 
 the United States all the vast territory which they nom- 
 inally owned west of Missouri and Arkansas, except 
 small reserves for themselves. Benton, as was to be 
 expected, took the frontier view of the Indian question, 
 which, by the way, though often wrong, is much more 
 apt to be right than is the so-called humanitarian or 
 Eastern view. But, so far as was compatible with hav- 
 ing the Indians removed, he always endeavored to have 
 them kindly and humanely treated. There was, of 
 course, much injustice and wrong inevitably attendant 
 upon the Indian policy advocated by him, and by the 
 rest of the Southern and Western statesmen; but it is 
 difficult to see what other course could have been pur- 
 sued with most of the tribes. In the Western States 
 there were then sixty millions of acres of the best land, 
 owned in great tracts by barbarous or half-barbarous 
 
 43 
 
THOMAS HART BENTON 
 
 Indians, who were always troublesome and often dan- 
 gerous neighbors, and who did not come in any way 
 under the laws of the States in which they lived. The 
 States thus encumbered would evidently never have 
 been satisfied until all their soil was under their own 
 jurisdiction and open to settlement. The Cherokees 
 had advanced far on the road toward civilization, and 
 it was undoubtedly a cruel grief and wrong to take 
 them away from their homes; but the only alternative 
 would have been to deprive them of much of their 
 land, and to provide for their gradually becoming citi- 
 zens of the States in which they were. For a movement 
 of this sort the times were not then, and, unfortunately, 
 are not yet, ripe. 
 
 Much maudlin nonsense has been written about the 
 governmental treatment of the Indians, especially as 
 regards taking their land. For the simple truth is that 
 they had no possible title to most of the lands we took, 
 not even that of occupancy, and at the most were in 
 possession merely by virtue of having butchered the 
 previous inhabitants. For many of its actions toward 
 them the government does indeed deserve the severest 
 criticism; but it has erred quite as often on the side of 
 too much leniency as on the side of too much severity. 
 From the very nature of things, it was wholly impos- 
 sible that there should not be much mutual wrong- 
 doing and injury in the intercourse between the Indians 
 and ourselves. It was equally out of the question to 
 let them remain as they were, and to bring the bulk of 
 their number up to our standard of civilization with 
 sufficient speed to enable them to accommodate them- 
 selves to the changed condition of their surroundings. 
 The policy toward them advocated by Benton, which 
 was much the same as, although more humane than, 
 
 44 
 
EARLY YEARS IN THE SENATE 
 
 that followed by most other Western men who have had 
 practically to face the problem, worked harshly in many 
 instances, and was the cause of a certain amount of 
 temporary suffering. But it was infinitely better for 
 the nation, as a whole, and, in the end, was really more 
 just and merciful, than it would have been to attempt 
 following out any of the visionary schemes which the 
 more impracticable Indian enthusiasts are fond of rec- 
 ommending. 
 
 It was during Monroe's last term that Henry Clay 
 brought in the first protective tariff bill, as distinguished 
 from tariff bills to raise revenue with protection as an 
 incident only. It was passed by a curiously mixed vote, 
 which hardly indicated any one's future position on the 
 tariff excepting that of Clay himself; Massachusetts, 
 under the lead of Webster, joining hands with the 
 Southern seacoast States to oppose it, while Tennessee 
 and New York split, and Missouri and Kentucky, to- 
 gether with most of the North, favored it. Benton 
 voted for it, but on the great question of internal im- 
 provements he stood out clearly for the views that he 
 ever afterward held. This was first brought up by the 
 veto, on constitutional grounds, of the Cumberland 
 Road bill, which had previously passed both houses 
 with singular unanimity, Benton's vote being one of 
 the very few recorded against it. In regard to all such 
 matters Benton was strongly in favor of a strict con- 
 struction of the Constitution and of guarding the rights 
 of the States, in spite of his devoted attachment to the 
 Union. W^hile voting against this bill, and denying the 
 power or the right of the federal government to take 
 charge of improvements which would benefit one State 
 only, Benton was nevertheless careful to reserve to him- 
 self the right to support measures for improving national 
 
 45 
 
THOMAS HART BENTON 
 
 rivers or harbors yielding revenues. The trouble is, that 
 however much the two classes of cases may differ in 
 point of expediency, they overlap so completely that it 
 is wholly impossible to draw a hard and fast line be- 
 tween them, and the question of constitutionality, if 
 waived in the one instance, can scarcely with propriety 
 be raised in the other. 
 
 With the close of Monroe's second term the "era of 
 good feeling" came to an end, and the great Democrat- 
 ic-Republican party split up into several fragments, 
 which gradually crystallized round two centres. But 
 in 1824 this process was still incomplete, and the presi- 
 dential election of that year was a simple scramble be- 
 tween four different candidates — Jackson, Adams, Clay, 
 and Crawford. Jackson had the greatest number of 
 votes, but as no one had a majority, the election was 
 thrown into the House of Representatives, where the 
 Clay men, inasmuch as their candidate was out of the 
 race, went over to Adams and elected him. Benton 
 at the time, and afterward in his "Thirty Years' View," 
 inveighed against this choice as being a violation of 
 what he called the "principle demos krateo" — a bar- 
 barous phrase for which he had a great fondness, and 
 which he used and misused on every possible occasion, 
 whether in speaking or writing. He insisted that, as 
 Jackson had secured the plurality of the electoral vote, 
 it was the duty of the House of Representatives to 
 ratify promptly this "choice of the people." The Con- 
 stitution expressly provided that this need not be done. 
 So Benton, who on questions of States' rights and in- 
 ternal improvements was so pronounced a stickler for a 
 strict construction of the Constitution, here coolly as- 
 sumed the absurd position that the Constitution was 
 wrong on this particular point, and should be disre- 
 
 46 
 
EARLY YEARS IN THE SENATE 
 
 garded, on the ground that there was a struggle "be- 
 tween the theory of the Constitution and the demo- 
 cratic principle." His proposition was ridiculous. The 
 "democratic principle " had nothing more to do with the 
 matter than had the law of gravitation. Either the 
 Constitution was or it was not to be accepted as a seri- 
 ous document, that meant something; in the former 
 case the election of Adams was proper in every aspect, 
 in the latter it was unnecessary to have held any elec- 
 tion at all. 
 
 At this period every one was floundering about in 
 efforts to establish political relations, Benton not less 
 than others; for he had begun the canvass as a supporter 
 of Clay, and had then gone over to Crawford. But at 
 the end he had become a Jacksonian Democrat, and 
 during the rest of his political career he figured as the 
 most prominent representative of the Jacksonian De- 
 mocracy in the Senate. Van Buren himself, afterward 
 Jackson's prime favorite and political heir, was a Craw- 
 ford man during this campaign. 
 
 Adams, after his election, which was owing to Clay's 
 support, gave Clay the position of secretary of state in 
 his Cabinet. The affair unquestionably had an unfor- 
 tunate look, and the Jacksonians, especially Jackson, 
 at once raised a great hue and cry that there had been 
 a corrupt bargain. Benton, much to his credit, refused 
 to join in the outcry, stating that he had good and suf- 
 ficient reasons — which he gave — to be sure of its falsity; 
 a position which brought him into temporary disfavor 
 with many of his party associates, and which a man 
 who had Benton's ambition and bitter partisanship, 
 without having his sturdy pluck, would have hesitated 
 to take. The assault was directed with especial bitter- 
 ness against Clay, whom Jackson ever afterward in- 
 
 47 
 
THOMAS HART BENTON 
 
 eluded in the very large list of individuals whom he 
 hated with the most rancorous and unreasoning viru- 
 lence. Randolph of Roanoke, the privileged eccentric 
 of the Senate, in one of those long harangues in which 
 he touched upon everybody and everything, except pos- 
 sibly the point at issue, made a rabid onslaught upon 
 the Clay-Adams coalition as an alliance of "the blackleg 
 and the Puritan." Clay, who was susceptible enough 
 to the charge of loose living, but who was a man of 
 rigid honor and rather fond than otherwise of fighting, 
 promptly challenged him, and a harmless interchange 
 of shots took place. Benton was on the field as the 
 friend of both parties, and his account of the affair is 
 very amusing in its description of the solemn, hair- 
 splitting punctilio with which it is evident that both 
 Randolph and many of his contemporaries regarded 
 points of duelling honor, which to us seem either ab- 
 surd, trivial, or wholly incomprehensible. 
 
 Two tolerably well-defined parties now emerged from 
 the chaos of contending politicians: one was the party 
 of the administration, whose members called themselves 
 National Republicans, and later on Whigs; the other 
 was the Jacksonian Democracy. Adams's inaugural 
 address and first message outlined the Whig policy as 
 favoring a protective tariff, internal improvements, and 
 a free construction of the Constitution generally. The 
 Jacksonians accordingly took the opposite side on all 
 these points, partly from principle and partly from 
 perversity. In the Senate they assailed with turgid 
 eloquence every administration measure, whether it was 
 good or bad, very much of their opposition being purely 
 factious in character. There has never been a time 
 when there was more rabid, objectless, and unscrupu- 
 lous display of partisanship. Benton, little to his credit, 
 
 48 
 
EARLY YEARS IN THE SENATE 
 
 was a leader in these purposeless conflicts. The most 
 furious of them took place over the proposed Panama 
 mission. This was a scheme that originated in the fer- 
 tile brain of Henry Clay, whose Americanism was of a 
 type quite as pronounced as Benton's, and who was 
 always inclined to drag us into a position of hostility 
 to European powers. The Spanish-American States, 
 having succeeded in winning their independence from 
 Spain, were desirous of establishing some principle of 
 concert in action among the American republics as a 
 whole, and for this purpose proposed to hold an inter- 
 national congress at Panama. Clay's fondness for a 
 spirited and spectacular foreign policy made him grasp 
 eagerly at the chance of transforming the United States 
 into the head of an American league of free republics, 
 which would be a kind of cis-Atlantic offset to the Holy 
 Alliance of European despotisms. Adams took up the 
 idea, nominated ministers to the Panama Congress, and 
 gave his reasons for his course in a special message to 
 the Senate. The administration men drew the most 
 rosy and impossible pictures of the incalculable bene- 
 fits which would be derived from the proposed congress ; 
 and the Jacksonians attacked it with an exaggerated 
 denunciation that was even less justified by the facts. 
 Adams's message was properly open to attack on one 
 or two points; notably in reference to its proposals that 
 we should endeavor to get the Spanish-American States 
 to introduce religious tolerance within their borders. It 
 was certainly an unhappy suggestion that we should 
 endeavor to remove the mote of religious intolerance 
 from our brother's eye while indignantly resenting the 
 least allusion to the beam of slavery in our own. It was 
 on this very point of slavery that the real opposition 
 hinged. The Spanish States had emancipated their 
 
 49 
 
THOMAS HART BENTON 
 
 comparatively small negro populations, and, as is usu- 
 ally the case with Latin nations, did not have a very 
 strong caste feeling against the blacks, some of whom 
 accordingly had risen to high civic and military rank; 
 and they also proposed to admit to their congress the 
 negro republic of Hayti. Certain of the slaveholders of 
 the South fiercely objected to any such association ; and 
 on this occasion Benton for once led and voiced the 
 ultra-Southern feeling on the subject, announcing in his 
 speech that diplomatic intercourse with Hayti should 
 not even be discussed in the Senate-chamber, and that 
 we could have no association with republics who had 
 "black generals in their armies and mulatto senators in 
 their congresses." But this feeling on the part of the 
 slaveholders against the measure was largely, although 
 not wholly, spurious; and really had less to do with the 
 attitude of the Jacksonian Democrats than had a mere 
 factious opposition to Adams and Clay. This was 
 shown by the vote on the confirmation of the ministers, 
 when the senators divided on party and not on sec- 
 tional lines. The nominations were confirmed, but not 
 till after such a length of time that the ministers were 
 unable to reach Panama until after the congress had ad- 
 journed. 
 
 The Oregon question again came up during Adams's 
 term, the administration favoring the renewal of the 
 joint occupation convention, by which we held the coun- 
 try in common with Great Britain. There was not much 
 public feeling in the matter; in the East there was none 
 whatever. But Benton, when he opposed the renewal, 
 and claimed the whole territory as ours, gave expression 
 to the desires of all the Westerners who thought over 
 the subject at all. He was followed by only half a 
 dozen senators, all but one from the West, and from 
 
 50 
 
EARLY YEARS IN THE SENATE 
 
 both sides of the Ohio — Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, 
 Mississippi; the Northwest and Southwest as usual act- 
 ing together. 
 
 The vote on the protective tariff law of 1828 furnished 
 another illustration of the solidarity of the West. New 
 England had abandoned her free-trade position since 
 1824, and the North went strongly for the new tariff; 
 the Southern seacoast States, except Louisiana, opposed 
 it bitterly; and the bill was carried by the support of 
 the Western States, both the free and the slave. This 
 tariff bill was the first of the immediate irritating causes 
 which induced South Carolina to go into the nullifica- 
 tion movement. Benton's attitude on the measure was 
 that of a good many other men who, in their public 
 capacities, are obliged to appear as protectionists, but 
 who lack his frankness in stating their reasons. He 
 utterly disbelieved in and was opposed to the principle 
 of the bill, but as it had bid for and secured the interest 
 of Missouri by a heavy duty on lead, he felt himself 
 forced to support it; and so he announced his position. 
 He simply went with his State, precisely as did Webster, 
 the latter, in following Massachusetts' change of front 
 and supporting the tariff of 1828, turning a full and 
 complete somersault. Neither the one nor the other 
 was to blame. Free-traders are apt to look at the tariff 
 from a sentimental standpoint; but it is in reality purely 
 a business matter, and should be decided solely on 
 grounds of expediency. Political economists have 
 pretty generally agreed that protection is vicious in 
 theory and harmful in practice; but if the majority of 
 the people in interest wish it, and it affects only them- 
 selves, there is no earthly reason why they should not 
 be allowed to try the experiment to their hearts' con- 
 tent. The trouble is that it rarely does affect only them- 
 
 51 
 
THOMAS HART BENTON 
 
 selves; and in 1828 the evil was peculiarly aggravated 
 on account of the unequal way in which the proposed 
 law would affect different sections. It purported to 
 benefit the rest of the country, but it undoubtedly 
 worked real injury to the planter States, and there is 
 small ground for wonder that the irritation over it in 
 the region so affected should have been intense. 
 
 During Adams's term Benton began his fight for dis- 
 posing of the public lands to actual settlers at a small 
 cost. It was a move of enormous importance to the 
 whole West; and Benton's long and sturdy contest for 
 it, and for the right of pre-emption, entitle him to the 
 greatest credit. He never gave up the struggle, although 
 repulsed again and again, and at the best only partially 
 successful; for he had to encounter much opposition, 
 especially from the short-sighted selfishness of many of 
 the northeasterners, who wished to consider the public 
 lands purely as sources of revenue. He utterly opposed 
 the then existing system of selling land to the highest 
 bidder — a most hurtful practice; and objected to the 
 establishment of an arbitrary minimum price, which 
 practically kept all land below a certain value out of 
 the market altogether. He succeeded in establishing 
 the pre-emption system, and had the system of renting 
 public mines, etc., abolished; and he struggled for the 
 principle of giving land outright to settlers in certain 
 cases. As a whole, his theory of a liberal system of land 
 distribution was undoubtedly the correct one, and he 
 deserves the greatest credit for having pushed it as he 
 did. 
 
 52 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE ELECTION OF JACKSON, AND THE SPOILS 
 
 SYSTEM 
 
 In the presidential election of 1828 Jackson and 
 Adams were pitted against each other as the only candi- 
 dates before the people, and Jackson won an overwhelm- 
 ing victory. The followers of the two were fast develop- 
 ing respectively into Democrats and Whigs, and the 
 parties were hardening and taking shape, while the 
 dividing lines were being drawn more clearly and dis- 
 tinctly. But the contest was largely a personal one, and 
 Jackson's success was due to his own immense popular- 
 ity more than to any party principles which he was 
 supposed to represent. Almost the entire strength of 
 Adams was in the Northeast; but it is absolutely wrong 
 to assume, because of this fact, that the election even 
 remotely foreshadowed the way in which party lines 
 would be drawn in the coming sectional antagonism 
 over slavery. Adams led Jackson in the two slave States 
 of Maryland and Delaware; and in the free States out- 
 side of New England Jackson had an even greater lead 
 over Adams. East of the Alleghanies it may here and 
 there have been taken as in some sort a triumph of the 
 South over the North; but its sectional significance, 
 as far as it had any, really came from its being a victory 
 of the West over the East. Infinitely more important 
 than this was the fact that it represented the over- 
 whelmingly successful upheaval of the most extreme 
 Democratic elements in the community. 
 
 Until 1828 all the Presidents, and indeed almost all 
 
 53 
 
THOMAS HART BENTON 
 
 the men who took the lead in public life, alike in na- 
 tional and in State affairs, had been drawn from what in 
 Europe would have been called the 'upper classes." 
 They were mainly college-bred men of high social stand- 
 ing, as well educated as any in the community, usually 
 rich or at least well-to-do. Their subordinates in office 
 were of much the same material. It was believed, and 
 the belief was acted upon, that public life needed an 
 apprenticeship of training and experience. Many of 
 our public men had been able; almost all had been 
 honorable and upright. The change of parties in 1800, 
 when the Jeffersonian Democracy came in, altered the 
 policy of the government, but not the character of the 
 officials. In that movement, though Jefferson had be- 
 hind him the mass of the people as the rank and file of 
 his party, yet all his captains were still drawn from 
 among the men in the same social position as himself. 
 The Revolutionary War had been fought under the 
 leadership of the colonial gentry; and for years after it 
 was over the people, as a whole, felt that their interests 
 could be safely intrusted to and were identical with 
 those of the descendants of their revolutionary leaders. 
 The classes in which were to be found almost all the 
 learning, the talent, the business activity, and the in- 
 herited wealth and refinement of the country, had also 
 hitherto contributed much to the body of its rulers. 
 
 The Jacksonian Democracy stood for the revolt 
 against these rulers ; its leaders, as well as their followers, 
 all came from the mass of the people. The majority 
 of the voters supported Jackson because they felt he 
 was one of themselves, and because they understood 
 that his election would mean the complete overthrow 
 of the classes in power and their retirement from the 
 control of the government. There was nothing to be 
 
 54 
 
JACKSON AND THE SPOILS SYSTEM 
 
 said against the rulers of the day; they had served the 
 country and all its citizens well, and they were dis- 
 missed, not because the voters could truthfully allege 
 any wrong-doing whatsoever against them, but solely 
 because, in their purely private and personal feelings 
 and habits of life, they were supposed to differ from 
 the mass of the people. This was such an outrageously 
 absurd feeling that the very men who were actuated 
 by it, or who, like Benton, shaped and guided it, were 
 ashamed to confess the true reason of their actions, and 
 tried to cloak it behind an outcry, as vague and senseless 
 as it was clamorous, against "aristocratic corruption" 
 and other shadowy and spectral evils. Benton even 
 talked loosely of "retrieving the country from the de- 
 plorable condition in which the enlightened classes had 
 sunk it," although the country was perfectly prosper- 
 ous and in its usual state of quiet, healthy growth. On 
 the other hand, the opponents of Jackson indulged in 
 talk almost as wild, and fears even more extravagant 
 than his supporters' hopes; and the root of much of 
 their opposition lay in a concealed but still existent 
 caste antagonism to a man of Jackson's birth and bring- 
 ing up. In fact, neither side, in spite of all their loud 
 talk of American Republicanism, had yet mastered 
 enough of its true spirit to be able to see that so long 
 as public officers did their whole duty to all classes 
 alike, it was not in the least the affair of their constitu- 
 ents whether they chose to spend their hours of social 
 relaxation in their shirt-sleeves or in dress coats. 
 
 The change was a great one; it was not a change of 
 the policy under which the government was managed, 
 as in Jefferson's triumph, but of the men who controlled 
 it. The two great Democratic victories had little in 
 common; almost as little as had the two great leaders 
 
 55 
 
THOMAS HART BENTON 
 
 under whose auspices they were respectively won — and 
 few men were ever more unlike than the scholarly, 
 timid, and shifty doctrinaire, who supplanted the elder 
 Adams, and the ignorant, headstrong, and straight- 
 forward soldier, who was victor over the younger. That 
 the change was the deliberate choice of the great mass 
 of the people, and that it was one for the worse, was 
 then, and has been ever since, the opinion of most think- 
 ing men; certainly the public service then took its first 
 and greatest step in that downward career of progres- 
 sive debasement and deterioration which has only been 
 checked in our own days. But those who would, offhand, 
 decry the Democratic principle on this account would 
 do well to look at the nearly contemporaneous career 
 of the pet heroes of a transatlantic aristocracy before 
 passing judgment. A very charming English historian 
 of our day* has compared Wellington with Washington ; 
 it would have been far juster to have compared him 
 with Andrew Jackson. Both were men of strong, nar- 
 row minds and bitter prejudices, with few statesmanlike 
 qualities, who, for brilliant military services, were raised 
 to the highest civil positions in the gift of the State. 
 The feeling among the aristocratic classes of Great 
 Britain in favor of the Iron Duke was nearly as strong 
 and quite as unreasonable as was the homage paid by 
 their homelier kinsfolk across the Atlantic to Old Hick- 
 ory. Wellington's military successes were far greater, 
 for he had more chances; but no single feat of his sur- 
 passed the remarkable victory won against his ablest 
 lieutenant and choicest troops by a much smaller num- 
 ber of backwoods riflemen under Andrew Jackson. As 
 a statesman Wellington may have done less harm than 
 Jackson, for he had less influence; but he has no such 
 
 * Justin McCarthy. 
 
 56 
 
JACKSON AND THE SPOILS SYSTEM 
 
 great mark to his credit as the old Tennesseean's atti- 
 tude toward the Nullifiers. If Jackson's election is a 
 proof that the majority is not always right, Welling- 
 ton's elevation may be taken as showing that the minor- 
 ity, or a fraction thereof, is in its turn quite as likely to 
 be wrong. 
 
 This caste antagonism was the distinguishing feature 
 in the election of 1828, and the partially sectional char- 
 acter of the contest was due to the different degree of 
 development the caste spirit had reached in different 
 portions of the Union. In New England wealth was 
 quite evenly distributed, and education and intelligence 
 were nearly universal; so there the antagonism was 
 slight, the bulk of the New England vote being given, 
 as usually before and since, in favor of the right candi- 
 date. In the Middle States, on the contrary, the antag- 
 onism was very strong. In the South it was of but 
 little political account as between the whites them- 
 selves, they all being knit together by the barbarous 
 bond of a common lordship of race; and here the feel- 
 ing for Jackson was largely derived from the close kin- 
 ship still felt for the West. In the West itself, where 
 Jackson's great strength lay, the people were still too 
 much on the same plane of thought as well as of ma- 
 terial prosperity, and the wealthy and cultivated classes 
 were of too limited extent to admit of much caste feeling 
 against the latter; and, accordingly, instead of hos- 
 tility to them, the Western caste spirit took the form 
 of hostility to their far more numerous representatives 
 who had hitherto formed the bulk of the political rulers 
 of the East. 
 
 New England was not only the most advanced por- 
 tion of the Union, as regards intelligence, culture, and 
 general prosperity, but was also most disagreeably 
 
 57 
 
THOMAS HART BENTON 
 
 aware of the fact, and was possessed with a self-con- 
 scious virtue that was peculiarly irritating to the West- 
 erners, who knew that they were looked down upon, 
 and savagely resented it on every occasion; and, be- 
 sides, New England was apt to meddle in affairs that 
 more nearly concerned other localities. Several of Ben- 
 ton's speeches, at this time, show this irritation against 
 the Northeast, and also incidentally bring out the 
 solidarity of interest felt throughout the West. In a 
 long and able speech, favoring the repeal of the iniqui- 
 tous "salt tax," or high duty on imported salt (a great 
 hobby of his, in which, after many efforts, he was 
 finally successful), he brought out the latter point very 
 strongly, besides complaining of the disproportionate 
 lightness of the burden imposed upon the Northeast by 
 the high tariff, of which he announced himself to be but 
 a moderate adherent. In common with all other West- 
 ern statesmen, he resented keenly the suspicion with 
 which the Northeast was then only too apt to regard the 
 West, quoting in one of his speeches with angry resent- 
 ment a prevalent New England sneer at "the savages 
 beyond the Alleghanies." At the time we are speaking 
 of it must be remembered that many even of the most 
 advanced Easterners were utterly incapable of appre- 
 ciating the almost limitless capacity of their country 
 for growth and expansion, being in this respect far be- 
 hind their Western brethren; indeed, many regarded 
 the acquisition of any new territory in the West with 
 alarm and regret, as tending to make the Union of such 
 unwieldy size that it would break of its own weight. 
 
 Benton was the leading opponent of a proposal, intro- 
 duced by Senator Foot, of Connecticut, to inquire into 
 the expediency of limiting the sales of public lands to 
 such lands as were then in the market. The limitation 
 
 58 
 
JACKSON AND THE SPOILS SYSTEM 
 
 would have been most injurious to the entire West, 
 which was thus menaced by the action of a New Eng- 
 lander, while Benton appeared as the champion of the 
 whole section, North and South alike, in the speech 
 wherein he strenuously and successfully opposed the 
 adoption of the resolution, and at the same time bitterly 
 attacked the quarter of the country from which it came, 
 as having from the earliest years opposed everything 
 that might advance the interests of the people beyond 
 the Alleghanies. Webster came to the assistance of the 
 mover of the measure in a speech wherein, among other 
 things, he claimed for the North the merit of the passage 
 of the Ordinance of 1787, in relation to the Northwest 
 Territory, and especially of the antislavery clause there- 
 in contained. But Benton here caught him tripping, 
 and in a very good speech showed that he was com- 
 pletely mistaken in his facts. The debate now, how- 
 ever, completely left the point at issue, taking a bitterly 
 sectional turn, and giving rise to the famous contro- 
 versy between Hayne, of South Carolina, who for the 
 first time on the floor of the Senate announced the doc- 
 trine of nullification, and Webster, who, in response to 
 his antagonist, voiced the feeling of the Union men of 
 the North in that wonderful and magnificent speech 
 known ever since under the name of the "Reply to 
 Hayne," and the calling forth of which will hencefor- 
 ward be Hayne's sole title to fame. Benton, though 
 himself a strong Union and antinullification man, was 
 still too excited over the subject-matter of the bill and 
 the original discussion over it to understand that the 
 debate had ranged off upon matters of infinitely greater 
 importance, and entirely failed to realize that he had 
 listened to the greatest piece of oratory of the century. 
 On the contrary, encouraged by his success earlier in 
 
 59 
 
THOMAS HART BENTON 
 
 the debate, he actually attempted a kind of reply to 
 Webster, attacking him with invective and sarcasm as 
 an alarmist, and taunting him with the memory of the 
 Hartford Convention, which had been held by mem- 
 bers of the Federalist party, to which Webster himself 
 had once belonged. Benton afterward became con- 
 vinced that Webster's views were by no means those 
 of a mere alarmist, and frankly stated that he had been 
 wrong in his position; but at the time, heated by his 
 original grievance, as a Western man, against New Eng- 
 land, he failed entirely to understand the true drift of 
 Ilayne's speech. Much of New England's policy to the 
 West was certainly excessively narrow-minded. 
 
 Jackson's administration derives a most unenviable 
 notoriety as being the one under which the "spoils sys- 
 tem" became, for the first time, grafted on the civil 
 service of the nation; appointments and removals in 
 the public service being made dependent upon political 
 qualifications, and not, as hitherto, upon merit or ca- 
 pacity. Benton, to his honor, always stoutly opposed 
 this system. It is unfair to assert that Jackson was the 
 originator of this method of appointment; but he was 
 certainly its foster-father, and more than any one else 
 is responsible for its introduction into the affairs of the 
 national government. Despite all the Eastern sneers at 
 the "savages" of the West, it was from Eastern men 
 that this most effective method of debauching political 
 life came. The Jacksonian Democrats of the West, 
 when they introduced it into the working of the federal 
 government, simply copied the system which they 
 found already firmly established by their Eastern allies 
 in New York and Pennsylvania. For many years the 
 course of politics throughout the country had been pre- 
 paring and foreshadowing the advent of the "spoils 
 
 60 
 
JACKSON AND THE SPOILS SYSTEM 
 
 system." The greatest single stroke in its favor had 
 been done at the instigation of Crawford, when that 
 scheming politician was seeking the presidency, and, 
 to further his ends, he procured the passage by Con- 
 gress of a law limiting the term of service of all public 
 officials to four years, thus turning out of office all the 
 fifty thousand public servants during each presidential 
 term. This law has never been repealed, every low 
 politician being vitally interested in keeping it as it is, 
 and accordingly it is to be found on the statute-books 
 at the present day; and though it has the company of 
 some other very bad measures, it still remains very 
 much the worst of all, as regards both the evil it has 
 done and that which it is still doing. This four years' 
 limitation law was passed without comment or protest, 
 every one voting in its favor, its probable working not 
 being comprehended in the least. Says Benton, who, 
 with all his colleagues, voted for it: "The object of the 
 law was to pass the disbursing officers every four years 
 under the supervision of the appointing power, for the 
 inspection of their accounts, in order that defaulters 
 might be detected and dropped, while the faithful 
 should be ascertained and continued. ... It was 
 found to operate contrary to its intent, and to have 
 become the facile means of getting rid of faithful dis- 
 bursing officers, instead of retaining them." New York 
 has always had a low political standard, one or the 
 other of its great party and factional organizations, and 
 often both or all of them, being at all times most un- 
 lovely bodies of excessively unwholesome moral tone. 
 Aaron Burr introduced the "spoils system" into her 
 State affairs, and his methods were followed and im- 
 proved upon by Marcy, Wright, Van Buren, and all 
 the "Albany Regency." In 1829 these men found 
 
 61 
 
THOMAS HART BENTON 
 
 themselves an important constituent portion of the win- 
 ning party, and immediately, by the help of the only 
 too willing Jackson, proceeded to apply their system 
 to affairs at Washington. It was about this time that, 
 in the course of a debate in the Senate, Marcy gave 
 utterance to the now notorious maxim, "To the victors 
 belong the spoils." 
 
 Under Adams the non-partisan character of the public 
 service had been guarded with a scrupulous care that 
 could almost be called exaggerated. Indeed, Adams 
 certainly went altogether too far in his non-partisanship 
 when it came to appointing Cabinet and other high of- 
 ficers, his views on such points being not only fantastic, 
 but absolutely wrong. The colorless character of his 
 administration was largely due to his having, in his 
 anxiety to avoid blind and unreasoning adherence to 
 party, committed the only less serious fault of paying 
 too little heed to party; for a healthy party spirit is pre- 
 requisite to the performance of effective work in Amer- 
 ican political life. Adams was not elected purely for 
 himself, but also on account of the men and the prin- 
 ciples that he was supposed to represent; and when he 
 partly surrounded himself with men of opposite prin- 
 ciples, he just so far, though from the best of motives, 
 betrayed his supporters, and rightly forfeited much of 
 their confidence. But, under him, every public servant 
 felt that, so long as he faithfully served the State, his 
 position was secure, no matter what his political opin- 
 ions might be. 
 
 With the incoming of the Jacksonians all this 
 changed, and terribly for the worse. A perfect reign 
 of terror ensued among the office-holders. In the first 
 month of the new administration more removals took 
 place than during all the previous administrations put 
 
 62 
 
JACKSON AND THE SPOILS SYSTEM 
 
 together. Appointments were made with little or no 
 attention to fitness, or even honesty, but solely because 
 of personal or political services. Removals were not 
 made in accordance with any known rule at all; the 
 most frivolous pretexts were sufficient, if advanced by 
 useful politicians who needed places already held by 
 capable incumbents. Spying and talebearing became 
 prominent features of official life, the meaner office- 
 holders trying to save their own heads by denouncing 
 others. The very best men were unceremoniously and 
 causelessly dismissed ; gray-headed clerks, who had been 
 appointed by the earlier Presidents — by Washington, 
 the elder Adams, and Jefferson — being turned off at an 
 hour's notice, although a quarter of a century's faithful 
 work in the public service had unfitted them to earn 
 their living elsewhere. Indeed, it was upon the best 
 and most efficient men that the blow fell heaviest; the 
 spies, talebearers, and tricksters often retained their 
 positions. In 1829 the public service was, as it always 
 had been, administered purely in the interest of the 
 people ; and the man who was styled the especial cham- 
 pion of the people dealt that service the heaviest blow 
 it has ever received. 
 
 Benton himself always took a sound stand on the 
 civil service question, although his partisanship led him 
 at times to defend Jackson's course when he must have 
 known well that it was indefensible. He viewed with 
 the greatest alarm and hostility the growth of the 
 "spoils system," and early introduced, as chairman of 
 a special committee, a bill to repeal the harmful four 
 years' limitation act. In discussing this proposed bill 
 afterward, he wrote, in words that apply as much at 
 this time as they did then: "The expiration of the four 
 years' term came to be considered as the termination 
 
 63 
 
THOMAS HART BENTON 
 
 and vacation of all the offices on which it fell, and the 
 creation of vacancies to be filled at the option of the 
 president. The bill to remedy this defect gave legal 
 effect to the original intention of the law by confining 
 the vacation of office to actual defaulters. The power 
 of the president to dismiss civil officers was not at- 
 tempted to be curtailed, but the restraints of respon- 
 sibility were placed upon its exercise by requiring the 
 cause of dismission to be communicated to Congress in 
 each case. The section of the bill to that effect was in 
 these words : That in all nominations made by the presi- 
 dent to the Senate, to fill vacancies occasioned by an exer- 
 cise of the president's power to remove from office, the fact 
 of the removal shall be stated to the Senate at the same time 
 that the nomination is made, with a statement of the reasons 
 for which such officer may have been removed. This was 
 intended to operate as a restraint upon removals with- 
 out cause." 
 
 In the "Thirty Years' View" he again writes, in lan- 
 guage which would be appropriate from every advanced 
 civil service reformer of the present day, that is, from 
 every disinterested man who has studied the workings 
 of the "spoils system" with any intelligence: 
 
 "I consider 'sweeping' removals, as now practised 
 by both parties, a great political evil in our country, 
 injurious to individuals, to the public service, to the 
 purity of elections, and to the harmony and union of 
 the people. Certainly no individual has a right to an 
 office; no one has an estate or property in a public em- 
 ployment; but when a mere ministerial worker in a sub- 
 ordinate station has learned its duties by experience and 
 approved his fidelity by his conduct, it is an injury to 
 the public service to exchange him for a novice whose 
 only title to the place may be a political badge or parti- 
 
 64 
 
JACKSON AND THE SPOILS SYSTEM 
 
 san service. It is exchanging experience for inexperi- 
 ence, tried ability for untried, and destroying the in- 
 centive to good conduct by destroying its reward. To 
 the party displaced it is an injury, he having become a 
 proficient in that business, expecting to remain in it 
 during good behavior, and finding it difficult, at an ad- 
 vanced age, and with fixed habits, to begin a new career 
 in some new walk of life. It converts elections into 
 scrambles for office, and degrades the government into 
 an office for rewards and punishments; and divides the 
 people of the Union into two adverse parties, each in 
 its turn, and as it becomes dominant, to strip and pro- 
 scribe the other." 
 
 Benton had now taken the position which he was for 
 many years to hold, as the recognized senatorial leader 
 of a great and well-defined party. Until 1828 the promi- 
 nent political chiefs of the nation had either been its 
 Presidents, or had been in the Cabinets of these Presi- 
 dents. But after Jackson's time they were in the Sen- 
 ate, and it was on this body that public attention was 
 concentrated. Jackson's Cabinet itself showed such a 
 falling off, when compared with the Cabinets of any of 
 his predecessors, as to justify the caustic criticism that, 
 when he took office, there came in "the millennium of 
 the minnows." In the Senate, on the contrary, there 
 were never before or since so many men of commanding 
 intellect and powers. Calhoun had been elected as Vice- 
 President on the Jacksonian ticket, and was thus, in 
 1829, presiding over the body of which he soon became 
 an active member; Webster and Clay were already tak- 
 ing their positions as the leaders of the great National 
 Republican, or, as it was afterward called, Whig party. 
 When the rupture between Calhoun and the Jack- 
 sonian Democrats, and the resignation of the former 
 
 65 
 
THOMAS HART BENTON 
 
 from the vice-presidency took place, three parties de- 
 veloped in the United States Senate. One was com- 
 posed of the Jacksonian Democrats, with Benton at 
 their head; one was made up of the little band of Nulli- 
 fies, led by Calhoun; and the third included the rather 
 loose array of the Whigs, under Clay and Webster. 
 The feeling of the Jacksonians toward Calhoun and the 
 Nullifiers and toward Clay and the Clay Whigs were 
 largely those of personal animosity; but they had very 
 little of this sentiment toward Webster and his asso- 
 ciates, their differences with them being on questions 
 of party principle, or else proceeding from merely sec- 
 tional causes. 
 
 66 
 
CHAPTER V 
 THE STRUGGLE WITH THE NULLIFIERS 
 
 During both Jackson's presidential terms he and 
 his adherents were engaged in two great struggles; that 
 with the Nullifiers, and that with the Bank. Although 
 these struggles were in part synchronous, it will be 
 easier to discuss each by itself. 
 
 The nullification movement in South Carolina, dur- 
 ing the latter part of the third and early part of the 
 fourth decades in the present century, had nothing to 
 do, except in the most distant way, with slavery. Its 
 immediate cause was the high tariff; remotely it sprang 
 from the same feelings which produced the Virginia and 
 Kentucky resolutions of 1798. 
 
 Certain of the slave States, including those which 
 raised hemp, indigo, and sugar, were high-tariff States; 
 indeed, it was not till toward the close of the presidency 
 of Monroe that there had been much sectional feeling 
 over the policy of protection. Originally, while we were 
 a purely agricultural and mercantile people, free trade 
 was the only economic policy which occurred to us as 
 possible to be followed, the first tariff bill being passed 
 in 1816. South Carolina then was inclined to favor the 
 system, Calhoun himself supporting the bill, and, his 
 subsequent denials to the contrary notwithstanding, 
 distinctly advocating the policy of protection to native 
 industries; while Massachusetts then and afterward 
 stoutly opposed its introduction, as hostile to her in- 
 terests. However, the bill was passed, and Massachu- 
 setts had to submit to its operation. After 1816 new 
 
 67 
 
THOMAS HART BENTON 
 
 tariff laws were enacted about every four years, and 
 soon the coast slave States, except Louisiana, realized 
 that their working was hurtful to the interests of the 
 planters. New England also changed her attitude; and 
 when the protective tariff bill of 1828 came up, its op- 
 ponents and supporters were sharply divided by sec- 
 tional lines. But these lines were not such as would 
 have divided the States on the question of slavery. The 
 Northeast and Northwest alike favored the measure, 
 as also did all the Southern States west of the Alle- 
 ghanies and Louisiana. It was therefore passed by an 
 overwhelming vote, against the solid opposition of the 
 belt of Southern coast States stretching from Virginia 
 to Mississippi, and including these two. 
 
 The States that felt themselves harmed by the tariff 
 did something more than record their disapproval by 
 the votes of their representatives in Congress. They 
 nearly all, through their legislatures, entered emphatic 
 protests against its adoption, as being most harmful to 
 them and dangerous to the Union; and some accom- 
 panied their protests with threats as to what would be 
 done if the obnoxious laws should be enforced. They 
 certainly had grounds for discontent. In 1828 the tariff, 
 whether it benefited the country as a whole or not, un- 
 questionably harmed the South; and in a federal Union 
 it is most unwise to pass laws which shall benefit one 
 part of the community to the hurt of another part, when 
 the latter receives no compensation. The truculent and 
 unyielding attitude of the extreme protectionists was 
 irritating in the extreme; for cooler men than the South 
 Carolinians might well have been exasperated at such 
 an utterance as that of Henry Clay, when he stated 
 that for the sake of the "American system" — by which 
 title he was fond of styling a doctrine already ancient 
 
 68 
 
STRUGGLE WITH THE NULLIFIERS 
 
 in mediaeval times — he would "defy the South, the 
 president and the devil." 
 
 On the other hand, both the good and the evil effects 
 of the tariff were greatly exaggerated. Some harm to 
 the planter States was doubtless caused by it; but their 
 falling back, as compared with the North, in the race 
 for prosperity, was doubtless caused much more by the 
 presence of slavery, as Dallas, of Pennsylvania, pointed 
 out in the course of some very temperate and moderate 
 remarks in the Senate. Clay's assertions as to what the 
 tariff had done for the West were equally ill founded, 
 as Benton showed in a good speech, wherein he de- 
 scribed picturesquely enough the industries and general 
 condition of his portion of the country, and asserted 
 with truth that its revived prosperity was due to its 
 own resources, entirely independent of federal aid or 
 legislation. He said: "I do not think we are indebted 
 to the high tariff for our fertile lands and our navigable 
 rivers; and I am certain we are indebted to these bless- 
 ings for the prosperity we enjoy." "In all that comes 
 from the soil the people of the West are rich. They 
 have an abundant supply of food for man and beast, 
 and a large surplus to send abroad. They have the 
 comfortable living which industry creates for itself in 
 a rich soil, but beyond this they are poor. . . . They 
 have no roads paved or macadamized; no canals or 
 aqueducts; no bridges of stone across the innumerable 
 streams; no edifices dedicated to eternity; no schools 
 for the fine arts ; not a public library for which an ordi- 
 nary scholar would not apologize." Then he went on 
 to speak of the commerce of the West and its exports, 
 "the marching myriads of living animals annually tak- 
 ing their departure from the heart of the West, defiling 
 through the gorges of the Cumberland, the Alleghany, 
 
 69 
 
THOMAS HART BENTON 
 
 and the Appalachian mountains, or traversing the plains 
 of the South, diverging as they inarch, . . . and the 
 flying steamboats and the fleets of floating arks, loaded 
 with the products of the forest, the farm, and the pas- 
 ture, following the courses of our noble rivers, and bear- 
 ing their freights to the great city" of New Orleans. 
 
 Unfortunately Benton would interlard even his best 
 speeches with theories of economics often more or less 
 crude, and, still worse, with a series of classic quota- 
 tions and allusions; for he was grievously afflicted with 
 the rage for cheap pseudoclassicism that Jefferson and 
 his school had borrowed from the French revolutionists. 
 Nor could he resist the temptation to drag in allusions 
 to some favorite hobby. The repeal of the salt tax was 
 an especial favorite of his. He was perfectly right in 
 attacking the tax, and deserves the greatest credit for 
 the persistency which finally won him the victory. But 
 his associates, unless of a humorous turn of mind, must 
 have found his allusions to it rather tiresome, as when, 
 apropos of the commerce of the Mississippi, and with- 
 out any possible excuse for speaking of the iniquity of 
 taxing salt, he suddenly alluded to New Orleans as 
 'that great city which revives upon the banks of the 
 Mississippi the name of the greatest of the emperors* 
 that ever reigned upon the banks of the Tiber, and who 
 eclipsed the glory of his own heroic exploits by giving 
 an order to his legions never to levy a contribution of 
 salt upon a Roman citizen !" 
 
 It must be admitted that the tariff did some harm 
 to the South, and that it was natural for the latter to 
 feel resentment at the way in which it worked. But it 
 must also be remembered that no law can be passed 
 which does not distribute its benefits more or less un- 
 
 * Aurelian. 
 
 70 
 
STRUGGLE WITH THE NULLIFIERS 
 
 equally, and which does not, in all probability, work 
 harm in some cases. Moreover, the South was estopped 
 from complaining of one section being harmed by a law 
 that benefited, or was supposed to benefit, the country 
 at large, by her position in regard to the famous em- 
 bargo and non-importation acts. These inflicted infi- 
 nitely more damage and loss in New England than any 
 tariff law could inflict on South Carolina, and, more- 
 over, were put into execution on account of a quarrel 
 with England forced on by the West and South con- 
 trary to the desire of the East. Yet the Southerners 
 were fierce in their denunciations of such of the Federal- 
 ists as went to the extreme in opposition to them. Even 
 in 1816 Massachusetts had been obliged to submit with 
 good grace to the workings of a tariff which she deemed 
 hostile to her interests, and which many Southerners 
 then advocated. Certainly, even if the new tariff laws 
 were ill advised, unjust, and unequal in their working, 
 yet they did not, in the most remote degree, justify any 
 effort to break up the Union; especially the South had 
 no business to complain when she herself had joined in 
 laying heavier burdens on the shoulders of New England. 
 Complain she did, however; and soon added threats 
 to complaints, and was evidently ready to add acts to 
 threats. Georgia, at first, took the lead in denunciation ; 
 but South Carolina soon surpassed her, and finally went 
 to the length of advocating and preparing for separa- 
 tion from the Union; a step that produced a revulsion 
 of feeling even among her fellow antitariff States. The 
 South Carolinian statesmen now proclaimed the doc- 
 trine of nullification — that is, proclaimed that if any 
 State deemed a federal law improper, it could proceed 
 to declare that law null and void so far as its own terri- 
 tory was concerned — and, as a corollary, that it had 
 
 71 
 
THOMAS HART BENTON 
 
 the right forcibly to prevent execution of this void law 
 within its borders. This was proclaimed, not as an 
 exercise of the right of revolution, which, in the last 
 resort, belongs, of course, to every community and 
 class, but as a constitutional privilege. Jefferson was 
 quoted as the father of the idea, and the Kentucky reso- 
 lutions of 1798-99, which he drew, were cited as the 
 precedent for the South Carolinian action. In both 
 these last assertions the Nullifiers were correct. Jeffer- 
 son was the father of nullification, and therefore of seces- 
 sion. He used the word "nullify" in the original draft 
 which he supplied to the Kentucky legislature, and 
 though that body struck it out of the resolutions which 
 they passed in 1798, they inserted it in those of the fol- 
 lowing year. This was done mainly as an unscrupulous 
 party move on Jefferson's part, and when his side came 
 into power he became a firm upholder of the Union; 
 and, being constitutionally unable to put a proper value 
 on truthfulness, he even denied that his resolutions 
 could be construed to favor nullification — though they 
 could by no possibility be construed to mean anything 
 else. 
 
 At this time it is not necessary to discuss nullification 
 as a constitutional dogma; it is an absurdity too great 
 to demand serious refutation. The United States has 
 the same right to protect itself from death by nullifica- 
 tion, secession, or rebellion that a man has to protect 
 himself from death by assassination. Calhoun's hair- 
 splitting and metaphysical disquisitions on the constitu- 
 tionality of nullification have now little more practical 
 interest than have the extraordinary arguments and dis- 
 cussions of the schoolmen of the Middle Ages. 
 
 But at the time they were of vital interest, for they 
 were words which it was known South Carolina was 
 
 72 
 
STRUGGLE WITH THE NULLIFIERS 
 
 prepared to back up by deeds. Calhoun was Vice-Presi- 
 dent, the second officer in the federal government, and 
 yet also the avowed leader of the most bitter disunion- 
 ists. His State supported him by an overwhelming ma- 
 jority, although even within its own borders there was 
 an able opposition, headed by the gallant and loyal 
 family of the Dray tons — the same family that after- 
 ward furnished the captain of Farragut's flag-ship, the 
 glorious old Hartford. There was a strong sentiment in 
 the other Southern States in his favor; the public men 
 of South Carolina made speech after speech goading 
 him on to take even more advanced ground. 
 
 In Washington the current at first seemed to be all 
 setting in favor of the Nullifiers ; they even counted on 
 Jackson's support, as he was a Southerner and a States'- 
 rights man. But he was also a strong Unionist, and, 
 moreover, at this time, felt very bitterly toward Cal- 
 houn, with whom he had just had a split, and had in 
 consequence remodelled his Cabinet, thrusting out all 
 Calhoun's supporters, and adopting Van Buren as his 
 political heir — the position which it was hitherto sup- 
 posed the great Carolina separatist occupied. 
 
 The first man to take up the gantlet the Nullifiers 
 had thrown down was Webster, in his famous reply to 
 Hayne. He, of course, voiced the sentiment of the 
 Whigs, and especially of the Northeast, where the high 
 tariff was regarded with peculiar favor, where the 
 Union feeling was strong, and where there was a cer- 
 tain antagonism felt toward the South. The Jacksonian 
 Democrats, whose strength lay in the West, had not yet 
 spoken. They were, for the most part, neither ultra- 
 protectionists nor absolute free-traders; Jackson's early 
 presidential utterances had given offense to the South 
 by not condemning all high-tariff legislation, but at the 
 
 73 
 
THOMAS HART BENTON 
 
 same time had declared in favor of a much more mod- 
 erate degree of protection than suited the Whigs. Only 
 a few weeks after Webster's speech Jackson's chance 
 came, and he declared himself in unmistakable terms. 
 It was on the occasion of the Jefferson birthday ban- 
 quet, April 13, 1830. An effort was then being made 
 to have Jefferson's birthday celebrated annually; and 
 the Nullifiers, rightly claiming him as their first and 
 chief apostle, attempted to turn this particular feast 
 into a demonstration in favor of nullification. Most of 
 the speakers present were actively or passively in favor 
 of the movement, and the toasts proposed strongly 
 savored of the new doctrine. But Jackson, Benton, 
 and a number of other Union men were in attendance 
 also, and when it came to Jackson's turn he electrified 
 the audience by proposing: "Our federal Union; it 
 must be preserved." Calhoun at once answered with: 
 "The Union; next to our liberty the most dear; may we 
 all remember that it can only be preserved by respect- 
 ing the rights of the states and distributing equally the 
 benefit and burden of the Union." The issue between 
 the President and the Vice-President was now complete, 
 and the Jacksonian Democracy was squarely committed 
 against nullification. Jackson had risen to the occasion 
 as only a strong and a great man could rise, and his 
 few, telling words, finely contrasting at every point with 
 Calhoun's utterances, rang throughout the whole coun- 
 try, and will last as long as our government. One re- 
 sult, at least, the Nullifiers accomplished — they com- 
 pletely put an end to the Jefferson birthday celebra- 
 tions. 
 
 The South Carolinians had no intention of flinching 
 from the contest which they had provoked, even when 
 they saw that the North and West were united against 
 
 74 
 
STRUGGLE WITH THE NIJLLIFIERS 
 
 them, and though the tide began to set the same way 
 in their sister States of the South; North Carolina, 
 among the latter, being the first and most pronounced 
 in her support of the President and denunciation of the 
 Nullifiers. The men of the Palmetto State have always 
 ranked high for hot-headed courage, and they soon 
 showed that they had wills as fiery as that of Jackson 
 himself. Yet in the latter they had met an antagonist 
 well worthy of any foeman's steel. In declining an in- 
 vitation to be present at Charleston, on July 4, 1831, 
 the President again defined most clearly his position in 
 favor of the Union, and his words had an especial sig- 
 nificance because he let it be seen that he was fully de- 
 termined to back them up by force if necessary. But 
 his letter only had the effect of inflaming still more the 
 minds of the South Carolinians. The prime cause of 
 irritation, the tariff, still remained; and in 1832, Clay, 
 having entered the Senate after a long retirement from 
 politics, put the finishing stroke to their anger by pro- 
 curing the passage of a new tariff bill, which left the 
 planter States almost as badly off as did the law of 1828. 
 Jackson signed this, although not believing that it went 
 far enough in the reduction of duties. 
 
 In the presidential election of 1832, Jackson defeated 
 Clay by an enormous majority; Van Buren was elected 
 Vice-President, there being thus a Northern man on the 
 ticket. South Carolina declined to take part in the 
 election, throwing away her vote. Again, it must be 
 kept in mind that the slave question did not shape, or, 
 indeed, enter into this contest at all, directly, although 
 beginning to be present in the background as a source 
 of irritation. In 1832 there was tenfold more feeling in 
 the North against Masonry, and secret societies gen- 
 erally, than there was against slavery. 
 
 75 
 
THOMAS HART BENTON 
 
 Benton threw himself in, heart and soul, with the 
 Union party, acting as Jackson's right-hand man 
 throughout the contest with South Carolina, and show- 
 ing an even more resolute and unflinching front than 
 Old Hickory himself. No better or trustier ally than 
 the Missouri statesman, in a hard fight for a principle, 
 could be desired. He was intensely national in all his 
 habits of thought; he took a deep, personal pride in all 
 his country — North, South, East, and West. He had 
 been very loath to believe that any movement hostile 
 to the Union was really on foot; but once thoroughly 
 convinced of it he chose his own line of action without 
 an instant's hesitation. 
 
 A fortnight after the presidential election South 
 Carolina passed her ordinance of nullification, directed 
 against the tariff laws generally, and against those of 
 1828 and 1832 in particular. The ordinance was to take 
 effect on February 1st; and if meantime the federal gov- 
 ernment should make any attempt to enforce the laws, 
 the fact of such attempt was to end the continuance of 
 South Carolina in the Union. 
 
 Jackson promptly issued a proclamation against 
 nullification, composed jointly by himself and the 
 great Louisiana jurist and statesman, Livingston. It 
 is one of the ablest, as well as one of the most impor- 
 tant, of all American State papers. It is hard to see 
 how any American can read it now without feeling his 
 veins thrill. Some claim it as being mainly the work 
 of Jackson, others as that of Livingston; it is great 
 honor for either to have had a hand in its production. 
 
 In his annual message the President merely referred, 
 in passing, to the Nullifiers, expressing his opinion that 
 the action in reducing the duties, which the extinction 
 of the public debt would permit and require, would put 
 
 76 
 
STRUGGLE WITH THE NULLIFIERS 
 
 an end to the proceedings. As matters grew more 
 threatening, however, South Carolina making every 
 preparation for war and apparently not being con- 
 ciliated in the least by the evident desire in Congress 
 to meet her more than half-way on the tariff question, 
 Jackson sent a special message to both houses. He had 
 already sent General Scott to Charleston, and had be- 
 gun the concentration of certain military and naval 
 forces in or near the State boundaries. He now asked 
 Congress to pass a measure to enable him to deal better 
 with possible resistance to the laws. South Carolina 
 having complained of the oppressed condition in which 
 she found herself, owing to the working of the tariff, 
 Jackson, in his message, with some humor, quoted in 
 reply the last Thanksgiving proclamation of her gov- 
 ernor, wherein he dilated upon the State's unexampled 
 prosperity and happiness. 
 
 It must always be kept in mind in describing the atti- 
 tude of the Jacksonian Democrats toward the Nullifiers 
 that they were all along, especially in the West, hostile 
 to a very high tariff. Jackson and Benton had always 
 favored a much lower tariff than that established in 
 1828 and hardly changed in 1832. It was no change 
 of front on their part now to advocate a reduction of 
 duties. Jackson and Benton both felt that there was 
 much ground for South Carolina's original complaint, 
 although as strongly opposed to her nullification atti- 
 tude as any Northerner. Most of the Southern sena- 
 tors and representatives, though opposed to nullifica- 
 tion, were almost equally hostile to the high tariff; and 
 very many others were at heart in sympathy with nulli- 
 fication itself. The intensely national and antisepa- 
 ratist tone of Jackson's declaration — a document that 
 might well have come from Washington or Lincoln, and 
 
 77 
 
THOMAS HART BENTON 
 
 that would have reflected high honor on either — though 
 warmly approved by Benton, was very repugnant to 
 many of the Southern Democrats, and was too much 
 even for certain of the Whigs. In fact, it reads like 
 the utterance of some great Federalist or Republican 
 leader. The feeling in Congress, as a whole, was as 
 strong against the tariff as it was against nullification; 
 and Jackson had to take this into account, all the more 
 because not only was he in some degree of the same 
 way of thinking, but also many of his followers enter- 
 tained the sentiment even more earnestly. 
 
 Calhoun introduced a series of nullification resolu- 
 tions into the Senate, and defended them strongly in 
 the prolonged constitutional debate that followed. 
 South Carolina meanwhile put off the date at which 
 her decrees were to take effect, so that she might see 
 what Congress would do. Beyond question, Jackson's 
 firmness, and the way in which he was backed up by 
 Benton, Webster, and their followers, was having some 
 effect. He had openly avowed his intention, if matters 
 went too far, of hanging Calhoun "higher than Hainan." 
 He unquestionably meant to imprison him, as well as 
 the other South Carolina leaders, the instant that State 
 came into actual collision with the Union; and to the 
 end of his life regretted, and with reason, that he had 
 not done so without waiting for an overt act of resis- 
 tance. Some historians have treated this as if it were 
 an idle threat; but such it certainly was not. Jackson 
 undoubtedly fully meant what he said, and would have 
 acted promptly had the provocation occurred, and, 
 moreover, he would have been sustained by the coun- 
 try. He was not the man to weigh minutely what would 
 and what would not fall just on one side or the other of 
 the line defining treason; nor was it the time for too 
 
 78 
 
STRUGGLE WITH THE NULLIFIERS 
 
 scrupulous adherence to precise wording. Had a col- 
 lision occurred, neither Calhoun nor his colleague would 
 ever have been permitted to leave Washington; and 
 brave though they were, the fact unquestionably had 
 much influence with them. 
 
 Webster was now acting heartily with Benton. He 
 introduced a set of resolutions which showed that in 
 the matters both of the tariff and of nullification his 
 position was much the same as was that of the Mis- 
 sourian. Unfortunately Congress, as a whole, was by 
 no means so stiff-kneed. A certain number of Whigs 
 followed Webster, and a certain number of Democrats 
 clung to Benton; but most Southerners were very re- 
 luctant to allow pressure to be brought to bear on South 
 Carolina, and many Northerners were as willing to com- 
 promise as Henry Clay himself. In accordance with 
 Jackson's recommendations two bills were introduced: 
 one the so-called "Force bill," to allow the President 
 to take steps to defend the federal authority in the 
 event of actual collision; and the other a moderate, and, 
 on the whole, proper tariff bill, to reduce protective du- 
 ties. Both were introduced by administration support- 
 ers. Benton and Webster warmly sustained the "Force 
 bill," which was bitterly attacked by the Nullifiers and 
 by most of the Southerners, who really hardly knew 
 what stand to take, the leading opponent being Tyler, 
 of Virginia, whose disunion attitude was almost as 
 clearly marked as that of Calhoun himself. The mea- 
 sure was eminently just, and was precisely what the 
 crisis demanded; and the Senate finally passed it and 
 sent it to the House. 
 
 All this time an obstinate struggle was going on over 
 the tariff bill. Calhoun and his sympathizers were be- 
 ginning to see that there was real danger ahead, alike 
 
 79 
 
THOMAS HART BENTON 
 
 to themselves, their constituents, and their principles, 
 if they followed unswervingly the course they had laid 
 down; and the weak-kneed brethren on the other side, 
 headed by Clay, were becoming even more uneasy. 
 Calhoun wished to avert collision with the federal gov- 
 ernment; Clay was quite as anxious to avoid an out- 
 break in the South and to save what he could of the 
 protective system, which was evidently doomed. Cal- 
 houn was willing to sacrifice some of his constitutional 
 theories in regard to protection; Clay was ready greatly 
 to reduce protection itself. Each of them, but espe- 
 cially Clay, was prepared to shift his stand somewhat 
 from that of abstract moral right to that of expediency. 
 Benton and Webster were too resolute and determined 
 in their hostility to any form of yielding to South Caro- 
 lina's insolent defiance to admit any hope of getting 
 them to accept a compromise; but the majority of the 
 members were known to be only too ready to jump at 
 any half-way measure which would patch up the affair 
 for the present, no matter what the sacrifice of principle 
 or how great the risk incurred for the future. Accord- 
 ingly, Clay and Calhoun met and agreed on a curious 
 bill, in reality recognizing the protective system, but 
 making a great although gradual reduction of duties; 
 and Clay introduced this as a "compromise measure." 
 It was substituted in the House for the administration 
 tariff bill, was passed and sent to the Senate. It gave 
 South Carolina much, but not all, that she demanded. 
 Her representatives announced themselves satisfied, 
 and supported it, together with all their Southern sym- 
 pathizers. Webster and Benton fought it stoutly to 
 the last, but it was passed by a great majority; a few 
 Northerners followed Webster, and Benton received 
 fair support from his Missouri colleagues and the Mary- 
 
 80 
 
STRUGGLE WITH THE NULLIFIERS 
 
 land senators; the other senators, Whigs and Democrats 
 alike, voted for the measure. Many of the Southerners 
 were imbued with separatist principles, although not 
 yet to the extent that Calhoun was; others, though 
 Union men, did not possess the unflinching will and 
 stern strength of character that enabled Benton to 
 stand out against any section of the country, even his 
 own, if it was wrong. Silas Wright, of New York, a 
 typical Northern "dough-face" politician, gave exact 
 expression to the "dough-face" sentiment, which in- 
 duced Northern members to vote for the compromise, 
 when he stated that he was unalterably opposed to the 
 principle of the bill, but that on account of the attitude 
 of South Carolina, and of the extreme desire which he 
 had to remove all cause of discontent in that State, and 
 in order to enable her again to become an affectionate 
 member of the Union, he would vote for what was satis- 
 factory to her, although repugnant to himself. Wright, 
 Marcy, and their successors in New York politics, almost 
 up to the present day, certainly carried cringing subser- 
 viency to the South to a pitch that was fairly sublime. 
 
 The "Force bill" and the compromise tariff bill 
 passed both houses nearly simultaneously, and were 
 sent up to the President, who signed both on the same 
 day. His signing the compromise bill was a piece of 
 weakness out of keeping with his whole character, and 
 especially out of keeping with his previous course toward 
 the Nullifiers. The position assumed by Benton and 
 Webster, that South Carolina should be made to sub- 
 mit first and should have the justice of her claims ex- 
 amined into afterward, was unquestionably the only 
 proper attitude. 
 
 Benton wrote: 
 
 "My objections to this bill, and to its mode of being 
 
 81 
 
THOMAS HART BENTON 
 
 passed, were deep and abiding, and went far beyond its 
 own obnoxious provisions, and all the transient and 
 temporary considerations connected with it. . . . A 
 compromise made with a state in arms is a capitulation 
 to that state. . . . The injury was great then, and a 
 permanent evil example. It remitted the government 
 to the condition of the old confederation, acting upon 
 sovereignties instead of individuals. It violated the 
 feature of our Union which discriminated it from all 
 confederacies that ever existed, and which was wisely 
 and patriotically put into the Constitution to save it 
 from the fate which had attended all confederacies, an- 
 cient and modern. . . . The framers of our Constitu- 
 tion established a Union instead of a League — to be 
 sovereign and independent within its sphere, acting 
 upon persons through its own laws and courts, instead 
 of acting on communities through persuasion or force. 
 The effect of this compromise legislation was to destroy 
 this great feature of our Union — to bring the general 
 and state governments into conflict — and to substitute 
 a sovereign state for an offending individual as often as 
 a state chose to make the cause of that individual her 
 own." 
 
 Not only was Benton's interpretation of the Con- 
 stitution sound, and one that by the course of events 
 has now come to be universally accepted, but his criti- 
 cisms on the wisdom of the compromise bill were per- 
 fectly just. Had the anti-Nullifiers stood firm, the 
 Nullifiers would probably have given way, and if not, 
 would certainly have been crushed. Against a solid 
 North and West, with a divided South, even her own 
 people not being unanimous, and with Jackson as chief 
 executive, South Carolina could not have made even a 
 respectable resistance. A salutary lesson then might 
 
 82 
 
STRUGGLE WITH THE NULLIFIERS 
 
 very possibly have saved infinite trouble and bloodshed 
 thereafter. But in Jackson's case it must be remem- 
 bered that, so far as his acts depended purely upon his 
 own will and judgment, no fault can be found with him; 
 he erred only in ratifying a compromise agreed to by 
 the vast majority of the representatives of the people 
 in both houses of Congress. 
 
 The battle did not result in a decisive victory for 
 either side. This was shown by the very fact that each 
 party insisted that it had won a signal triumph. Cal- 
 houn and Clay afterward quarrelled in the Senate-cham- 
 ber as to which had given up the more in the com- 
 promise. South Carolina had declared, first, that the 
 tariff was unconstitutional, and therefore to be opposed 
 upon principle; second, that it worked injustice to her 
 interests, and must be abolished forthwith; thirdly, that, 
 if it were not so abolished, she would assert her power 
 to nullify a federal law, and, if necessary, would secede 
 from the Union. When her representatives agreed to 
 the compromise bill, they abandoned the first point; the 
 second was decided largely in her favor, though protec- 
 tion was not by any means entirely given up; the third 
 she was allowed to insist upon with impunity, although 
 the other side, by passing the "Force bill," showed that 
 in case matters did proceed to extremities they were 
 prepared to act upon the opposite conviction. Still, she 
 gained most of that for which she contended, and the 
 victory, as a whole, rested with her. Calhoun's pur- 
 poses seem to have been, in the main, pure; but few 
 criminals have worked as much harm to their country 
 as he did. The plea of good intentions is not one that 
 can be allowed to have much weight in passing historical 
 judgment upon a man whose wrong-headedness and dis- 
 torted way of looking at things produced, or helped to 
 
 83 
 
THOMAS HART BENTON 
 
 produce, such incalculable evil; there is a wide political 
 applicability in the remark attributed to a famous 
 Texan, to the effect that he might, in the end, pardon 
 a man who shot him on purpose, but that he would 
 surely never forgive one who did so accidentally. 
 
 Without doubt, the honors of the nullification dis- 
 pute were borne off by Benton and Webster. The 
 latter's reply to Hayne is, perhaps, the greatest single 
 speech of the nineteenth century, and he deserves the 
 highest credit for the stubbornness with which he stood 
 by his colors to the last. There never was any question 
 of Webster's courage; on the occasions when he changed 
 front he was actuated by self-interest and ambition, not 
 by timidity. Usually he appears as an advocate rather 
 than an earnest believer in the cause he represents; but 
 when it came to be a question of the Union, he felt what 
 he said with the whole strength of his nature. 
 
 An even greater meed of praise attaches to Benton 
 for the unswerving fidelity which he showed to the 
 Union in this crisis. Webster was a high- tariff man, 
 and was backed up by all the sectional antipathies of 
 the Northeast in his opposition to the Nullifiers; Ben- 
 ton, on the contrary, was a believer in a low tariff, or 
 in one for revenue merely, and his sectional antipathies 
 were the other way. Yet, even when deserted by his 
 chief, and when he was opposed to every senator from 
 south of the Potomac and the Ohio, he did not flinch 
 for a moment from his attitude of aggressive loyalty to 
 the national Union. He had a singularly strong and 
 upright character; this country has never had a states- 
 man more fearlessly true to his convictions, when great 
 questions were at stake, no matter what might be the 
 cost to himself, or the pressure from outside — even 
 when, as happened later, his own State was against him. 
 
 84 
 
STRUGGLE WITH THE NULLIFIERS 
 
 Intellectually he cannot for a moment be compared to 
 the great Massachusetts senator; but morally he towers 
 much higher. 
 
 Yet, while praising Jackson and Benton for their be- 
 havior toward South Carolina, we cannot forget that 
 but a couple of years previously they had not raised 
 their voices even in the mildest rebuke of Georgia for 
 conduct which, though not nearly so bad in degree as 
 that of South Carolina, was of much the same kind. 
 Toward the close of Adams's term, Georgia had bid 
 defiance to the mandates of the Supreme Court, and 
 proceeded to settle the Indian question within her bor- 
 ders without regard to the authority of the United 
 States, and these matters were still unsettled when 
 Jackson became President. Unfortunately he let his 
 personal feelings bias him; and, as he took the Western 
 and Georgian view of the Indian question, and, more- 
 over, hated the Supreme Court because it was largely 
 Federalist in its composition, he declined to interfere. 
 David Crockett, himself a Union man and a nationalist 
 to the backbone, rated Jackson savagely, and with jus- 
 tice, for the inconsistency of his conduct in the two 
 cases, accusing him of having, by his harmful leniency 
 to Georgia, encouraged South Carolina to act as she 
 did, and ridiculing him because, while he smiled at the 
 deeds of the one State, when the like acts were done by 
 the other, "he took up the rod of correction and shook 
 it over her." 
 
 85 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 JACKSON AND BENTON MAKE WAR ON THE 
 
 BANK 
 
 If the struggle with the Nullifiers showed Benton at 
 his best, in the conflict with the Bank he exhibited cer- 
 tain qualities which hardly place him in so favorable a 
 light. Jackson's attack upon the Bank was a move 
 undertaken mainly on his own responsibility, and one 
 which, at first, most of his prominent friends were 
 alarmed to see him undertake. Benton alone supported 
 him from the beginning. Captain and lieutenant alike 
 intensely appreciated the joy of battle; they cared for a 
 fight because it was a fight, and the certainty of a strug- 
 gle, such as would have daunted weaker or more timid 
 men, simply offered to them an additional inducement 
 to follow out the course they had planned. Benton's 
 thoroughgoing support was invaluable to Jackson. 
 The President sorely needed a friend in the Senate who 
 would uphold him through thick and thin, and who yet 
 commanded the respect of all his opponents by his 
 strength, ability, and courage. To be sure, Benton's 
 knowledge of financial economics was not always pro- 
 found; but, on the other hand, a thorough mastery of 
 the laws of finance would have been, in this fight, a 
 very serious disadvantage to any champion of Jackson. 
 
 The rights and wrongs of this matter have been worn 
 threadbare in countless discussions. For much of the 
 hostility of Jackson and Benton toward the Bank, there 
 were excellent grounds ; but many of their actions were 
 wholly indefensible and very harmful in their results to 
 the country. An assault upon what Benton called "the 
 
 86 
 
WAR ON THE BANK 
 
 money power" is apt to be popular in a Democratic 
 republic, partly on account of the vague fear with which 
 the poorer and more ignorant voters regard a powerful 
 institution, whose working they do not understand, and 
 partly on account of the jealousy they feel toward those 
 who are better off than themselves. When these feel- 
 ings are appealed to by men who are intensely in earnest, 
 and who are themselves convinced of the justice and 
 wisdom of their course, they become very formidable 
 factors in any political contest. 
 
 The struggle first became important when the ques- 
 tion of the recharter of the Bank was raised toward 
 the end of Jackson's first term, the present charter still 
 having three years to run. This charter had in it many 
 grave faults; and there might well be a question as to 
 whether it should be renewed. The Bank itself, beyond 
 doubt, possessed enormous power; too much power for 
 its own or outsiders' good. Its president, Biddle, was 
 a man of some ability, but conceited to the last degree, 
 untruthful, and to a certain extent unscrupulous in the 
 use he made of the political influence of the great mon- 
 eyed institution over which he presided. Some of the 
 financial theories on which he managed the Bank were 
 wrong; yet, on the whole, it was well conducted, and 
 under its care the monetary condition of the country 
 was quiet and good, infinitely better than it had been 
 before, or than, under the auspices of the Jacksonian 
 Democracy, it afterward became. 
 
 The two great reasons for Jackson's success through- 
 out his political career were to be found in the strength 
 of the feeling in his favor among the poorer and least 
 educated classes of voters, and in the ardent support 
 given him by the low politicians, who, by playing on his 
 prejudices and passions, moulded him to their wishes, 
 
 87 
 
THOMAS HART BENTON 
 
 and who organized and perfected in their own and his 
 interests a great political machine, founded on the 
 "spoils system"; and both the Jacksonian rank and 
 file and the Jacksonian politicians soon agreed heartily 
 in their opposition to the Bank. Jackson and Benton 
 opposed it for the same reasons that the bulk of their 
 followers did; that is to say, partly from honest and 
 ignorant prejudice and partly from a well-founded feel- 
 ing of distrust as to some of its actions. The mass of 
 their fellow party leaders and henchmen assailed it with 
 the cry that it was exerting its influence to debauch 
 politics, while at the same time they really sought to 
 use it as a power in politics on their own side. 
 
 Jackson, in his first annual message in 1829, had 
 hinted that he was opposed to the recharter of the 
 Bank, then a question of the future and not to arise 
 for four or five years. At the same time he had called 
 in question the constitutionality and expediency of the 
 Bank's existence, and had criticised as vicious its cur- 
 rency system. The matter of constitutionality had 
 been already decided by the Supreme Court, the proper 
 tribunal, and was, and had been for years, an accepted 
 fact; it was an absurdity to call it in question. As re- 
 gards the matter of expediency, certainly the Jack- 
 sonians failed signally to put anything better in its 
 place. Yet it was undeniable that there were grave 
 defects in the currency system. 
 
 The President's message roused but little interest, 
 and what little it did rouse was among the Bank's 
 friends. At once these began to prepare the way for 
 the recharter by an active and extensive agitation in 
 its favor. The main bank was at Philadelphia, but it 
 had branches everywhere, and naturally each branch 
 bank was a centre of opposition to the President's pro- 
 
 88 
 
WAR ON THE BANK 
 
 posed policy. As the friends of the Bank were greatly 
 interested, and as the matter did not immediately con- 
 cern those who afterward became its foes, the former, 
 for the time, had it all their own way, and the drift of 
 public opinion seemed to be strongly in its favor. 
 
 Benton was almost the only public man of promi- 
 nence who tried to stem this tide from the beginning. 
 Jackson's own party associates were originally largely 
 against him, and so he stood all the more in need of the 
 vigorous support which he received from the Missouri 
 senator. Indeed, it would be unfair in the matter of 
 the attack on the Bank to call Benton Jackson's fol- 
 lower; he might with more propriety be called the leader 
 in the assault, although of course he could accomplish 
 little compared with what was done by the great popu- 
 lar idol. He had always been hostile to the Bank, 
 largely as a matter of Jeffersonian tradition, and he 
 had shown his hostility by resolutions introduced in 
 the Senate before Jackson was elected President. 
 
 Early in 1831 he asked leave to introduce a resolu- 
 tion against the recharter of the Bank; his purpose 
 being merely to give formal notice of war against it, 
 and to attempt to stir up a current of feeling counter 
 to that which then seemed to be generally prevailing 
 in its favor. In his speech he carefully avoided laying 
 stress upon any such abstract point as that of consti- 
 tutionality, and dwelt instead upon the questions that 
 would affect the popular mind; assailing the Bank "as 
 having too much power over the people and the govern- 
 ment, over business and politics, and as too much dis- 
 posed to exercise that power to the prejudice of the 
 freedom and equality which should prevail in a re- 
 public, to be allowed to exist in our country." The 
 force of such an argument in a popular election will be 
 
 89 
 
THOMAS HART BENTON 
 
 acknowledged by all practical politicians. But, al- 
 though Benton probably believed what he said, or at 
 any rate most of it, he certainly ought not to have 
 opened the discussion of a great financial measure with 
 a demagogic appeal to caste prejudices. He wished to 
 substitute a gold currency in the place of the existing 
 bank-notes, and was not disturbed at all as to how he 
 would supply the place of the Bank, saying: "I am 
 willing to see the charter expire, without providing any 
 substitute for the present Bank. I am willing to see 
 the currency of the federal government left to the hard 
 money mentioned and intended in the Constitution; 
 . . . every species of paper might be left to the state 
 authorities, unrecognized by the federal government!" 
 Of the beauties of such a system as the last the coun- 
 try later on received practical demonstration. Some 
 of his utterances, however, could be commended to the 
 friends of greenbacks and of dishonest money even at 
 the present day, as when he says: "Gold and silver are 
 the best currency for a republic; it suits the men of 
 middle property and the working people best; and if I 
 was going to establish a working man's party it should 
 be on the basis of hard money — a hard-money party 
 against a paper party." The Bank was in Philadelphia; 
 much of the stock was held in the East, and a good deal 
 was held abroad, which gave Benton a chance to play 
 on sectional feelings, as follows: 'To whom is all the 
 power granted ? To a company of private individuals, 
 many of them foreigners, and the mass of them resid- 
 ing in a remote and narrow corner of the Union, uncon- 
 nected by any sympathy with the fertile regions of the 
 Great Valley, in which the natural power of this Union 
 — the power of numbers — will be found to reside long 
 before the renewed term of a second charter would ex- 
 
 90 
 
WAR ON THE BANK 
 
 pire." Among the other sentences occurs the following 
 bit of pure demagogic pyrotechnics: "It [the Bank] 
 tends to aggravate the inequality of fortunes; to make 
 the rich richer and the poor poorer; to multiply nabobs 
 and paupers; and to deepen and widen the gulf which 
 separates Dives from Lazarus. A great moneyed power 
 is favorable to great capitalists, for it is the principle of 
 money to favor money. It is unfavorable to small capi- 
 talists, for it is the principle of money to eschew the 
 needy and unfortunate. It is injurious to the laboring 
 classes." Altogether it was not a speech to be proud of. 
 The Senate refused permission to introduce the resolu- 
 tion by the close vote of twenty-three to twenty. 
 
 Benton lived only a generation after that one which 
 had itself experienced oppression from a king, from an 
 aristocratic legislature and from a foreign power; and 
 so his rant about the undue influence of foreigners in 
 our governmental affairs, and his declamation over the 
 purely supposititious powers that were presumed to be 
 conspiring against the welfare of the poorer classes 
 probably more nearly expressed his real feelings than 
 would be the case with the similar utterances of any 
 leading statesman nowadays. He was an enthusiastic 
 believer in the extreme Jeffersonian doctrinaire views 
 as to the will of the majority being always right, and 
 as to the moral perfection of the average voter. Like 
 his fellow statesmen he failed to see the curious ab- 
 surdity of supporting black slavery, and yet claiming 
 universal suffrage for whites as a divine right, not as a 
 mere matter of expediency resulting on the whole bet- 
 ter than any other method. He had not learned that 
 the majority in a democracy has no more right to tyran- 
 nize over a minority than, under a different system, the 
 latter would have to oppress the former; and that, if 
 
 91 
 
THOMAS HART BENTON 
 
 there is a moral principle at stake, the saying that the 
 voice of the people is the voice of God may be quite 
 as untrue, and do quite as much mischief, as the old 
 theory of the divine right of kings. The distinguishing 
 feature of our American governmental system is the 
 freedom of the individual; it is quite as important to 
 prevent his being oppressed by many men as it is to 
 save him from the tyranny of one. 
 
 This speech on the recharter showed a great deal of 
 wide reading and much information; but a good part 
 of it was sheer declamation, in the turgid, pompous 
 style that Benton, as well as a great many other Amer- 
 ican public speakers, was apt to mistake for genuine 
 oratory. His subsequent speech on the currency, how- 
 ever, was much better. This was likewise delivered on 
 the occasion of asking leave to present a joint resolu- 
 tion, which leave was refused. The branch-draft sys- 
 tem was the object of the assault. These branch drafts 
 were for even sums of small denomination, circulating 
 like bank-notes; they were drawn on the parent bank 
 at Philadelphia to the order of some officer of the branch 
 bank and were indorsed by the latter to bearer. Thus 
 paper was issued at one place which was payable at 
 another and a distant place; and among other results 
 there ensued a constant inflation of credit. They were 
 very mischievous in their workings; they had none of 
 the marks of convertible bank-notes or money, and so 
 long as credit was active there could be no check on the 
 inflation of the currency by them. Payment could be 
 voluntarily made at the branch banks whence issued, 
 but if it was refused the owner had only the right to 
 go to Philadelphia and sue the directors there. Most 
 of these drafts were issued at the most remote and in- 
 accessible branches, the payment of them being, there- 
 
 92 
 
WAR ON THE BANK 
 
 fore, much delayed by distance and difficulty; nor were 
 the directors liable for excessive issues. They consti- 
 tuted the bulk of all the paper seen in circulation; they 
 were supposed to be equivalent to money, but being 
 bills of exchange they were merely negotiable instru- 
 ments; they did not have the properties of bank-notes, 
 which are constantly and directly interchangeable with 
 money. In their issue Biddle had laid himself open to 
 attack; and in defending them he certainly did not al- 
 ways speak the truth, wilfully concealing or coloring 
 facts. Moreover, his self-satisfaction and the foolish 
 pride in his own power, which he could not conceal, led 
 him into making imprudent boasts as to the great power 
 the Bank could exercise over other local banks, and 
 over the general prosperity of the country, while dilat- 
 ing upon its good conduct in not using this power to 
 the disadvantage of the public. All this was playing 
 into Benton's hands. He showed some of the evils of 
 the branch-draft system, although apparently not see- 
 ing others that were quite as important. He attacked 
 the Bank for some real and many imaginary wrong- 
 doings; and quoted Biddle himself as an authority for 
 the existence of powers dangerous to the welfare of the 
 State. 
 
 The advocates of the Bank were still in the majority 
 in both houses of Congress, and soon began prepara- 
 tions for pushing through a bill for the recharter. The 
 issue began to become political. Webster, Clay, and 
 most of the other antiadministration men were for the 
 Bank ; and so when the convention of the National Re- 
 publicans, who soon afterward definitely assumed the 
 name of Whigs, took place, they declared heartily in its 
 favor, and nominated for the presidency its most en- 
 thusiastic supporter, Henry Clay. The Bank itself un- 
 
 93 
 
THOMAS HART BENTON 
 
 questionably preferred not to be dragged into politics; 
 but Clay, thinking he saw a chance for a successful 
 stroke, fastened upon it, and the convention that nomi- 
 nated him made the fight against Jackson on the ground 
 that he was hostile to the Bank. Even had this not 
 already been the case no more certain method of in- 
 suring his hostility could have been adopted. 
 
 Still, however, many of Jackson's supporters were 
 also advocates of recharter; and the bill for that pur- 
 pose commanded the majority in Congress. Benton 
 took the lead in organizing the opposition, not with the 
 hope of preventing its passage, but "to attack inces- 
 santly, assail at all points, display the evil of the insti- 
 tution, rouse the people, and prepare them to sustain 
 the veto." In other words, he was preparing for an 
 appeal to the people, and working to secure an anti- 
 Bank majority in the next Congress. He instigated 
 and prepared the investigation into the affairs of the 
 Bank, which was made in the House, and he led the 
 harassing parliamentary warfare carried on against the 
 rechartering bill in the Senate. He himself seems to 
 have superintended the preparation of the charges which 
 were investigated by the House. A great flurry was 
 made over them, Benton and all his friends claiming 
 that they were fully substantiated; but the only real 
 point scored was that against the branch drafts. Ben- 
 ton, with the majority of the committee of investiga- 
 tion, had the loosest ideas as to what a bank ought to 
 do, loud though they were in denunciation of what this 
 particular Bank was alleged to have done. 
 
 Webster made the great argument in favor of the re- 
 charter bill. Benton took the lead in opposition, stat- 
 ing, what was probably true — that the bill was brought 
 up so long before the charter expired for political rea- 
 
 94 
 
WAR ON THE BANK 
 
 sons, and criticising it as premature; a criticism unfor- 
 tunately applicable with even greater force to Jackson's 
 message. His speech was largely mere talking against 
 time, and he wandered widely from the subject. Among 
 other things he invoked the aid of the principle of States' 
 rights, because the Bank then had power to establish 
 branches in any State, whether the latter liked it or not, 
 and free from State taxation. He also appealed to the 
 Western members as such, insisting that the Bank dis- 
 criminated against their section of the country in favor 
 of the East; the facts being that the shrewdness and 
 commercial morality of the Northeast, particularly of 
 New England, saved them from the evils brought on the 
 Westerners by the foolishness with which they abused 
 their credit and the laxness with which they looked 
 on monetary obligations. But in spite of all that Ben- 
 ton could do the bill passed both houses, the Senate 
 voting in its favor by twenty-eight ayes against twenty 
 nays. 
 
 Jackson, who never feared anything, and was more 
 than ready to accept the fight which was in some mea- 
 sure forced on him, yet which in some degree he had 
 courted, promptly vetoed the bill in a message which 
 stated some truths forcibly and fearlessly, which de- 
 veloped some very queer constitutional and financial 
 theories, and which contained a number of absurdities, 
 evidently put in, not for the benefit of the Senate, but 
 to influence voters at the coming presidential election. 
 The leaders of the opposition felt obliged to make a 
 show of trying to pass the bill over the veto in order 
 to get a chance to answer Jackson. Webster again 
 opened the argument. Clay made the fiercest on- 
 slaught, assailing the President personally, besides at- 
 tacking the veto power, and trying to discredit its use. 
 
 95 
 
THOMAS HART BENTON 
 
 But the presidential power of veto is among the best 
 features of our government, and Benton had no diffi- 
 culty in making a good defense of it; although many of 
 the arguments adduced by him in its favor were entirely 
 unsound, being based on the wholly groundless assump- 
 tion that the function of the President corresponded to 
 that of the ancient Roman tribune of the people, and 
 was supposed to be exercised in the interests of the 
 people to control the legislature — thus wilfully over- 
 looking the fact that the legislature also was elected by 
 the people. When on his ultrademocratic hobby Ben- 
 ton always rode very loose in the saddle, and with little 
 knowledge of where he was going. Clay and Benton 
 alike drew all sorts of analogies between the state of 
 affairs in the United States and that formerly prevail- 
 ing in France, England, and above all in the much-suf- 
 fering republics of antiquity. Benton insisted that the 
 Bank had wickedly persuaded the West to get in debt 
 to it so as to have that section in its power, and that 
 the Western debt had been created with a view to polit- 
 ical engineering; the fact being that the Westerners had 
 run into debt purely by their own fault, and that the 
 Bank itself was seriously alarmed at the condition of its 
 Western branches. The currency being in much worse 
 shape in the West than in the Northeast, gold and silver 
 naturally moved toward the latter place; and this re- 
 sult of their own shortcomings was again held up as a 
 grievance of the Westerners against the Bank. He also 
 read a severe lecture on the interests of party discipline 
 to the Democrats who had voted for the recharter, as- 
 suring them that they could not continue to be both for 
 the Bank and for Jackson. The Jacksonian Democ- 
 racy, nominally the party of the multitude, was in 
 reality the nearest approach the United States has ever 
 
 96 
 
WAR ON THE BANK 
 
 seen to the "one-man power"; and to break with Jack- 
 son was to break with the Democratic party. The alter- 
 native of expulsion or of turning a somersault being 
 thus plainly presented to the recalcitrant members, 
 they for the most part chose the latter, and performed 
 the required feat of legislative acrobatics with the most 
 unobtrusive and submissive meekness. The debate con- 
 cluded with a sharp and undignified interchange of per- 
 sonalities between the Missouri and Kentucky senators, 
 Clay giving Benton the lie direct, and the latter retort- 
 ing in kind. Each side, of course, predicted the utter 
 ruin of the country, if the other prevailed. Benton said 
 that, if the Bank conquered, the result would be the 
 establishment of an oligarchy, and then of a monarchy, 
 and finally the death of the Republic by corruption. 
 Webster stated as his belief that, if the sentiments of 
 the veto message received general approbation, the Con- 
 stitution could not possibly survive its fiftieth year. 
 Webster, however, in that debate, showed to good ad- 
 vantage. Benton was no match for him, either as a 
 thinker or as a speaker; but with the real leader of the 
 Whig party, Henry Clay, he never had much cause to 
 fear comparison. 
 
 All the State banks were of course rabidly in favor of 
 Jackson; and the presidential election of 1832 was 
 largely fought on the Bank issue. In Pennsylvania, 
 however, the feeling for the Bank was only less strong 
 than that for Jackson; and accordingly that Boeotian 
 community sapiently cast its electoral votes for the 
 latter, while instructing its senators and representatives 
 to support the former. But the complete and hopeless 
 defeat of Clay by Jackson sealed the fate of the Bank. 
 Jackson was not even content to let it die naturally by 
 the lapse of its charter. His attitude toward it so far 
 
 97 
 
THOMAS HART BENTON 
 
 had been one for which much could be said; indeed, 
 very good grounds can be shown for thinking his veto 
 proper. But of the impropriety of his next step there 
 could be no possible question. Congress had passed a 
 resolution declaring its belief in the safety of the United 
 States deposits in the Bank; but the President, in the 
 summer of 1833, removed these deposits and placed 
 them in certain State banks. He experienced some dif- 
 ficulty in getting a secretary of the treasury who would 
 take such a step; finally he found one in Taney. 
 
 The Bank memorialized Congress at once; and the 
 antiadministration majority in the Senate forthwith 
 took up the quarrel. They first rejected Jackson's 
 nominations for bank directors, and then refused to 
 confirm Taney himself. Two years later Jackson made 
 the latter Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, in which 
 position he lived to do even more mischief than he had 
 time or opportunity to accomplish as secretary of the 
 treasury. 
 
 Benton was the administration champion in the Sen- 
 ate. Opposed to him were Webster and Clay, as leaders 
 of the Whigs, supported for the time being by Calhoun. 
 The feeling of Clay and Calhoun against the President 
 was bitterly personal, and was repaid by his rancorous 
 hatred. But Webster, though he was really on most 
 questions even more antagonistic to the ideas of the 
 Jacksonian school, always remained personally on good 
 terms with its leaders. 
 
 Clay introduced a resolution directing the return of 
 the deposits; Benton opposed it; it passed by a vote of 
 twenty-eight to eighteen, but was lost in the House. 
 Clay then introduced a resolution demanding to know 
 from the President whether the paper alleged to have 
 been published by his authority as having been read 
 
 98 
 
1 
 
 WAR ON THE BANK 
 
 to the Cabinet, in relation to the removal of the de- 
 posits, was genuine or not; and, if it was, asking for a 
 copy. Benton opposed the motion, which nevertheless 
 passed. But the President refused to accede to the de- 
 mand. Meanwhile the new departure in banking, in- 
 augurated by the President, was working badly. One 
 of the main grounds for removing the deposits was the 
 allegation that they were used to debauch politics. This 
 was never proved against the old United States Bank; 
 but under Jackson's administration, which corrupted 
 the public service in every way, the deposits became 
 fruitful sources of political reward and bribery. 
 
 Clay then introduced his famous resolution censur- 
 ng the President for his action, and supported it in a 
 long and fiery speech; a speech which, like most of 
 Clay's, was received by his followers at the time with 
 rapture, but in which this generation fails to find the 
 sign of that remarkable ability with which his own con- 
 temporaries credited the great Kentuckian. He at- 
 tacked Jackson with fierce invective, painting him as 
 an unscrupulous tyrant, who was inaugurating a revo- 
 lution in the government of the Union. But he was 
 outdone by Calhoun, who, with continual interludes of 
 complacent references to the good already done by the 
 Nullifiers, assailed Jackson as one of a band of artful, 
 corrupt, and cunning politicians, and drew a picture 
 even more lurid than Clay's of the future of the coun- 
 try, and the danger of impending revolution. Web- 
 ster's speeches were more self-contained in tone. Ben- 
 ton was the only Jacksonian senator who could contend 
 with the great Nullifier and the two great Whigs, and 
 he replied at length, and in much the same style as they 
 had spoken. 
 
 The Senate was flooded with petitions in favor of the 
 
 99 
 
THOMAS HART BENTON 
 
 Bank, which were presented with suitable speeches by 
 the leading Whigs. Benton ridiculed the exaggerated 
 tone of alarm in which these petitions were drawn, and 
 declared that the panic, excitement, and suffering exist- 
 ing in business circles throughout the country were due 
 to the deliberate design of the Bank, and afforded a 
 fresh proof that the latter was a dangerous power to the 
 State. 
 
 The resolution of censure was at last passed by a vote 
 of twenty-six to twenty, and Jackson, in a fury, sent in 
 a written protest against it, which the Senate refused 
 to receive. The excitement all over the country was 
 intense throughout the struggle. The suffering, which 
 was really caused by the President's act, but which was 
 attributed by his supporters to the machinations of the 
 Bank, was very real; even Benton admitted this, al- 
 though contending that it was not a natural result of 
 the policy pursued, but had been artificially excited — 
 or, as he very clumsily phrased it, "though fictitious 
 and forged, yet the distress was real, and did an im- 
 mensity of damage." Neither Jackson nor Benton 
 yielded an inch to the outside pressure; the latter was 
 the soul of the fight in Congress, making over thirty 
 speeches during the struggle. 
 
 During the debate on receiving the President's pro- 
 test, Benton gave notice of his intention at an early 
 day to move to expunge from the journal the resolution 
 of censure. This idea was entirely his own, and he gave 
 the notice without having consulted anybody. It was, 
 however, a motion after Jackson's own heart, as the 
 latter now began to look upon the affair as purely per- 
 sonal to himself. His party accepted this view of the 
 matter with a servile alacrity only surpassed by the way 
 in which its leaders themselves bowed down before the 
 
 100 
 
WAR ON THE BANK 
 
 mob ; and for the next two years the State elections were 
 concerned purely with personal politics, the main point 
 at issue in the choice for every United States senator 
 being, whether he would or would not support Benton's 
 expunging resolution. The whole affair seems to us so 
 puerile that we can hardly understand the importance 
 attached to it by the actors themselves. But the men 
 who happened at that period to be the leaders in public 
 affairs were peculiarly and frankly incapable of sepa- 
 rating in their minds matters merely affecting them- 
 selves from matters affecting their constituents. Each 
 firmly believed that if he was not the whole State, he 
 was at least a most important fraction of it; and this 
 was as plainly seen in Webster's colossal egoism and 
 the frank vanity of Henry Clay as in Benton's ponder- 
 ous self-consciousness and the all-pervading personality 
 of Andrew Jackson. 
 
 Some of the speeches on the expunging resolution 
 show delicious, although entirely unconscious, humor. 
 If there ever was a wholly irrational state of mind it 
 was that in which the Jacksonians perpetually kept 
 themselves. Every canvass on Jackson's behalf was 
 one of sound, fury, and excitement, of appeal to the 
 passions, prejudices, and feelings, but never the reason, 
 of the people. A speech for him was generally a mere 
 frantic denunciation of whatever and whoever was op- 
 posed to him, coupled with fulsome adulation of "the 
 old hero." His supporters rarely indeed spoke to the 
 cool judgment of the country, for the very excellent 
 reason that the cool judgment of the country was apt 
 to be against them. Such being the case, it is amusing 
 to read in Benton's speech on receiving the protest the 
 following sentences, apparently uttered in solemn good 
 faith, and with sublime unconsciousness of irony: 
 
 101 
 
THOMAS HART BENTON 
 
 "To such a community [the American body politic] 
 ■ — in an appeal on a great question of constitutional law 
 to the understandings of such a people — declamation, 
 passion, epithets, opprobrious language, will stand 
 for nothing. They will float harmless and unheeded 
 through the empty air, and strike in vain upon the ear 
 of a sober and dispassionate tribunal. Indignation, 
 real or affected; wrath, however hot; fury, however en- 
 raged; asseverations, however violent; denunciation, 
 however furious, will avail nothing. Facts, inexorable 
 facts, are all that will be attended to; reason, calm and 
 self-possessed, is all that will be listened to." 
 
 The description of the mass of Jacksonian voters as 
 forming "a sober and dispassionate tribunal" is an ar- 
 tistic touch of fancy quite unique, but admirably char- 
 acteristic of Benton, whose statements always rose 
 vigorously to the necessities of the occasion. 
 
 Webster, in an effort to make the best of untoward 
 circumstances, brought in a bill to recharter the Bank 
 for a short period, at the same time doing away with 
 some of the features that were objectionable in the old 
 charter. This bill might have passed, had it not been 
 opposed by the extreme Bank men, including Clay and 
 Calhoun. In the course of the debate over it Benton 
 delivered a very elaborate and carefully studied speech 
 in favor of hard money and a currency of the precious 
 metals; a speech which is to this day well worth careful 
 reading. Some of his financial theories were crude and 
 confused; but on the main question he was perfectly 
 sound. Both he and Jackson deserve great credit for 
 having done much to impress the popular mind with 
 the benefit of hard, that is to say honest, money. Ben- 
 ton was the strongest hard-money man then in public 
 life, being, indeed, popularly nicknamed "Old Bullion." 
 
 102 
 
WAR ON THE BANK 
 
 He thoroughly appreciated that a metallic currency was 
 of more vital importance to the laboring men and to 
 men of small capital generally than to any of the richer 
 classes. A metallic currency is always surer and safer 
 than a paper currency; where it exists a laboring man 
 dependent on his wages need fear less than any other 
 member of the community the evils of bad banking. 
 Benton's idea of the danger to the masses from "the 
 money power" was exaggerated; but in advocating a 
 sound gold currency he took the surest way to overcome 
 any possible dangerous tendency. A craze for "soft," 
 or dishonest, money— a greenback movement, or one 
 for short-weight silver dollars— works more to the dis- 
 advantage of the whole mass of the people than even 
 to that of the capitalists; it is a move directly in the 
 interests of "the money power," which its loud-mouthed 
 advocates are ostensibly opposing in the interests of 
 democracy. 
 
 Benton continued his speeches. The panic was now 
 subsiding; there had not been time for Jackson's ruin- 
 ous policy of making deposits in numerous State banks, 
 and thereby encouraging wild inflation of credit, to bear 
 fruit and, as it afterward did, involve the whole country 
 in financial disaster. Therefore Benton was able to ex- 
 ult greatly over the favorable showing of affairs in the 
 report of the secretary of the treasury. He also pro- 
 cured the passage of a gold currency law, which, how- 
 ever, fixed the ratio of value between gold and silver 
 at sixteen to one; an improper proportion, but one which 
 had prevailed for three centuries in the Spanish-Ameri- 
 can countries, from which he copied it. In consequence 
 of this law gold, long banished, became once more a 
 circulating medium of exchange. 
 
 The Bank of the United States afterward was turned 
 
 103 
 
THOMAS HART BENTON 
 
 into the State Bank of Pennsylvania ; it was badly man- 
 aged and finally became insolvent. The Jacksonians 
 accepted its downfall as a vindication of their policy; 
 but in reality it was due to causes not operative at the 
 time of the great struggle between the President and 
 the Senate over its continued existence. Certainly by 
 no possible financial policy could it have produced such 
 wide-spread ruin and distress as did the system intro- 
 duced by Jackson. 
 
 Long after the Bank controversy had lost all prac- 
 tical bearing it continued to be agitated by the chief 
 parties to it, who still felt sore from the various encoun- 
 ters. Jackson assailed it again in his message; a friendly 
 committee of the Senate investigated it and reported in 
 its favor, besides going out of their way to rake up 
 charges against Jackson and Benton. The latter re- 
 plied in a long speech, and became involved in personal- 
 ities with the chairman, Tyler, of Virginia. Neither side 
 paid attention to any but the partisan aspect of the 
 question, and the discussions were absolutely profitless. 
 
 The whole matter was threshed over again and again, 
 long after nothing but chaff was left, during the debates 
 on Benton's expunging resolution. Few now would de- 
 fend this resolution. The original resolution of censure 
 may have been of doubtful propriety; but it was passed, 
 was entered on the record, and had become a part of 
 the journal of the Senate. It would have been perfectly 
 proper to pass another resolution condemning or re- 
 versing the original one, and approving the course of 
 the President; but it was in the highest degree improper 
 to set about what was in form falsifying the record. 
 Still, Benton found plenty of precedents in the annals 
 of other legislative bodies for what he proposed to do, 
 and the country, as a whole, backed him up heartily. 
 
 104 
 
WAR ON THE BANK 
 
 He was further stimulated by the knowledge that there 
 was probably no other legislative act in which Jackson 
 took such intense interest, or which could so gratify his 
 pride; the mortification to Clay and Calhoun would be 
 equally great. Benton's motion failed more than once, 
 but the complexion of the Senate was rapidly changed 
 by the various States substituting Democratic for Whig 
 or anti-Jackson senators. Some of the changes were 
 made, as in Virginia, by senators refusing to vote for 
 the expunging resolution, as required by the State legis- 
 latures, and then resigning their seats, pursuant to a 
 ridiculous theory of the ultra-Democrats, which, if car- 
 ried out, would completely nullify the provision for a 
 six years' senatorial term. Finally, at the very close of 
 Jackson's administration, Benton found himself with a 
 fair majority behind him, and made the final move. 
 His speech was of course mainly filled with a highly 
 colored account of the blessings wrought for the Amer- 
 ican people by Andrew Jackson, and equally of course 
 the latter was compared at length to a variety of an- 
 cient Roman worthies. The final scene in the Senate 
 had an element of the comic about it. The expungers 
 held a caucus and agreed to sit the session out until the 
 resolution was passed; and with prudent forethought 
 Benton, well aware that when hungry and tired his fol- 
 lowers might show less inflexibility of purpose, provided 
 in an adjoining committee room "an ample supply of 
 cold hams, turkeys, rounds of beef, pickles, wines, and 
 cups of hot coffee," wherewith to inspirit the faint- 
 hearted. 
 
 Fortified by the refreshments, the expungers won a 
 complete victory. If the language of Jackson's admirers 
 was overdrawn and strained to the last degree in laud- 
 ing him for every virtue that he had or had not, it must 
 
 105 
 
THOMAS HART BENTON 
 
 be remembered that his opponents went quite as far 
 wrong on the other side in their denunciations and ex- 
 travagant prophecies of gloom. Webster made a very 
 dignified and forcible speech in closing the argument 
 against the resolution, but Calhoun and Clay were much 
 less moderate — the latter drawing a vivid picture of a 
 rapidly approaching reign of lawless military violence 
 and asserting that his opponents had "extinguished one 
 of the brightest and purest lights that ever burnt at the 
 altar of civil liberty." As a proper finale Jackson, to 
 show his appreciation, gave a great dinner to the ex- 
 pungers and their wives, Benton sitting at the head of 
 the table. Jackson and Benton solemnly thought that 
 they were taking part in a great act of justice, and were 
 amusingly unable to see the comic side of their acts. 
 They probably really believed most of their own de- 
 nunciations of the Bank, and very possibly thought 
 that the wickedness of its followers might tempt them 
 to do any desperate deed. At any rate they enjoyed 
 posing alike to themselves and to the public as persons 
 of antique virtue, who had risked both life and reputa- 
 tion in a hazardous but successful attempt to save the 
 liberties of the people from the vast and hostile forces 
 of the aristocratic "money power." 
 
 The best verdict on the expunging resolution was 
 given by Webster when he characterized the whole af- 
 fair as one which, if it were not regarded as a ruthless 
 violation of a sacred instrument, would appear to be 
 little elevated above the character of a contemptible 
 farce. 
 
 106 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 THE DISTRIBUTION OF THE SURPLUS 
 
 Benton was supremely self-satisfied with the part he 
 had played in the struggle with the Bank. But very 
 few thinking men would now admit that his actions, as 
 a whole, on the occasion in question, were to his credit, 
 although in the matter of the branch drafts he was per- 
 fectly right, and in that of the recharter at least occu- 
 pied defensible ground. His general views on mone- 
 tary matters, however, were sound, and on some of 
 the financial questions that shortly arose he occupied 
 a rather lonely pre-eminence of good sense among his 
 fellow senators; such being particularly the case as re- 
 gards the various mischievous schemes in relation to 
 disposing of the public lands, and of the money drawn 
 from their sale. The revenue derived from all sources, 
 including these sales of public lands, had for some years 
 been much in excess of the governmental expenses, and 
 a surplus had accumulated in the Treasury. This sur- 
 plus worked more damage than any deficit would have 
 done. 
 
 There were gold-mines in the Southern States, which 
 had been growing more and more productive; and, as 
 the cost of freighting the bullion was excessive, a bill 
 was introduced to establish branch mints at New Or- 
 leans and in the gold regions of Georgia and North 
 Carolina. Benton advocated this strongly, as a con- 
 stitutional right of the South and West, and as greatly 
 in the interest of those two sections; and also as being 
 another move in favor of a hard-money currency as op- 
 
 107 
 
THOMAS HART BENTON 
 
 posed to one of paper. There was strong opposition to 
 the bill; many of the Whigs having been carried so far 
 by their heated devotion to the United States Bank in 
 its quarrel that they had become paper-money men. 
 But the vote was neither sectional nor partisan in its 
 character. Clay led the opposition, while Webster sup- 
 ported Benton. 
 
 Before this time propositions to distribute among the 
 States the revenue from the public lands had become 
 common; and they were succeeded by propositions to 
 distribute the lands themselves, and then by others to 
 distribute all the surplus revenue. Calhoun finally in- 
 troduced an amendment to the Constitution to enable 
 the surplus in the Treasury during the next eight years 
 to be distributed among the various States ; the estimate 
 being that for the time mentioned there would be about 
 nine millions surplus annually. Benton attacked the 
 proposal very ably, showing the viciousness of a scheme 
 which would degrade every State government into the 
 position of a mendicant, and would allow money to be 
 collected from the citizens with one hand in order to be 
 given back to them with the other; and also denying 
 that the surplus would reach anything like the dimen- 
 sions indicated. He ridiculed the idea of making a con- 
 stitutional amendment to cover so short a period of 
 time; and stated that he would greatly prefer to see the 
 price paid for public lands by incoming settlers reduced, 
 and what surplus there was expended on strengthening 
 the defenses of the United States against foreign powers. 
 This last proposition was eminently proper. W r e were 
 then, as always, in our chronic state of utter defenseless- 
 ness against any hostile attack, and yet were in immi- 
 nent danger of getting embroiled with at least one great 
 power — France. Our danger is always that we shall 
 
 108 
 
THE DISTRIBUTION OF THE SURPLUS 
 
 spend too little, and not too much, in keeping ourselves 
 prepared for foreign war. Calhoun's resolution was a 
 total failure, and was never even brought to a vote. 
 
 Benton's proposed method of using the surplus came 
 in with peculiar propriety on account of the conduct of 
 the Whigs and Nullifiers in joining to oppose the ap- 
 propriation of three millions of dollars for purposes of 
 defense, which was provided for in the general fortifica- 
 tion bill. The House passed this bill by a great major- 
 ity. It was eminently proper that we should at once 
 take steps to provide for the very possible contingency 
 of a war with France, as the relations with that power 
 were growing more threatening every day; but the op- 
 position of the anti-Jackson men to the administration 
 and to all its measures had become so embittered that 
 they were willing to run the risk of seriously damaging 
 the national credit and honor, if they could thereby 
 score a point against their political adversaries. Ac- 
 cordingly, under the lead of Webster, Clay, and Cal- 
 houn, they defeated the bill in the Senate, in spite of 
 all that could be done to save it by Benton, who, what- 
 ever his faults, was always patriotic. The appropria- 
 tion had been very irregular in form, and under or- 
 dinary circumstances there would have been good 
 justification for inquiring into it before permitting its 
 passage; but under the circumstances its defeat at the 
 moment was most unfortunate. For the President had 
 been pressing France, even to the point of tolerably 
 plain threats, in order to induce or compel her to fulfil 
 the conditions of the recent treaty by which she had 
 bound herself to pay a considerable indemnity, long 
 owing by her to the United States for depredations on 
 our commerce. Now she menaced war, avowedly on 
 the ground that we were unprepared to resist her; and 
 
 109 
 
THOMAS HART BENTON 
 
 this vote in the Senate naturally led the French Gov- 
 ernment to suppose that Jackson was not sustained by 
 the country in the vigorous position which he had as- 
 sumed. In speaking on the message of the President 
 which alluded to this state of affairs, Benton strongly 
 advocated our standing firmly for our rights, making a 
 good speech, which showed much historical learning. 
 He severely reproached the antiadministration senators 
 for their previous conduct in causing the loss of the de- 
 fense appropriation bill, and for preferring to do worse 
 than waste the surplus by distributing it among the 
 different States instead of applying it according to the 
 provisions of that wise measure. 
 
 This brought on a bitter wrangle, in which Benton 
 certainly had the best of it. Calhoun was in favor of 
 humiliating non-resistance; he never advocated warlike 
 measures when the dignity of the nation was at stake, 
 fond though he was of threatening violence on behalf 
 of slavery or that form of secession known as nullifica- 
 tion. Benton quoted from speeches in the French 
 Chamber of Deputies to show that the French were 
 encouraged to take the position that they did on ac- 
 count of the action of the Senate, and the disposition 
 shown by a majority among the senators rather to pull 
 down the President in a party struggle than to uphold 
 him in his efforts to save the national honor in a con- 
 test with France. A curious feature of his speech was 
 that in which he warned the latter power that, in the 
 event of a conflict, it would have to do with a branch of 
 the same race which, "from the days of Agincourt and 
 Crecy, of Blenheim and Ramillies, down to the days of 
 Salamanca and Waterloo, has always known perfectly 
 well how to deal with the impetuous and fiery courage 
 of the French." This sudden outcropping of what, in 
 
 110 
 
THE DISTRIBUTION OF THE SURPLUS 
 
 Bentonian English, might be called Pan-Anglo-Saxon 
 sentiment was all the more surprising inasmuch as both 
 Benton himself and the party to which he belonged 
 were strongly anti-English in their way of looking at our 
 foreign policy, at least so far as North America was con- 
 cerned. In the end France yielded, though trying to 
 maintain her dignity by stating that she had not done 
 so, and the United States received what was due them. 
 
 Benton strongly opposed the payment by the United 
 States of the private claims of its citizens for damages 
 arising from the French spoliations at the end of the 
 last century. He pointed out that the effort to pay 
 such claims, scores of years after the time of their ac- 
 cruing, rarely benefits any of the parties originally in 
 interest, and can only do real service to dishonest specu- 
 lators. His speech on this matter would not be bad 
 reading for some of the pension-jobbing congressmen of 
 the present day and their supporters; but as concerned 
 these French claims he could have been easily answered. 
 
 In the controversy over the bill introduced by Clay, 
 to distribute the revenue derived from the public lands 
 among the States for the next five years, Benton showed 
 to great advantage compared both to the introducer of 
 the bill himself, and to Webster, his supporter. He 
 had all along taken the view of the land question that 
 would be natural to a far-seeing Western statesman de- 
 sirous of encouraging immigration. He wished the 
 public lands to be sold in small parcels to actual set- 
 tlers, at prices that would allow any poor man who was 
 thrifty to take up a claim. He had already introduced 
 a bill to sell them at graduated prices, the minimum 
 being established at a dollar and twenty-five cents an 
 acre; but if land remained unsold at this rate for three 
 years it was then to be sold for what it would bring in 
 
 111 
 
THOMAS HART BENTON 
 
 the market. This bill passed the Senate, but failed in 
 the House. 
 
 In opposing Clay's distribution scheme Benton again 
 brought forward his plan of using the surplus to provide 
 for the national defenses, and in his speech showed the 
 strongly national turn of his mind, saying: 
 
 "In this great system of national defense the whole 
 Union is equally interested; for the country, in all that 
 concerns its defenses, is but a unit, and every section is 
 interested in the defense of every other section, and 
 every individual citizen is interested in the defense of 
 the whole population. It is in vain to say that the navy 
 is on the sea, and the fortifications on the seaboard, and 
 that the citizens in the interior states, or in the valley 
 of the Mississippi, have no interest in these remote de- 
 fenses. Such an idea is mistaken and delusive; the in- 
 habitant of Missouri or of Indiana has a direct interest 
 in keeping open the mouths of the rivers, defending 
 the seaport towns, and preserving a naval force that 
 will protect the produce of his labor in crossing the 
 ocean and arriving safely in foreign markets." 
 
 Benton's patriotism always included the whole coun- 
 try in spite of the strength of his local sympathies. 
 
 The bill passed the Senate by a rather close vote, and 
 went to the House, where it soon became evident that 
 it was doomed to failure. There was another bill, prac- 
 tically of much the same import, before the Senate, 
 providing for the distribution of the surplus among the 
 States in proportion to their electoral votes, but omit- 
 ting the excellent proviso concerning the defenses. To 
 suit the views of Calhoun and the sticklers for strict 
 construction generally, the form of this rival bill was 
 changed, so that the "distribution" purported to be a 
 "deposit" merely; the money being nominally only 
 
 112 
 
THE DISTRIBUTION OF THE SURPLUS 
 
 loaned to the States, who pledged their faith to return 
 it when Congress should call for it. As it was of course 
 evident that such a loan would never be repaid, the 
 substitution of "deposit" for "distribution" can only 
 be regarded as a verbal change to give the doctrinaires 
 a loophole for escape from their previous position; they 
 all took advantage of it, and the bill received over- 
 whelming support and was passed by both houses. 
 
 Benton, however, stood out against it to the last, and 
 in a very powerful speech foretold the evils which the 
 plan would surely work. He scornfully exposed the 
 way in which some of the members were trying, by a 
 trick of wording, to hide the nature of the bill they were 
 enacting into a law, and thus to seem to justify them- 
 selves for the support they were giving it. "It is in 
 name a deposit; in form, a loan; in essence and design, 
 a distribution," said Benton. He ridiculed the attitude 
 of the hair-splitting strict constructionists, like Cal- 
 houn, who had always pretended most scrupulously to 
 respect the exact wording of the Constitution, and who 
 had previously refused to vote for distribution on the 
 ground that it was unconstitutional: 
 
 "At the commencement of the present session a prop- 
 osition was made [by Calhoun] to amend the Consti- 
 tution, to permit this identical distribution to be made. 
 That proposition is now upon our calendar, for the ac- 
 tion of Congress. All at once it is discovered that a 
 change of name will do as well as a change of the Con- 
 stitution. Strike out the word 'distribute' and insert 
 the word 'deposit,' and incontinently the impediment 
 is removed; the constitutional difficulty is surmounted, 
 and the distribution can be made." 
 
 He showed that to the States themselves the moneys 
 distributed would either be useless, or else — and much 
 
 113 
 
THOMAS HART BENTON 
 
 more probably — they would be fruitful sources of cor- 
 ruption and political debauchery. He was quite right. 
 It would have been very much better to have destroyed 
 the surplus than to have distributed it as was actually 
 done. None of the States gained any real benefit by 
 the transaction; most were seriously harmed. At the 
 best, the money was squandered in the rage for public 
 improvements that then possessed the whole people; 
 often it was stolen outright, or never accounted for. In 
 the one case, it was an incentive to extravagance; in the 
 other, it was a corruption fund. Yet the popular feel- 
 ing was strongly in favor of the measure at the time, 
 and Benton was almost the only public man of note 
 who dared to resist it. On this occasion, as in the clos- 
 ing act of the struggle with the Nullifiers, he showed 
 more backbone than did his great chief; for Jackson 
 signed the bill, although criticising it most forcibly and 
 pungently. 
 
 The success of this measure naturally encouraged the 
 presentation of others. Clay attempted to revive his 
 land-money distribution bill, but was defeated, mainly 
 through Benton's efforts. Three or four other simi- 
 lar schemes, including one of Calhoun's, also failed. 
 Finally a clause providing for a further "deposit" of sur- 
 plus moneys with the States was tacked to a bill appro- 
 priating money for defenses, thereby loading it down so 
 that it was eventually lost. In the Senate the "deposit " 
 amendment was finally struck out, in spite of the oppo- 
 sition of Clay, Calhoun, and Webster. Throughout the 
 whole discussion of the distribution of the surplus Ben- 
 ton certainly shines by comparison with any one of his 
 three great senatorial rivals. 
 
 He shows to equally great advantage compared to 
 them in the part taken by him in reference to Jackson's 
 
 114 
 
THE DISTRIBUTION OF THE SURPLUS 
 
 so-called specie circulars. The craze for speculation had 
 affected the sales of public lands, which were increasing 
 at an extraordinary rate, nearly twenty-five million 
 dollars' worth being sold in 1836. As a rule, the pay- 
 ments were made in the notes of irresponsible banks, 
 gotten up in many cases by the land speculators them- 
 selves. The sales were running up to five millions a 
 month, with prospect of a boundless increase, so that 
 all the public land bade fair to be converted into incon- 
 vertible paper. Benton had foreseen the evil results at- 
 tending such a change, and, though well aware that he 
 was opposing powerful interests in his own section of 
 the country, had already tried to put a stop to it by 
 law. In his speech he had stated that the unprece- 
 dented increase in the sale of public lands was due 
 to the accommodations received by speculators from 
 worthless banks, whose notes in small denominations 
 would be taken to some distant part of the country, 
 whence it would be a long time before they were re- 
 turned and presented for payment. The speculators, 
 with paper of which the real value was much below par, 
 could outbid settlers and cultivators who could only 
 offer specie, or notes that were its equivalent. He went 
 on to say that "the effect was equally injurious to every 
 interest concerned — except the banks and the specu- 
 lators: it was injurious to the treasury, which was filling 
 up with paper; to the new states, which were flooded 
 with paper; and to settlers and cultivators, who were 
 outbid by speculators loaded with this borrowed paper. 
 A return to specie payments for lands was the remedy 
 for all these evils." 
 
 Benton's reasoning was perfectly sound. The effects 
 on settlers, on the new States, and on the government 
 itself were precisely such as he described, and the pro- 
 
 115 
 
THOMAS HART BENTON 
 
 posed remedy was the right one. But his bill failed; for 
 the Whigs, including even Webster, had by this time 
 worked themselves up until they were fairly crazy at 
 the mere mention of paper-money banks. 
 
 Jackson, however, not daunted by the fate of the 
 bill, got Benton to draw up a Treasury order, and had 
 it issued. This served the same purpose, as it forbade 
 the land-offices to receive anything but gold and silver 
 in payment for land. It was not issued until Congress 
 had adjourned, for fear that body might counteract it 
 by a law; and this was precisely what was attempted 
 at the next session, when a joint resolution was passed 
 rescinding the order, and practically endeavoring to im- 
 pose the worthless paper currency of the States upon the 
 federal government. Benton stood almost alone in the 
 fight he made against this resolution, although the right 
 of the matter was so plainly on his side. In his speech 
 he foretold clearly the coming of the great financial 
 crisis that was then near at hand. The resolution, how- 
 ever, amounted to nothing, as it turned out, for it was 
 passed so late in the session that the President, by sim- 
 ply withholding his signature from it, was enabled to 
 prevent it from having effect. 
 
 116 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 THE SLAVE QUESTION APPEARS IN POLITICS 
 
 Toward the close of Jackson's administration, slav- 
 ery for the first time made its permanent appearance 
 in national politics; although for some years yet it had 
 little or no influence in shaping the course of political 
 movements. In 1833 the abolition societies of the North 
 came into prominence; they had been started a couple 
 of years previously. 
 
 Black slavery was such a grossly anachronistic and 
 un-American form of evil, that it is difficult to discuss 
 calmly the efforts to abolish it, and to remember that 
 many of these efforts were calculated to do, and actu- 
 ally did, more harm than good. We are also very apt 
 to forget that it was perfectly possible and reasonable 
 for enlightened and virtuous men, who fully recognized 
 it as an evil, yet to prefer its continuance to having it 
 interfered with in a way that would produce even worse 
 results. Black slavery in Hayti was characterized by 
 worse abuse than ever was the case in the United States; 
 yet, looking at the condition of that republic now, it 
 may well be questioned whether it would not have been 
 greatly to her benefit in the end to have had slavery 
 continue a century or so longer — its ultimate extinction 
 being certain — rather than to have had her attain free- 
 dom as she actually did, with the results that have 
 flowed from her action. When an evil of colossal size 
 exists, it is often the case that there is no possible way 
 
 117 
 
THOMAS HART BENTON 
 
 of dealing with it that will not itself be fraught with 
 baleful results. Nor can the ultraphilanthropic method 
 be always, or even often, accepted as the best. If there 
 is one question upon which the philanthropists of the 
 present day, especially the more emotional ones, are 
 agreed, it is that any law restricting Chinese immigra- 
 tion is an outrage; yet it seems incredible that any man 
 of even moderate intelligence should not see that no 
 greater calamity could now befall the United States 
 than to have the Pacific slope fill up with a Mongolian 
 population. 
 
 The cause of the Abolitionists has had such a halo 
 shed round it by the after course of events, which they 
 themselves in reality did very little to shape, that it 
 has been usual to speak of them with absurdly exag- 
 gerated praise. Their courage, and for the most part 
 their sincerity, cannot be too highly spoken of, but their 
 share in abolishing slavery was far less than has com- 
 monly been represented; any single non-abolitionist 
 politician, like Lincoln or Seward, did more than all 
 the professional Abolitionists combined really to bring 
 about its destruction. The abolition societies were only 
 in a very restricted degree the causes of the growing 
 feeling in the North against slavery; they are rather 
 to be regarded as themselves manifestations or accom- 
 paniments of that feeling. The antislavery outburst in 
 the Northern States over the admission of Missouri took 
 place a dozen years before there was an abolition so- 
 ciety in existence; and the influence of the professional 
 Abolitionists upon the growth of the antislavery senti- 
 ment as often as not merely warped it and twisted it 
 out of proper shape — as when at one time they showed 
 a strong inclination to adopt disunion views, although 
 it was self-evident that by no possibility could slavery 
 
 118 
 
THE SLAVE QUESTION IN POLITICS 
 
 be abolished unless the Union was preserved. Their 
 tendency toward impracticable methods was well shown 
 in the position they assumed toward him who was not 
 only the greatest American, but also the greatest man, 
 of the nineteenth century; for during all the terrible 
 four years that sad, strong, patient Lincoln worked and 
 suffered for the people, he had to dread the influence of 
 the extreme Abolitionists only less than that of the 
 Copperheads. Many of their leaders possessed no good 
 qualities beyond their fearlessness and truth — qualities 
 that were also possessed by the Southern fire-eaters. 
 They belonged to that class of men that is always en- 
 gaged in some agitation or other; only it happened that 
 in this particular agitation they were right. Wendell 
 Phillips may be taken as a very good type of the whole. 
 His services against slavery prior to the war should al- 
 ways be remembered with gratitude; but after the war, 
 and until the day of his death, his position on almost 
 every public question was either mischievous or ridicu- 
 lous, and usually both. 
 
 When the abolitionist movement started it was 
 avowedly designed to be cosmopolitan in character ; the 
 originators looked down upon any merely national or 
 patriotic feeling. This again deservedly took away 
 from their influence. In fact, it would have been most 
 unfortunate had the majority of the Northerners been 
 from the beginning in hearty accord with the Abolition- 
 ists; at the best it would have resulted at that time in 
 the disruption of the Union and the perpetuation of 
 slavery in the South. 
 
 But after all is said, the fact remains, that on the 
 main issue the Abolitionists were at least working in 
 the right direction. Sooner or later, by one means or 
 another, slavery had to go. It is beyond doubt a mis- 
 
 119 
 
THOMAS HART BENTON 
 
 fortune that in certain districts the bulk of the popu- 
 lation should be composed of densely ignorant negroes, 
 often criminal or vicious in their instincts; but such is 
 the case, and the best, and indeed the only proper, course 
 to pursue is to treat them with precisely the same jus- 
 tice that is meted out to whites. The effort to do so in 
 time immediately past has not resulted so successfully 
 as was hoped and expected; but nevertheless no other 
 way would have worked as well. 
 
 Slavery was chiefly responsible for the streak of coarse 
 and brutal barbarism which ran through the Southern 
 character, and which marked the ferocious outcry in- 
 stantly raised by the whole Southern press against the 
 Abolitionists. There had been an abortive negro rising 
 in Virginia almost at the same time that the abolitionist 
 movement first came into prominence; and this fact 
 added to the rage and terror with which the South re- 
 garded the latter. The clamor against the North was 
 deafening; and though it soon subsided for the time 
 being, it never afterward entirely died away. As has 
 been shown already, there had always been a strong 
 separatist feeling in the South; but hitherto its mani- 
 festations had been local and sporadic, never affecting 
 all the States at the same time; for it had never hap- 
 pened that the cause which called forth any particular 
 manifestation was one bearing on the whole South alike. 
 The alien and sedition laws were more fiercely resented 
 in Virginia and Kentucky than in South Carolina; the 
 tariff, which so angered the latter, pleased Louisiana; 
 and Georgia and Alabama alone were affected by the 
 presence of great Indian communities within their bor- 
 ders. But slavery was an interest common to the whole 
 South. When it was felt to be in any way menaced, all 
 Southerners came together for its protection; and, from 
 
 120 
 
THE SLAVE QUESTION IN POLITICS 
 
 the time of the rise of the Abolitionists onward, the sepa- 
 ratist movement throughout the South began to iden- 
 tify itself with the maintenance of slavery, and gradu- 
 ally to develop greater and greater strength. Its growth 
 was furthered and hastened by the actions of the more 
 ambitious and unscrupulous of the Southern politicians, 
 who saw that it offered a chance for them to push them- 
 selves forward, and who were perfectly willing to wreak 
 almost irreparable harm to the nation if by so doing 
 they could advance their own selfish interests. It was 
 in reference to these politicians that Benton quoted 
 with approval a letter from ex-President Madison, 
 which ran: 
 
 "The danger is not to be concealed, that the sym- 
 pathy arising from known causes, and the inculcated 
 impression of a permanent incompatibility of interests 
 between the South and the North may put it in the 
 power of popular leaders, aspiring to the highest sta- 
 tions, to unite the South, on some critical occasion, in 
 a course that will end by creating a new theatre of great, 
 though inferior, interest. In pursuing this course the 
 first and most obvious step is nullification, the next 
 secession, and the last a farewell separation." 
 
 This was a pretty good forecast of the crisis that was 
 precipitated by the greedy and reckless ambition of the 
 secessionist leaders in 1860. The moral difference be- 
 tween Benedict Arnold on the one hand, and Aaron 
 Burr or Jefferson Davis on the other, is precisely the 
 difference that obtains between a politician who sells 
 his vote for money and one who supports a bad measure 
 in consideration of being given some high political posi- 
 tion. 
 
 The Abolitionists immediately contrived to bring 
 themselves before the notice of Congress in two ways: 
 
 121 
 
THOMAS HART BENTON 
 
 by the presentation of petitions for the abolition of 
 slavery in the District of Columbia, and by sending out 
 to the Southern States a shoal of abolition pamphlets, 
 newspapers, and rather ridiculous illustrated cuts. 
 What the precise point of the last proceeding was no 
 one can tell; the circulation of such writings as theirs 
 in the South could not possibly serve any good purpose. 
 But they had a right to send what they wished, and the 
 conduct of many of the Southerners in trying to get a 
 federal law passed to prohibit their writings from being 
 carried in the mail was as wrong as it was foolish ; while 
 the brutal clamor raised in the South against the whole 
 North as well as against the Abolitionists, and the con- 
 duct of certain Southern legislatures in practically set- 
 ting prices on the heads of the leaders in the objection- 
 able movement, in turn angered the North and gave the 
 Abolitionists tenfold greater strength than they would 
 otherwise have had. 
 
 The question first arose upon the presentation of a 
 perfectly proper and respectful petition sent to the Sen- 
 ate by a society of Pennsylvania Quakers, and praying 
 for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia. 
 The District was solely under the control of Congress, 
 and was the property of the nation at large, so that 
 Congress was the proper and the only body to which 
 any petition concerning the affairs of the District could 
 be sent; and if the right of petition meant anything, it 
 certainly meant that the people, or any portion thereof, 
 should have the right to petition their representatives 
 in regard to their own affairs. Yet certain Southern ex- 
 tremists, under the lead of Calhoun, were anxious to 
 refuse to receive the paper. Benton voted in favor of 
 receiving it, and was followed in his action by a number 
 of other Southern senators. He spoke at length on the 
 
 122 
 
THE SLAVE QUESTION IN POLITICS 
 
 subject, and quite moderately, even crediting the peti- 
 tioners, or many of them, with being "good people, aim- 
 ing at benevolent objects, and endeavoring to amelio- 
 rate the condition of one part of the human race, with- 
 out inflicting calamities on another part," which was 
 going very far indeed for a slaveholding senator of that 
 time. He was of course totally opposed to abolition and 
 the Abolitionists, and showed that the only immediate 
 effect of the movement had been to make the lot of the 
 slaves still worse, and for the moment to do away with 
 any chance of intelligently discussing the question of 
 emancipation. For, like many other Southerners, he 
 fondly cherished the idea of gradual peaceful emanci- 
 pation — an idea which the course of events made wholly 
 visionary, but which, under the circumstances, might 
 well have been realized. He proceeded to give most 
 questionable praise to the North for some acts as out- 
 rageous and disgraceful as were ever perpetrated by its 
 citizens, stating that: 
 
 "Their conduct was above all praise, above all thanks, 
 above all gratitude. They had chased off the foreign 
 emissaries, silenced the gabbling tongues of female 
 dupes, and dispersed the assemblages, whether fanati- 
 cal, visionary, or incendiary, of all that congregated to 
 preach against evils that affected others, not them- 
 selves; and to propose remedies to aggravate the dis- 
 ease which they had pretended to cure. They had 
 acted with a noble spirit. They had exerted a vigor 
 beyond all law. They had obeyed the enactments, not 
 of the statute-book, but of the heart." 
 
 These fervent encomiums were fully warranted by 
 the acts of various Northern mobs, that had maltreated 
 abolitionist speakers, broken up antislavery meetings, 
 and committed numerous other deeds of lawless vio- 
 
 123 
 
THOMAS HART BENTON 
 
 lence. But however flattered the Northerners of that 
 generation may have been, in feeling that they thor- 
 oughly deserved Benton's eulogy, it is doubtful if their 
 descendants will take quite the same pride in looking 
 back to it. An amusing incident of the debate was 
 Calhoun's attack upon one of the most subservient 
 allies the South ever had in the Northern States; he 
 caused to be sent up to the desk and read an abolition 
 paper published in New Hampshire, which contained a 
 bitter assault upon Franklin Pierce, then a member of 
 Congress. Nominally he took this course to show that 
 there was much greater strength in the abolition move- 
 ment, and therefore much greater danger to the South, 
 than the Northern senators were willing to admit; in 
 reality he seems to have acted partly from wanton 
 malice, partly from overbearing contempt for the truck- 
 ling allies and apologists of slavery in the North, and 
 partly from a desire not to see the discussion die out, 
 but rather, in spite of his continual profession to the 
 contrary, to see it maintained as a standing subject of 
 irritation. He wished to refuse to receive the petitions, 
 on the ground that they touched a subject that ought 
 not even to be discussed ; yet he must have known well 
 that he was acting in the very way most fitted to give 
 rise to discussion — a fact that was pointed out to him 
 by Benton, in a caustic speech. He also took the ground 
 that the question of emancipation affected the States 
 exclusively, and that Congress had no more jurisdiction 
 over the subject in the District of Columbia than she 
 had in the State of North Carolina. This precious con- 
 tribution to the true interpretation of the Constitution 
 was so farcically and palpably false that it is incredible 
 that he should himself have believed what he was say- 
 ing. He was still smarting from the nullification con- 
 
 124 
 
THE SLAVE QUESTION IN POLITICS 
 
 troversy; he had seceded from his party, and was sore 
 with disappointed ambition ; and it seems very improba- 
 ble that he was honest in his professions of regret at see- 
 ing questions come up which would disturb the Union. 
 On the contrary, much of the opposition he was con- 
 tinually making to supposititious federal and Northern 
 encroachments on the rights of the South must have 
 been merely factious, and it seems likely that, partly 
 from a feeling of revenge and partly with the hope of 
 gratifying his ambition, he was anxious to do all he 
 could to work the South up to the highest pitch of irri- 
 tation, and keep her there until there was a dissolution 
 of the Union. Benton evidently thought that this was 
 the case; and in reading the constant threats of nulli- 
 fication and secession which run through all Calhoun's 
 speeches, and the innumerable references he makes to 
 the alleged fact that he had come off victorious in his 
 treasonable struggle over the tariff in 1833, it is difficult 
 not to accept Benton's view of the matter. He always 
 spoke of Calhoun with extreme aversion, and there 
 were probably moments when he was inclined heartily 
 to sympathize with Jackson's death-bed regret that he 
 had not hung the South Carolina Nullifier. Doubtless 
 in private life, or as regards any financial matters, Cal- 
 houn's conduct was always blameless; but it may well 
 be that he has received far more credit for purity of 
 motive in his public conduct than his actions fairly en- 
 title him to. 
 
 Calhoun was also greatly exercised over the circu- 
 lation of abolition documents in the South. At his re- 
 quest a committee of five was appointed to draft a bill 
 on the subject; he was chairman, and three of the other 
 four members were from the slave States; yet his re- 
 port was so extreme that only one of the latter would 
 
 125 
 
THOMAS HART BENTON 
 
 sign it with him. He introduced into it a long argu- 
 ment to the effect that the Constitution was a mere 
 compact between sovereign States, and inferentially that 
 nullification and secession were justifiable and constitu- 
 tional ; and then drew a vivid picture of the unspeakable 
 horrors with which, as he contended, the action of the 
 Northern Abolitionists menaced the South. The bill 
 subjected to penalties any postmaster who should 
 knowingly receive and put into the mail any publica- 
 tion touching slavery, to go into any State which had 
 forbidden by law the circulation of such a publication. 
 In discussing this bill he asserted that Congress, in re- 
 fusing to pass it, would be co-operating with the Aboli- 
 tionists; and then he went on to threaten as usual that 
 in such case nullification or secession would become 
 necessary. Benton had become pretty well tired of 
 these threats, his attachment to the Union even exceed- 
 ing his dislike to seeing slavery meddled with; and he 
 headed the list of half a dozen Southern senators who 
 joined with the bulk of the Northerners in defeating 
 the bill, which was lost by a vote of twenty-five to nine- 
 teen. A few of the Northern "dough-faces" voted with 
 Calhoun. There is a painfully striking contrast between 
 the courage shown by Benton, a slaveholder with a 
 slaveholding constituency, in opposing this bill, and the 
 obsequious subserviency to the extreme Southern feel- 
 ing shown on the same occasion by Wright, Van Buren, 
 and Buchanan — fit representatives of the sordid and 
 odious political organizations of New York and Penn- 
 sylvania. 
 
 Several other questions came up toward the end of 
 Jackson's administration which were more or less re- 
 motely affected by the feeling about slavery. Benton 
 succeeded in getting a bill through to extend the boun- 
 
 126 
 
THE SLAVE QUESTION IN POLITICS 
 
 daries of the State of Missouri so as to take in territory 
 lying northwest of her previous limit, the Indian title 
 to which was extinguished by treaty. This annexed 
 land lay north of the boundary for slave territory estab- 
 lished by the Missouri Compromise; but Benton ex- 
 perienced no difficulty in getting his bill through. It 
 was not, however, in the least a move designed in the 
 interests of the slave power. Missouri's feeling was 
 precisely that which would actuate Oregon or Wash- 
 ington Territory to-day, if either wished to annex part 
 of northern Idaho. 
 
 The territories of Arkansas and Michigan had ap- 
 plied for admission into the Union as States; and as 
 one would be a free and the other a slave State, it was 
 deemed proper that they should come in together. Ben- 
 ton himself urged the admission of the free State of 
 Michigan, while the interests of Arkansas were con- 
 fided to Buchanan, of Pennsylvania. The slavery ques- 
 tion entered but little into the matter; although some 
 objections were raised on that score, as well as on ac- 
 count of the irregular manner in which the would-be 
 States had acted in preparing for admission. The real 
 ground of opposition to the admission of the two new 
 States was political, as it was known that they could 
 both be relied upon for Democratic majorities at the 
 approaching presidential election. Many Whigs, there- 
 fore, both from the North and the South, opposed it. 
 
 The final removal of the Cherokees from Georgia and 
 Alabama was brought about in 1836 by means of a 
 treaty with those Indians. Largely through the instru- 
 mentality of Benton, and in spite of the opposition of 
 Clay, Calhoun, and Webster, this instrument was ratified 
 in the Senate by the close vote of thirty-one to fifteen. 
 Although new slave territory was thus acquired, the 
 
 127 
 
THOMAS HART BENTON 
 
 vote on the treaty was factional and not sectional, being 
 equally divided between the Northern and the South- 
 ern States, Calhoun and six other Southern senators 
 opposing it, chiefly from hostility to the administration. 
 The removal of the Indians was probably a necessity; 
 undoubtedly it worked hardship in individual instances, 
 but on the whole it did not in the least retard the civili- 
 zation of the tribe, which was fully paid for its losses; 
 and moreover, in its new home, continued to make prog- 
 ress in every way until it became involved in the great 
 Civil War, and received a setback from which it has not 
 yet recovered. These Cherokees were almost the last 
 Indians left in any number east of the Mississippi, and 
 their removal solved the Indian problem so far as the 
 old States were concerned. 
 
 Later on Benton went to some trouble to disprove 
 the common statement that we have robbed the orig- 
 inal Indian occupants of their lands. He showed by 
 actual statistics that up to 1840 we had paid to the 
 Indians eighty-five millions of dollars for land pur- 
 chases, which was over five times as much as the United 
 States gave the great Napoleon for Louisiana; and about 
 three times as much as we paid France, Spain, and Mex- 
 ico together for the purchase of Louisiana, Florida, and 
 California ; while the amount of land received in return 
 would not equal any one of these purchases, and was 
 but a fractional part of Louisiana or California. We 
 paid the Cherokees for their territory exactly as much 
 as we paid the French, at the height of their power, for 
 Louisiana; while as to the Creek and Choctaw nations, 
 we paid each more for their lands than we paid for 
 Louisiana and Florida combined. The dealings of the 
 government with the Indian have often been unwise, 
 and sometimes unjust; but they are very far indeed 
 
 128 
 
THE SLAVE QUESTION IN POLITICS 
 
 from being so black as is commonly represented, espe- 
 cially when the tremendous difficulties of the case are 
 taken into account. 
 
 Far more important than any of these matters was 
 the acknowledgment of the independence of Texas; and 
 in this, as well as in the troubles with Mexico which 
 sprang from it, slavery again played a prominent part, 
 although not nearly so important at first as has com- 
 monly been represented. Doubtless the slaveholders 
 worked hard to secure additional territory out of which 
 to form new slave States; but Texas and California 
 would have been in the end taken by us, had there not 
 been a single slave in the Mississippi valley. The greed 
 for the conquest of new lands which characterized the 
 Western people had nothing whatever to do with the 
 fact that some of them owned slaves. Long before there 
 had been so much as the faintest foreshadowing of the 
 importance which the slavery question was to assume, 
 the West had been eagerly pressing on to territorial con- 
 quest, and had been chafing and fretting at the restraint 
 put upon it, and at the limits set to its strivings by the 
 treaties established with foreign powers. The first set- 
 tlers beyond the Alleghanies, and their immediate suc- 
 cessors, who moved down along the banks of the Ohio, 
 the Cumberland, and the Tennessee, and thence out to 
 the Mississippi itself, were not generally slaveholders; 
 but they were all as anxious to wrest the Mississippi 
 valley from the control of the French as their descen- 
 dants were to overrun the Spanish lands lying along 
 the Rio Grande. In other words, slavery had very lit- 
 tle to do with the Western aggressions on Mexican 
 territory, however it might influence the views of South- 
 ern statesmen as to lending support to the Western 
 schemes. 
 
 129 
 
THOMAS HART BENTON 
 
 The territorial boundaries of all the great powers 
 originally claiming the soil of the West — France, Spain, 
 and the United States — were very ill defined, there be- 
 ing no actual possession of the lands in dispute, and 
 each power making a great showing on its own map. 
 If the extreme views of any one were admitted, its ad- 
 versary, for the time being, would have had nothing. 
 Thus before the treaty of 1819 with Spain our nominal 
 boundaries and those of the latter power in the West 
 overlapped each other; and the extreme Western men 
 persisted in saying that we had given up some of the 
 territory which belonged to us because we had con- 
 sented to adopt a middle line of division, and had not 
 insisted upon being allowed the full extent of our claims. 
 Benton always took this view of it, insisting that we had 
 given up our rights by the adoption of this treaty. 
 Many Southerners improved on this idea, and spoke of 
 the desirability of "reannexing" the territory we had 
 surrendered — endeavoring by the use of this very inap- 
 propriate word to give a color of right to their proceed- 
 ings. As a matter of fact it was inevitable, as well as 
 in the highest degree desirable for the good of humanity 
 at large, that the American people should ultimately 
 crowd out the Mexicans from their sparsely populated 
 Northern provinces. But it was quite as desirable that 
 this should not be done in the interests of slavery. 
 
 American settlers had begun to press into the out- 
 lying Spanish province of Texas before the treaty of 
 1819 was ratified. Their numbers went on increasing, 
 and at first the Mexican Government, having achieved 
 independence of Spain, encouraged their incoming. But 
 it soon saw that their presence boded danger, and for- 
 bade further immigration; without effect, however, as 
 the settlers and adventurers came thronging in as fast 
 
 130 
 
THE SLAVE QUESTION IN POLITICS 
 
 as ever. The Americans had brought their slaves with 
 them, and when the Mexican Government issued a de- 
 cree liberating all slaves, they refused to be bound by 
 it; and this decree was among the reasons alleged for 
 their revolt. It has been represented as the chief if not 
 the sole cause of the rebellion; but in reality it was not 
 the cause at all; it was merely one of the occasions. 
 Long before slavery had been abolished in Mexico, and 
 before it had become an exciting question in the United 
 States, the infant colony of Texas, when but a few 
 months old, had made an abortive attempt at insur- 
 rection. Any one who has ever been on the frontier, 
 and who knows anything whatever of the domineering, 
 masterful spirit and bitter race prejudices of the white 
 frontiersmen, will acknowledge at once that it was out 
 of the question that the Texans should long continue 
 under Mexican rule; and it would have been a great 
 misfortune if they had. It was out of the question to 
 expect them to submit to the mastery of the weaker 
 race, which they were supplanting. Whatever might 
 be the pretexts alleged for revolt, the real reasons were 
 to be found in the deeply marked difference of race, and 
 in the absolute unfitness of the Mexicans then to govern 
 themselves, to say nothing of governing others. Dur- 
 ing the dozen years that the American colony in Texas 
 formed part of Mexico, the government of the latter 
 went through revolution after revolution— republic, 
 empire, and military dictatorship following one another 
 in bewildering succession. A state of things like this in 
 the central government, especially when the latter be- 
 longed to a race alien in blood, language, religion, and 
 habits of life, would warrant any community in deter- 
 mining to shift for itself. Such would probably have 
 been the result even on people as sober and peaceable 
 
 131 
 
THOMAS HART BENTON 
 
 as the Texan settlers were warlike, reckless, and over- 
 bearing. 
 
 But the majority of those who fought for Texan inde- 
 pendence were not men who had already settled in that 
 Territory, but, on the contrary, were adventurers from 
 the States, who had come to help their kinsmen and to 
 win for themselves, by their own prowess, homes on 
 what was then Mexican soil. It may as well be frankly 
 admitted that the conduct of the American frontiers- 
 men all through this contest can be justified on no pos- 
 sible plea of international morality or law. Still, we 
 cannot judge them by the same standard we should ap- 
 ply to the dealings between highly civilized powers of 
 approximately the same grade of virtue and intelligence. 
 Two nations may be contemporaneous so far as mere 
 years go, and yet, for all that, may be existing among 
 surroundings which practically are centuries apart. The 
 nineteenth century on the banks of the Thames, the 
 Seine, and the Rhine, or even of the Hudson and the 
 Potomac, was one thing; the nineteenth century in the 
 valley of the Rio Grande was another and quite a dif- 
 ferent thing. 
 
 The conquest of Texas should properly be classed 
 with conquests like those of the Norse sea-rovers. The 
 virtues and faults alike of the Texans were those of a 
 barbaric age. They were restless, brave, and eager for 
 adventure, excitement, and plunder; they were warlike, 
 resolute, and enterprising; they had all the marks of a 
 young and hardy race, flushed with the pride of strength 
 and self-confidence. On the other hand they showed 
 again and again the barbaric vices of boastfulness, ig- 
 norance, and cruelty; and they were utterly careless of 
 the rights of others, looking upon the possessions of all 
 weaker races as simply their natural prey. A band of 
 
 132 
 
THE SLAVE QUESTION IN POLITICS 
 
 settlers entering Texas was troubled by no greater 
 scruples of conscience than, a thousand years before, 
 a ship-load of Knut's followers might have felt at land- 
 ing in England; and when they were engaged in warfare 
 with the Mexicans they could count with certainty upon 
 assistance from their kinsfolk who had been left behind, 
 and for the same reasons that had enabled Rolf's Norse- 
 men on the seacoast of France to rely confidently on 
 Scandinavian help in their quarrels with their Karling 
 overlords. The great Texan hero, Houston, who drank 
 hard and fought hard, who was mighty in battle and 
 crafty in council, with his reckless, boastful courage and 
 his thirst for changes and risks of all kinds, his propen- 
 sity for private brawling, and his queerly blended im- 
 pulses for good and evil, might, with very superficial 
 alterations of character, stand as the type of an old- 
 world Viking — plus the virtue of a deep and earnestly 
 patriotic attachment to his whole country. Indeed his 
 career was as picturesque and romantic as that of Har- 
 old Hardraada himself, and, to boot, was much more 
 important in its results. 
 
 Thus the Texan struggle for independence stirred up 
 the greatest sympathy and enthusiasm in the United 
 States. The administration remained nominally neu- 
 tral, but obviously sympathized with the Texans, per- 
 mitting arms and men to be sent to their help, without 
 hindrance, and indeed doing not a little discreditable 
 bullying in the diplomatic dealing with Mexico, which 
 that unfortunate community had her hands too full to 
 resent. Still we did not commit a more flagrant breach 
 of neutrality than, for instance, England was at the 
 same time engaged in committing in reference to the 
 civil wars in Spain. The victory of San Jacinto, in 
 which Houston literally annihilated a Mexican force 
 
 133 
 
THOMAS HART BENTON 
 
 twice the strength of his own, virtually decided the con- 
 test; and the Senate at once passed a resolution recog- 
 nizing the independence of Texas. Calhoun wished 
 that body to go farther, and forthwith admit Texas as 
 a State into the Union; but Benton and his colleagues 
 were not prepared to take such a step at so early a date, 
 although intending of course that in the end she should 
 be admitted. There was little opposition to the recog- 
 nition of Texan independence, although a few members 
 of the Lower House, headed by Adams, voted against it. 
 While a Cabinet officer, and afterward as President, 
 Adams had done all that he could to procure by pur- 
 chase or treaty the very land which was afterward the 
 cause of our troubles with Mexico. 
 
 Much the longest and most elaborate speech in favor 
 of the recognition of Texan independence was made by 
 Benton, to whom the subject appealed very strongly. 
 He announced emphatically that he spoke as a Western 
 senator, voicing the feeling of the West; and he was 
 right. The opposition to the growth of our country on 
 its southwestern frontier was almost confined to the 
 Northeast; the West as a whole, free States as well as 
 slave, heartily favored the movement. The settlers of 
 Texas had come mainly, it is true, from the slave States; 
 but there were also many who had been born north of 
 the Ohio. It was a matter of comment that the guns 
 used at San Jacinto had come from Cincinnati — and so 
 had some of those who served them. 
 
 In Benton's speech he began by pointing out the im- 
 propriety of doing what Calhoun had done in attempt- 
 ing to complicate the question of the recognition of 
 Texan independence with the admission of Texas as a 
 State. He then proceeded to claim for us a good deal 
 more credit than we were entitled to for our efforts to 
 
 134 
 
THE SLAVE QUESTION IN POLITICS 
 
 preserve neutrality; drew a very true picture of the com- 
 mercial bonds that united us to Mexico, and of the 
 necessity that they should not be lightly broken; gave 
 a spirited sketch of the course of the war hitherto, con- 
 demning without stint the horrible butcheries com- 
 mitted by the Mexicans, but touching gingerly on the 
 savage revenge taken by the Americans in their turn; 
 and ended by a eulogy of the Texans themselves, and 
 their leaders. 
 
 It was the age of "spread-eagle" speeches, and many 
 of Benton's were no exception to the rule. As a people 
 we were yet in a condition of raw, crude immaturity; 
 and our very sensitiveness to foreign criticism — a sensi- 
 tiveness which we now find it difficult to understand — 
 and the realization of our own awkwardness made us 
 inclined to brag about and exaggerate our deeds. Our 
 public speakers and writers acquired the abominable 
 habit of speaking of everything and everybody in the 
 United States in the superlative; and therefore, as we 
 claimed the highest rank for all our fourth-rate men, we 
 put it out of our power to do justice to the really first- 
 rate ones; and on account of our continual exaggerations 
 we were not believed by others, and hardly even be- 
 lieved ourselves, when we presented estimates that were 
 truthful. When every public speaker was declared to 
 be a Demosthenes or a Cicero, people failed to realize 
 that we actually had, in Webster, the greatest orator 
 of the century; and when every general who whipped 
 an Indian tribe was likened to Napoleon, we left our- 
 selves no words with which properly to characterize 
 the really heroic deeds done from time to time in the 
 grim frontier warfare. All Benton's oratory took on 
 this lurid coloring; and in the present matter his final 
 eulogy of the Texan warriors was greatly strained, 
 
 135 
 
THOMAS HART BENTON 
 
 though it would hardly have been in his power to pay 
 too high a tribute to some of the deeds they had done. 
 It was the heroic age of the Southwest; though, as with 
 every other heroic age, there were plenty of failings, 
 vices, and weaknesses visible, if the standpoint of ob- 
 servation was only close enough. 
 
 136 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 THE CHILDREN'S TEETH ARE SET ON EDGE 
 
 In his dealings with the Bank and his disposal of the 
 deposits Jackson ate sour grapes to his heart's content; 
 and now the teeth of his adopted child Van Buren were 
 to be set on edge. 
 
 Van Buren was the first product of what are now 
 called "machine politics" that was put into the presi- 
 dential chair. He owed his elevation solely to his own 
 dexterous political manipulation, and to the fact that, 
 for his own selfish ends, and knowing perfectly well 
 their folly, he had yet favored or connived at all the 
 actions into which the administration had been led 
 either through Jackson's ignorance and violence, or by 
 the crafty unscrupulousness and limited knowledge of 
 the Kitchen Cabinet. The people at large would never 
 have thought of him for President of their own accord; 
 but he had become Jackson's political legatee, partly 
 because he had personally endeared himself to the lat- 
 ter, and partly because the politicians felt that he was 
 a man whom they could trust. The Jacksonian Democ- 
 racy was already completely ruled by a machine, of 
 which the most important cogs were the countless office- 
 holders, whom the spoils system had already converted 
 into a band of well-drilled political mercenaries. A po- 
 litical machine can only be brought to a state of high per- 
 fection in a party containing very many ignorant and 
 uneducated voters; and the Jacksonian Democracy held 
 in its ranks the mass of the ignorance of the country. 
 Besides this such an organization requires, in order that it 
 may do its most effective work, to have as its leader 
 
 137 
 
THOMAS HART BENTON 
 
 and figurehead a man who really has a great hold on 
 the people at large, and who yet can be managed by 
 such politicians as possess the requisite adroitness; and 
 Jackson fulfilled both these conditions. The famous 
 Kitchen Cabinet was so called because its members 
 held no official positions, and yet were known to have 
 Jackson more under their influence than was the case 
 with his nominal advisers. They stood as the first rep- 
 resentatives of a type common enough afterward, and 
 of which Thurlow Weed was perhaps the best example. 
 They were men who held no public position, and yet 
 devoted their whole time to politics, and pulled the 
 strings in obedience to which the apparent public leaders 
 moved. 
 
 Jackson liked Van Buren because the latter had served 
 him both personally and politically — indeed Jackson was 
 incapable of distinguishing between a political and a 
 personal service. This liking, however, would not alone 
 have advanced Van Buren's interests, if the latter, who 
 was himself a master in the New York State machine, 
 had not also succeeded in enlisting the goodwill and 
 self-interest of the members of the Kitchen Cabinet and 
 the other intimate advisers of the President. These 
 first got Jackson himself thoroughly committed to Van 
 Buren, and then used his name and enormous influence 
 with the masses, coupled with their own mastery of ma- 
 chine methods, to bring about the New Yorker's nomi- 
 nation. In both these moves they had been helped, and 
 Van Buren's chances had been immensely improved, by 
 an incident that had seemed at the time very unfor- 
 tunate for the latter. When he was secretary of state, 
 in carrying on negotiations with Great Britain relative 
 to the West India trade, he had so far forgotten what 
 was due to the dignity of the nation as to allude dis- 
 
 138 
 
THE CHILDREN'S TEETH ON EDGE 
 
 paragingly, while thus communicating with a foreign 
 power, to the course pursued by the previous adminis- 
 tration. This extension of party lines into our foreign 
 diplomacy was discreditable to the whole country. The 
 antiadministration men bitterly resented it, and em- 
 phasized their resentment by rejecting the nomination 
 of Van Buren when Jackson wished to make him minis- 
 ter to England. Their action was perfectly proper, and 
 Van Buren, by right, should have suffered for his un- 
 dignified and unpatriotic conduct. But instead of this, 
 and in accordance with the eternal unfitness of things, 
 what really happened was that his rejection by the Sen- 
 ate actually helped him; for Jackson promptly made 
 the quarrel his own, and the masses blindly followed 
 their idol. Benton exultingly and truthfully said that 
 the President's foes had succeeded in breaking a minis- 
 ter only to make a President. 
 
 Van Buren faithfully served the mammon of unright- 
 eousness, both in his own State and, later on, at Wash- 
 ington; and he had his reward, for he was advanced to 
 the highest offices in the gift of the nation. He had no 
 reason to blame his own conduct for his final downfall; 
 he got just as far along as he could possibly get; he suc- 
 ceeded because of, and not in spite of, his moral short- 
 comings; if he had always governed his actions by a 
 high moral standard he would probably never have been 
 heard of. Still, there is some comfort in reflecting that, 
 exactly as he was made President for no virtue of his 
 own, but simply on account of being Jackson's heir, so 
 he was turned out of the office, not for personal failure, 
 but because he was taken as scapegoat, and had the 
 sins of his political fathers visited on his own head. 
 
 The opposition to the election of Van Buren was very 
 much disorganized, the Whig party not yet having solid- 
 
 139 
 
THOMAS HART BENTON 
 
 ified — indeed it always remained a somewhat fluid body. 
 The election did not have the slightest sectional signif- 
 icance, slavery not entering into it, and both Northern 
 and Southern States voting without the least reference 
 to the geographical belongings of the candidates. He 
 was the last true Jacksonian Democrat — Union Demo- 
 crat — who became President; the South Carolina sepa- 
 ratists and many of their fellows refused to vote for him. 
 The Democrats who came after him, on the contrary, 
 all had leanings to the separatist element which so soon 
 obtained absolute control of the party, to the fierce in- 
 dignation of men like Benton, Houston, and the other 
 old Jacksonians, whose sincere devotion to the Union 
 will always entitle them to the gratitude of every true 
 American. As far as slavery was concerned, however, 
 the Southerners had hitherto had nothing whatever to 
 complain of in Van Buren's attitude. He was careful 
 to inform them in his inaugural address that he would 
 not sanction any attempt to interfere with the institu- 
 tion, whether by abolishing it in the District of Colum- 
 bia or in any other way distasteful to the South. He 
 also expressed a general hope that he would be able 
 throughout to follow in the footsteps of Jackson. 
 
 He had hardly been elected before the ruinous finan- 
 cial policy to which he had been party, but of which 
 the effects, it must in justice be said, were aggravated 
 by many of the actions of the Whigs, began to bear 
 fruit after its kind. The use made of the surplus was 
 bad enough, but the withdrawal of the United States 
 deposits from one responsible bank and their distribu- 
 tion among scores of others, many of which were in the 
 most rickety condition, was a step better calculated 
 than any other to bring about a financial crash. It 
 gave a stimulus to extravagance, and evoked the wildest 
 
 140 
 
THE CHILDREN'S TEETH ON EDGE 
 
 spirit of speculation that the country had yet seen. The 
 local banks, to whom the custody of the public moneys 
 had been intrusted, used them as funds which they and 
 their customers could hazard for the chance of gain; 
 and the gambling spirit, always existent in the American 
 mercantile community, was galvanized into furious life. 
 The public dues were payable in the paper of these de- 
 posit banks and of the countless others that were even 
 more irresponsible. The deposit banks thus became 
 filled up with a motley mass of more or less worthless 
 bank paper, which thus formed the "surplus," of which 
 the distribution had caused Congress so much worry. 
 Their condition was desperate, as they had been man- 
 aged with the most reckless disregard for the morrow. 
 Many of them had hardly kept as much specie in hand 
 as would amount to one-fiftieth of the aggregate of their 
 deposits and other immediate liabilities. 
 
 The people themselves were of course primarily re- 
 sponsible for the then existing state of affairs; but the 
 government had done all in its power to make matters 
 worse. Panics were certain to occur more or less often 
 in so speculative and venturesome a mercantile commu- 
 nity, where there was such heedless trust in the future 
 and such recklessness in the use of credit. But the gov- 
 ernment, by its actions, immensely increased the se- 
 verity of this particular panic, and became the prime 
 factor in precipitating its advent. Benton tried to 
 throw the blame mainly on the bankers and politicians, 
 who, he alleged, had formed an alliance for the over- 
 throw of the administration; but he made the plea more 
 half-heartedly than usual, and probably in his secret 
 soul acknowledged its puerility. 
 
 The mass of the people were still happy in the belief 
 that all things were working well, and that their show 
 
 141 
 
THOMAS HART BENTON 
 
 of unexampled prosperity and business activity denoted 
 a permanent and healthy condition. Yet all the signs 
 pointed to a general collapse at no distant date; an era 
 of general bank suspensions, of depreciated currency, 
 and of insolvency of the federal Treasury was at hand. 
 No one but Benton, however, seemed able to read the 
 signs aright, and his foreboding utterances were laughed 
 at or treated with scorn by his fellow statesmen. He 
 recalled the memory of the times of 1818-19, when the 
 Treasury reports of one year showed a superfluity of 
 revenue of which there was no want, and those of the 
 next showed a deficit which required to be relieved by 
 a loan; and he foretold an infinitely worse result from 
 the inflation of the paper system, saying: 
 
 "Are we not at this moment, and from the same 
 cause, realizing the first part — the elusive and treacher- 
 ous part — of this picture ? and must not the other, the 
 sad and real sequel, speedily follow? The day of re- 
 vulsion in its effects may be more or less disastrous; but 
 come it must. The present bloat in the paper system 
 cannot continue; violent contraction must follow enor- 
 mous expansion; a scene of distress and suffering must 
 ensue — to come of itself out of the present state of 
 things, without being stimulated and helped on by our 
 unwise legislation. ... 7 am one of those who prom- 
 ised gold, not paper; I did not join in putting down the 
 Bank of the United States to put up a wilderness of local 
 banks. 1 did not join in putting down the currency of a 
 national bank to put up a national paper currency of a 
 thousand local banks. I did not strike Csesar to make 
 Antony master of Rome." 
 
 These last sentences referred to the passage of the act 
 repealing the specie circular and making the notes of 
 the banks receivable in payment of federal dues. The 
 
 142 
 
THE CHILDREN'S TEETH ON EDGE 
 
 act was most mischievous, and Benton's criticisms both 
 of it and of the great Whig senator who pressed it were 
 perfectly just; but they apply with quite as much weight 
 to Jackson's dealings with the deposits, which Benton 
 had defended. 
 
 Benton foresaw the coming of the panic so clearly, 
 and was so particularly uneasy about the immediate 
 effects upon the governmental Treasury, that he not 
 only spoke publicly on the matter in the Senate, but 
 even broached the subject in the course of a private 
 conversation with the President-elect, to get him to try 
 to make what preparations he could. Van Buren, cool, 
 skilful, and far-sighted politician though he was, on this 
 occasion showed that he was infected with the common 
 delusion as to the solidity of the country's business pros- 
 perity. He was very friendly with Benton, and was 
 trying to get him to take a position in his Cabinet, which 
 the latter refused, preferring service in the Senate; but 
 now he listened with scant courtesy to the warning, and 
 paid no heed to it. Benton, an intensely proud man, 
 would not speak again; and everything went on as be- 
 fore. The law distributing the surplus among the States 
 began to take effect; under its operations drafts for mil- 
 lions of dollars were made on the banks containing the 
 deposits, and these banks, already sinking, were utterly 
 unable to honor them. It would have been impossible, 
 under any circumstances, for the President to ward off 
 the blow, but he might at least, by a little forethought 
 and preparation, have saved the government from some 
 galling humiliations. Had Benton's advice been fol- 
 lowed, the moneys called for by the appropriation acts 
 might have been drawn from the banks, and the dis- 
 bursing officers might have been prevented from de- 
 positing in them the sums which they drew from the 
 
 143 
 
THOMAS HART BENTON 
 
 Treasury to provide for their ordinary expenses; thus 
 the government would have been spared the disgrace of 
 being obliged to stop the actual daily payments to the 
 public servants; and the nation would not have seen 
 such a spectacle as its rulers presented when they had 
 not a dollar with which to pay even a day-laborer, while 
 at the same time a law was standing on the statute-book 
 providing for the distribution of forty millions of nomi- 
 nal surplus. 
 
 No effort was made to stave off even so much of the 
 impending disaster as was at that late date preventable; 
 and a few days after Van Buren's inauguration the coun- 
 try was in the throes of the worst and most wide-spread 
 financial panic it has ever seen. The distress was fairly 
 appalling both in its intensity and in its universal dis- 
 tribution. All the banks stopped payment, and bank- 
 ruptcy was universal. Bank paper depreciated with 
 frightful rapidity, especially in the West; specie in- 
 creased in value so that all the coin in the country, 
 down to the lowest denomination, was almost imme- 
 diately taken out of circulation, being either hoarded, 
 or gathered for shipment abroad as bullion. For small 
 change every kind of device was made use of — to- 
 kens, bank-bills for a few cents each, or brass and iron 
 counters. 
 
 Benton and others pretended to believe that the panic 
 was the result of a deep-laid plot on the part of the rich 
 classes, who controlled the banks, to excite popular hos- 
 tility against the Jacksonian Democracy, on account of 
 the caste antagonism which these same richer classes 
 were supposed to feel toward the much- vaunted "party 
 of the people"; and as Benton's mental vision was sin- 
 gularly warped in regard to some subjects, it is possible 
 that the belief was not altogether a pretense. It is en- 
 
 144 
 
THE CHILDREN'S TEETH ON EDGE 
 
 tirely unnecessary now seriously to discuss the proposi- 
 tion that it would be possible to drag the commercial 
 classes into so wide-spread and profoundly secret a con- 
 spiracy, with such a vague end in view, and with the 
 certainty that they themselves would be, from a busi- 
 ness standpoint, the main sufferers. 
 
 The efforts made by Benton and the other Jackso- 
 nians to stem the tide of public feeling and direct it 
 through the well-worn channel of suspicious fear of, and 
 anger at, the banks, as the true authors of the general 
 wretchedness, were unavailing; the stream swelled into 
 a torrent and ran like a mill-race in the opposite way. 
 The popular clamor against the administration was 
 deafening; and if much of it was based on good grounds, 
 much of it was also unreasonable. But a very few years 
 before the Jacksonians had appealed to a senseless 
 public dislike of the so-called "money power," in order 
 to help themselves to victory; and now they had the 
 chagrin of seeing an only less irrational outcry raised 
 against themselves in turn, and used to oust them from 
 their places, with the same effectiveness which had pre- 
 viously attended their own frothy and loud-mouthed 
 declamations. The people were more than ready to lis- 
 ten to any one who could point out, or pretend to point 
 out, the authors of, and the reasons for, the calamities 
 that had befallen them. Their condition was pitiable; 
 and this was especially true in the newer and Western 
 States, where in many places there was absolutely no 
 money at all in circulation, even the men of means not 
 being able to get enough coin or its equivalent to make 
 the most ordinary purchases. Trade was at a complete 
 standstill ; laborers were thrown out of employment and 
 left almost starving; farmers, merchants, mechanics, 
 craftsmen of every sort — all alike were in the direst dis- 
 
 145 
 
THOMAS HART BENTON 
 
 tress. They naturally, in seeking relief, turned to the 
 government, it being almost always the case that the 
 existing administration receives more credit if the coun- 
 try is prosperous, and greater blame if it is not, than in 
 either case it is rightfully entitled to. The Democracy 
 was now held to strict reckoning, not only for some of 
 its numerous real sins but also for a good many imagi- 
 nary ones; and the change in the political aspect of 
 many of the commonwealths was astounding. Jack- 
 son's own home State of Tennessee became strongly 
 Whig; and Van Buren had the mortification of seeing 
 New York follow suit; two stinging blows to the Presi- 
 dent and the ex-President. The distress was a godsend 
 to the Whig politicians. They fairly raved in their anger 
 against the administration, and denounced all its acts, 
 good and bad alike, with fluent and incoherent impar- 
 tiality. Indeed, in their speeches, and in the petitions 
 which they circulated and then sent to the President, 
 they used language that was to the last degree absurd in 
 its violence and exaggeration, and drew descriptions of 
 the iniquities of the rulers of the country which were so 
 overwrought as to be merely ridiculous. The speeches 
 about the panic, and in reference to the proposed laws 
 to alleviate it, were remarkable for their inflation, even 
 in that age of windy oratory. 
 
 Van Buren, Benton, and their associates stood 
 bravely up against the storm of indignation which 
 swept over the whole country, and lost neither head 
 nor nerve. They needed both to extricate themselves 
 with any credit from the position in which they were 
 placed. In deference to the urgent wish of almost all 
 the people an extra session of Congress was called espe- 
 cially to deal with the panic. Van Buren's message to 
 this body was a really statesmanlike document, going 
 
 146 
 
THE CHILDREN'S TEETH ON EDGE 
 
 exhaustively into the subject of the national finances. 
 The Democrats still held the majority in both houses, 
 but there was so large a floating vote, and the margins 
 were so narrow, as to make the administration feel that 
 its hold was precarious. 
 
 The first thing to be done was to provide for the im- 
 mediate wants of the government, which had not enough 
 money to pay even its most necessary running expenses. 
 To make this temporary provision two plans were pro- 
 posed. The fourth instalment of the surplus — ten mil- 
 lions — was due to the States. As there was really no 
 surplus, but a deficit instead, it was proposed to repeal 
 the deposit law so far as it affected their fourth pay- 
 ment; and Treasury notes were to be issued to provide 
 for immediate and pressing needs. 
 
 The Whigs frantically attacked the President's pro- 
 posals, and held him and his party accountable for all 
 the evils of the panic; and in truth it was right enough 
 to hold them so accountable for part; but, after all, the 
 harm was largely due to causes existing throughout the 
 civilized world, and especially to the speculative folly 
 rife among the whole American people. But it is always 
 an easy and a comfortable thing to hold others respon- 
 sible for what is primarily our own fault. 
 
 Benton did not believe, as a matter of principle, in 
 the issue of Treasury notes, but supported the bill for 
 that purpose on account of the sore straits the adminis- 
 tration was in, and its dire need of assistance from any 
 source. He treated it as a disagreeable but temporary 
 makeshift, only allowable on the ground of the sternest 
 and most grinding necessity. He stated that he sup- 
 ported the issue only because the Treasury notes were 
 made out in such a form that they could not become 
 currency; they were merely loan notes. Their chief 
 
 147 
 
THOMAS HART BENTON 
 
 characteristic was that they bore interest; they were 
 transferable only by indorsement; were payable at a 
 fixed time; were not reissuable, nor of small denomina- 
 tions; and were to be cancelled when paid. Such being 
 the case he favored their issue, but expressly stated that 
 he only did so on account of the urgency of the govern- 
 mental wants; and that he disapproved of any such 
 issue until the ordinary resources of taxes and loans 
 had been tried to the utmost and failed. "I distrust, 
 dislike, and would fain eschew this treasury-note re- 
 source; I prefer the direct loans of 1820-21. I could 
 only bring myself to support this present measure when 
 it was urged that there was not time to carry a loan 
 through in its forms; nor even then would I consent to 
 it until every feature of a currency character had been 
 eradicated from the bill." 
 
 A sharp struggle took place over the bill brought in 
 by the friends of the administration and advocated by 
 Benton, to repeal the obligation to deposit the fourth 
 instalment of the surplus with the States. This scheme 
 of a distribution, thinly disguised under the name of de- 
 posit to soothe the feelings of Calhoun and the other 
 strict constructionist pundits, had worked nothing but 
 mischief from the start; and now that there was no sur- 
 plus to distribute, it would seem incredible that there 
 should have been opposition to its partial repeal. Yet 
 Webster, Clay, and their followers strenuously opposed 
 even such repeal. It is possible that their motives were 
 honest, but much more probable that they were ac- 
 tuated by partisan hostility to the administration, or 
 that they believed they would increase their own popu- 
 larity by favoring a plan that seemingly distributed 
 money as a gift among the States. The bill was finally 
 amended so as to make it imperative to pay this fourth 
 
 148 
 
THE CHILDREN'S TEETH ON EDGE 
 
 instalment in a couple of years; yet it was not then 
 paid, since on the date appointed the national Treasury 
 was bankrupt and the States could therefore never get 
 the money — which was the only satisfactory incident in 
 the whole proceeding. The financial theories of Jackson 
 and Benton were crude and vicious, it is true, but Web- 
 ster, Clay, and most other public men of the day seem 
 to have held ideas on the subject that were almost, if 
 not quite, as mischievous. 
 
 The great financial measures advocated by the ad- 
 ministration of Van Buren, and championed with espe- 
 cial zeal by Benton, were those providing for an inde- 
 pendent treasury and for hard-money payments; that 
 is, providing that the government should receive noth- 
 ing but gold and silver for its revenues, and that this 
 gold and silver should be kept by its own officers in real, 
 not constructive, treasuries — in strong buildings, with 
 special officers to hold the keys. The Treasury was to 
 be at Washington, with branches or subtreasuries at the 
 principal points of collection and disbursement. 
 
 These measures, if successful, meant that there would 
 be a total separation of the federal government from all 
 banks; in the political language of the times they be- 
 came known as those for the divorce of bank and State. 
 Hitherto the local banks chosen by Jackson to receive 
 the deposits had been actively hostile to Biddle's great 
 bank and to its friends; but self-interest now united 
 them all in violent opposition to the new scheme. Web- 
 ster, Clay, and the Whigs generally fought it bitterly in 
 the Senate; but Calhoun now left his recent allies and 
 joined with Benton in securing its passage. However, 
 it was for the time being defeated in the House of Rep- 
 resentatives. Most of the opposition to it was charac- 
 terized by sheer loud-mouthed demagogy — cries that 
 
 149 
 
THOMAS HART BENTON 
 
 the government was too aristocratic to accept the money 
 that was thought good enough for the people, and simi- 
 lar claptrap. Benton made a very earnest plea for hard 
 money, and especially denounced the doctrine that it 
 was the government's duty to interfere in any way in 
 private business; for, as usual in times of general dis- 
 tress, a good many people had a vague idea that in some 
 way the government ought to step in and relieve them 
 from the consequences of their own folly. 
 
 Meanwhile the banks had been endeavoring to re- 
 sume specie payment. Those of New York had taken 
 steps in that direction but little more than three months 
 after the suspension. Their weaker Western neighbors, 
 however, were not yet in condition to follow suit; and 
 the great bank at Philadelphia also at first refused to 
 come in with them. But the New York banks persisted 
 in their purpose, resumed payment a year after they 
 had suspended, and eventually the others had to fall 
 into line; the reluctance to do so being of course attrib- 
 uted by Benton to "the factious and wicked machina- 
 tions" of a "powerful combined political and moneyed 
 confederation" — a shadowy and spectral creation of 
 vivid Jacksonian imaginations, in the existence of which 
 he persisted in believing. 
 
 Clay, always active as the friend of the banks, intro- 
 duced a resolution, nominally to quicken the approach 
 of resumption, but really to help out precisely those 
 weak banks which did not deserve help, making the 
 notes of the resuming banks receivable in payment of 
 all dues to the federal government. This was offered 
 after the banks of New York had resumed, and when 
 all the other solvent banks were on the point of resum- 
 ing also; so its nominal purpose was already accom- 
 plished, as Benton, in a caustic speech, pointed out. He 
 
 150 
 
THE CHILDREN'S TEETH ON EDGE 
 
 then tore the resolution to shreds, showing that it would 
 be of especial benefit to the insolvent and unsound 
 banks, and would insure a repetition of the worst evils 
 under which the country was already suffering. He 
 made it clear that the proposition practically was to 
 force the government to receive paper promises to pay 
 from banks that were certain to fail, and therefore to 
 force the government in turn to pay out this worthless 
 paper to its honest creditors. Benton's speech was an 
 excellent one, and Clay's resolution was defeated. 
 
 All through this bank controversy, and the other con- 
 troversies relating to it, Benton took the leading part, 
 as mouthpiece of the administration. He heartily sup- 
 ported the suggestion of the President, that a stringent 
 bankrupt law against the banks should be passed. 
 Webster stood out as the principal opponent of this 
 measure, basing his objections mainly upon constitu- 
 tional grounds; that is, questioning the right, rather 
 than the expediency, of the proposed remedy. Benton 
 answered him at length in a speech showing an immense 
 amount of careful and painstaking study and a wide 
 range of historical reading and legal knowledge; he re- 
 plied point by point, and more than held his own with 
 his great antagonist. His speech was an exhaustive 
 study of the history and scope of bankruptcy laws 
 against corporations. Benton's capacity for work was 
 at all times immense; he delighted in it for its own sake, 
 and took a most justifiable pride in his wide reading, 
 and especially in his full acquaintance with history, both 
 ancient and modern. He was very fond of illustrating 
 his speeches on American affairs with continual allusions 
 and references to events in foreign countries or in old 
 times, which he considered to be more or less parallel 
 to those he was discussing; and indeed he often dragged 
 
 151 
 
THOMAS HART BENTON 
 
 in these comparisons when there was no particular need 
 for such a display of his knowledge. He could fairly 
 be called a learned man, for he had studied very many 
 subjects deeply and thoroughly; and though he was too 
 self-conscious and pompous in his utterances not to in- 
 cur more than the suspicion of pedantry, yet the fact 
 remains that hardly any other man has ever sat in the 
 Senate whose range of information was as wide as his. 
 He made another powerful and carefully wrought 
 speech in favor of what he called the act to provide for 
 the divorce of bank and State. This bill, as finally 
 drawn, consisted of two distinct parts, one portion mak- 
 ing provision for the keeping of the public moneys in an 
 independent treasury, and the other for the hard-money 
 currency, which was all that the government was to ac- 
 cept in payment of revenue dues. This last provision, 
 however, was struck out, and the bill thereby lost the 
 support of Calhoun, who, with Webster, Clay, and the 
 other Whigs, voted against it; but, mainly through Ben- 
 ton's efforts, it passed the Senate, although by a very 
 slender majority. Benton, in his speech, dwelt with es- 
 pecial admiration on the working of the monetary sys- 
 tem of France, and held it up as well worthy to be copied 
 by us. Most of the points he made were certainly good 
 ones, although he overestimated the beneficent results 
 that would spring from the adoption of the proposed 
 system, believing that it would put an end for the fu- 
 ture to all panics and commercial convulsions. In real- 
 ity it would have removed only one of the many causes 
 which go to produce the latter, leaving the others free 
 to work as before; the people at large, not the govern- 
 ment, were mainly to blame, and even with them it was 
 in some respects their misfortune as much as their fault. 
 Benton's error, however, was natural; like most other 
 
 152 
 
THE CHILDREN'S TEETH ON EDGE 
 
 men he was unable fully to realize that hardly any phe- 
 nomenon, even the most simple, can be said to spring 
 from one cause only, and not from a complex and inter- 
 woven tissue of causation — and a panic is one of the 
 least simple and most complex of mercantile phenom- 
 ena. Benton's deep-rooted distrust of and hostility to 
 such banking as then existed in the United States cer- 
 tainly had good grounds for existence. 
 
 This distrust was shown again when the bill for the 
 recharter of the district banks came up. The specie 
 basis of many of them had been allowed to become alto- 
 gether too low; and Benton showed himself more keenly 
 alive than any other public man to the danger of such 
 a state of things, and argued strongly that a basis of 
 specie amounting to one-third the total of liabilities was 
 the only safe proportion, and should be enforced by law. 
 He made a most forcible argument, using numerous and 
 apt illustrations to show the need of his amendment. 
 
 Nor was the tireless Missouri senator satisfied even 
 yet; for he introduced a resolution asking leave to bring 
 in a bill to tax the circulation of banks and bankers, 
 and of all corporations, companies, or individuals, issu- 
 ing paper currency. One object of the bill was to raise 
 revenue; but even more he aimed at the regulation of 
 the currency by the suppression of small notes ; and for 
 this end the tax was proposed to be made heaviest on 
 notes under twenty dollars, and to be annually aug- 
 mented until it had accomplished its object and they 
 had been driven out of circulation. In advocating his 
 measure he used, as was perhaps unavoidable, some 
 arguments that savored strongly of demagogy; but on 
 the whole he made a strong appeal, using as prece- 
 dents for the law he wished to see enacted both the 
 then existing banking laws in England and those that 
 
 153 
 
THOMAS HART BENTON 
 
 had obtained previously in the history of the United 
 
 States. 
 
 Taken altogether, while the Jacksonians, during the 
 period of Van Buren's presidency, rightly suffered for 
 their previous financial misdeeds, yet so far as their ac- 
 tions at the time were concerned, they showed to greater 
 advantage than the Whigs. Nor did they waver in 
 their purpose even when the tide of popular feeling 
 changed. The great financial measure of the adminis- 
 tration, in which Benton was most interested, the in- 
 dependent Treasury bill, he succeeded in getting through 
 the Senate twice; the first time it was lost in the House 
 of Representatives; but on the second occasion, toward 
 the close of Van Buren's term, firmness and persever- 
 ance met their reward. The bill passed the Senate by 
 an increased majority, scraped through the House after 
 a bitter contest, and became a law. It developed the 
 system known as that of the Subtreasury, which has 
 proved satisfactory to the present day. 
 
 It was during Van Buren's term that Biddle's great 
 bank, so long the pivot on which turned the fortunes of 
 political parties, finally tottered to its fall. It was 
 ruined by unwise and reckless management; and Ben- 
 ton sang a pa?an over its downfall, exulting in its fate 
 as a justification of all that he had said and done. Yet 
 there can be little doubt that its mismanagement be- 
 came gross only after all connection with the national 
 government had ceased; and its end, attributable to 
 causes not originally existent or likely to exist, can 
 hardly be rightly considered in passing judgment upon 
 the actions of the Jacksonians in reference to it. 
 
 154 
 
CHAPTER X 
 LAST DAYS OF THE JACKSONIAN DEMOCRACY 
 
 The difficulty and duration of a war with an Indian 
 tribe depend less upon the numbers of the tribe itself 
 than upon the nature of the ground it inhabits. The 
 two Indian tribes that have caused the most irritating 
 and prolonged struggle are the Apaches, who live in the 
 vast, waterless, mountainous deserts of Arizona and 
 New Mexico, and whom we are at this present moment 
 engaged in subduing, and the Seminoles, who, from 
 among the impenetrable swamps of Florida, bade the 
 whole United States army defiance for seven long years ; 
 and this although neither Seminoles nor Apaches ever 
 brought much force into the field, nor inflicted such de- 
 feats upon us as have other Indian tribes, like the Creeks 
 and Sioux. 
 
 The conflict with the Seminoles was one of the lega- 
 cies left by Jackson to Van Buren; it lasted as long as 
 the Revolutionary War, cost thirty millions of dollars, 
 and baffled the efforts of several generals and numerous 
 troops, who had previously shown themselves equal to 
 any in the world. The expense, length, and ill success 
 of the struggle, and a strong feeling that the Seminoles 
 had been wronged, made it a great handle for attack on 
 the administration; and the defense was taken up by 
 Benton, who always accepted completely the Western 
 estimate of any form of the Indian question. 
 
 As is usually the case in Indian wars there had been 
 much wrong done by each side; but in this instance we 
 were the more to blame, although the Indians them- 
 
 155 
 
THOMAS HART BENTON 
 
 selves were far from being merely harmless and suffer- 
 ing innocents. The Seminoles were being deprived of 
 their lands in pursuance of the general policy of remov- 
 ing all the Indians west of the Mississippi. They had 
 agreed to go, under pressure, and influenced, probably, 
 by fraudulent representations ; but they declined to ful- 
 fil their agreement. If they had been treated wisely 
 and firmly they might probably have been allowed to 
 remain without serious injury to the surrounding whites. 
 But no such treatment was attempted, and as a result 
 we were plunged in one of the most harassing Indian 
 wars we ever waged. In their gloomy, tangled swamps, 
 and among the unknown and untrodden recesses of the 
 everglades the Indians found a secure asylum ; and they 
 issued from their haunts to burn and ravage almost all 
 the settled part of Florida, fairly depopulating five coun- 
 ties; while the soldiers could rarely overtake them, and 
 when they did, were placed at such a disadvantage that 
 the Indians repulsed or cut off detachment after de- 
 tachment, generally making a merciless and complete 
 slaughter of each. The great Seminole leader, Osceola, 
 was captured only by deliberate treachery and breach 
 of faith on our part, and the Indians were worn out 
 rather than conquered. This was partly owing to their 
 remarkable capacities as bush-fighters, but infinitely 
 more to the nature of their territory. 
 
 Our troops generally fought with great bravery; but 
 there is very little else in the struggle, either as regards 
 its origin or the manner in which it was carried on, to 
 which an American can look back with any satisfaction. 
 We usually group all our Indian wars together, in 
 speaking of their justice or injustice; and thereby show 
 flagrant ignorance. The Sioux and Cheyennes, for 
 instance, have more often been sinning than sinned 
 
 156 
 
THE JACKSONIAN DEMOCRACY 
 
 against; for example, the so-called Chivington or Sandy 
 Creek Massacre, in spite of certain most objectionable 
 details, was on the whole as righteous and beneficial a 
 deed as ever took place on the frontier. On the other 
 hand, the most cruel wrongs have been perpetrated by 
 whites upon perfectly peaceable and unoffending tribes 
 like those of California, or the Nez Perces. Yet the 
 emasculated professional humanitarians mourn as much 
 over one set of Indians as over the other — and indeed, 
 on all points connected with Indian management, are 
 as untrustworthy and unsafe leaders as would be an 
 equal number of the most brutal white borderers. But 
 the Seminole War was one of those where the Eastern, 
 or humanitarian, view was more nearly correct than was 
 any other; although even here the case was far from 
 being entirely one-sided. 
 
 Benton made an elaborate but not always candid de- 
 fense of the administration, both as to the origin and 
 as to the prosecution of the war. He attempted to show 
 that the Seminoles had agreed to go West, had broken 
 their treaty without any reason, had perpetrated cause- 
 less massacres, had followed up their successes with 
 merciless butcheries, which last statement was true; 
 and that Osceola had forfeited all claim or right to have 
 a flag of truce protect him. There was a certain justice 
 in his position even on these questions, and when he 
 came to defend the conduct of our soldiers he had the 
 right entirely with him. They were led by the same 
 commander, and belonged to the same regiments, that 
 in Canada had shown themselves equal to the famous 
 British infantry; they had to contend with the country, 
 rather than with their enemies, as the sweltering heat, 
 the stagnant lagoons, the quaking morasses, and the 
 dense forests of Florida made it almost impossible for 
 
 157 
 
THOMAS HART BENTON 
 
 an army to carry on a successful campaign. Moreover, 
 the Seminoles were well armed; and many tribes of 
 North American Indians show themselves, when with 
 good weapons and on their own ground, more danger- 
 ous antagonists than would be an equal number of the 
 best European troops. Indeed, under such conditions 
 they can only be contended with on equal terms if the 
 opposing white force is made up of frontiersmen who are 
 as good woodsmen and riflemen as themselves, and who, 
 moreover, have been drilled by some man like Jackson, 
 who knows how to handle them to the best advantage, 
 both in disciplining their lawless courage and in forcing 
 them to act under orders and together — the lack of 
 which discipline and power of supporting each other has 
 often rendered an assemblage of formidable individual 
 border fighters a mere disorderly mob when brought in- 
 to the field. 
 
 The war dragged on tediously. The troops — regulars, 
 volunteers, and militia alike — fought the Indians again 
 and again; there were pitched battles, surprises, am- 
 buscades, and assaults on places of unknown strength; 
 hundreds of soldiers were slain in battle or by treachery ; 
 hundreds of settlers were slaughtered in their homes, 
 or as they fled from them; the bloody Indian forays 
 reached even to the outskirts of Tallahatchee and to 
 within sight of the walls of quaint old St. Augustine. 
 Little by little, however, the power of the Seminoles was 
 broken; their war bands were scattered and driven from 
 the field, hundreds of their number were slain in fight, 
 and five times as many surrendered and were taken west 
 of the Mississippi. The white troops inarched through 
 Florida down to and into the everglades, and crossed it 
 backward and forward, from the Gulf of Mexico to the 
 Atlantic Ocean; they hunted their foes from morass to 
 
 158 
 
THE JACKSONIAN DEMOCRACY 
 
 morass and from hummock to hummock; they mapped 
 out the whole hitherto unknown country; they estab- 
 lished numerous posts; opened hundreds of miles of wag- 
 on road; and built very many causeways and bridges. 
 But they could not end the war. The bands of Indians 
 broke up and entirely ceased to offer resistance to bodies 
 of armed whites; but as individuals they continued as 
 dangerous to the settlers as ever, prowling out at night 
 like wild beasts from their fastnesses in the dark and 
 fetid swamps, murdering, burning, and ravaging in all 
 the outlying settlements, and destroying every lonely 
 farmhouse or homestead. 
 
 There was but one way in which the war could be 
 finally ended, and that was to have the territory occu- 
 pied by armed settlers; in other words, to have it won 
 and held exactly as almost all the land of the United 
 States has been in the beginning. Benton introduced a 
 bill to bring this about, giving to every such settler a 
 good inheritance in the soil as a reward for his enter- 
 prise, toil, and danger; and the war was finished only 
 by the adoption of this method. He supported his bill 
 in a very effective speech, showing that the proposed 
 way was the only one by which a permanent conquest 
 could be effected; he himself had, when young, seen it 
 put into execution in Tennessee and Kentucky, where 
 the armed settlers, with their homesteads in the soil, 
 formed the vanguard of the white advance: where the 
 rifle-bearing backwoodsmen went forth to fight and to 
 cultivate, living in assemblages of blockhouses at first 
 and separating into individual settlements afterward. 
 The work had to be done with axe, spade, and rifle alike. 
 Benton rightly insisted that there was no longer need of 
 a large army in Florida: 
 
 "Why, the men who are there now can find nobody 
 
 159 
 
THOMAS HART BENTON 
 
 to fight ! It is two years since a fight has been had. Ten 
 men who will avoid surprises and ambuscades can now 
 go from one end of Florida to the other. As warriors, 
 these Indians no longer appear; it is only as assassins, 
 as robbers, as incendiaries, that they lurk about. What 
 is now wanted is not an army to fight, but settlers and 
 cultivators to take possession and keep possession; and 
 the armed cultivator is the man for that. The block- 
 house is the first house to be built in an Indian country ; 
 the stockade the first fence to be put up. Within that 
 blockhouse, or within a hollow square of blockhouses, 
 two miles long on each side, two hundred yards apart, 
 and enclosing a good field, safe habitations are to be 
 found for families. Cultivation and defense then go 
 hand in hand. The heart of the Indian sickens when 
 he hears the crowing of the cock, the barking of the dog, 
 the sound of the axe, and the crack of the rifle. These 
 are the true evidences of the dominion of the white man ; 
 these are the proofs that the owner has come and means 
 to stay, and then the Indians feel it to be time for them 
 to go. While soldiers alone are in the country they feel 
 their presence to be temporary; that they are mere so- 
 journers in the land, and sooner or later must go away. 
 It is the settler alone, the armed settler, whose presence 
 announces the dominion, the permanent dominion, of 
 the white man." 
 
 Benton's ideas were right, and were acted upon. It 
 is impossible even to subdue an Indian tribe by the army 
 alone; the latter can only pave the way for and partially 
 protect the armed settlers who are to hold the soil. 
 
 Benton continued to take a great interest in the dis- 
 posal of the public lands, as was natural in a senator 
 from the West, where the bulk of these lands lay. He 
 was always a great advocate of a homestead law. Dur- 
 
 160 
 
THE JACKSONIAN DEMOCRACY 
 
 ing Van Buren's administration, he succeeded in getting 
 two or three bills on the subject through the Senate. 
 One of these allowed lands that had been five years in 
 the market to be reduced in price to a dollar an acre, and 
 if they stood five years longer to go down to seventy- 
 five cents. The bill was greatly to the interest of the 
 Western farmer in the newer, although not necessarily 
 the newest, parts of the country. The man who went 
 on the newest land was in turn provided for by the pre- 
 emption bill, which secured the privilege of first pur- 
 chase to the actual settler on any lands to which the 
 Indian title had been extinguished; to be paid for at the 
 minimum price of public lands at the time. An effort 
 was made to confine the benefits of this proposed law to 
 citizens of the United States, excluding unnaturalized 
 foreigners from its action. Benton, as representing the 
 new States, who desired immigrants of every kind, 
 whether foreign or native, successfully opposed this. 
 He pointed out that there was no question of conferring 
 political rights, which involved the management of the 
 government, and which should not be conferred until 
 the foreigner had become a naturalized citizen; it was 
 merely a question of allowing the alien a right to main- 
 tain himself and to support his family. He especially 
 opposed the amendment on account of the class of for- 
 eigners it would affect. Aliens who wished to take up 
 public lands were not paupers or criminals, and did not 
 belong to the shiftless and squalid foreign mob that 
 drifted into the great cities of the seaboard and the in- 
 terior; but on the contrary were among our most enter- 
 prising, hardy, and thrifty citizens, who had struck out 
 for themselves into the remote parts of the new States 
 and had there begun to bring the wilderness into sub- 
 jection. Such men deserved to be encouraged in every 
 
 161 
 
THOMAS HART BENTON 
 
 way, and should receive from the pre-emption laws the 
 same benefits that would inure to native-born citizens. 
 The third bill introduced, which passed the Senate but 
 failed in the House, was one to permit the public lands 
 sold to be immediately taxed by the States in which 
 they lay. Originally these lands had been sold upon 
 credit, the total amount not being paid, nor the title 
 passed, until five years after the sale; and during this 
 time it would have been unjust to tax them, as failure 
 in paying the instalments to the government would 
 have let the lands revert to the latter; but when the 
 cash system was substituted for credit Benton believed 
 that there was no longer reason why the new lands 
 should not bear their share of the State burdens. 
 
 During Van Buren's administration the standard of 
 public honesty, which had been lowering with frightful 
 rapidity ever since, with Adams, the men of high moral 
 tone had gone out of power, went almost as far down 
 as it could go; although things certainly did not change 
 for the better under Tyler and Polk. Not only was 
 there the most impudent and unblushing rascality 
 among the public servants of the nation, but the people 
 themselves, through their representatives in the State 
 legislatures, went to work to swindle their honest credi- 
 tors. Many States, in the rage for public improvements, 
 had contracted debts which they now refused to pay; 
 in many cases they were unable, or at least so professed 
 themselves, even to pay the annual interest. The debts 
 of the States were largely held abroad; they had been 
 converted into stock and held in shares, which had gone 
 into a great number of hands, and now, of course, be- 
 came greatly depreciated in value. It is a painful and 
 shameful page in our history; and every man connected 
 with the repudiation of the States' debts ought, if re- 
 
 162 
 
THE JACKSONIAN DEMOCRACY 
 
 membered at all, to be remembered only with scorn and 
 contempt. However, time has gradually shrouded from 
 our sight both the names of the leaders in the repudia- 
 tion and the names of the victims whom they swindled. 
 Two alone, one in each class, will always be kept in 
 mind. Before Jefferson Davis took his place among the 
 arch-traitors in our annals he had already long been 
 known as one of the chief repudiators; it was not un- 
 natural that to dishonesty toward the creditors of the 
 public he should afterward add treachery toward the 
 public itself. The one most prominent victim was de- 
 scribed by Benton himself: "The Reverend Sydney 
 Smith, of witty memory, but amiable withal, was ac- 
 customed to lose all his amiability, but no part of his 
 wit, when he spoke of his Pennsylvania bonds — which, 
 in fact, was very often." 
 
 Many of the bondholders, however, did not manifest 
 their grief by caustic wit, but looked to more substan- 
 tial relief; and did their best to bring about the assump- 
 tion of the State debts, in some form, whether open or 
 disguised, by the federal government. The British cap- 
 italists united with many American capitalists to work 
 for some such action; and there were plenty of people 
 in the States willing enough to see it done. Of course 
 it would have been criminal folly on the part of the 
 federal government to take any such step; and Benton 
 determined to meet and check the effort at the very 
 beginning. The London Bankers' Circular had con- 
 tained a proposition recommending that the Congress 
 of the United States should guarantee, or otherwise pro- 
 vide for, the ultimate payment of the debts which the 
 States had contracted for State or local purposes. Ben- 
 ton introduced a series of resolutions declaring utter 
 opposition to the proposal, both on the ground of expe- 
 
 163 
 
THOMAS HART BENTON 
 
 diency and on that of constitutionality. The resolu- 
 tions were perfectly proper in their purpose, but were 
 disfigured by that cheap species of demagogy which con- 
 sists in denouncing purely supposititious foreign inter- 
 ference, complicated by an allusion to Benton's especial 
 pet terror, the inevitable money power. As he put it: 
 "Foreign interference and influence are far moredanger- 
 ous in the invidious intervention of the moneyed power 
 than in the forcible invasions of fleets and armies." 
 
 An attempt was made directly to reverse the effect 
 of the resolutions by amending them so as to provide 
 that the public land revenue should be divided among 
 the States, to help them in the payment of these debts. 
 Both Webster and Clay supported this amendment, but 
 it was fortunately beaten by a large vote. 
 
 Benton's speech, like the resolutions in support of 
 which he spoke, was right in its purpose, but contained 
 much matter that was beside the mark. He had worked 
 himself into such a condition over the supposititious in- 
 trigues of the "money power" — an attack on which is 
 almost always sure to be popular — that he was very cer- 
 tain to discover evidence of their existence on all, even 
 the most unlikely, occasions; and it is difficult to think 
 that he was not himself aware how overdrawn was his 
 prophecy of the probable interference of foreign powers 
 in our affairs, if the resolutions he had presented were 
 not adopted. 
 
 The tariff had once more begun to give trouble, and 
 the South was again complaining of its workings, aware 
 that she was falling always more to the rear in the race 
 for prosperity, and blindly attributing her failure to 
 everything but the true reason — the existence of slavery. 
 Even Benton himself showed a curiously pathetic eager- 
 ness to prove both to others and himself that the cause 
 
 164 
 
THE JACKSONIAN DEMOCRACY 
 
 of the increasing disparity in growth, and incompati- 
 bility in interest between the two sections, must be due 
 to some temporary and artificial cause, and endeavored 
 to hide from all eyes, even from his own, the fact that 
 the existence of slavery was working, slowly but surely, 
 and with steadily increasing rapidity, to rend in sunder 
 the Union which he loved and served with such heart- 
 felt devotion. He tried to prove that the main cause 
 of discontent was to be found in the tariff and other 
 laws, which favored the North at the expense of the 
 South. At the same time he entered an eloquent plea 
 for a warmer feeling between the sections, and pointed 
 out the absolute hopelessness of attempting to better 
 the situation in any way by disunion. The great Mis- 
 sourian could look back with fond pride and regret to 
 the condition of the South as it was during and imme- 
 diately after the Colonial days, when it was the seat of 
 wealth, power, high living, and free-handed hospitality, 
 and was filled to overflowing with the abounding life of 
 its eager and turbulent sons. The change for the worse 
 in its relative condition was real and great. He reproved 
 his fellow Southerners for attributing this change to a 
 single cause, the unequal working of the federal govern- 
 ment, "which gave all the benefits of the Union to the 
 South and all its burdens to the North " ; he claimed that 
 it was due to many other causes as well. Yet those 
 whom he rebuked were as near right as he was; for the 
 change was due in the main to only one cause — but that 
 cause was slavery. It is almost pitiful to see the strong, 
 stern, self-reliant statesman refusing, with nervous and 
 passionate wilfulness, to look the danger in the face, 
 and, instead thereof, trying to persuade himself into the 
 belief that "the remedy lies in the right working of the 
 Constitution; in the cessation of unequal legislation; in 
 
 165 
 
THOMAS HART BENTON 
 
 the reduction of the inordinate expenses of the govern- 
 ment; in its return to the simple, limited, and economi- 
 cal machine it was intended to be; and in the revival of 
 fraternal feelings and respect for each other's rights and 
 just complaints." Like many another man he thought, 
 or tried to think, that by sweeping the dust from the 
 door-sill he could somehow stave off the whirling rush 
 of the sand-storm. 
 
 The compromise tariff of 1833 had abolished all spe- 
 cific duties, establishing ad valorem ones in their place; 
 and the result had been great uncertainty and injustice 
 in its working. Now whether a protective tariff is right 
 or wrong may be open to question; but if it exists at all, 
 it should work as simply and with as much certainty 
 and exactitude as possible; if its interpretation varies, or 
 if it is continually meddled with by Congress, great dam- 
 age ensues. It is in reality of far less importance that a 
 law should be ideally right than that it should be cer- 
 tain and steady in its workings. Even supposing that 
 a high tariff is all wrong, it would work infinitely better 
 for the country than would a series of changes between 
 high and low duties. Benton strongly advocated a re- 
 turn to specific duties, as being simpler, surer, and bet- 
 ter on every account. In commenting on the ad valorem 
 duties, he showed how they had been adopted blindly 
 and without discussion by the frightened, silent multi- 
 tude of congressmen and senators, who jumped at Clay's 
 compromise bill in 1833 as giving them a loophole of 
 escape from a situation where they would have had to 
 face evil consequences, no matter what stand they 
 took. Benton's comment on men of this stamp de- 
 serves chronicling, from its justice and biting severity: 
 "It (the compromise act) was passed by the aid of the 
 votes of those — always a considerable per centum in 
 
 166 
 
THE JACKSONIAN DEMOCRACY 
 
 every public body — to whom the name of compromise 
 is an irresistible attraction; amiable men, who would do 
 no wrong of themselves, and without whom the design- 
 ing could also do but little wrong." 
 
 He not only devoted himself to the general subject 
 of the tariff in relation to specific duties, but he also 
 took up several prominent abuses. One subject, on 
 which he was never tired of harping with monotonous 
 persistency, was the duty on salt. The idea of making 
 salt free had become one which he was almost as fond 
 of bringing into every discussion, no matter how inap- 
 propriate to the matter in hand, as he was of making 
 irrelevant and abusive allusions to his much-endur- 
 ing and long-suffering hobby, the iniquitous "money 
 power." Benton had all the tenacity of a snapping 
 turtle, and was as firm a believer in the policy of "con- 
 tinuous hammering" as Grant himself. His tenacity 
 and his pertinacious refusal to abandon any contest, no 
 matter what the odds were against him, and no matter 
 how often he had to return to the charge, formed two 
 of his most invaluable qualities, and when called into 
 play on behalf of such an object as the preservation of 
 the Union, cannot receive too high praise at our hands; 
 for they did the country services so great and lasting 
 that they should never be forgotten. It would have 
 been fortunate indeed if Clay and Webster had pos- 
 sessed the fearless, aggressive courage and iron will of 
 the rugged Missourian, who was so often pitted against 
 them in the political arena. But when Benton's atten- 
 tion was firmly fixed on the accomplishment of some- 
 thing comparatively trivial, his dogged, stubborn, and 
 unyielding earnestness drew him into making efforts of 
 which the disproportion to the result aimed at was 
 rather droll. Nothing could thwart him or turn him 
 
 167 
 
THOMAS HART BENTON 
 
 aside; and though slow to take up an idea, yet, if it was 
 once in his head, to drive it out was a simply hopeless 
 task. These qualities were of such invaluable use to 
 the State on so many great occasions that we can well 
 afford to treat them merely with a good-humored laugh, 
 when we see them exercised on behalf of such a piece 
 of foolishness as, for example, the expunging resolution. 
 The repeal of the salt tax, then, was a particular 
 favorite in Benton's rather numerous stable of hobbies, 
 because it gave free scope for the use of sentimental as 
 well as of economic arguments. He had the right of the 
 question, and was not in the least daunted by his nu- 
 merous rebuffs and the unvarying ill success of his ef- 
 forts. Speaking in 1840, he stated that he had been 
 urging the repeal for twelve years; and for the purpose 
 of furnishing data with which to compare such a period 
 of time, and without the least suspicion that there was 
 anything out of the way in the comparison, he added, 
 in a solemn parenthesis, that this was two years longer 
 than the siege of Troy lasted. In the same speech was 
 a still choicer morsel of eloquence about salt: 'The 
 Supreme Ruler of the Universe has done everything to 
 supply his creatures with it; man, the fleeting shadow 
 of an instant, invested with his little brief authority, 
 has done much to deprive them of it." After which he 
 went on to show a really extensive acquaintance with 
 the history of salt taxes and monopolies, and with the 
 uses and physical structure and surroundings of the 
 mineral itself— all which might have taught his hearers 
 that a man may combine much erudition with a total 
 lack of the sense of humor. The salt tax is dragged, 
 neck and heels, into many of Benton's speeches much as 
 Cooper manages, on all possible occasions, throughout 
 his novels, to show the unlikeness of the Bay of Naples 
 
 168 
 
THE JACKSONIAN DEMOCRACY 
 
 to the Bay of New York — not the only point of resem- 
 blance, by the way, between the characters of the Mis- 
 souri statesman and the New York novelist. Whether 
 the subject under discussion was the taxation of bank- 
 notes, or the abolition of slavery, made very little dif- 
 ference to Benton as to introducing an allusion to the 
 salt monopoly. One of his happy arguments in favor 
 of the repeal, which was addressed to an exceedingly 
 practical and commonplace Congress, was that the early 
 Christian disciples had been known as the salt of the 
 earth — a Biblical metaphor, which Benton kindly as- 
 sured his hearers was very expressive; and added that 
 a salt tax was morally as well as politically wrong, and 
 in fact "was a species of impiety." 
 
 But in attacking some of the abuses which had de- 
 veloped out of the tariff of 1833 Benton made a very 
 shrewd and practical speech, without permitting him- 
 self to indulge in any such intellectual pranks as ac- 
 companied his salt orations. He especially aimed at 
 reducing the drawbacks on sugar, molasses, and one 
 or two other articles. In accordance with our whole 
 clumsy, haphazard system of dealing with the tariff 
 we had originally put very high duties on the articles 
 in question, and then had allowed correspondingly 
 heavy drawbacks; and yet, when in 1833, by Clay's 
 famous compromise tariff bill, the duties were reduced 
 to a fractional part of what they had previously been, 
 no parallel reduction was made in the drawbacks, al- 
 though Benton (supported by Webster) made a vain 
 effort even then, while the compromise bill was on its 
 passage, to have the injustice remedied. As a conse- 
 quence, the exporters of sugar and rum, instead of draw- 
 ing back the exact amounts paid into the Treasury, 
 drew back several times as much; and the ridiculous 
 
 169 
 
THOMAS HART BENTON 
 
 result was that certain exporters were paid a naked 
 bounty out of the Treasury, and received pay for doing 
 and suffering nothing. In 1839 the drawback paid on 
 the exportation of refined sugar exceeded the amount 
 of revenue derived from imported sugar by over twenty 
 thousand dollars. Benton showed this clearly, by un- 
 impeachable statistics, and went on to prove that in 
 that year the whole amount of the revenue from brown 
 and clayed sugar, plus the above-mentioned twenty 
 thousand dollars, was paid over to twenty-nine sugar- 
 refiners; and that these men thus "drew back" from 
 the Treasury what they had never put into it. Abuses 
 equally gross existed in relation to various other articles. 
 But in spite of the clear justice of his case Benton was 
 able at first to make but little impression on Congress; 
 and it was some time before matters were straightened 
 out, as all the protective interests felt obliged to make 
 common cause with each other, no matter what evils 
 might be perpetrated by their taking such action. 
 
 Toward the close of Van Buren's administration, 
 when he was being assailed on every side, as well for 
 what Jackson as for what he himself had done or left 
 undone, one of the chief accusations brought against 
 him was that he had squandered the public money, and 
 that, since Adams had been ousted from the presidency, 
 the expenses of running the government had increased 
 out of all proportion to what was proper. There was 
 good ground for their complaint, as the waste and pecu- 
 lation in some of the departments had been very great; 
 but Benton, in an elaborate defense of both Jackson and 
 Van Buren, succeeded in showing that at least certain 
 of the accusations were unfounded — although he had to 
 stretch a point or two in trying to make good his claim 
 that the administration was really economical, being 
 
 170 
 
THE JACKSONIAN DEMOCRACY 
 
 reduced to the rather lame expedient of ruling out about 
 two-thirds of the expenditures on the ground that they 
 were "extraordinary." 
 
 The charge of extravagance was one of the least of 
 the charges urged against the Jacksonian Democrats 
 during the last days of their rule. While they had been 
 in power the character of the public service had de- 
 teriorated frightfully, both as regarded its efficiency and 
 infinitely more as regarded its honesty; and under Van 
 Buren the amount of money stolen by the public of- 
 ficers, compared to the amount handed in to the Trea- 
 sury, was greater than ever before or since. For this 
 the Jacksonians were solely and absolutely responsible; 
 they drove out the merit system of making appoint- 
 ments, and introduced the "spoils" system in its place; 
 and under the latter they chose a peculiarly dishonest 
 and incapable set of officers, whose sole recommendation 
 was to be found in the knavish trickery and low cunning 
 that enabled them to manage the ignorant voters who 
 formed the backbone of Jackson's party. The states- 
 men of the Democracy in after-days forgot the good 
 deeds of the Jacksonians; they lost their attachment to 
 the Union, and abandoned their championship of hard 
 money; but they never ceased to cling to the worst 
 legacy their predecessors had left them. The engraft- 
 ing of the "spoils" system on our government was, of 
 all the results of Jacksonian rule, the one which was 
 most permanent in its effects. 
 
 All these causes— the corruption of the public of- 
 ficials, the extravagance of the government, and the 
 wide-spread distress, which might be regarded as the 
 aftermath of its ruinous financial policy— combined 
 with others that were as little to the discredit of the 
 Jacksonians as they were to the credit of the Whigs, 
 
 171 
 
THOMAS HART BENTON 
 
 brought about the overthrow of the former. There was 
 much poetic justice in the fact that the presidential elec- 
 tion which decided their fate was conducted on as purely 
 irrational principles, and was as merely one of sound and 
 fury, as had been the case in the election twelve years 
 previously, when they came into power. The Whigs, 
 having exhausted their language in denouncing their op- 
 ponents for nominating a man like Andrew Jackson, 
 proceeded to look about in their own party to find one 
 who should come as near him as possible in all the at- 
 tributes that had given him so deep a hold on the people; 
 and they succeeded perfectly when they pitched on the 
 old Indian fighter, Harrison. "Tippecanoe" proved 
 quite as effective a war-cry in bringing about the down- 
 fall of the Jacksonians as "Old Hickory" had shown 
 itself to be a dozen years previously in raising them up. 
 General Harrison had already shown himself to be a 
 good soldier, and a loyal and honest public servant, al- 
 though by no means standing in the first rank either as 
 regards war-craft or statecraft; but the mass of his sup- 
 porters apparently considered the facts, or supposed 
 facts, that he lived in a log cabin the walls of which 
 were decorated with coon-skins, and that he drank hard 
 cider from a gourd, as being more important than his 
 capacity as a statesman or his past services to the na- 
 tion. 
 
 The Whigs having thus taken a shaft from the Jack- 
 sonians' quiver, it was rather amusing to see the latter, 
 in their turn, hold up their hands in horror at the in- 
 iquity of what would now be called a "hurrah" canvass; 
 blandly ignoring the fact that it was simply a copy of 
 their own successful proceedings. Says Benton, with 
 amusing gravity, "The class of inducements addressed 
 to the passions and imaginations of the people was such 
 
 172 
 
THE JACKSONIAN DEMOCRACY 
 
 as history blushes to record," a remark that provokes 
 criticism, when it is remembered that Benton had been 
 himself a prominent actor on the Jacksonian side in the 
 campaigns of '28 and '32, when it was exclusively to 
 "the passions and imaginations of the people" that all 
 arguments were addressed. 
 
 The Democrats did not long remain out of power; 
 and they kept the control of the governmental policy 
 in their hands pretty steadily until the time of the Civil 
 War; nevertheless it is true that with the defeat of Van 
 Buren the Jacksonian Democracy, as such, lost forever 
 its grip on the direction of national affairs. When, 
 under Polk, the Democrats came back, they came under 
 the lead of the very men whom the original Jacksonians 
 had opposed and kept down. With all their faults, Jack- 
 son and Benton were strong Union men, and under them 
 their party was a Union party. Calhoun and South 
 Carolina, and the disunionists in the other Southern 
 States were their bitter foes. But the disunion and ex- 
 treme slavery elements within the Democratic ranks 
 were increasing rapidly all the time; and they had ob- 
 tained complete and final control when the party re- 
 appeared as victors after their defeat in 1840. Until 
 Van Buren's overthrow the nationalists had held the 
 upper hand in shaping Democratic policy; but after 
 that event the leadership of the party passed completely 
 into the hands of the separatists. 
 
 The defeat of Van Buren marks an era in more ways 
 than one. During his administration slavery played a 
 less prominent part in politics than did many other mat- 
 ters; this was never so again. His administration was 
 the last in which this question, or the question spring- 
 ing from it, did not overtop and dwarf in importance all 
 others. Again, the presidential election of 1840 was the 
 
 173 
 
THOMAS HART BENTON 
 
 last into which slavery did not enter as a most impor- 
 tant, and in fact as the vital and determining, factor. In 
 the contest between Van Buren and Harrison it did not 
 have the least influence upon the result. Moreover, 
 Van Buren was the last Democratic President who ruled 
 over a Union of States; all his successors, up to the time 
 of Lincoln's election, merely held sway over a Union of 
 sections. The spirit of separation had identified itself 
 with the maintenance of slavery, and the South was 
 rapidly uniting into a compact array of States with in- 
 terests that were hostile to the North on the point most 
 vitally affecting the welfare of the whole country. 
 
 No great question involving the existence of slavery 
 was brought before the attention of Congress during 
 Van Buren's term of office; nor was the matter mooted 
 except in the eternal wrangles over receiving the aboli- 
 tionist petitions. Benton kept silent in these discus- 
 sions, although voting to receive the petitions. As he 
 grew older he continually grew wiser, and better able 
 to do good legislative work on all subjects; but he was 
 not yet able to realize that the slavery question was one 
 which could not be kept down, and which was bound to 
 force itself into the sphere of national politics. He still 
 insisted that it was only dragged before Congress by a 
 few fanatics at the North, and that in the South it was 
 made the instrument by which designing and unscrupu- 
 lous men wished to break up the federal republic. His 
 devotion to the Union, ever with him the chief and over- 
 mastering thought, made him regard with horror and 
 aversion any man, at the North or at the South, who 
 brought forward a question so fraught with peril to its 
 continuance. He kept trying to delude himself into the 
 belief that the discussion and the danger would alike 
 gradually die away, and the former State of peaceful 
 
 174 
 
THE JACKSONIAN DEMOCRACY 
 
 harmony between the sections, and freedom from dis- 
 union excitement, would return. 
 
 But the time for such an ending already lay in the 
 past; thereafter the outlook was to grow steadily darker 
 year by year. Slavery lowered like a thunder-storm on 
 the horizon; and though sometimes it might seem for 
 a moment to break away, yet in reality it had reached 
 that stage when, until the final all-engulfing outburst 
 took place, the clouds were bound forevermore to re- 
 turn after the rain. 
 
 175 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 THE PRESIDENT WITHOUT A PARTY 
 
 The Whigs in 1840 completely overthrew the Demo- 
 crats, and for the first time elected a President and held 
 the majority in both houses of Congress. Yet, as it 
 turned out, all that they really accomplished was to 
 elect a President without a party, for Harrison died 
 when he had hardly more than sat in the presidential 
 chair, and was succeeded by the Vice-President, Tyler, 
 of Virginia. 
 
 Harrison was a true Whig; he was, when nominated, 
 a prominent member of the Whig party, although of 
 course not to be compared with its great leader, Henry 
 Clay, or with its most mighty intellectual chief and 
 champion in the Northeast, Daniel Webster, whose mu- 
 tual rivalry had done much to make his nomination pos- 
 sible. Tyler, however, could hardly be called a Whig at 
 all ; on the contrary, he belonged rightfully in the ranks 
 of those extreme Democrats who were farthest removed 
 from the Whig standard, and who were as much dis- 
 pleased with the Union sentiments of the Jacksonians 
 as they were with the personal tyranny of Jackson him- 
 self. He was properly nothing but a dissatisfied Demo- 
 crat, who hated the Jacksonians, and had been nomi- 
 nated only because the Whig politicians wished to 
 strengthen their ticket and insure its election by bid- 
 ding for the votes of the discontented in the ranks of 
 their foes. Now a chance stroke of death put the presi- 
 dency in the hands of one who represented this, the 
 smallest, element in the coalition that overthrew Van 
 Buren. 
 
 176 
 
THE PRESIDENT WITHOUT A PARTY 
 
 The principles of the Whigs were hazily outlined at 
 the best, and the party was never a very creditable 
 organization; indeed, throughout its career, it could be 
 most easily defined as the opposition to the Democracy. 
 It was a free constructionist party, believing in giving 
 a liberal interpretation to the doctrines of the Consti- 
 tution; otherwise, its principles were purely economic, 
 as it favored a high tariff, internal improvements, a 
 bank, and kindred schemes; and its leaders, however 
 they might quarrel among themselves, agreed thor- 
 oughly in their devout hatred of Jackson and all his 
 works. 
 
 It was on this last point only that Tyler came in. 
 His principles had originally been ultra-Democratic. 
 He had been an extreme strict constructionist, had be- 
 longed to that wing of the Democracy which inclined 
 more and more toward separation, and had thus, on 
 several grounds, found himself opposed to Jackson, 
 Benton, and their followers. Indeed, he went into op- 
 position to his original party for reasons akin to those 
 that influenced Calhoun; and Seward's famous remark 
 about the "ill-starred coalition between Whigs and Nul- 
 lifiers" might with certain changes have been applied 
 to the presidential election of 1840 quite as well as to 
 the senatorial struggles to which it had reference. 
 
 Tyler, however, had little else in common with Cal- 
 houn, and least of all his intellect. He has been called 
 a mediocre man; but this is unwarranted flattery. He 
 was a politician of monumental littleness. Owing to 
 the nicely divided condition of parties, and to the sheer 
 accident which threw him into a position of such promi- 
 nence that it allowed him to hold the balance of power 
 between them, he was enabled to turn politics com- 
 pletely topsyturvy; but his chief mental and moral at- 
 
 177 
 
THOMAS HART BENTON 
 
 tributes were peevishness, fretful obstinacy, inconsis- 
 tency, incapacity to make up his own mind, and the 
 ability to quibble indefinitely over the most microscopic 
 and hair-splitting plays upon words, together with an 
 inordinate vanity that so blinded him to all outside 
 feeling as to make him really think that he stood a 
 chance to be renominated for the presidency. 
 
 The Whigs, especially in the Senate, under Henry 
 Clay, prepared at once to push through various mea- 
 sures that should undo the work of the Jacksonians. 
 Clay was boastfully and domineeringly sure of the neces- 
 sity of applying to actual governmental work the eco- 
 nomic theories that formed the chief stock in trade of 
 his party. But it was precisely on these economic theo- 
 ries that Tyler split off from the Whigs. The result was 
 that very shortly the real leader of the dominant party, 
 backed by almost all his fellow party men in both houses 
 of Congress, was at daggers drawn with the nominal 
 Whig President, who in his turn was supported only by 
 a "corporal's guard" of followers in the House of Rep- 
 resentatives, by all the office-holders whom fear of re- 
 moval reduced to obsequious subserviency, and bya 
 knot of obscure politicians who used him for their own 
 ends, and worked alternately on his vanity and on his 
 fears. The Democrats, led by Benton, played out their 
 own game, and were the only parties to the three-cor- 
 nered fight who came out of it with profit. The details 
 now offer rather dry reading, as the economic theories 
 of all the contestants were more or less crude, the re- 
 sults of the conflict indecisive, and the effects upon our 
 history ephemeral. 
 
 Clay began by a heated revival of one of Jackson's 
 worst ideas, namely, that when the people elect a Presi- 
 dent they thereby mark with the seal of their approval 
 
 178 
 
THE PRESIDENT WITHOUT A PARTY 
 
 any and every measure with which that favored mortal 
 or his advisers may consider themselves identified, and 
 indorse all his and their previous actions. He at once 
 declared that the people had shown, by the size of Har- 
 rison's majority, that they demanded the repeal of the 
 independent Treasury Act, and the passage of various 
 other laws in accordance with some of his own favorite 
 hobbies, two out of three voters, as a matter of fact, 
 probably never having given a second thought to any 
 of them. Accordingly he proceeded to introduce a whole 
 batch of bills, which he alleged that it was only yielding 
 due respect to the spirit of Democracy to pass forthwith. 
 Benton, however, even outdid Clay in paying hom- 
 age to what he was pleased to call the "Democratic 
 idea." At this time he speaks of the last session of the 
 Twenty-sixth Congress as being "barren of measures, 
 and necessarily so, as being the last of an administra- 
 tion superseded by the popular voice and soon to expire; 
 and therefore restricted by a sense of propriety, during 
 the brief remainder of its existence, to the details of 
 business and the routine of service." According to this 
 theory an interregnum of some sixteen weeks would 
 intervene between the terms of service of every two 
 Presidents. He also speaks of Tyler as having, when 
 the legislature of Virginia disapproved of a course he 
 wished to follow, resigned his seat "in obedience to the 
 Democratic principle," which, according to his views, 
 thus completely nullified the section of the Constitution 
 providing for a six years' term of service in the Senate. 
 In truth Benton, like most other Jacksonian and Jeffer- 
 sonian leaders, became both foolish and illogical when 
 he began to talk of the bundle of vague abstractions, 
 which he knew collectively as the "Democratic prin- 
 ciple." Although not so bad as many of his school he 
 
 179 
 
THOMAS HART BENTON 
 
 had yet gradually worked himself up to a belief that it 
 was almost impious to pay anything but servile heed 
 to the "will of the majority"; and was quite uncon- 
 scious that to surrender one's own manhood and judg- 
 ment to a belief in the divine right of kings was only 
 one degree more ignoble, and was not a shadow more 
 logical, and but little more defensible, than it was 
 blindly to deify a majority — not of the whole people, 
 but merely of a small fraction consisting of those who 
 happened to be of a certain sex, to have reached a cer- 
 tain age, to belong to a certain race, and to fulfil some 
 other conditions. In fact there is no natural or divine 
 law in the matter at all ; how large a portion of the popu- 
 lation should be trusted with the control of the govern- 
 ment is a question of expediency merely. In any purely 
 native American community manhood suffrage works 
 infinitely better than would any other system of gov- 
 ernment, and throughout our country at large, in spite 
 of the large number of ignorant foreign-born or colored 
 voters, it is probably preferable as it stands to any 
 modification of it; but there is no more "natural right" 
 why a white man over twenty-one should vote than 
 there is why a negro woman under eighteen should not. 
 "Civil rights" and "personal freedom" are not terms 
 that necessarily imply the right to vote. People make 
 mistakes when governing themselves, exactly as they 
 make mistakes when governing others; all that can be 
 said is, that in the former case their self-interest is on 
 the side of good government, whereas in the latter it 
 always may be, and often must be, the reverse ; so that, 
 when any people reaches a certain stage of mental de- 
 velopment and of capacity to take care of its own con- 
 cerns, it is far better that it should itself take the reins. 
 The distinctive features of the American system are 
 
 180 
 
THE PRESIDENT WITHOUT A PARTY 
 
 its guarantees of personal independence and individual 
 freedom; that is, as far as possible, it guarantees to each 
 man his right to live as he chooses and to regulate his 
 own private affairs as he wishes, without being inter- 
 fered with or tyrannized over by an individual, or by 
 an oligarchic minority, or by a Democratic majority; 
 while, when the interests of the whole community are 
 at stake, it is found best in the long run to let them be 
 managed in accordance with the wishes of the majority 
 of those presumably concerned. 
 
 Clay's nourish of trumpets foreboded trouble and 
 disturbance to the Jacksonian camp. At last he stood 
 at the head of a party controlling both branches of the 
 legislative body, and devoted to his behests; and, if a 
 little doubtful about the President, he still believed he 
 could frighten him into doing as he was bid. He had 
 long been in the minority, and had seen his foes ride 
 roughshod over all he most believed in; and now he 
 prepared to pay them back in their own coin and to 
 leave a heavy balance on his side of the reckoning. Nor 
 could any Jacksonian have shown himself more domi- 
 neering and influenced by a more insolent disregard for 
 the rights of others than Clay did in his hour of triumph. 
 On the other side, Benton braced himself with dogged 
 determination for the struggle; for he was one of those 
 men who fight a losing or a winning battle with equal 
 resolution. 
 
 Tyler's first message to Congress read like a pretty 
 good Whig document. It did not display any especial 
 signs of his former strict construction theories, and gave 
 little hope to the Democrats. The leader of the latter, 
 indeed, Benton, commented upon both it and its author 
 with rather grandiloquent severity, on account of its 
 latitudinarian bias, and of its recommendation of a 
 
 181 
 
THOMAS HART BENTON 
 
 bank of some sort. However, the ink with which the 
 message was written could hardly have been dry before 
 the President's mind began to change. He himself 
 probably had very little idea what he intended to do, 
 and so contrived to give the Whigs the impression that 
 he would act in accordance with their wishes; but the 
 leaven had already begun working in his mind, and, not 
 having much to work on, soon changed it so completely 
 that he was willing practically to eat his own words. 
 
 Shortly after Tyler had sent in his message outlining 
 what legislation he deemed proper, he being by virtue 
 of his position the nominal and titular leader of the 
 Whigs, Clay, who was their real and very positive chief, 
 and who was, moreover, determined to assert his chief- 
 tainship, in his turn laid down a programme for his 
 party to follow, introducing a series of resolutions de- 
 claring it necessary to pass a bill to repeal the Sub- 
 treasury Act, another to establish a bank, another to 
 distribute the proceeds of the public land sales, and one 
 or two more, to which was afterward added a bank- 
 ruptcy measure. 
 
 The Sub treasury bill was first taken up and promptly 
 passed and signed. Benton, of course, led the hope- 
 less fight against it, making a long and elaborate speech, 
 insisting that the finances were in excellent shape, as 
 they were, showing the advantages of hard money, and 
 denouncing the bill on account of the extreme sudden- 
 ness with which it took effect, and because it made no 
 provision for any substitute. He also alluded causti- 
 cally to the curious and anomalous bank bill, which was 
 then being patched up by the Whig leaders so as to get 
 it into some such shape that the President would sign 
 it. 
 
 The other three important measures, that is, the 
 
 182 
 
THE PRESIDENT WITHOUT A PARTY 
 
 bank, distribution, and bankruptcy bills, were all passed 
 nearly together; as Benton pointed out, they were got 
 through only by a species of bargain and sale, the chief 
 supporters of each agreeing to support the other, so as 
 to get their own pet measure through. "All must go to- 
 gether or fall together. This is the decree out-of-doors. 
 When the sun dips below the horizon a private congress 
 is held; the fate of the measures is decided; a bundle is 
 tied together; and while one goes ahead as a bait, an- 
 other is held back as a rod." 
 
 The bankruptcy bill went through and was signed. 
 It was urged by all the large debtor class, whose ranks 
 had been filled to overflowing by the years of wild specu- 
 lation and general bank suspension and insolvency. 
 These debtors were quite numerous enough to consti- 
 tute an important factor in politics, but Benton disre- 
 garded them nevertheless, and fought the bill as stoutly 
 as he did its companions, alleging that it was a gross 
 outrage on honesty and on the rights of property, and 
 was not a bankrupt law at all, but practically an insol- 
 vent law for the abolition of debts at the will of the 
 debtor. He pointed out grave and numerous defects 
 of detail, and gave an exhaustive abstract of bank- 
 ruptcy legislation in general; the speech gave evidence 
 of the tireless industry and wide range of learning for 
 which Benton was pre-eminently distinguished. 
 
 The third bill to be taken up and passed was that 
 providing for the distribution of the public lands reve- 
 nue, and thus indirectly for assuming the debts of the 
 States. Tyler, in his message, had characteristically 
 stated that, though it would be wholly unconstitutional 
 for the federal government to assume the debts of the 
 States, yet it would be highly proper for it to give the 
 latter money wherewith to pay them. Clay had al- 
 
 183 
 
THOMAS HART BENTON 
 
 ways been an enthusiastic advocate of a distribution 
 bill; and accordingly one was now passed and signed 
 with the least possible delay. It was an absolutely in- 
 defensible measure. The Treasury was empty, and 
 loan and tax bills were pending at the very moment, 
 in order to supply money for the actual running of the 
 government. As Benton pointed out, Congress had 
 been called together (a special session having been sum- 
 moned by Harrison before his death) to raise revenue, 
 and the first thing done was to squander it. The dis- 
 tribution took place when the Treasury reports showed 
 a deficit of sixteen millions of dollars. The bill was 
 pushed through mainly by the States which had re- 
 pudiated their debts in whole or in part; and as these 
 debts were largely owed abroad, many prominent for- 
 eign banking-houses and individuals took an active part 
 in lobbying for the bill. Benton was emphatically right 
 in his opposition to the measure, but he was very wrong 
 in some of the grounds he took. Thus he inveighed 
 vigorously against the foreign capitalists who had come 
 to help push the bill through Congress; but he did not 
 have anything to say against the scoundrelly dishonesty 
 displayed by certain States toward their creditors, 
 which had forced these capitalists into the endeavor to 
 protect themselves. He also incidentally condemned 
 the original assumption by the national government of 
 the debts of the States, at the time of the formation 
 of the Constitution, which was an absolute necessity; 
 and his constitutional views throughout seem rather 
 strained. But he was right beyond cavil on the main 
 point. It was criminal folly to give the States the im- 
 pression that they would be allowed to create debts 
 over which Congress could have no control, yet which 
 Congress in the end would give them the money to pay. 
 
 184 
 
THE PRESIDENT WITHOUT A PARTY 
 
 To reward a State for repudiating a debt by giving her 
 the wherewithal to pay it was a direct and unequivocal 
 encouragement of dishonesty. In every respect the bill 
 was wholly improper; and Benton's attitude toward it 
 and toward similar schemes was incomparably better 
 than the position of Clay, Webster, and the other 
 Whigs. 
 
 Both the bankrupt bill and the distribution bill were 
 repealed very shortly; the latter before it had time to 
 take effect. This was an emphatic indorsement by the 
 public of Benton's views, and a humiliating rebuke to 
 the Whig authors of the measures. Indeed, the whole 
 legislation of the session was almost absolutely fruitless 
 in its results. 
 
 One feature of the struggle was an attempt by Clay, 
 promptly and successfully resisted by Benton and Cal- 
 houn, to institute the hour limit for speeches in the Sen- 
 ate. There was a good deal of excuse for Clay's motion. 
 The House could cut off debate by the previous ques- 
 tion, which the Senate could not, and nevertheless had 
 found it necessary to establish the hour limit in ad- 
 dition. Of course it is highly undesirable that there 
 should not be proper freedom of debate in Congress; 
 but it is quite as hurtful to allow a minority to exercise 
 their privileges improperly. The previous question is 
 often abused and used tyrannically; but on the whole 
 it is a most invaluable aid to legislation. Benton, how- 
 ever, waxed hot and wrathful over the proposed change 
 in the Senate rules. He, with Calhoun and their fol- 
 lowers, had been consuming an immense amount of time 
 in speech-making against the Whig measures, and in 
 offering amendments; not with any hopes of bettering 
 the bills, but for outside effect, and to annoy their op- 
 ponents. He gives an amusingly naive account of their 
 
 185 
 
THOMAS HART BENTON 
 
 course of action, and the reasons for it, substantially as 
 
 follows : 
 
 "The Democratic senators acted upon a system, and 
 with a thorough organization and a perfect understand- 
 ing. Being a minority, and able to do nothing, they be- 
 came assailants, and attacked incessantly; not by for- 
 mal orations against the whole body of a measure, but 
 by sudden, short, and pungent speeches directed against 
 the vulnerable parts, and pointed by proffered amend- 
 ments. Amendments were continually offered — a great 
 number being prepared every night and placed in suit- 
 able hands for use the next day — always commendably 
 calculated to expose an evil and to present a remedy. 
 Near forty propositions of amendment were offered to 
 the first fiscal agent bill alone — the yeas and nays were 
 taken upon them seven and thirty times. All the other 
 prominent bills — distribution, bankrupt, fiscal corpora- 
 tion, new tariff act, called revenue — were served the 
 same way; every proposed amendment made an issue. 
 There were but twenty-two of us, but every one was a 
 speaker and effective. The Globe newspaper was a 
 powerful ally, setting out all we did to the best advan- 
 tage in strong editorials, and carrying out our speeches, 
 fresh and hot, to the people; and we felt victorious in 
 the midst of unbroken defeats." 
 
 It is no wonder that such rank filibustering, coupled 
 with the exasperating self-complacency of its origina- 
 tors, should have excited in Whig bosoms every des- 
 perate emotion short of homicidal mania. 
 
 Clay, to cut off such useless talk, gave notice that he 
 would move to have the time for debate for each in- 
 dividual restricted; remarking very truthfully that he 
 did not believe the people at large would complain of 
 the abridgment of speeches in Congress. But the Demo- 
 
 186 
 
THE PRESIDENT WITHOUT A PARTY 
 
 cratic senators, all rather fond of windy orations, fairly 
 foamed at the mouth at what they affected to deem 
 such an infringement of their liberties; and actually 
 took the inexcusable resolution of bidding defiance to 
 the rule if it was adopted, and refusing to obey it, no 
 matter what degree of violence their conduct might 
 bring about — a resolution that was wholly unpardon- 
 able. Benton was selected to voice their views upon 
 the matter, which he did in a long, and not very wise, 
 speech; while Calhoun was quite as emphatic in his 
 threats of what would happen if attempt should be 
 made to enforce the proposed rule. Clay was always 
 much bolder in opening a campaign than in carrying it 
 through; and when it came to putting his words into 
 deeds, he wholly lacked the nerve which would have en- 
 abled him to contend with two such men as the senators 
 from Missouri and South Carolina. Had he possessed 
 a temperament like that of either of his opponents, he 
 would have gone on and have simply forced acquies- 
 cence; for any legislative body can certainly enforce 
 what rules it may choose to make as to the conduct of 
 its own members in addressing it; but his courage failed 
 him, and he withdrew from the contest, leaving the vic- 
 tory with the Democrats. 
 
 When the question of the recharter of the district 
 banks came up, it of course gave Benton another chance 
 to attack his favorite foe. He offered a very proper 
 amendment, which was voted down, to prohibit the 
 banks from issuing a currency of small notes, fixing 
 upon twenty dollars as being the lowest limit. This he 
 supported in a strong speech, wherein he once again 
 argued at length in favor of a gold and silver currency, 
 and showed the evil effects of small bank-notes, which 
 might not be, and often were not, redeemable at par. 
 
 187 
 
THOMAS HART BENTON 
 
 He very properly pointed out that to have a sound cur- 
 rency, especially in all the smaller denominations, was 
 really of greater interest to the working men than to 
 any one else. 
 
 The great measure of the session, however, and the 
 one that was intended to be the final crown and glory 
 of the Whig triumph, was the bill to establish a new 
 national bank. Among the political theories to which 
 Clay clung most closely, only the belief in a bank ranked 
 higher in his estimation than his devotion to a pro- 
 tective tariff. The establishment of a national bank 
 seemed to him to be the chief object of a Whig success; 
 and that it would work immediate and immense benefit 
 to the country was with him an article of faith. With 
 both houses of Congress under his control, he at once 
 prepared to push his pet measure through, impatiently 
 brushing aside all resistance. 
 
 But at the very outset difficulty was feared from the 
 action of the President. Tyler could not at first make 
 up his mind what to do; or rather, he made it up in 
 half a dozen different ways every day. His peevish- 
 ness, vacillation, ambitious vanity, and sheer puzzle- 
 headedness made him incline first to the side of his new 
 friends and present supporters, the Whigs, and then to 
 that of his old Democratic allies, whose views on the 
 bank, as on most other questions, he had so often openly 
 expressed himself as sharing. But though his mind os- 
 cillated like a pendulum, yet each time it swung farther 
 and farther over to the side of the Democracy, and it 
 began to look as if he would certainly in the end come 
 to a halt in the camp of the enemies of the Whigs; his 
 approach to this destination was merely hastened by 
 Clay's overbearing violence and injudicious taunts. 
 
 However, at first Tyler did not dare to come out 
 
 188 
 
THE PRESIDENT WITHOUT A PARTY 
 
 openly against any and all bank laws, but tried to search 
 round for some compromise measure; and as he could 
 not invent a compromise in fact, he came to the con- 
 clusion that one in words would do just as well. He 
 said that his conscience would not permit him to sign 
 a bill to establish a bank that was called a bank, but 
 that he was willing to sign a bill establishing such an 
 institution provided that it was called something else, 
 though it should possess all the properties of a bank. 
 Such a proposal opened a wide field for the endless quib- 
 bling in which his soul delighted. 
 
 The secretary of the treasury, in response to a call 
 from the Senate, furnished a plan for a bank, having 
 modelled it studiously so as to overcome the President's 
 scruples; and a select committee of the Senate at once 
 shaped a bill in accordance with the plans. Said Ben- 
 ton: "Even the title was made ridiculous to please the 
 President, though not so much so as he wished. He ob- 
 jected to the name of bank either in the title or the 
 body of the charter, and proposed to style it * Fiscal In- 
 stitute'; and afterward the * Fiscal Agent,' and finally 
 the 'Fiscal Corporation.' Such preposterous folly on 
 the President's part was more than the hot-blooded and 
 overbearing Kentuckian could stand; and, in spite of his 
 absorbing desire for the success of his measure, and of 
 the vital necessity for conciliating Tyler, Clay could not 
 bring himself to adopt such a ludicrous title, even 
 though he had seen that the charter provided that the 
 institution, whatever it might be styled in form, should 
 in fact have all the properties of a bank. After a while, 
 however, a compromise title was agreed on, but only a 
 shadow less imbecile than the original one proposed by 
 the President ; and it was agreed to call the measure the 
 "Fiscal Bank" bill. 
 
 189 
 
THOMAS HART BENTON 
 
 The President vetoed it, but stated that he was ready 
 to approve any similar bill that should be free from the 
 objections he named. Clay could not resist reading 
 Tyler a lecture on his misconduct, during the course of 
 a speech in the Senate; but the Whigs generally smoth- 
 ered their resentment, and set about preparing some- 
 thing which the President would sign, and this time 
 concluded that they would humor him to the top of his 
 bent, even by choosing a title as ridiculous as he wished; 
 so they styled their bill one to establish a "Fiscal Cor- 
 poration." Benton held the title up to well-deserved 
 derision, and showed that, though there had been quite 
 an elaborate effort to disguise the form of the measure, 
 and to make it purport to establish a bank that should 
 have the properties of a treasury, yet that in reality 
 it was simply a revival of the old scheme under another 
 name. The Whigs swallowed the sneers of their oppo- 
 nents as best they could, and passed their bill. 
 
 The President again interposed his veto. An intrigue 
 was going on among a few unimportant congressmen 
 and obscure office-holders to form a new party with 
 Tyler at its head; and the latter willingly entered into the 
 plan, his mind, which was not robust at the best, being 
 completely dazzled by his sudden elevation and his wild 
 hopes that he could continue to keep the place which 
 he had reached. He had given the Whigs reason to ex- 
 pect that he would sign the bill, and had taken none of 
 his Cabinet into his confidence. So, when his veto came 
 in, it raised a perfect whirlwind of wrath and bitter dis- 
 appointment. His Cabinet all resigned, except Web- 
 ster, who stayed to finish the treaty with Great Britain ; 
 and the Whigs formally read him out of the party. The 
 Democrats looked on with huge enjoyment, and patted 
 Tyler on the back, for they could see that he was bring- 
 
 190 
 
THE PRESIDENT WITHOUT A PARTY 
 
 ing their foes to ruin; but nevertheless they despised 
 him heartily, and abandoned him wholly when he had 
 served their turn. Left without any support among the 
 regulars of either side, and his own proposed third party 
 turning out a still-born abortion, he simply played out 
 his puny part until his term ended, and then dropped 
 noiselessly out of sight. It is only the position he filled, 
 and not in the least his ability, for either good or bad, 
 in filling it, that prevents his name from sinking into 
 merciful oblivion. 
 
 There was yet one more brief spasm over the bank, 
 however; the President sending in a plan for a "Fiscal 
 Agent," to be called a Board of Exchequer. Congress 
 contemptuously refused to pay any attention to the 
 proposition, Benton showing its utter unworthiness in 
 an excellent speech, one of the best that he made on 
 the whole financial question. 
 
 Largely owing to the cross purposes at which the 
 President and his party were working, the condition of 
 the Treasury became very bad. It sought to provide 
 for its immediate wants by the issue of Treasury notes, 
 differing from former notes of the kind in that they 
 were made reissuable. Benton at once, and very prop- 
 erly, attacked this proceeding. He had a check drawn 
 for a few days' compensation as senator, demanded pay- 
 ment in hard money, and when he was given Treasury 
 notes instead, made a most emphatic protest in the Sen- 
 ate, which was entirely effectual, the practically com- 
 pulsory tender of the paper money being forthwith 
 stopped. 
 
 It was at this time, also, that bills to subsidize steam- 
 ship lines were first passed, and that the enlarging and 
 abuse of the pension system began, which in our own 
 day threatens to become a really crying evil. Benton 
 
 191 
 
THOMAS HART BENTON 
 
 opposed both sets of measures; and in regard to the 
 pension matter showed that he would not let himself, 
 by any specious plea of exceptional suffering or need 
 for charity, be led into vicious special legislation, sure 
 in the end to bring about the breaking down of some 
 of the most important principles of government. 
 
 192 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 BOUNDARY TROUBLES WITH ENGLAND 
 
 Two important controversies with foreign powers be- 
 came prominent during Tyler's presidency; but he had 
 little to do with the settlement of either, beyond suc- 
 cessively placing in his Cabinet the two great statesmen 
 who dealt with them. Webster, while secretary of 
 state, brought certain of the negotiations with England 
 to a close; and later on, Calhoun, while holding the same 
 office, took up Webster's work and also grappled with — 
 indeed partly caused — the troubles on the Mexican bor- 
 der, and turned them to the advantage of the South and 
 slavery. 
 
 Our boundaries were still very ill defined, except 
 where they were formed by the Gulf and the Ocean, 
 the Great Lakes, and the river St. John. Even in the 
 Northeast, where huge stretches of unbroken forest- 
 land separated the inhabited portions of Canada from 
 those of New England, it was not yet decided how much 
 of this wilderness belonged to us and how much to the 
 Canadians ; and in the vast, unsettled regions of the far 
 West our claims came into direct conflict with those of 
 Mexico and of Great Britain. The ownership of these 
 little known and badly mapped regions could with great 
 difficulty be decided on grounds of absolute and abstract 
 right; the title of each contestant to the land was more 
 or less plausible, and at the same time more or less de- 
 fective. The matter was sure to be decided in favor of 
 the strongest; and, say what we will about the justice 
 and right of the various claims, the honest truth is, that 
 the comparative might of the different nations, and not 
 
 193 
 
THOMAS HART BENTON 
 
 the comparative righteousness of their several causes, 
 was the determining factor in the settlement. Mexico 
 lost her northern provinces by no law of right, but sim- 
 ply by the law of the longest sword — the same law that 
 gave India to England. In both instances the result 
 was greatly to the benefit of the conquered peoples and 
 of every one else; though there is this wide difference 
 between the two cases : that whereas the English rule in 
 India, while it may last for decades or even for centu- 
 ries, must eventually come to an end and leave little 
 trace of its existence; on the other hand our conquests 
 from Mexico determined for all time the blood, speech, 
 and law of the men who should fill the lands we won. 
 
 The questions between Great Britain and ourselves 
 were compromised by each side accepting about half 
 what it claimed, only because neither was willing to 
 push the other to extremities. Englishmen like Pal- 
 merston might hector and ruffle, and Americans like 
 Benton might swagger and bully; but when it came to 
 be a question of actual fighting each people recognized 
 the power of the other, and preferred to follow the more 
 cautious and peaceful, not to say timid, lead of such 
 statesmen as Webster and Lord Melbourne. Had we 
 been no stronger than the Sikhs, Oregon and Washing- 
 ton would at present be British possessions; and if Great 
 Britain had been as weak as Mexico, she would not now 
 hold a foot of territory on the Pacific coast. Either na- 
 tion might perhaps have refused to commit a gross and 
 entirely unprovoked and uncalled-for act of aggression; 
 but each, under altered conditions, would have readily 
 found excuses for showing much less regard for the 
 claims of the other than actually was shown. It would 
 be untrue to say that nations have not at times proved 
 themselves capable of acting with great disinterested- 
 
 194 
 
BOUNDARY TROUBLES 
 
 ness and generosity toward other peoples ; but such con- 
 duct is not very common at the best, and although it 
 often may be desirable, it certainly is not always so. If 
 the matter in dispute is of great importance, and if there 
 is a doubt as to which side is right, then the strongest 
 party to the controversy is pretty sure to give itself the 
 benefit of that doubt; and international morality will 
 have to take tremendous strides in advance before this 
 ceases to be the case. 
 
 It is difficult to exaggerate the importance of the 
 treaties and wars by means of which we finally gave 
 definite bounds to our territory beyond the Mississippi. 
 Contemporary political writers and students, of the 
 lesser sort, are always painfully deficient in the sense of 
 historic perspective; and to such the struggles for the 
 possession of the unknown and dimly outlined Western 
 wastes seemed of small consequence compared to similar 
 European contests for territorial aggrandizement. Yet, 
 in reality, when we look at the far-reaching nature of 
 the results, the questions as to what kingdom should 
 receive the fealty of Holstein or Lorraine, of Savoy or 
 the Dobrudscha, seem of absolutely trivial importance 
 compared to the infinitely more momentous ones as to 
 the future race settlement and national ownership of the 
 then lonely and unpeopled lands of Texas, California, 
 and Oregon. 
 
 Benton, greatly to the credit of his foresight, and 
 largely in consequence of his strong nationalist feeling, 
 thoroughly appreciated the importance of our geograph- 
 ical extensions. He was the great champion of the West 
 and of Western development, and a furious partisan of 
 every movement in the direction of the enlargement of 
 our Western boundaries. Many of his expressions, 
 when talking of the greatness of our country and of 
 
 195 
 
THOMAS HART BENTON 
 
 the magnitude of the interests which were being de- 
 cided, not only were grandiloquent in manner, but also 
 seem exaggerated and overwrought even as regards mat- 
 ter. But when we think of the interests for which he 
 contended, as they were to become, and not as they at 
 the moment were, the appearance of exaggeration is 
 lost, and the intense feeling of his speeches no longer 
 seems out of place or disproportionate to the importance 
 of the subject with which he dealt. Without clearly 
 formulating his opinions, even to himself, and while 
 sometimes prone to attribute to his country at the mo- 
 ment a greatness she was not to possess for two or three 
 generations to come, he, nevertheless, had engrained in 
 his very marrow and fibre the knowledge that inevi- 
 tably, and beyond all doubt, the coming years were to 
 be hers. He knew that, while other nations held the 
 past, and shared with his own the present, yet that to 
 her belonged the still formless and unshaped future. 
 More clearly than almost any other statesman he be- 
 held the grandeur of the nation loom up, vast and shad- 
 owy, through the advancing years. 
 
 He was keenly alive to the need of our having free 
 chance to spread toward the northwest; he very early 
 grasped the idea that in that direction we ought to have 
 room for continental development. In his earliest years, 
 to be sure, when the Mississippi seemed a river of the 
 remote Western border, when nobody, not even the 
 hardiest trapper, had penetrated the boundless and tree- 
 less plains that stretch to the foot-hills of the Rockies, 
 and when the boldest thinkers had not dared to suppose 
 that we could ever hold together as a people, when once 
 scattered over so wide a territorv, he had stated in a 
 public speech that he considered the mountains to be 
 our natural frontier line to the west, and the barrier be- 
 
 196 
 
BOUNDARY TROUBLES 
 
 yond which we ought not to pass, and had expressed 
 his trust that on the Pacific coast there would grow up 
 a kindred and friendly Republic. But very soon, as the 
 seemingly impossible became the actual, he himself 
 changed, and ever afterward held that we should have, 
 wherever possible, no boundaries but the two oceans. 
 
 Benton's violent and aggressive patriotism undoubt- 
 edly led him to assume positions toward foreign powers 
 that were very repugnant to the quiet, peaceable, and 
 order-loving portion of the community, especially when 
 he gave vent to the spirit of jealous antagonism which 
 he felt toward Great Britain, the power that held sway 
 over the wilderness bordering us on the north. Yet the 
 arrogant attitude he assumed was more than justified 
 by the destiny of the great Republic; and it would have 
 been well for all America if we had insisted even more 
 than we did upon the extension northward of our boun- 
 daries. Not onlv the Columbia but also the Red River 
 of the North — and the Saskatchewan and Frazer as well 
 — should lie wholly within our limits, less for our own 
 sake than for the sake of the men who dwell along their 
 banks. Columbia, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba would, 
 as States of the American Union, hold positions incom- 
 parably more important, grander, and more dignified 
 than they can ever hope to reach either as independent 
 communities or as provincial dependencies of a foreign 
 power that regards them with a kindly tolerance some- 
 what akin to contemptuous indifference. Of course no 
 one would wish to see these, or any other settled com- 
 munities, now added to our domain by force; we want 
 no unwilling citizens to enter our Union; the time to 
 have taken the lands was before settlers came into them. 
 European nations war for the possession of thickly set- 
 tled districts which, if conquered, will for centuries re- 
 
 197 
 
THOMAS HART BENTON 
 
 main alien and hostile to the conquerors; we, wiser in 
 our generation, have seized the waste solitudes that lay 
 near us, the limitless forests and never-ending plains, 
 and the valleys of the great, lonely rivers; and have 
 thrust our own sons into them to take possession; and 
 a score of years after each conquest we see the con- 
 quered land teeming with a people that is one with our- 
 selves. 
 
 Benton felt that all the unoccupied land to the north- 
 west was by right our heritage, and he was willing to 
 do battle for it if necessary. He was a perfect type of 
 Western American statesmanship in his way of looking 
 at our foreign relations; he was always unwilling to com- 
 promise, being of that happy temperament which is ab- 
 solutely certain that its claims are just and righteous in 
 their entirety, and that it would be wrong to accept 
 anything less than all that is demanded; he was willing 
 to bully if our rights, as he deemed them, were not 
 granted us; and he was perfectly ready to fight if the 
 bullying was unsuccessful. True, he did not consis- 
 tently carry through all his theories to their logical con- 
 sequences; but it may well be questioned whether, after 
 all, his original attitude toward Great Britain was not 
 wiser, looking to its probable remote results, than that 
 which was finally taken by the national government, 
 whose policy was on this point largely shaped by the 
 feeling among the richer and more educated classes of 
 the Northeast. These classes have always been more 
 cautious and timid than any others in the Union, espe- 
 cially in their way of looking at possible foreign wars, 
 and have never felt much of the spirit which made the 
 West stretch out impatiently for new lands. Fortu- 
 nately they have rarely been able to control our terri- 
 torial growth. 
 
 198 
 
BOUNDARY TROUBLES 
 
 No foot of soil to which we had any title in the 
 Northwest should have been given up; we were the 
 people who could use it best, and we ought to have 
 taken it all. The prize was well worth winning, and 
 would warrant a good deal of risk being run. We had 
 even then grown to be so strong that we were almost 
 sure eventually to win in any American contest for con- 
 tinental supremacy. We were near by, our foes far 
 away — for the contest over the Columbia would have 
 been settled in Canada. We should have had hard 
 fighting, to be sure, but sooner or later the result would 
 have been in our favor. There were no better soldiers 
 in the world than the men of Balaclava and Inkerman, 
 but the victors of Buena Vista and Chapultepec were 
 as good. Scott and Taylor were not great generals, but 
 they were, at least, the equals of Lord Raglan; and we 
 did not have in our service any such examples of ab- 
 normal military inaptitude as Lords Lucan and Cardi- 
 gan and their kind. 
 
 It was of course to be expected that men like Benton 
 would bitterly oppose the famous Ashburton treaty, 
 which was Webster's crowning work while secretary of 
 state, and the only conspicuous success of Tyler's ad- 
 ministration. The Ashburton treaty was essentially a 
 compromise between the extreme claims of the two con- 
 testants, as was natural where the claims were based 
 on very unsubstantial grounds and the contestants were 
 of somewhat the same strength. It was most beneficial 
 in its immediate effects; and that it was a perfectly dig- 
 nified and proper treaty for America to make is best 
 proved by the virulent hostility with which Palmerston 
 and his followers assailed it as a "surrender" on the 
 part of England, while Englishmen of the same stamp 
 are to this day never tired of lamenting the fact that 
 
 199 
 
THOMAS HART BENTON 
 
 they have allowed our Western boundaries to be pushed 
 so far to the north. But there appears to be much ex- 
 cuse for Benton's attitude, when we look at the treaty 
 as one in a chain of incidents, and with regard to its 
 future results. Our territorial quarrels with Great Brit- 
 ain were not like those between most other powers. It 
 was for the interest of the whole western hemisphere 
 that no European nation should have extensive posses- 
 sions between the Atlantic and the Pacific; and by right 
 we should have given ourselves the benefit of every 
 doubt in all territorial questions, and have shown our- 
 selves ready to make prompt appeal to the sword when- 
 ever it became necessary as a last resort. 
 
 Still, as regards the Ashburton treaty itself, it must 
 be admitted that much of Benton's opposition was 
 merely factious and partisan, on account of its being a 
 Whig measure; and his speeches on the subject contain 
 a number of arguments that are not very creditable to 
 him. 
 
 Some of his remarks referred to a matter which had 
 been already a cause of great excitement during Van 
 Buren's administration, and on which he had spoken 
 more than once. This was the destruction of the 
 steamer Caroline by the British during the abortive 
 Canadian insurrection of 1837. Much sympathy had 
 been felt for the rebels by the Americans along the bor- 
 der, and some of them had employed the Caroline in 
 conveying stores to the insurgents; and in revenge a 
 party of British troops surprised and destroyed her one 
 night while she was lying in an American port. This 
 was a gross and flagrant violation of our rights, and was 
 promptly resented by Van Buren, who had done what 
 he could to maintain order along the border, and had 
 been successful in his efforts. Benton had supported 
 
 200 
 
BOUNDARY TROUBLES 
 
 the President in preventing a breach of neutrality on 
 our part, and was fiercely indignant when the breach 
 was committed by the other side. Reparation was de- 
 manded forthwith. The British Government at first 
 made evasive replies. After a while a very foolish per- 
 sonage named McLeod, a British subject, who boasted 
 that he had taken part in the affair, ventured into New 
 York and was promptly imprisoned by the State au- 
 thorities. His boastings, fortunately for him, proved 
 to be totally unfounded, and he was acquitted by the 
 jury before whom he was taken, after a detention of 
 several months in prison. But meanwhile the British 
 Government demanded his release — adopting a very 
 different tone with Tyler and the Whigs from that which 
 they had been using toward Van Buren, who still could 
 conjure with Jackson's terrible name. The United 
 States agreed to release McLeod, but New York re- 
 fused to deliver him up; and before the question was 
 decided he was acquitted, as said above. It was clearly 
 wrong for a State to interfere in a disagreement between 
 the nation and a foreign power; and on the other hand 
 the federal authorities did not show as much firmness 
 in their dealings with England as they should have 
 shown. Benton, true to certain of his States'-rights 
 theories and in pursuance of his policy of antagonism 
 to Great Britain, warmly supported the attitude of New 
 York, alleging that the United States had no right to 
 interfere with her disposal of McLeod; and asserting 
 that while if the citizens of one country committed an 
 outrage upon another it was necessary to apply to the 
 sovereign for redress, yet that if the wrong-doers came 
 into the country which had been aggrieved they might 
 be seized and punished; and he exultingly referred to 
 Jackson's conduct at the time of the first Seminole War, 
 
 201 
 
THOMAS HART BENTON 
 
 when he hung offhand two British subjects whom he 
 accused of inciting the Indians against us, Great Brit- 
 ain not making any protest. The Caroline matter was 
 finally settled in the Ashburton treaty, the British mak- 
 ing a formal but very guarded apology for her destruc- 
 tion — an apology which did not satisfy Benton in the 
 least. 
 
 It is little to Benton's credit, however, that, while 
 thus courting foreign wars, he yet opposed the efforts 
 of the Whigs to give us a better navy. Our navy was 
 then good of its kind, but altogether too small. Ben- 
 ton's opposition to its increase seems to have proceeded 
 partly from mere bitter partisanship, partly from sheer 
 ignorance, and partly from the doctrinaire dread of any 
 kind of standing military or naval force, which he had 
 inherited, with a good many similar ideas, from the Jef- 
 fersonians. 
 
 He attacked the whole treaty, article by article, when 
 it came up for ratification in the Senate, making an ex- 
 tremely lengthy and elaborate speech, or rather set of 
 speeches, against it. Much of his objection, especially 
 to the part compromising the territorial claims of the 
 two governments, was well founded; but much was also 
 factious and groundless. The most important point of 
 all that was in controversy, the ownership of Oregon, 
 was left unsettled; but, as will be shown further on, this 
 was wise. He made this omission a base or pretext for 
 the charge that the treaty was gotten up in the interests 
 of the East — although with frank lack of logic he also 
 opposed it because it sacrificed the interests of Maine — 
 and that it was detrimental to the South and West; and 
 he did his best to excite sectional feeling against it. He 
 also protested against the omission of all reference to 
 the impressment of American sailors by British vessels ; 
 
 202 
 
BOUNDARY TROUBLES 
 
 and this was a valid ground of opposition — although 
 Webster had really settled the matter by writing a for- 
 mal note to the British Government, in which he prac- 
 tically gave official notice that any attempt to revive 
 the practice would be repelled by force of arms. 
 
 Benton occupied a much less tenable position when he 
 came to the question of slavery, and inveighed against 
 the treaty because it did not provide for the return of 
 fugitive slaves, or of slaves taken from American coast- 
 ing vessels when the latter happened to be obliged to 
 put into West Indian ports, and because it did contain 
 a provision that we ourselves should keep in commis- 
 sion a squadron on the coast of Africa to co-operate with 
 the British in the suppression of the slave-trade. Ben- 
 ton's object in attacking the treaty on this point was 
 to excite the South to a degree that would make the 
 senators from that section refuse to join in ratifying it; 
 but the attempt was a flat failure. It is hardly to be 
 supposed that he himself was as indignant over this 
 question as he pretended to be. He must have realized 
 that, so long as we had among ourselves an institution 
 so wholly barbarous and out of date as slavery, just so 
 long we should have to expect foreign powers to treat 
 us rather cavalierly on that one point. Whatever we 
 might say among ourselves as to the rights of property 
 or the necessity of preserving the Union by refraining 
 from the disturbance of slavery, it was certain that for- 
 eign nations would place the manhood and liberty of 
 the slave above the vested interest of the master — all 
 the more readily because they were jealous of the Union 
 and anxious to see it break up, and were naturally de- 
 lighted to take the side of abstract justice and humanity, 
 when to do so was at the expense of outsiders and re- 
 dounded to their own credit, without causing them the 
 
 203 
 
THOMAS HART BENTON 
 
 least pecuniary loss or personal inconvenience. The at- 
 titude of slaveholders toward freedom in the abstract 
 was grotesque in its lack of logic; but the attitude of 
 many other classes of men, both abroad and at home, 
 toward it was equally full of a grimly unconscious 
 humor. The Southern planters, who loudly sympa- 
 thized with Kossuth and the Hungarians, were entirely 
 unconscious that their tyranny over their own black 
 bondsmen made their attacks upon Austria's despotism 
 absurd; and Germans, who were shocked at our holding 
 the blacks in slavery, could not think of freedom in 
 their own country without a shudder. On one night 
 the Democrats of the Northern States would hold a 
 mass-meeting to further the cause of Irish freedom, on 
 the next night the same men would break up another 
 meeting held to help along the freeing of the negroes; 
 while the English aristocracy held up its hands in horror 
 at American slavery and set its face like a flint against 
 all efforts to do Ireland tardy and incomplete justice. 
 
 Again, in his opposition to the extradition clause of 
 the treaty, Benton was certainly wrong. Nothing is 
 clearer than that nations ought to combine to prevent 
 criminals from escaping punishment merely by fleeing 
 over an imaginary line; the crime is against all society, 
 and society should unite to punish it. Especially is 
 there need of the most stringent extradition laws be- 
 tween countries whose people have the same speech and 
 legal system, as with the United States and Great Brit- 
 ain. Indeed, it is a pity that our extradition laws are 
 not more stringent. But Benton saw, or affected to see, 
 in the extradition clause, a menace to political refugees, 
 and based his opposition to it mainly on this ground. 
 He also quoted on his side the inevitable Jefferson; for 
 Jefferson, or rather the highly idealized conception of 
 
 204 
 
BOUNDARY TROUBLES 
 
 what Jefferson had been, shared with the "demos krateo 
 principle" the honor of being one of the twin fetiches to 
 which Benton, in common with most of his fellow Demo- 
 crats, especially delighted to bow down. 
 
 But when he came to the parts of the treaty that de- 
 fined our northeastern boundary and so much of our 
 northwestern boundary as lay near the Great Lakes, 
 Benton occupied far more defensible ground; and the 
 parts of his speech referring to these questions were very 
 strong indeed. He attempted to show that in the mat- 
 ter of the Maine frontier we had surrendered very much 
 more than there was any need of our doing, and that 
 the British claim was unfounded; and there seems now 
 to be good reason for thinking him right, although it 
 must be admitted that in agreeing to the original line 
 in earlier treaties the British had acted entirely under 
 a misapprehension as to where it would go. Benton 
 was also able to make a good point against Webster for 
 finally agreeing to surrender so much of Maine's claim 
 by showing the opposition the latter had made, while 
 in the Senate, to a similar but less objectionable clause 
 in a treaty which Jackson's administration had then 
 been trying to get through. Again Webster had, in de- 
 fending the surrender of certain of our claims along the 
 boundary west of Lake Superior, stated that the coun- 
 try was not very valuable, as it was useless for agricul- 
 tural purposes; and Benton had taken him up sharply 
 on this point, saying that we wanted the land anyhow, 
 whether it produced corn and potatoes or only furs and 
 lumber. The amounts of territory as to which our 
 claims were compromised were not very large compared 
 to the extent of the Pacific coast lands which were still 
 left in dispute; and it was perhaps well that the treaty 
 was ratified; but certainly there is much to be said on 
 
 205 
 
THOMAS HART BENTON 
 
 Benton's side so far as his opposition to the proposed 
 frontier was concerned. 
 
 However, he was only able to rally eight other sena- 
 tors to his support, and the treaty went through the 
 Senate triumphantly. It encountered an even more 
 bitter opposition in Parliament, where Palmerston 
 headed a series of furious attacks upon it, for reasons 
 the precise opposite of those which Benton alleged, 
 arguing that England received much less, instead of 
 much more, than her due, and thereby showing Web- 
 ster's position in a very much better light than that in 
 which it would otherwise have appeared. Eventually 
 the British Government ratified the treaty. 
 
 The Ashburton treaty did not touch on the Oregon 
 matter at all ; nor was this dealt with by Webster while 
 he was secretary of state. But it came before the Sen- 
 ate at that time, and later on Calhoun took it up, when 
 filling Webster's place in the Cabinet, although a final 
 decision was not reached until during Polk's presidency. 
 Webster did not appreciate the importance of Oregon 
 in the least, and moreover came from a section of the 
 country that was not inclined to insist on territorial 
 expansion at the hazard of a war, in which the mer- 
 chants of the seaboard would be the chief sufferers. 
 Calhoun, it is true, came from a peculiarly militant and 
 bellicose State, but on the other hand from a section 
 that was not very anxious to see the free North acquire 
 new territory. So it happened that neither of Tyler's 
 two great secretaries felt called upon to insist too vehe- 
 mently upon going to extremes in defense of our rights, 
 or supposed rights, along the Pacific coast; and though 
 in the end the balance was struck pretty evenly between 
 our claims and those of our neighbor, yet it is to be re- 
 gretted that we did not stand out stiffly for the whole 
 
 206 
 
BOUNDARY TROUBLES 
 
 of our demand. Our title was certainly not perfect, but 
 it was to the full as good as, or better than, Great Brit- 
 ain's; and it would have been better in the end had we 
 insisted upon the whole territory being given to us, no 
 matter what price we had to pay. 
 
 The politico-social line of division between the East 
 and the West had been gradually growing fainter as that 
 between the North and South grew deeper; but on the 
 Oregon question it again became prominent. South- 
 eastern Democrats, like the Carolinian McDuffie, spoke 
 as slightingly of the value of Oregon, and were as little 
 inclined to risk a war for its possession, as the most 
 peace-loving Whigs of New England; while the intense 
 Western feeling against giving up any of our rights on 
 the Pacific coast was best expressed by the two senators 
 from the slave State of Missouri. Benton was not re- 
 strained in his desire to add to the might of the Union 
 by any fear of the possible future effect upon the polit- 
 ical power of the slave States. Although a slaveholder 
 and the representative of slaveholders, he was fully alive 
 to the evils of slavery, though as yet not seeing clearly 
 how all-important a question it had become. The pres- 
 ervation and extension of the Union and obedience to 
 the spirit of Democracy were the chief articles of his 
 political creed, and to these he always subordinated all 
 others. When, in speaking of slavery, he made use, as 
 he sometimes did, of expressions that were not far re- 
 moved from those of men really devoted to the slave 
 interests, it was almost always because he had some ul- 
 terior object in view, or for factional ends; for unfortu- 
 nately his standard of political propriety was not suf- 
 ficiently high to prevent his trying to make use of any 
 weapon, good or bad, with which to overturn his polit- 
 ical foes. In protesting against the Ashburton treaty, 
 
 207 
 
THOMAS HART BENTON 
 
 he outdid even such slavery champions as Calhoun in 
 the extravagance of his ideas as to what we should de- 
 mand of foreign powers in reference to their treatment 
 of our "peculiar institution"; but he seems to have done 
 this merely because thereby he got an additional handle 
 of attack against the Whig measures. The same thing 
 was true earlier of his fulmination against Clay's 
 proposed Panama Congress; and even before that, in 
 attacking Adams for his supposed part in the treaty 
 whereby we established the line of our Spanish fron- 
 tier, he dragged slavery into the question, not, appar- 
 ently, because he really particularly wished to see our 
 slave territory extended, but because he thought that 
 he might use the slavery cry to excite in one other sec- 
 tion of the country a feeling as strong as that which the 
 West already felt in regard to territorial expansion gen- 
 erally. Indeed, his whole conduct throughout the Ore- 
 gon controversy, especially when taken in connection 
 with the fact that he stood out for Maine's frontier 
 rights more stoutly than the Maine representatives 
 themselves, shows how free from sectional bias was his 
 way of looking at our geographical growth. 
 
 The territory along the Pacific coast lying between 
 California on the south and Alaska on the north — 
 "Oregon," as it was comprehensively called — had been 
 a source of dispute for some time between the United 
 States and Great Britain. After some negotiations both 
 had agreed with Russia to recognize the line of 54° 40' 
 as the southern boundary of the latter's possessions; 
 and Mexico's undisputed possession of California gave 
 an equally well-marked southern limit, at the forty- 
 second parallel. All between was in dispute. The Brit- 
 ish had trading-posts at the mouth of the Columbia, 
 which they emphatically asserted to be theirs; we, on 
 
 208 
 
BOUNDARY TROUBLES 
 
 the other hand, claimed an absolutely clear title up to 
 the forty-ninth parallel, a couple of hundred miles north 
 of the mouth of the Columbia, and asserted that for all 
 the balance of the territory up to the Russian posses- 
 sions our title was at any rate better than that of the 
 British. In 1818 a treaty had been made providing for 
 the joint occupation of the territory by the two powers, 
 as neither was willing to give up its claim to the whole, 
 or at the time at all understood the value of the posses- 
 sion, then entirely unpeopled. This treaty of joint occu- 
 pancy had remained in force ever since. Under it the 
 British had built great trading stations, and used the 
 whole country in the interests of certain fur companies. 
 The Americans, in spite of some vain efforts, were un- 
 able to compete with them in this line; but, what was 
 infinitely more important, had begun, even prior to 
 1840, to establish actual settlers along the banks of the 
 rivers, some missionaries being the first to come in. As 
 long, however, as the territory remained sparsely set- 
 tled, and the communication with it chiefly by sea, the 
 hold of Great Britain gave promise of being the stronger. 
 But the aspect of affairs was totally changed when in 
 1842 a huge caravan of over a thousand Americans made 
 the journey overland from the frontiers of Missouri, tak- 
 ing with them their wives and their children, their flocks 
 and herds, carrying their long rifles on their shoulders, 
 and their axes and spades in the great canvas-topped 
 wagons. The next year, two thousand more settlers of 
 the same sort in their turn crossed the vast plains, 
 wound their way among the Rocky Mountains through 
 the pass explored by Fremont, Benton's son-in-law, and 
 after suffering every kind of hardship and danger, and 
 warding off the attacks of hostile Indians, descended the 
 western slope of the great watershed to join their fellows 
 
 209 
 
THOMAS HART BENTON 
 
 by the banks of the Columbia. When American settlers 
 were once in actual possession of the disputed territory, 
 it became evident that the period of Great Britain's un- 
 disputed sway was over. 
 
 The government of the United States, meanwhile, 
 was so far from helping these settlers that it on the con- 
 trary rather threw obstacles in their way. As usual 
 with us, the individual activity of the citizens them- 
 selves, who all acted independently and with that pecu- 
 liar self-reliance that is the chief American character- 
 istic, outstripped the activity of their representatives, 
 who were obliged all to act together, and who were 
 therefore held back by each other — our Constitution, 
 while giving free scope for individual freedom, wisely 
 providing such checks as to make our governmental 
 system eminently conservative in its workings. Tyler's 
 administration did not wish to embroil itself with Eng- 
 land; so it refused any aid to the settlers, and declined 
 to give them grants of land, as under the joint occu- 
 pancy treaty that would have given England offense 
 and cause for complaint. But Benton and the other 
 Westerners were perfectly willing to offend England, if 
 by so doing they could help America to obtain Oregon, 
 and were too rash and headstrong to count the cost of 
 their actions. Accordingly, a bill was introduced pro- 
 viding for the settlement of Oregon, and giving each 
 settler six hundred and forty acres, and additional land 
 if he had a family; so that every inducement was held 
 out to the emigrants, the West wanting to protect and 
 encourage them by all the means in its power. The laws 
 and jurisdiction of the Territory of Iowa were to be 
 extended to all the settlers on the Pacific coast, who 
 hitherto had governed themselves merely by a system 
 of mutual agreements. 
 
 210 
 
BOUNDARY TROUBLES 
 
 The bill was, of course, strongly opposed, especially 
 on account of the clause giving land to the settlers. It 
 passed the Senate by a close vote, but failed in the 
 House. Naturally Benton was one of its chief support- 
 ers, and spoke at length in its favor. He seized the 
 kernel of the matter when, in advocating the granting 
 of land, he spoke of immigration as "the only thing 
 which can save the country from the British, acting 
 through their powerful agent, the Hudson's Bay Com- 
 pany." He then blew a lusty note of defiance to Great 
 Britain herself: 
 
 "I think she will take offense, do what we may in 
 relation to this territory. She wants it herself, and 
 means to quarrel for it, if she does not fight for it. . . . 
 I grant that she will take offense, but that is not the 
 question with me. Has she a right to take offense? 
 That is my question ! And this being decided in the 
 negative, I neither fear nor calculate consequences. . . . 
 Courage will keep her off, fear will bring her upon us. 
 The assertion of our rights will command her respect; 
 the fear to assert them will bring us her contempt. . . . 
 Neither nations nor individuals ever escaped danger by 
 fearing it. They must face it and defy it. An abandon- 
 ment of a right for fear of bringing on an attack, instead 
 of keeping it off, will inevitably bring on the outrage 
 that is dreaded." 
 
 He was right enough in his disposition to resent the 
 hectoring spirit which, at that time, characterized Great 
 Britain's foreign policy; but he was all wrong in con- 
 demning delay, and stating that if things were left as 
 they were time would work against us, and not for us. 
 
 In this respect Calhoun, who opposed the bill, was 
 much wiser. He advocated a policy of "masterly in- 
 activity," foreseeing that time was everything to us, in- 
 
 211 
 
THOMAS HART BENTON 
 
 asinuch as the land was sure in the end to belong to that 
 nation whose people had settled in it, and we alone were 
 able to furnish a constantly increasing stream of immi- 
 grants. Later on, however, Calhoun abandoned this 
 policy, probably mainly influenced by fear of the ex- 
 tension of free territory, and consented to a compromise 
 with Great Britain. The true course to have pursued 
 would have been to have combined the ideas of both 
 Benton and Calhoun, and to have gone farther than 
 either; that is, we should have allowed the question to 
 remain unsettled as long as was possible, because every 
 year saw an increasing American population in the 
 coveted lands, and rendered the ultimate decision surer 
 to be for us. When it was impossible to postpone the 
 question longer, we should have insisted upon its being 
 settled entirely in our favor, no matter at what cost. 
 The unsuccessful attempts, made by Benton and his 
 supporters, to persuade the Senate to pass a resolution, 
 requiring that notice of the termination of the joint oc- 
 cupancy treaty should forthwith be given, were cer- 
 tainly ill advised. 
 
 However, even Benton was not willing to go to the 
 length to which certain Western men went, who in- 
 sisted upon all or nothing. He had become alarmed 
 and angry over the intrigue for the admission of Texas 
 and the proposed forcible taking away of Mexican terri- 
 tory. The northwestern Democrats wanted all Texas 
 and all Oregon; the southeastern ones wished all the 
 former and part of the latter. Benton then concluded 
 that it would be best to take part of each; for, although 
 no friend to compromises, yet he was unwilling to jeop- 
 ardize the safety of the Union as it was by seeking to 
 make it still larger. Accordingly, he sympathized with 
 the effort made by Calhoun while secretary of state to 
 
 212 
 
BOUNDARY TROUBLES 
 
 get the British to accept the line of 49° as the frontier; 
 but the British Government then rejected this proposi- 
 tion. In 1844 the Democrats made their campaign 
 upon the issue of "fifty-four forty or fight"; and Polk, 
 when elected, felt obliged to insist upon this campaign 
 boundary. To this, however, Great Britain naturally 
 would not consent; it was, indeed, idle to expect her to 
 do so, unless things should be kept as they were until a 
 fairly large American population had grown up along 
 the Pacific coast, and had thus put her in a position 
 where she could hardly do anything else. Polk's ad- 
 ministration was neither capable nor warlike, however 
 well disposed to bluster; and the secretary of state, the 
 timid, shifty, and selfish politician, Buchanan, naturally 
 fond of facing both ways, was the last man to wish to 
 force a quarrel on a high-spirited and determined antag- 
 onist like England. Accordingly, he made up his mind 
 to back down and try for the line of 49°, as proposed 
 by Calhoun, when in Tyler's Cabinet; and the English, 
 for all their affected indifference, had been so much im- 
 pressed by the warlike demonstrations in the United 
 States, that they in turn were delighted, singing in a 
 much lower key than before the "fifty-four forty" cry 
 had been raised; accordingly they withdrew their for- 
 mer pretensions to the Columbia River and accepted 
 the offered compromise. Now, however, came the ques- 
 tion of getting the treaty through the Senate; and 
 Buchanan sounded Benton, to see if he would under- 
 take this task. 
 
 Benton, worried over the Texas matter, was willing 
 to recede somewhat from the very high ground he had 
 taken— although, of course, he insisted that he had been 
 perfectly consistent throughout, and that the forty- 
 ninth parallel was the line he had all along been striving 
 
 213 
 
THOMAS HART BENTON 
 
 for. Under his lead the proposal for a treaty on the 
 basis indicated was carried through the Senate, and the 
 line in consequence ultimately became our frontier, 
 in spite of the frantic opposition of the northwestern 
 Democrats, the latter hurling every sort of charge of 
 bad faith and treachery at their Southern associates, 
 who had joined with the Whigs in defeating them. 
 Benton's speech in support of the proposal was pitched 
 much lower than had been his previous ones; and, a 
 little forgetful of some of his own remarks, he was espe- 
 cially severe upon those members who denounced Eng- 
 land, and held up a picture of her real or supposed de- 
 signs to excite and frighten the people into needless op- 
 position to her. 
 
 In its immediate effects the adoption of the forty- 
 ninth parallel as the dividing line between the two coun- 
 tries was excellent, and entailed no loss of dignity on 
 either. Yet, as there was no particular reason why we 
 should show any generosity in our diplomatic dealings 
 with England, it may well be questioned whether it 
 would not have been better to have left things as they 
 were until we could have taken all. Wars are, of course, 
 as a rule to be avoided; but they are far better than 
 certain kinds of peace. Every war in which we have 
 been engaged, except the one with Mexico, has been 
 justifiable in its origin; and each one, without any ex- 
 ception whatever, has left us better off, taking both 
 moral and material considerations into account, than 
 we should have been if we had not waged it. 
 
 214 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 THE ABOLITIONISTS DANCE TO THE SLAVE 
 BARONS' PIPING 
 
 In 1844 the Whig candidate for the presidency, Henry 
 Clay, was defeated by a Mr. Polk, the nominee of the 
 Democracy. The majorities in several of the States 
 were very small ; this was the case, for example, in New 
 York, the change in whose electoral vote would have 
 also changed the entire result. 
 
 Up to 1860 there were very few political contests in 
 which the dividing lines between right and wrong so 
 nearly coincided with those drawn between the two op- 
 posing parties as in that of 1844. The Democrats 
 favored the annexation of Texas, and the addition of 
 new slave territory to the Union; the Whigs did not. 
 Almost every good element in the country stood behind 
 Clay; the vast majority of intelligent, high-minded, up- 
 right men supported him. Polk was backed by rabid 
 Southern fire-eaters and slavery extensionists, who had 
 deified negro bondage and exalted it beyond the Union, 
 the Constitution, and everything else; by the almost 
 solid foreign vote, still unfit for the duties of American 
 citizenship; by the vicious and criminal classes in all 
 the great cities of the North and in New Orleans ; by the 
 corrupt politicians, who found ignorance and viciousness 
 tools ready forged to their hands, wherewith to perpe- 
 trate the gigantic frauds without which the election 
 would have been lost; and, lastly, he was also backed 
 indirectly but most powerfully by the political Aboli- 
 tionists. 
 
 215 
 
THOMAS HART BENTON 
 
 These Abolitionists had formed themselves into the 
 Liberty party, and ran Birney for President; and though 
 they polled but little over sixty thousand votes, yet as 
 these were drawn almost entirely from the ranks of 
 Clay's supporters, they were primarily responsible for 
 his defeat; for the defections were sufficiently large to 
 turn the scale in certain pivotal and closely contested 
 States, notably New York. Their action in this case 
 was wholly evil, alike in its immediate and its remote 
 results; they simply played into the hands of the ex- 
 treme slavery men like Calhoun, and became, for the 
 time being, the willing accomplices of the latter. Yet 
 they would have accomplished nothing had it not been 
 for the frauds and outrages perpetrated by the gangs 
 of native and foreign-born ruffians in the great cities, 
 under the leadership of such brutal rowdies as Isaiah 
 Rynders. 
 
 These three men, Calhoun, Birney, and Isaiah Ryn- 
 ders, may be taken as types of the classes that were 
 chiefly instrumental in the election of Polk, and that 
 must, therefore, bear the responsibility for all the evils 
 attendant thereon, including among them the bloody 
 and unrighteous war with Mexico. With the purpose 
 of advancing the cause of abstract right, but with the 
 result of sacrificing all that was best, most honest, and 
 most high-principled in national politics, the Abolition- 
 ists joined hands with Northern roughs and Southern 
 slavocrats to elect the man who was, excepting Tyler, 
 the very smallest of the line of small Presidents who 
 came in between Jackson and Lincoln. 
 
 Owing to a variety of causes, the Abolitionists have 
 received an immense amount of hysterical praise, which 
 they do not deserve, and have been credited with deeds 
 done by other men, whom they in reality hampered and 
 
 216 
 
ABOLITIONISTS AND SLAVE BARONS 
 
 opposed rather than aided. After 1840 the professed 
 Abolitionists formed but a small and comparatively un- 
 important portion of the forces that were working tow- 
 ard the restriction and ultimate destruction of slavery; 
 and much of what they did was positively harmful to 
 the cause for which they were fighting. Those of their 
 number who considered the Constitution as a league 
 with death and hell, and who therefore advocated a 
 dissolution of the Union, acted as rationally as would 
 antipolygamists nowadays if, to show their disapproval 
 of Mormonism, they should advocate that Utah should 
 be allowed to form a separate nation. The only hope 
 of ultimately suppressing slavery lay in the preserva- 
 tion of the Union, and every Abolitionist who argued 
 or signed a petition for its dissolution was doing as much 
 to perpetuate the evil he complained of as if he had been 
 a slaveholder. The Liberty party, in running Birney, 
 simply committed a political crime, evil in almost all 
 its consequences; they in no sense paved the way for 
 the Republican party, or helped forward the antislavery 
 cause, or hurt the existing organizations. Their effect 
 on the Democracy was nil; and all they were able to 
 accomplish with the Whigs was to make them put for- 
 ward for the ensuing campaign a slaveholder from Lou- 
 isiana, with whom they were successful. Such were 
 the remote results of their conduct; the immediate evils 
 they produced have already been alluded to. They 
 bore considerable resemblance— except that, after all, 
 they really did have a principle to contend for— to the 
 political prohibitionists of the present day, who go into 
 the third party organizations, and are, not even except- 
 ing the saloon-keepers themselves, the most efficient al- 
 lies on whom intemperance and the liquor traffic can 
 count. 
 
 217 
 
THOMAS HART BENTON 
 
 Antislavery men like Giddings, who supported Clay, 
 were doing a thousandfold more effective work for the 
 cause they had at heart than all the voters who sup- 
 ported Birney; or, to speak more accurately, they were 
 doing all they could to advance the cause, and the others 
 were doing all they could to hold it back. Lincoln in 
 1860 occupied more nearly the ground held by Clay 
 than that held by Birney; and the men who supported 
 the latter in 1844 were the prototypes of those who 
 wished to oppose Lincoln in 1860, and only worked less 
 hard because they had less chance. The ultra-Aboli- 
 tionists discarded expediency, and claimed to act for 
 abstract right, on principle, no matter what the results 
 might be; in consequence they accomplished very little, 
 and that as much for harm as for good, until they ate 
 their words, went counter to their previous course, 
 thereby acknowledging it to be bad, and supported in 
 the Republican party the men and principles they had 
 so fiercely condemned. The Liberty party was not in 
 any sense the precursor of the Republican party, which 
 was based as much on expediency as on abstract right, 
 and was therefore able to accomplish good instead of 
 harm. To say that the extreme Abolitionists triumphed 
 in Republican success and were causes of it, is as absurd 
 as it would be to call prohibitionists successful if, after 
 countless futile efforts totally to prohibit the liquor 
 traffic, and after savage denunciation of those who try 
 to regulate it, they should then turn round and form a 
 comparatively insignificant portion of a victorious high- 
 license party. 
 
 Many people in speaking of the Abolitionists appar- 
 ently forget that the national government, even under 
 Republican rule, would never have meddled with slav- 
 ery in the various States unless as a war measure, 
 
 218 
 
ABOLITIONISTS AND SLAVE BARONS 
 
 made necessary by the rebellion into which the South 
 was led by a variety of causes, of which slavery was 
 chief, but among which there were others that were also 
 prominent; such as the separatist spirit of certain of the 
 communities and the unscrupulous, treacherous ambi- 
 tion of such men as Davis, Floyd, and the rest. The 
 Abolitionists' political organizations, such as the Lib- 
 erty party, generally produced very little effect either 
 way, and were scarcely thought of during the contests 
 waged for freedom in Congress. The men who took a 
 great and effective part in the fight against slavery were 
 the men who remained within their respective parties; 
 like the Democrats Benton and Wilmot, or the Whigs 
 Seward and Stevens. When a new party with more 
 clearly defined principles was formed, they, for the most 
 part, went into it; but, like all other men who have ever 
 had a really great influence, whether for good or bad, 
 on American politics, they did not act independently of 
 parties, but on the contrary kept within party lines — 
 although, of course, none of them were mere blind and 
 unreasoning partisans. 
 
 The plea that slavery was a question of principle, on 
 which no compromise could be accepted, might have 
 been made and could still be made on twenty other 
 points — woman suffrage, for instance. Of course, to 
 give women their just rights does not by any means 
 imply that they should necessarily be allowed to vote, 
 any more than the bestowal of the rights of citizenship 
 upon blacks and aliens must of necessity carry with it 
 the same privilege. But there were until lately, and in 
 some States there are now, laws on the statute-book in 
 reference to women that are in principle as unjust, and 
 that are quite as much the remnants of archaic barbar- 
 ism as was the old slave code; and though it is true that 
 
 219 
 
THOMAS HART BENTON 
 
 they do not work anything like the evil of the latter, they 
 yet certainly work evil enough. The same laws that in 
 one Southern State gave a master a right to whip a 
 slave also allowed him to whip his wife, provided he 
 used a stick no thicker than his little finger; the legal 
 permission to do the latter was even more outrageous 
 than that to do the former, yet no one considered it a 
 ground for wishing a dissolution of the Union or for de- 
 claring against the existing parties. The folly of voting 
 the Liberty ticket in 1844 differed in degree, but not at 
 all in kind, from the folly of voting the Woman Suffrage 
 ticket in 1884. 
 
 The intrigue for the annexation of Texas, and for 
 thereby extending the slave territory of the Union, had 
 taken shape toward the close of Tyler's term of office, 
 while Calhoun was secretary of state. Benton, as an 
 aggressive Western man, desirous of seeing our terri- 
 torial possessions extended in any direction, north or 
 south, always hoped that in the end Texas might be ad- 
 mitted into the Union ; but he disliked seeing any prema- 
 ture steps taken, and was no party to the scheme of forc- 
 ing an immediate annexation in the interests of slavery. 
 Such immediate annexation was certain, among other 
 things, to bring us into grave difficulties not only with 
 Mexico, but also with England, which was strongly in- 
 clined to take much interest of a practical sort in the 
 fate of Texas, and would, of course, have done all it 
 could to bring about the abolition of slavery in that 
 State. The Southerners, desirous of increasing the 
 slave domain, and always in a state of fierce alarm over 
 the proximity of any free State that might excite a ser- 
 vile insurrection, were impatient to add the Lone Star 
 Republic of the Rio Grande to the number of their 
 States; the southwesterners fell in with them, influ- 
 
 220 
 
ABOLITIONISTS AND SLAVE BARONS 
 
 enced, though less strongly, by the same motives, and 
 also by the lust for new lands and by race hatred toward 
 the Mexicans and traditional jealousy of Great Britain; 
 and these latter motives induced many northwesterners 
 to follow suit. By a judicious harping on all these 
 strings Jackson himself, whose name was still a mighty 
 power among the masses, was induced to write a letter 
 favoring instant and prompt annexation. 
 
 This letter was really procured for political purposes. 
 Tyler had completely identified himself with the Democ- 
 racy, and especially with its extreme separatist wing, to 
 which Calhoun also belonged, and which had grown so 
 as to be already almost able to take the reins. The 
 separatist chiefs were intriguing for the presidency, and 
 were using annexation as a cry that would help them; 
 and, failing in this attempt, many of the leaders were 
 willing to break up the Union, and turn the Southern 
 States, together with Texas, into a slaveholding con- 
 federacy. After Benton, the great champion of the 
 old-style Union Democrats was Van Buren, who was 
 opposed to immediate annexation, sharing the feeling 
 that prevailed throughout the Northeast generally; al- 
 though in certain circles all through the country there 
 were men at work in its favor, largely as a mere matter 
 of jobbery and from base motives, on account of specu- 
 lations in Texan land and scrip, into which various cap- 
 italists and adventurers had gone rather extensively. 
 Jackson, though a Southerner, warmly favored Van 
 Buren, and was bitterly opposed to separatists; but the 
 latter, by cunningly working on his feelings, without 
 showing their own hands, persuaded him to write the 
 letter mentioned, and promptly used it to destroy the 
 chances of Van Buren, who was the man they chiefly 
 feared; and though Jackson, at last roused to what was 
 
 221 
 
THOMAS HART BENTON 
 
 going on, immediately announced himself as in favor of 
 Van Buren's candidacy, it was too late to undo the mis- 
 chief. 
 
 Benton showed on this, as on many other occasions, 
 much keener political ideas than his great political chief. 
 He was approached by a politician, who himself was 
 either one of those concerned in the presidential in- 
 trigues, or else one of their dupes, and who tried to win 
 him over to take the lead on their side, complimenting 
 him upon his former services to the cause of territorial 
 expansion toward the southwest. Ordinarily the great 
 Missourian was susceptible enough to such flattery; but 
 on this occasion, preoccupied with the idea of an in- 
 trigue for the presidency, and indignant that there 
 should be an effort made to implicate him in it, espe- 
 cially as it was mixed up with schemes of stock-jobbing 
 and of disloyalty to the Union, he took fire at once, and 
 answered with hot indignation, in words afterward 
 highly resented by his questioner, "that it was on the 
 part of some an intrigue for the presidency, and a plot 
 to dissolve the Union; on the part of others, a Texas 
 scrip and land speculation; and that he was against it." 
 The answer was published in the papers, and brought 
 about a total break between Benton and the annexation 
 party. 
 
 He was now thoroughly on the alert, and actively op- 
 posed at all points the schemes of those whom he re- 
 garded as concerned in or instigating the intrigue. He 
 commented harshly on Tyler's annual message, which 
 made a strong plea for annexation, even at the cost of 
 a war both with Great Britain and Mexico; also on Cal- 
 houn's letter to Lord Aberdeen, which was certainly a 
 remarkable diplomatic document — being a thesis on 
 slavery and the benefits resulting from it. Tyler's ob- 
 
 222 
 
ABOLITIONISTS AND SLAVE BARONS 
 
 ject was to prepare the way for a secret treaty, which 
 should secure the desired object. Benton, in the course 
 of some severe strictures on his acts, said, very truly, 
 that it was evidently the intention to keep the whole 
 matter as secret as possible until the treaty was con- 
 cluded, "and then to force its adoption for the purpose 
 of increasing the area of slave territory, or to make 
 its rejection a cause for the secession of the Southern 
 States; and in either event and in all cases to make 
 the question of annexation a controlling one in the 
 nomination of presidential candidates, and also in the 
 election itself." 
 
 When the treaty proposed by the administration was 
 rejected, and when it became evident that neither Tyler 
 nor Calhoun, the two most prominent champions of the 
 extreme separatists, had any chance for the Demo- 
 cratic nomination, the disunion side of the intrigue was 
 brought to the front in many of the Southern States, 
 beginning of course with South Carolina. A movement 
 was made for a convention of the Southern States, to 
 be held in the interest of the scheme; the key-note being 
 struck in the cry of " Texas or disunion ! " But this con- 
 vention was given up, on account of the strong opposi- 
 tion it excited in the so-called "Border States"— an op- 
 position largely stirred up and led by Benton. Once 
 more the haughty slave leaders of the Southeast had 
 found that in the Missouri senator they had an oppo- 
 nent whose fearlessness quite equalled their own, and 
 whose stubborn temper and strength of purpose made 
 him at least a match for themselves, in spite of all their 
 dash and fiery impetuosity. It must have sounded 
 strange, indeed, to Northern ears, accustomed to the 
 harsh railings and insolent threats of the South Caro- 
 lina senators, to hear one of the latter complaining that 
 
 223 
 
THOMAS HART BENTON 
 
 Benton's tone in the debate was arrogant, overbearing, 
 and dictatorial toward those who were opposed to him. 
 This same senator, McDuffie, had been speaking of the 
 proposed Southern meeting at Nashville; and Benton 
 warned him that such a meeting would never take place, 
 and that he had mistaken the temper of the Tennes- 
 seeans; and also reminded him that General Jackson was 
 still alive, and that the South Carolinians in particular 
 must needs be careful if they hoped to agree with his 
 followers, whose name was still legion, because he would 
 certainly take the same position toward a disunion 
 movement in the interests of slavery that he had al- 
 ready taken toward a nullification movement in the 
 interests of free trade. "Preservation of the federal 
 Union is as strong in the old Roman's heart now as 
 ever; and while, as a Christian, he forgives all that is 
 past (if it were past), yet no old tricks under new names ! 
 Texas disunion will be to him the same as tariff dis- 
 union; and if he detects a Texas disunionist nestling into 
 his bed, I say again: Woe unto the luckless wight!" 
 Boldly and forcibly he went on to paint the real motives 
 of the promoters of the scheme, and the real character 
 of the scheme itself; stating that, though mixed up with 
 various speculative enterprises and with other intrigues, 
 yet disunion was at the bottom of it all, and that already 
 the cry had become: "Texas without the Union, rather 
 than the Union without Texas !" "Under the pretext 
 of getting Texas into the Union the scheme is to get 
 the South out of it. A Southern Confederacy stretch- 
 ing from the Atlantic to the Californias ... is the 
 cherished vision of disappointed ambition." He bit- 
 terly condemned secession, as simply disunion begat by 
 nullification, and went on to speak of his own attitude 
 in apparently opposing the admission of Texas, which 
 
 224 
 
ABOLITIONISTS AND SLAVE BARONS 
 
 he had always desired to see become a part of the Union, 
 and which he had always insisted rightfully belonged to 
 us, and to have been given away by Monroe's treaty 
 with Spain. " All that is intended and foreseen. The in- 
 trigue for the presidency was the first act in the drama; 
 the dissolution of the Union the second. And I, who 
 hate intrigue and love the Union, can only speak of the 
 intriguers and disunionists with warmth and indigna- 
 tion. The oldest advocate for the recovery of Texas, 
 I must be allowed to speak in just terms of the criminal 
 politicians who prostituted the question of its recovery 
 to their own base purposes, and delayed its success by 
 degrading and disgracing it. A Western man, and com- 
 ing from a State more than any other interested in the 
 recovery of this country, so unaccountably thrown away 
 by the treaty of 1819, I must be allowed to feel indig- 
 nant at seeing Atlantic politicians seizing upon it, and 
 making it a sectional question for the purposes of am- 
 bition and disunion. I have spoken warmly of these 
 plotters and intriguers; but I have not permitted their 
 conduct to alter my own, or to relax my zeal for the 
 recovery of the sacrificed country. I have helped to re- 
 ject the disunion treaty; and that obstacle being re- 
 moved, I have brought in the bill which will insure the 
 recovery of Texas, with peace and honor, and with the 
 Union." 
 
 It is important to remember, in speaking of his after- 
 ward voting to admit Texas, that this was what he had 
 all along favored, and that he now opposed it only on 
 account of special circumstances. In both cases he was 
 right; for, slavery or no slavery, it would have been a 
 most unfortunate thing for us, and still worse for the 
 Texans, if the latter had been allowed to develop into 
 an independent nation. Benton deserves the greatest 
 
 225 
 
THOMAS HART BENTON 
 
 credit for the way in which he withstood the ignorant 
 popular feeling of his own section in regard to Tyler's 
 proposed treaty; and not only did he show himself able 
 to withstand pressure from behind him, but also prompt 
 in resenting threats made by outsiders. When McDuffie 
 told him that the remembrance of his attitude on the 
 bill would, to his harm, meet him on some future day, 
 like the ghost that appeared to Brutus at Philippi, he 
 answered : 
 
 "I can promise the ghost and his backers that if the 
 fight goes against me at this new Philippi, with which 
 I am threatened, and the enemies of the American 
 Union triumph over me as the enemies of Roman lib- 
 erty triumphed over Brutus and Cassius, I shall not fall 
 upon my sword, as Brutus did, though Cassius be killed, 
 and run it through my own body; but I shall save it and 
 save myself for another day and another use, — for the 
 day when the battle of the disunion of these states is 
 to be fought, not with words but with iron, and for the 
 hearts of the traitors who appear in arms against their 
 country." 
 
 Such a stern, defiant, almost prophetic warning did 
 more to help the Union cause than volumes of elaborate 
 constitutional argument, and it would have been well 
 for the Northern States had they possessed men as capa- 
 ble of uttering it as was the iron Westerner. Benton 
 always showed at his best when the honor or integrity 
 of the nation was menaced, whether by foes from with- 
 out or by foes from within. On such occasions his metal 
 always rang true. When there was any question of 
 breaking faith with the Union, or of treachery toward 
 it, his figure always loomed up as one of the chief in 
 the ranks of its defenders; and his follies and weaknesses 
 sink out of sight when we think of the tremendous debt 
 
 226 
 
ABOLITIONISTS AND SLAVE BARONS 
 
 which the country owes hira for his sorely tried and un- 
 swerving loyalty. 
 
 The treaty alluded to by Benton in his speech against 
 the abortive secession movement was the one made with 
 Texas while Calhoun was secretary of state, and sub- 
 mitted to the Senate by Tyler, with a message as ex- 
 traordinary as some of his secretary's utterances. The 
 treaty was preposterously unjust and iniquitous. It 
 provided for the annexation of Texas, and also of a very 
 large portion of Mexico, to which Texas had no possible 
 title, and this without consulting Mexico in any way 
 whatever; Calhoun advancing the plea that it was neces- 
 sary to act immediately on account of the danger that 
 Texas was in of falling under the control of England, 
 and therefore having slavery abolished within its bor- 
 ders; while Tyler blandly announced that we had ac- 
 quired title to the ceded territory — which belonged to 
 one power and was ceded to us by another — through his 
 signature to the treaty, and that, pending its ratifica- 
 tion by the Senate, he had despatched troops to the 
 scene of action to protect the ceded land "from inva- 
 sion" — the territory to be thus protected from Mexican 
 invasion being then and always having been part and 
 parcel of Mexico. 
 
 Benton opposed the ratification of the treaty in a very 
 strong speech, during which he mercilessly assailed both 
 Tyler and Calhoun. The conduct of the former he dis- 
 missed with the contemptuous remark that he had com- 
 mitted "a caper about equal to the mad freaks with 
 which the unfortunate Emperor Paul, of Russia, was ac- 
 customed to astonish Europe"; and roughly warned him 
 to be careful how he tried to imitate Jackson's methods, 
 because in heroic imitations there was no middle ground, 
 and if he failed to fill the role of hero he would then per- 
 
 227 
 
THOMAS HART BENTON 
 
 force find himself playing that of harlequin. Calhoun 
 received more attention, for he was far more worthy of 
 a foeman's steel than was his nominal superior, and Ben- 
 ton exposed at length the wilful exaggeration and the 
 perversion of the truth of which the Carolinian had been 
 guilty in trying to raise the alarm of English interfer- 
 ence in Texas, for the purpose of excusing the haste 
 with which the treaty was carried through. 
 
 He showed at length the outrage we should inflict 
 upon Mexico by seizing 'two thousand miles of her 
 territory, without a word of explanation with her, and 
 by virtue of a treaty with Texas to which she was no 
 party"; and he conclusively proved, making use of his 
 own extensive acquaintance with history, especially 
 American history, that the old Texas, the only territory 
 that the Texans themselves or we could claim with any 
 shadow of right, made but a fraction of the territory 
 now "ceded" to us. He laughed at the idea of calling 
 the territory Texas, and speaking of its forcible cutting 
 off as reannexation, "Humboldt calls it New Mexico, 
 Chihuahua, Coahuila and Nuevo Santander; and the 
 civilized world may qualify this reannexation by some 
 odious and terrible epithet . . . robbery"; then he 
 went on to draw a biting contrast between our treat- 
 ment of Mexico and our treatment of England. 
 "Would we take two thousand miles of Canada in 
 the same way ? I presume not. And why not ? Why 
 not treat Great Britain and Mexico alike? Why not 
 march up to 'fifty-four forty' as courageously as we 
 march upon the Rio Grande? Because Great Britain 
 is powerful and Mexico weak — a reason which may fail 
 in policy as much as in morals." Also he ridiculed the 
 flurry of fear into which the Southern slaveholders af- 
 fected to be cast by the dread of England's hostility to 
 
 228 
 
ABOLITIONISTS AND SLAVE BARONS 
 
 slavery, when they had just acquiesced in making a 
 treaty with her by which we bound ourselves to help to 
 put down the slave-trade. He then stated his own posi- 
 tion, showing why he wished us to have the original 
 Texan lands, if we could get them honorably and with- 
 out robbing Mexico of new territory; and at the same 
 time sneered at Calhoun and Tyler because they had 
 formerly favored the Monroe treaty, by which we aban- 
 doned our claims to them: 
 
 "We want Texas, that is to say, the Texas of La 
 Salle; and we want it for great natural reasons, obvious 
 as day, and permanent as nature. We want it because 
 it is geographically appurtenant to our division of North 
 America, essential to our political, commercial, and so- 
 cial system, and because it would be detrimental and 
 injurious to us to have it fall into the hands or sink 
 under the domination of any foreign power. For these 
 reasons I was against sacrificing the country when it 
 was thrown away— and thrown away by those who are 
 now so suddenly possessed of a fury to get it back. For 
 these reasons I am for getting it back whenever it can 
 be done with peace and honor, or even at the price of 
 just war against any intrusive European power; but I 
 am against all disguise and artifice— against all pre- 
 texts—and especially against weak and groundless pre- 
 texts, discreditable to ourselves and offensive to others, 
 too thin and shallow not to be seen through by every 
 beholder, and merely invented to cover unworthy pur- 
 poses." 
 
 The treaty was rejected by an overwhelming vote, 
 although Buchanan led a few of his time-serving com- 
 rades from the North to the support of the extreme 
 Southern element. Benton then tried, but failed, to get 
 through a bill providing for a joint agreement between 
 
 229 
 
THOMAS HART BENTON 
 
 Mexico, Texas, and the United States to settle definitely 
 all boundary questions. Meanwhile the presidential 
 election occurred, with the result already mentioned. 
 The separatist and annexationist Democrats, the ex- 
 treme slavery wing of the party, defeated Van Buren 
 and nominated Polk, who was their man; the Whigs 
 nominated Clay, who was heartily opposed to all the 
 schemes of the disunion and extreme slavery men, and 
 who, if elected, while he might very properly have con- 
 sented to the admission of Texas with its old boundaries, 
 would never have brought on a war nor have attempted 
 to add a vast extent of new slave territory to the Union. 
 Clay would have been elected, and the slavery disunion- 
 ists defeated, if in the very nick of time the Abolitionists 
 had not stepped in to support the latter, and by their 
 blindness in supporting Birney given the triumph to 
 their own most bitter opponents. Then the Abolition- 
 ists, having played their only card, and played it badly, 
 had to sit still and see what evil their acts had produced; 
 they had accomplished just as much as men generally 
 do accomplish when they dance to the tune that their 
 worst foes play. 
 
 Polk's election gave an enormous impulse to the an- 
 nexation movement, and made it doubly and trebly dif- 
 ficult for any one to withstand it. The extreme disunion 
 and slavery men, of course, hated Benton, himself a 
 southwesterner from a slaveholding State, with pecu- 
 liar venom, on account of his attitude, very justly re- 
 garding him as the main obstacle in their path; and the 
 din and outcry raised against all who opposed the 
 schemes of the intriguers was directed with especial 
 fury against the Missourian. He was accused of being 
 allied to the Whigs, of wishing to break up the Democ- 
 racy, and of many other things. Indeed, Benton's own 
 
 230 
 
ABOLITIONISTS AND SLAVE BARONS 
 
 people were very largely against him, and it must always 
 be remembered that whereas northeastern statesmen 
 were certain to be on the popular side in taking a stand 
 against the extreme proslavery men, Benton's position 
 was often just the reverse. With them it was politic to 
 do right; with him it was not; and for this reason the 
 praise awarded the latter should be beyond measure 
 greater than that awarded to the former. 
 
 Still, there can be little question that he was some- 
 what, even although only slightly, influenced by the 
 storm of which he had to bear the brunt; indeed, he 
 would have been more than human if he had not been; 
 and probably this outside pressure was one among the 
 causes that induced him to accept a compromise in the 
 matter, which took effect just before Polk was inaugu- 
 rated. The House of Representatives had passed a reso- 
 lution giving the consent of Congress to the admission 
 of Texas as a State, and allowing it the privilege of form- 
 ing four additional States out of its territory, whenever 
 it should see fit. The line of the Missouri Compromise, 
 36° 30', was run through this new territory, slavery 
 being prohibited in the lands lying north of it, and per- 
 missible or not, according to the will of the State seeking 
 admission, in those lying south of it. Benton mean- 
 while had introduced a bill merely providing that nego- 
 tiations should be entered into with Texas for its ad- 
 mission, the proposed treaty or articles of agreement to 
 be submitted to the Senate or to Congress. He thereby 
 kept the control in the hands of the legislature, which 
 the joint resolution did not; and moreover, as he said 
 in his speech, he wished to provide for due considera- 
 tion being shown Mexico in the arrangement of the 
 boundary, and for the matter being settled by commis- 
 sioners. 
 
 231 
 
THOMAS HART BENTON 
 
 Neither resolution nor bill could get through by it- 
 self; and accordingly it was proposed to combine both 
 into one measure, leaving the President free to choose 
 either plan. To this proposition Benton finally con- 
 sented, it being understood that, as only three days of 
 Tyler's term remained, the execution of the act would 
 be left to the incoming President, and that the latter 
 would adopt Benton's plans. The friends of the ad- 
 mission of Texas assured the doubtful voters that such 
 would be the case. Polk himself gave full assurance that 
 he would appoint a commission, as provided by Ben- 
 ton's bill, if passed, with the House resolution as an 
 alternative; and McDuffie, Calhoun's friend, and the 
 senator from South Carolina, announced without re- 
 serve that Calhoun — for Tyler need not be considered 
 in the matter, after it had been committed to the great 
 Nullifier — would not have the "audacity" to try to take 
 the settlement of the question away from the President, 
 who was to be inaugurated on the 4th of March. On 
 the strength of these assurances, which, if made good, 
 would, of course, have rendered the "alternative" a 
 merely nominal one, Benton supported the measure, 
 which was then passed. Contrary to all expectation, 
 Calhoun promptly acted upon the legislative clause, and 
 Polk made no effort to undo what the former had done. 
 This caused intense chagrin and anger to the Benton- 
 ians; but they should certainly have taken such a con- 
 tingency into account, and though they might with 
 much show of reason say that they had been tricked 
 into acting as they had done, yet it is probable that the 
 immense pressure from behind had made Benton too 
 eager to follow any way he could find that would take 
 him out of the position into which his conscience had 
 led him. No amount of pressure would have made him 
 
 232 
 
ABOLITIONISTS AND SLAVE BARONS 
 
 deliberately sanction a wrong; but it did render him a 
 little less wary in watching to see that the right was not 
 infringed upon. It was most natural that he should be 
 anxious to find a common ground for himself and his 
 constituents to stand on; but it is to be regretted that 
 this anxiety to find a common ground should have made 
 him willing to trust blindly to vague pledges and prom- 
 ises, which he ought to have known would not be held 
 in the least binding by those on whose behalf they were 
 supposed to be made. 
 
 Acting under this compromise measure Texas was 
 admitted, and the foundation for our war with Mexico 
 was laid. Calhoun, under whom this was done, never- 
 theless sincerely regretted the war itself, and freely con- 
 demned Polk's administration for bringing it on; his 
 own position being that he desired to obtain without a 
 war what it was impossible we should get except at the 
 cost of one. Benton, who had all along consistently 
 opposed doing a wrong to Mexico, attacked the whole 
 war party, and in a strong and bitter speech accused 
 Calhoun of being the cause of the contest; showing 
 plainly that, whatever the ex-secretary of state might 
 say in regard to the acts immediately precipitating the 
 conflict, he himself was responsible as being in truth 
 their original cause. While stating his conviction, how- 
 ever, that Calhoun was the real author of the war, Ben- 
 ton added that he did not believe that war was his ob- 
 ject, although an inevitable incident of the course he 
 had pursued. 
 
 Although heartily opposed to the war in its origin, 
 Benton very properly believed in prosecuting it with 
 the utmost vigor when once we were fairly in; and it 
 was mainly owing to him that the proposed policy of a 
 "masterly inactivity" was abandoned, and the scheme 
 
 233 
 
THOMAS HART BENTON 
 
 of pushing straight for the city of Mexico adopted in 
 its stead. Indeed, it was actually proposed to make 
 him lieutenant-general, and therefore the commander- 
 in-chief of our forces in Mexico; but this was defeated 
 in the Senate, very fortunately, as it would have been 
 a great outrage upon Scott, Taylor, and every other 
 soldier with real military training. It seems extraor- 
 dinary that Benton himself should not have seen the 
 absurdity and wrong of such a proposition. 
 
 The wonderful hardihood and daring shown in the 
 various expeditions against Mexico, especially in those 
 whereby her northwest territory was wrested from her, 
 naturally called forth all Benton's sympathy; and one 
 of his best speeches was that made to welcome Doni- 
 phan's victorious volunteers after their return home 
 from their famous march to Chihuahua. 
 
 234 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 SLAVERY IN THE NEW TERRITORIES 
 
 Hardly was Polk elected before it became evident to 
 Benton and the other Jacksonians that the days of the 
 old Union or Nationalist Democracy were over, and that 
 the separatist and disunion elements within the party 
 had obtained the upper hand. The first sign of the new 
 order of things was the displacement of Blair, editor of 
 the Globe, the Democratic newspaper organ. Blair was 
 a strong Unionist, and had been bitterly hostile to Cal- 
 houn and the Nullifiers. He had also opposed Tyler, 
 the representative of those States'-rights and separatist 
 Democrats, who by their hostility to Jackson had been 
 temporarily driven into the Whig camp, and who, find- 
 ing themselves in very uncongenial society, and seeing, 
 moreover, that their own principles were gradually com- 
 ing to the front in the old party, had begun drifting back 
 again into it. Polk's chances of election were so pre- 
 carious that he was most anxious to conciliate the sepa- 
 ratists; besides which he at heart sympathized with 
 their views, and had himself been brought forward in 
 the Democratic convention to beat the National candi- 
 date, Van Buren. Moreover, Tyler withdrew from the 
 contest in his favor; in part payment for which help, 
 soon after the election, Blair was turned out, and 
 Ritchie, of Virginia, a man whose views suited the new 
 Democratic leaders, was put in his place; to the indig- 
 nation not only of Benton, but also of Jackson himself, 
 then almost on his death-bed. Of course the break be- 
 tween the two wings was as yet by no means complete. 
 Polk needed the Union Democrats, and the latter were 
 
 235 
 
THOMAS HART BENTON 
 
 still in good party standing. Benton himself, as has 
 been seen, was offered the command of all the forces in 
 Mexico, but the governmental policy, and the attitude 
 of the party in Congress after 1844, were widely differ- 
 ent from what they had been while Jackson's influence 
 was supreme, or while the power he left behind him was 
 wielded by a knot of Union men. 
 
 From this time the slavery question dwarfed all 
 others, and was the one with which Benton, as well as 
 other statesmen, had mainly to deal. He had been very 
 loath to acknowledge that it was ever to become of such 
 overshadowing importance; until late in his life he had 
 not realized that, interwoven with the disunionist move- 
 ment, it had grown so as to become in reality the one and 
 only question before the people; but, this once thor- 
 oughly understood, he henceforth devoted his tremen- 
 dous energies to the struggle with it. He possessed such 
 phenomenal power of application and of study, and his 
 capacity for and his delight in work were so extraordi- 
 nary, that he was able at the same time to grapple with 
 many other subjects of importance, and to present them 
 in a way that showed he had thoroughly mastered them 
 both in principle and detail — as witness his speech in 
 favor of giving the control of the coast survey to the 
 navy; but henceforth the importance of his actions lay 
 in their relation to the slavery extension movements. 
 
 He had now entered on what may fairly be called the 
 heroic part of his career; for it would be difficult to 
 choose any other word to express our admiration for the 
 unflinching and defiant courage with which, supported 
 only by conscience and by his loving loyalty to the 
 Union, he battled for the losing side, although by so 
 doing he jeopardized and eventually ruined his political 
 prospects, being finally, as punishment for his boldness 
 
 236 
 
SLAVERY IN THE NEW TERRITORIES 
 
 in opposing the dominant faction of the Missouri De- 
 mocracy, turned out of the Senate, wherein he had 
 passed nearly half his life. Indeed, his was one of those 
 natures that show better in defeat than in victory. In 
 his career there were many actions that must command 
 our unqualified admiration; such were his hostility to 
 the Nulliflers, wherein, taking into account his geo- 
 graphical location and his refusal to compromise, he did 
 better than any other public man, not even excepting 
 Jackson and Webster; his belief in honest money; and 
 his attitude toward all questions involving the honor or 
 the maintenance and extension of the Union. But in 
 all these matters he was backed more or less heartily by 
 his State, and he had served four terms in the federal 
 Senate as the leading champion and representative, not 
 alone of Missouri, but also of the entire West. When, 
 however, the slavery question began to enter upon its 
 final stage, Benton soon found himself opposed to a large 
 and growing faction of the Missouri Democracy, which 
 increased so rapidly that it soon became dominant. 
 But he never for an instant yielded his convictions, even 
 when he saw the ground being thus cut from under his 
 feet, fighting for the right as sturdily as ever, facing his 
 fate fearlessly, and going down without a murmur. 
 The contrast between the conduct toward the slavery 
 disunionists of this Democrat from a slaveholding 
 State, with a hostile majority at home against him, and 
 the conduct of Webster, a Whig, enthusiastically backed 
 by his own free State, in the same issue, is a painful one 
 for the latter. Indeed, on any moral point, Benton 
 need have no cause to fear comparison with any of his 
 great rivals in the political arena. During his career, 
 the United States Senate was perhaps the most influen- 
 tial, and certainly the ablest legislative, body in the 
 
 237 
 
THOMAS HART BENTON 
 
 world; and after Jackson's presidency came to an end 
 the really great statesmen and political leaders of the 
 country were to be found in it, and not in the Executive 
 chair. The period during which the great Missourian 
 was so prominent a figure in our politics, and which 
 lasted up to the time of the Civil War, might very appro- 
 priately be known in our history as the time of the su- 
 premacy of the Senate. Such senators as Benton, Web- 
 ster, Clay, and Calhoun, and later on Douglas, Seward, 
 and Sumner, fairly towered above presidents like the 
 obscure Southerners, Tyler and Polk, or the truckling, 
 time-serving Northern politicians, Pierce and Buchanan. 
 During the long interval coming between the two heroic 
 ages of American history— the age of Washington and 
 Franklin, and the age of Lincoln and Grant— it was but 
 rarely that the nation gave its greatest gift to its best or 
 its greatest son. 
 
 Benton had come into the Senate at the same time 
 that Missouri was admitted into the Union, with thanks, 
 therefore, to the same measure, the Missouri Compro- 
 mise bill. This shut out slavery from all territory north 
 of the line of 36° 30', and did not make it obligatory even 
 where it was permissible; and the immediate cause of 
 Benton's downfall was his courage and persistency in de- 
 fending the terms of this compromise from the attacks 
 of the Southern slavery extensionists and disunionists. 
 The proslavery feeling was running ever higher and 
 higher throughout the South; and his stand on this ques- 
 tion aroused the most furious anger among a constantly 
 increasing number of his constituents, and made him the 
 target for bitter and savage assaults on the part of his 
 foes, the spirit of hostility against him being carried to 
 such length as finally almost to involve him in an open 
 brawl on the floor of the Senate with one of his col- 
 
 238 
 
SLAVERY IN THE NEW TERRITORIES 
 
 leagues, Foote, who, like his fellow fire-eaters, found that 
 Benton was not a man who could be bullied. Indeed, 
 his iron will and magnificent physique both fitted him 
 admirably for such a contest against odds, and he seems 
 to have entered into it with a positive zest. 
 
 The political Abolitionists having put Polk in power, 
 their action bore fruit after its kind, and very soon the 
 question had to be faced, as to what should be done with 
 the immense tracts of territory conquered from Mexico. 
 Benton opposed, as being needless and harmful, the Wil- 
 mot Proviso, which forbade the introduction of slavery 
 into any part of the territory so acquired. He argued, 
 and produced in evidence the laws and constitution of 
 Mexico, that the soil of California and Mexico was al- 
 ready free, and that as slavery would certainly never be, 
 and indeed could never be, introduced into either Terri- 
 tory, the agitation of the question could only result in 
 harm. Calhoun and the other extreme slavery leaders 
 welcomed the discussion over this proviso, which led 
 Benton to remark that the Abolitionists and the Nulli- 
 fiers were necessary to each other— the two blades of a 
 pair of shears, neither of which could cut until they were 
 joined together. 
 
 When Calhoun introduced his famous resolutions de- 
 claring that Congress had no power to interfere with 
 slavery in the Territories, and therefore no power to pre- 
 vent the admission of new States except on the condi- 
 tion of their prohibiting slavery within their limits, Ben- 
 ton promptly and strongly opposed them as being fire- 
 brands needlessly thrown to inflame the passions of the 
 extremists, and, moreover, as being disunionist in ten- 
 dency. The following is his own account of what then 
 took place: "Mr. Calhoun said he had expected the sup- 
 port of Mr.. Benton 'as the representative of a slave- 
 
 239 
 
THOMAS HART BENTON 
 
 holding state.' Mr. Benton answered that it was im- 
 possible that he could have expected such a thing. 
 'Then,' said Mr. Calhoun, 'I shall know where to find 
 that gentleman.' To which Mr. Benton said: 'I shall 
 be found in the right place — on the side of my country 
 and the Union.' This answer, given on that day and on 
 the spot, is one of the incidents of his life which Mr. Ben- 
 ton will wish posterity to remember." We can easily 
 pardon the vanity which wishes and hopes that such an 
 answer, given under such conditions, may be remem- 
 bered. Indeed, Benton's attitude throughout all this 
 period should never be forgotten; and the words he 
 spoke in answer to Calhoun marked him as the leader 
 among those Southerners who held the nation above any 
 section thereof, even their own, and whose courage and 
 self-sacrifice in the cause of the Union entitled them to 
 more praise than by right belongs to any equal number 
 of Northerners ; those Southerners who in the Civil War 
 furnished Farragut, Thomas, Bristow, and countless 
 others as loyal as they were brave. The effect of Ben- 
 ton's teachings and the still remaining influence of his 
 intense personality did more than aught else to keep 
 Missouri within the Union, when her sister States went 
 out of it. 
 
 Benton always regarded much of the slavery agitation 
 in the South as being political in character, and the re- 
 sult of the schemes of ambitious and unscrupulous lead- 
 ers. He believed that Calhoun had introduced a set of 
 resolutions that were totally uncalled for, simply for the 
 purpose of carrying a question to the slave States on 
 which they could be formed into a unit against the free 
 States; and there is much to be said in support of his 
 view. Certainly the resolutions mark the beginning of 
 the first great slavery agitation throughout the Southern 
 
 240 
 
SLAVERY IN THE NEW TERRITORIES 
 
 States, which was engineered and guided for their own 
 ends by politicians like Jefferson Davis. These resolu- 
 tions were absolutely inconsistent with many of Cal- 
 houn's previous declarations; and that fact was also 
 sharply commented on by Benton in his speeches and 
 writings. He also criticised with caustic severity Cal- 
 houn's statements that he wished to save the Union by 
 forcing the North to take a position so agreeable to the 
 South as to make the latter willing not to separate. He 
 showed that Calhoun's proposed "constitutional" and 
 " peaceable " methods of bringing this about by prohib- 
 iting commercial intercourse between the two sections 
 would themselves be flagrant breaches of the Constitu- 
 tion and acts of disunion — all the more so as it was pro- 
 posed to discriminate in favor of the Northwest as 
 against the Northeast. Calhoun wished to bring about 
 a convention of the Southern States, in order to secure 
 the necessary unity of action; and one of the main ob- 
 stacles to the success of the plan was Missouri's refusal 
 to take part in it. Great efforts were made to win her 
 over, and to beat down Benton; the extreme proslavery 
 men honoring him with a hatred more intense than that 
 they harbored toward any Northerner. Some of Cal- 
 houn's recent biographers have credited him with being 
 really a Union man at heart. It seems absolutely im- 
 possible that this could have been the case; and the sup- 
 position is certainly not compatible with the belief that 
 he retained his right senses. Benton characterizes his 
 system of slavery agitation, very truthfully, as being one 
 "to force issues upon the North under the pretext of 
 self-defense, and to sectionalize the South, preparatory 
 to disunion, through the instrumentality of sectional 
 conventions, composed wholly of delegates from the 
 slaveholding states." 
 
 241 
 
THOMAS HART BENTON 
 
 When the question of the admission of Oregon came 
 up, Calhoun attempted to apply to it a dogma wholly at 
 variance with all his former positions on the subject. 
 This was the theory of the self-extension of the slavery 
 part of the Constitution to the Territories; that is, he 
 held that the exclusion of slavery from any part of the 
 new Territory was itself a subversion of the Constitu- 
 tion. Such a dogma was so monstrous in character, so 
 illogical, so inconsistent with all his former theories, and 
 so absolutely incompatible with the preservation of the 
 Union, that it renders it impossible to believe that his 
 asseverations of devotion to the latter were uttered hon- 
 estly or in good faith. Most modern readers will agree 
 with Benton that he deliberately worked to bring about 
 secession. 
 
 Meanwhile the Missourian had gained an ally of his 
 own stamp in the Senate. This was Houston, from the 
 new State of Texas, who represented in that State, like 
 Andrew Jackson in Tennessee, and Benton himself in 
 Missouri, the old Nationalist Democracy, which held 
 the preservation of the Union dear above all other 
 things. Houston was a man after Benton's own heart, 
 and was thoroughly Jacksonian in type. He was rough, 
 honest, and fearless, a devoted friend and a vengeful 
 enemy, and he promised that combination of stubborn 
 courage and capacity of devotion to an ideal that ren- 
 ders a man an invaluable ally in a fight against odds for 
 principle. 
 
 After much discussion and amendment, the Oregon 
 bill, containing a radical antislavery clause, passed both 
 houses and became a law in spite of the violent op- 
 position of some of the Southerners, headed by Calhoun, 
 who announced that the great strife between the North 
 and the South was ended, and that the time had come 
 
 242 
 
SLAVERY IN THE NEW TERRITORIES 
 
 for the South to show that, though she prized the Union, 
 yet there were matters which she regarded as of greater 
 importance than its preservation. His ire was most 
 fiercely excited by the action of Benton and Houston in 
 supporting the bill, and after his return to South Caro- 
 lina he denounced them by name as traitors to the South 
 — "a denunciation," says Benton, "which they took for 
 a distinction; as what he called treason to the South they 
 knew to be allegiance to the Union." When it was pro- 
 posed to extend by bill the Constitution of the United 
 States into the Territories, with a view to carrying slav- 
 ery into California, Utah, and New Mexico, Benton was 
 again opposed to Calhoun. As a matter of course, too, 
 he was the stoutest opponent of the Southern conven- 
 tion and other similar disunion movements that were 
 beginning to take shape throughout the South, insti- 
 gated by the two rank secession States of South Carolina 
 and Mississippi. 
 
 Most of the momentous questions springing out of the 
 war with Mexico were left by Polk as legacies to his suc- 
 cessor, when the former went out of office, after an ad- 
 ministration that Benton criticised with extreme sharp- 
 ness, although he tried to shield the President by casting 
 the blame for his actions upon his Cabinet advisers; 
 characterizing the Mexican War as one of "speculation 
 and intrigue," and as the "great blot" of his four years' 
 term of office, and ridiculing the theory that we were 
 acting in self-defense, or that our soil had been invaded. 
 In 1848 the Democrats nominated Cass, a Northern 
 proslavery politician of moderate abilities, and the 
 Whigs put up and elected old Zachary Taylor, the rough 
 frontier soldier and Louisiana slaveholder. The politi- 
 cal Abolitionists again took a hand in the contest, but 
 this time abandoned their abolition theories, substi- 
 
 243 
 
THOMAS HART BENTON 
 
 tuting instead thereof the prohibition of slavery in the 
 new Territories. They derived much additional im- 
 portance from their alliance with a disappointed politi- 
 cian in the pivotal State of New York; and in this case, 
 in sharp contrast to the result in 1844, their actions 
 worked good, and not evil. Van Buren, chagrined and 
 angered by the way he was treated by the regular Demo- 
 crats, organized a revolt against them, and used the ban- 
 ner of the new Free Soil party as one under which to 
 rally his adherents. This movement was of conse- 
 quence mainly in New York, and there it soon became 
 little more than a mere fight between the two sections of 
 the Democracy. Benton himself visited this all-impor- 
 tant State to try to patch up matters, but he fortunately 
 failed. The factions proved very nearly equal in 
 strength; and as a consequence the Whigs carried the 
 State and the election, and once more held the reins of 
 government. 
 
 When a Louisiana slaveholder was thus installed in 
 the White House, the extreme Southern men may have 
 thought that they were sure of him as an ally in their 
 fight against freedom. But, if so, they soon found they 
 had reckoned without their host, for the election of Tay- 
 lor affords a curious, though not solitary, instance in 
 which the American people builded better than they 
 knew in choosing a chief executive. Nothing whatever 
 was known of his political theories, and the Whigs nomi- 
 nated him simply because he was a successful soldier, 
 likely to take the popular fancy. But once elected he 
 turned out to have the very qualities we then most 
 needed in a President — a stout heart, shrewd common 
 sense, and thoroughgoing devotion to the Union. Al- 
 though with widely different training from Benton, and 
 nominally differing from him in politics, he was yet of 
 
 244 
 
SLAVERY IN THE NEW TERRITORIES 
 
 the same stamp both in character and principles; both 
 were Union Southerners, not in the least afraid of openly 
 asserting their opinions, and, if necessary, of making 
 them good by their acts. In his first and only annual 
 message, Taylor expressed, upon all the important ques- 
 tions of the day, views that were exactly similar to those 
 advanced before or after by Benton himself in the Sen- 
 ate; and he used similar emphasis and plainness of 
 speech. He declared the Union to be the greatest of 
 blessings, which he would maintain in every way against 
 whatever dangers might threaten it; he advised the ad- 
 mission of California, which wished to come in as a free 
 State; he thought that the Territories of Utah and New 
 Mexico should be left as they were; and he warned the 
 Texans, who were blustering about certain alleged rights 
 to New Mexican soil, and threatening to take them by 
 force of arms, that this could not be permitted, and that 
 the matter would have to be settled by the judicial au- 
 thority of the United States. Benton heartily indorsed 
 the message. Naturally, it was bitterly assailed by the 
 disunionists under Calhoun; and even Clay, who en- 
 tirely lacked Taylor's backbone, was dissatisfied with it 
 as being too extreme in tone, and conflicting with his 
 proposed compromise measures. These same compro- 
 mise measures brought the Kentucky leader into conflict 
 with Benton also, especially on the point of their inter- 
 fering with the immediate admission of California into 
 the Union. 
 
 This is not the place to discuss Clay's proposed com- 
 promise, which was not satisfactory to the extreme 
 Southerners, and still less so to the Unionists and anti- 
 slavery men. It consisted of five different parts, relat- 
 ing to the recovery of fugitive slaves, the suppression of 
 the slave-trade in the District of Columbia, the admis- 
 
 245 
 
THOMAS HART BENTON 
 
 sion of California as a State, and the territorial condition 
 of Utah and New Mexico. Benton opposed it as mix- 
 ing up incongruous measures; as being unjust to Cali- 
 fornia, inasmuch as it confounded the question of her 
 admission with the general slavery agitation in the 
 United States; and above all as being a concession or 
 capitulation to the spirit of disunion and secession, and 
 therefore a repetition of the error of 1833. Benton al- 
 ways desired to meet and check any disunion movement 
 at the very outset, and, if he had had his way, would 
 have carried matters with a high hand whenever it came 
 to dealing with threats of such a proceeding; and therein 
 he was perfectly right. In regard to the proposed com- 
 promise he believed in dealing with each question as it 
 arose, beginning with the admission of California, and 
 refusing to have any compromise at all with those who 
 threatened secession. 
 
 The slavery extensionists endeavored to have the 
 Missouri compromise line stretched on to the Pacific. 
 Benton, avowing his belief that slavery was an evil, op- 
 posed this, and gave his reasons why he did not wish to 
 see the line which had been used to divide free and slave 
 soil in the French or Louisiana purchase extended into 
 the lands won from Mexico. Slavery had always existed 
 in Louisiana, while it had been long abolished in Mexico. 
 "The Missouri compromise line, extending to New 
 Mexico and California, though astronomically the same 
 as that in Louisiana, would be politically directly the 
 opposite. One went through a territory all slave, and 
 made one half free; the other would go through territory 
 all free, and make one half slave." In fact Benton, as 
 he grew older, unlike most of his compatriots, gained a 
 clearer insight into the effects of slavery. This was 
 shown in his comments upon Calhoun's statement, made 
 
 246 
 
SLAVERY IN THE NEW TERRITORIES 
 
 in the latter's last speech, in reference to the unequal 
 development of the North and South; which, Benton 
 said, was partly owing to the existence of "slavery it- 
 self, which he (Calhoun) was so anxious to extend." 
 It was in this same speech that Calhoun hinted at his 
 plan for a dual Executive — one President from the free 
 and one from the slave States — a childish proposition, 
 that Benton properly treated as a simple absurdity. 
 
 In his speech against the compromise, Benton dis- 
 cussed it, section by section, with great force, and with 
 his usual blunt truthfulness. His main count was the 
 injustice done to California by delaying her admittance, 
 and making it dependent upon other issues; but he made 
 almost as strong a point against the effort to settle the 
 claims of Texas to New Mexican territory. The Texan 
 threats to use force he treated with cavalier indifference, 
 remarking that as long as New Mexico was a Territory, 
 and therefore belonged to the United States, any contro- 
 versy with her was a controversy with the federal gov- 
 ernment, which would know how to play her part by 
 "defending her territory from invasion, and her people 
 from violence" — a hint that had a salutary effect upon 
 the Texans; in fact the disunionists, generally, were not 
 apt to do much more than threaten while a Whig like 
 Taylor was backed up by a Democrat like Benton. He 
 also pointed out that it was not necessary, however de- 
 sirable, to make a compact with Texas about the boun- 
 daries, as they could always be settled, whether she 
 wished it or not, by a suit before the Supreme Court; 
 and again intimated that a little show of firmness would 
 remove all danger of a collision. "As to anything that 
 Texas or New Mexico may do in taking or relinquishing 
 possession, that is all moonshine. New Mexico is the 
 property of the United States, and she cannot dispose 
 
 247 
 
THOMAS HART BENTON 
 
 of herself or any part of herself, nor can Texas take her 
 or any part of her." He showed a thorough acquaint- 
 ance with New Mexican geography and history, and al- 
 luded to the bills he had already brought in, in 1844 
 and 1850, to establish a divisional line between the Ter- 
 ritory and Texas, on the longitude first of one hundred 
 and then of one hundred and two degrees. He recalled 
 the fact that before the annexation of Texas, and in a 
 bill proposing to settle all questions with her, he had 
 inserted a provision forever prohibiting slavery in all 
 parts of the annexed Territory lying west of the hun- 
 dredth degree of longitude. He also took the oppor- 
 tunity of formally stating his opposition to any form of 
 slavery extension, remarking that it was no new idea 
 with him, but dated from the time when in 1804, while 
 a law student in Tennessee, he had studied Blackstone 
 as edited by the learned Virginian, Judge Tucker, who, 
 in an appendix, treated of, and totally condemned, black 
 slavery in the United States. The very difficulty, or, as 
 he deemed it, the impossibility, of getting rid of the 
 evil, made Benton all the more determined in opposing 
 its extension. " The incurability of the evil is the great- 
 est objection to the extension of slavery. If it is wrong 
 for the legislator to inflict an evil which can be cured, 
 how much more to inflict one that is incurable, and 
 against the will of the people who are to endure it for- 
 ever ! I quarrel with no one for deeming slavery a bless- 
 ing; I deem it an evil, and would neither adopt it nor 
 impose it on others." The solution of the problem of 
 disposing of existent slavery, he confessed, seemed be- 
 yond human wisdom; but "there is a wisdom above 
 human, and to that we must look. In the meantime, 
 do not extend the evil." In justification of his position 
 he quoted previous actions of Congress, done under the 
 
 248 
 
SLAVERY IN THE NEW TERRITORIES 
 
 lead of Southern men, in refusing again and again, down 
 to 1807, to allow slavery to be introduced into Indiana, 
 when that community petitioned for it. He also re- 
 pudiated strongly the whole spirit in which Clay had 
 gotten up his compromise bill, stating that he did not 
 believe in geographical parties; that he knew no North 
 and no South, and utterly rejected any slavery com- 
 promises except those to be found in the Constitution. 
 Altogether it was a great speech, and his opposition was 
 one of the main causes of the defeat of Clay's measure. 
 
 Benton's position on the Wilmot Proviso is worth 
 giving in his own words: "That measure was rejected 
 again as heretofore, and by the votes of those who were 
 opposed to extending slavery into the territories, be- 
 cause it was unnecessary and inoperative— irritating to 
 the Slave States, without benefit to the Free States, a 
 mere work of supererogation, of which the fruit was dis- 
 content. It was rejected, not on the principle of non- 
 intervention; not on the principle of leaving to the 
 territories to do as they pleased on the question, but 
 because there had been intervention; because Mexican 
 law and constitution had intervened, had abolished 
 slavery by law in those dominions; which law would 
 remain in force until repealed by Congress. All that 
 the opponents to the extension of slavery had to do, 
 then, was to do nothing. And they did nothing." 
 
 Before California was admitted into the Union old 
 Zachary Taylor had died, leaving behind him a name 
 that will always be remembered among our people. He 
 was neither a great statesman nor yet a great command- 
 er; but he was an able and gallant soldier, a loyal and 
 upright public servant, and a most kindly, honest, and 
 truthful man. His death was a greater loss to the coun- 
 try than perhaps the people ever knew. 
 
 249 
 
THOMAS HART BENTON 
 
 The bill for the admission of California as a free 
 State, heartily sustained by Benton, was made a test 
 question by the Southern disunionists; but on this oc- 
 casion they were thoroughly beaten. The great strug- 
 gle was made over a proposition to limit the southern 
 boundary of the State to the line of 36° 30', and to ex- 
 tend the Missouri line through to the Pacific, so as to 
 authorize the existence of slavery in all the territory 
 south of that latitude. This was defeated by a vote of 
 thirty-two to twenty-four. Not only Benton, but also 
 Spruance and Wales, of Delaware, and Underwood, of 
 Kentucky, joined with the representatives from the 
 free States in opposing it. Had it not been for the ac- 
 tion of these four slave State senators in leaving their 
 associates, the vote would have been a tie; and their 
 courage and patriotism should be remembered. The 
 bill was then passed by a vote of thirty-four to eighteen, 
 two other Southern senators, Houston, of Texas, and 
 Bell, of Tennessee, voting for it, in addition to the four 
 already mentioned. After its passage, ten of the sena- 
 tors who had voted against it, including, of course, 
 Jefferson Davis, and also Benton's own colleague from 
 Missouri, Atchison, joined in a protest against what 
 had been done, ending with a thinly veiled threat of 
 disunion — "dissolution of the confederacy," as they 
 styled it. Benton stoutly and successfully opposed al- 
 lowing this protest to be received or entered upon the 
 journal, condemning it, with a frankness that very few 
 of his fellow senators would have dared to copy, as 
 being sectional and disunion in form, and therefore un- 
 fit even for preservation on the records. 
 
 When the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 was passed, 
 through the help of some Northern votes, Benton re- 
 fused to support it; and this was the last act of impor- 
 
 250 
 
SLAVERY IN THE NEW TERRITORIES 
 
 tance that he performed as United States senator. He 
 had risen and grown steadily all through his long term 
 of service; and during its last period he did greater ser- 
 vice to the nation than any of his fellow senators. Com- 
 pare his stand against the slavery extremists and dis- 
 unionists, such as Calhoun, with the position of Web- 
 ster at the time of his famous 7th of March speech, or 
 with that of Clay when he brought in his compromise 
 bill ! In fact, as the times grew more troublesome, he 
 grew steadily better able to do good work in them. 
 
 It is this fact of growth that especially marks his 
 career. No other American statesman, except John 
 Quincy Adams — certainly neither of his great contem- 
 poraries, Webster and Clay— kept doing continually 
 better work throughout his term of public service, or 
 showed himself able to rise to a higher level at the very 
 end than at the beginning. Yet such was the case with 
 Benton. He always rose to meet a really great emer- 
 gency; and his services to the nation grew steadily in 
 importance to the very close of his life. Whereas Web- 
 ster and Clay passed their zenith and fell, he kept rising 
 all the time. 
 
 251 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 THE LOSING FIGHT 
 
 Benton had now finished his fifth and last term in 
 the United States Senate. He had been chosen senator 
 from Missouri before she was admitted into the Union, 
 and had remained such for thirty years. During all 
 that time the State had been steadily Democratic, the 
 large Whig minority never being able to get control; but 
 on the question of the extension of slavery the dominant 
 party itself began at this time to break into two factions. 
 Hitherto Benton had been the undisputed leader of the 
 Democracy, but now the proslavery and disunionist 
 Democrats organized a very powerful opposition to him ; 
 while he still received the enthusiastic support of an al- 
 most equally numerous body of followers. Although 
 the extension of slavery and the preservation of the 
 Union were the two chief and vital points on which the 
 factions differed, yet the names by which they desig- 
 nated each other were adopted in consequence of their 
 differing also on a third and only less important one. 
 Benton was such a firm believer in hard money, and a 
 currency of gold and silver, as to have received the nick- 
 name of "Old Bullion," and his followers were called 
 "hards"; his opponents were soft-money men, in addi- 
 tion to being secessionists and proslavery fanatics, and 
 took the name of "softs." The principles of the Ben- 
 tonians were right, and those of their opponents wrong; 
 but for all that the latter gradually gained upon the 
 former. Finally, in the midst of Benton's fight against 
 the extension of slavery into the Territories, the "softs" 
 carried the Missouri legislature, and passed a series of 
 
 252 
 
THE LOSING FIGHT 
 
 resolutions based upon those of Calhoun. These were 
 most truculent and disloyal in tone, demanding that 
 slavery be permitted to exist in all the new States to be 
 admitted, and instructing their senators to vote accord- 
 ingly. These resolutions were presented in the Senate 
 by Benton's colleague from Missouri, Atchison, who was 
 rather hostile to him and to every other friend of the 
 Union, and later on achieved disreputable notoriety as 
 a leader of the "border ruffians" in the affrays on the 
 soil of Kansas. Benton at once picked up the glove that 
 had been flung down. He utterly refused to obey the 
 resolutions, denounced them savagely as being treason- 
 able and offensive in the highest degree, asserted that 
 they did not express the true opinions of the voters of 
 the State, and appealed from the Missouri legislature to 
 the Missouri people. 
 
 The issue between the two sides was now sharply 
 brought out, and, as this took place toward the end of 
 Benton's fifth term, the struggle to command the legis- 
 lature which should re-elect him or give him a successor 
 was most exciting. Benton himself took an active part 
 in the preliminary canvass. Neither faction was able to 
 get a majority of the members, and the deadlock was 
 finally broken by the "softs" coming to the support of 
 the Whigs, and helping them to elect Benton's rival. 
 Thus, after serving his State faithfully and ably for 
 thirty years, he was finally turned out of the position 
 which he so worthily filled, because he had committed 
 the crime of standing loyally by the Union. 
 
 But the stout old Nationalist was not in the least cast 
 down or even shaken by his defeat. He kept up the 
 fight as bitterly as ever, though now an old man, and in 
 1852 went to Congress as a representative Union Demo- 
 crat. For thirty years he had been the autocrat of Mis- 
 
 253 
 
THOMAS HART BENTON 
 
 souri politics, and had at one time wielded throughout 
 his own State a power as great as Calhoun possessed in 
 South Carolina; greater than Webster held in Massa- 
 chusetts, or Clay in Kentucky. But the tide which had 
 so long flowed in his favor now turned, and for the few 
 remaining years of his life set as steadily against him; 
 yet at no time of his long public career did he stand forth 
 as honorably and prominently as during his last days, 
 when he was showing so stern a front to his victorious 
 foes. His love for work was so great that, when out of 
 the Senate, he did not find even his incessant political 
 occupations enough for him. During his contest for the 
 senatorship his hands had been full, for he had spoken 
 again and again throughout the entire State, his care- 
 fully prepared speeches showing remarkable power, and 
 filled with scathing denunciation and invective, and bit- 
 ing and caustic sarcasm. But so soon as his defeat was 
 assured he turned his attention immediately to litera- 
 ture, setting to work on his great "Thirty Years' View," 
 of which the first volume was printed during his congres- 
 sional term, and was quoted on the floor of the House, 
 both by his friends and foes, during the debates in which 
 he was taking part. 
 
 In 1852, when he was elected to Congress as a mem- 
 ber of the House, he had supported Pierce for the presi- 
 dency against Scott, a good general, but otherwise a 
 wholly absurd and flatulent personage, who was the 
 Whig nominee. But it soon became evident that Pierce 
 was completely under the control of the secession wing 
 of the party, and Benton thereafterward treated him 
 with contemptuous hostility, despising him, and seeing 
 him exactly as he was — a small politician, of low capac- 
 ity and mean surroundings, proud to act as the servile 
 tool of men worse than himself but also stronger and 
 
 254 
 
THE LOSING FIGHT 
 
 abler. He was ever ready to do any work the slavery 
 leaders set him, and to act as their attorney in arguing 
 in its favor— to quote Benton's phrase, with " undaunted 
 mendacity, moral callosity [and] mental obliquity." 
 His last message to Congress in the slavery interest Ben- 
 ton spoke of as characteristic, and exemplifying "all the 
 modes of conveying untruths which long ages have in- 
 vented — direct assertion, fallacious inference, equivocal 
 phrase, and false innuendo." As he entertained such 
 views of the head of the Democratic party, and as this 
 same head was in hearty accord with, and a good rep- 
 resentative of, the mass of the rank and file politicians of 
 the organization, it is small wonder that Benton found 
 himself, on every important question that came up 
 while he was in Congress, opposed to the mass of his 
 fellow Democrats. 
 
 Although the great questions to which he devoted 
 himself, while a representative in Congress, were those 
 relating to the extension of slavery, yet he also found 
 time to give to certain other subjects, working as usual 
 with indomitable energy, and retaining his marvellous 
 memory to the last. The idea of desponding or giving 
 up, for any cause whatever, simply never entered his 
 head. When his house, containing all the manuscript 
 and papers of the nearly completed second volume of his 
 "Thirty Years' View," was burned up, he did not delay 
 a minute in recommencing his work, and the very next 
 day spoke in Congress as usual. 
 
 His speeches were showing a steady improvement; 
 they were not masterpieces, even at the last, but in 
 every way, especially in style, they were infinitely supe- 
 rior to those that he had made on his first entrance into 
 public life. Of course, a man with his intense pride in 
 his country, and characterized by such a desire to see her 
 
 255 
 
THOMAS HART BENTON 
 
 become greater and more united in every way, would 
 naturally support the proposal to build a Pacific Rail- 
 road, and accordingly he argued for it at great length 
 and with force and justness, at the same time opposing 
 the propositions to build northern and southern trans- 
 continental roads as substitutes for the proposed central 
 route. He showed the character of the land through 
 which the road would run, and the easiness of the passes 
 across the Rockies, and prophesied a rapid increase of 
 States as one of the results attendant upon its building. 
 At the end of his speech he made an elaborate compari- 
 son of the courses of trade and commerce at different 
 periods of the world's history, and showed that, as we 
 had reached the Pacific coast, we had finally taken a 
 position where our trade with the Oriental kingdoms, 
 backed up by our own enormous internal development, 
 rendered us more than ever independent of Europe. 
 
 In another speech he discussed very intelligently, and 
 with his usual complete command of the facts of the 
 case, some of the contemporary Indian uprisings in the 
 far West. He attacked our whole Indian policy, show- 
 ing that the corruption of the Indian agents, coupled 
 with astute aggressions, were the usual causes of our 
 wars. Further, he criticised our regular troops as being 
 unfit to cope with the savages, and advocated the forma- 
 tion of companies of frontier rangers, who should also be 
 settlers, and should receive from the government a 
 bounty in land as part reward for their service. Many 
 of his remarks on our Indian policy apply quite as well 
 now as they did then, and our regular soldiers are cer- 
 tainly not the proper opponents for the Indians; but 
 Benton's military views were, as a rule, the reverse of 
 sensible, and we cannot accept his denunciations of the 
 army, and especially of West Point, as being worth seri- 
 
 256 
 
THE LOSING FIGHT 
 
 ous consideration. His belief in the marvellous efficacy 
 of a raw militia, especially as regards war with European 
 powers, was childish, and much of his feeling against the 
 regular army officer was dictated by jealousy. He was, 
 by all the peculiarities of his habits and education, ut- 
 terly unfitted for military command; and it would have 
 been an evil day for his good fame if Polk had succeeded 
 in having him made lieutenant-general of our forces in 
 Mexico. 
 
 His remarks upon our Indian policy were not the only 
 ones he made that would bear study even yet. Certain 
 of his speeches upon the different land-bounty and pen- 
 sion bills, passed nominally in the interests of veterans, 
 but really through demagogy and the machination of 
 speculators, could be read with profit by not a few con- 
 gressmen at the present time. One of his utterances 
 was, "I am a friend to old soldiers . . . but not to old 
 speculators"; and while favoring proper pension bills he 
 snowed the foolishness and criminality of certain others 
 very clearly, together with the fact that, when passed 
 long after the services have been rendered, they always 
 fail to relieve the real sufferers, and work in the interests 
 of unworthy outsiders. 
 
 But his great speech, and one of the best and greatest 
 that he ever made, was the one in opposition to the 
 Kansas-Nebraska bill, which was being pushed through 
 Congress by the fire-eaters and their Northern pro- 
 slavery followers. His own position upon the measure 
 was best expressed by the words he used in commenting 
 on the remarks of a Georgian member: "He votes as 
 a Southern man, and votes sectionally; I also am a 
 Southern man, but vote nationally on national ques- 
 tions." 
 
 The Missouri Compromise of 1820 had expressly 
 
 257 
 
THOMAS HART BENTON 
 
 abolished slavery in the Territory out of which Kansas 
 and Nebraska were carved. By the proposed bill this 
 compromise was to be repealed, and the famous doc- 
 trine of non-intervention, or "squatter sovereignty," 
 was to take its place, the people of each Territory being 
 allowed to choose for themselves whether they did or 
 did not wish slavery. Benton attacked the proposal 
 with all the strength of his frank, open nature, as "a 
 bungling attempt to smuggle slavery into the territory, 
 and throughout all the country, up to the Canada line 
 and out to the Rocky Mountains." He showed ex- 
 haustively the real nature of the original Missouri Com- 
 promise, which, as he said, was forced by the South 
 upon the North, and which the South now proposed to 
 repeal, that it might humiliate the North still further. 
 The compromise of 1820 was, he justly contended, right; 
 it was like the original compromises of the Constitu- 
 tion, by which the slave States were admitted to the 
 formation of the Union; no greater concession of prin- 
 ciple was involved in the one case than in the other; 
 and, had either compromise failed, the Union would not 
 now be in existence. But the day when compromises 
 had been necessary, or even harmless, had passed. The 
 time had come when the extension of slavery was to 
 be opposed in every constitutional way; and it was an 
 outrage to propose to extend its domain by repealing 
 all that part of a compromise measure which worked 
 against it, when the South had already long taken ad- 
 vantage of such parts of the law as worked in its favor. 
 Said Benton: "The South divided and took half, and 
 now it will not do to claim the other half." Exactly 
 as a proposition to destroy the slavery compromises of 
 the Constitution would be an open attempt to destroy 
 the Union, so, he said, the attempt to abrogate the corn- 
 
 258 
 
THE LOSING FIGHT 
 
 promise of 1820 would be a preparation for the same 
 ending. "I have stood upon the Missouri Compromise 
 for about thirty years, and mean to stand upon it to 
 the end of my life ... [it is] a binding covenant upon 
 both parties, and the more so upon the South, as she 
 imposed it." 
 
 The squatter-sovereignty theories of Douglas he 
 treated with deserved ridicule, laughing at the idea that 
 the Territories were not the actual property of the na- 
 tion, to be treated as the latter wished, and having none 
 of the rights of sovereign States; and he condemned 
 even more severely the theory advanced to the effect 
 that Congress had no power to legislate on slavery in 
 the Territories. Thus, he pointed out that to admit any 
 such theories was directly to reverse the principles upon 
 which we had acted for seventy years in regard to the 
 various Territories that from time to time grew to such 
 size as entitled them to come into the Union as States. 
 After showing that there was no excuse for bringing in 
 the bill on the plea of settling the slavery question, since 
 there was not a foot of territory in the United States 
 where the subject of slavery was not already settled by 
 law, he closed with an earnest appeal against such an 
 attempt to break up the Union and outrage the North 
 by forcing slavery into a land where its existence was 
 already forbidden by law. His speech exceeded the 
 hour allotted to it, and he was allowed to go on only 
 by the courtesy of a member from Illinois, who, when 
 some of the Southerners protested against his being 
 heard further, gave up part of his own time to the grand 
 old Missourian, and asked the House to hear him, if 
 only "as the oldest living man in Congress, the only 
 man in Congress who was present at the passage of the 
 Missouri Compromise bill." Many a man at the North, 
 
 259 
 
THOMAS HART BENTON 
 
 ashamed and indignant at seeing the politicians of his 
 own section cower at the crack of the Southern whip, 
 felt a glow of sincere gratitude and admiration for the 
 rugged Westerner, who so boldly bade defiance to the 
 ruling slave party that held the reins not only in his own 
 section, but also in his own State, and to oppose which 
 was almost certain political death. 
 
 The Gadsden treaty was also strongly opposed and 
 condemned by Benton, who considered it to be part of 
 a great scheme or movement in the interests of the 
 slavery disunionists, of which he also believed the Kan- 
 sas-Nebraska bill to be the first development — the 
 "thin end of the wedge." He opposed the acquirement 
 even of the small piece of territory we were actually 
 able to purchase from Mexico; and showed good grounds 
 for his belief that the administration, acting as usual 
 only in the interest of the secessionists, had tried to get 
 enough North-Mexican territory to form several new 
 States, and had also attempted to purchase Cuba, both 
 efforts being for the purpose of enabling the South either 
 to become again dominant in the Union or else to set 
 up a separate confederacy of her own. For it must be 
 kept in mind that Benton always believed that the 
 Southern disunion movements were largely due to con- 
 spiracies among ambitious politicians, who used the 
 slavery question as a handle by which to influence the 
 mass of the people. This view has certainly more truth 
 in it than it is now the fashion to admit. His objection 
 to the actual treaty was mainly based on its having 
 been done by the executive without the consent of the 
 legislature, and he also criticised it for the secrecy with 
 which it had been put through. In bringing forward 
 the first objection, however, he was confronted with 
 Jefferson's conduct in acquiring Louisiana, which he en- 
 
 260 
 
THE LOSING FIGHT 
 
 deavored, not very successfully, to show had nothing in 
 common with the actions of Pierce, who, he said, simply 
 demanded a check from the House with which to com- 
 plete a purchase undertaken on his own responsibility. 
 
 Throughout his congressional term of service, Benton 
 acted so as to deserve well of the Union as a whole, and 
 most well of Missouri in particular. But he could not 
 stem the tide of folly and madness in this State, and 
 was defeated when he was a candidate for re-election. 
 The Whigs had now disappeared from the political 
 arena, and the Know-nothings were running through 
 their short and crooked lease of life; they foolishly 
 nominated a third candidate in Benton's district, who 
 drew off enough votes from him to enable his proslav- 
 ery Democratic competitor to win. 
 
 No sooner had he lost his seat in Congress than Ben- 
 ton, indefatigable as ever, set to work to finish his 
 "Thirty Years' View," and produced the second volume 
 in 1856, the year when he made his last attempt to re- 
 gain his hold in politics, and to win Missouri back to 
 the old Union standard. Although his own son-in-law, 
 Fremont, the daring Western explorer, was running as 
 the first presidential candidate ever nominated by the 
 Republicans, the old partisan voted for the Democrat, 
 Buchanan. He did not like Buchanan, considering him 
 weak and unsuitable, but the Republican party he be- 
 lieved to be entirely too sectional in character for him 
 to give it his support. For governor there was a tri- 
 angular fight, the Know-nothings having nominated one 
 candidate, the secessionist Democrats a second, while 
 Benton himself ran as the choice of the Union Democ- 
 racy. He was now seventy-four years old, but his mind 
 was as vigorous as ever, and his iron will kept up a 
 frame that had hardly even yet begun to give way. 
 
 261 
 
THOMAS HART BENTON 
 
 During the course of the campaign he travelled through- 
 out the State, going in all twelve hundred miles, and 
 making forty speeches, each one of two or three hours' 
 length. This was a remarkable feat for so old a man; 
 indeed, it has very rarely been paralleled, except by 
 Gladstone's recent performances. The vote was quite 
 evenly divided between the three candidates; but Ben- 
 ton came in third, and the extreme proslavery men 
 carried the day. After this, during the few months of 
 life he yet had left, he did not again mingle in the politics 
 of Missouri. 
 
 But in the days of his defeat at home, the regard and 
 respect in which he was held in the other States, espe- 
 cially at the North, increased steadily; and in the fall 
 of 1856 he made by request a lecturing tour in New 
 England, speaking on the danger of the political situa- 
 tion and the imperative necessity of preserving the 
 Union, which he now clearly saw to be gravely threat- 
 ened. He was well received, for the North was learning 
 to respect him, and he had gotten over his early hos- 
 tility to New England — a hostility originally shared by 
 the whole West. The New Englanders were not yet 
 aware, however, of the importance of the secession 
 movements, and paid little heed to the warnings that 
 were to be so fully justified by the events of the next 
 few years. But Benton, in spite of his great age, saw 
 distinctly the changes that were taking place, and the 
 dangers that were impending — an unusual thing for a 
 man whose active life has already been lived out under 
 widely different conditions. 
 
 He again turned his attention to literature, and pro- 
 duced another great work, the "Abridgment of the 
 Debates of Congress from 1789 to 1856," in sixteen 
 volumes, besides writing a valuable pamphlet on the 
 
 262 
 
THE LOSING FIGHT 
 
 Dred Scott decision, which he severely criticised. The 
 amount of labor all this required was immense, and his 
 health completely gave way; yet he continued working 
 to the very end, dictating the closing portion of the 
 "Abridgment" in a whisper as he lay on his death-bed. 
 When he once began to fail his advanced years made 
 him succumb rapidly; and on April 10, 1858, he died, 
 in the city of Washington. As soon as the news reached 
 Missouri, a great revulsion of feeling took place, and all 
 classes of the people united to do honor to the memory 
 of the dead statesman, realizing that they had lost a 
 man who towered head and shoulders above both friends 
 and foes. The body was taken to St. Louis, and after 
 lying in state was buried in Bellefontaine Cemetery, 
 more than forty thousand people witnessing the funeral. 
 All the public buildings were draped in mourning; all 
 places of business were closed, and the flags everywhere 
 were at half-mast. Thus at the very end the great city 
 of the West at last again paid fit homage to the West's 
 mightiest son. 
 
 Benton's most important writings are those men- 
 tioned above. The "Thirty Years' View" ("a history 
 of the working of the American Government for thirty 
 years, from 1820 to 1850") will always be indispensable 
 to every student of American history. It deals with the 
 deeds of both houses of Congress, and of some of the 
 higher federal officials during his thirty years' term of 
 service in the Senate, and is valuable alike for the orig- 
 inal data it contains, and because it is so complete a rec- 
 ord of our public life at that time. The book is also 
 remarkable for its courteous and equable tone, even 
 toward bitter personal and political enemies. It shows 
 a vanity on the part of the author that is too frank and 
 free from malice to be anything but amusing; the style 
 
 263 
 
THOMAS HART BENTON 
 
 is rather ponderous, and the English not always good, 
 for Benton began life, and, in fact, largely passed it, in 
 an age of ornate periods, when grandiloquence was con- 
 sidered more essential than grammar. In much of the 
 Mississippi valley the people had their own canons of 
 literary taste; indeed, in a recent book by one of Ben- 
 ton's admirers, there is a fond allusion to his statement, 
 anent the expunging resolution, that "solitary and 
 alone" he had set the ball in motion — the pleonasm 
 being evidently looked upon in the light of a rather fine 
 oratorical outburst. 
 
 The "Abridgment of the Debates of Congress from 
 1789 to 1856" he was only able to bring down to 1850. 
 Sixteen volumes were published. It was a compilation 
 needing infinite labor, and is invaluable to the historian. 
 While in the midst of the vast work he also found time 
 to write his "Examination of the Dred Scott Case," in so 
 far as it decided the Missouri Compromise law to be un- 
 constitutional, and asserted the self-extension of the 
 Constitution into the Territories, carrying slavery with 
 it — the decision in this case promulgated by Judge 
 Taney, of unhappy fame, having been the last step 
 taken in the interests of slavery and for the overthrow 
 of freedom. The pamphlet contained nearly two hun- 
 dred pages, and showed, as was invariably the case with 
 anything Benton did, the effects of laborious research 
 and wide historical and legal learning. His summing up 
 was, "that the decision conflicts with the uniform action 
 of all the departments of the federal government from 
 its foundation to the present time, and cannot be ac- 
 cepted as a rule to govern Congress and the people, with- 
 out severing that act and admitting the political su- 
 premacy of the court and accepting an altered constitu- 
 tion from its hands, and taking a new and portentous 
 
 264 
 
THE LOSING FIGHT 
 
 point of departure in the working of the government." 
 He denounced the new party theories of the Democracy, 
 which had abandoned the old belief of the founders of 
 the Republic, that Congress had power to legislate upon 
 slavery in Territories, and which had gone on "from the 
 abrogation of the Missouri Compromise, which saved 
 the Union, to squatter sovereignty, which killed the 
 compromise, and thence to the decisions of the supreme 
 court, which kill both." In closing he touched briefly 
 on the history of the proslavery agitation. 'Up to 
 Mr. Pierce's administration the plan had been defensive, 
 that is to say, to make the secession of the South a 
 measure of self-defense against the abolition encroach- 
 ments and crusades of the North. In the time of Mr. 
 Pierce the plan became offensive, that is to say, to com- 
 mence the expansion of slavery, and the acquisition of 
 territory to spread it over, so as to overpower the North 
 with new Slave States, and drive them out of the Union. 
 . . . The rising in the Free States, in consequence of the 
 abrogation of the Missouri Compromise, checked these 
 schemes, and limited the success of the disunionists to 
 the revival of the agitation which enables them to wield 
 the South against the North in all the federal elections 
 and all federal legislation. Accidents and events have 
 given the party a strange pre-eminence,— under Jack- 
 son's administration proclaimed for treason; since at the 
 head of the government and of the Democratic party. 
 The death of Harrison, and the accession of Tyler, was 
 their first great lift; the election of Mr. Pierce was their 
 culminating point." This was the last protest of the 
 last of the old Jacksonian leaders against that new gen- 
 eration of Democrats, whose delight it had become to 
 bow down to strange gods. 
 
 In his private life Benton's relations were of the 
 
 265 
 
THOMAS HART BENTON 
 
 pleasantest. He was a religious man, although, like his 
 great political chief, he could on occasions swear roundly. 
 He was rigidly moral, and he was too fond of work ever 
 to make social life a business. But he liked small din- 
 ners, with just a few intimate friends or noted and bril- 
 liant public men, and always shone at such an entertain- 
 ment. Although he had not travelled much, he gave 
 the impression of having done so, by reason of his wide 
 reading, and because he always made a point of knowing 
 all explorers, especially those who had penetrated our 
 great Western wilds. His geographical knowledge was 
 wonderful ; and his good nature, as well as his delight in 
 work for work's sake, made him of more use than any 
 library of reference, if his friends needed information 
 upon some abstruse matter — Webster himself acknowl- 
 edging his indebtedness to him on one occasion, and 
 being the authority for the statement that Benton knew 
 more political facts than any other man he had ever met, 
 even than John Quincy Adams, and possessed a wonder- 
 ful fund of general knowledge. Although very gentle in 
 his dealings with those for whom he cared, Benton orig- 
 inally was rather quarrelsome and revengeful in char- 
 acter. His personal and political prejudices were bitter, 
 and he denounced his enemies freely in public and from 
 the stump; yet he always declined to take part in joint 
 political debates, on account of the personal discourtesy 
 with which they were usually conducted. He gave his 
 whole time to public life, rarely or never attending to his 
 law practice after he had fairly entered the political 
 field. 
 
 Benton was one of those who were present and es- 
 caped death at the time of the terrible accident on board 
 the Princeton, during Tyler's administration, when the 
 bursting of her great gun killed so many prominent men. 
 
 266 
 
THE LOSING FIGHT 
 
 Benton was saved owing to the fact that, characteristi- 
 cally enough, he had stepped to one side the better to 
 note the marksmanship of the gunner. Ex-Governor 
 Gilmer, of Virginia, who had taken his place, was in- 
 stantly killed. Tyler, who was also on board, was like- 
 wise saved in consequence of the exhibition of a charac- 
 teristic trait; for, just as the gun was about to be fired, 
 something occurred in another part of the ship which 
 distracted the attention of the fussy, fidgety President, 
 who accordingly ran off to see what it was, and thus es- 
 caped the fatal explosion. The tragic nature of the acci- 
 dent and his own narrow escape made a deep impression 
 upon Benton; and it was noticed that ever afterward he 
 was far more forbearing and forgiving than of old. He 
 became good friends with Webster and other political 
 opponents, with whom he had formerly hardly been on 
 speaking terms. Calhoun alone he would never forgive. 
 It was not in his nature to do anything by halves; and 
 accordingly, when he once forgave an opponent, he could 
 not do enough to show him that the forgiveness was real. 
 A Missourian named Wilson, who had been his bitter 
 and malignant political foe for years, finally becoming 
 broken in fortune and desirous of bettering himself by 
 going to California, where Benton's influence, through 
 his son-in-law, Fremont, was supreme, was persuaded by 
 W T ebster to throw himself on the generosity of his old 
 enemy. The latter not only met him half-way, but 
 helped him with a lavish kindness that would hardly 
 have been warranted by less than a lifelong friendship. 
 Webster has left on record the fact that, when once they 
 had come to be on good terms with each other, there was 
 no man in the whole Senate of whom he would more 
 freely have asked any favor that could properly be 
 granted. 
 
 267 
 
THOMAS HART BENTON 
 
 He was a most loving father. At his death he left 
 four surviving daughters — Mrs. William Carey Jones, 
 Mrs. Sarah Benton Jacobs, Madame Susan Benton 
 Boilleau, and Mrs. Jessie Ann Benton Fremont, the wife 
 of the great explorer, whose wonderful feats and adven- 
 tures, ending with the conquest of California, where he 
 became a sort of viceroy in point of power, made him an 
 especial favorite with his father-in-law, who loved dar- 
 ing and hardihood. Benton took the keenest delight in 
 Fremont's remarkable successes, and was never tired of 
 talking of them, both within and without the Senate. 
 He records with very natural pride the fact that it was 
 only the courage and judgment displayed in a trying 
 crisis by his own gifted daughter, Fremont's wife, which 
 enabled the adventurous young explorer to prosecute 
 one of the most important of his expeditions, when 
 threatened with fatal interference from jealous govern- 
 mental superiors. 
 
 He was an exceptionally devoted husband. His wife 
 was Miss Elizabeth McDowell, of Virginia, whom he 
 married after he had entered the Senate. Their life was 
 most happy until 1844, when she was struck by paral- 
 ysis. From that time till her death in 1854, he never 
 went out to a public place of amusement, spending all 
 his time not occupied with public duties in writing by 
 her bedside. It is scant praise to say that, while mere 
 acquiescence on his part would have enabled him to be- 
 come rich through government influence, he neverthe- 
 less died a poor man. In public, as in private, life he 
 was a man of sensitive purity of character; he would 
 never permit any person connected with him by blood 
 or marriage to accept office under the government, nor 
 would he ever favor any applicant for a government 
 contract on political grounds. 
 
 268 
 
THE LOSING FIGHT 
 
 During his last years, when his sturdy independence 
 and devotion to the Union had caused him the loss 
 of his political influence in his own State and with his 
 own party, he nevertheless stood higher with the coun- 
 try at large than ever before. He was a faithful friend 
 and a bitter foe; he was vain, proud, utterly fearless, 
 and quite unable to comprehend such emotions as 
 are expressed by the terms despondency and yielding. 
 Without being a great orator or writer, or even an 
 original thinker, he yet possessed marked ability; and 
 his abounding vitality and marvellous memory, his in- 
 domitable energy and industry, and his tenacious per- 
 sistency and personal courage, all combined to give him 
 a position and influence such as few American statesmen 
 have ever held. His character grew steadily to the very 
 last; he made better speeches and was better able to 
 face new problems when past threescore and ten than 
 in his early youth or middle age. He possessed a rich 
 fund of political, legal, and historical learning, and 
 every subject that he ever handled showed the traces 
 of careful and thorough study. He was very courteous, 
 except when provoked; his courage was proof against 
 all fear, and he shrank from no contest, personal or 
 political. He was sometimes narrow-minded, and al- 
 ways wilful and passionate; but he was honest and 
 truthful. At all times and in all places he held every 
 good gift he had completely at the service of the Amer- 
 ican Federal Union. 
 
 269 
 
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 
 
 Gouverneur Morris. By Theodore Roosevelt. Boston and New York: 
 Houghton Mifflin Company. The Riverside Press, Cambridge, 1888. 
 
 x, 370 pp., VZmo, blue cloth. 
 
 This volume was specially written for the " American Statesmen " series and did not 
 appear in magazine form. It has been frequently reprinted. A large-paper illus- 
 trated edition, limited to five hundred copies, none of which were sold except as 
 part of the complete series, appeared in 1898-1899. The edition contained a new 
 preface by the author, dated at Washington, April, 1898. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 Gouverneur Morris, like his far greater friend and 
 political associate, Alexander Hamilton, had about him 
 that "touch of the purple" which is always so strongly 
 attractive. He was too unstable and erratic to leave a 
 profound mark upon our political developments, but 
 he performed two or three conspicuous feats, he ren- 
 dered several marked services to the country, and he 
 embodied to a peculiar degree both the qualities which 
 made the Federalist party so brilliant and so useful, and 
 those other qualities which finally brought about its 
 downfall. Hamilton and even Jay represented better 
 what was highest in the Federalist party. Gouverneur 
 Morris stood for its weakness as well as for its strength. 
 Able, fearless, and cultivated, deeply devoted to his 
 people, and of much too tough fibre ever to be misled 
 into losing his affection for things American because of 
 American faults and shortcomings, as was and is the 
 case with weaker natures, he was able to render dis- 
 tinguished service to his country. Other American 
 ministers have been greater and more successful diplo- 
 mats than Morris was; but no one has better represented 
 those qualities of generous daring and lofty disinter- 
 estedness which we like to associate with the name 
 American, than did the minister who, alone among the 
 foreign ministers, kept his residence in Paris through 
 the "Terror." He stood for order. He stood for the 
 honest payment of debts. Unlike many of his col- 
 leagues, he was a polished man of the world, whose 
 comments on men and things showed that curious in- 
 
 273 
 
PREFACE 
 
 sight and power of observation which come only when 
 to natural ability there is added special training. But 
 he distrusted the mass of the people, and especially the 
 mass of the people in other sections of the country than 
 his own, who had not the habits of refinement and the 
 ways of looking at life which he and his associates pos- 
 sessed; and thus it happened that, when the Federalists 
 sank into a secessionist faction, the name of Gouverneur 
 Morris was associated with the names of the others who 
 at that time lacked the power, but not the will, to split 
 a great nation into a chaos of feeble and quarrelsome 
 little States. 
 
 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 
 
 Washington, 
 April, 1898. 
 
 274 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. His Youth: Colonial New York 279 
 
 II. The Outbreak of the Revolution: Morris in 
 
 the Provincial Congress 208 
 
 III. Independence: Forming the State Constitution 316 
 
 IV. In the Continental Congress 333 
 
 V. Finances: The Treaty of Peace 350 
 
 VI. The Formation of the National Constitution 360 
 
 VII. First Stay in France 401 
 
 Vm. Life in Paris 422 
 
 IX. Mission to England: Return to Paris . 444 
 
 X, Minister to France 462 
 
 XI. Stay in Europe 407 
 
 XII. Service in the United States Senate . . 511 
 
 XIII. The Northern Disunion Movement Among the 
 
 Federalists 531 
 
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS 
 
CHAPTER I 
 HIS YOUTH: COLONIAL NEW YORK 
 
 When on January 31, 1752, Gouverneur Morris was 
 born in the family manor-house at Morrisania, on the 
 lands where his forefathers had dwelt for three genera- 
 tions, New York colony contained only some eighty 
 thousand inhabitants, of whom twelve thousand were 
 blacks. New York City was a thriving little trading 
 town, whose people in summer suffered much from the 
 mosquitoes that came back with the cows when they 
 were driven home at nightfall for milking; while from 
 among the locusts and water-beeches that lined the 
 pleasant, quiet streets, the tree-frogs sang so shrilly 
 through the long, hot evenings that a man in speaking 
 could hardly make himself heard. 
 
 Gouverneur Morris belonged by birth to that power- 
 ful landed aristocracy whose rule was known by New 
 York alone among all the northern colonies. His great- 
 grandfather, who had served in the Cromwellian armies, 
 came to the seaport at the mouth of the Hudson, while 
 it was still beneath the sway of Holland, and settled 
 outside of Haerlem, the estate being invested with ma- 
 norial privileges by the original grant of the governor. 
 In the next two generations the Morrises had played a 
 prominent part in colonial affairs, both the father and 
 grandfather of Gouverneur having been on the bench, 
 and having also been members of the provincial legis- 
 lature, where they took the popular side, and stood up 
 stoutly for the rights of the Assembly in the wearisome 
 
 279 
 
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS 
 
 and interminable conflicts waged by the latter against 
 the prerogatives of the Crown and the powers of the 
 royal governors. The Morrises were restless, adven- 
 turous men, of erratic temper and strong intellect; and, 
 with far more than his share of the family talent and 
 brilliancy, young Gouverneur also inherited a certain 
 whimsical streak that ran through his character. His 
 mother was one of the Huguenot Gouverneurs, who had 
 been settled in New York since the revocation of the 
 Edict of Nantes; and it was perhaps the French blood 
 in his veins that gave him the alert vivacity and keen 
 sense of humor that distinguished him from most of the 
 great Revolutionary statesmen who were his contempo- 
 raries. 
 
 He was a bright, active boy, fond of shooting and 
 outdoor sports, and was early put to school at the old 
 Huguenot settlement of New Rochelle, where the church 
 service was still sometimes held in French; and he there 
 learned to speak and write this language almost as well 
 as he could English. Thence, after the usual prepara- 
 tory instruction, he went to King's College — now, with 
 altered name and spirit, Columbia — in New York. 
 
 The years of his childhood were stirring ones for the 
 colonies ; for England was then waging the greatest and 
 most successful of her Colonial contests with France 
 and Spain for the possession of eastern North America. 
 Such contests, with their usual savage accompaniments 
 in the way of Indian warfare, always fell with especial 
 weight on New York, whose borderlands were not only 
 claimed, but even held by the French, and within whose 
 boundaries lay the great confederacy of the Six Nations, 
 the most crafty, warlike, and formidable of all the na- 
 tive races, infinitely more to be dreaded than the Al- 
 gonquin tribes with whom the other colonies had to 
 
 280 
 
HIS YOUTH 
 
 deal. Nor was this war any exception to the rule; for 
 battle after battle was fought on our soil, from the day 
 when, unassisted, the purely Colonial troops of New 
 York and New England at Lake George destroyed 
 Baron Dieskau's mixed host of French regulars, Cana- 
 dian militia, and Indian allies, to that still more bloody 
 day when, on the shores of Lake Champlain, Aber- 
 crombie's great army of British and Americans recoiled 
 before the fiery genius of Montcalm. 
 
 When once the war was ended by the complete and 
 final overthrow of the French power, and the definite 
 establishment of English supremacy along the whole 
 Atlantic seaboard, the bickering which was always go- 
 ing on between Great Britain and her American sub- 
 jects, and which was but partially suppressed even when 
 they were forced to join in common efforts to destroy 
 a common foe, broke out far more fiercely than ever. 
 While the colonists were still reaping the aftermath of 
 the contest in the shape of desolating border warfare 
 against those Indian tribes who had joined in the famous 
 conspiracy of Pontiac, the Royal Parliament passed the 
 Stamp Act, and thereby began the struggle that ended 
 in the Revolution. 
 
 England's treatment of her American subjects was 
 thoroughly selfish; but that her conduct toward them 
 was a wonder of tyranny will not now be seriously as- 
 serted; on the contrary, she stood decidedly above the 
 general European standard in such matters, and cer- 
 tainly treated her colonies far better than France and 
 Spain did theirs ; and she herself had undoubted grounds 
 for complaint in, for example, the readiness of the Amer- 
 icans to claim military help in time of danger, together 
 with their frank reluctance to pay for it. It was im- 
 possible that she should be so far in advance of the age 
 
 281 
 
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS 
 
 as to treat her colonists as equals; they themselves were 
 sometimes quite as intolerant in their behavior toward 
 men of a different race, creed, or color. The New Eng- 
 land Puritans lacked only the power, but not the will, 
 to behave almost as badly toward the Pennsylvania 
 Quakers as did the Episcopalian English toward them- 
 selves. Yet granting all this, the fact remains, that in 
 the Revolutionary War the Americans stood toward the 
 British as the Protestant peoples stood toward the Cath- 
 olic powers in the sixteenth century, as the Parliamen- 
 tarians stood toward the Stuarts in the seventeenth, or 
 as the upholders of the American Union stood toward 
 the Confederate slaveholders in the nineteenth; that is, 
 they warred victoriously for the right in a struggle whose 
 outcome vitally affected the welfare of the whole human 
 race. They settled, once for all, that thereafter the 
 people of English stock should spread at will over the 
 world's waste spaces, keeping all their old liberties and 
 winning new ones; and they took the first and longest 
 step in establishing the great principle that thenceforth 
 those Europeans, who by their strength and daring 
 founded new states abroad, should be deemed to have 
 done so for their own profit as freemen, and not for the 
 benefit of their more timid, lazy, or contented brethren 
 who stayed behind. 
 
 The rulers of Great Britain, and to a large extent its 
 people, looked upon the American colonies as existing 
 primarily for the good of the mother country : they put 
 the harshest restrictions on American trade in the 
 interests of British merchants; they discouraged the 
 spread of the Americans westward; and they claimed 
 the right to decide for both parties the proportions in 
 which they should pay their shares of the common bur- 
 dens. The English and Americans were not the sub- 
 
 282 
 
HIS YOUTH 
 
 jects of a common sovereign; for the English were them- 
 selves the sovereigns, the Americans were the subjects. 
 Whether their yoke bore heavily or bore lightly, whether 
 it galled or not, mattered little; it was enough that it 
 was a yoke to warrant a proud, free people in throwing 
 it off. We could not thankfully take as a boon part 
 only of what we felt to be our lawful due. " We do not 
 claim liberty as a privilege, but challenge it as a right," 
 said the men of New York, through their legislature, in 
 1764; and all Americans felt with them. 
 
 Yet, for all this, the feeling of loyalty was strong and 
 hard to overcome throughout the provinces, and espe- 
 cially in New York. The Assembly wrangled with the 
 royal governor; the merchants and shipmasters com- 
 bined to evade the intolerable harshness of the laws of 
 trade that tried to make them customers of England 
 only; the householders bitterly resented the attempts to 
 quarter troops upon them; while the soldiers of the gar- 
 rison were from time to time involved in brawls with the 
 lower ranks of the people, especially the sailors, as the 
 seafaring population was large, and much given to forci- 
 bly releasing men taken by the press-gang for the Brit- 
 ish war-ships; but in spite of everything there was a 
 genuine sentiment of affection and respect for the Brit- 
 ish Crown and kingdom. It is perfectly possible that if 
 British statesmen had shown less crass and brutal stu- 
 pidity, if they had shown even the wise negligence of 
 Walpole, this feeling of loyalty would have been strong 
 enough to keep England and America united until they 
 had learned how to accommodate themselves to the 
 rapidly changing conditions; but the chance was lost 
 when once a prince like George the Third came to the 
 throne. It has been the fashion to represent this king 
 as a well-meaning though dull person, whose good mor- 
 
 283 
 
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS 
 
 als and excellent intentions partially atoned for his mis- 
 takes of judgment; but such a view is curiously false. 
 His private life, it is true, showed the very admirable 
 but commonplace virtues, as well as the appalling in- 
 tellectual littleness, barrenness, and stagnation, of the 
 average British greengrocer; but in his public career, 
 instead of rising to the level of harmless and unimpor- 
 tant mediocrity usually reached by the sovereigns of the 
 House of Hanover, he fairly rivalled the Stuarts in his 
 perfidy, wrong-headedness, political debauchery, and at- 
 tempts to destroy free government, and to replace it by 
 a system of personal despotism. It needed all the suc- 
 cessive blunders both of himself and of his Tory minis- 
 ters to reduce the loyal party in New York to a minor- 
 ity, by driving the moderate men into the patriotic or 
 American camp; and even then the loyalist minority 
 remained large enough to be a formidable power, and 
 to plunge the embryonic State into a ferocious civil 
 war, carried on, as in the Carolinas and Georgia, with 
 even more bitterness than the contest against the Brit- 
 ish. 
 
 The nature of this loyalist party and the strength of 
 the conflicting elements can only be understood after a 
 glance at the many nationalities that in New York were 
 being blended into one. The descendants of the old 
 Dutch inhabitants were still more numerous than those 
 of any other one race, while the French Huguenots, who, 
 being of the same Calvinistic faith, were closely mixed 
 with them, and had been in the land nearly as long, 
 were also plentiful; the Scotch and Scotch or Anglo 
 Irish, mostly Presbyterians, came next in point of num- 
 bers; the English, both of Old and New England, next; 
 there were large bodies of Germans ; and there were also 
 settlements of Gaelic Highlanders, and some Welsh, 
 
 284 
 
HIS YOUTH 
 
 Scandinavians, etc. Just prior to the Revolution there 
 were in New York City two Episcopalian churches, 
 three Dutch Reformed, three Presbyterian (Scotch and 
 Irish), one French, two German (one Lutheran and one 
 Calvinistic, allied to the Dutch Reformed); as well as 
 places of worship for the then insignificant religious 
 bodies of the Methodists, Baptists (largely Welsh), 
 Moravians (German), Quakers, and Jews. There was 
 no Roman Catholic church until after the Revolution; 
 in fact before that date there were hardly any Roman 
 Catholics in the colonies, except in Maryland and 
 Pennsylvania, and in New York they did not acquire 
 any strength until after the War of 1812. 
 
 This mixture of races is very clearly shown by the 
 ancestry of the half-dozen great men brought forth 
 by New York during the Revolution. Of these, one, 
 Alexander Hamilton, stands in the very first class of 
 American statesmen; two more, John Jay and Gouver- 
 neur Morris, come close behind him; the others, Philip 
 Schuyler, Robert Livingston, and George Clinton, were 
 of lesser, but still of more than merely local, note. They 
 were all born and bred on this side of the Atlantic. Ham- 
 ilton's father was of Scotch, and his mother of French 
 Huguenot, descent; Morris came on one side of English, 
 and on the other of French Huguenot, stock; Jay, of 
 French Huguenot blood, had a mother who was Dutch; 
 Schuyler was purely Dutch; Livingston was Scotch on 
 his father's, and Dutch on his mother's, side; the Clin- 
 tons were of Anglo-Irish origin, but married into the old 
 Dutch families. In the same way, it was Herkomer, of 
 German parentage, who led the New York levies, and 
 fell at their head in the bloody fight against the Tories 
 and Indians at Oriskany; it was the Irishman Mont- 
 gomery who died leading the New York troops against 
 
 285 
 
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS 
 
 Quebec; while yet another of the few generals allotted 
 to New York by the Continental Congress was Mac- 
 Dougall, of Gaelic Scotch descent. The colony was al- 
 ready developing an ethnic type of its own, quite dis- 
 tinct from that of England. No American State of the 
 present day, not even Wisconsin or Minnesota, shows 
 so many and important "foreign" or non-English ele- 
 ments as New York, and for that matter Pennsylvania 
 and Delaware, did a century or so ago. In fact, in New 
 York the English element in the blood has grown greatly 
 during the past century, owing to the enormous New 
 England immigration that took place during its first 
 half; and the only important addition to the race con- 
 glomerate has been made by the Celtic Irish. The New 
 England element in New York in 1775 was small and 
 unimportant; on Long Island, where it was largest, it 
 was mainly Tory or neutral; in the city itself, however, 
 it was aggressively patriotic. 
 
 Recent English writers, and some of our own as well, 
 have foretold woe to our nation, because the blood of the 
 Cavalier and the Roundhead is being diluted with that 
 of "German boors and Irish cotters." The alarm is 
 needless. As a matter of fact the majority of the people 
 of the middle colonies at the time of the Revolution were 
 the descendants of Dutch and German boors and Scotch 
 and Irish cotters ; and in a less degree the same was true 
 of Georgia and the Carolinas. Even in New England, 
 where the English stock was purest, there was plenty of 
 other admixture, and two of her most distinguished 
 Revolutionary families bore, one the Huguenot name of 
 Bowdoin, and the other the Irish name of Sullivan. In- 
 deed, from the very outset, from the days of Cromwell, 
 there has been a large Irish admixture in New England. 
 When our people began their existence as a nation, they 
 
 286 
 
HIS YOUTH 
 
 already differed in blood from their ancestral relatives 
 across the Atlantic much as the latter did from their 
 forebears beyond the German Ocean ; and on the whole, 
 the immigration since has not materially changed the 
 race strains in our nationality; a century back we were 
 even less homogeneous than we are now. It is no doubt 
 true that we are in the main an offshoot of the English 
 stem; and cousins to our kinsfolk of Britain we perhaps 
 may be; but brothers we certainly are not. 
 
 But the process of assimilating, or as we should now 
 say, of Americanizing, all foreign and non-English ele- 
 ments was going on almost as rapidly a hundred years 
 ago as it is at present. A young Dutchman or Hugue- 
 not felt it necessary, then, to learn English, precisely as 
 a young Scandinavian or German does now; and the 
 churches of the former at the end of the last century 
 were obliged to adopt English as the language for their 
 ritual exactly as the churches of the latter do at the end 
 of this. The most stirring, energetic, and progressive 
 life of the colony was English ; and all the young fellows 
 of push and ambition gradually adopted this as their 
 native language, and then refused to belong to congre- 
 gations where the service was carried on in a less familiar 
 speech. Accordingly the Dutch Reformed churches 
 dwindled steadily, while the Episcopalian and Presby- 
 terian swelled in the same ratio, until in 1764 the former 
 gained a new and lasting lease of life by reluctantly 
 adopting the prevailing tongue; though Dutch was also 
 occasionally used until forty years later. 
 
 In fact, during the century that elapsed between the 
 final British conquest of the colony and the Revolution, 
 the New Yorkers — Dutch, French, German, Irish, and 
 English — had become in the main welded into one peo- 
 ple; they felt alike toward outsiders, having chronic 
 
 287 
 
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS 
 
 quarrels with the New England States as well as with 
 Great Britain, and showing, indeed, but little more jeal- 
 ous hostility toward the latter than they did toward 
 Connecticut and New Hampshire. 
 
 The religious differences no longer corresponded to 
 the differences of language. Half of the adherents of 
 the Episcopalian Church were of Dutch or Huguenot 
 blood; the leading ministers of the Dutch Church were 
 of Scotch parentage; and the Presbyterians included 
 some of every race. The colonists were all growing to 
 call themselves Englishmen ; when Mayor Cruger, and a 
 board of aldermen with names equally Dutch, signed the 
 non-importation agreement, they prefaced it by stating 
 that they claimed "their rights as Englishmen." But 
 though there were no rivalries of race, there were many 
 and bitter of class and religion, the different Protestant 
 sects hating one another with a virulence much sur- 
 passing that with which they now regard even Cath- 
 olics. 
 
 The colony was in government an aristocratic repub- 
 lic, its constitution modelled on that of England and 
 similar to it; the power lay in the hands of certain old 
 and wealthy families, Dutch and English, and there was 
 a limited freehold suffrage. The great landed families, 
 the Livingstons, Van Rensselaers, Schuylers, Van Cort- 
 landts, Phillipses, Morrises, with their huge manorial 
 estates, their riches, their absolute social pre-eminence 
 and their unquestioned political headship, formed a 
 proud, polished, and powerful aristocracy, deep-rooted 
 in the soil; for over a century their sway was unbroken, 
 save by contests between themselves or with the royal 
 governor, and they furnished the colony with military, 
 political, and social leaders for generation after genera- 
 tion. They owned numerous black slaves, and lived in 
 
 288 
 
HIS YOUTH 
 
 state and comfort on their broad acres, tenant-farmed, 
 in the great, roomy manor-houses, with wainscoted walls 
 and huge fireplaces, and round about the quaint old 
 gardens, prim and formal with their box hedges and pre- 
 cise flower-beds. They answered closely to the Whig 
 lords of England, and indeed were often connected with 
 the ruling orders abroad by blood or marriage; as an ex- 
 ample, Staats Long Morris, Gouverneur's elder brother, 
 who remained a royalist, and rose to be a major-general 
 in the British army, married the Duchess of Gordon. 
 Some of the manors were so large that they sent repre- 
 sentatives to the Albany legislature, to sit alongside of 
 those from the towns and counties. 
 
 Next in importance to the great manorial lords came 
 the rich merchants of New York; many families, like the 
 Livingstons, the most prominent of all, had representa- 
 tives in both classes. The merchants were somewhat of 
 the type of Frobisher, Hawkins, Klaesoon, and other old 
 English and Dutch sea-worthies, who were equally keen 
 as fighters and traders. They were shrewd, daring, and 
 prosperous; they were often their own shipmasters, and 
 during the incessant wars against the French and Span- 
 iards went into privateering ventures with even more 
 zest and spirit than into peaceful trading. Next came 
 the smaller landed proprietors, who also possessed con- 
 siderable local influence; such was the family of the 
 Clintons. The law, too, was beginning to take high 
 rank as an honorable and influential profession. 
 
 Most of the gentry were Episcopalians, theirs being 
 practically the state church, and very influential and 
 wealthy; some belonged to the Calvinistic bodies — no- 
 tably the Livingstons, who were in large part Presby- 
 terians, while certain of their number were prominent 
 members of the Dutch congregations. It was from 
 
 289 
 
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS 
 
 among the gentry that the little group of New York 
 revolutionary leaders came; men of singular purity, 
 courage, and ability, who, if they could not quite rank 
 with the brilliant Virginians of that date, nevertheless 
 stood close behind, alongside of the Massachusetts men 
 and ahead of those from any other colony; that, too, it 
 must be kept in mind, at a time when New York was in- 
 ferior in wealth and population to Massachusetts, Penn- 
 sylvania, or Virginia, and little, if at all, in advance of 
 Maryland or Connecticut. The great families also fur- 
 nished the leaders of the loyalists during the war; such 
 were the De Lanceys, whose influence around the mouth 
 of the Hudson was second to that of none others; and 
 the Johnsons, who, in mansions that were also castles, 
 held half-feudal, half-barbaric sway over the valley of 
 the upper Mohawk, where they were absolute rulers, 
 ready and willing to wage war on their own account, re- 
 lying on their numerous kinsmen, their armed negro 
 slaves, their trained bands of Gaelic retainers, and their 
 hosts of savage allies, drawn from among the dreaded 
 Iroquois. 
 
 The bulk of the people were small farmers in the coun- 
 try, tradesmen and mechanics in the towns. They were 
 for the most part members of some of the Calvinistic 
 churches, the great majority of the whole population 
 belonging to the Presbyterian and Dutch Reformed con- 
 gregations. The farmers were thrifty, set in their ways, 
 and obstinate; the townsmen thrifty also, but restless 
 and turbulent. Both farmers and townsmen were thor- 
 oughly independent and self-respecting, and were grad- 
 ually getting more and more political power. They had 
 always stood tenaciously by their rights, from the days 
 of the early Stuart governors, who had complained 
 loudly of the "Dutch Republicans." But they were 
 
 290 
 
HIS YOUTH 
 
 narrow, jealous of each other, as well as of outsiders, and 
 slow to act together. 
 
 The political struggles were very bitter. The great 
 families, under whose banners they were carried on, 
 though all intermarried, were divided by keen rivalries 
 into opposing camps. Yet they joined in dreading too 
 great an extension of democracy; and in return were sus- 
 pected by the masses, who grumblingly followed their 
 lead, of hostility to the popular cause. The Episco- 
 palians, though greatly in the minority, possessed most 
 power, and harassed in every way they dared the dis- 
 senting sects, especially the Presbyterians — for the 
 Dutch Reformed and Huguenot churches had certain 
 rights guaranteed them by treaty. The Episcopalian 
 clergy were royalists to a man, and it was in their con- 
 gregations that the main strength of the Tories lay, 
 although these also contained many who became the 
 stanchest of patriots. King's College was controlled by 
 trustees of this faith. They were busy trying to turn it 
 into a diminutive imitation of Oxford, and did their best 
 to make it, in its own small way, almost as much a per- 
 verse miracle of backward and invariable wrong-headed- 
 ness as was its great model. Its president, when the 
 Revolution broke out, was a real old wine-bibbing Tory 
 parson, devoted to every worn-out theory that incul- 
 cated humble obedience to church and crown; and he 
 was most summarily expelled by the mob. 
 
 Some important political consequences arose from the 
 fact that the mass of the people belonged to some one or 
 other of the branches of the Calvinistic faith — of all 
 faiths the most republican in its tendencies. They were 
 strongly inclined to put their republican principles into 
 practice as well in State as in Church; they tended 
 toward hostility to the Crown, and were strenuous in 
 
 291 
 
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS 
 
 their opposition to the extension of the Episcopal power, 
 always threatened by some English statesmen ; their cry 
 was against "the King and the Bishops." It is worth 
 noting that the Episcopalian churches were shut up 
 when the Revolution broke out, and were reopened 
 when the British troops occupied the city. The Calvin- 
 istic churches, on the contrary, which sided with the 
 revolutionists, were shut when the British came into 
 New York, were plundered by the troops, and were not 
 reopened until after the evacuation. 
 
 Thus three parties developed, although the third, des- 
 tined to overwhelm the others, had not yet come to the 
 front. The first consisted of the royalists, or monarch- 
 ists, the men who believed that power came from above, 
 from the king and the bishops, and who were aristocratic 
 in their sympathies; who were Americans only secon- 
 darily, and who stood by their order against their coun- 
 try. This party contained many of the great manorial 
 families and also of the merchants; and in certain places, 
 as in Staten Island, the east end of Long Island, the up- 
 per valley of the Mohawk, and part of Westchester 
 County, the influence of the upper classes combined 
 with the jealousy and ignorance of large sections of the 
 lower to give it a clear majority of the whole population. 
 The second party was headed by the great families of 
 Whig or liberal sympathies, who, when the split came, 
 stood by their country, although only very moderate re- 
 publicans ; and it held also in its ranks the mass of mod- 
 erate men, who wished freedom, were resolute in defense 
 of their rights, and had republican leanings, but who 
 also appreciated the good in the system under which 
 they were living. Finally came the extremists, the men 
 of strong republican tendencies, whose delight it was to 
 toast Pym, Hampden, and the regicides. These were 
 
 292 
 
HIS YOUTH 
 
 led by the agitators in the towns, and were energetic and 
 active, but were unable to effect anything until the blun- 
 ders of the British ministers threw the moderate men 
 over to their side. They furnished none of the greater 
 revolutionary leaders in New York, though the Clintons 
 came near the line that divided them from the second 
 party. 
 
 The last political contest carried on under the Crown 
 occurred in 1768, the year in which Morris graduated 
 from college, when the last Colonial legislature was 
 elected. It reminds us of our own days when we read 
 of the fears entertained of the solid German vote, and of 
 the hostility to the Irish, who were hated and sneered at 
 as "beggars" by the English party and the rich Episco- 
 palians. The Irish of those days, however, were Pres- 
 byterians, and in blood more English than Gaelic. St. 
 Patrick's Day was celebrated then as now, by public 
 processions, as well as otherwise; but when, for instance, 
 on March 17, 1766, the Irish residents of New York cele- 
 brated the day by a dinner, they gave certain toasts 
 that would sound strangely in the ears of Milesian patri- 
 ots of the present time, for they included "The Protes- 
 tant Interest," and "King William, of glorious, pious, 
 and immortal memory." 
 
 The royalist or conservative side in this contest in 
 1768 was led by the De Lanceys, their main support 
 being drawn from among the Episcopalians, and most of 
 the larger merchants helping them. The Whigs, includ- 
 ing those with republican leanings, followed the Living- 
 stons, and were drawn mainly from the Presbyterian 
 and other Calvinistic congregations. The moderate 
 men on this occasion went with the De Lanceys, and 
 gave them the victory. In consequence the Colonial 
 legislature was conservative and loyal in tone, and anti- 
 
 293 
 
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS 
 
 republican, although not ultra -Tory, as a whole; and 
 thus when the Revolutionary outbreak began it went 
 much slower than was satisfactory to the patriot party, 
 and its actions were finally set aside by the people. 
 
 When Morris graduated from college, as mentioned 
 above, he was not yet seventeen years old. His college 
 career was like that of any other bright, quick boy, with- 
 out overmuch industry or a passion for learning. For 
 mathematics he possessed a genuine taste; he was par- 
 ticularly fond of Shakespeare; and even thus early he 
 showed great skill in discussion and much power of argu- 
 ment. He made the oration, or graduating address, of 
 his class, choosing for the subject "Wit and Beauty"; 
 it was by no means a noteworthy effort, and was couched 
 in the dreadful Johnsonian English of the period. A 
 little later, when he took his master's degree, he again 
 delivered an oration — this time on "Love." In point of 
 style this second speech was as bad as the first, disfigured 
 by cumbrous Latinisms and a hopeless use of the super- 
 lative; but there were one or two good ideas in it. 
 
 As soon as he graduated, he set to work to study law, 
 deciding on this profession at once as being best suited 
 for an active, hopeful, ambitious young man of his social 
 standing and small fortune, who was perfectly self-con- 
 fident and conscious of his own powers. He soon be- 
 came interested in his studies, and followed them with 
 great patience, working hard and mastering both prin- 
 ciples and details with ease. He was licensed to prac- 
 tise as an attorney in 1771, just three years after another 
 young man, destined to stand as his equal in the list of 
 New York's four or five noted statesmen, John Jay, had 
 likewise been admitted to the bar; and among the very 
 few cases in which Morris was engaged of which the rec- 
 ord has been kept is one concerning a contested election, 
 
 294 
 
HIS YOUTH 
 
 in which he was pitted against Jay, and bore himself 
 well. 
 
 Before this, and while not yet of age, he had already 
 begun to play a part in public affairs. The colony had 
 been run in debt during the French and Indian wars, 
 and a bill was brought forward in the New York Assem- 
 bly to provide for this by raising money through the 
 issue of interest-bearing bills of credit. The people, in- 
 dividually, were largely in debt, and hailed the proposal 
 with much satisfaction, on the theory that it would 
 "make money more plenty"; our Revolutionary fore- 
 fathers being unfortunately not much wiser or more 
 honest in their ways of looking at the public finances 
 than we ourselves, in spite of our state repudiators, na- 
 tional greenbackers, and dishonest silver men. 
 
 Morris attacked the bill very forcibly, and with good 
 effect, opposing any issue of paper money, which could 
 bring no absolute relief, but merely a worse catastrophe 
 of bankruptcy in the end; he pointed out that it was 
 nothing but a mischievous pretense for putting off the 
 date of a payment that would have to be met anyhow, 
 and that ought rather to be met at once with honest 
 money gathered from the resources of the province. He 
 showed the bad effects such a system of artificial credit 
 would have on private individuals, the farmers and 
 tradesmen, by encouraging them to speculate and go 
 deeper into debt; and he criticised unsparingly the atti- 
 tude of the majority of his fellow citizens in wishing such 
 a measure of relief, not only for their short-sighted folly, 
 but also for their criminal and selfish dishonesty in try- 
 ing to procure a temporary benefit for themselves at the 
 lasting expense of the community; finally he strongly ad- 
 vised them to bear with patience small evils in the pres- 
 ent rather than to remedy them by inflicting infinitely 
 
 295 
 
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS 
 
 greater ones on themselves and their descendants in the 
 future. 
 
 At the law he did very well, having the advantages of 
 his family name, and of his own fine personal appear- 
 ance. He was utterly devoid of embarrassment, and 
 his perfect self-assurance and freedom from any timidity 
 or sense of inferiority left his manner without the least 
 tinge of awkwardness, and gave clear ground for his 
 talents and ambition to make their mark. 
 
 However, hard-working and devoted to his profession 
 though he was, he had the true family restlessness and 
 craving for excitement, and soon after he was admitted 
 to the bar he began to long for foreign travel, as was 
 natural enough in a young provincial gentleman of his 
 breeding and education. In a letter to an old friend 
 (William Smith, a man of learning, the historian of the 
 colony, and afterward its chief justice), in whose office 
 he had studied law, he asks advice in the matter, and 
 gives as his reasons for wishing to make the trip the 
 desire "to form my manners and address by the example 
 of the truly polite, to rub off in the gay circle a few of 
 the many barbarisms which characterize a provincial 
 education, and to curb the vain self-sufficiency which 
 arises from comparing ourselves with companions who 
 are inferior to us." He then anticipates the objections 
 that may be made on the score of the temptations to 
 which he will be exposed by saying: ''If it be allowed 
 that I have a taste for pleasure, it may naturally follow 
 that I shall avoid those low pleasures which abound on 
 this as well as on the other side of the Atlantic. As for 
 these poignant joys which are the lot of the affluent, 
 like Tantalus I may grasp at them, but they will cer- 
 tainly be out of my reach." In this last sentence he 
 touches on his narrow means; and it was on this point 
 
 296 
 
HIS YOUTH 
 
 that his old preceptor harped in making his reply, cun- 
 ningly instilling into his mind the danger of neglecting 
 his business, and bringing up the appalling example of 
 an "Uncle Robin," who, having made three pleasure- 
 trips to England, "began to figure with thirty thousand 
 pounds, and did not leave five thousand"; going on: 
 "What! 'Virtus post nummos? Curse on inglorious 
 wealth?' Spare your indignation. I, too, detest the 
 ignorant miser; but both virtue and ambition abhor 
 poverty, or they are mad. Rather imitate your grand- 
 father (who had stayed in America and prospered) than 
 your uncle." 
 
 The advice may have had its effect; at any rate 
 Morris stayed at home, and, with an occasional trip to 
 Philadelphia, got all he could out of the society of New 
 York, which, little provincial seaport though it was, 
 was yet a gay place, gayer than any other American 
 city save Charleston, the society consisting of the higher 
 Crown officials, the rich merchants, and the great landed 
 proprietors. Into this society Morris, a handsome, high- 
 bred young fellow, of easy manners and far from puri- 
 tanical morals, plunged with a will, his caustic wit and 
 rather brusque self-assertion making him both admired 
 and feared. He enjoyed it all to the full, and in his 
 bright, chatty letters to his friends pictures himself as 
 working hard, but gay enough also: 'Up all night — 
 balls, concerts, assemblies— all of us mad in the pur- 
 suit of pleasure." 
 
 But the Revolution was at hand, and both pleasure 
 and office work had to give way to something more im- 
 portant. 
 
 297 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 THE OUTBREAK OF THE REVOLUTION: MORRIS IN 
 THE PROVINCIAL CONGRESS 
 
 During the years immediately preceding the out- 
 break of the Revolution, almost all people were utterly 
 in the dark as to what their future conduct should be. 
 No responsible leader thought seriously of separation 
 from the mother country, and the bulk of the popula- 
 tion were still further from supposing such an event to 
 be possible. Indeed it must be remembered that all 
 through the Revolutionary War not only was there a 
 minority actively favorable to the royal cause, but there 
 was also a minority — so large that, added to the pre- 
 ceding it has been doubted whether it was not a ma- 
 jority — that was but lukewarm in its devotion to the 
 American side, and was kept even moderately patriotic 
 almost as much by the excesses of the British troops 
 and blunders of the British generals and ministers as 
 by the valor of our own soldiers, or the skill of our own 
 statesmen. We can now see clearly that the right of 
 the matter was with the patriotic party; and it was a 
 great thing for the whole English-speaking race that 
 that section of it which was destined to be the most 
 numerous and powerful should not be cramped and fet- 
 tered by the peculiarly galling shackles of provincial 
 dependency; but all this was not by any means so clear 
 then as now, and some of our best citizens thought 
 themselves in honor bound to take the opposite side — 
 though of necessity those among our most high-minded 
 
 298 
 
OUTBREAK OF THE REVOLUTION 
 
 men, who were also far-sighted enough to see the true 
 nature of the struggle, went with the patriots. 
 
 That the loyalists of 1776 were wrong is beyond ques- 
 tion; but it is equally beyond question that they had 
 greater grounds for believing themselves right than had 
 the men who tried to break up the Union three-quarters 
 of a century later. That these latter had the most 
 hearty faith in the justice of their cause need not be 
 doubted; and he is but a poor American whose veins 
 do not thrill with pride as he reads of the deeds of des- 
 perate prowess done by the Confederate armies; but it 
 is most unfair to brand the 'Tory" of 1776 with a 
 shame no longer felt to pertain to the "rebel" of 1860. 
 Still, there is no doubt, not only that the patriots were 
 right, but also that they were as a whole superior to the 
 Tories; they were the men with a high ideal of freedom, 
 too fond of liberty, and too self-respecting, to submit 
 to foreign rule; they included the mass of hard-working, 
 orderly, and yet high-spirited yeomen and freeholders. 
 The Tories included those of the gentry who were de- 
 voted to aristocratic principles ; the large class of timid 
 and prosperous people (like the Pennsylvania Quakers) ; 
 the many who feared above all things disorder; also the 
 very lowest sections of the community, the lazy, thrift- 
 less, and vicious, who hated their progressive neighbors, 
 as in the Carolinas; and finally the men who were really 
 principled in favor of a kingly government. 
 
 Morris was at first no more sure of his soundings 
 than were the rest of his companions. He was a gentle- 
 man of old family, and belonged to the ruling Episco- 
 palian Church. He was no friend to tyranny, and he 
 was a thorough American, but he had little faith in ex- 
 treme democracy. The Revolution had two sides; in 
 the northern Atlantic States at least it was almost as 
 
 299 
 
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS 
 
 much an uprising of democracy against aristocracy as 
 it was a contest between America and England; and 
 the patriotic Americans, who nevertheless distrusted 
 ultrademocratic ideas, suffered many misgivings when 
 they let their love for their country overcome their 
 pride of caste. The "Sons of Liberty," a semisecret 
 society originating among the merchants, and very 
 powerful in bringing discontent to a head, now showed 
 signs of degenerating into a mob; and for mobs Morris, 
 like other clear-headed men, felt the most profound dis- 
 like and contempt. 
 
 Throughout 1774 he took little part in the various 
 commotions, which kept getting more and more vio- 
 lent. He was angered by the English encroachments, 
 and yet was by no means pleased with the measures 
 taken to repel them. The gentry, and the moderate 
 men generally, were at their wits' ends in trying to lead 
 the rest of the people, and were being pushed on farther 
 and farther all the time; the leadership, even of the 
 Revolutionary party, still rested in their hands; but 
 it grew continually less absolute. Said Morris: "The 
 spirit of the English Constitution has yet a little influ- 
 ence left, and but a little. The remains of it, however, 
 will give the wealthy people a superiority this time; 
 but, would they secure it, they must banish all school- 
 masters and confine all knowledge to themselves. . . . 
 The gentry begin to fear this. Their committee will 
 be appointed; they will deceive the people, and again 
 forfeit a share of their confidence. And if these in- 
 stances of what with one side is policy, with the 
 other perfidy, shall continue to increase and become 
 more frequent, farewell, aristocracy. I see, and see it 
 with fear and trembling, that if the dispute with Brit- 
 ain continues, we shall be under the worst of all pos- 
 
 300 
 
OUTBREAK OF THE REVOLUTION 
 
 sible dominions; we shall be under the dominion of a 
 riotous mob. It is the interest of all men, therefore, to 
 seek for reunion with the parent state." He then goes 
 on to discuss the terms which will make this reunion 
 possible, and evidently draws ideas from sources as di- 
 verse as Rousseau and Pitt, stating, as preliminaries, 
 that when men come together in society, there must be 
 an implied contract that "a part of their freedom shall 
 be given up for the security of the remainder. But what 
 part? The answer is plain. The least possible, con- 
 sidering the circumstances of the society, which con- 
 stitute what may be called its political necessity"; and 
 again, "In every society the members have a right to 
 the utmost liberty that can be enjoyed consistent with 
 the general safety"; while he proposes the rather wild 
 remedy of divorcing the taxing and the governing pow- 
 ers, giving America the right to lay her own imposts, 
 and regulate her internal police, and reserving to Great 
 Britain that to regulate the trade for the entire empire. 
 
 Naturally there was no hope of any compromise of 
 this sort. The British ministry grew more imperious, 
 and the colonies more defiant. At last the clash came, 
 and then Morris's thorough Americanism and inborn 
 love of freedom and impatience of tyranny overcame 
 any lingering class jealousy, and he cast in his lot with 
 his countrymen. Once in, he was not of the stuff to 
 waver or look back; but like most other Americans, and 
 like almost all New Yorkers, he could not for some little 
 time realize how hopeless it was to try to close the 
 breach with Great Britain. Hostilities had gone on for 
 quite a while before even Washington could bring him- 
 self to believe that a lasting separation was inevitable. 
 
 The Assembly, elected, as shown in the previous chap- 
 ter, at a moment of reaction, was royalist in tone. It 
 
 301 
 
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS 
 
 contained several stanch patriots, but the majority, al- 
 though unwilling to back up the British ministers in all 
 their doings, were still more hostile to the growing body 
 of republican revolutionists. They gradually grew 
 wholly out of sympathy with the people; until the latter 
 at last gave up all attempts to act through their ordi- 
 nary representatives, and set about electing delegates 
 who should prove more faithful. Thereupon, in April, 
 1775, the last colonial legislature adjourned for all time, 
 and was replaced by successive bodies more in touch 
 with the general sentiment of New York; that is, by 
 various committees, by a convention to elect delegates 
 to the Continental Congress and then by the Provin- 
 cial Congress. The lists of names in these bodies show 
 not only how many leading men certain families con- 
 tributed, but also how mixed the lineage of such fami- 
 lies was; for among the numerous Jays, Livingstons, 
 Ludlows, Van Cortlandts, Roosevelts, Beekmans, and 
 others of Dutch, English, and Huguenot ancestry, ap- 
 pear names as distinctly German, Gaelic-Scotch, and 
 Irish, like Hoffman, Mulligan, MacDougall, Connor.* 
 
 * The habit of constantly importing indentured Irish servants, as well as German 
 laborers, under contract, prevailed throughout the colonies; and the number of 
 men thus imported was quite sufficient to form a considerable element in the popu- 
 lation, and to add a new, although perhaps not very valuable, strain to our already 
 mixed blood. In taking up at random the file of the New York Gazette for 1766, 
 we find among the advertisements many offering rewards for runaway servants; 
 such as "three pounds for the runaway servant Conner O'Rourke," "ten pounds 
 for the runaway Irish servant, Philip Maginnis," " five pounds apiece for certain 
 runaway German miners — Bruderlein, Baum, Ostmann, etc. — imported under con- 
 tract"; all this mixed in with advertisements of rewards of about the same money 
 value for "the mulatto man named Tom," or the "negroes Nero and Pompey." 
 Still, in speaking of the Revolutionary armies, the word "Irish" must almost always 
 be understood as meaning Presbyterian Irish; the Catholic Irish had but little hand 
 in the war, and that little was limited to furnishing soldiers to some of the British 
 regiments. The Presbyterian Irish, however, in the Revolutionary armies, played 
 a part as manful and valiant as, and even more important than, that taken by the 
 Catholic Irish soldiers who served so bravely during the great contest between the 
 North and South. The few free Catholic Irish already in America in 1776 were for 
 the most part heartily loyal; but they were not numerous enough to be of the least 
 consequence. 
 
 302 
 
OUTBREAK OF THE REVOLUTION 
 
 To the Provincial Congress, from thenceforth on the 
 regular governmental body of the colony, eighty-one 
 delegates were elected, including Gouverneur Morris 
 from the county of Westchester, and seventy were pres- 
 ent at the first meeting, which took place on May 22d 
 at New York. The voting in the Congress was done 
 by counties, each being allotted a certain number of 
 votes roughly approximating to its population. 
 
 Lexington had been fought, and the war had already 
 begun in Massachusetts; but in New York, though it 
 was ablaze with sympathy for the insurgent New Eng- 
 enders, the royal authority was still nominally unques- 
 tioned, and there had been no collision with the British 
 troops. Few, if any, of the people of the colony as yet 
 aimed at more than a redress of their grievances and 
 the restoration of their rights and liberties; they had 
 still no idea of cutting loose from Great Britain. Even 
 such an avowedly popular and revolutionary body as 
 the Provincial Congress contained some few out-and- 
 out Tories and very many representatives of that timid, 
 wavering class which always halts midway in any course 
 of action, and is ever prone to adopt half-measures — a 
 class which in any crisis works quite as much harm as 
 the actively vicious, and is almost as much hated and 
 even more despised by the energetic men of strong con- 
 victions. The timid good are never an element of 
 strength in a community; but they have always been 
 well represented in New York. During the Revolu- 
 tionary War, it is not probable that much more than 
 half of her people were ever in really hearty and active 
 sympathy with the patriots. 
 
 Morris at once took a prominent place in the Con- 
 gress, and he showed the national bent of his mind when 
 he seconded a resolution to the effect that implicit obe- 
 
 303 
 
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS 
 
 dience ought to be rendered to the Continental Con- 
 gress in all matters pertaining to the general regulation 
 of the associated colonies. The Assembly, however, was 
 by no means certain how far it would be well to go ; and 
 the majority declined either to approve or disapprove 
 of the proceedings of the late Continental Congress. 
 They agreed to subscribe to the association, and recom- 
 mended the same course to their constituents, but added 
 that they did not believe the latter should be forced to 
 do so. 
 
 Still, with all their doubting and faint-heartedness, 
 they did set about preparing for resistance, and for at 
 least the possibility of concerted action with the other 
 colonies. The first step, of course, was to provide for 
 raising funds; this was considered by a committee of 
 which Morris was a member, and he prepared and drew 
 up their report. In the state of public feeling, which 
 was nearly a unit against "taxation without represen- 
 tation" abroad, but was the reverse of unanimous as to 
 submitting even to taxation with representation at 
 home, it was impossible to raise money by the ordinary 
 method; indeed, though the mass of active patriots 
 were willing to sacrifice much, perhaps all, for the cause, 
 yet there were quite as many citizens whose patriotism 
 was lukewarm enough already, and could not stand any 
 additional chilling. Such people are always willing to 
 face what may be called a staved-off sacrifice, however; 
 and promises to pay in the future what they can, but 
 will not pay in the present, come under this head. Be- 
 sides, there would have been other difficulties in the 
 way, and in fact it was impossible to raise the amount 
 needed by direct taxation. Accordingly Morris, in his 
 report on behalf of the committee, recommended an 
 issue of paper money, and advised that this should not 
 
 304 
 
OUTBREAK OF THE REVOLUTION 
 
 be done by the colony itself, but that the Continental 
 Congress should strike the whole sum needed, and ap- 
 portion the several shares to the different colonies, each 
 of them being bound to discharge its own particular 
 part, and all together to be liable for whatever any par- 
 ticular colony was unable to pay. This plan secured a 
 wide credit and circulation to the currency, and, what 
 was equally desirable, created throughout the colonies 
 a common interest and common responsibility on a most 
 important point, and greatly strengthened the bonds of 
 their union. Morris even thus early showed the breadth 
 of his far-seeing patriotism; he was emphatically an 
 American first, a New Yorker next; the whole tone of 
 his mind was thoroughly national. He took the chief 
 part in urging the adoption of the report, and made a 
 most telling speech in its favor before the Assembly, a 
 mixed audience of the prominent men of the colony 
 being also present. The report was adopted and for- 
 warded to the Continental Congress; Morris was felt 
 on all sides to have already taken his place among the 
 leaders, and from thenceforth he was placed on almost 
 every important committee of the Provincial Congress. 
 This body kept on its course, corresponding with the 
 other colonies, exchanging thinly veiled threats with 
 the Johnsons, the powerful Tory overlords of the upper 
 Mohawk, and preparing rather feebly for defense, being 
 hampered by a total lack of funds or credit until the 
 Continental currency was coined. But they especially 
 busied themselves with a plan of reconciliation with 
 England; and in fact were so very cautious and mod- 
 erate as to be reproached by their chosen agent in Eng- 
 land, Edmund Burke, for their "scrupulous timidity." 
 The Congress, by the way, showed some symptoms of an 
 advance in toleration, at least so far as the Protestant 
 
 305 
 
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS 
 
 sects went; for it was opened and closed by ministers of 
 the Episcopalian, Dutch Reformed, Presbyterian, Bap- 
 tist, and other sects, each in turn; but, as will shortly 
 be seen, the feeling against Catholics was quite as nar- 
 row-minded and intense as ever. This was natural 
 enough in colonial days, when Protestantism and na- 
 tional patriotism were almost interchangeable terms; 
 for the hereditary and embittered foes of the Americans, 
 the French and Spaniards, were all Catholics, and even 
 many of the Indians were of the same faith; and un- 
 doubtedly the wonderful increase in the spirit of toler- 
 ance shown after the Revolution was due in part to the 
 change of the Catholic French into our allies, and of 
 the Protestant English into our most active foes. It 
 must be remembered, however, that the Catholic gen- 
 try of Maryland played the same part in the Revolu- 
 tion that their Protestant neighbors did. One of the 
 famous Carroll family was among the signers of the 
 Declaration of Independence; and, on the other hand, 
 one of the Cliftons was a noted loyalist leader. 
 
 Morris took a prominent part, both in and out of 
 committee, in trying to shape the plan of reconciliation, 
 although utterly disapproving of many of the ways in 
 which the subject was handled; for he had all the con- 
 tempt natural to most young men of brains, decision, 
 and fiery temper for his timid, short-sighted, and prolix 
 colleagues. The report was not all to his taste in the 
 final shape in which it was adopted. It consisted of a 
 series of articles recommending the repeal of the ob- 
 noxious statutes of the Imperial Parliament, the regu- 
 lation of trade for the benefit of the whole empire, the 
 establishment of triennial colonial legislatures, and also 
 asserting the right of the colonies to manage their in- 
 ternal polity to suit themselves, and their willingness 
 
 306 
 
OUTBREAK OF THE REVOLUTION 
 
 to do their part, according to their capacities, for the 
 general defense of the empire. The eighth article con- 
 tained a denial of the right of "Great Britain, or any 
 other earthly legislature or tribunal, to interfere in the 
 ecclesiastical or religious concerns of the colonies," to- 
 gether with a "protest against the indulgence and es- 
 tablishment of popery all along their interior confines"; 
 this being called forth by what was known as the "Que- 
 bec Bill," whereby the British Parliament had recently 
 granted extraordinary powers and privileges to the 
 Canadian clergy, with the obvious purpose of con- 
 ciliating that powerful priesthood, and thereby con- 
 verting — as was actually done — the recently conquered 
 French of the St. Lawrence valley into efficient allies 
 of the British Government against the old Protestant 
 colonies. 
 
 This eighth article was ridiculous, and was especially 
 objected to by Morris. In one of his vigorous, deli- 
 ciously fresh, and humorous letters, dated June 30, 1775, 
 and addressed to John Jay, then in the Continental 
 Congress, he writes: 
 
 "The foolish religious business I opposed until I was 
 weary; it was carried by a very small majority, and my 
 dissent entered. . . . The article about religion is 
 most arrant nonsense, and would do as well in a high 
 Dutch Bible as the place it now stands in. 
 
 "I drew a long report for our committee, to which 
 they could make no objections excepting that none of 
 them could understand it. . . . I was pleased at the 
 rejection, because, as I observed to you before, I think 
 the question ought to be simplified. 
 
 "I address this letter to you, but I shall be glad [if] 
 you will read it to Livingston, for I intend it for both of 
 you; make my compliments to him, and tell him that I 
 
 307 
 
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS 
 
 shall write to him when I have time to write a good letter 
 — this is a damned bad one, and would not exist, if I did 
 not think it a duty to myself to show my friends that I 
 had no hand in that foolish religious business. I am, as 
 you well know, your friend, etc." 
 
 Morris did not believe in a Colonial assembly making 
 overtures for a reconciliation, as he thought this was the 
 province of the Continental Congress. The majority 
 was against him, but he was a clever politician and par- 
 liamentary tactician, as well as a great statesman, and 
 he fairly outwitted and hoodwinked his opponents, per- 
 suading them finally to adopt the report in the form of a 
 mere expression of opinions to be sent to their congres- 
 sional delegates, with a prayer that the latter would 
 " use every effort for the compromising of this unnatural 
 quarrel between the parent and child." In this shape it 
 was forwarded to the delegates, who answered that they 
 would do all in their power to compromise the quarrel, 
 and added a postscript, written by Jay himself, to the 
 effect that they deemed it better not to make any men- 
 tion of the religious article before the Congress, as they 
 thought it wise to bury "all disputes on ecclesiastical 
 points, which have for ages had no other tendency than 
 that of banishing peace and charity from the world." 
 
 While all this was pending, and though Bunker Hill 
 had been fought, and the war was in full progress round 
 Boston, New York yet maintained what might almost 
 be described as an attitude of armed neutrality. The 
 city was so exposed to the British war-ships in the bay, 
 and the surrounding population was so doubtful, that 
 the patriot party dared not take the deciding steps, es- 
 pecially as so many of its members still clung to the hope 
 of a peaceful settlement. Morris announced frankly 
 that he did not believe in breaking the peace until they 
 
 308 
 
OUTBREAK OF THE REVOLUTION 
 
 were prepared to take the consequences. Indeed, when 
 the few British troops left the city to join the garrison in 
 Boston, he strongly opposed the action of the Sons of 
 Liberty, who gathered hastily together, and took away 
 the cart-loads of arms and ammunition that the soldiers 
 were taking with them. The Congress, to their honor, 
 discouraged, to the best of their power, the rioting and 
 mobbing of Tories in the city. 
 
 In fact, New York's position was somewhat like that 
 of Kentucky at the outbreak of the Civil War. Her 
 backwardness in definitely throwing in her lot with the 
 revolutionists was clearly brought out by a rather ludi- 
 crous incident. General Washington, on his way to 
 take command of the Continental army round Boston, 
 passed through New York the same day the royal gov- 
 ernor, Try on, arrived by sea, and the authorities were 
 cast into a great quandary as to how they should treat 
 two such kings of Brentford when the one rose was so 
 small. Finally they compromised by sending a guard of 
 honor to attend each; Montgomery and Morris, as dele- 
 gates from the Assembly, received Washington and 
 brought him before that body, which addressed him in 
 terms of cordial congratulation, but ended with a note- 
 worthy phrase — that "when the contest should be de- 
 cided by an accommodation with the mother country, 
 he should deliver up the important deposit that had 
 been confided to his hands." 
 
 These words give us the key to the situation. Even 
 the patriots of the colony could not realize that there 
 was no hope of an "accommodation"; and they were 
 hampered at every step by the fear of the British frig- 
 ates, and of the numerous Tories. The latter were very 
 bold and defiant; when Congress tried to disarm them, 
 they banded themselves together, bade the authorities 
 
 309 
 
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS 
 
 defiance, and plainly held the upper hand on Staten 
 Island and in Queens County. New York furnished 
 many excellent soldiers to the royal armies during the 
 war, and from among her gentry came the most famous 
 of the Tory leaders — such as Johnson and De Lancey, 
 whose prowess was felt by the hapless people of their 
 own native province; De Peyster, who was Ferguson's 
 second in command at Kings Mountain; and Cruger, 
 who, in the Carolinas, inflicted a check upon Greene 
 himself. The Tories were helped also by the jealousy 
 felt toward some of the other colonies, especially Con- 
 necticut, whose people took the worst possible course for 
 the patriot side by threatening to "crush down" New 
 York, and by finally furnishing an armed and mounted 
 mob which rode suddenly into the city, and wrecked the 
 office of an obnoxious loyalist printer named Rivington. 
 This last proceeding caused great indignation, and 
 nearly made a split in the Revolutionary camp. 
 
 New York had thus some cause for her inaction; 
 nevertheless, her lack of boldness and decision were not 
 creditable to her, and she laid herself open to just re- 
 proaches. Nor can Morris himself be altogether freed 
 from the charge of having clung too long to the hope of 
 a reconciliation and to a policy of half-measures. He 
 was at that time chairman of a legislative committee 
 which denounced any projected invasion of Canada 
 (therein, however, only following the example of the 
 Continental Congress), and refused to allow Ethan 
 Allen to undertake one, as that adventurous partisan 
 chieftain requested. But Morris was too clear-sighted 
 to occupy a doubtful position long; and he now began 
 to see things clearly as they were, and to push his slower 
 or more timid associates forward along the path which 
 they had set out to tread. He was instrumental in get- 
 
 310 
 
OUTBREAK OF THE REVOLUTION 
 
 ting the militia into somewhat better shape; and, as it 
 was found impossible to get enough Continental money, 
 a colonial paper currency was issued. In spite of the 
 quarrel with Connecticut, a force from that province 
 moved in to take part in the defense of New York. 
 
 Yet, in the main, the policy of the New York Con- 
 gress still continued both weak and changeable, and no 
 improvement was effected when it was dissolved and a 
 second elected. To this body the loyalist counties of 
 Richmond and Queens refused to return delegates, and 
 throughout the colony affairs grew more disorderly, and 
 the administration of justice came nearly to a standstill. 
 Finding that the local congress seemed likely to remain 
 unable to make up its mind how to act, the Continental 
 leaders at last took matters into their own hands, and 
 marched a force into New York City early in February, 
 1776. This had a most bracing effect upon the provin- 
 cial authorities; yet they still continued to allow the 
 British war-ships in the bay to be supplied with provi- 
 sions, nor was this attitude altered until in April Wash- 
 ington arrived with the main Continental army. He at 
 once insisted that a final break should be made; and 
 about the same time the third Provincial Congress was 
 elected. Morris, again returned for Westchester, headed 
 the bolder spirits, who had now decided that the time 
 had come to force their associates out of their wavering 
 course, and to make them definitely cast in their lot with 
 their fellow Americans. Things had come to a point 
 which made a decision necessary; the gathering of the 
 Continental forces on Manhattan Island and the threat- 
 ening attitude of the British fleet and army made it im- 
 possible for even the most timid to keep on lingering in 
 a state of uncertainty. So the Declaration of Inde- 
 pendence was ratified, and a state constitution organ- 
 
 311 
 
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS 
 
 ized; then the die was cast, and thereafter New York 
 manfully stood by the result of the throw. 
 
 The two Provincial Congresses that decided on this 
 course held their sessions in a time of the greatest tu- 
 mult, when New York was threatened hourly by the 
 British; and long before their work was ended they had 
 hastily to leave the city. Before describing what they 
 did, a glance should be taken at the circumstances under 
 which it was done. 
 
 The peaceable citizens, especially those with any 
 property, gradually left New York; and it remained in 
 possession of the raw levies of the Continentals, while 
 Staten Island received Howe with open arms, and he 
 was enabled without difficulty to disembark his great 
 force of British and German mercenaries on Long Island. 
 The much smaller, motley force opposed to him, unor- 
 ganized, ill armed, and led by utterly inexperienced 
 men, was beaten, with hardly an effort, in the battle that 
 followed, and only escaped annihilation through the 
 skill of Washington and the supine blundering of Howe. 
 Then it was whipped up the Hudson and beyond the 
 borders of the State, the broken remnant fleeing across 
 New Jersey; and though the brilliant feats of arms at 
 Trenton and Princeton enabled the Americans to recon- 
 quer the latter province, southern New York lay under 
 the heel of the British till the close of the war. 
 
 Thus Morris, Jay, and the other New York leaders 
 were obliged for six years to hold up their cause in a half- 
 conquered State, a very large proportion of whose pop- 
 ulation was lukewarm or hostile. The odds were heavy 
 against the patriots, because their worst foes were those 
 of their own household. English writers are fond of in- 
 sisting upon the alleged fact that America only won her 
 freedom by the help of foreign nations. Such help was 
 
 312 
 
OUTBREAK OF THE REVOLUTION 
 
 certainly most important, but, on the other hand, it 
 must be remembered that during the first and vital years 
 of the contest the Revolutionary colonists had to strug- 
 gle unaided against the British, their mercenary German 
 and Indian allies, Tories, and even French-Canadians. 
 When the French court declared in our favor the worst 
 was already over; Trenton had been won, Burgoyne had 
 been captured, and Valley Forge was a memory of the 
 past. 
 
 We did not owe our main disasters to the might of our 
 foes, nor our final triumph to the help of our friends. It 
 was on our own strength that we had to rely, and it was 
 with our own folly and weakness that we had to contend. 
 The Revolutionary leaders can never be too highly 
 praised; but taken in bulk the Americans of the last 
 quarter of the eighteenth century do not compare to 
 advantage with the Americans of the third quarter of 
 the nineteenth. In our Civil War it was the people who 
 pressed on the leaders, and won almost as much in spite 
 of as because of them; but the leaders of the Revolution 
 had to goad the rank and file into line. They were 
 forced to contend not only with the active hostility of 
 the Tories, but with the passive neutrality of the in- 
 different, and the selfishness, jealousy, and short-sight- 
 edness of the patriotic. Had the Americans of 1776 
 been united, and had they possessed the stubborn, un- 
 yielding tenacity and high devotion to an ideal shown 
 by the North, or the heroic constancy and matchless 
 valor shown by the South, in the Civil War, the British 
 would have been driven off the continent before three 
 years were over. 
 
 It is probable that nearly as great a proportion of our 
 own people were actively or passively opposed to the 
 formation of our Union originally as were in favor of its 
 
 313 
 
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS 
 
 dissolution in 1860. This was one of the main reasons 
 why the war dragged on so long. It may be seen by the 
 fact, among others, that when in the Carolinas and 
 Georgia a system of relentless and undying partisan war- 
 fare not only crushed the Tories, but literally destroyed 
 them from off the face of the earth, then the British, 
 though still victorious in almost every pitched battle, 
 were at once forced to abandon the field. 
 
 Another reason was the inferior military capacity of 
 the Revolutionary armies. The Continental troops, 
 when trained, were excellent; but in almost every battle 
 they were mixed with more or less worthless militia ; and 
 of the soldiers thus obtained all that can be said is that 
 their officers could never be sure that they would fight, 
 nor their enemies that they would run away. The Revo- 
 lutionary troops certainly fell short of the standard 
 reached by the volunteers who fought Shiloh and Get- 
 tysburg. The British rarely found them to be such foes 
 as they afterward met at New Orleans and Lundy's 
 Lane. Throughout the Revolution the militia were in- 
 variably leaving their posts at critical times; they would 
 grow either homesick or dejected, and would then go 
 home at the very crisis of the campaign; they did 
 not begin to show the stubbornness and resolution 
 to "see the war through" so common among their de- 
 scendants in the contending Federal and Confederate 
 armies. 
 
 The truth is that in 1776 our main task was to shape 
 new political conditions, and then to reconcile our peo- 
 ple to them; whereas in 1860 we had merely to fight 
 fiercely for the preservation of what was already ours. 
 In the first emergency we needed statesmen, and in the 
 second warriors; and the statesmen and warriors were 
 forthcoming. A comparison of the men who came to 
 
 314 
 
OUTBREAK OF THE REVOLUTION 
 
 the front during these, the two heroic periods of the Re- 
 public, brings out this point clearly. 
 
 Washington, alike statesman, soldier, and patriot, 
 stands alone. He was not only the greatest American; 
 he was also one of the greatest men the world has ever 
 known. Few centuries and few countries have ever 
 seen his like. Among the people of English stock there 
 is none to compare with him, unless perhaps Cromwell, 
 utterly different though the latter was. Of Americans, 
 Lincoln alone is worthy to stand even second. 
 
 As for our other statesmen: Franklin, Hamilton, Jef- 
 ferson, Adams, and their fellows most surely stand far 
 above Seward, Sumner, Chase, Stanton, and Stevens, 
 great as were the services which these, and those like 
 them, rendered. But when we come to the fighting 
 men, all this is reversed. As a mere military man, 
 Washington himself cannot rank with the wonderful 
 war-chief who for four years led the army of northern 
 Virginia; and the names of Washington and Greene fill 
 up the short list of really good Revolutionary generals. 
 Against these the Civil War shows a roll that contains 
 not only Lee, but also Grant and Sherman, Jackson and 
 Johnston, Thomas, Sheridan, and Farragut— leaders 
 whose volunteer soldiers and sailors, at the end of their 
 four years' service, were ready and more than able to 
 match themselves against the best regular forces of 
 Europe. 
 
 315 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 INDEPENDENCE: FORMING THE STATE 
 CONSTITUTION 
 
 The third Provincial Congress, which came together 
 in May, and before the close of its sessions was obliged 
 to adjourn to White Plains, had to act on the Declara- 
 tion of Independence, and provide for the foundation of 
 a new State government. 
 
 Morris now put himself at the head of the patriotic 
 party, and opened the proceedings by a long and very 
 able speech in favor of adopting the recommendation of 
 the Continental Congress that the colonies should form 
 new governments. In his argument he went at length 
 into the history and growth of the dispute with Great 
 Britain; spoke of the efforts made in the past for recon- 
 ciliation, and then showed clearly how such efforts were 
 now not only hopeless, but also no longer compatible 
 with the dignity and manhood of Americans. He 
 sneered at those who argued that we ought to submit 
 to Great Britain for the sake of the protection we got 
 from her. "Great Britain will not fail to bring us into 
 a war with some of her neighbors, and then protect us 
 as a lawyer defends a suit — the client paying for it. 
 This is quite in form, but a wise man would, I think, get 
 rid of the suit and the lawyer together. Again, how are 
 we to be protected? If a descent is made upon our 
 coasts and the British navy and army are three thou- 
 sand miles off, we cannot receive very great benefit from 
 them on that occasion. If, to obviate this inconveni- 
 
 316 
 
INDEPENDENCE 
 
 ence, we have an army and navy constantly among us, 
 who can say that we shall not need a little protection 
 against them ? " He went on to point out the hopeless- 
 ness of expecting Great Britain to keep to any terms 
 which would deprive Parliament of its supremacy over 
 America; for no succeeding Parliament could be held 
 bound by the legislation of its predecessor, and the very 
 acknowledgment of British supremacy on the part of the 
 Americans would bind them as subjects, and make the 
 supremacy of Parliament legitimate. He bade his hear- 
 ers remember the maxim "that no faith is to be kept 
 with rebels," and said: "In this case, or in any other 
 case, if we fancy ourselves hardly dealt with, I maintain 
 there is no redress but by arms. For it never yet was 
 known that, when men assume power, they will part 
 with it again, unless by compulsion." 
 
 He then took up the subject of independence; showed, 
 for the benefit of the good but timid men who were 
 frightened at the mere title, that, in all but name, it 
 already existed in New York, and proved that its main- 
 tenance was essential to our well-being. 'My argu- 
 ment, therefore, stands thus: As a connection with 
 Great Britain cannot again exist without enslaving 
 America, an independence is absolutely necessary. I 
 cannot balance between the two. We run a hazard in 
 one path, I confess; but then we are infallibly ruined 
 if we pursue the other. ... We find the characteristic 
 marks and insignia of independence in this society, con- 
 sidered in itself and compared with other societies. The 
 enumeration is conviction. Coining moneys, raising 
 armies, regulating commerce, peace, war— all these 
 things you are not only adepts in, but masters of. Trea- 
 ties alone remain, and even those you have dabbled at. 
 Georgia you put under the ban of empire, and received 
 
 317 
 
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS 
 
 her upon repentance as a member of the flock. Canada 
 you are now treating with. France and Spain you ought 
 to treat with, and the rest is but a name. I believe, sir, 
 the Romans were as much governed, or rather op- 
 pressed, by their emperors, as ever any people were 
 by their king. But emperor was more agreeable to their 
 ears than king. [So] some, nay, many, persons in Amer- 
 ica dislike the word independence." 
 
 He then went on to show how independence would 
 work well alike for our peace, liberty, and security. 
 Considering the first, he laughed at the apprehensions 
 expressed by some that the moment America was inde- 
 pendent all the powers of Europe would pounce down 
 on her, to parcel out the country among themselves; 
 and showed clearly that to a European power any war 
 of conquest in America would be "tedious, expensive, 
 uncertain, and ruinous," and that none of the country 
 could be kept even if it should come to pass that some 
 little portion of it were conquered. "But I cannot 
 think it will ever come to this. For when I turn my 
 eyes to the means of defense, I find them amply suf- 
 ficient. We have all heard that in the last war America 
 was conquered in Germany. I hold the converse of this 
 to be true, namely, that in and by America his majesty's 
 German dominions were secured. ... I expect a full 
 and lasting defense against any and every part of the 
 earth." After thus treating of the advantages to be 
 hoped for on the score of peace, he turns attention "to 
 a question of infinitely greater importance, namely, the 
 liberty of this country"; and afterward passes to the 
 matter of security, which, "so long as the system of 
 laws by which we are now governed shall prevail, is 
 amply provided for in every separate colony. There 
 may indeed arise an objection because some gentlemen 
 
 318 
 
INDEPENDENCE 
 
 suppose that the different colonies will carry on a sort 
 of land piracy against one another. But how this can 
 possibly happen when the idea of separate colonies no 
 longer exists I cannot for my soul comprehend. That 
 something very like this has already been done I shall 
 not deny, but the reason is as evident as the fact. We 
 never yet had a government in this country of sufficient 
 energy to restrain the lawless and indigent. Whenever 
 a form of government is established which deserves the 
 name, these insurrections must cease. But who is the 
 man so hardy as to affirm that they will not grow with 
 our growth, while on every occasion we must resort to 
 an English judicature to terminate differences which 
 the maxims of policy will teach them to leave undeter- 
 mined ? By degrees we are getting beyond the utmost 
 pale of English government. Settlements are forming 
 to the westward of us, whose inhabitants acknowledge 
 no authority but their own." In one sentence he showed 
 rather a change of heart, as regarded his former aristo- 
 cratic leanings; for he reproached those who were "ap- 
 prehensive of losing a little consequence and importance 
 by living in a country where all are on an equal foot- 
 ing," and predicted that we should "cause all nations 
 to resort hither as an asylum from oppression." 
 
 The speech was remarkable for its incisive directness 
 and boldness, for the exact clearness with which it por- 
 trayed things as they were, for the broad sense of Amer- 
 ican nationality that it displayed, and for the accurate 
 forecasts that it contained as to our future course in 
 certain particulars — such as freedom from European 
 wars and entanglements, a strong but purely defensive 
 foreign policy, the encouragement of the growth of the 
 West, while keeping it united to us, and the throwing 
 open our doors to the oppressed from abroad. 
 
 319 
 
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS 
 
 Soon after the delivery of this speech news came that 
 the Declaration of Independence had been adopted by 
 the Continental Congress; and Jay, one of the New 
 York delegates to this body, and also a member of the 
 Provincial Congress, drew up for the latter a resolution 
 emphatically indorsing the declaration, which was at 
 once adopted without a dissenting voice. At the same 
 time the Provincial Congress changed its name to that 
 of "The Convention of the Representatives of the State 
 of New York." 
 
 These last acts were done by a body that had been 
 elected, with increased power, to succeed the third Pro- 
 vincial Congress and provide for a new constitution. 
 Just before this, Morris had been sent to the Conti- 
 nental Congress in Philadelphia to complain that the 
 troops from New England were paid more largely than 
 those from the other colonies; a wrong which was at 
 once redressed, the wages of the latter being raised, and 
 Morris returned to New York in triumph after only a 
 week's absence. 
 
 The Constitutional Convention of New York led a 
 most checkered life; for the victorious British chevied 
 it up and down the State, hunting it in turn from every 
 small town in which it thought to have found a peace- 
 ful haven of refuge. At last it rested in Fishkill, such 
 an out-of-the-way place as to be free from danger. The 
 members were obliged to go armed, so as to protect 
 themselves from stray marauding parties; and the num- 
 ber of delegates in attendance alternately dwindled and 
 swelled in a wonderful manner, now resolving them- 
 selves into a committee of safety, and again resuming 
 their functions as members of the convention. 
 
 The most important duties of the convention were 
 intrusted to two committees. Of the first, which was 
 
 320 
 
INDEPENDENCE 
 
 to draft a plan for the Constitution, Morris, Jay, and 
 Livingston were the three leading members, upon whom 
 all the work fell; of the second, which was to devise 
 means for the establishment of a State fund, Morris 
 was the chairman and moving spirit. 
 
 He was also chairman of a committee which was ap- 
 pointed to look after the Tories, and prevent them from 
 joining together and rising; and so numerous were they 
 that the jails were soon choked with those of their num- 
 ber who, on account of their prominence or bitterness, 
 were most obnoxious to the patriots. Also a partial 
 system of confiscation of Tory estates was begun. So 
 greatly were the Tories feared and hated, and so deter- 
 mined were the attempts to deprive them of even the 
 shadow of a chance to do harm, by so much as a word, 
 that the convention sent a memorial, drafted by Morris, 
 to the Continental Congress, in which they made the 
 very futile suggestion that it should take "some mea- 
 sures for expunging from the Book of Common Prayer 
 such parts, and discontinuing in the congregations of 
 all other denominations all such prayers, as interfere 
 with the interests of the American cause." The reso- 
 lution was not acted on; but another part of the memo- 
 rial shows how the Church of England men were stand- 
 ing by the mother country, for it goes on to recite that 
 "the enemies of America have taken great pains to in- 
 sinuate into the minds of the Episcopalians that the 
 church is in danger. We could wish the Congress would 
 pass some resolve to quiet their fears, and we are con- 
 fident that it would do essential service to the cause of 
 America, at least in this State." 
 
 Morris's position in regard to the Tories was a pecu- 
 liarly hard one, because among their number were many 
 of his own relatives, including his elder brother. The 
 
 321 
 
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS 
 
 family house, where his mother resided, was within the 
 British lines; and not only did he feel the disapproval 
 of such of his people as were loyalists, on the one side, 
 but, on the other, his letters to his family caused him 
 to be regarded with suspicion by the baser spirits in the 
 American party. About this time one of his sisters 
 died; the letter he then wrote to his mother is in the 
 usual formal style of the time, yet it shows marks of 
 deep feeling, and he takes occasion, while admitting 
 that the result of the war was uncertain, to avow, with a 
 sternness unusual to him, his intention to face all things 
 rather than abandon the patriot cause. "The worst 
 that can happen is to fall on the last bleak mountain of 
 America; and he who dies there in defense of the in- 
 jured rights of mankind is happier than his conqueror, 
 more beloved by mankind, more applauded by his own 
 heart." The letter closes by a characteristic touch, 
 when he sends his love to "such as deserve it. The 
 number is not great." 
 
 The committee on the Constitution was not ready to 
 report until March, 1777. Then the convention devoted 
 itself solely to the consideration of the report, which, 
 after several weeks' discussion, was adopted with very 
 little change. Jay and Morris led the debate before the 
 convention, as they had done previously in committee. 
 There was perfect agreement upon the general prin- 
 ciples. Freehold suffrage was adopted, and a majority 
 of the freeholders of the State were thus the ultimate 
 governing power. The executive, judicial, and legis- 
 lative powers were separated sharply, as was done in 
 the other States, and later on in the federal Constitu- 
 tion as well. The legislative body was divided into two 
 chambers. 
 
 It was over the executive branch that the main con- 
 
 322 
 
INDEPENDENCE 
 
 test arose. It was conceded that this should be nomi- 
 nally single-headed; that is, that there should be a gov- 
 ernor. But the members generally could not realize 
 how different was a governor elected by the people, and 
 responsible to them, from one appointed by an alien 
 and higher power to rule over them, as in the colonial 
 days. The remembrance of the contests with the royal 
 governors was still fresh ; and the mere name of governor 
 frightened them. They had the same illogical fear of 
 the Executive that the demagogues of to-day (and some 
 honest but stupid people, as well) profess to feel for a 
 standing army. Men often let the dread of the shadow 
 of a dead wrong frighten them into courting a living 
 evil. 
 
 Morris himself was wonderfully clear-sighted and 
 cool-headed. He did not let the memory of the wrong- 
 doing of the royal governors blind him; he saw that the 
 trouble with them lay, not in the power that they held, 
 but in the source from which that power came. Once 
 the source was changed, the power was an advantage, 
 not a harm, to the State. Yet few or none of his com- 
 panions could see this; and they nervously strove to 
 save their new State from the danger of executive usur- 
 pation by trying to make the Executive practically a 
 board of men instead of one man, and by crippling it 
 so as to make it ineffective for good, while at the same 
 time dividing the responsibility, so that no one need be 
 afraid to do evil. Above all, they were anxious to take 
 away from the governor the appointment of the mili- 
 tary and civil servants of the State. 
 
 Morris had persuaded the committee to leave the ap- 
 pointment of these officials to the governor, the legis- 
 lature retaining the power of confirmation or rejection; 
 but the convention, under the lead of Jay, rejected this 
 
 323 
 
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS 
 
 proposition, and after some discussion adopted in its 
 place the cumbrous and foolish plan of a "council of 
 appointment," to consist of the governor and several 
 senators. As might have been expected, this artificial 
 body worked nothing but harm, and became simply a 
 peculiarly odious political machine. 
 
 Again, Morris advocated giving the governor a quali- 
 fied veto over the acts passed by the legislature; but in- 
 stead of such a simple and straightforward method of 
 legislative revision, the convention saw fit to adopt a 
 companion piece of foolishness to the council of ap- 
 pointment, in the shape of the equally complicated 
 and anomalous council of revision, consisting of the 
 governor, chancellor, and judges of the Supreme Court, 
 by whom all the acts of the legislature had to be revised 
 before they could become laws. It is marvellous that 
 these two bodies should have lived on so long as they 
 did — over forty years. 
 
 The convention did one most praiseworthy thing in 
 deciding in favor of complete religious toleration. This 
 seems natural enough now; but at that time there was 
 hardly a European state that practised it. Great Brit- 
 ain harassed her Catholic subjects in a hundred differ- 
 ent ways; while in France Protestants were treated far 
 worse, and, in fact, could scarcely be regarded as having 
 any legal standing whatever. On no other one point do 
 the statesmen of the Revolution show to more marked 
 advantage when compared with their European com- 
 peers than in this of complete religious toleration. Their 
 position was taken, too, simply because they deemed it 
 to be the right and proper one; they had nothing to fear 
 or hope from Catholics, and their own interests were in 
 nowise advanced by what they did in the matter. 
 
 But in the New York convention toleration was not 
 
 324 
 
INDEPENDENCE 
 
 obtained without a fight. There always rankled in 
 Jay's mind the memory of the terrible cruelty wrought 
 by Catholics on his Huguenot forefathers; and he in- 
 troduced into the article on toleration an appendix, 
 which discriminated against the adherents of the Church 
 of Rome, denying them the rights of citizenship until 
 they should solemnly swear before the Supreme Court, 
 first, "that they verily believe in their conscience that 
 no pope, priest, or foreign authority on earth has power 
 to absolve the subjects of this State from their allegiance 
 to the same"; and, second, "that they renounce . . . 
 the dangerous and damnable doctrine that the Pope or 
 any other earthly authority has power to absolve men 
 from sins described in and prohibited by the Holy Gos- 
 pel." This second point, however important, was of 
 purely theological interest, and had absolutely nothing 
 to do with the State constitution; as to the first propo- 
 sition, it might have been proper enough had there been 
 the least chance of a conflict between the Pope, either 
 in his temporal or his ecclesiastical capacity, and the 
 United States; but as there was no possibility of such 
 a conflict arising, and as, if it did arise, there would not 
 be the slightest danger of the United States receiving 
 any damage, to put the sentence in would have been 
 not only useless, but exceedingly foolish and harmful, 
 on account of the intense irritation it would have ex- 
 cited. 
 
 The whole clause was rejected by a two to one vote, 
 and then all the good that it aimed at was accomplished 
 by the adoption, on the motion of Morris, of a proviso 
 that the toleration granted should not be held to "jus- 
 tify practices inconsistent with the peace and safety of 
 this State." This proviso of Morris remains in the 
 constitution to this day; and thus, while absolute re- 
 
 325 
 
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS 
 
 ligious liberty is guaranteed, the State reserves to itself 
 full right of protection, if necessary, against the adher- 
 ents of any religious body, foreign or domestic, if they 
 menace the public safety. 
 
 On a question even more important than religious 
 toleration, namely, the abolition of domestic slavery, 
 Jay and Morris fought side by side; but though the more 
 enlightened of their fellow members went with them, 
 they were a little too much in advance of the age, and 
 failed. They made every effort to have a clause intro- 
 duced into the constitution recommending to the fu- 
 ture legislature of New York to abolish slavery as soon 
 as it could be done consistently with the public safety 
 and the rights of property; "so that in future ages every 
 human being who breathes the air of this State shall en- 
 joy the privileges of a free man." Although they failed 
 in their immediate purpose, yet they had much hearty 
 support, and by the bold stand they took and the high 
 ground they occupied they undoubtedly brought nearer 
 the period when the abolition of slavery in New York 
 became practicable. 
 
 The constitution was finally adopted by the conven- 
 tion almost unanimously, and went into effect forthwith, 
 as there was no ratification by the people at large. 
 
 As soon as it was adopted a committee, which in- 
 cluded Morris, Jay, and Livingston, was appointed to 
 start and organize the new government. The courts of 
 justice were speedily put in running order, and thus one 
 of the most crying evils that affected the State was 
 remedied. A council of safety of fifteen members — 
 again including Morris — was established to act as the 
 provincial government, until the regular legislature 
 should convene. An election for governor was also 
 held almost immediately, and Clinton was chosen. He 
 
 326 
 
INDEPENDENCE 
 
 was then serving in the field, where he had done good 
 work, and, together with his brother James, had fought 
 with the stubborn valor that seems to go with Anglo- 
 Irish blood. He did not give up his command until 
 several months after he was elected, although mean- 
 while keeping up constant communication with the 
 Council of Safety, through whom he acted in matters 
 
 of state. 
 
 Meanwhile Burgoyne, with his eight or nine thousand 
 troops, excellently drilled British and Hessians, assisted 
 by Tories, Canadians, and Indians, had crossed the 
 northern frontier, and was moving down toward the 
 heart of the already disorganized State, exciting the 
 wildest panic and confusion. The Council of Safety 
 hardly knew how to act, and finally sent a committee of 
 two, Morris being one, to the headquarters of General 
 Schuyler, who had the supreme command over all the 
 troops in the northern part of New York. 
 
 On Morris's arrival he found affairs at a very low ebb, 
 and at once wrote to describe this condition to the presi- 
 dent of the Council of Safety. Burgoyne's army had 
 come steadily on. He first destroyed Arnold's flotilla 
 on Lake Champlain. Then he captured the forts along 
 the Lakes, and utterly wrecked the division of the 
 American army that had been told off to defend them, 
 under the very unfortunate General St. Clair. He was 
 now advancing through the great reaches of wooded 
 wilderness toward the head of the Hudson. Schuyler, 
 a general of fair capacity, was doing what he could to 
 hold the enemy back; but his one efficient supporter was 
 the wilderness itself, through which the British army 
 stumbled painfully along. Schuyler had in all less than 
 five thousand men, half of them short-service Conti- 
 nental troops, the other half militia. The farmers 
 
 327 
 
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS 
 
 would not turn out until after harvest home; all the 
 bodies of militia, especially those from New England, 
 were very insubordinate and of most fickle temper, and 
 could not be depended on for any sustained contest; as 
 an example, Stark, under whose nominal command the 
 northern New Englanders won the battle of Bennington, 
 actually marched off his whole force the day before the 
 battle of Stillwater, alleging the expiration of the term of 
 service of his soldiers as an excuse for what looked like 
 gross treachery or cowardice, but was probably merely 
 sheer selfish wrong-headedness and mean jealousy. 
 Along the Mohawk valley the dismay was extreme, and 
 the militia could not be got out at all. Jay was so an- 
 gered by the abject terror in this quarter that he advised 
 leaving the inhabitants to shift for themselves; sound 
 advice, too, for when the pinch came and they were ab- 
 solutely forced to take arms, they did very fairly at Oris- 
 kany. It was even feared that the settlers of the region 
 which afterward became Vermont would go over to the 
 enemy; still, time and space were in our favor, and Mor- 
 ris was quite right when he said in his first letter (dated 
 July 16, 1777): "Upon the whole I think we shall do 
 very well, but this opinion is founded merely upon the 
 barriers which nature has raised against all access from 
 the northward." As he said of himself, he was "a good 
 guesser." 
 
 He outlined the plan which he thought the Americans 
 should follow. This was to harass the British in every 
 way, without risking a stand-up fight, while laying waste 
 the country through which they were to pass so as to 
 render it impossible for an army to subsist on it. For 
 the militia he had the most hearty contempt, writing: 
 'Three hundred of the militia of Massachusetts Bay 
 went off this morning, in spite of the opposition — we 
 
 328 
 
INDEPENDENCE 
 
 should have said, entreaties— of their officers. All the 
 militia on the ground are so heartily tired, and so ex- 
 tremely desirous of getting home, that it is more than 
 probable that none of them will remain here ten days 
 longer. One half was discharged two days ago, to 
 silence, if possible, their clamor; and the remainder, 
 officers excepted, will soon discharge themselves." 
 
 The Council of Safety grew so nervous over the out- 
 look that their letters became fairly querulous; and they 
 not unnaturally asked Morris to include in his letters 
 some paragraphs that could be given to the public. To 
 this that rather quick-tempered gentleman took excep- 
 tion, and replied caustically in his next letter, the open- 
 ing paragraph being, "We have received yours of the 
 19th, which has afforded us great pleasure, since we are 
 enabled in some measure to collect from it our errand 
 to the northward, one of the most important objects of 
 our journey being, in the opinion of your honorable 
 body, to write the news," and he closes by stating that 
 he shall come back to wait upon them, and learn their 
 pleasure, at once. 
 
 Meanwhile the repeated disasters in the north had 
 occasioned much clamor against Schuyler, who, if not a 
 brilliant general, had still done what he could in very 
 trying circumstances, and was in nowise responsible for 
 the various mishaps that had occurred. The New Eng- 
 land members of Congress, always jealous of New York, 
 took advantage of this to begin intriguing against him, 
 under the lead of Roger Sherman and others, and finally 
 brought about his replacement by Gates, a much inferior 
 man, with no capacity whatever for command. Morris 
 and Jay both took up Schuyler's cause very warmly, 
 seeing clearly, in the first place, that the disasters were 
 far from ruinous, and that a favorable outcome was 
 
 329 
 
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS 
 
 probable; and, in the second place, that it was the peo- 
 ple themselves who were to blame and not Schuyler. 
 They went on to Philadelphia to speak for him, but they 
 arrived just a day too late, Gates having been appointed 
 twenty-four hours previous to their coming. 
 
 When Gates reached his army the luck had already 
 begun to turn. Burgoyne's outlying parties had been 
 destroyed, his Indians and Canadians had left him, he 
 had been disappointed in his hopes of a Tory uprising in 
 his favor, and, hampered by his baggage-train, he had 
 been brought almost to a standstill in the tangled wilds 
 through which he had slowly ploughed his way. Schuy- 
 ler had done what he could to hinder the foe's progress, 
 and had kept his own army together as a rallying-point 
 for the militia, who, having gathered in their harvests, 
 and being inspirited by the outcome of the fights at Or- 
 iskany and Bennington, flocked in by hundreds to the 
 American standard. Gates himself did literally noth- 
 ing; he rather hindered his men than otherwise; and the 
 latter were turbulent and prone to disobey orders. But 
 they were now in fine feather for fighting, and there were 
 plenty of them. So Gates merely sat still, and the levy 
 of backwoods farmers, all good individual fighters, and 
 with some excellent brigade and regimental command- 
 ers, such as Arnold and Morgan, fairly mobbed to death 
 the smaller number of dispirited and poorly led regulars 
 against whom they were pitted. When the latter were 
 at last fought out and forced to give in, Gates allowed 
 them much better terms than he should have done; and 
 the Continental Congress, to its shame, snatched at a 
 technicality, under cover of which to break the faith 
 plighted through its general, and to avoid fulfilling the 
 conditions to which he had so foolishly agreed. 
 
 Morris and Jay, though unable to secure the reten- 
 
 330 
 
INDEPENDENCE 
 
 tion of Schuyler, had, nevertheless, by their representa- 
 tions while at Philadelphia, prevailed on the authorities 
 largely to reinforce the army which was about to be put 
 under Gates. Morris was very angry at the intrigue by 
 which the latter had been given the command; but what 
 he was especially aiming at was the success of the cause, 
 not the advancement of his friends. Once Gates was 
 appointed he did all in his power to strengthen him, and, 
 with his usual clear-sightedness, he predicted his ulti- 
 mate success. 
 
 Schuyler was a man of high character and public 
 spirit, and he behaved really nobly in the midst of his 
 disappointment; his conduct throughout affording a 
 very striking contrast to that of McClellan, under some- 
 what similar circumstances in the Civil War. Morris 
 wrote him, sympathizing with him, and asking him to 
 sink all personal feeling and devote his energies to the 
 common weal of the country while out of power just as 
 strenuously as he had done when in command. Schuy- 
 ler responded that he should continue to serve his coun- 
 try as zealously as before, and he made his words good; 
 but Gates was jealous of the better man whose downfall 
 he had been the instrument of accomplishing, and de- 
 clined to profit by his help. 
 
 In a later letter to Schuyler, written September 18, 
 1777, Morris praised the latter very warmly for the way 
 he had behaved, and commented roughly on Gates's 
 littleness of spirit. He considered that with such a com- 
 mander there was nothing to be hoped for from skilful 
 management, and that Burgoyne would have to be sim- 
 ply tired out. Alluding to a rumor that the Indians were 
 about to take up the hatchet for us, he wrote, in the 
 humorous vein he adopted so often in dealing even with 
 the most pressing matters: "If this be true, it would be 
 
 331 
 
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS 
 
 infinitely better to wear away the enemy's army by a 
 scrupulous and polite attention, than to violate the rules 
 of decorum and the laws of hospitality by making an at- 
 tack upon strangers in our own country!" He gave 
 Schuyler the news of Washington's defeat at the battle 
 of Brandywine, and foretold the probable loss of Phila- 
 delphia and a consequent winter campaign. 
 
 In ending he gave a thoroughly characteristic sketch 
 of the occupations of himself and his colleagues. "The 
 chief justice (Jay) is gone to fetch his wife. The chan- 
 cellor (Livingston) is solacing himself with his wife, his 
 farm, and his imagination. Our Senate is doing, I know 
 not what. In Assembly we wrangle long to little pur- 
 pose. . . . We have some principles of fermentation 
 which must, if it be possible, evaporate before business 
 is entered upon." 
 
 332 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 IN THE CONTINENTAL CONGRESS 
 
 At the end of 1777, while still but twenty -five years 
 old, Morris was elected to the Continental Congress, and 
 took his seat in that body at Yorktown in the following 
 January. 
 
 He was immediately appointed as one of a committee 
 of five members to go to Washington's headquarters at 
 Valley Forge and examine into the condition of the Con- 
 tinental troops. 
 
 The dreadful suffering of the American army in this 
 winter camp was such that its memory has literally 
 eaten its way into the hearts of our people, and it comes 
 before our minds with a vividness that dims the remem- 
 brance of any other disaster. Washington's gaunt, 
 half-starved Continentals, shoeless and ragged, shivered 
 in their crazy huts, worn out by want and illness, and by 
 the bitter cold; while the members of the Continental 
 Congress not only failed to support them in the present, 
 but even grudged them the poor gift of a promise of half- 
 pay in the future. Some of the delegates, headed by 
 Samuel Adams, were actually caballing against the great 
 chief himself, the one hope of America. Meanwhile the 
 States looked askance at each other, and each sunk into 
 supine indifference when its own borders were for the 
 moment left unthreatened by the foe. Throughout the 
 Revolutionary War our people hardly once pulled with a 
 will together; although almost every locality in turn, on 
 some one occasion, varied its lethargy by a spasm of ter- 
 
 333 
 
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS 
 
 rible energy. Yet, again, it must be remembered that 
 we were never more to be dreaded than when our last 
 hope seemed gone; and if the people were unwilling to 
 show the wisdom and self-sacrifice that would have in- 
 sured success, they were equally determined under no 
 circumstances whatever to acknowledge final defeat. 
 
 To Jay, with whom he was always intimate, Morris 
 wrote in strong terms from Valley Forge, painting things 
 as they were, but without a shadow of doubt or distrust; 
 for he by this time saw clearly enough that in American 
 warfare the darkest hour was often followed close indeed 
 by dawn. "The skeleton of an army presents itself to 
 our eyes in a naked, starving condition, out of health, 
 out of spirits. But I have seen Fort George in 1777." 
 The last sentence refers to what he saw of Schuyler's 
 forces, when affairs in New York State were at the black- 
 est, just before the tide began to turn against Burgoyne. 
 He then went on to beseech Jay to exert himself to the 
 utmost on the great question of taxation, the most vital 
 of all. Morris himself was so good a financier that 
 Revolutionary financial economics drove him almost 
 wild. The Continental Congress, of which he had just 
 become a member, he did not esteem very highly, and 
 dismissed it, as well as the currency as having ''both de- 
 preciated." The State of Pennsylvania, he remarked, 
 was "sick unto death"; and added that "Sir William 
 [the British general] would prove a most damnable 
 physician." 
 
 Most wisely, in examining and reporting, he paid heed 
 almost exclusively to Washington's recommendations, 
 and the plan he and his colleagues produced was little 
 more than an enlargement of the general's suggestions 
 as to filling out the regiments, regulating rank, model- 
 ling the various departments, etc. In fact, Morris now 
 
 334 
 
IN THE CONTINENTAL CONGRESS 
 
 devoted himself to securing the approval of Congress for 
 Washington's various plans. 
 
 In urging one of the most important of these he 
 encountered very determined opposition. Washington 
 was particularly desirous of securing a permanent pro- 
 vision for the officers by the establishment of a system 
 of half-pay, stating that without some such arrangement 
 he saw no hope whatever for the salvation of the cause; 
 for as things then were the officers were leaving day by 
 day; and of those who went home on furlough to the 
 Eastern and Southern States, many, instead of return- 
 ing, went into some lucrative employment. This fact, 
 by the way, while showing the difficulties with which 
 Washington had to deal, and therefore his greatness, 
 since he successfully dealt with them, at the same time 
 puts the officers of the Revolution in no very favorable 
 light as compared with their descendants at the time of 
 the great rebellion; and the Continental Congress makes 
 a still worse showing. 
 
 When Morris tried to push through a measure provid- 
 ing for half-pay for life, he was fought, tooth and nail, 
 by many of his colleagues, including, to their lasting dis- 
 credit be it said, every delegate from New England. 
 The folly of these ultrademocratic delegates almost 
 passes belief. They seemed incapable of learning how 
 the fight for liberty should be made. Their leaders, 
 like Samuel Adams and John Hancock, did admirable 
 service in exciting the Americans to make the struggle; 
 but once it was begun, their function ended, and from 
 thence onward they hampered almost as much as they 
 helped the patriot cause. New England, too, had 
 passed through the period when its patriotic fervor was 
 at white heat. It still remained as resolute as ever; and 
 if the danger had been once more brought home to its 
 
 335 
 
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS 
 
 very door-sill, then it would have risen again as it had 
 risen before ; but without the spur of an immediate ne- 
 cessity it moved but sluggishly. 
 
 The New Englanders were joined by the South Caro- 
 lina delegates. Morris was backed by the members 
 from New York, Virginia, and the other States, and he 
 won the victory, but not without being obliged to accept 
 amendments that took away some of the good of the 
 measure. Half-pay was granted, but it was only to last 
 for seven years after the close of the war; and the paltry 
 bounty of eighty dollars was to be given to every soldier 
 who served out his time to the end. 
 
 At the same period Morris was engaged on numerous 
 other committees, dealing chiefly with the finances, or 
 with the remedy of abuses that had crept into the ad- 
 ministration of the army. In one of his reports he ex- 
 posed thoroughly the frightful waste in the purchase and 
 distribution of supplies, and, what was much worse, the 
 accompanying frauds. These frauds had become a 
 most serious evil; Jay, in one of his letters to Morris, 
 had already urgently requested him to turn his atten- 
 tion especially to stopping the officers, in particular 
 those of the staff, from themselves engaging in trade, on 
 account of the jobbing and swindling that it produced. 
 The shoddy contractors of the Civil War had plenty of 
 predecessors in the Revolution. 
 
 When these events occurred, in the spring of 1778, it 
 was already three years after the fight at Lexington; 
 certainly, the Continental armies of that time do not 
 compare favorably, even taking all difficulties into ac- 
 count, with the Confederate forces which in 1864, three 
 years after the fall of Sumter, fronted Grant and Sher- 
 man. The men of the Revolution failed to show the 
 capacity to organize for fighting purposes, and the abil- 
 
 336 
 
IN THE CONTINENTAL CONGRESS 
 
 ity to bend all energies toward the attainment of a given 
 end, which their great-grandsons of the Civil War, both 
 at the North and the South, possessed. Yet, after all, 
 their very follies sprang from their virtues, from their 
 inborn love of freedom, and their impatience of the con- 
 trol of outsiders. So fierce had they been in their oppo- 
 sition to the rule of foreigners that they were now hardly 
 willing to submit to being ruled by themselves; they had 
 seen power so abused that they feared its very use; they 
 were anxious to assert their independence of all man- 
 kind, even of each other. Stubborn, honest, and fear- 
 less, they were taught with difficulty, and only by the 
 grinding logic of an imperious necessity, that it was no 
 surrender of their freedom to submit to rulers chosen by 
 themselves, through whom alone that freedom could be 
 won. They had not yet learned that right could be en- 
 forced only by might, that union was to the full as im- 
 portant as liberty, because it was the prerequisite condi- 
 tion for the establishment and preservation of liberty. 
 But if the Americans of the Revolution were not per- 
 fect, how their faults dwindle when we stand them side 
 by side with their European compeers! What Euro- 
 pean nation then brought forth rulers as wise and pure 
 as our statesmen, or masses as free and self-respecting 
 as our people ? There was far more swindling, jobbing, 
 cheating, and stealing in the English army than in ours; 
 the British king and his ministers need no criticism; and 
 the outcome of the war proves that their nation as a 
 whole was less resolute than our own. As for the other 
 European powers, the faults of our leaders sink out of 
 sight when matched against the ferocious frivolity of 
 the French noblesse, or the ignoble, sordid, bloody base- 
 ness of those swinish German kinglets who let out their 
 subjects to do hired murder, and battened on the blood 
 
 337 
 
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS 
 
 and sweat of the wretched beings under them, until the 
 whirlwind of the French Revolution swept their car- 
 casses from off the world they cumbered. 
 
 We must needs give all honor to the men who founded 
 our Commonwealth; only in so doing let us remember 
 that they brought into being a government under which 
 their children were to grow better and not worse. 
 
 Washington at once recognized in Morris a man whom 
 he could trust in every way, and on whose help he could 
 rely in other matters besides getting his officers half-pay. 
 The young New Yorker was one of the great Virginian's 
 warmest supporters in Congress, and took the lead in 
 championing his cause at every turn. He was the 
 leader in putting down intrigues like that of the French- 
 Irish adventurer Conway, his ready tongue and knowl- 
 edge of parliamentary tactics, no less than his ability, 
 rendering him the especial dread and dislike of the anti- 
 Washington faction. 
 
 Washington wrote to Morris very freely, and in one 
 of his letters complained of the conduct of some of the 
 officers who wished to resign when affairs looked dark, 
 and to be reinstated as soon as they brightened a little. 
 Morris replied with one of his bright caustic letters, 
 sparing his associates very little, their pompous tedious- 
 ness and hesitation being peculiarly galling to a man so 
 far-seeing and so prompt to make up his mind. He 
 wrote: "We are going on with the regimental arrange- 
 ments as fast as possible, and I think the day begins to 
 appear with respect to that business. Had our Saviour 
 addressed a chapter to the rulers of mankind, as he did 
 many to the subjects, I am persuaded his good sense 
 would have dictated this text: Be not wise overmuch. 
 Had the several members who compose our multifarious 
 
 338 
 
IN THE CONTINENTAL CONGRESS 
 
 body been only wise enough, our business would long 
 since have been completed. But our superior abilities, 
 or the desire of appearing to possess them, lead us to 
 such exquisite tediousness of debate that the most pre- 
 cious moments pass unheeded away. ... As to what 
 you mention of the extraordinary demeanor of some 
 gentlemen, I cannot but agree with you that such con- 
 duct is not the most honorable. But, on the other hand, 
 you must allow that it is the most safe, and certainly 
 you are not to learn that, however ignorant of that 
 happy art in your own person, the bulk of us bipeds 
 know well how to balance solid pudding against empty 
 praise. There are other things, my dear sir, beside vir- 
 tue, which are their own reward." 
 
 Washington chose Morris as his confidential friend 
 and agent to bring privately before Congress a matter 
 in reference to which he did not consider it politic to 
 write publicly. He was at that time annoyed beyond 
 measure by the shoals of foreign officers who were seek- 
 ing employment in the army, and he wished Congress 
 to stop giving them admission to the service. These 
 foreign officers were sometimes honorable men, but more 
 often adventurers; with two or three striking exceptions, 
 they failed to do as well as officers of native birth; and, 
 as later in the Civil War, so in the Revolution, it ap- 
 peared that Americans could be best commanded by 
 Americans. Washington had the greatest dislike for 
 these adventurers, stigmatizing them as "men who in 
 the first instance tell you that they wish for nothing 
 more than the honor of serving in so glorious a cause 
 as volunteers, the next day solicit rank without pay, the 
 day following want money advanced to them, and in 
 the course of a week want further promotion, and are 
 not satisfied with anything you can do for them." He 
 
 339 
 
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS 
 
 ended by writing: "I do most devoutly wish that we 
 had not a single foreigner among us, except the Marquis 
 de Lafayette, who acts upon very different principles 
 from those which govern the rest." To Lafayette, in- 
 deed, America owes as much as to any of her own chil- 
 dren, for his devotion to us was as disinterested and 
 sincere as it was effective; and it is a pleasant thing to 
 remember that we, in our turn, not only repaid him 
 materially, but, what he valued far more, that our whole 
 people yielded him all his life long the most loving hom- 
 age a man could receive. No man ever kept pleasanter 
 relations with a people he had helped than Lafayette 
 did with us. 
 
 Morris replied to Washington that he would do all 
 in his power to aid him. Meanwhile he had also con- 
 tracted a very warm friendship for Greene, then newly 
 appointed quartermaster-general of the army, and 
 proved a most useful ally, both in and out of Congress, 
 in helping the general to get his department in good 
 running order, and in extricating it from the frightful 
 confusion in which it had previously been plunged. 
 
 He also specially devoted himself at this time to an 
 investigation of the finances, which were in a dreadful 
 condition; and by the ability with which he performed 
 his very varied duties he acquired such prominence that 
 he was given the chairmanship of the most important 
 of all the congressional committees. This was the com- 
 mittee to which was confided the task of conferring with 
 the British commissioners, who had been sent over, in 
 the spring of 1778, to treat with the Americans, in ac- 
 cordance with the terms of what were known as Lord 
 North's conciliatory bills. These bills were two in num- 
 ber, the first giving up the right of taxation, about which 
 the quarrel had originally arisen, and the second author- 
 
 340 
 
IN THE CONTINENTAL CONGRESS 
 
 izing the commissioners to treat with the revolted 
 colonies on all questions in dispute. They were intro- 
 duced in Parliament on account of the little headway 
 made by the British in subduing their former subjects, 
 and were pressed hastily through because of the fear of 
 an American alliance with France, which was then, in- 
 deed, almost concluded. 
 
 Three years before, these bills would have achieved 
 their end; but now they came by just that much time 
 too late. The embittered warfare had lasted long 
 enough entirely to destroy the old friendly feelings; 
 and the Americans having once tasted the "perilous 
 pleasure" of freedom, having once stretched out their 
 arms and stood before the world's eyes as their own 
 masters, it was certain that they would never forego 
 their liberty, no matter with what danger it was fraught, 
 no matter how light the yoke, or how kindly the bond- 
 age, by which it was to be replaced. 
 
 Two days after the bills were received, Morris drew 
 up and presented his report, which was unanimously 
 adopted by Congress. Its tenor can be gathered from 
 its summing up, which declared that the indispensable 
 preliminaries to any treaty would have to be the with- 
 drawal of all the British fleets and armies, and the ac- 
 knowledgment of the independence of the United States; 
 and it closed by calling on the several States to furnish 
 without delay their quotas of troops for the coming 
 campaign. 
 
 This decisive stand was taken when America was still 
 without allies in the contest; but ten days afterward 
 messengers came to Congress bearing copies of the 
 treaty with France. It was ratified forthwith, and 
 again Morris was appointed chairman of a committee, 
 this time to issue an address on the subject to the Amer- 
 
 341 
 
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS 
 
 ican people at large. He penned this address himself, 
 explaining fully the character of the crisis, and going 
 briefly over the events that had led to it; and shortly 
 afterward he drew up, on behalf of Congress, a sketch 
 of all the proceedings in reference to the British com- 
 missioners, under the title of "Observations on the 
 American Revolution," giving therein a masterly out- 
 line not only of the doings of Congress in the particular 
 matter under consideration, but also an account of the 
 causes of the war, of the efforts of the Americans to 
 maintain peace, and of the chief events that had taken 
 place, as well as a comparison between the contrasting 
 motives and aims of the contestants. 
 
 Morris was one of the committee appointed to re- 
 ceive the French minister, M. Gerard. Immediately 
 afterward he was also selected by Congress to draft 
 the instructions which were to be sent to Franklin, the 
 American minister at the Court of Versailles. As a 
 token of the closeness of our relations with France, he 
 was requested to show these instructions to M. Gerard, 
 which he accordingly did ; and some interesting features 
 of the conversation between the two men have been 
 preserved for us in the despatches of Gerard to the 
 French Court. The Americans were alwavs anxious to 
 undertake the conquest of Canada, although Washing- 
 ton did not believe the scheme feasible; and the French 
 strongly, although secretly, opposed it, as it was their 
 policy from the beginning that Canada should remain 
 English. Naturally the French did not wish to see 
 America transformed into a conquering power, a menace 
 to themselves and to the Spaniards as well as to the Eng- 
 lish; nor can they be criticised for feeling in this way, 
 or taunted with acting only from motives of self-interest. 
 It is doubtless true that their purposes in going into the 
 
 342 
 
IN THE CONTINENTAL CONGRESS 
 
 war were mixed ; they unquestionably wished to benefit 
 themselves, and to hurt their old and successful rival; 
 but it is equally unquestionable that they were also 
 moved by a generous spirit of sympathy and admiration 
 for the struggling colonists. It would, however, have 
 been folly to let this sympathy blind them to the conse- 
 quences that might ensue to all Europeans having pos- 
 sessions in America, if the Americans should become not 
 only independent, but also aggressive; and it was too 
 much to expect them to be so far-sighted as to see that, 
 once independent, it was against the very nature of 
 things that the Americans should not be aggressive, and 
 impossible that they should be aught but powerful and 
 positive instruments, both in their own persons and by 
 their example, in freeing the whole western continent 
 from European control. 
 
 Accordingly M. Gerard endeavored, though without 
 success, to prevail on Morris not to mention the ques- 
 tion of an invasion of Canada in the instructions to 
 Franklin. He also warned the American of the danger 
 of alarming Spain by manifesting a wish to encroach on 
 its territory in the Mississippi valley, mentioning and 
 condemning the attitude taken by several members of 
 Congress to the effect that the navigation of the Mis- 
 sissippi should belong equally to the English and Amer- 
 icans. 
 
 Morris's reply showed how little even the most in- 
 telligent American of that time — especially if he came 
 from the Northern or Eastern States— could appreciate 
 the destiny of his country. He stated that his colleagues 
 favored restricting the growth of our country to the 
 south and west, and believed that the navigation of 
 the Mississippi, from the Ohio down, should belong ex- 
 clusively to the Spaniards, as otherwise the western 
 
 343 
 
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS 
 
 settlements springing up in the valley of the Ohio, and 
 on the shores of the Great Lakes, would not only domi- 
 neer over Spain, but also over the United States, and 
 would certainly render themselves independent in the 
 end. He further said that some at least of those who 
 were anxious to secure the navigation of the Mississippi 
 were so from interested motives, having money ven- 
 tures in the establishments along the river. However, 
 if he at this time failed fully to grasp his country's fu- 
 ture, he was, later on, one of the first in the Northern 
 States to recognize it; and once he did see it he promptly 
 changed, and became the strongest advocate of our ter- 
 ritorial expansion. 
 
 Accompanying his instructions to Franklin, Morris 
 sent a pamphlet entitled "Observations on the Finances 
 of America," to be laid before the French ministry. 
 Practically, all that the pamphlet amounted to was a 
 most urgent begging letter, showing that our own people 
 could not, or would not, either pay taxes or take up a 
 domestic loan, so that we stood in dire need of a sub- 
 sidy from abroad. The drawing up of such a document 
 could hardly have been satisfactory employment for a 
 high-spirited man who wished to be proud of his coun- 
 try- 
 All through our negotiations with France and Eng- 
 land, Morris's views coincided with those of Wash- 
 ington, Hamilton, Jay, and the others who afterward 
 became leaders of the Federalist party. Their opinions 
 were well expressed by Jay in a letter to Morris written 
 about this time, which ran: "I view a return to the 
 domination of Britain with horror, and would risk all 
 for independence; but that point ceded, . . . the de- 
 struction of Old England would hurt me ; I wish it well ; 
 it afforded my ancestors an asylum from persecution." 
 
 344 
 
IN THE CONTINENTAL CONGRESS 
 
 The rabid American adherents of France could not un- 
 derstand such sentiments, and the more mean-spirited 
 among them always tried to injure Morris on account 
 of his loyalist relatives, although so many families were 
 divided in this same way, Franklin's only son being 
 himself a prominent Tory. So bitter was this feeling 
 that when, later on, Morris's mother, who was within 
 the British lines, became very ill, he actually had to 
 give up his intended visit to her, because of the furious 
 clamor that was raised against it. He refers bitterly, 
 in one of his letters to Jay, to the "malevolence of in- 
 dividuals," as something he had to expect, but which 
 he announced that he would conquer by so living as to 
 command the respect of those whose respect was worth 
 having. 
 
 When, however, his foes were of sufficient importance 
 to warrant his paying attention to them individually, 
 Morris proved abundantly able to take care of himself, 
 and to deal heavier blows than he received. This was 
 shown in the controversy which convulsed Congress 
 over the conduct of Silas Deane, the original American 
 envoy to France. Deane did not behave very well, but 
 at first he was certainly much more sinned against than 
 sinning, and Morris took up his cause warmly. Thomas 
 Paine, the famous author of " Common Sense," who was 
 secretary of the Committee of Foreign Affairs, attacked 
 Deane and his defenders, as well as the Court of France, 
 with peculiar venom, using as weapons the secrets he 
 became acquainted with through his official position, 
 and which Ke was in honor bound not to divulge. For 
 this Morris had him removed from his secretaryship, 
 and in the debate handled him extremely roughly, char- 
 acterizing him with contemptuous severity as "a mere 
 adventurer from England . . . ignorant even of gram- 
 
 345 
 
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS 
 
 mar," and ridiculing his pretensions to importance. 
 Paine was an adept in the art of invective; but he came 
 out second best in this encounter, and never forgot or 
 forgave his antagonist. 
 
 As a rule, however, Morris was kept too busily at 
 work to spare time for altercations. He was chairman 
 of three important standing committees, those on the 
 commissary, quartermaster's, and medical departments, 
 and did the whole business for each. He also had more 
 than his share of special committee work, besides play- 
 ing his full part in the debates and consultations of the 
 Congress itself. Moreover, his salary was so small that 
 he had to eke it out by the occasional practice of his 
 profession. He devoted himself especially to the con- 
 sideration of our finances and of our foreign relations; 
 and, as he grew constantly to possess more and more 
 weight and influence in Congress, he was appointed, 
 early in 1779, as chairman of a very important com- 
 mittee, which was to receive communications from our 
 ministers abroad, as well as from the French envoy. 
 He drew out its report, together with the draft of in- 
 structions to our foreign ministers, which it recom- 
 mended. Congress accepted the first, and adopted the 
 last, without change, whereby it became the basis of 
 the treaty by which we finally won peace. In his draft 
 he had been careful not to bind down our representa- 
 tives on minor points, and to leave them as large liberty 
 of action as was possible; but the main issues, such as 
 the boundaries, the navigation of the Mississippi, and 
 the fisheries, were discussed at length and in order. 
 
 At the time this draft of instructions for a treaty was 
 sent out, there was much demand among certain mem- 
 bers in Congress that we should do all in our power to 
 make foreign alliances, and to procure recognitions of 
 
 346 
 
IN THE CONTINENTAL CONGRESS 
 
 our independence in every possible quarter. To this 
 Morris was heartily opposed, deeming that this "rage 
 for treaties," as he called it, was not very dignified on 
 our part. He held rightly that our true course was to 
 go our own gait, without seeking outside favor, until we 
 had shown ourselves able to keep our own place among 
 nations, when the recognitions would come without ask- 
 ing. Whether European nations recognized us as a free 
 people, or not, was of little moment so long as we our- 
 selves knew that we had become one in law and in fact, 
 through the right of battle and the final arbitrament of 
 the sword. 
 
 Besides these questions of national policy, Morris 
 also had to deal with an irritating matter affecting 
 mainly New York. This was the dispute of that State 
 with the people of Vermont, who wished to form a 
 separate commonwealth of their own, while New York 
 claimed that their lands came within its borders. Even 
 the fear of their common foe, the British, against whom 
 they needed to employ their utmost strength, was barely 
 sufficient to prevent the two communities from indulg- 
 ing in a small civil war of their own; and they persisted 
 in pressing their rival claims upon the attention of Con- 
 gress, and clamoring for a decision from that harassed 
 and overburdened body. Clinton, who was much more 
 of a politician than a statesman, led the popular party 
 in this foolish business, the majority of the New Yorkers 
 being apparently nearly as enthusiastic in asserting their 
 sovereignty over Vermont as they were in declaring 
 their independence of Britain. Morris, however, was 
 very half-hearted in pushing the affair before Congress. 
 He doubted if Congress had the power, and he knew it 
 lacked the will, to move in the matter at all; and be- 
 sides he did not sympathize with the position taken by 
 
 347 
 
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS 
 
 his State. He was wise enough to see that the Ver- 
 monters had much of the right on their side in addition 
 to the great fact of possession; and that New York 
 would be probably unable to employ force enough to 
 conquer them. Clinton was a true type of the sepa- 
 ratist or States'-rights politician of that day: he cared 
 little how the national weal was affected by the quarrel; 
 and he was far more anxious to bluster than to fight 
 over the matter, to which end he kept besieging the 
 delegates in Congress with useless petitions. In a letter 
 to him, Morris put the case with his usual plainness, 
 telling him that it was perfectly idle to keep worrying 
 Congress to take action, for it would certainly not do 
 so, and, if it did render a decision, the Vermonters would 
 no more respect it than they would the Pope's Bull. He 
 went on to show his characteristic contempt for half- 
 measures, and capacity for striking straight at the root 
 of things: "Either let these people alone, or conquer 
 them. I prefer the latter; but I doubt the means. If 
 we have the means let them be used, and let Congress 
 deliberate and decide, or deliberate without deciding — 
 it is of no consequence. Success will sanctify every 
 operation. ... If we have not the means of conquer- 
 ing these people we must let them alone. We must 
 continue our impotent threats, or we must make a 
 treaty. ... If we continue our threats they will either 
 hate or despise us, and perhaps both. . . . On the 
 whole, then, my conclusion is here, as on most other 
 human affairs, act decisively, fight or submit, — conquer 
 or treat." Morris was right; the treaty was finally 
 made, and Vermont became an independent State. 
 
 But the small politicians of New York would not for- 
 give him for the wisdom and the broad feeling of na- 
 tionality he showed on this and so many other ques- 
 
 348 
 
IN THE CONTINENTAL CONGRESS 
 
 tions; and they defeated him when he was a candidate 
 for re-election to Congress at the end of 1779. The 
 charge they urged against him was that he devoted his 
 time wholly to the service of the nation at large, and 
 not to that of New York in particular; his very devo- 
 tion to the public business, which had kept him from 
 returning to the State, being brought forward to harm 
 him. Arguments of this kind are common enough even 
 at the present day, and effective too, among that nu- 
 merous class of men with narrow minds and selfish 
 hearts. Many an able and upright congressman since 
 Morris has been sacrificed because his constituents 
 found he was fitted to do the exact work needed; be- 
 cause he showed himself capable of serving the whole 
 nation, and did not devote his time to advancing the 
 interests of only a portion thereof. 
 
 349 
 
CHAPTER V 
 FINANCES: THE TREATY OF PEACE 
 
 At the end of 1779 Morris was thus retired to private 
 life; and, having by this time made many friends in 
 Philadelphia, he took up his abode in that city. His 
 leaving Congress was small loss to himself, as that body 
 was rapidly sinking into a condition of windy decrepi- 
 tude. 
 
 He at once began working at his profession, and also 
 threw himself with eager zest into every attainable form 
 of gaiety and amusement, for he was of a most pleasure- 
 loving temperament, very fond of society, and a great 
 favorite in the little American world of wit and fashion. 
 But although in private life, he nevertheless kept his 
 grip on public affairs, and devoted himself to the 
 finances, which were in a most wretched state. He 
 could not keep out of public life; he probably agreed 
 with Jay, who, on hearing that he was again a private 
 citizen, wrote him to "remember that Achilles made no 
 figure at the spinning-wheel." At any rate, as early as 
 February, 1780, he came to the front once more as the 
 author of a series of essays on the finances. They were 
 published in Philadelphia, and attracted the attention 
 of all thinking men by their soundness. In fact it was 
 in our monetary affairs that the key to the situation 
 was to be found; for, had we been willing to pay honestly 
 and promptly the necessary war expenses, we should 
 have ended the struggle in short order. But the nig- 
 gardliness as well as the real poverty of the people, the 
 
 350 
 
FINANCES: THE TREATY OF PEACE 
 
 jealousies of the States, kept aflame by the States'- 
 rights leaders for their own selfish purposes, and the 
 foolish ideas of most of the congressional delegates on 
 all money matters, combined to keep our Treasury in 
 a pitiable condition. 
 
 Morris tried to show the people at large the advan- 
 tage of submitting to reasonable taxation, while at the 
 same time combating some of the theories entertained 
 as well by themselves as by their congressional repre- 
 sentatives. He began by discussing with great clear- 
 ness what money really is, how far coin can be replaced 
 by paper, the interdependence of money and credit, 
 and other elementary points in reference to which most 
 of his fellow citizens seemed to possess wonderfully 
 mixed ideas. He attacked the efforts of Congress to 
 make their currency legal tender, and then showed the 
 utter futility of one of the pet schemes of Revolutionary 
 financial wisdom, the regulation of prices by law. Hard 
 times, then as now, always produced not only a large 
 debtor class, but also a corresponding number of polit- 
 ical demagogues who truckled to it; and both dema- 
 gogue and debtor, when they clamored for laws which 
 should "relieve" the latter, meant thereby laws which 
 would enable him to swindle his creditor. The people, 
 moreover, liked to lay the blame for their misfortunes 
 neither on fate nor on themselves, but on some unfor- 
 tunate outsider; and they were especially apt to attack 
 as "monopolists" the men who had purchased neces- 
 sary supplies in large quantities to profit by their rise 
 in price. Accordingly they passed laws against them; 
 and Morris showed in his essays the unwisdom of such 
 legislation, while not defending for a moment the men 
 who looked on the misfortunes of their country solely 
 as offering a field for their own harvesting. 
 
 351 
 
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS 
 
 He ended by drawing out an excellent scheme of 
 taxation; but, unfortunately, the people were too short- 
 sighted to submit to any measure of the sort, no matter 
 how wise and necessary. One of the pleas he made for 
 his scheme was, that something of the sort would be 
 absolutely necessary for the preservation of the Federal 
 Union, "which," he wrote, "in my poor opinion, will 
 greatly depend upon the management of the revenue." 
 He showed with his usual clearness the need of obtain- 
 ing, for financial as well as for all other reasons, a firmer 
 union, as the existing confederation bade fair to be- 
 come, as its enemies had prophesied, a rope of sand. 
 He also foretold graphically the misery that would ensue 
 —and that actually did ensue— when the pressure from 
 a foreign foe should cease, and the States should be re- 
 solved into a disorderly league of petty, squabbling com- 
 munities. In ending he remarked bitterly: "The Ar- 
 ticles of Confederation were formed when the attach- 
 ment to Congress was warm and great. The framers 
 of them, therefore, seem to have been only solicitous 
 how to provide against the power of that body, which, 
 by means of their foresight and care, now exists by 
 mere courtesy and sufferance." 
 
 Although Morris was not able to convert Congress 
 to the ways of sound thinking, his ability and clearness 
 impressed themselves on all the best men, notably on 
 Robert Morris— who was no relation of his, by the way 
 —the first in the line of American statesmen who have 
 been great in finance; a man whose services to our 
 Treasury stand on a par, if not with those of Hamilton, 
 at least with those of Gallatin and John Sherman. Con- 
 gress had just established four departments, with secre- 
 taries at the head of each. The two most important 
 were the departments of Foreign Affairs and of Finance. 
 
 352 
 
FINANCES: THE TREATY OF PEACE 
 
 Livingston was given the former, while Robert Morris 
 received the latter; and immediately afterward ap- 
 pointed Gouverneur Morris as assistant financier, at 
 a salary of eighteen hundred and fifty dollars a year. 
 
 Morris accepted this appointment, and remained in 
 office for three years and a half, until the beginning of 
 1785. He threw himself heart and soul into the work, 
 helping his chief in every way; and in particular giving 
 him invaluable assistance in the establishment of the 
 "Bank of North America," which Congress was per- 
 suaded to incorporate — an institution which was the 
 first of its kind in the country. It was of wonderful 
 effect in restoring the public credit, and was absolutely 
 invaluable in the financial operations undertaken by the 
 secretary. 
 
 When, early in 1782, the secretary was directed by 
 Congress to present to that body a report on the for- 
 eign coins circulating in the country, it was prepared 
 and sent in by Gouverneur Morris, and he accompanied 
 it with a plan for an American coinage. The postscript 
 was the really important part of the document, and the 
 plan therein set forth was made the basis of our present 
 coinage system, although not until several years later, 
 and then only with important modifications, suggested, 
 for the most part, by Jefferson. 
 
 Although his plan was modified, it still remains true 
 that Gouverneur Morris was the founder of our national 
 coinage. He introduced the system of decimal nota- 
 tion, invented the word "cent" to express one of the 
 smaller coins, and nationalized the already familiar 
 word "dollar." His plan, however, was a little too ab- 
 struse for the common mind, the unit being made so 
 small that a large sum would have had to be expressed 
 in a very great number of figures, and there being five 
 
 353 
 
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS 
 
 or six different kinds of new coins, some of them not 
 simple multiples of each other. Afterward he proposed 
 as a modification a system of pounds, or dollars, and 
 doits, the doit answering to our present mill, while pro- 
 viding also an ingenious arrangement by which the 
 money of account was to differ from the money of coin- 
 age. Jefferson changed the system by grafting on it the 
 dollar as a unit, and simplifying it; and Hamilton per- 
 fected it further. 
 
 To understand the advantage, as well as the bold- 
 ness, of Morris's scheme, we must keep in mind the 
 horrible condition of our currency at that time. We 
 had no proper coins of our own; nothing but hopelessly 
 depreciated paper bills, a mass of copper, and some 
 clipped and counterfeited gold and silver coin from the 
 mints of England, France, Spain, and even Germany. 
 Dollars, pounds, shillings, doubloons, ducats, moidores, 
 joes, crowns, pistareens, coppers, and sous circulated 
 indifferently, and with various values in each colony. 
 A dollar was worth six shillings in Massachusetts, eight 
 in New York, seven and sixpence in Pennsylvania, six 
 again in Virginia, eight again in North Carolina, thirty- 
 two and a half in South Carolina, and five in Georgia. 
 The government itself had to resort to clipping in one 
 of its most desperate straits; and at last people would 
 only take payment by weight of gold or silver. 
 
 Morris, in his report, dwelt especially on three points : 
 first, that the new money should be easily intelligible to 
 the multitude, and should, therefore, bear a close rela- 
 tion to the coins already existing, as otherwise its sud- 
 den introduction would bring business to a standstill, 
 and would excite distrust and suspicion everywhere, 
 particularly among the poorest and most ignorant, the 
 day -laborers, the farm servants, and the hired help; 
 
 354 
 
FINANCES: THE TREATY OF PEACE 
 
 second, that its lowest divisible sum, or unit, should 
 be very small, so that the price and the value of little 
 things could be made proportionate; and third, that as 
 far as possible the money should increase in decimal 
 ratio. The Spanish dollar was the coin most widely 
 circulated, while retaining everywhere about the same 
 value. Accordingly he took this, and then sought for 
 a unit that would go evenly into it, as well as into the 
 various shillings, disregarding the hopelessly aberrant 
 shilling of South Carolina. Such a unit was a quarter 
 of a grain of pure silver, equal to the one fourteen hun- 
 dred and fortieth part of a dollar; it was not, of course, 
 necessary to have it exactly represented in coin. On 
 the contrary, he proposed to strike two copper pieces, 
 respectively of five and eight units, to be known as fives 
 and eights. Two eights would then make a penny in 
 Pennsylvania, and three eights one in Georgia, while 
 three fives would make one in New York, and four would 
 make one in Massachusetts. Morris's great aim was, 
 while establishing uniform coins for the entire Union, 
 to get rid of the fractional remainders in translating the 
 old currencies into the new; and in addition his reckon- 
 ing adapted itself to the different systems in the different 
 States, as well as to the different coins in use. But he 
 introduced an entirely new system of coinage, and more- 
 over used therein the names of several old coins while 
 giving them new values. His originally proposed table 
 of currency was as follows: 
 
 One crown = ten dollars, or 10,000 units 
 
 One dollar = ten bills, or 1,000 
 
 One bill = ten pence, or 100 
 
 One penny = ten quarters, or 10 
 
 One quarter = 1 
 
 But he proposed that for convenience other coins should 
 
 355 
 
 << 
 
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS 
 
 be struck, like the copper five and eight above spoken of, 
 and he afterward altered his names. He then called the 
 bill of one hundred units a cent, making it consist of 
 twenty-five grains of silver and two of copper, being 
 thus the lowest silver coin. Five cents were to make a 
 quint, and ten a mark. 
 
 Congress, according to its custom, received the re- 
 port, applauded it, and did nothing in the matter. 
 Shortly afterward, however, Jefferson took it up, when 
 the whole subject was referred to a committee of which 
 he was a member. He highly approved of Morris's 
 plan, and took from it the idea of a decimal system, and 
 the use of the words " dollar " and " cent." But he con- 
 sidered Morris's unit too small, and preferred to take 
 as his own the Spanish dollar, which was already known 
 to all the people, its value being uniform and well under- 
 stood. Then, by keeping strictly to the decimal system, 
 and dividing the dollar into one hundred parts, he got 
 cents for our fractional currency. He thus introduced 
 a simpler system than that of Morris, with an existing 
 and well-understood unit, instead of an imaginary one 
 that would have to be, for the first time, brought to the 
 knowledge of the people, and which might be adopted 
 only with reluctance. On the other hand, Jefferson's 
 system failed entirely to provide for the extension of the 
 old currencies in the terms of the new without the use 
 of fractions. On this account Morris vehemently op- 
 posed it, but it was nevertheless adopted. He foretold, 
 what actually came to pass, that the people would be 
 very reluctant to throw away their local moneys in order 
 to take up a general money which bore no special rela- 
 tion to them. For half a century afterward the people 
 clung to their absurd shillings and sixpences, the gov- 
 ernment itself, in its post-office transactions, being 
 
 356 
 
FINANCES: THE TREATY OF PEACE 
 
 obliged to recognize the obsolete terms in vogue in cer- 
 tain localities. Some curious pieces circulated freely up 
 to the time of the Civil War. Still, Jefferson's plan 
 worked admirably in the end. 
 
 All the time he was working so hard at the finances, 
 Morris nevertheless continued to enjoy himself to the 
 full in the society of Philadelphia. Imperious, light- 
 hearted, good-looking, well-dressed, he ranked as a wit 
 among men, as a beau among women. He was equally 
 sought for dances and dinners. He was a fine scholar 
 and a polished gentleman; a capital story-teller; and had 
 just a touch of erratic levity that served to render him 
 still more charming. Occasionally he showed whimsi- 
 cal peculiarities, usually about very small things, that 
 brought him into trouble; and one such freak cost him 
 a serious injury. In his capacity of young man of 
 fashion, he used to drive about town in a phaeton with 
 a pair of small, spirited horses; and because of some 
 whim, he would not allow the groom to stand at their 
 heads. So one day they took fright, ran, threw him 
 out, and broke his leg. The leg had to be amputated, 
 and he was ever afterward forced to wear a wooden one. 
 However, he took his loss with most philosophic cheer- 
 fulness, and even bore with equanimity the condolences 
 of those exasperating individuals, of a species by no 
 means peculiar to Revolutionary times, who endeavored 
 to prove to him the manifest falsehood that such an 
 accident was "all for the best." To one of these dreary 
 gentlemen he responded, with disconcerting vivacity, 
 that his visitor had so handsomely argued the advantage 
 of being entirely legless as to make him almost tempted 
 to part with his remaining limb ; and to another he an- 
 nounced that at least there was the compensation that 
 he would be a steadier man with one leg than with two. 
 
 357 
 
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS 
 
 Wild accounts of the accident got about, which rather 
 irritated him, and in answer to a letter from Jay he 
 wrote: "I suppose it was Deane who wrote to you from 
 France about the loss of my leg. His account is face- 
 tious. Let it pass. The leg is gone, and there is an end 
 of the matter." His being crippled did not prevent him 
 from going about in society very nearly as much as ever; 
 and society in Philadelphia was at the moment gayer 
 than in any other American city. Indeed Jay, a man of 
 Puritanic morality, wrote to Morris somewhat gloomily 
 to inquire about "the rapid progress of luxury at Phila- 
 delphia"; to which his younger friend, who highly ap- 
 preciated the good things of life, replied light-heartedly : 
 "With respect to our taste for luxury, do not grieve 
 about it. Luxury is not so bad a thing as it is often sup- 
 posed to be; and if it were, still we must follow the course 
 of things, and turn to advantage what exists, since we 
 have not the power to annihilate or create. The very 
 definition of 'luxury' is as difficult as the suppression 
 of it." In another letter he remarked that he thought 
 there were quite as many knaves among the men who 
 went on foot as there were among those who drove in 
 carriages. 
 
 Jay at this time, having been successively a member 
 of the Continental Congress, the New York legislature, 
 and the State Constitutional Convention, having also 
 been the first chief justice of his native State, and then 
 president of the Continental Congress, had been sent as 
 our minister to Spain. Morris always kept up an inti- 
 mate correspondence with him. It is noticeable that 
 the three great Revolutionary statesmen from New 
 York, Hamilton, Jay, and Morris, always kept on good 
 terms, and always worked together; while the friendship 
 between two, Jay and Morris, was very close. 
 
 358 
 
FINANCES: THE TREATY OF PEACE 
 
 The two men, in their correspondence, now and then 
 touched on other than State matters. One of Jay's 
 letters which deals with the education of his children 
 would be most healthful reading for those Americans of 
 the present day who send their children to be brought 
 up abroad in Swiss schools, or English and German 
 universities. He writes: "I think the youth of every 
 free, civilized country should be educated in it, and not 
 permitted to travel out of it until age has made them 
 so cool and firm as to retain their national and moral 
 impressions. American youth may possibly form proper 
 and perhaps useful friendships in European seminaries, 
 but I think not so probably as among their fellow citi- 
 zens, with whom they are to grow up, whom it will be 
 useful for them to know and be early known to, and 
 with whom they are to be engaged in the business of 
 active life. . . . I do not hesitate to prefer an American 
 education." The longer Jay stayed away, the more de- 
 voted he became to America. He had a good, hearty, 
 honest contempt for the miserable "cosmopolitanism" 
 so much affected by the feebler folk of fashion. As he 
 said, he "could never become so far a citizen of the 
 world as to view every part of it with equal regard," 
 for "his affections were deep-rooted in America," and 
 he always asserted that he had never seen anything in 
 Europe to cause him to abate his prejudices in favor of 
 his own land. 
 
 Jay had a very hard time at the Spanish court, which, 
 he wrote Morris, had "little money, less wisdom, and 
 no credit." Spain, although fighting England, was bit- 
 terly jealous of the United States, fearing most justly 
 our aggressive spirit, and desiring to keep the lower 
 Mississippi valley entirely under its own control. Jay, 
 a statesman of intensely national spirit, was determined 
 
 359 
 
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS 
 
 to push our boundaries as far westward as possible; he 
 insisted on their reaching to the Mississippi, and on our 
 having the right to navigate that stream. Morris did 
 not agree with him, and on this subject, as has been 
 already said, he for once showed less than his usual 
 power of insight into the future. He wrote Jay that it 
 was absurd to quarrel about a country inhabited only 
 by red men, and to claim "a territory we cannot occupy, 
 a navigation we cannot enjoy." He also ventured the 
 curiously false prediction that, if the territory beyond 
 the Alleghanies should ever be filled up, it would be 
 by a population drawn from the whole world, not one- 
 hundredth part of it American, which would imme- 
 diately become an independent and rival nation. How- 
 ever, he could not make Jay swerve a hand's breadth 
 from his position about our Western boundaries, though 
 on every other point the two were in hearty accord. 
 
 In relating and forecasting the military situation, 
 Morris was more happy. He was peculiarly interested 
 in Greene, and from the outset foretold the final success 
 of his Southern campaign. In a letter written March 
 31, 1781, after the receipt of the news of the battle 
 of Guilford Court-House, he describes to Jay Greene's 
 forces and prospects. His troops included, he writes, 
 "from 1500 to 2000 Continentals, many of them raw, 
 and somewhat more of militia than regular troops — the 
 whole of these almost in a state of nature, and of whom 
 it ought to be said, as by Hamlet to Horatio, 'Thou 
 hast no other revenue but thy good spirits to feed and 
 clothe thee.' The militia he styled the "jruges con- 
 sumer e nati of an army." He then showed the necessity 
 of the battle being fought, on account of the fluctuating 
 state of the militia, the incapacity of the State govern- 
 ments to help themselves, the poverty of the country 
 
 360 
 
FINANCES: THE TREATY OF PEACE 
 
 ("so that the very teeth of the enemy defend them, 
 especially in retreat"), and, above all, because a de- 
 feat was of little consequence to us, while it would ruin 
 the enemy. He wrote: "There is no loss in fighting 
 away two or three hundred men who would go home if 
 they were not put in the way of being knocked on the 
 head. . . . These are unfeeling reflections. I would 
 apologize for them to any one who did not know that 
 I have at least enough of sensibility. The gush of senti- 
 ment will not alter the nature of things, and the busi- 
 ness of the statesman is more to reason than to feel." 
 Morris was always confident that we should win in the 
 end, and sometimes thought a little punishment really 
 did our people good. When Cornwallis was in Virginia 
 he wrote: "The enemy are scourging the Virginians, at 
 least those of Lower Virginia. This is distressing, but 
 will have some good consequences. In the meantime 
 the delegates of Virginia make as many lamentations as 
 ever Jeremiah did, and to as good purpose perhaps." 
 
 The war was drawing to an end. Great Britain had 
 begun the struggle with everything — allies, numbers, 
 wealth — in her favor; but now, toward the close, the 
 odds were all the other way. The French were strug- 
 gling with her on equal terms for the mastery of the 
 seas; the Spaniards were helping the French, and were 
 bending every energy to carry through successfully the 
 great siege of Gibraltar; the Dutch had joined their 
 ancient enemies, and their fleet fought a battle with the 
 English, which, for bloody indecisiveness, rivalled the 
 actions when Van Tromp and De Ruyter held the Chan- 
 nel against Blake and Monk. In India the name of 
 Hyder Ali had become a very nightmare of horror to 
 the British. In America, the centre of the war, the day 
 had gone conclusively against the island folk. Greene 
 
 361 
 
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS 
 
 had doggedly fought and marched his way through the 
 Southern States with his ragged, underfed, badly armed 
 troops; he had been beaten in three obstinate battles, 
 had each time inflicted a greater relative loss than he 
 received, and, after retiring in good order a short dis- 
 tance, had always ended by pursuing his lately vic- 
 torious foes; at the close of the campaign he had com- 
 pletely reconquered the Southern States by sheer ca- 
 pacity for standing punishment, and had cooped up the 
 remaining British force in Charleston. In the Northern 
 States the British held Newport and New York, but 
 could not penetrate elsewhere; while at Yorktown their 
 ablest general was obliged to surrender his whole army 
 to the overwhelming force brought against him by 
 Washington's masterly strategy. 
 
 Yet England, hemmed in by the ring of her foes, 
 fronted them all with a grand courage. In her veins 
 the Berserker blood was up, and she hailed each new 
 enemy with grim delight, exerting to the full her war- 
 like strength. Single-handed she kept them all at bay, 
 and repaid with crippling blows the injuries they had 
 done her. In America alone the tide ran too strongly 
 to be turned. But Holland was stripped of all her 
 colonies; in the East, Sir Eyre Coote beat down Hyder 
 Ali, and taught Moslem and Hindoo alike that they 
 could not shake off the grasp of the iron hands that 
 held India. Rodney won back for his country the su- 
 premacy of the ocean in that great sea-fight where he 
 shattered the splendid French navy; and the long siege 
 of Gibraltar closed with the crushing overthrow of the 
 assailants. So, with bloody honor, England ended the 
 most disastrous war she had ever waged. 
 
 The war had brought forth many hard fighters, but 
 only one great commander — Washington. For the rest, 
 
 362 
 
FINANCES: THE TREATY OF PEACE 
 
 on land, Cornwallis, Greene, Rawdon, and possibly La- 
 fayette and Rochambeau, might all rank as fairly good 
 generals, probably in the order named, although many 
 excellent critics place Greene first. At sea, Rodney and 
 the Bailli de Suffren won the honors; the latter stands 
 beside Duquesne and Tourville in the roll of French ad- 
 mirals; while Rodney was a true latter-day buccaneer, 
 as fond of fighting as of plundering, and a first-rate hand 
 at both. Neither ranks with such mighty sea chiefs as 
 Nelson, nor yet with Blake, Farragut, or Tegethof. 
 
 All parties were tired of the war; peace was essential 
 to all. But of all, America was most resolute to win 
 what she had fought for; and America had been the 
 most successful so far. English historians— even so gen- 
 erally impartial a writer as Mr. Lecky — are apt greatly 
 to exaggerate our relative exhaustion, and try to prove 
 it by quoting from the American leaders every state- 
 ment that shows despondency and suffering. If they 
 applied the same rule to their own side, they would come 
 to the conclusion that the British Empire was at that 
 time on the brink of dissolution. Of course we had 
 suffered very heavily, and had blundered badly; but in 
 both respects we were better off than our antagonists. 
 Mr. Lecky is right in bestowing unstinted praise on our 
 diplomatists for the hardihood and success with which 
 they insisted on all our demands being granted; but he 
 is wrong when he says or implies that the military situa- 
 tion did not warrant their attitude. Of all the contes- 
 tants, America was the most willing to continue the 
 fight rather than yield her rights. Morris expressed the 
 general feeling when he wrote to Jay, on August 6, 
 1782: "Nobody will be thankful for any peace but a 
 very good one. This they should have thought on who 
 made war with the republic. I am among the number 
 
 363 
 
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS 
 
 who would be extremely ungrateful for the grant of a 
 bad peace. My public and private character will both 
 concert to render the sentiment coming from me un- 
 suspected. Judge, then, of others, judge of the many- 
 headed fool who can feel no more than his own sorrow- 
 ing. ... I wish that while the war lasts it may be 
 real war, and that when peace comes it may be real 
 peace." As to our military efficiency, we may take 
 Washington's word (in a letter to Jay of October 18, 
 1782) : "I am certain it will afford you pleasure to know 
 that our army is better organized, disciplined, and 
 clothed than it has been at any period since the com- 
 mencement of the war. This you may be assured is the 
 fact." 
 
 Another mistake of English historians — again like- 
 wise committed by Mr. Lecky — comes in their laying 
 so much stress on the help rendered to the Americans 
 by their allies, while at the same time speaking as if 
 England had none. As a matter of fact, England would 
 have stood no chance at all had the contest been strictly 
 confined to British troops on the one hand, and to the 
 rebellious colonists on the other. There were more Ger- 
 man auxiliaries in the British ranks than there were 
 French allies in the American; the loyalists, including 
 the regularly enlisted loyalists as well as the militia who 
 took part in the various Tory uprisings, were probably 
 more numerous still. The withdrawal of all Hessians, 
 Tories, and Indians from the British army would have 
 been cheaply purchased by the loss of our own foreign 
 allies. 
 
 The European powers were even a shade more anxious 
 for peace than we were; and to conduct the negotiations 
 for our side, we chose three of our greatest statesmen — 
 Franklin, Adams, and Jay. 
 
 364 
 
FINANCES: THE TREATY OF PEACE 
 
 Congress, in appointing our commissioners, had, with 
 little regard for the national dignity, given them instruc- 
 tions which, if obeyed, would have rendered them com- 
 pletely subservient to France; for they were directed 
 to undertake nothing in the negotiations without the 
 knowledge and concurrence of the French Cabinet, and 
 in all decisions to be ultimately governed by the advice 
 of that body. Morris fiercely resented such servile sub- 
 servience, and in a letter to Jay denounced Congress 
 with well-justified warmth, writing: 'That the proud 
 should prostitute the very little dignity this poor coun- 
 try is possessed of would be indeed astounding, if we 
 did not know the near alliance between pride and mean- 
 ness. Men who have too little spirit to demand of their 
 constituents that they do their duty, who have sufficient 
 humility to beg a paltry pittance at the hands of any 
 and every sovereign — such men will always be ready to 
 pay the price which vanity shall demand from the vain." 
 Jay promptly persuaded his colleagues to unite with 
 him in disregarding the instructions of Congress on this 
 point; had he not done so, the dignity of our govern- 
 ment would, as he wrote Morris, 'have been in the 
 dust." Franklin was at first desirous of yielding obedi- 
 ence to the command, but Adams immediately joined 
 Jay in repudiating it. 
 
 We had waged war against Britain, with France and 
 Spain as allies; but in making peace we had to strive 
 for our rights against our friends almost as much as 
 against our enemies. There was much generous and 
 disinterested enthusiasm for America among French- 
 men individually; but the French Government, with 
 which alone we were to deal in making peace, had acted 
 throughout from purely selfish motives, and in reality 
 did not care an atom for American rights. We owed 
 
 365 
 
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS 
 
 France no more gratitude for taking our part than she 
 owed us for giving her an opportunity of advancing her 
 own interests, and striking a severe blow at an old-time 
 enemy and rival. As for Spain, she disliked us quite 
 as much as she did England. 
 
 The peace negotiations brought all this out very 
 clearly. The great French minister, Vergennes, who 
 dictated the policy of his court all through the con- 
 test, cared nothing for the Revolutionary colonists 
 themselves; but he was bent upon securing them their 
 independence, so as to weaken England, and he was 
 also bent upon keeping them from gaining too much 
 strength, so that they might always remain dependent 
 allies of France. He wished to establish the "balance- 
 of-power" system in America. The American commis- 
 sioners he at first despised for their blunt, truthful 
 straightforwardness, which he, trained in the school of 
 deceit, and a thorough believer in every kind of finesse 
 and double-dealing, mistook for boorishness; later on, 
 he learned to his chagrin that they were able as well as 
 honest, and that their resolution, skill, and far-sighted- 
 ness made them, where their own deepest interests were 
 concerned, overmatches for the subtle diplomats of Eu- 
 rope. 
 
 America, then, was determined to secure not only 
 independence, but also a chance to grow into a great 
 continental nation; she wished her boundaries fixed at 
 the Great Lakes and the Mississippi ; she also asked for 
 the free navigation of the latter to the Gulf, and for a 
 share in the fisheries. Spain did not even wish that we 
 should be made independent; she hoped to be compen- 
 sated at our expense for her failure to take Gibral- 
 tar; and she desired that we should be kept so weak 
 as to hinder us from being aggressive. Her fear of us, 
 
 366 
 
FINANCES: THE TREATY OF PEACE 
 
 by the way, was perfectly justifiable, for the greatest 
 part of our present territory lies within what were nomi- 
 nally Spanish limits a hundred years ago. France, as 
 the head of a great coalition, wanted to keep on good 
 terms with both her allies; but, as Gerard, the French 
 minister at Washington, said, if France had to choose 
 between the two, "the decision would not be in favor 
 of the United States." She wished to secure for Amer- 
 ica independence, but she wished also to keep the new 
 nation so weak that it would "feel the need of sureties, 
 allies, and protectors." France desired to exclude our 
 people from the fisheries, to deprive us of half our Ter- 
 ritories by making the Alleghanies our western bounda- 
 ries, and to secure to Spain the undisputed control of 
 the navigation of the Mississippi. It was not to the 
 interest of France and Spain that we should be a great 
 and formidable people, and very naturally they would 
 not help us to become one. There is no need of blaming 
 them for their conduct, but it would have been rank 
 folly to have been guided by their wishes. Our true 
 policy was admirably summed up by Jay in his letters 
 to Livingston, where he says: "Let us be honest and 
 grateful to France, but let us think for ourselves. . . . 
 Since we have assumed a place in the political firma- 
 ment, let us move like a primary and not a secondary 
 planet." Fortunately, England's own self-interest made 
 her play into our hands; as Fox put it, it was necessary 
 for her to "insist in the strongest manner that, if Amer- 
 ica is independent, she must be so of the whole world. 
 No secret, tacit, or ostensible connection with France." 
 Our statesmen won; we got all we asked, as much to 
 the astonishment of France as of England; we proved 
 even more successful in diplomacy than in arms. As 
 Fox had hoped, we became independent not only of 
 
 367 
 
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS 
 
 England, but of all the world; we were not entangled 
 as a dependent subordinate in the policy of France, nor 
 did we sacrifice our western boundary to Spain. It 
 was a great triumph — greater than any that had been 
 won by our soldiers. Franklin had a comparatively 
 small share in gaining it; the glory of carrying through 
 successfully the most important treaty we ever nego- 
 tiated belongs to Jay and Adams, and especially to Jay. 
 
 368 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE FORMATION OF THE NATIONAL 
 CONSTITUTION 
 
 Before peace was established, Morris had been ap- 
 pointed a commissioner to treat for the exchange of 
 prisoners. Nothing came of his efforts, however, the 
 British and Americans being utterly unable to come to 
 any agreement. Both sides had been greatly exasper- 
 ated — the British by the Americans' breach of faith 
 about Burgoyne's troops, and the Americans by the in- 
 human brutality with which their captive countrymen 
 had been treated. An amusing feature of the affair was 
 a conversation between Morris and the British general, 
 Dalrymple, wherein the former assured the latter rather 
 patronizingly that the British "still remained a great 
 people, a very great people," and that 'they would 
 undoubtedly still hold their rank in Europe." He would 
 have been surprised had he known not only that the 
 stubborn island folk were destined soon to hold a higher 
 rank in Europe than ever before, but that from their 
 loins other nations, broad as continents, were to spring, 
 so that the South Seas should become an English ocean, 
 and that over a fourth of the world's surface there 
 should be spoken the tongue of Pitt and Washington. 
 
 No sooner was peace declared, and the immediate 
 and pressing danger removed, than the confederation 
 relapsed into a loose knot of communities, as quarrel- 
 some as they were contemptible. The States'-rights 
 men for the moment had things all their own way, and 
 speedily reduced us to the level afterward reached by 
 
 369 
 
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS 
 
 the South American republics. Each commonwealth 
 set up for itself, and tried to oppress its neighbors; not 
 one had a creditable history for the next four years; 
 while the career of Rhode Island in particular can only 
 be properly described as infamous. We refused to pay 
 our debts, we would not even pay our army; and mob 
 violence flourished rankly. As a natural result, the Eu- 
 ropean powers began to take advantage of our weakness 
 and division. 
 
 All our great men saw the absolute need of estab- 
 lishing a National Union — not a league or a confedera- 
 tion — if the country was to be saved. None felt this 
 more strongly than Morris, and no one was more hope- 
 ful of the final result. Jay had written to him as to the 
 need of "raising and maintaining a national spirit in 
 America"; and he wrote in reply, at different times: 
 "Much of convulsion will yet ensue, yet it must termi- 
 nate in giving to government that power without which 
 government is but a name. . . . This country has 
 never yet been known to Europe, and God knows 
 whether it ever will be. To England it is less known 
 than to any other part of Europe, because they con- 
 stantly view it through a medium of either prejudice 
 or faction. True it is that the general government 
 wants energy, and equally true it is that the want will 
 eventually be supplied. A national spirit is the natural 
 result of national existence; and although some of the 
 present generation may feel the result of colonial opposi- 
 tions of opinion, that generation will die away and give 
 place to a race of Americans* On this occasion, as on 
 others, Great Britain is our best friend; and, by seizing 
 the critical moment when we were about to divide, she 
 has shown us the dreadful consequences of division. 
 
 * The italics are mine. 
 
 370 
 
FORMATION OF THE CONSTITUTION 
 
 . . . Indeed, my friend, nothing can do us so much 
 good as to convince the eastern and southern States 
 how necessary it is to give proper force to the federal 
 government, and nothing will so soon operate that con- 
 viction as foreign efforts to restrain the navigation of 
 the one and the commerce of the other." The last 
 sentence referred to the laws aimed at our trade by 
 Great Britain, and by other powers as well — symptoms 
 of outside hostility which made us at once begin to 
 draw together again. 
 
 Money troubles grew apace, and produced the usual 
 crop of crude theories and of vicious and dishonest legis- 
 lation in accordance therewith. Lawless outbreaks be- 
 came common, and in Massachusetts culminated in ac- 
 tual rebellion. The mass of the people were rendered 
 hostile to any closer union by their ignorance, their 
 jealousy, and the general particularistic bent of their 
 minds — this last being merely a vicious graft on, or 
 rather outgrowth of, the love of freedom inborn in the 
 race. Their leaders were enthusiasts of pure purpose 
 and unsteady mental vision; they were followed by the 
 mass of designing politicians, who feared that their im- 
 portance would be lost if their sphere of action should 
 be enlarged. Among these leaders the three most im- 
 portant were, in New York, George Clinton, and, in 
 Massachusetts and Virginia, two much greater men — 
 Samuel Adams and Patrick Henry. All three had done 
 excellent service at the beginning of the Revolutionary 
 troubles. Patrick Henry lived to redeem himself, al- 
 most in his last hour, by the noble stand he took in aid 
 of Washington against the Democratic nullification agi- 
 tation of Jefferson and Madison; but the usefulness of 
 each of the other two was limited to the early portion of 
 his career. 
 
 371 
 
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS 
 
 Like every other true patriot and statesman, Morris 
 did all in his power to bring into one combination the 
 varied interests favorable to the formation of a govern- 
 ment that should be strong and responsible as well as 
 free. The public creditors and the soldiers of the army 
 —whose favorite toasts were, "A hoop to the barrel," 
 and "Cement to the union"— were the two classes most 
 sensible of the advantages of such a government; and 
 to each of these Morris addressed himself when he pro- 
 posed to consolidate the public debt, both to private 
 citizens and to the soldiers, and to make it a charge on 
 the United States, and not on the several separate 
 States. 
 
 In consequence of the activity and ability with which 
 he advocated a firmer union, the extreme States'-rights 
 men were especially hostile to him; and certain of their 
 number assailed him with bitter malignity, both then 
 and afterward. One accusation was, that he had im- 
 proper connections with the public creditors. This was 
 a pure slander, absolutely without foundation, and not 
 supported by even the pretense of proof. Another ac- 
 cusation was that he favored the establishment of a 
 monarchy. This was likewise entirely untrue. Morris 
 was not a sentimental political theorist; he was an emi- 
 nently practical— that is, useful— statesman, who saw 
 with unusual clearness that each people must have a 
 government suited to its own individual character, and 
 to the stage of political and social development it had 
 reached. He realized that a nation must be governed 
 according to the actual needs and capacities of its citi- 
 zens, not according to any abstract theory or set of ideal 
 principles. He would have dismissed with contemptu- 
 ous laughter the ideas of those Americans who at the 
 present day believe that Anglo-Saxon democracy can 
 
 372 
 
FORMATION OF THE CONSTITUTION 
 
 be applied successfully to a half-savage negroid people 
 in Hayti, or of those Englishmen who consider seriously 
 the proposition to renovate Turkey by giving her rep- 
 resentative institutions and a parliamentary govern- 
 ment. He understood and stated that a monarchy " did 
 not consist with the taste and temper of the people" in 
 America, and he believed in establishing a form of gov- 
 ernment that did. Like almost every other statesman 
 of the day, the perverse obstinacy of the extreme par- 
 ticularist section at times made him downhearted, and 
 caused him almost to despair of a good government 
 being established; and like every sensible man he would 
 have preferred almost any strong, orderly government 
 to the futile anarchy toward which the ultra States'- 
 rights men or separatists tended. Had these last ever 
 finally obtained the upper hand, either in Revolutionary 
 or post-Revolutionary times, either in 1787 or 1861, 
 the fact would have shown conclusively that Americans 
 were unfitted for republicanism and self-government. 
 An orderly monarchy would certainly be preferable to 
 a republic of the epileptic Spanish-American type. The 
 extreme doctrinaires, who are fiercest in declaiming in 
 favor of freedom, are in reality its worst foes, far more 
 dangerous than any absolute monarchy ever can be. 
 When liberty becomes license, some form of one-man 
 power is not far distant. 
 
 The one great reason for our having succeeded as no 
 other people ever has, is to be found in that common 
 sense which has enabled us to preserve the largest pos- 
 sible individual freedom on the one hand, while showing 
 an equally remarkable capacity for combination on the 
 other. We have committed plenty of faults, but we 
 have seen and remedied them. Our very doctrinaires 
 have usually acted much more practically than they 
 
 373 
 
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS 
 
 have talked. Jefferson, when in power, adopted most 
 of the Federalist theories, and became markedly hos- 
 tile to the nullification movements at whose birth he 
 had himself officiated. We have often blundered badly 
 in the beginning, but we have always come out well in 
 the end. The Dutch, when they warred for freedom 
 from Spanish rule, showed as much short-sighted selfish- 
 ness and bickering jealousy as even our own Revolu- 
 tionary ancestors, and only a part remained faithful to 
 the end: as a result, but one section won independence, 
 while the Netherlands were divided, and never grasped 
 the power that should have been theirs. As for the 
 Spanish-Americans, they split up hopelessly almost be- 
 fore they were free, and, though they bettered their 
 condition a little, yet lost nine-tenths of what they had 
 gained. Scotland and Ireland, when independent, were 
 nests of savages. All the follies our forefathers com- 
 mitted can be paralleled elsewhere, but their successes 
 
 are unique. 
 
 So it was in the few years immediately succeeding the 
 peace by which we won our independence. The mass of 
 the people wished for no closer union than was to be 
 found in a lax confederation; but they had the good 
 sense to learn the lesson taught by the weakness and 
 lawlessness they saw around them; they reluctantly 
 made up their minds to the need of a stronger govern- 
 ment, and when they had once come to their decision, 
 neither demagogue nor doctrinaire could swerve them 
 
 from it. 
 
 The national convention to form a constitution met 
 in May, 1787; and rarely in the world's history has 
 there been a deliberative body which contained so many 
 remarkable men, or produced results so lasting and 
 far-reaching. The Congress whose members signed the 
 
 374 
 
FORMATION OF THE CONSTITUTION 
 
 Declaration of Independence had but cleared the ground 
 on which the framers of the Constitution were to build. 
 Among the delegates in attendance, easily first stood 
 Washington and Franklin— two of that great American 
 trio in which Lincoln is the third. Next came Hamil- 
 ton from New York, having as colleagues a couple of 
 mere obstructionists sent by the Clintonians to handi- 
 cap him. From Pennsylvania came Robert Morris and 
 Gouverneur Morris; from Virginia, Madison; from 
 South Carolina, Rutledge and the Pinckneys; and so 
 on through the other States. Some of the most noted 
 statesmen were absent, however. Adams and Jeffer- 
 son were abroad. Jay was acting as secretary for for- 
 eign affairs, in which capacity, by the way, he had 
 shown most unlooked-for weakness in yielding to Span- 
 ish demands about the Mississippi. 
 
 Two years after taking part in the proceedings of the 
 American Constitutional Convention, Morris witnessed 
 the opening of the States General of France. He thor- 
 oughly appreciated the absolute and curious contrast 
 offered by these two bodies, each so big with fate for all 
 mankind. The men who predominated in and shaped 
 the actions of the first belonged to a type not uncom- 
 monly brought forth by a people already accustomed 
 to freedom at a crisis in the struggle to preserve or 
 extend its liberties. During the past few centuries this 
 type had appeared many times among the liberty-lov- 
 ing nations who dwelt on the shores of the Baltic and 
 the North Sea; and our forefathers represented it in its 
 highest and most perfect shapes. It is a type only to 
 be found among men already trained to govern them- 
 selves as well as others. The American statesmen were 
 the kinsfolk and fellows of Hampden and Pyin, of Wil- 
 liam the Silent and John of Barne veldt. Save love of 
 
 375 
 
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS 
 
 freedom, they had little in common with the closet phi- 
 losophers, the enthusiastic visionaries, and the selfish 
 demagogues who in France helped pull up the flood- 
 gates of an all-swallowing torrent. They were great 
 men; but it was less the greatness of mere genius than 
 that springing from the union of strong, virile qualities 
 with steadfast devotion to a high ideal. In certain re- 
 spects they were ahead of all their European compeers ; 
 yet they preserved virtues forgotten or sneered at by the 
 contemporaneous generation of transatlantic leaders. 
 They wrought for the future as surely as did the French 
 Jacobins; but their spirit was the spirit of the Long 
 Parliament. They were resolute to free themselves 
 from the tyranny of man; but they had not unlearned 
 the reverence felt by their fathers for their fathers' God. 
 They were sincerely religious. The advanced friends of 
 freedom abroad scoffed at religion, and would have 
 laughed outright at a proposition to gain help for their 
 cause by prayer; but to the founders of our Constitu- 
 tion, when matters were at a deadlock, and the outcome 
 looked almost hopeless, it seemed a most fit and proper 
 thing that one of the chief of their number should pro- 
 pose to invoke to aid them a wisdom greater than the 
 wisdom of human beings. Even those among their 
 descendants who no longer share their trusting faith 
 may yet well do regretful homage to a religious spirit 
 so deep-rooted and so strongly tending to bring out a 
 pure and high morality. The statesmen who met in 
 1787 were earnestly patriotic. They unselfishly desired 
 the welfare of their countrymen. They were cool, reso- 
 lute men, of strong convictions, with clear insight into 
 the future. They were thoroughly acquainted with the 
 needs of the community for which they were to act. 
 Above all, they possessed that inestimable quality, so 
 
 376 
 
FORMATION OF THE CONSTITUTION 
 
 characteristic of their race, hard-headed common sense. 
 Their theory of government was a very high one; but 
 they understood perfectly that it had to be accommo- 
 dated to the shortcomings of the average citizen. Small, 
 indeed, was their resemblance to the fiery orators and 
 brilliant pamphleteers of the States General. They 
 were emphatically good men; they were no less em- 
 phatically practical men. They would have scorned 
 Mirabeau as a scoundrel; they would have despised 
 Sieyes as a vain and impractical theorist. 
 
 The deliberations of the convention in their result 
 illustrated in a striking manner the truth of the Amer- 
 ican principle, that— for deliberative, not executive, 
 purposes— the wisdom of many men is worth more than 
 the wisdom of any one man. The Constitution that the 
 members assembled in convention finally produced was 
 not only the best possible one for America at that time, 
 but it was also, in spite of its shortcomings, and taking 
 into account its fitness for our own people and condi- 
 tions, as well as its accordance with the principles of 
 abstract right, probably the best that any nation has 
 ever had, while it was beyond question a very much 
 better one than any single member could have prepared. 
 The particularist statesmen would have practically 
 denied us any real union or efficient executive power; 
 while there was hardly a Federalist member who would 
 not, in his anxiety to avoid the evils from which we were 
 suffering, have given us a government so centralized 
 and aristocratic that it would have been utterly un- 
 suited to a proud, liberty-loving, and essentially demo- 
 cratic race, and would have infallibly provoked a tre- 
 mendous reactionary revolt. 
 
 It is impossible to read through the debates of the 
 convention without being struck by the innumerable 
 
 377 
 
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS 
 
 shortcomings of each individual plan proposed by the 
 several members, as divulged in their speeches, when 
 compared with the plan finally adopted. Had the re- 
 sult been in accordance with the views of the strong- 
 government men like Hamilton on the one hand, or of 
 the weak-government men like Franklin on the other, 
 it would have been equally disastrous for the country. 
 The men who afterward naturally became the chiefs of 
 the Federalist party, and who included in their number 
 the bulk of the great Revolutionary leaders, were the 
 ones to whom we mainly owe our present form of gov- 
 ernment; certainly we owe them more, both on this and 
 on other points, than we do their rivals, the after-time 
 Democrats. Yet there were some articles of faith in 
 the creed of the latter so essential to our national well- 
 being, and yet so counter to the prejudices of the Fed- 
 eralists, that it was inevitable they should triumph in 
 the end. Jefferson led the Democrats to victory only 
 when he had learned to acquiesce thoroughly in some 
 of the fundamental principles of Federalism, and the 
 government of himself and his successors was good 
 chiefly in so far as it followed out the theories of the 
 Hamiltonians; while Hamilton and the Federalists fell 
 from power because they could not learn the one great 
 truth taught by Jefferson— that in America a statesman 
 should trust the people, and should endeavor to secure 
 to each man all possible individual liberty, confident 
 that he will use it aright. The old-school Jeffersonian 
 theorists believed in "a strong people and a weak gov- 
 ernment." Lincoln was the first who showed how a 
 strong people might have a strong government and yet 
 remain the freest on the earth. He seized— half un- 
 wittingly—all that was best and wisest in the traditions 
 of Federalism; he was the true successor of the Federalist 
 
 378 
 
FORMATION OF THE CONSTITUTION 
 
 leaders; but he grafted on their system a profound be- 
 lief that the great heart of the nation beat for truth, 
 honor, and liberty. 
 
 This fact, that in 1787 all the thinkers of the day 
 drew out plans that in some respects went very wide 
 of the mark, must be kept in mind, or else we shall judge 
 each particular thinker with undue harshness when we 
 examine his utterances without comparing them with 
 those of his fellows. But one partial exception can be 
 made. In the Constitutional Convention Madison, a 
 moderate Federalist, was the man who, of all who were 
 there, saw things most clearly as they were, and whose 
 theories most closely corresponded with the principles 
 finally adopted; and although even he was at first dis- 
 satisfied with the result, and both by word and by ac- 
 tion interpreted the Constitution in widely different 
 ways at different times, still this was Madison's time 
 of glory : he was one of the statesmen who do extremely 
 useful work, but only at some single given crisis. While 
 the Constitution was being formed and adopted, he 
 stood in the very front; but in his later career he sunk 
 his own individuality, and became a mere pale shadow 
 of Jefferson. 
 
 Morris played a very prominent part in the conven- 
 tion. He was a ready speaker, and among all the able 
 men present there was probably no such really brilliant 
 thinker. In the debates he spoke more often than any 
 one else, although Madison was not far behind him; 
 and his speeches betrayed, but with marked and exag- 
 gerated emphasis, both the virtues and the shortcom- 
 ings of the Federalist school of thought. They show us, 
 too, why he never rose to the first rank of statesmen. 
 His keen, masterful mind, his far-sightedness, and the 
 force and subtlety of his reasoning were all marred by 
 
 379 
 
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS 
 
 his incurable cynicism and deep-rooted distrust of man- 
 kind. He throughout appears as advocatus diaboli; he 
 puts the lowest interpretation upon every act, and 
 frankly avows his disbelief in all generous and unselfish 
 motives. His continual allusions to the overpowering 
 influence of the baser passions, and to their mastery of 
 the human race at all times, drew from Madison, al- 
 though the two men generally acted together, a protest 
 against his "forever inculcating the utter political de- 
 pravity of men, and the necessity for opposing one vice 
 and interest as the only possible check to another vice 
 and interest." 
 
 Morris championed a strong national government, 
 wherein he was right; but he also championed a sys- 
 tem of class representation, leaning toward aristocracy, 
 wherein he was wrong. Not Hamilton himself was a 
 firmer believer in the national idea. His one great ob- 
 ject was to secure a powerful and lasting Union, instead 
 of a loose federal league. It must be remembered that 
 in the convention the term "federal" was used in ex- 
 actly the opposite sense to the one in which it was taken 
 afterward; that is, it was used as the antithesis of "na- 
 tional," not as its synonym. The States'-rights men 
 used it to express a system of government such as that 
 of the old federation of the thirteen colonies; while their 
 opponents called themselves Nationalists, and only 
 took the title of Federalists after the Constitution had 
 been formed, and then simply because the name was 
 popular with the masses. They thus appropriated their 
 adversaries' party name, bestowing it on the organiza- 
 tion most hostile to their adversaries' party theories. 
 Similarly, the term "Republican party," which was 
 originally in our history merely another name for the 
 Democracy, has in the end been adopted by the chief 
 opponents of the latter. 
 
 380 
 
FORMATION OF THE CONSTITUTION 
 
 The difficulties for the convention to surmount 
 seemed insuperable; on almost every question that 
 came up, there were clashing interests. Strong govern- 
 ment and weak government, pure democracy or a modi- 
 fied aristocracy, small States and large States, North 
 and South, slavery and freedom, agricultural sections 
 as against commercial sections — on each of twenty 
 points the delegates split into hostile camps, that could 
 only be reconciled by concessions from both sides. The 
 Constitution was not one compromise; it was a bundle 
 of compromises, all needful. 
 
 Morris, like every other member of the convention, 
 sometimes took the right and sometimes the wrong side 
 on the successive issues that arose. But on the most 
 important one of all he made no error; and he commands 
 our entire sympathy for his thoroughgoing nationalism. 
 As was to be expected, he had no regard whatever for 
 States' rights. He wished to deny to the small States 
 the equal representation in the Senate finally allowed 
 them; and he was undoubtedly right theoretically. No 
 good argument can be adduced in support of the pres- 
 ent system on that point. Still, it has thus far worked 
 no harm; the reason being that our States have merely 
 artificial boundaries, while those of small population 
 have hitherto been distributed pretty evenly among the 
 different sections, so that they have been split up like 
 the others on every important issue, and thus have 
 never been arrayed against the rest of the country. 
 
 Though Morris and his side were defeated in their 
 efforts to have the States represented proportionally in 
 the Senate, yet they carried their point as to represen- 
 tation in the House. Also, on the general question of 
 making a national government, as distinguished from a 
 league or federation, the really vital point, their triumph 
 was complete. The Constitution they drew up and had 
 
 381 
 
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS 
 
 adopted no more admitted of legal or peaceable rebel- 
 lion — whether called secession or nullification — on the 
 part of the State than on the part of a county or an 
 individual. 
 
 Morris expressed his own views with his usual clear- 
 cut, terse vigor when he asserted that "state attach- 
 ments and state importance had been the bane of the 
 country," and that he came, not as a mere delegate 
 from one section, but "as a representative of America 
 — a representative in some degree of the whole human 
 race, for the whole human race would be affected by 
 the outcome of the convention." And he poured out 
 the flood of his biting scorn on those gentlemen who 
 came there "to truck and bargain for their respective 
 States," asking what man there was who could tell with 
 certainty the State wherein he — and even more wherein 
 his children— would live in the future; and reminding the 
 small States, with cavalier indifference, that, "if they did 
 not like the Union, no matter — they would have to come 
 in, and that was all there was about it; for if persuasion 
 did not unite the country, then the sword would." His 
 correct language and distinct enunciation — to which 
 Madison has borne witness — allowed his grim truths to 
 carry their full weight; and he brought them home to 
 his hearers with a rough, almost startling, earnestness 
 and directness. Many of those present must have 
 winced when he told them that it would matter nothing 
 to America "if all the charters and constitutions of the 
 States were thrown into the fire, and all the demagogues 
 into the ocean," and asserted that "any particular State 
 ought to be injured, for the sake of a majority of the 
 people, in case its conduct showed that it deserved it." 
 He held that we should create a national government, to 
 be the one and only supreme power in the land — one 
 
 382 
 
FORMATION OF THE CONSTITUTION 
 
 which, unlike a mere federal league, such as we then 
 lived under, should have complete and compulsive op- 
 eration, and he instanced the examples as well of Greece 
 as of Germany and the United Netherlands, to prove 
 that local jurisdiction destroyed every tie of nationality. 
 It shows the boldness of the experiment in which we 
 were engaged, that we were forced to take all other na- 
 tions, whether dead or living, as warnings, not examples; 
 whereas, since we succeeded, we have served as a pat- 
 tern to be copied, either wholly or in part, by every 
 other people that has followed in our steps. Before our 
 own experience, each similar attempt, save perhaps on 
 the smallest scale, had been a failure. Where so many 
 other nations teach by their mistakes, we are among 
 the few who teach by their successes. 
 
 Be it noted also that, the doctrinaires to the contrary 
 notwithstanding, we proved that a strong central gov- 
 ernment was perfectly compatible with absolute democ- 
 racy. Indeed, the separatist spirit does not lead to 
 true democratic freedom. Anarchy is the handmaiden 
 of tyranny. Of all the States, South Carolina has shown 
 herself (at least throughout the greater part of the pres- 
 ent century) to be the most aristocratic, and the most 
 wedded to the separatist spirit. The German masses 
 were never so ground down by oppression as when the 
 little German principalities were most independent of 
 each other and of any central authority. 
 
 Morris believed in letting the United States interfere 
 to put down a rebellion in a State, even though the ex- 
 ecutive of the State himself should be at the head of it; 
 and he was supported in his views by Pinckney, the 
 ablest member of the brilliant and useful but unfortu- 
 nately short-lived school of South Carolina Federalists. 
 Pinckney was a thoroughgoing Nationalist; he wished 
 
 383 
 
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS 
 
 to go a good deal further than the convention actually 
 went in giving the central government complete con- 
 trol. Thus he proposed that Congress should have 
 power to negative by a two-thirds vote all State laws 
 inconsistent with the harmony of the Union. Madison 
 also wished to give Congress a veto over State legisla- 
 tion. Morris believed that a national law should be 
 allowed to repeal any State law, and that Congress 
 should legislate in all cases where the laws of the 
 States conflicted among themselves. 
 
 Yet Morris, on the very question of nationalism, him- 
 self showed the narrowest, blindest, and least excusable 
 sectional jealousy on one point. He felt as an Amer- 
 ican for all the Union, as it then existed; but he feared 
 and dreaded the growth of the Union in the West, the 
 very place where it was inevitable, as well as in the 
 highest degree desirable, that the greatest growth should 
 take place. He actually desired the convention to com- 
 mit the criminal folly of attempting to provide that the 
 West should always be kept subordinate to the East. 
 Fortunately he failed; but the mere attempt casts the 
 gravest discredit alike on his far-sightedness and on his 
 reputation as a statesman. It is impossible to under- 
 stand how one who was usually so cool and clear-headed 
 an observer could have blundered so flagrantly on 
 a point hardly less vital than the establishment of 
 the Union itself. Indeed, had his views been carried 
 through, they would in the end have nullified all the 
 good bestowed by the Union. In speaking against 
 State jealousy, he had shown its foolishness by observ- 
 ing that no man could tell in what State his children 
 would dwell; and the folly of the speaker himself was 
 made quite as clear by his not perceiving that their 
 most likely dwelling-place was in the West. This jeal- 
 
 384 
 
FORMATION OF THE CONSTITUTION 
 
 ousy of the West was even more discreditable to the 
 Northeast than the jealousy of America had been to 
 England; and it continued strong, especially in New 
 England, for very many years. It was a mean and un- 
 worthy feeling; and it was greatly to the credit of the 
 Southerners that they shared it only to a very small 
 extent. The South, in fact, originally was in heartiest 
 sympathy with the West; it was not until the middle 
 of the present century that the country beyond the 
 Alleghanies became preponderatingly Northern in sen- 
 timent. In the Constitutional Convention itself, But- 
 ler, of South Carolina, pointed out "that the people and 
 strength of America were evidently tending westwardly 
 and southwestwardly." 
 
 Morris wished to discriminate against the West by 
 securing to the Atlantic States the perpetual control of 
 the Union. He brought this idea up again and again, 
 insisting that we should reserve to ourselves the right 
 to put conditions on the Western States when we should 
 admit them. He dwelt at length on the danger of 
 throwing the preponderance of influence into the West- 
 ern scale; stating his dread of the "back members," who 
 were always the most ignorant, and the opponents of 
 all good measures. He foretold with fear that some day 
 the people of the West would outnumber the people of 
 the East, and he wished to put it in the power of the 
 latter to keep a majority of the votes in their own hands. 
 Apparently he did not see that, if the West once became 
 as populous as he predicted, its legislators would forth- 
 with cease to be "back members." The futility of his 
 fears, and still more of his remedies, was so evident that 
 the convention paid very little heed to either. 
 
 On one point, however, his anticipations of harm 
 were reasonable, and indeed afterward came true in 
 
 385 
 
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS 
 
 part. He insisted that the West, or interior, would 
 join the South and force us into a war with some Euro- 
 pean power, wherein the benefits would accrue to them 
 and the harm to the Northeast. The attitude of the 
 South and West already clearly foreshadowed a strug- 
 gle with Spain for the Mississippi valley; and such a 
 struggle would surely have come, either with the French 
 or Spaniards, had we failed to secure the territory in 
 question by peaceful purchase. As it was, the realiza- 
 tion of Morris's prophecy was only put off for a few 
 years; the South and West brought on the War of 1812, 
 wherein the East was the chief sufferer. 
 
 On the question as to whether the Constitution 
 should be made absolutely democratic or not, Morris 
 took the conservative side. On the suffrage his views 
 are perfectly defensible: he believed that it should be 
 limited to freeholders. He rightly considered the ques- 
 tion as to how widely it should be extended to be one 
 of expediency merely. It is simply idle folly to talk of 
 suffrage as being an "inborn" or "natural" right. 
 There are enormous communities totally unfit for its 
 exercise; while true universal suffrage never has been, 
 and never will be, seriously advocated by any one. 
 There must always be an age limit, and such a limit 
 must necessarily be purely arbitrary. The wildest 
 Democrat of Revolutionary times did not dream of 
 doing away with the restrictions of race and sex which 
 kept most American citizens from the ballot-box; and 
 there is certainly much less abstract right in a system 
 which limits the suffrage to people of a certain color 
 than there is in one which limits it to people who come 
 up to a given standard of thrift and intelligence. On 
 the other hand, our experience has not proved that men 
 of wealth make any better use of their ballots than do, 
 
 386 
 
FORMATION OF THE CONSTITUTION 
 
 for instance, mechanics and other handicraftsmen. No 
 plan could be adopted so perfect as to be free from all 
 drawbacks. On the whole, however, and taking our 
 country in its length and breadth, manhood suffrage has 
 worked well, better than would have been the case with 
 any other system; but even here there are certain local- 
 ities where its results have been evil, and must simply 
 be accepted as the blemishes inevitably attendant upon, 
 and marring, any effort to carry out a scheme that will 
 be widely applicable. 
 
 Morris contended that his plan would work no novel 
 or great hardship, as the people in several States were 
 already accustomed to freehold suffrage. He consid- 
 ered the freeholders to be the best guardians of liberty, 
 and maintained that the restriction of the right to them 
 was only creating a necessary safeguard "against the 
 dangerous influence of those people, without property 
 or principle, with whom, in the end, our country, like 
 all other countries, was sure to abound." He did not be- 
 lieve that the ignorant and dependent could be trusted 
 to vote. Madison supported him heartily, likewise 
 thinking the freeholders the safest guardians of our 
 rights; he indulged in some gloomy (and fortunately 
 hitherto unverified) forebodings as to our future, which 
 sound strangely coming from one who was afterward an 
 especial pet of the Jeffersonian democracy. He said: 
 "In future times a great majority of the people will be 
 without landed or any other property. They will then 
 either combine under the influence of their common 
 situation — in which case the rights of property and the 
 public liberty will not be safe in their hands — or, as is 
 more probable, they will become the tools of opulence 
 and ambition." 
 
 Morris also enlarged on this last idea. "Give the 
 
 387 
 
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS 
 
 votes to people who have no property, and they will 
 sell them to the rich," said he. When taunted with his 
 aristocratic tendencies, he answered that he had long 
 ceased to be the dupe of words, that the mere sound of 
 the name "aristocracy" had no terrors for him, but that 
 he did fear lest harm should result to the people from 
 the unacknowledged existence of the very thing they 
 feared to mention. As he put it, there never was or 
 would be a civilized society without an aristocracy, and 
 his endeavor was to keep it as much as possible from 
 doing mischief. He thus professed to be opposed to the 
 existence of an aristocracy, but convinced that it would 
 exist anyhow, and that therefore the best thing to be 
 done was to give it a recognized place, while clipping 
 its wings so as to prevent its working harm. In pur- 
 suance of this theory, he elaborated a wild plan, the 
 chief feature of which was the provision for an aris- 
 tocratic Senate, and a popular or democratic house, 
 which were to hold each other in check, and thereby 
 prevent either party from doing damage. He believed 
 that the senators should be appointed by the national 
 Executive, who should fill up the vacancies that oc- 
 curred. To make the Upper House effective as a check- 
 ing branch, it should be so constituted as to have a per- 
 sonal interest in checking the other branch; it should 
 be a Senate for life, it should be rich, it should be aris- 
 tocratic. He continued: It would then do wrong ? He 
 believed so; he hoped so. The rich would strive to en- 
 slave the rest; they always did. The proper security 
 against them was to form them into a separate interest. 
 The two forces would then control each other. By thus 
 combining and setting apart the aristocratic interest, 
 the popular interest would also be combined against it. 
 There would be mutual check and mutual security. If, 
 
 388 
 
FORMATION OF THE CONSTITUTION 
 
 on the contrary, the rich and poor were allowed to min- 
 gle, then, if the country were commercial, an oligarchy 
 would be established; and if it were not, an unlimited 
 democracy would ensue. It was best to look truth in 
 the face. The loaves and fishes would be needed to 
 bribe demagogues; while as for the people, if left to 
 themselves, they would never act from reason alone. 
 The rich would take advantage of their passions, and 
 the result would be either a violent aristocracy, or a 
 more violent despotism. — The speech containing these 
 extraordinary sentiments, which do no particular credit 
 to either Morris's head or heart, is given in substance 
 by Madison in the "Debates." Madison's report is 
 undoubtedly correct, for, after writing it, he showed it 
 to the speaker himself, who made but one or two verbal 
 alterations. 
 
 Morris applied an old theory in a new way when he 
 proposed to make "taxation proportional to represen- 
 tation" throughout the Union. He considered the pres- 
 ervation of property as being the distinguishing ob- 
 ject of civilization, as liberty was sufficiently guaran- 
 teed even by savagery; and therefore he held that the 
 representation in the Senate should be according to 
 property as well as numbers. But when this proposi- 
 tion was defeated, he declined to support one making 
 property qualifications for congressmen, remarking that 
 such were proper for the electors rather than the elected. 
 
 His views as to the power and functions of the nation- 
 al Executive were in the main sound, and he succeeded 
 in having most of them embodied in the Constitution. 
 He wished to have the President hold office during good 
 behavior; and, though this was negatived, he succeeded 
 in having him made re-eligible to the position. He was 
 instrumental in giving him a qualified veto over legis- 
 
 389 
 
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS 
 
 lation, and in providing for his impeachment for mis- 
 conduct; and also in having him made commander-in- 
 chief of the forces of the Republic, and in allowing him 
 the appointment of governmental officers. The espe- 
 cial service he rendered, however, was his successful 
 opposition to the plan whereby the President was to be 
 elected by the legislature. This proposition he com- 
 bated with all his strength, showing that it would take 
 away greatly from the dignity of the Executive, and 
 would render his election a matter of cabal and faction, 
 'like the election of the pope by a conclave of cardi- 
 nals." He contended that the President should be 
 chosen by the people at large, by the citizens of the 
 United States, acting through electors whom they had 
 picked out. He showed the probability that in such a 
 case the people would unite upon a man of continental 
 reputation, as the influence of designing demagogues 
 and tricksters is generally powerful in proportion as the 
 limits within which they work are narrow; and the im- 
 portance of the stake would make all men inform them- 
 selves thoroughly as to the characters and capacities of 
 those who were contending for it; and he flatly denied 
 the statements, that were made in evident good faith, 
 to the effect that in a general election each State would 
 cast its vote for its own favorite citizen. He inclined 
 to regard the President in the light of a tribune chosen 
 by the people to watch over the legislature; and giving 
 him the appointing power, he believed, would force him 
 to make good use of it, owing to his sense of responsi- 
 bility to the people at large, who would be directly af- 
 fected by its exercise, and who could and would hold 
 him accountable for its abuse. 
 
 On the judiciary his views were also sound. He up- 
 held the power of the judges, and maintained that they 
 
 390 
 
FORMATION OF THE CONSTITUTION 
 
 should have absolute decision as to the constitutionality 
 of any law. By this means he hoped to provide against 
 the encroachments of the popular branch of the govern- 
 ment, the one from which danger was to be feared, as 
 "virtuous citizens will often act as legislators in a way 
 of which they would, as private individuals, afterward 
 be ashamed." He wisely disapproved of low salaries 
 for the judges, showing that the amounts must be fixed 
 from time to time in accordance with the manner and 
 style of living in the country; and that good work on 
 the bench, where it was especially needful, like good 
 work everywhere else, could only be insured by a high 
 rate of recompense. On the other hand, he approved 
 of introducing into the national Constitution the foolish 
 New York State inventions of a Council of Revision and 
 an Executive Council. 
 
 His ideas of the duties and powers of Congress were 
 likewise very proper on the whole. Most citizens of 
 the present day will agree with him that "the excess 
 rather than the deficiency of laws is what we have to 
 dread." He opposed the hurtful provision which re- 
 quires that each congressman should be a resident of 
 his own district, urging that congressmen represented 
 the people at large, as well as their own small localities; 
 and he also objected to making officers of the army and 
 navy ineligible. He laid much stress on the propriety 
 of passing navigation acts to encourage American bot- 
 toms and seamen, as a navy was essential to our secur- 
 ity, and the shipping business was always one that stood 
 in peculiar need of public patronage. Also, like Hamil- 
 ton and most other Federalists, he favored a policy of 
 encouraging domestic manufactures. Incidentally he 
 approved of Congress having power to lay an embargo, 
 although he has elsewhere recorded his views as to the 
 
 391 
 
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS 
 
 general futility of such kinds of "commercial warfare." 
 He believed in having a uniform bankruptcy law; ap- 
 proved of abolishing all religious tests as qualifications 
 for office, and was utterly opposed to the " rotation-in- 
 office" theory. 
 
 One curious incident in the convention was the sud- 
 den outcropping, even thus early, of a "Native Ameri- 
 can " movement against all foreigners, which was headed 
 by Butler, of South Carolina, who himself was of Irish 
 parentage. He strenuously insisted that no foreigners 
 whosoever should be admitted to our councils — a rather 
 odd proposition, considering that it would have excluded 
 quite a number of the eminent men he was then address- 
 ing. Pennsylvania in particular — whose array of native 
 talent has always been far from imposing — had a num- 
 ber of foreigners among her delegates, and loudly op- 
 posed the proposition, as did New York. These States 
 wished that there should be no discrimination whatever 
 between native and foreign born citizens ; but finally a 
 compromise was agreed to, by which the latter were ex- 
 cluded only from the presidency, but were admitted to 
 all other rights after a seven years' residence — a period 
 that was certainly none too long. 
 
 A much more serious struggle took place over the 
 matter of slavery, quite as important then as ever, for 
 at that time the negroes were a fifth of our population, 
 instead of, as now, an eighth. The question, as it came 
 before the convention, had several sides to it; the espe- 
 cial difficulty arising over the representation of the 
 slave States in Congress, and the importation of ad- 
 ditional slaves from Africa. No one proposed to abolish 
 slavery offhand; but an influential though small num- 
 ber of delegates, headed by Morris, recognized it as a 
 terrible evil, and were very loath either to allow the 
 
 392 
 
FORMATION OF THE CONSTITUTION 
 
 South additional representation for the slaves, or to 
 permit the foreign trade in them to go on. When the 
 Southern members banded together on the issue, and 
 made it evident that it was the one which they regarded 
 as almost the most important of all, Morris attacked 
 them in a telling speech, stating with his usual boldness 
 facts that most Northerners only dared hint at, and 
 summing up with the remark that, if he was driven to 
 the dilemma of doing injustice to the Southern States 
 or to human nature, he would have to do it to the for- 
 mer; certainly he would not encourage the slave trade 
 by allowing representation for negroes. Afterward he 
 characterized the proportional representation of the 
 blacks even more strongly, as being "a bribe for the 
 importation of slaves." 
 
 In advocating the proposal, first made by Hamilton, 
 that the representation should in all cases be propor- 
 tioned to the number of free inhabitants, Morris showed 
 the utter lack of logic in the Virginian proposition, which 
 was that the slave States should have additional repre- 
 sentation to the extent of three-fifths of their negroes. 
 If negroes were to be considered as inhabitants, then 
 they ought to be added in their entire number; if they 
 were to be considered as property, then they ought to 
 be counted only if all other wealth was likewise included. 
 The position of the Southerners was ridiculous: he tore 
 their arguments to shreds; but he was powerless to alter 
 the fact that they were doggedly determined to carry 
 their point, while most of the Northern members cared 
 comparatively little about it. 
 
 In another speech he painted in the blackest colors 
 the unspeakable misery and wrong wrought by slavery, 
 and showed the blight it brought upon the land. 'It 
 was the curse of Heaven on the States where it pre- 
 
 393 
 
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS 
 
 vailed." He contrasted the prosperity and happiness 
 of the Northern States with the misery and poverty 
 which overspread the barren wastes of those where 
 slaves were numerous. "Every step you take through 
 the great region of slavery presents a desert widening 
 with the increasing number of these wretched beings." 
 He indignantly protested against the Northern States 
 being bound to march their militia for the defense of 
 the Southern States against the very slaves of whose 
 existence the Northern men complained. "He would 
 sooner submit himself to a tax for paying for all the 
 negroes in the United States than saddle posterity with 
 such a Constitution." 
 
 Some of the high-minded Virginian statesmen were 
 quite as vigorous as he was in their denunciation of the 
 system. One of them, George Mason, portrayed the 
 effect of slavery upon the people at large with bitter 
 emphasis, and denounced the slave traffic as "infernal," 
 and slavery as a national sin that would be punished by 
 a national calamity — stating therein the exact and ter- 
 rible truth. In shameful contrast, many of the North- 
 erners championed the institution; in particular, Oliver 
 Ellsworth, of Connecticut, whose name should be 
 branded with infamy because of the words he then ut- 
 tered. He actually advocated the free importation of 
 negroes into the south Atlantic States, because the 
 slaves "died so fast in the sickly rice-swamps" that it 
 was necessary ever to bring fresh ones to labor and 
 perish in the places of their predecessors; and, with a 
 brutal cynicism, peculiarly revolting from its mercan- 
 tile baseness, he brushed aside the question of morality 
 as irrelevant, asking his hearers to pay heed only to the 
 fact that "what enriches the part enriches the whole." 
 
 The Virginians were opposed to the slave trade; but 
 
 394 
 
FORMATION OF THE CONSTITUTION 
 
 South Carolina and Georgia made it a condition of their 
 coming into the Union. It was accordingly agreed that 
 it should be allowed for a limited time — twelve years; 
 and this was afterward extended to twenty by a bar- 
 gain made by Maryland and the three south Atlantic 
 States with the New England States, the latter getting 
 in return the help of the former to alter certain provi- 
 sions respecting commerce. One of the main industries 
 of the New England of that day was the manufacture 
 of rum ; and its citizens cared more for their distilleries 
 than for all the slaves held in bondage throughout 
 Christendom. The rum was made from molasses which 
 they imported from the West Indies, and they carried 
 there in return the fish taken by their great fishing 
 fleets; they also carried the slaves into the Southern 
 ports. Their commerce was what they especially re- 
 lied on; and to gain support for it they were perfectly 
 willing to make terms with even such a black Mammon 
 of unrighteousness as the Southern slaveholding system. 
 Throughout the contest, Morris and a few other stout 
 antislavery men are the only ones who appear to ad- 
 vantage; the Virginians, who were honorably anxious 
 to minimize the evils of slavery, come next; then the 
 other Southerners who allowed pressing self-interest to 
 overcome their scruples; and, last of all, the New Eng- 
 enders whom a comparatively trivial self-interest made 
 the willing allies of the extreme slaveholders. These 
 last were the only Northerners who yielded anything to 
 the Southern slaveholders that was not absolutely neces- 
 sary; and yet they were the forefathers of the most de- 
 termined and effective foes that slavery ever had. 
 
 As already said, the Southerners stood firm on the 
 slave question : it was the one which perhaps more than 
 any other offered the most serious obstacle to a settle- 
 
 395 
 
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS 
 
 ment. Madison pointed out "that the real difference 
 lay, not between the small States and the large, but 
 between the Northern and the Southern States. The 
 institution of slavery and its consequences formed the 
 real line of discrimination." To talk of this kind Morris 
 at first answered hotly enough: "He saw that the 
 Southern gentlemen would not be satisfied unless they 
 saw the way open to their gaining a majority in the 
 public councils. ... If [the distinction they set up 
 between the North and South] was real, instead of at- 
 tempting to blend incompatible things, let them at once 
 take a friendly leave of each other." He afterward 
 went back from this position, and agreed to the com- 
 promise by which the slaves were to add, by three-fifths 
 of their number, to the representation of their masters, 
 and the slave trade was to be allowed for a certain num- 
 ber of years, and prohibited forever after. He showed 
 his usual straightforward willingness to call things by 
 their right names in desiring to see "slavery" named 
 outright in the Constitution, instead of being charac- 
 terized with cowardly circumlocution, as was actually 
 done. 
 
 In finally yielding and assenting to a compromise, he 
 was perfectly right. The crazy talk about the iniquity 
 of consenting to any recognition of slavery whatever in 
 the Constitution is quite beside the mark; and it is 
 equally irrelevant to assert that the so-called "com- 
 promises" were not properly compromises at all, be- 
 cause there were no mutual concessions, and the South- 
 ern States had "no shadow of right" to what they 
 demanded and only in part gave up. It was all-impor- 
 tant that there should be a Union, but it had to result 
 from the voluntary action of all the States; and each 
 State had a perfect "right" to demand just whatever 
 
 396 
 
FORMATION OF THE CONSTITUTION 
 
 it chose. The really wise and high-minded statesmen 
 demanded for themselves nothing save justice; but they 
 had to accomplish their purpose by yielding somewhat 
 to the prejudices of their more foolish and less disin- 
 terested colleagues. It was better to limit the duration 
 of the slave trade to twenty years than to allow it to 
 be continued indefinitely, as would have been the case 
 had the South Atlantic States remained by themselves. 
 The three-fifths representation of the slaves was an evil 
 anomaly, but it was no worse than allowing the small 
 States equal representation in the Senate; indeed, bal- 
 ancing the two concessions against each other, it must 
 be admitted that Virginia and North Carolina surren- 
 dered to New Hampshire and Rhode Island more than 
 they got in return. 
 
 No man who supported slavery can ever have a clear 
 and flawless title to our regard; and those who opposed 
 it merit, in so far, the highest honor; but the opposition 
 to it sometimes took forms that can be considered only 
 as the vagaries of lunacy. The only hope of abolishing 
 it lay, first in the establishment and then in the preser- 
 vation of the Union; and if we had at the outset dis- 
 solved into a knot of struggling anarchies, it would have 
 entailed an amount of evil both on our race and on all 
 North America, compared to which the endurance of 
 slavery for a century or two would have been as noth- 
 ing. If we had even split up into only two republics, 
 a Northern and a Southern, the West would probably 
 have gone with the latter, and to this day slavery would 
 have existed throughout the Mississippi valley; much 
 of what is now our territory would have been held by 
 European powers, scornfully heedless of our divided 
 might, while in not a few States the form of government 
 would have been a military dictatorship; and indeed 
 
 397 
 
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS 
 
 our whole history would have been as contemptible as 
 was that of Germany for some centuries prior to the 
 rise of the house of Hohenzollern. 
 
 The fierceness of the opposition to the adoption of the 
 Constitution, and the narrowness of the majority by 
 which Virginia and New York decided in its favor, 
 while North Carolina and Rhode Island did not come 
 in at all until absolutely forced, showed that the refusal 
 to compromise on any one of the points at issue would 
 have jeopardized everything. Had the slavery interest 
 been in the least dissatisfied, or had the plan of govern- 
 ment been a shade less democratic, or had the smaller 
 States not been propitiated, the Constitution would 
 have been rejected offhand; and the country would have 
 had before it decades, perhaps centuries, of misrule, 
 violence, and disorder. 
 
 Madison paid a very just compliment to some of 
 Morris's best points when he wrote, anent his services 
 in the convention: "To the brilliancy of his genius he 
 added, what is too rare, a candid surrender of his opin- 
 ions when the light of discussion satisfied him that they 
 had been too hastily formed, and a readiness to aid in 
 making the best of measures in which he had been over- 
 ruled." Although so many of his own theories had been 
 rejected, he was one of the warmest advocates of the 
 Constitution; and it was he who finally drew up the 
 document and put the finish to its style and arrange- 
 ment, so that, as it now stands, it comes from his pen. 
 
 Hamilton, who more than any other man bore the 
 brunt of the fight for its adoption, asked Morris to help 
 him in writing the "Federalist," but the latter was for 
 some reason unable to do so; and Hamilton was assisted 
 only by Madison, and to a very slight extent by Jay. 
 Pennsylvania, the State from which Morris had been 
 
 398 
 
FORMATION OF THE CONSTITUTION 
 
 sent as a delegate, early declared in favor of the new 
 experiment; although, as Morris wrote Washington, 
 there had been cause to "dread the cold and sour tem- 
 per of the back counties, and still more the wicked in- 
 dustry of those who have long habituated themselves 
 to live on the public, and cannot bear the idea of being 
 removed from the power and profit of state govern- 
 ment, which has been and still is the means of support- 
 ing themselves, their families, and dependents, and 
 (which perhaps is equally grateful) of depressing and 
 humbling their political adversaries." In his own na- 
 tive State of New York the influences he thus describes 
 were still more powerful, and it needed all Hamilton's 
 wonderful genius to force a ratification of the Consti- 
 tution in spite of the stupid selfishness of the Clintonian 
 faction; as it was, he was only barely successful, al- 
 though backed by all the best and ablest leaders in the 
 community — Jay, Livingston, Schuyler, Stephen Van 
 Rensselaer, Isaac Roosevelt, James Duane, and a host 
 of others. 
 
 About this time Morris came back to New York to 
 live, having purchased the family estate at Morrisania 
 from his elder brother, Staats Long Morris, the British 
 general. He had for some time been engaged in various 
 successful commercial ventures with his friend, Robert 
 Morris, including an East India voyage on a large scale, 
 shipments of tobacco to France, and a share in iron- 
 works on the Delaware River, and had become quite a 
 rich man. As soon as the war was ended, he had done 
 what he could do to have the loyalists pardoned and 
 reinstated in their fortunes; thereby risking his popu- 
 larity not a little, as the general feeling against the 
 Tories was bitter and malevolent in the highest degree, 
 in curious contrast to the good-will that so rapidly 
 
 399 
 
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS 
 
 sprang up between the Unionists and ex-Confederates 
 after the Civil War. 
 
 He also kept an eye on foreign politics, and one of his 
 letters to Jay curiously foreshadows the good-will gen- 
 erally felt by Americans of the present day toward Rus- 
 sia, running: "If her ladyship (the Czarina) would 
 drive the Turk out of Europe, and demolish the Al- 
 gerines and other piratical gentry, she will have done 
 us much good for her own sake; . . . but it is hardly 
 possible the other powers will permit Russia to possess 
 so wide a door into the Mediterranean. I may be de- 
 ceived, but I think England herself would oppose it. 
 As an American, it is my hearty wish that she may ef- 
 fect her schemes." 
 
 Shortly after this it became necessary for him to sail 
 for Europe on business. 
 
 400 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 FIRST STAY IN FRANCE 
 
 After a hard winter passage of forty days' length 
 Morris reached France, and arrived in Paris on Febru- 
 ary 3, 1789. He remained there a year on his private 
 business; but his prominence in America, and his inti- 
 mate friendship with many distinguished Frenchmen, 
 at once admitted him to the highest social and political 
 circles, where his brilliant talents secured him imme- 
 diate importance. 
 
 The next nine years of his life were spent in Europe, 
 and it was during this time that he unknowingly ren- 
 dered his especial and peculiar service to the public. As 
 an American statesman he has many rivals, and not a 
 few superiors; but as a penetrating observer and re- 
 corder of contemporary events, he stands alone among 
 the men of his time. He kept a full diary during his 
 stay abroad, and was a most voluminous correspondent; 
 and his capacity for keen, shrewd observation, his truth- 
 fulness, his wonderful insight into character, his sense 
 of humor, and his power of graphic description, all com- 
 bine to make his comments on the chief men and events 
 of the day a unique record of the inside history of West- 
 ern Europe during the tremendous convulsions of the 
 French Revolution. He is always an entertaining and 
 in all matters of fact a trustworthy writer. His letters 
 and diary together form a real mine of wealth for the 
 student either of the social life of the upper classes in 
 France just before the outbreak, or of the events of the 
 revolution itself. 
 
 401 
 
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS 
 
 In the first place, it must be premised that from the 
 outset Morris was hostile to the spirit of the French 
 Revolution, and his hostility grew in proportion to its 
 excesses until at last it completely swallowed up his 
 original antipathy to England, and made him regard 
 France as normally our enemy, not our ally. This was 
 perfectly natural, and indeed inevitable: in all really 
 free countries, the best friends of freedom regarded the 
 revolutionists, when they had fairly begun their bloody 
 career, with horror and anger. It was only to oppressed, 
 debased, and priest-ridden peoples that the French 
 Revolution could come as the embodiment of liberty. 
 Compared to the freedom already enjoyed by Ameri- 
 cans, it was sheer tyranny of the most dreadful kind. 
 
 Morris saw clearly that the popular party in France, 
 composed in part of amiable visionaries, theoretic phi- 
 lanthropists, and closet constitution-mongers, and in 
 part of a brutal, sodden populace, maddened by the 
 grinding wrongs of ages, knew not whither its own steps 
 tended; and he also saw that the then existing genera- 
 tion of Frenchmen were not, and never would be, fitted 
 to use liberty aright. It is small matter for wonder that 
 he could not see as clearly the good which lay behind 
 the movement; that he could not as readily foretell the 
 real and great improvement it was finally to bring 
 about, though only after a generation of hideous con- 
 vulsions. Even as it was, he discerned what was hap- 
 pening, and what was about to happen, more distinctly 
 than did any one else. The wild friends of the French 
 Revolution, especially in America, supported it blindly, 
 with but a very slight notion of what it really signified. 
 Keen though Morris's intellectual vision was, it was 
 impossible for him to see what future lay beyond the 
 quarter of a century of impending tumult. It did not 
 
 402 
 
FIRST STAY IN FRANCE 
 
 lie within his powers to applaud the fiendish atrocities 
 of the Red Terror for the sake of the problematical good 
 that would come to the next generation. To do so he 
 would have needed the granite heart of a zealot, as well 
 as the prophetic vision of a seer. 
 
 The French Revolution was in its essence a struggle 
 for the abolition of privilege, and for equality in civil 
 rights. This Morris perceived, almost alone among the 
 statesmen of his day; and he also perceived that most 
 Frenchmen were willing to submit to any kind of gov- 
 ernment that would secure them the things for which 
 they strove. As he wrote to Jefferson, when the re- 
 public was well under weigh: "The great mass of the 
 French nation is less solicitous to preserve the present 
 order of things than to prevent the return of the ancient 
 oppression, and of course would more readily submit to 
 a pure despotism than to that kind of monarchy whose 
 only limits were found in those noble, legal, and clerical 
 corps by which the people were alternately oppressed 
 and insulted." To the downtrodden masses of Conti- 
 nental Europe, the gift of civil rights and the removal 
 of the tyranny of the privileged classes, even though ac- 
 companied by the rule of a directory, a consul, or an 
 emperor, represented an immense political advance; but 
 to the free people of England, and to the freer people of 
 America, the change would have been wholly for the 
 worse. 
 
 Such being the case, Morris's attitude was natural 
 and proper. There is no reason to question the sin- 
 cerity of his statement in another letter, that "I do, 
 from the bottom of my heart, wish well to this country 
 [France]." Had the French people shown the least 
 moderation or wisdom, he would have unhesitatingly 
 sided with them against their oppressors. It must be 
 
 403 
 
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS 
 
 kept in mind that he was not influenced in the least in 
 his course by the views of the upper classes with whom 
 he mingled. On the contrary, when he first came to 
 Europe, he distinctly lost popularity in some of the so- 
 cial circles in which he moved, because he was so much 
 more conservative than his aristocratic friends, among 
 whom the closet republicanism of the philosophers was 
 for the moment all the rage. He had no love for the 
 French nobility, whose folly and ferocity caused the 
 revolution, and whose craven cowardice could not check 
 it even before it had gathered headway. Long after- 
 ward he wrote of some of the emigres: 'The conversa- 
 tion of these gentlemen, who have the virtue and good 
 fortune of their grandfathers to recommend them, leads 
 rne almost to forget the crimes of the French Revolu- 
 tion; and often the unforgiving temper and sanguinary 
 wishes which they exhibit make me almost believe that 
 the assertion of their enemies is true, namely, that it is 
 success alone which has determined on whose side 
 should be the crimes, and on whose the miseries." The 
 truth of the last sentence was strikingly verified by the 
 White Terror, even meaner, if less bloody, than the 
 Red. Bourbon princes and Bourbon nobles were alike, 
 and Morris only erred in not seeing that their destruc- 
 tion was the condition precedent upon all progress. 
 
 There was never another great struggle, in the end 
 productive of good to mankind, where the tools and 
 methods by which that end was won were so wholly 
 vile as in the French Revolution. Alone among move- 
 ments of the kind, it brought forth no leaders entitled 
 to our respect; none who were both great and good; 
 none even who were very great, save, at its beginning, 
 strange, strong, crooked Mirabeau, and at its close the 
 towering world-genius who sprang to power by its 
 
 404 
 
FIRST STAY IN FRANCE 
 
 means, wielded it for his own selfish purposes, and 
 dazzled all nations over the wide earth by the glory of 
 his strength and splendor. 
 
 We can hardly blame Morris for not appreciating a 
 revolution whose immediate outcome was to be Napo- 
 leon's despotism, even though he failed to see all the 
 good that would remotely spring therefrom. He con- 
 sidered, as he once wrote a friend, that "the true ob- 
 ject of a great statesman is to give to any particular 
 nation the kind of laws which is suitable to them, and 
 the best constitution which they are capable of." There 
 can be no sounder rule of statesmanship; and none was 
 more flagrantly broken by the amiable but incompe- 
 tent political doctrinaires of 1789. Thus the American, 
 as a far-sighted statesman, despised the theorists who 
 began the revolution, and, as a humane and honorable 
 man, abhorred the black-hearted wretches who carried 
 it on. His view of the people among whom he found 
 himself, as well as his statement of his own position, 
 he himself has recorded: "To fit people for a republic, 
 as for any other form of government, a previous educa- 
 tion is necessary. ... In despotic governments the 
 people, habituated to beholding everything bending 
 beneath the weight of power, never possess that power 
 for a moment without abusing it. Slaves, driven to 
 despair, take arms, execute vast vengeance, and then 
 sink back to their former condition of slaves. In such 
 societies the patriot, the melancholy patriot, sides with 
 the despot, because anything is better than a wild and 
 bloody confusion." 
 
 So much for an outline of his views. His writings 
 preserve them for us in detail on almost every impor- 
 tant question that came up during his stay in Europe; 
 couched, moreover, in telling, piquant sentences that 
 
 405 
 
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS 
 
 leave room for hardly a dull line in either letters or 
 diary. 
 
 No sooner had he arrived in Paris than he sought out 
 Jefferson, then the American minister, and Lafayette. 
 They engaged him to dine on the two following nights. 
 He presented his various letters of introduction, and in 
 a very few weeks, by his wit, tact, and ability, had made 
 himself completely at home in what was by far the most 
 brilliant and attractive — although also the most hope- 
 lessly unsound — fashionable society of any European 
 capital. He got on equally well with fine ladies, phi- 
 losophers, and statesmen; was as much at his ease in 
 the salons of the one as at the dinner-tables of the 
 other; and all the time observed and noted down, with 
 the same humorous zest, the social peculiarities of his 
 new friends as well as the tremendous march of political 
 events. Indeed, it is difficult to know whether to set 
 the higher value on his penetrating observations con- 
 cerning public affairs, or on his witty, light, half-satir- 
 ical sketches of the men and women of the world with 
 whom he was thrown in contact, told in his usual charm- 
 ing and effective style. No other American of note has 
 left us writings half so humorous and amusing, filled, 
 too, with information of the greatest value. 
 
 Although his relations with Jefferson were at this 
 time very friendly, yet his ideas on most subjects were 
 completely at variance with those of the latter. He 
 visited him very often; and, after one of these occa- 
 sions, jots down his opinion of his friend in his usual 
 amusing vein: "Call on Mr. Jefferson, and sit a good 
 while. General conversation on character and politics. 
 I think he does not form very just estimates of charac- 
 ter, but rather assigns too many to the humble rank of 
 fools; whereas in life the gradations are infinite, and 
 
 406 
 
FIRST STAY IN FRANCE 
 
 each individual has his peculiarities of fort and feeble": 
 not a bad protest against the dangers of sweeping gen- 
 eralization. Another time he records his judgment of 
 Jefferson's ideas on public matters as follows: "He and 
 I differ in our systems of politics. He, with all the 
 leaders of liberty here, is desirous of annihilating dis- 
 tinctions of order. How far such views may be right 
 respecting mankind in general is, I think, extremely 
 problematical. But with respect to this nation I am 
 sure they are wrong, and cannot eventuate well." 
 
 As soon as he began to go out in Parisian society, he 
 was struck by the closet republicanism which it had be- 
 come the fashion to affect. After his first visit to La- 
 fayette, who received him with that warmth and frank, 
 open-handed hospitality which he always extended to 
 Americans, Morris writes: "Lafayette is full of politics; 
 he appears to be too republican for the genius of his 
 country." And again, when Lafayette showed him the 
 draft of the celebrated Declaration of Rights, he notes : 
 "I gave him my opinions, and suggested several amend- 
 ments tending to soften the high-colored expressions of 
 freedom. It is not by sounding words that revolutions 
 are produced." Elsewhere he writes that "the young 
 nobility have brought themselves to an active faith in 
 the natural equality of mankind, and spurn at every- 
 thing which looks like restraint." Some of their num- 
 ber, however, he considered to be actuated by con- 
 siderations more tangible than mere sentiment. He 
 chronicles a dinner with some members of the National 
 Assembly, where "one, a noble representing the Tiers, 
 is so vociferous against his own order, that I am con- 
 vinced he means to rise by his eloquence, and finally 
 will, I expect, vote with the opinion of the court, let 
 that be what it may." The sentimental humanitarians 
 
 407 
 
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS 
 
 — who always form a most pernicious body, with an 
 influence for bad hardly surpassed by that of the pro- 
 fessionally criminal class — of course throve vigorously 
 in an atmosphere where theories of mawkish benevo- 
 lence went hand in hand with the habitual practice of 
 vices too gross to name. Morris, in one of his letters, 
 narrates an instance in point; at the same time show- 
 ing how this excess of watery philanthropy was, like all 
 the other movements of the French Revolution, but a 
 violent and misguided reaction against former abuses 
 of the opposite sort. The incident took place in Ma- 
 dame de StaeTs salon. "The Count de Clermont Ton- 
 nerre, one of their best orators, read to us a very pathetic 
 oration; and the object was to show that no penalties 
 are the legal compensations for crimes or injuries: the 
 man who is hanged, having by that event paid his debt 
 to society, ought not to be held in dishonor; and in like 
 manner he who has been condemned for seven years to 
 be flogged in the galley should, when he has served out 
 his apprenticeship, be received again into good com- 
 pany, as if nothing had happened. You smile; but ob- 
 serve the extreme to which the matter was carried the 
 other way. Dishonoring thousands for the guilt of one 
 has so shocked the public sentiment as to render this 
 extreme fashionable. The oration was very fine, very 
 sentimental, very pathetic, and the style harmonious. 
 Shouts of applause and full approbation. When this 
 was pretty well over, I told him that his speech was 
 extremely eloquent, but that his principles were not 
 very solid. Universal surprise ! " 
 
 At times he became rather weary of the constant 
 discussion of politics, which had become the chief draw- 
 ing-room topic. Among the capacities of his lively and 
 erratic nature was the power of being intensely bored 
 
 408 
 
FIRST STAY IN FRANCE 
 
 by anything dull or monotonous. He remarked testily 
 that "republicanism was absolutely a moral influenza, 
 from which neither titles, places, nor even the diadem 
 can guard the possessor." In a letter to a friend on a 
 different subject he writes: "Apropos, — a term which 
 my Lord Chesterfield well observes we generally use to 
 bring in what is not at all to the purpose, — apropos, 
 then, I have here the strangest employment imaginable. 
 A republican, and just as it were emerged from that 
 assembly which has formed one of the most republican 
 of all republican constitutions, I preach incessantly re- 
 spect for the prince, attention to the rights of the nobles, 
 and above all moderation, not only in the object, but 
 also in the pursuit of it. All this you will say is none 
 of my business; but I consider France as the natural 
 ally of my country, and, of course, that we are inter- 
 ested in her prosperity; besides, to say the truth, I love 
 France." 
 
 His hostility to the fashionable cult offended some of 
 his best friends. The Lafayettes openly disapproved 
 his sentiments. The marquis told him that he was 
 injuring the cause, because his sentiments were being 
 continually quoted against "the good party." Morris 
 answered that he was opposed to democracy from a 
 regard to liberty; that the popular party were going 
 straight to destruction, and he would fain stop them if 
 he could; for their views respecting the nation were 
 totally inconsistent with the materials of which it was 
 composed, and the worst thing that could happen to 
 them would be to have their wishes granted. Lafay- 
 ette half admitted that this was true. "He tells me 
 that he is sensible his party are mad, and tells them 
 so, but is not the less determined to die with them. I 
 tell him that I think it would be quite as well to bring 
 
 409 
 
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS 
 
 them to their senses and live with them" — the last 
 sentence showing the impatience with which the shrewd, 
 fearless, practical American at times regarded the 
 dreamy inefficiency of his French associates. Madame 
 de Lafayette was even more hostile than her husband 
 to Morris's ideas. In commenting on her beliefs he 
 says: "She is a very sensible woman, but has formed 
 her ideas of government in a manner not suited, I think, 
 either to the situation, the circumstances, or the dis- 
 position of France." 
 
 He was considered too much of an aristocrat in the 
 salon of the Comtesse de Tesse, the resort of "repub- 
 licans of the first feather"; and at first was sometimes 
 rather coldly received there. He felt, however, a most 
 sincere friendship and regard for the comtesse, and thor- 
 oughly respected the earnestness with which she had 
 for twenty years done what lay in her power to give 
 her country greater liberty. She was a genuine enthu- 
 siast, and, when the National Assembly met, was filled 
 with exultant hope for the future. The ferocious out- 
 breaks of the mob, and the crazy lust for blood shown 
 by the people at large, startled her out of her faith, and 
 shocked her into the sad belief that her lifelong and 
 painful labors had been wasted in the aid of a bad 
 cause. Later in the year Morris writes: "I find Ma- 
 dame de Tesse is become a convert to my principles. 
 We have a gay conversation of some minutes on their 
 affairs, in which I mingle sound maxims of government 
 with that piquant legerete which this nation delights in. 
 She insists that I dine with her at Versailles the next 
 time I am there. We are vastly gracious, and all at 
 once, in a serious tone, ' Mais attendez, madame, est-ce 
 que je suis trop aristocrat?' To which she answers, 
 with a smile of gentle humility, 'Oh, mon Dieu, non !' " 
 
 410 
 
FIRST STAY IN FRANCE 
 
 It is curious to notice how rapidly Morris's brilliant 
 talents gave him a commanding position, stranger and 
 guest though he was, among the most noted statesmen 
 of France; how often he was consulted, and how widely 
 his opinions were quoted. Moreover, his incisive truth- 
 fulness makes his writings more valuable to the historian 
 of his time than are those of any of his contemporaries, 
 French, English, or American. Taine, in his great work 
 on the revolution, ranks him high among the small num- 
 ber of observers who have recorded clear and sound 
 judgments of those years of confused, formless tumult 
 and horror. 
 
 All his views on French politics are very striking. 
 As soon as he reached Paris, he was impressed by the 
 unrest and desire for change prevailing everywhere, and 
 wrote home: "I find on this side of the Atlantic a re- 
 semblance to what I left on the other— a nation which 
 exists in hopes, prospects, and expectations; the rever- 
 ence for ancient establishments gone; existing forms 
 shaken to the very foundation; and a new order of things 
 about to take place, in which, perhaps, even the very 
 names of all former institutions will be disregarded." 
 And again, "This country presents an astonishing 
 spectacle to one who has collected his ideas from books 
 and information half a dozen years old. Everything is 
 a VAnglaise, and a desire to imitate the English pre- 
 vails alike in the cut of a coat and the form of a con- 
 stitution. Like the English, too, all are engaged in par- 
 liamenteering; and when we consider how novel this 
 last business must be, I assure you the progress is far 
 from contemptible"— a reference to Lafayette's elec- 
 tioneering trip to Auvergne. The rapidity with which, 
 in America, order had come out of chaos, while in France 
 the reverse process had been going on, impressed him 
 
 411 
 
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS 
 
 deeply; as he says: 'If any new lesson were wanting 
 to impress on our hearts a deep sense of the mutability 
 of human affairs, the double contrast between France 
 and America two years ago and at the present would 
 surely furnish it." 
 
 He saw at once that the revolutionists had it in their 
 power to do about as they chose. "If there be any 
 real vigor in the nation the prevailing party in the 
 States General may, if they please, overturn the mon- 
 archy itself, should the king commit his authority to 
 a contest with them. The court is extremely feeble, 
 and the manners are so extremely corrupt that they 
 cannot succeed if there be any consistent opposition, 
 unless the whole nation be equally depraved." 
 
 He did not believe that the people would be able to 
 profit by the revolution, or to use their opportunities 
 aright. For the numerous class of patriots who felt a 
 vague, though fervent, enthusiasm for liberty in the 
 abstract, and who, without the slightest practical knowl- 
 edge, were yet intent on having all their own pet theo- 
 ries put into practice, he felt profound scorn and con- 
 tempt; while he distrusted and despised the mass of 
 Frenchmen, because of their frivolity and viciousness. 
 He knew well that a pure theorist may often do as much 
 damage to a country as the most corrupt traitor; and 
 very properly considered that in politics the fool is quite 
 as obnoxious as the knave. He also realized that levity 
 and the inability to look life seriously in the face, or to 
 attend to the things worth doing, may render a man 
 just as incompetent to fulfil the duties of citizenship 
 as would actual viciousness. 
 
 To the crazy theories of the constitution-makers and 
 closet republicans generally, he often alludes in his 
 diary, and in his letters home. In one place he notes: 
 
 412 
 
FIRST STAY IN FRANCE 
 
 "The literary people here, observing the abuses of the 
 monarchical form, imagine that everything must go the 
 better in proportion as it recedes from the present estab- 
 lishment, and in their closets they make men exactly 
 suited to their systems; but unluckily they are such 
 men as exist nowhere else, and least of all in France." 
 And he writes almost the same thing to Washington: 
 "The middle party, who mean well, have unfortunately 
 acquired their ideas of government from books, and are 
 admirable fellows upon paper: but as it happens, some- 
 what unfortunately, that the men who live in the world 
 are very different from those who dwell in the heads of 
 philosophers, it is not to be wondered at if the systems 
 taken out of books are fit for nothing but to be put 
 back into books again." And once more: 'They have 
 all that romantic spirit, and all those romantic ideas of 
 government, which, happily for America, we were cured 
 of before it was too late." He shows how they had never 
 had the chance to gain wisdom through experience. 
 "As they have hitherto felt severely the authority exer- 
 cised in the name of their princes, every limitation of 
 that power seems to them desirable. Never having felt 
 the evils of too weak an executive, the disorders to be 
 apprehended from anarchy make as yet no impression." 
 Elsewhere he comments on their folly in trying to apply 
 to their own necessities systems of government suited to 
 totally different conditions; and mentions his own atti- 
 tude in the matter: "I have steadily combated the 
 violence and excess of those persons who, either inspired 
 with an enthusiastic love of freedom, or prompted by 
 sinister designs, are disposed to drive everything to ex- 
 tremity. Our American example has done them good; 
 but, like all novelties, liberty runs away with their dis- 
 cretion, if they have any. They want an American con- 
 
 413 
 
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS 
 
 stitution with the exception of a king instead of a presi- 
 dent, without reflecting that they have not American 
 citizens to support that constitution. . . . Whoever 
 desires to apply in the practical science of government 
 those rules and forms which prevail and succeed in a 
 foreign country, must fall into the same pedantry with 
 our young scholars, just fresh from the university, who 
 would fain bring everything to the Roman standard. 
 . . . The scientific tailor who should cut after Grecian 
 or Chinese models would not have many customers, 
 either in London or Paris; and those who look to Amer- 
 ica for their political forms are not unlike the tailors in 
 Laputa, who, as Gulliver tells us, always take measures 
 with a quadrant." 
 
 He shows again and again his abiding distrust and 
 fear of the French character, as it was at that time, 
 volatile, debauched, ferocious, and incapable of self- 
 restraint. To Lafayette he insisted that the "extreme 
 licentiousness" of the people rendered it indispensable 
 that they should be kept under authority; and on an- 
 other occasion told him "that the nation was used to 
 being governed, and would have to be governed; and 
 that if he expected to lead them by their affections, he 
 would himself be the dupe." In writing to Washington 
 he painted the outlook in colors that, though black in- 
 deed, were not a shade too dark. "The materials for a 
 revolution in this country are very indifferent. Every- 
 body agrees that there is an utter prostration of morals ; 
 but this general proposition can never convey to an 
 American mind the degree of depravity. It is not by 
 any figure of rhetoric or force of language that the idea 
 can be communicated. A hundred anecdotes and a hun- 
 dred thousand examples are required to show the ex- 
 treme rottenness of every member. There are men and 
 
 414 
 
FIRST STAY IN FRANCE 
 
 women who are greatly and eminently virtuous. I have 
 the pleasure to number many in my own acquaintance; 
 but they stand forward from a background deeply and 
 darkly shaded. It is however from such crumbling 
 matter that the great edifice of freedom is to be erected 
 here. Perhaps like the stratum of rock which is spread 
 under the whole surface of their country, it may harden 
 when exposed to the air; but it seems quite as likely 
 that it will fall and crush the builders. I own to you 
 that I am not without such apprehensions, for there is 
 one fatal principle which pervades all ranks. It is a 
 perfect indifference to the violation of engagements. 
 Inconstancy is so mingled in the blood, marrow, and 
 very essence of this people, that when a man of high 
 rank and importance laughs to-day at what he seriously 
 asserted yesterday, it is considered as in the natural 
 order of things. Consistency is a phenomenon. Judge, 
 then, what would be the value of an association should 
 such a thing be proposed and even adopted. The great 
 mass of the common people have no religion but their 
 priests, no law but their superiors, no morals but their 
 interest. These are the creatures who, led by drunken 
 curates, are now on the high road a la liberie." 
 
 Morris and Washington wrote very freely to each 
 other. In one of his letters, the latter gave an account 
 of how well affairs were going in America (save in Rhode 
 Island, the majority of whose people "had long since 
 bid adieu to every principle of honor, common sense, 
 and honesty"), and then went on to discuss things in 
 France. He expressed the opinion that, if the revolu- 
 tion went no farther than it had already gone, France 
 would become the most powerful and happy state in 
 Europe; but he trembled lest, having triumphed in the 
 first paroxysms, it might succumb to others still more 
 
 415 
 
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS 
 
 violent that would be sure to follow. He feared equally 
 the "licentiousness of the people" and the folly of the 
 leaders, and doubted if they possessed the requisite tem- 
 perance, firmness, and foresight; and if they did not, 
 then he believed they would run from one extreme to 
 another, and end with "a higher toned despotism than 
 the one which existed before." 
 
 Morris answered him with his usual half-satiric 
 humor, "Your sentiments on the revolution here I be- 
 lieve to be perfectly just, because they perfectly accord 
 with my own, and that is, you know, the only standard 
 which Heaven has given us by which to judge," and 
 went on to describe how the parties in France stood. 
 "The king is in effect a prisoner in Paris and obeys en- 
 tirely the National Assembly. This Assembly may be 
 divided into three parts : one, called the aristocrats, con- 
 sists of the high clergy, the members of the law (note, 
 these are not the lawyers) and such of the nobility as 
 think they ought to form a separate order. Another, 
 which has no name, but which consists of all sorts of 
 people, really friends to a good free government. The 
 third is composed of what is here called the enragees, 
 that is, the madmen. These are the most numerous, 
 and are of that class which in America is known by the 
 name of pettifogging lawyers; together with . . . those 
 persons who in all revolutions throng to the standard 
 of change because they are not well. This last party is 
 in close alliance with the populace here, and they have 
 already unhinged everything, and, according to custom 
 on such occasions, the torrent rushes on irresistibly until 
 it shall have wasted itself." The literati he pronounced 
 to have no understanding whatever of the matters at 
 issue, and as was natural to a shrewd observer educated 
 in the intensely practical school of American political 
 
 416 
 
FIRST STAY IN FRANCE 
 
 life, he felt utter contempt for the wordy futility and 
 wild theories of the French legislators. "For the rest, 
 they discuss nothing in their assembly. One large half 
 of the time is spent in hallooing and bawling." 
 
 Washington and Morris were both so alarmed and 
 indignant at the excesses committed by the revolution- 
 ists, and so frankly expressed their feelings, as to create 
 an impression in some quarters that they were hostile 
 to the revolution itself. The exact reverse was orig- 
 inally the case. They sympathized most warmly with 
 the desire for freedom, and with the efforts made to at- 
 tain it. Morris wrote to the President: 'We have, I 
 think, every reason to wish that the patriots may be 
 successful. The generous wish that a free people must 
 have to disseminate freedom, the grateful emotion which 
 rejoices in the happiness of a benefactor, the interest we 
 must feel as well in the liberty as in the power of this 
 country, all conspire to make us far from indifferent 
 spectators. I say that we have an interest in the liberty 
 of France. The leaders here are our friends. Many of 
 them have imbibed their principles in America, and all 
 have been fired by our example. Their opponents are 
 by no means rejoiced at the success of our revolution, 
 and many of them are disposed to form connections of 
 the strictest kind with Great Britain." Both Washing- 
 ton and Morris would have been delighted to see liberty 
 established in France; but they had no patience with 
 the pursuit of the bloody chimera which the revolution- 
 ists dignified with that title. The one hoped for, and 
 the other counselled, moderation among the friends of 
 republican freedom, not because they were opposed to 
 it, but because they saw that it could only be gained 
 and kept by self-restraint. They were, to say the least, 
 perfectly excusable for believing that at that time some 
 
 417 
 
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS 
 
 form of monarchy, whether under king, dictator, or em- 
 peror, was necessary to France. Every one agrees that 
 there are certain men wiser than their fellows; the only 
 question is as to how these men can be best chosen out, 
 and to this there can be no absolute answer. No mode 
 will invariably give the best results; and the one that 
 will come nearest to doing so under given conditions 
 will not work at all under others. Where the people are 
 enlightened and moral they are themselves the ones to 
 choose their rulers; and such a form of government is 
 unquestionably the highest of any, and the only one 
 that a high-spirited and really free nation will tolerate; 
 but if they are corrupt and degraded, they are unfit for 
 republicanism, and need to be under an entirely differ- 
 ent system. The most genuine republican, if he has 
 any common sense, does not believe in a democratic 
 government for every race and in every age. 
 
 Morris was a true republican, and an American to 
 the core. He was alike free from truckling subserviency 
 to European opinion — a degrading remnant of coloni- 
 alism that unfortunately still lingers in certain limited 
 social and literary circles — and from the uneasy self- 
 assertion that springs partly from sensitive vanity, and 
 partly from a smothered doubt as to one's real position. 
 Like most men of strong character, he had no taste for 
 the "cosmopolitanism" that so generally indicates a 
 weak moral and mental make-up. He enjoyed his stay 
 in Europe to the utmost, and was intimate with the 
 most influential men and charming women of the time; 
 but he was heartily glad to get back to America, refused 
 to leave it again, and always insisted that it was the 
 most pleasant of all places in which to live. While 
 abroad he was simply a gentleman among gentlemen. 
 He never intruded his political views or national prej- 
 
 418 
 
FIRST STAY IN FRANCE 
 
 udices upon his European friends; but he was not in- 
 clined to suffer any imputation on his country. Any 
 question about America that was put in good faith, no 
 matter how much ignorance it displayed, he always an- 
 swered good-humoredly; and he gives in his diary some 
 amusing examples of such conversations. Once he was 
 cross-examined by an inquisitive French nobleman, 
 still in the stage of civilization which believes that no 
 man can be paid to render a service to another, espe- 
 cially a small service, and yet retain his self-respect and 
 continue to regard himself as the full political equal of 
 his employer. One of this gentleman's sagacious in- 
 quiries was as to how a shoemaker could, in the pride 
 of his freedom, think himself equal to a king, and yet 
 accept an order to make shoes; to which Morris replied 
 that he would accept it as a matter of business, and be 
 glad of the chance to make them, since it lay in the line 
 of his duty; and that he would all the time consider him- 
 self at full liberty to criticise his visitor, or the king, or 
 any one else, who lapsed from his own duty. After re- 
 cording several queries of the same nature, and some 
 rather abrupt answers, the diary for that day closes 
 rather caustically with the comment: "This manner of 
 thinking and speaking, however, is too masculine for 
 the climate I am now in." 
 
 In a letter to Washington, Morris made one of his 
 usual happy guesses— if forecasting the future by the 
 aid of marvellous insight into human character can 
 properly be called a guess— as to what would happen 
 to France. "It is very difficult to guess whereabouts 
 the flock will settle when it flies so wild; but as far as 
 it is possible to guess this (late) kingdom will be cast 
 into a congeries of little democracies, laid out, not ac- 
 cording to rivers, mountains, etc., but with the square 
 
 419 
 
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS 
 
 and compass according to latitude and longitude," and 
 adds that he thinks so much fermenting matter will soon 
 give the nation "a kind of political colic." 
 
 He rendered some services to Washington that did 
 not come in the line of his public duty. One of these 
 was to get him a watch, Washington having written to 
 have one purchased in Paris, of gold, "not a small, 
 trifling, nor a finical ornamental one, but a watch well 
 executed in point of workmanship, large and flat, with 
 a plain, handsome key." Morris sent it to him by Jef- 
 ferson, "with two copper keys and one golden one, and 
 a box containing a spare spring and glasses." His next 
 service to the great Virginian, or rather to his family, 
 was of a different kind, and he records it with a smile 
 at his own expense. "Go to M. Houdon's; he has been 
 waiting for me a long time. I stand for his statue of 
 General Washington, being the humble employment of 
 a manikin. This is literally taking the advice of St. 
 Paul, to be all things to all men." 
 
 He corresponded with many men of note; not the 
 least among whom was the daring corsair, Paul Jones. 
 The latter was very anxious to continue in the service 
 of the people with whom he had cast in his lot, and in 
 command of whose vessels he had reached fame. Morris 
 was obliged to tell him that he did not believe an Amer- 
 ican navy would be created for some years to come, and 
 advised him meanwhile to go into the service of the 
 Russians, as he expected there would soon be warm 
 work on the Baltic ; and even gave him a hint as to what 
 would probably be the best plan of campaign. Paul 
 Jones wanted to come to Paris; but from this Morris 
 dissuaded him. "A journey to this city can, I think, 
 produce nothing but the expense attending it; for 
 neither pleasure nor profit can be expected here, by 
 
 420 
 
FIRST STAY IN FRANCE 
 
 one of your profession in particular; and, except that 
 it is a more dangerous residence than many others, I 
 know of nothing which may serve to you as an induce- 
 ment." 
 
 421 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 LIFE IN PARIS 
 
 Although Morris entered into the social life of Paris 
 with all the zest natural to his pleasure-loving charac- 
 ter, yet he was far too clear-headed to permit it to cast 
 any glamour over him. Indeed, it is rather remarkable 
 that a young provincial gentleman, from a raw, new, 
 far-off country, should not have had his head turned by 
 being made somewhat of a lion in what was then the 
 foremost city of the civilized world. Instead of this 
 happening, his notes show that he took a perfectly cool 
 view of his new surroundings, and appreciated the over- 
 civilized, aristocratic society, in which he found him- 
 self, quite at its true worth. He enjoyed the life of the 
 salon very much, but it did not in the least awe or im- 
 press him; and he was of too virile fibre, too essentially 
 a man, to be long contented with it alone. He likewise 
 appreciated the fashionable men, and especially the 
 fashionable women, whom he met there; but his amus- 
 ing comments on them, as shrewd as they are humorous, 
 prove how little he respected their philosophy, and how 
 completely indifferent he was to their claims to social 
 pre-eminence. 
 
 Much has been written about the pleasure-loving, 
 highly cultured society of eighteenth-century France; 
 but to a man like Morris, of real ability and with an 
 element of sturdiness in his make-up, both the culture 
 and knowledge looked a little like veneering; the polish 
 partook of effeminacy; the pleasure so eagerly sought 
 after could be called pleasure only by people of ignoble 
 
 422 
 
LIFE IN PARIS 
 
 ambition; and the life that was lived seemed narrow 
 and petty, agreeable enough for a change, but dreary 
 beyond measure if followed too long. The authors, phi- 
 losophers, and statesmen of the salon were rarely, almost 
 never, men of real greatness; their metal did not ring 
 true; they were shams, and the life of which they were 
 a part was a sham. Not only was the existence hollow, 
 unwholesome, effeminate, but also in the end tedious: 
 the silent, decorous dulness of life in the dreariest coun- 
 try town is not more insufferable than, after a time, be- 
 come the endless chatter, the small witticisms, the mock 
 enthusiasms, and vapid affectations of an aristocratic 
 society as artificial and unsound as that of the Parisian 
 drawing-rooms in the last century. 
 
 But all this was delightful for a time, especially to a 
 man who had never seen any city larger than the over- 
 grown villages of New York and Philadelphia. Morris 
 thus sums up his first impressions in a letter to a friend: 
 "A man in Paris lives in a sort of whirlwind, which 
 turns him round so fast that he can see nothing. And 
 as all men and things are in the same vertiginous con- 
 dition, you can neither fix yourself nor your object for 
 regular examination. Hence the people of this metrop- 
 olis are under the necessity of pronouncing their defini- 
 tive judgment from the first glance; and being thus 
 habituated to shoot flying, they have what sportsmen 
 call a quick sight. Ex pede Herculem. They know a 
 wit by his snuff-box, a man of taste by his bow, and a 
 statesman by the cut of his coat. It is true that, like 
 other sportsmen, they sometimes miss; but then, like 
 other sportsmen too, they have a thousand excuses be- 
 sides the want of skill: the fault, you know, may be in 
 the dog, or the bird, or the powder, or the flint, or even 
 the gun, without mentioning the gunner." 
 
 423 
 
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS 
 
 Among the most famous of the salons where he was 
 fairly constant in his attendance was that of Madame 
 de Stael. There was not a little contempt mixed with 
 his regard for the renowned daughter of Necker. She 
 amused him, however, and he thought well of her ca- 
 pacity, though in his diary he says that he never in his 
 life saw "such exuberant vanity" as she displayed about 
 her father, Necker — a very ordinary personage, whom 
 the convulsions of the time had for a moment thrown 
 forward as the most prominent man in France. By way 
 of instance he mentions a couple of her remarks, one 
 to the effect that a speech of Talleyrand on the church 
 property was "excellent, admirable, in short that there 
 were two pages in it which were worthy of M. Necker"; 
 and another wherein she said that wisdom was a very 
 rare quality, and that she knew of no one who possessed 
 it in a superlative degree except her father. 
 
 The first time he met her was after an exciting dis- 
 cussion in the Assembly over the finances, which he de- 
 scribes at some length. Necker had introduced an ab- 
 surd scheme for a loan. Mirabeau, who hated Necker, 
 saw the futility of his plan, but was also aware that 
 popular opinion was blindly in his favor, and that to 
 oppose him would be ruinous; so in a speech of "fine 
 irony" he advocated passing Necker's proposed bill 
 without change or discussion, avowing that his object 
 was to have the responsibility and glory thrown entirely 
 on the proposer of the measure. He thus yielded to the 
 popular view, while at the same time he shouldered on 
 Necker all the responsibility for a deed which it was evi- 
 dent would in the end ruin him. It was a not very 
 patriotic move, although a good example of selfish polit- 
 ical tactics, and Morris sneered bitterly at its adoption 
 by the representatives of a people who prided them- 
 
 424 
 
LIFE IN PARIS 
 
 selves on being "the modern Athenians." To his sur- 
 prise, however, even Madame de Stael took Mirabeau's 
 action seriously; she went into raptures over the wis- 
 dom of the Assembly in doing just what Necker said, 
 for "the only thing they could do was to comply with 
 her father's wish, and there could be no doubt as to the 
 success of her father's plans ! Bravo !" 
 
 With Morris she soon passed from politics to other 
 subjects. "Presented to Madame de Stael as un homme 
 d'esprit" he writes, "she singles me out and makes a 
 talk; asks if I have not written a book on the American 
 Constitution. 'Non madame, j'ai fait mon devoir en 
 assistant a la formation de cette constitution.' 'Mais, 
 monsieur, votre conversation doit etre tres interessante, 
 car je vous entends cite de toute parti.' 'Ah, madame, 
 je ne suis pas digne de cette eloge.' How I lost my leg ? 
 It was unfortunately not in the military service of my 
 country. ' Monsieur, vous avez l'air tres imposant,' and 
 this is accompanied with that look which, without being 
 what Sir John Falstaff calls the 'leer of invitation,' 
 amounts to the same thing. . . . This leads us on, 
 but in the midst of the chat arrive letters, one of which 
 is from her lover, Narbonne, now with his regiment. 
 It brings her to a little recollection, which a little time 
 will, I think, again banish, and a few interviews would 
 stimulate her to try the experiment of her fascinations 
 even on the native of a new world who has left one of 
 his legs behind him." 
 
 An entry in Morris's diary previous to this conversa- 
 tion shows that he had no very high opinion of this 
 same Monsieur de Narbonne: "He considers a civil war 
 inevitable, and is about to join his regiment, being, as 
 he says, in a conflict between the dictates of his duty 
 and his conscience. I tell him that I know of no duty 
 
 425 
 
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS 
 
 but that which conscience dictates. I presume that his 
 conscience will dictate to join the strongest side." 
 
 Morris's surmises as to his fair friend's happy for- 
 getfulness of her absent lover proved true : she soon be- 
 came bent on a flirtation with the good-looking Amer- 
 ican stranger, and when he failed to make any advances 
 she promptly made them herself; told him that she 
 "rather invited than repelled those who were inclined 
 to be attentive," and capped this exhibition of modest 
 feminine reserve by suggesting that "perhaps he might 
 become an admirer." Morris dryly responded that it 
 was not impossible, but that, as a previous condition, 
 she must agree not to repel him — which she instantly 
 promised. Afterward, at dinner, "we become engaged 
 in an animated conversation, and she desires me to 
 speak English, which her husband does not understand. 
 In looking round the room, I observe in him very much 
 emotion, and I tell her that he loves her distractedly, 
 which she says she knows, and that it renders her 
 miserable. ... I condole with her a little on her 
 widowhood, the Chevalier de Narbonne being absent 
 in Franche Comte. . . . She asks me if I continue to 
 think she has a preference for Monsieur de Tonnerre. 
 I reply only by observing that each of them has wit 
 enough for one couple, and therefore I think they had 
 better separate, and take each a partner who is un peu 
 bete. After dinner I seek a conversation with the hus- 
 band, which relieves him. He inveighs bitterly [poor, 
 honest Swede] against the manners of the country, and 
 the cruelty of alienating a wife's affection. I regret with 
 him on general grounds that prostitution of morals 
 which unfits them for good government, and convince 
 him, I think, I shall not contribute to making him any 
 more uncomfortable than he already is." Certainly, 
 
 426 
 
LIFE IN PARIS 
 
 according to Morris's evidence, Madame de Stael's sen- 
 sitive delicacy could only be truthfully portrayed by 
 the unfettered pen of a Smollett. 
 
 He was an especial habitue of the salon of Madame 
 de Flahaut, the friend of Talleyrand and Montesquieu. 
 She was a perfectly characteristic type; a clever, accom- 
 plished little woman, fond of writing romances, and a 
 thorough-paced intriguante. She had innumerable en- 
 thusiasms, with perhaps a certain amount of sincerity 
 in each, and was a more infatuated political schemer 
 than any of her male friends. She was thoroughly con- 
 versant with the politics of both court and Assembly; 
 her "precision and justness of thought was very un- 
 common in either sex," and, as time went on, made her 
 a willing and useful helper in some of Morris's plans. 
 Withal she was a mercenary, self-seeking little person- 
 age, bent on increasing her own fortune by the aid of 
 her political friends. Once, when dining with Morris 
 and Talleyrand, she told them in perfect good faith that, 
 if the latter was made minister, "they must be sure to 
 make a million for her." 
 
 She was much flattered by the deference that Morris 
 showed for her judgment, and in return let him into not 
 a few state secrets. She and he together drew up a trans- 
 lation of the outline for a constitution for France, which 
 he had prepared, and through her it was forwarded to 
 the king. Together with her two other intimates, Tal- 
 leyrand and Montesquieu, they made just a party of 
 four, often dining at her house; and when her husband 
 was sent to Spain, the dinners became more numerous 
 than ever, sometimes merely parties carrees, sometimes 
 very large entertainments. Morris records that, small 
 or large, they were invariably "excellent dinners, where 
 the conversation was always extremely gay." 
 
 427 
 
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS 
 
 Once they planned out a ministry together, and it 
 must be kept in mind that it was quite on the cards 
 that their plan would be adopted. After disposing suit- 
 ably of all the notabilities, some in stations at home, 
 others in stations abroad, the scheming little lady turned 
 to Morris: " 'Enfin,' she says, 'raon ami, vous et moi 
 nous gouvernerons la France.' It is an odd combina- 
 tion, but the kingdom is actually in much worse hands." 
 
 This conversation occurred one morning when he had 
 called to find madame at her toilet, with her dentist in 
 attendance. It was a coarse age, for all the gilding; 
 and the coarseness was ingrained in the fibre even of 
 the most ultrasentimental. At first Morris felt per- 
 haps a little surprised at the easy familiarity with which 
 the various ladies whose friend he was admitted him 
 to the privacy of boudoir and bedroom, and chronicles 
 with some amusement the graceful indifference with 
 which one of them would say to him : 'Monsieur Morris 
 me permettra de faire ma toilette?" But he was far 
 from being a strait-laced man — in fact, he was alto- 
 gether too much the reverse — and he soon grew habit- 
 uated to these as well as to much worse customs. How- 
 ever, he notes that the different operations of the toilet 
 "were carried on with an entire and astounding regard 
 to modesty." 
 
 Madame de Flahaut was a very charming member of 
 the class who, neither toiling nor spinning, were sup- 
 ported in luxury by those who did both, and who died 
 from want while so doing. At this very time, while 
 France was rapidly drifting into bankruptcy, the fraud- 
 ulent pensions given to a horde of courtiers, titled place- 
 men, well-born harlots and their offspring, reached the 
 astounding total of two hundred and seventy odd mil- 
 lions of livres. The Assembly passed a decree cutting 
 
 428 
 
LIFE IN PARIS 
 
 away these pensions right and left, and thereby worked 
 sad havoc in the gay society that nothing could render 
 serious but immediate and pressing poverty — not even 
 the loom of the terror ahead, growing darker moment 
 by moment. Calling on his fascinating little friend im- 
 mediately after the decree was published, Morris finds 
 her "cm desespoir, and she intends to cry very loud, she 
 says. . . . She has been in tears all day. Her pensions 
 from Monsieur and the Comte d'Artois are stopped. 
 On that from the king she receives but three thousand 
 francs — and must therefore quit Paris. I try to con- 
 sole her, but it is impossible. Indeed, the stroke is se- 
 vere; for, with youth, beauty, wit, and every loveliness, 
 she must quit all she loves, and pass her life with what 
 she abhors." In the time of adversity Morris stood 
 loyally by the friends who had treated him so kindly 
 when the world was a merry onj and things went well 
 with them. He helped them in every way possible; his 
 time and his purse were always at their service; and he 
 performed the difficult feat of giving pecuniary assist- 
 ance with a tact and considerate delicacy that pre- 
 vented the most sensitive from taking offense. 
 
 He early became acquainted with the Duchess of Or- 
 leans, wife of Philippe Egalite, the vicious voluptuary 
 of liberal leanings and clouded character. He met her 
 at the house of an old friend, Madame de Chastellux. 
 At first he did not fancy her, and rather held himself 
 aloof, being uncertain "how he would get on with roy- 
 alty." The duchess, however, was attracted by him, 
 asked after him repeatedly, made their mutual friends 
 throw them together, and finally so managed that he 
 became one of her constant visitors and attendants. 
 This naturally flattered him, and he remained sincerely 
 loyal to her always afterward. She was particularly 
 
 429 
 
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS 
 
 anxious that he should be interested in her son, then 
 a boy, afterward destined to become the citizen king — 
 not a bad man, but a mean one, and rather an unkingly 
 king even for the nineteenth century, fertile though it 
 has been in ignoble royalty. Morris's further dealings 
 with this precious youth will have to be considered here- 
 after. 
 
 After his first interview he notes that the duchess was 
 "handsome enough to punish the duke for his irregular- 
 ities/' He also mentioned that she still seemed in love 
 with her husband. However, the lady was not averse 
 to seeking a little sentimental consolation from her new 
 friend, to whom she confided, in their after intimacy, 
 that she was weary at heart and not happy, and — a 
 thoroughly French touch — that she had the "besoin 
 d'etre aimee." On the day they first met, while he is 
 talking to her, "the widow of the late Duke of Orleans 
 comes in, and at going away, according to custom, kisses 
 the duchess. I observe that the ladies of Paris are very 
 fond of each other; which gives rise to some observations 
 from her royal highness on the person who has just 
 quitted the room, which show that the kiss does not 
 always betoken great affection. In going away she is 
 pleased to say that she is glad to have met me, and I 
 believe her. The reason is that I dropped some expres- 
 sions and sentiments a little rough, which were agree- 
 able because they contrasted with the palling polish she 
 meets with everywhere. Hence I conclude that the less 
 I have the honor of such good company the better; for 
 when the novelty ceases all is over, and I shall probably 
 be worse than insipid." 
 
 Nevertheless, the "good company" was determined 
 he should make one of their number. He was not very 
 loath himself, when he found he was in no danger of 
 
 430 
 
LIFE IN PARIS 
 
 being patronized — for anything like patronage was al- 
 ways particularly galling to his pride, which was of the 
 kind that resents a tone of condescension more fiercely 
 than an overt insult — and he became a fast friend of 
 the house of Orleans. The duchess made him her con- 
 fidant; unfolded to him her woes about the duke; and 
 once, when he was dining with her, complained to him 
 bitterly of the duke's conduct in not paying her allow- 
 ance regularly. She was in financial straits at the time; 
 for, though she was allowed four hundred and fifty 
 thousand livres a year, yet three hundred and fifty 
 thousand were appropriated for the house-servants, 
 table, etc.— an item wherein her American friend, al- 
 beit not overfrugal, thought a very little economy 
 would result in a great saving. 
 
 His description of one of the days he spent at Raincy 
 with the duchess and her friends gives us not only a 
 glimpse of the life of the great ladies and fine gentlemen 
 of the day, but also a clear insight into the reasons why 
 these same highly polished ladies and gentlemen had 
 utterly lost their hold over the people whose God-given 
 rulers they deemed themselves to be. 
 
 Dejeuner a la fourchette was not served till noon- 
 Morris congratulating himself that he had taken a light 
 breakfast earlier. "After breakfast we go to mass in 
 the chapel. In the tribune above we have a bishop, an 
 abbe, the duchess, her maids and some of their friends. 
 Madame de Chastellux is below on her knees. We are 
 amused above by a number of little tricks played off 
 by Monsieur de Segur and Monsieur de Cabieres with 
 a candle, which is put into the pockets of different gen- 
 tlemen, the bishop among the rest, and lighted, while 
 they are otherwise engaged (for there is a fire in the 
 tribune), to the great merriment of the spectators. Im- 
 
 431 
 
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS 
 
 moderate laughter is the consequence. The duchess 
 preserves as much gravity as she can. This scene must 
 be very edifying to the domestics who are opposite to 
 us, and the villagers who worship below." The after- 
 noon's amusements were not to his taste. They all 
 walked, which he found very hot; then they got into 
 bateaux, and the gentlemen rowed the ladies, which 
 was still hotter; and then there came more walking, so 
 he was glad to get back to the chateau. The formal 
 dinner was served after five; the conversation thereat 
 varied between the vicious and the frivolous. There 
 was much bantering, well-bred in manner and exces- 
 sively underbred in matter, between the different guests 
 of both sexes, about the dubious episodes in their past 
 careers, and the numerous shady spots in their re- 
 spective characters. Epigrams and "epitaphs" were 
 bandied about freely, some in verse, some not; proba- 
 bly very amusing then, but their lustre sadly tarnished 
 in the eyes of those who read them now. While they 
 were dining, "a number of persons surround the win- 
 dows, doubtless from a high idea of the company, to 
 whom they are obliged to look up at an awful distance. 
 Oh, did they but know how trivial the conversation, 
 how very trivial the characters, their respect would soon 
 be changed to an emotion entirely different!" 
 
 This was but a month before the Bastille fell; and 
 yet, on the threshold of their hideous doom, the people 
 who had most at stake were incapable not only of in- 
 telligent action to ward off their fate, but even of seri- 
 ous thought as to what their fate would be. The men 
 — the nobles, the clerical dignitaries, and the princes of 
 the blood — chose the church as a place wherein to cut 
 antics that would have better befitted a pack of mon- 
 keys; while the women, their wives and mistresses, ex- 
 
 432 
 
LIFE IN PARIS 
 
 changed with them impure jests at their own expense, 
 relished because of the truth on which they rested. 
 Brutes might still have held sway at least for a time; 
 but these were merely vicious triflers. They did not 
 believe in their religion; they did not believe in them- 
 selves; they did not believe in anything. They had no 
 earnestness, no seriousness; their sensibilities and enthu- 
 siasms were alike affectations. There was still plenty 
 of fire and purpose and furious energy in the hearts of 
 the French people; but these and all the other virile 
 virtues lay not among the noblesse, but among the 
 ranks of the common herd beneath them, downtrod- 
 den, bloody in their wayward ferocity, but still capable 
 of fierce, heroic devotion to an ideal in which they be- 
 lieved, and for which they would spill the blood of 
 others, or pour out their own, with the proud waste of 
 utter recklessness. 
 
 Many of Morris's accounts of the literary life of the 
 salon read as if they were explanatory notes to "Les 
 Precieuses Ridicules." There was a certain pretentious- 
 ness about it that made it a bit of a sham at the best; 
 and the feebler variety of salon, built on such a founda- 
 tion, thus became that most despicable of things, an 
 imitation of a pretense. At one of the dinners which 
 Morris describes, the company was of a kind that would 
 have done no discredit to an entertainment of the great 
 social and literary light of Eatanswill. "Set off in great 
 haste to dine with the Comtesse de R., on an invitation 
 of a week's standing. Arrive at about a quarter past 
 three, and find in the drawing-room some dirty linen 
 and no fire. While a waiting-woman takes away one, 
 a valet lights up the other. Three small sticks in a deep 
 bed of ashes give no great expectation of heat. By the 
 smoke, however, all doubts are removed respecting the 
 
 433 
 
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS 
 
 existence of fire. To expel the smoke, a window is 
 opened, and, the day being cold, I have the benefit of 
 as fresh air as can reasonably be expected in so large a 
 city. 
 
 "Toward four o'clock the guests begin to assemble, 
 and I begin to expect that, as madame is a poetess, I 
 shall have the honor to dine with that exalted part of 
 the species who devote themselves to the muses. In 
 effect, the gentlemen begin to compliment their respec- 
 tive works; and, as regular hours cannot be expected in 
 a house where the mistress is occupied more with the 
 intellectual than the material world, I have a delightful 
 prospect of a continuance of the scene. Toward five, 
 madame steps in to announce dinner, and the hungry 
 poets advance to the charge. As they bring good appe- 
 tites, they have certainly reason to praise the feast. And 
 I console myself with the persuasion that for this day 
 at least I shall escape an indigestion. A very narrow 
 escape, too, for some rancid butter, of which the cook 
 had been liberal, puts me in bodily fear. If the repast 
 is not abundant, we have at least the consolation that 
 there is no lack of conversation. Not being perfectly 
 master of the language, most of the jests escaped me. 
 As for the rest of the company, each being employed 
 either in saying a good thing, or else in studying one 
 to say, it is no wonder if he cannot find time to applaud 
 that of his neighbors. They all agree that we live in an 
 age alike deficient in justice and in taste. Each finds 
 in the fate of his own works numerous instances to 
 justify this censure. They tell me, to my great sur- 
 prise, that the public now condemn theatrical composi- 
 tions before they have heard the first recital. And, to 
 remove my doubts, the comtesse is so kind as to assure 
 me that this rash decision has been made on one of her 
 
 434 
 
LIFE IN PARIS 
 
 own pieces. In pitying modern degeneracy, we rise 
 from the table. 
 
 "I take my leave immediately after the coffee, which 
 by no means dishonors the precedent repast; and ma- 
 dame informs me that on Tuesdays and Thursdays she 
 is always at home, and will always be glad to see me. 
 While I stammer out some return to the compliment, 
 my heart, convinced of my unworthiness to partake of 
 such attic entertainments, makes me promise never 
 again to occupy the place from which perhaps I had ex- 
 cluded a worthier personage." 
 
 Among Morris's other qualities, he was the first to 
 develop that peculiarly American vein of humor which 
 is especially fond of gravely pretending to believe with- 
 out reserve some preposterously untrue assertion — as 
 throughout the above quotation. 
 
 Though the society in which he was thrown interested 
 him, he always regarded it with half-sarcastic amuse- 
 ment, and at times it bored him greatly. Meditating 
 on the conversation in "this upper region of wits and 
 graces," he concludes that "the sententious style" is 
 the one best fitted for it, and that in it "observations 
 with more of justice than splendor cannot amuse," and 
 sums up by saying that "he could not please, because 
 he was not sufficiently pleased." 
 
 His comments upon the various distinguished men 
 he met are always interesting, on account of the quick, 
 accurate judgment of character which they show. It 
 was this insight into the feelings and ideas alike of the 
 leaders and of their followers which made his political 
 predictions often so accurate. His judgment of many 
 of his contemporaries comes marvellously near the 
 cooler estimate of history. 
 
 He was originally prejudiced in favor of the king, 
 
 435 
 
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS 
 
 poor Louis XVI, and, believing him "to be an honest 
 and good man, he sincerely wished him well," but he 
 very soon began to despise him for his weakness. This 
 quality was the exact one that under existing circum- 
 stances was absolutely fatal; and Morris mentions it 
 again and again, pronouncing the king "a well-mean- 
 ing man, but extremely weak, without genius or edu- 
 cation to show the way toward that good which he 
 desires," and "a prince so weak that he can influence 
 very little either by his presence or absence." Finally, 
 in a letter to Washington, he gives a biting sketch of 
 the unfortunate monarch. "If the reigning prince were 
 not the small-beer character that he is, there can be 
 but little doubt that, watching events and making a 
 tolerable use of them, he would regain his authority; 
 but what will you have from a creature who, situated 
 as he is, eats and drinks, sleeps well and laughs, and is 
 as merry a grig as lives ? The idea that they will give 
 him some money, which he can economize, and that he 
 will have no trouble in governing, contents him entirely. 
 Poor man ! He little thinks how unstable is his situa- 
 tion. He is beloved, but it is not with the sort of love 
 which a monarch should inspire. It is that kind of good- 
 natured pity which one feels for a led captive. There 
 is besides no possibility of serving him, for at the slight- 
 est show of opposition he gives up everything and every 
 person." Morris had too robust a mind to feel the least 
 regard for mere amiability and good intentions when un- 
 accompanied by any of the ruder, manlier virtues. 
 
 The Count d'Artois had "neither sense to counsel 
 himself, nor to choose counsellors for himself, much less 
 to counsel others." This gentleman, afterward Charles 
 X, stands as perhaps the most shining example of the 
 monumental ineptitude of his royal house. His fellow 
 
 436 
 
LIFE IN PARIS 
 
 Bourbon, the amiable Bomba of Naples, is his only 
 equal for dull silliness, crass immorality, and the lack 
 of every manly or kingly virtue. Democracy has much 
 to answer for, but after all it would be hard to find, even 
 among the aldermen of New York and Chicago, men 
 whose moral and mental shortcomings would put them 
 lower than this royal couple. To our shame be it said, 
 our system of popular government once let our greatest 
 city fall under the control of Tweed; but it would be 
 rank injustice to that clever rogue to compare him with 
 the two vicious dullards whom the opposite system per- 
 mitted to tyrannize at Paris and Naples. Moreover, in 
 the end, we of the democracy not only overthrew the 
 evil-doer who oppressed us, but also put him in prison; 
 and in the long run we have usually meted out the same 
 justice to our lesser criminals. Government by man- 
 hood suffrage shows at its worst in large cities; and yet 
 even in these experience certainly does not show that a 
 despotism works a whit better, or as well. 
 
 Morris described the Count de Montmorin pithily, 
 saying: "He has more understanding than people in 
 general imagine, and he means well, very well, but he 
 means it feebly." 
 
 When Morris came to France, Necker was the most 
 prominent man in the kingdom. He was a hard-work- 
 ing, well-meaning, conceited person, not in the least 
 fitted for public affairs, a banker but not a financier, 
 and affords a beautiful illustration of the utter futility 
 of the popular belief that a good business man will neces- 
 sarily be a good statesman. Accident had made him 
 the most conspicuous figure of the government, admired 
 and hated, but not looked down upon; yet Morris saw 
 through him at a glance. After their first meeting, he 
 writes down in his diary: "He has the look and manner 
 
 437 
 
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS 
 
 of the counting-house, and, being dressed in embroi- 
 dered velvet, he contrasts strongly with his habiliments. 
 His bow, his address, say, 'I am the man.' ... If he 
 is really a very great man, I am deceived; and yet this 
 is a rash judgment. If he is not a laborious man, I am 
 also deceived." He soon saw that both the blame and 
 the praise bestowed on him were out of all proportion 
 to his consequence, and he wrote: "In their anguish 
 [the nobles] curse Necker, who is in fact less the cause 
 than the instrument of their sufferings. His popularity 
 depends now more on the opposition he meets with 
 from one party than any serious regard of the other. 
 It is the attempt to throw him down which saves him 
 from falling; ... as it is, he must soon fall." To 
 Washington he gave a fuller analysis of his character. 
 "As to M. Necker, he is one of those people who has 
 obtained a much greater reputation than he has any 
 right to. . . . In his public administration he has al- 
 ways been honest and disinterested; which proves well, 
 I think, for his former private conduct, or else it proves 
 that he has more vanity than cupidity. Be that as it 
 may, an unspotted integrity as minister, and serving at 
 his own expense in an office which others seek for the 
 purpose of enriching themselves, have acquired for him 
 very deservedly much confidence. Add to this that his 
 writings on finance teem with that sort of sensibility 
 which makes the fortune of modern romances, and 
 which is exactly suited to this lively nation, who love 
 to read but hate to think. Hence his reputation. He 
 . . . [has not] the talents of a great minister. His edu- 
 cation as a banker has taught him to make tight bar- 
 gains, and put him upon his guard against projects. 
 But though he understands man as a covetous creature, 
 he does not understand mankind — a defect which is 
 
 438 
 
LIFE IN PARIS 
 
 remediless. He is utterly ignorant of politics, by which 
 I mean politics in the great sense, or that sublime science 
 which embraces for its object the happiness of mankind. 
 Consequently he neither knows what constitution to 
 form, nor how to obtain the consent of others to such 
 as he wishes. From the moment of convening the 
 States General, he has been afloat upon the wide ocean 
 of incidents. But what is most extraordinary is that 
 M. Necker is a very poor financier. This I know will 
 sound like heresy in the ears of most people, but it is 
 true. The plans he has proposed are feeble and inept." 
 
 A far more famous man, Talleyrand, then Bishop of 
 Autun, he also gauged correctly from the start, writing 
 down that he appeared to be "a sly, cool, cunning, 
 ambitious, and malicious man. I know not why con- 
 clusions so disadvantageous to him are formed in my 
 mind, but so it is, and I cannot help it." He was after- 
 ward obliged to work much in common with Talleyrand, 
 for both took substantially the same view of public af- 
 fairs in that crisis, and were working for a common end. 
 Speaking of his new ally's plan respecting church prop- 
 erty, he says: "He is bigoted to it, and the thing is well 
 enough; but the mode is not so well. He is attached to 
 this as an author, which is not a good sign for a man of 
 business." And again he criticises Talleyrand's man- 
 agement of certain schemes for the finances, as showing 
 a willingness " to sacrifice great objects for the sake of 
 small ones ... an inverse ratio of moral proportion." 
 
 Morris was fond of Lafayette, and appreciated highly 
 his courage and keen sense of honor; but he did not 
 think much of his ability, and became at times very im- 
 patient with his vanity and his impractical theories. 
 Besides, he deemed him a man who was carried away 
 by the current, and could neither stem nor guide it. 
 
 439 
 
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS 
 
 "I have known my friend Lafayette now for many 
 years, and can estimate at the just value both his words 
 and actions. He means ill to no one, but he is very 
 much below the business he has undertaken; and if the 
 sea runs high, he will be unable to hold the helm." 
 And again, in writing to Washington: "Unluckily he 
 has given in to measures . . . which he does not heart- 
 ily approve, and he heartily approves many things 
 which experience will demonstrate to be dangerous." 
 
 The misshapen but mighty genius of Mirabeau he 
 found more difficulty in estimating; he probably never 
 rated it quite high enough. He naturally scorned a 
 man of such degraded debauchery, who, having been 
 one of the great inciters to revolution, had now be- 
 come a subsidized ally of the court. He considered him 
 "one of the most unprincipled scoundrels that ever 
 lived," although of "superior talents," and "so prof- 
 ligate that he would disgrace any administration," be- 
 sides having so little principle as to make it unsafe to 
 trust him. After his death he thus sums him up : " Vices 
 both degrading and detestable marked this extraor- 
 dinary being. Completely prostitute, he sacrificed 
 everything to the whim of the moment; — cupidus alieni 
 prodigus sai; venal, shameless; and yet greatly virtuous 
 when pushed by a prevailing impulse, but never truly 
 virtuous, because never under the steady control of 
 reason, nor the firm authority of principle. I have seen 
 this man, in the short space of two years, hissed, hon- 
 ored, hated, mourned. Enthusiasm has just now pre- 
 sented him gigantic. Time and reflection will sink this 
 stature." Even granting this to be wholly true, as it 
 undoubtedly is in the main, it was nevertheless the fact 
 that in Mirabeau alone lay the last hope of salvation 
 for the French nation; and Morris erred in strenuously 
 
 440 
 
LIFE IN PARIS 
 
 opposing Lafayette's going into a ministry with him. 
 Indeed, he seems in this case to have been blinded by 
 prejudice, and certainly acted very inconsistently; for 
 his advice and the reasons he gave for it were completely 
 at variance with the rules he himself laid down to Lafay- 
 ette, with even more cynicism than common sense, when 
 the latter once made some objections to certain pro- 
 posed coadjutors of his: "I state to him . . . that, as 
 to the objections he has made on the score of morals in 
 some, he must consider that men do not go into an ad- 
 ministration as the direct road to heaven; that they 
 are prompted by ambition or avarice, and therefore 
 that the only way to secure the most virtuous is by 
 making it their interest to act rightly." 
 
 Morris thus despised the king, and distrusted the 
 chief political leaders; and, as he wrote Washington, he 
 was soon convinced that there was an immense amount 
 of corruption in the upper circles. The people at large 
 he disliked even more than he did their advisers, and 
 he had good grounds, too, as the following extract from 
 his journal shows: "July 22. After dinner, walk a 
 little under the arcade of the Palais Royal, waiting for 
 my carriage. In this period the head and body of M. 
 de Toulon are introduced in triumph, the head on a 
 pike, the body dragged naked on the earth. Afterward 
 this horrible exhibition is carried through the different 
 streets. His crime is, to have accepted a place in the 
 ministry. This mutilated form of an old man of seven- 
 ty-five is shown to his son-in-law, Berthier, the inten- 
 dant of Paris; and afterward he also is put to death and 
 cut to pieces, the populace carrying about the mangled 
 fragments with a savage joy. Gracious God, what a 
 
 people !" 
 
 He describes at length, and most interestingly, the 
 
 441 
 
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS 
 
 famous opening of the States General, "the beginning 
 of the revolution." He eyed this body even at the be- 
 ginning with great distrust; and he never thought that 
 any of the delegates showed especial capacity for grap- 
 pling with the terrible dangers and difficulties by which 
 they were encompassed. He comments on the extreme 
 enthusiasm with which the king was greeted, and sym- 
 pathizes strongly with Marie Antoinette, who was 
 treated with studied and insulting coldness. "She was 
 exceedingly hurt. I cannot help feeling the mortifica- 
 tion which the poor queen meets with, for I see only 
 the woman; and it seems unmanly to treat a woman 
 with unkindness. . . . Not one voice is heard to wish 
 her well. I would certainly raise mine if I were a 
 Frenchman; but I have no right to express a sentiment, 
 and in vain solicit those who are near me to do it." . . . 
 At last "the queen rises, and, to my great satisfaction, 
 she hears, for the first time in several months, the sound 
 of * Vive la reine! ' She makes a low courtesy, and this 
 produces a louder acclamation, and that a lower cour- 
 tesy." 
 
 The sympathy was for the woman, not the queen, 
 the narrow-minded, absolute sovereign, the intriguer 
 against popular government, whose policy was as 
 heavily fraught with bale for the nation as was that 
 of Robespierre himself. The king was more than com- 
 petent to act as his own evil genius; had he not been, 
 Marie Antoinette would have amply filled the place. 
 
 He characterized the carrying of "that diabolical 
 castle," the Bastille, as "among the most extraordinary 
 things I have met with." The day it took place he 
 wrote in his journal, with an irony very modern in its 
 flavor : ' Yesterday it was the fashion at Versailles not 
 to believe that there were any disturbances at Paris. 
 
 442 
 
LIFE IN PARIS 
 
 I presume that this day's transactions will induce a 
 conviction that all is not perfectly quiet." 
 
 He used the Bastille as a text when, shortly after- 
 ward, he read a brief lesson to a certain eminent painter. 
 The latter belonged to that class of artists with pen or 
 pencil (only too plentiful in America at the present day) 
 who always insist on devoting their energies to depict- 
 ing subjects worn threadbare by thousands of predeces- 
 sors, instead of working in the new, broad fields, filled 
 with picturesque material, opened to them by their own 
 country and its history. 'The painter shows us a piece 
 he is now about for the king, taken from the iEneid: 
 Venus restraining the arm which is raised in the temple 
 of the Vestals to shed the blood of Helen. I tell him 
 he had better paint the storm of the Bastille." 
 
 443 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 MISSION TO ENGLAND: RETURN TO PARIS 
 
 In March, 1790, Morris went to London, in obedi- 
 ence to a letter received from Washington appointing 
 him private agent to the British Government, and en- 
 closing him the proper credentials. 
 
 Certain of the conditions of the treaty of peace be- 
 tween Great Britain and the United States, although 
 entered into seven years before, were still unfulfilled. 
 It had been stipulated that the British should give up 
 the fortified frontier posts within our territory, and 
 should pay for the negroes they had taken away from 
 the Southern States during the war. They had done 
 neither, and Morris was charged to find out what the 
 intentions of the government were in the matter. He 
 was also to find out whether there was a disposition to 
 enter into a commercial treaty with the United States; 
 and finally, he was to sound them as to their sending a 
 minister to America. 
 
 On our part we had also failed to fulfil a portion of 
 our treaty obligations, not having complied with the 
 article which provided for the payment of debts due 
 before the war to British merchants. Both sides had 
 been to blame; each, of course, blamed only the other. 
 But now, when we were ready to perform our part, the 
 British refused to perform theirs. 
 
 As a consequence, Morris, although he spent most of 
 the year in London, failed to accomplish anything. The 
 feeling in England was hostile to America; to the king, 
 in particular, the very name was hateful. The English 
 
 444 
 
MISSION TO ENGLAND 
 
 were still sore over their defeat, and hated us because 
 we had been victors; and yet they despised us also, for 
 they thought we should be absolutely powerless except 
 when we were acting merely on the defensive. From 
 the days of the Revolution till the days of the Civil 
 War, the ruling classes of England were bitterly antag- 
 onistic to our nation; they always saw with glee any 
 check to our national well-being; they wished us ill, and 
 exulted in our misfortunes, while they sneered at our 
 successes. The results have been lasting, and now work 
 much more to their hurt than to ours. The past con- 
 duct of England certainly offers much excuse for, though 
 it cannot in the least justify, the unreasonable and viru- 
 lent anti-English feeling — that is, the feeling against 
 Englishmen politically and nationally, not socially or 
 individually — which is so strong in many parts of our 
 country where the native American blood is purest. 
 
 The English ministry in 1790 probably had the gen- 
 eral feeling of the nation behind them in their deter- 
 mination to injure us as much as they could; at any 
 rate, their aim seemed to be, as far as lay in them, to 
 embitter our already existing hostility to their empire. 
 They not only refused to grant us any substantial jus- 
 tice, but they were inclined to inflict on us and on our 
 representatives those petty insults which rankle longer 
 than injuries. 
 
 When it came to this point, however, Morris was 
 quite able to hold his own. He had a ready, biting 
 tongue; and, excepting Pitt and Fox, was intellectually 
 superior to any of the public men whom he met. In 
 social position, even as they understood it, he was their 
 equal; they could hardly look down on the brother of 
 a British major-general, and a brother-in-law of the 
 Duchess of Gordon. He was a man of rather fiery cour- 
 
 445 
 
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS 
 
 age, and any attacks upon his country were not likely 
 to be made twice in his presence. Besides, he never 
 found the English congenial as friends or companions; 
 he could not sympathize, or indeed get along well, with 
 them. This distaste for their society he always retained, 
 and though he afterward grew to respect them, and to 
 be their warm partisan politically, he was at this time 
 much more friendly to France, and was even helping 
 the French ministers concoct a scheme of warfare 
 against their neighbor. To his bright, impatient tem- 
 perament, the English awkwardness seemed to be an 
 insuperable obstacle to bringing people together "as in 
 other countries." He satirized the English drawing- 
 rooms, "where the arrangement of the company was 
 stiff and formal, the ladies all ranged in battalia on one 
 side of the room"; and remarked "that the French, 
 having no liberty in their government, have compen- 
 sated to themselves that misfortune by bestowing a 
 great deal upon society. But that, I fear, in England, 
 is all confined to the House of Commons." Years after- 
 ward he wrote to a friend abroad: "Have you reflected 
 that there is more of real society in one week at [a con- 
 tinental watering-place] than in a London year ? Recol- 
 lect that a tedious morning, a great dinner, a boozy 
 afternoon, and dull evening make the sum total of Eng- 
 lish life. It is admirable for young men who shoot, 
 hunt, drink — but for us ! How are we to dispose of our- 
 selves ? No. Were I to give you a rendezvous in Eu- 
 rope, it should be on the Continent. I respect, as you 
 know, the English nation highly, and love many in- 
 dividuals among them, but I do not love their manners." 
 Times have changed, and the manners of the islanders 
 with them. Exactly as the "rude Carinthian boor" 
 has become the most polished of mortals, so, after a 
 
 446 
 
MISSION TO ENGLAND 
 
 like transformation, English society is now perhaps the 
 pleasantest and most interesting in Europe. Were Mor- 
 ris alive to-day, he would probably respect the English 
 as much as he ever did, and like them a good deal more; 
 and, while he might well have his preference for his own 
 country confirmed, yet, if he had to go abroad, it is 
 hard to believe that he would now pass by London in 
 favor of any Continental capital or watering-place. 
 
 In acknowledging Washington's letter of appoint- 
 ment, Morris wrote that he did not expect much 
 difficulty, save from the king himself, who was very 
 obstinate, and bore a personal dislike to his former sub- 
 jects. But his interviews with the minister of foreign 
 affairs, the Duke of Leeds, soon undeceived him. The 
 duke met him with all the little tricks of delay and 
 evasion known to old-fashioned diplomacy; tricks that 
 are always greatly relished by men of moderate ability, 
 and which are successful enough where the game is not 
 very important, as in the present instance, but are 
 nearly useless when the stakes are high and the adver- 
 sary determined. The worthy nobleman was profuse 
 in expressions of general good-will, and vague to a de- 
 gree in his answers to every concrete question; affected 
 to misunderstand what was asked of him, and, when he 
 could not do this, "slumbered profoundly" for weeks 
 before making his reply. Morris wrote that "his ex- 
 planatory comments were more unintelligible than his 
 texts," and was delighted when he heard that he might 
 be replaced by Lord Hawksbury ; for the latter, although 
 strongly anti-American, "would at least be an efficient 
 minister," whereas the former was "evidently afraid of 
 committing himself by saying or doing anything posi- 
 tive." He soon concluded that Great Britain was so 
 uncertain as to how matters were going in Europe that 
 
 447 
 
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS 
 
 she wished to keep us in a similar state of suspense. 
 She had recovered with marvellous rapidity from the 
 effects of the great war; she was felt on all sides to hold 
 a position of commanding power; this she knew well, 
 and so felt like driving a very hard bargain with any 
 nation, especially with a weak one that she hated. It 
 was particularly difficult to form a commercial treaty. 
 There were very many Englishmen who agreed with a 
 Mr. Irwin, "a mighty sour sort of creature," who as- 
 sured Morris that he was utterly opposed to all Ameri- 
 can trade in grain, and that he wished to oblige the Brit- 
 ish people, by the force of starvation, to raise enough 
 corn for their own consumption. Fox told Morris that 
 he and Burke were about the only two men left who 
 believed that Americans should be allowed to trade in 
 their own bottoms to the British islands; and he also 
 informed him that Pitt was not hostile to America, but 
 simply indifferent, being absorbed in European matters, 
 and allowing his colleagues free hands. 
 
 Becoming impatient at the long-continued delay, 
 Morris finally wrote, very courteously but very firmly, 
 demanding some sort of answer, and this produced a 
 momentary activity, and assurances that he was under 
 a misapprehension as to the delay, etc. The subject of 
 the impressment of American sailors into British men- 
 of-war — a matter of chronic complaint throughout our 
 first forty years of national life — now came up; and he 
 remarked to the Duke of Leeds, with a pithy irony that 
 should have made the saying famous: "I believe, my 
 lord, that this is the only instance in which we are not 
 treated as aliens." He proposed a plan which would 
 have at least partially obviated the difficulties in the 
 way of a settlement of the matter, but the duke would 
 do nothing. Neither would he come to any agreement 
 
 448 
 
MISSION TO ENGLAND 
 
 in reference to the exchange of ministers between the 
 two countries. 
 
 Then came an interview with Pitt, and Morris, see- 
 ing how matters stood, now spoke out perfectly clearly. 
 In answer to the accusations about our failure wholly to 
 perform certain stipulations of the treaty, after reciting 
 the counter-accusations of the Americans, he brushed 
 them all aside with the remark: "But, sir, what I have 
 said tends to show that these complaints and inquiries 
 are excellent if the parties mean to keep asunder; if they 
 wish to come together, all such matters should be kept 
 out of sight." He showed that the House of Represen- 
 tatives, in a friendly spirit, had recently decided against 
 laying extraordinary restrictions on British vessels in 
 our ports. "Mr. Pitt said that, instead of restrictions, 
 we ought to give them particular privileges, in return 
 for those we enjoy here. I assured him that I knew of 
 none except that of being impressed, a privilege which 
 of all others we least wished to partake of. . . . Mr. 
 Pitt said seriously that they had certainly evinced good- 
 will to us by what they had done respecting our com- 
 merce. I replied therefore, with like seriousness, that 
 their regulations had been dictated with a view to their 
 own interests; and therefore, as we felt no favor, we 
 owed no obligation." Morris realized thoroughly that 
 they were keeping matters in suspense because their 
 behavior would depend upon the contingencies of war 
 or peace with the neighboring powers; he wished to 
 show that, if they acted thus, we would also bide our 
 time till the moment came to strike a telling blow; and 
 accordingly he ended by telling Pitt, with straightfor- 
 ward directness, a truth that was also a threat: 'We 
 do not think it worth while to go to war with you for 
 the [frontier] forts; but we know our rights, and will 
 
 449 
 
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS 
 
 avail ourselves of them when time and circumstances 
 may suit." 
 
 After this conversation he became convinced that we 
 should wait until England herself felt the necessity of a 
 treaty before trying to negotiate one. He wrote Wash- 
 ington "that those who, pursuing the interests of Great 
 Britain, wish to be on the best terms with America, are 
 outnumbered by those whose sour prejudice and hot 
 resentment render them averse to any intercourse ex- 
 cept that which may immediately subserve a selfish 
 policy. These men do not yet know America. Perhaps 
 America does not yet know herself. . . . We are yet 
 in but the seeding-time of national prosperity, and it 
 will be well not to mortgage the crop before it is gath- 
 ered. . . . England will not, I am persuaded, enter 
 into a treaty with us unless we give for it more than it 
 is worth now, and infinitely more than it will be worth 
 hereafter. A present bargain would be that of a young 
 heir with an old usurer. . . . But, should war break 
 out [with a European power], the anti -American party 
 here will agree to any terms; for it is more the taste of 
 the medicine which they nauseate than the quantity of 
 the dose." 
 
 Accordingly all negotiations were broken off. In 
 America his enemies blamed Morris for this failure. 
 They asserted that his haughty manners and proud 
 bearing had made him unpopular with the ministers, 
 and that his consorting with members of the opposition 
 had still further damaged his cause. The last assertion 
 was wholly untrue; for he had barely more than met 
 Fox and his associates. But on a third point there was 
 genuine reason for dissatisfaction. Morris had confided 
 his purpose to the French minister at London, M. de la 
 Luzerne, doing so because he trusted to the latter's 
 
 450 
 
RETURN TO PARIS 
 
 honor, and did not wish to seem to take any steps un- 
 known to our ally; and he was in all probability also 
 influenced by his constant association and intimacy with 
 the French leaders. Luzerne, however, promptly used 
 the information for his own purposes, letting the Eng- 
 lish ministers know that he was acquainted with Mor- 
 ris's objects, and thus increasing the weight of France 
 by making it appear that America acted only with her 
 consent and advice. The affair curiously illustrates 
 Jay's wisdom eight years before, when he insisted on 
 keeping Luzerne's superior at that time, Vergennes, in 
 the dark as to our course during the peace negotiations. 
 However, it is not at all likely that Mr. Pitt or the 
 Duke of Leeds were influenced in their course by any- 
 thing Luzerne said. 
 
 Leaving London, Morris made a rapid trip through 
 the Netherlands and up the Rhine. His journals, be- 
 sides the usual comments on the inns, the bad roads, 
 poor horses, sulky postilions, and the like, are filled with 
 very interesting observations on the character of the 
 country through which he passed, its soil and inhabi- 
 tants, and the indications they afforded of the national 
 resources. He liked to associate with people of every 
 kind, and he was intensely fond of natural scenery; but, 
 what seems rather surprising in a man of his culture, 
 he apparently cared very little for the great cathedrals, 
 the picture-galleries, and the works of art for which the 
 old towns he visited were so famous. 
 
 He reached Paris at the end of November, but was 
 almost immediately called to London again, returning 
 in January, 1791, and making three or four similar trips 
 in the course of the year. His own business affairs took 
 up a great deal of his time. He was engaged in very 
 many different operations, out of which he made a great 
 
 451 
 
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS 
 
 deal of money, being a shrewd business man with a 
 strong dash of the speculator. He had to prosecute a 
 suit against the farmers-general of France for a large 
 quantity of tobacco shipped them by contract; and he 
 gives a very amusing description of the visits he made 
 to the judges before whom the case was to be tried. 
 Their occupations were certainly various, being those 
 of a farrier, a goldsmith, a grocer, a currier, a woollen 
 draper, and a bookseller respectively. As a sample of 
 his efforts, take the following: "Return home and dine. 
 At five resume my visits to my judges, and first wait 
 upon the honorable M. Gillet, the grocer, who is in a 
 little cuddy adjoining his shop, at cards. He assures 
 me that the courts are impartial, and alike uninfluenced 
 by farmers, receivers, and grand seigneurs; that they 
 are generally of the same opinion ; that he will do every- 
 thing in his power; and the like. De V autre cote, perfect 
 confidence in the ability and integrity of the court. 
 Wish only to bring the cause to such a point as that I 
 may have the honor to present a memorial. Am vastly 
 sorry to have been guilty of an intrusion upon the 
 amusements of his leisure hours. Hope he will excuse 
 the solicitude of a stranger, and patronize a claim of 
 such evident justice. The whole goes off very well, 
 though I with difficulty restrain my risible faculties. 
 ... A disagreeable scene, the ridicule of which is so 
 strongly painted to my own eyes that I cannot forbear 
 laughing." 
 
 He also contracted to deliver Necker twenty thou- 
 sand barrels of flour for the relief of Paris; wherein, by 
 the way, he lost heavily. He took part in sundry ship- 
 ping operations. Perhaps the most lucrative business 
 in which he was engaged was in negotiating the sale of 
 wild lands in America. He even made many efforts to 
 
 452 
 
RETURN TO PARIS 
 
 buy the Virginian and Pennsylvanian domains of the 
 Fairfaxes and the Penns. On behalf of a syndicate, he 
 endeavored to purchase the American debts to France 
 and Spain; these being purely speculative efforts, as it 
 was supposed that the debts could be obtained at quite 
 a low figure, while, under the new Constitution, the 
 United States would certainly soon make arrangements 
 for paying them off. These various operations entailed 
 a wonderful amount of downright hard work; yet all 
 the while he remained not only a close observer of 
 French politics, but, to a certain extent, even an actor 
 in them. 
 
 He called upon Lafayette as soon as he was again 
 established in Paris, after his mission to London. He 
 saw that affairs had advanced to such a pitch in France 
 that "it was no longer a question of liberty, but simply 
 who shall be master." He had no patience with those 
 who wished the king to place himself, as they phrased 
 it, at the head of the revolution, remarking : ' The trade 
 of a revolutionist appears to me a hard one for a prince." 
 What with the folly of one side and the madness of the 
 other, things were going to pieces very rapidly. At one 
 of his old haunts, the club, the "sentiment aristocra- 
 tique" had made great headway: one of his friends, De 
 Moustin, now in favor with the king and queen, was 
 "as usual on the high ropes of royal prerogative." 
 Lafayette, however, was still wedded to his theories, 
 and did not appear overglad to see his American friend, 
 all whose ideas and habits of thought were so opposed 
 to his own; while madame was still cooler in her recep- 
 tion. Morris, nothing daunted, talked to his friend 
 very frankly and seriously. He told him that the time 
 had come when all good citizens would be obliged, sim- 
 ply from lack of choice, to cling to the throne; that 
 
 453 
 
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS 
 
 the executive must be strengthened, and good and able 
 men put into the council. He pronounced the "thing 
 called a constitution" good for nothing, and showed 
 that the National Assembly was rapidly falling into 
 contempt. He pointed out, for the hundredth time, 
 that each country needed to have its own form of gov- 
 ernment; that an American constitution would not do 
 for France, for the latter required an even higher-toned 
 system than that of England; and that, above all things, 
 France needed stability. He gave the reasons for his ad- 
 vice clearly and forcibly; but poor Lafayette flinched 
 from it, and could not be persuaded to take any effec- 
 tual step. 
 
 It is impossible to read Morris's shrewd comments on 
 the events of the day, and his plans in reference to them, 
 without wondering that France herself should at the 
 crisis have failed to produce any statesmen to be com- 
 pared with him for force, insight, and readiness to do 
 what was practically best under the circumstances; but 
 her past history for generations had been such as to 
 make it out of the question for her to bring forth such 
 men as the founders of our own government. Warriors, 
 lawgivers, and diplomats she had in abundance. States- 
 men who would be both hard-headed and true-hearted, 
 who would be wise and yet unselfish, who would enact 
 laws for a free people that would make that people 
 freer still, and yet hinder them from doing wrong to 
 their neighbors — statesmen of this order she neither had 
 nor could have had. Indeed, had there been such, it 
 may well be doubted if they could have served France. 
 With a people who made up in fickle ferocity what they 
 lacked in self-restraint, and a king too timid and short- 
 sighted to turn any crisis to advantage, the French 
 statesmen, even had they been as wise as they were 
 
 454 
 
RETURN TO PARIS 
 
 foolish, would hardly have been able to arrest or alter 
 the march of events. Morris said bitterly that France 
 was the country where everything was talked of, and 
 where hardly anything was understood. 
 
 He told Lafayette that he thought the only hope of 
 the kingdom lay in a foreign war; it is possible that the 
 idea may have been suggested to him by Lafayette's 
 naive remark that he believed his troops would readily 
 follow him into action, but that they would not mount 
 guard when it rained. Morris not only constantly urged 
 the French ministers to make war, but actually drew up 
 a plan of campaign for them. He believed it would turn 
 the popular ardor, now constantly inflamed against the 
 aristocrats, into a new channel, and that "there was no 
 word perhaps in the dictionary which would take the 
 place of aristocrat so readily as Anglais" In proof of 
 the wisdom of his propositions he stated, with absolute 
 truthfulness: "If Britain had declared war in 1774 
 against the house of Bourbon, the now United States 
 would have bled freely in her cause." He was disgusted 
 with the littleness of the men who, appalled at their 
 own surroundings, and unable to make shift even for 
 the moment, found themselves thrown by chance to the 
 helm and face to face with the wildest storm that had 
 ever shaken a civilized government. Speaking of one 
 of the new ministers, he remarked: 'They say he is a 
 good kind of man, which is saying very little"; and 
 again: "You want just now great men, to pursue great 
 measures." Another time, in advising a war — a war 
 of men, not of money — and speaking of the efforts made 
 by the neighboring powers against the revolutionists in 
 Flanders, he told his French friends that they must 
 either suffer for or with their allies; and that the latter 
 was at once the noblest and the safest course. 
 
 455 
 
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS 
 
 In a letter to Washington he drew a picture of the 
 chaos as it really was, and at the same time, with won- 
 derful clear-sightedness, showed the great good which 
 the change was eventually to bring to the mass of the 
 people. Remembering how bitter Morris's feelings were 
 against the revolutionists, it is extraordinary that they 
 did not blind him to the good that would in the long run 
 result from their movement. Not another statesman 
 would have been able to set forth so clearly and tem- 
 perately the benefits that would finally come from the 
 convulsions he saw around him, although he rightly be- 
 lieved that these benefits would be even greater could 
 the hideous excesses of the revolutionists be forthwith 
 stopped and punished. 
 
 His letter runs: "This unhappy country, bewildered 
 in the pursuit of metaphysical whimsies, presents to our 
 moral view a mighty ruin. . . . The sovereign, hum- 
 bled to the level of a beggar without pity, without 
 resources, without authority, without a friend. The 
 Assembly, at once a master and a slave, new in power, 
 wild in theory, raw in practice. It engrosses all func- 
 tions, though incapable of exercising any, and has taken 
 from this fierce, ferocious people every restraint of re- 
 ligion and of respect." AVhere this would all end, or 
 what sum of misery would be necessary to change the 
 popular will and awaken the popular heart, he could 
 not say. A glorious opportunity had been lost, and for 
 the time being the revolution had failed. Yet, he went 
 on to say, in the consequences flowing from it he was 
 confident he could see the foundation of future pros- 
 perity. For among these consequences were: 1. The 
 abolition of the different rights and privileges which 
 had formerly kept the various provinces asunder. 2. 
 The abolition of feudal tyranny, by which the tenure 
 of real property would be simplified, and the rent no 
 
 456 
 
RETURN TO PARIS 
 
 longer be dependent upon idle vanity, capricious taste, 
 or sullen pride. 3. The throwing into the circle of in- 
 dustry those vast possessions formerly held by the 
 clergy in mortmain, wealth conferred upon them as 
 wages for their idleness. 4. The destruction of the sys- 
 tem of venal jurisprudence which had established the 
 pride and privileges of the few on the misery and deg- 
 radation of the general mass. 5. Above all, the estab- 
 lishment of the principles of true liberty, which would 
 remain as solid facts after the superstructure of meta- 
 physical froth and vapor should have been blown away. 
 Finally, "from the chaos of opinion and the conflict of 
 its jarring elements a new order will at length arise, 
 which, though in some degree the child of chance, may 
 not be less productive of human happiness than the 
 forethought provisions of human speculation." Not 
 one other contemporary statesman could have begun 
 to give so just an estimate of the good the revolution 
 would accomplish; no other could have seen so deeply 
 into its ultimate results, while also keenly conscious of 
 the dreadful evil through which these results were being 
 worked out. 
 
 The social life of Paris still went on, though with 
 ever less of gaiety, as the gloom gathered roundabout. 
 Going with Madame de Chastellux to dine with the 
 Duchess of Orleans, Morris was told by her royal high- 
 ness that she was "ruined," that is, that her income 
 was reduced from four hundred and fifty thousand to 
 two hundred thousand livres a year, so that she could 
 no longer give him good dinners; but if he would come 
 and fast with her, she would be glad to see him. The 
 poor lady was yet to learn by bitter experience that real 
 ruin was something very different from the loss of half 
 of an enormous income. 
 
 On another occasion he breakfasted with the duchess, 
 
 457 
 
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS 
 
 and was introduced to her father, with whom he agreed 
 to dine. After breakfast she went out walking with him 
 till nearly dinner-time, and gave him the full history of 
 her breach with her husband, Egalite, showing the let- 
 ters that had passed between them, complaining of his 
 numerous misdeeds, and assuring Morris that what the 
 world had attributed to fondness for her worthless 
 spouse was merely discretion; that she had hoped to 
 bring him to a decent and orderly behavior, but had 
 finally made up her mind that he could only be governed 
 by fear. 
 
 Now and then he indulges in a quiet laugh at the 
 absurd pretensions and exaggerated estimates of each 
 other still affected by some of the frequenters of the 
 various salons. 'Dine with Madame de Stael. The 
 Abbe Sieyes is here, and descants with much self-suf- 
 ficiency on government, despising all that has been said 
 or sung on that subject before him; and madame says 
 that his writings and opinions will form in politics a new 
 era, like those of Newton in physics." 
 
 After dining with Marmontel, he notes in his diary 
 that his host "thinks soundly" —rare praise for him to 
 bestow on any of the French statesmen of the time. 
 He records a bon mot of Talleyrand's. When the As- 
 sembly had declared war on the emperor conditionally 
 upon the latter's failing to beg pardon before a certain 
 date, the little bishop remarked that "the nation was 
 une parvenue, and of course insolent." At the British 
 ambassador's he met the famous Colonel Tarleton, who 
 did not know his nationality, and amused him greatly 
 by descanting at length on the American war. 
 
 He was very fond of the theatre, especially of the 
 Comedie Franchise, where Preville, whom he greatly ad- 
 mired, was acting in Moliere's "Amphitryon." Many 
 
 458 
 
RETURN TO PARIS 
 
 of the plays, whose plots presented in any way analogies 
 to what was actually happening in the political world, 
 raised great excitement among the spectators. Going 
 to see "Brutus" acted, he records that the noise and al- 
 tercations were tremendous, but that finally the demo- 
 crats in the parterre got the upper hand by sheer lusty 
 roaring, which they kept up for a quarter of an hour at 
 a time, and, at the conclusion of the piece, insisted upon 
 the bust of Voltaire being crowned and placed on the 
 stage. Soon afterward a tragedy called " Charles Neuf," 
 founded on the massacre of St. Bartholomew, was put 
 on the stage, to help the Assembly in their crusade 
 against the clergy; he deemed it a very extraordinary 
 piece to be represented in a Catholic country, and 
 thought that it would give a fatal blow to the Catholic 
 religion. 
 
 The priesthood, high and low, he disliked more than 
 any other set of men; all his comments on them show 
 his contempt. The high prelates he especially objected 
 to. The Bishop of Orleans he considered to be a luxuri- 
 ous old gentleman, "of the kind whose sincerest prayer 
 is for the fruit of good living, one who evidently thought 
 it more important to speak than to speak the truth" 
 The leader of the great church dignitaries, in their fight 
 for their rich benefices, was the Abbe Maury, who, Mor- 
 ris writes, "is a man who looks like a downright ec- 
 clesiastical scoundrel." He met him in Madame de 
 Nadaillac's salon, where were "a party of fierce aris- 
 tocrats. They have the word 'valet' written on their 
 foreheads in large characters. Maury is formed to gov- 
 ern such men, and they are formed to obey him or any 
 one else. But Maury seems to have too much vanity 
 for a great man." To tell the bare truth is sometimes 
 to make the most venomous comment possible, and this 
 
 459 
 
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS 
 
 he evidently felt when he wrote of his meeting with the 
 Cardinal de Rohan: "We talk among other things 
 about religion, for the cardinal is very devout. He was 
 once the lover of Madame de Flahaut's sister." 
 
 But as the tremendous changes went on about him, 
 Morris had continually less and less time to spend in 
 mere social pleasures; graver and weightier matters 
 called for his attention, and his diary deals with the 
 shifts and stratagems of the French politicians, and 
 pays little heed to the sayings and manners of nobles, 
 bishops, and ladies of rank. 
 
 The talented, self-confident, fearless American, ad- 
 mittedly out of sympathy with what he called "this 
 abominable populace," was now well known; and in 
 their terrible tangle of dangers and perplexities, court 
 and ministry alike turned to him for help. Perhaps 
 there has hardly been another instance where, in such 
 a crisis, the rulers have clutched in their despair at the 
 advice of a mere private stranger sojourning in the land 
 on his own business. The king and his ministers, as 
 well as the queen, kept in constant communication with 
 him. With Montmorin he dined continually, and was 
 consulted at every stage. But he could not prevail on 
 them to adopt the bold, vigorous measures he deemed 
 necessary; his plain speaking startled them, and they 
 feared it would not suit the temper of the people. He 
 drafted numerous papers for them, among others a royal 
 speech, which the king liked, but which his ministers 
 prevented him from using. In fact, it had grown to be 
 hopeless to try to help the court; for the latter pursued 
 each course by fits and starts, now governed by advice 
 from Coblentz, now by advice from Brussels, and then 
 for a brief spasm going its own gait. All the while the 
 people at large knew their own minds no better than 
 
 460 
 
RETURN TO PARIS 
 
 poor Louis knew his, and cheered him with fervent 
 ecstasy one day, only to howl at him with malignant 
 fury the next. With such a monarch and such subjects 
 it is not probable that any plan would have worked 
 well; but Morris's was the ablest as well as the boldest 
 and best defined of the many that were offered to the 
 wretched, halting king; and had his proposed policy 
 been pursued, things might have come out better, and 
 they could not possibly have come out worse. 
 
 All through these engrossing affairs, he kept up the 
 liveliest interest in what was going on in his own coun- 
 try, writing home shrewd observations on every step 
 taken. One of his remarks deserves to be kept in mind. 
 In speaking of the desire of European nations to legis- 
 late against the introduction of our produce, he says 
 that this effort has after all its bright side; because it 
 will force us "to make great and rapid progress in use- 
 ful manufactures. This alone is wanting to complete 
 our independence. We shall then be, as it were, a world 
 by ourselves." 
 
 461 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 MINISTER TO FRANCE 
 
 In the spring of 1792, Morris received his credentials 
 as minister to France. There had been determined op- 
 position in the Senate to the confirmation of his appoint- 
 ment, which was finally carried only by a vote of sixteen 
 to eleven, mainly through the exertions of Rufus King. 
 His opponents urged the failure of the British negotia- 
 tions, the evidences repeatedly given of his proud, im- 
 patient spirit, and above all his hostility to the French 
 Revolution, as reasons why he should not be made 
 minister. Washington, however, as well as Hamilton, 
 King, and the other Federalists, shared most of Morris's 
 views with regard to the revolution, and insisted upon 
 his appointment. 
 
 But the President, as good and wise a friend as Mor- 
 ris had, thought it best to send him a word of warning, 
 coupling with the statement of his own unfaltering trust 
 and regard the reasons why the new diplomat should 
 observe more circumspection than his enemies thought 
 him capable of showing. For his opponents asserted 
 that his brilliant, lively imagination always inclined him 
 to act so promptly as to leave no time for cool judgment, 
 and was, wrote Washington, "the primary cause of 
 those sallies which too often offend, and of that ridicule 
 of character which begets enmity not easy to be for- 
 gotten, but which might easily be avoided if it were 
 under the control of caution and prudence. . . . By 
 reciting [their objections] I give you a proof of my 
 friendship, if I give none of my policy." 
 
 Morris took his friend's advice in good part, and 
 
 462 
 
MINISTER TO FRANCE 
 
 profited by it as far as lay in his nature. He knew that 
 he had a task of stupendous difficulty before him; as it 
 would be almost impossible for a minister to steer clear 
 of the quarrels springing from the ferocious hatred borne 
 to each other by the royalists and the various republican 
 factions. To stand well with all parties he knew was 
 impossible: but he thought it possible, and merely so, 
 to stand well with the best people in each, without 
 greatly offending the others; and, in order to do this, 
 he had to make up his mind to mingle with the worst 
 as well as the best, to listen unmoved to falsehoods so 
 foul and calumnies so senseless as to seem the ravings 
 of insanity; and meanwhile to wear a front so firm and 
 yet so courteous as to ward off insult from his country 
 and injury from himself during the days when the whole 
 people went crazy with the blood lust, when his friends 
 were butchered by scores around him, and when the 
 rulers had fulfilled Mirabeau's terrible prophecy, and 
 had "paved the streets with their bodies." 
 
 But when he began his duties, he was already en- 
 tangled in a most dangerous intrigue, one of whose very 
 existence he should not, as a foreign minister, have 
 known, still less have entered into. He got enmeshed 
 in it while still a private citizen, and could not honor- 
 ably withdraw, for it dealt with nothing less than the 
 escape of the king and queen from Paris. His chival- 
 rous sympathy for the two hemmed-in, hunted crea- 
 tures, threatened by madmen and counselled by fools, 
 joined with his characteristic impulsiveness and fear- 
 lessness to incline him to make an effort to save them 
 from their impending doom. A number of plans had 
 been made to get the king out of Paris; and as the mana- 
 gers of each were of necessity ignorant of all the rest, 
 they clashed with and thwarted one another. Morris's 
 
 463 
 
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS 
 
 scheme was made in concert with a M. de Monciel, one 
 of the royal ministers, and some other French gentle- 
 men; and their measures were so well taken that they 
 would doubtless have succeeded had not the king's 
 nerve invariably failed him at the critical moment, and 
 brought delay after delay. The Swiss guards, faithful 
 to their salt, were always ready to cover his flight, and 
 Lafayette would have helped them. 
 
 Louis preferred Morris's plan to any of the others 
 offered, and gave a most striking proof of his preference 
 by sending to the latter, toward the end of July, to say 
 how much he regretted that his advice had not been 
 followed, and to ask him if he would not take charge of 
 the royal papers and money. Morris was unwilling to 
 take the papers, but finally consented to receive the 
 money, amounting in all to nearly seven hundred and 
 fifty thousand livres, which was to be paid out in hiring 
 and bribing the men who stood in the way of the escape; 
 for most of the revolutionists were as venal as they were 
 bloodthirsty. Still the king lingered; then came the 
 10th of August; the Swiss guards were slaughtered, and 
 the whole scheme was at an end. Some of the men en- 
 gaged in the plot were suspected; one, D'Angremont, 
 was seized and condemned, but he went to his death 
 without betraying his fellows. The others, by the lib- 
 eral use of the money in Morris's possession, were saved, 
 the authorities being bribed to wink at their escape or 
 concealment. Out of the money that was left advances 
 were made to Monciel and others; finally, in 1796, Mor- 
 ris gave an accurate account of the expenditures to 
 the dead king's daughter, the Duchesse d'Angouleme, 
 then at the Austrian court, and turned over to her 
 the remainder, consisting of a hundred and forty-seven 
 pounds. 
 
 464 
 
MINISTER TO FRANCE 
 
 Of course all this was work in which no minister had 
 the least right to share; but the whole crisis was one so 
 completely without precedent that it is impossible to 
 blame Morris for what he did. The extraordinary trust 
 reposed in him, and the feeling that his own exertions 
 were all that lay between the two unfortunate sover- 
 eigns and their fate roused his gallantry and blinded 
 him to the risk he himself ran, as well as to the hazard 
 to which he put his country's interests. He was under 
 no illusion as to the character of the people whom he 
 was trying to serve. He utterly disapproved the queen's 
 conduct, and he despised the king, noting the latter's 
 feebleness and embarrassment, even on the occasion of 
 his presentation at court; he saw in them "a lack of 
 mettle which would ever prevent them from being truly 
 royal"; but when in their mortal agony they held out 
 their hands to him for aid, his generous nature forbade 
 him to refuse it, nor could he look on unmoved as they 
 went helplessly down to destruction. 
 
 The rest of his two years' history as minister forms 
 one of the most brilliant chapters in our diplomatic an- 
 nals. His boldness, and the frankness with which he 
 expressed his opinions, though they at times irritated 
 beyond measure the factions of the revolutionists who 
 successively grasped a brief but tremendous power, yet 
 awed them, in spite of themselves. He soon learned to 
 combine courage and caution, and his readiness, wit, 
 and dash always gave him a certain hold over the fiery 
 nation to which he was accredited. He was firm and 
 dignified in insisting on proper respect being shown our 
 flag, while he did all he could to hasten the payment of 
 our obligations to France. A very large share of his 
 time, also, was taken up with protesting against the 
 French decrees aimed at neutral — which meant Amer- 
 
 465 
 
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS 
 
 ican — commerce, and with interfering to save American 
 shipmasters, who had got into trouble by unwittingly 
 violating them. Like his successor, Mr. Washburne, in 
 the time of the commune, Morris was the only foreign 
 minister who remained in Paris during the terror. He 
 stayed at the risk of his life ; and yet, while fully aware 
 of his danger, he carried himself as coolly as if in a time 
 of profound peace, and never flinched for a moment 
 when he was obliged for his country's sake to call to 
 account the rulers of France for the time being — men 
 whose power was as absolute as it was ephemeral and 
 bloody, who had indulged their desire for slaughter with 
 the unchecked ferocity of madmen, and who could by 
 a word have had him slain as thousands had been slain 
 before him. Few foreign ministers have faced such dif- 
 ficulties, and not one has ever come near to facing such 
 dangers as Morris did during his two years' term of 
 service. His feat stands by itself in diplomatic history; 
 and, as a minor incident, the letters and despatches he 
 sent home give a very striking view of the French Revo- 
 lution. 
 
 As soon as he was appointed he went to see the French 
 minister of foreign affairs; and, in answer to an observa- 
 tion of the latter, stated with his customary straight- 
 forwardness that it was true that, while a mere private 
 individual, sincerely friendly to France, and desirous of 
 helping her, and whose own nation could not be com- 
 promised by his acts, he had freely taken part in passing 
 events, had criticised the constitution, and advised the 
 king and his ministers; but he added that, now that he 
 was a public man, he would no longer meddle with their 
 affairs. To this resolution he kept, save that, as already 
 described, sheer humanity induced him to make an ef- 
 fort to save the king's life. He had predicted what 
 
 466 
 
MINISTER TO FRANCE 
 
 would ensue as the result of the exaggerated decentral- 
 ization into which the opponents of absolutism had 
 rushed ; when they had split the state up into more than 
 forty thousand sovereignties, each district the sole exec- 
 utor of the law, and the only judge of its propriety, and 
 therefore obedient to it only so long as it listed, and until 
 rendered hostile by the ignorant whim or ferocious im- 
 pulse of the moment; and now he was to see his predic- 
 tions come true. In that brilliant and able state paper, 
 the address he had drawn up for Louis to deliver when 
 in 1791 the latter accepted the constitution, the key- 
 note of the situation was struck in the opening words, 
 "It is no longer a king who addresses you, Louis XVI 
 is a private individual"; and he had then scored off, 
 point by point, the faults in a document that created 
 an unwieldy assembly of men unaccustomed to govern, 
 that destroyed the principle of authority, though no 
 other could appeal to a people helpless in their new- 
 born liberty, and that created out of one whole a jarring 
 multitude of fractional sovereignties. Now he was to 
 see one of these same sovereignties rise up in successful 
 rebellion against the government that represented the 
 whole, destroy it and usurp its power, and establish over 
 all France the rule of an anarchic despotism which, by 
 what seems to a free American a gross misnomer, they 
 called a democracy. 
 
 All through June, at the beginning of which month 
 Morris had been formally presented at court, the ex- 
 citement and tumult kept increasing. When, on the 
 20th, the mob forced the gates of the chateau, and made 
 the king put on the red cap, Morris wrote in his diary 
 that the constitution had given its last groan. A few 
 days afterward he told Lafayette that in six weeks 
 everything would be over, and tried to persuade him 
 
 467 
 
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS 
 
 that his only chance was to make up his mind instantly 
 to fight either for a good constitution or for the wretched 
 piece of paper which bore the name. Just six weeks to 
 a day from the date of this prediction came the 10th of 
 August to verify it. 
 
 Throughout July the fevered pulses of the people 
 beat with always greater heat. Looking at the mad- 
 dened mob, the American minister thanked God from 
 his heart that in his own country there was no such 
 populace, and prayed with unwonted earnestness that 
 our education and morality should forever stave off 
 such an evil. At court even the most purblind dimly 
 saw their doom. Calling there one morning, he chroni- 
 cles with a matter-of-fact brevity, impressive from its 
 very baldness, that nothing of note had occurred except 
 that they had stayed up all night expecting to be mur- 
 dered. He wrote home that he could not tell "whether 
 the king would live through the storm; for it blew 
 hard." 
 
 His horror of the base mob, composed of people whose 
 kind was absolutely unknown in America, increased 
 continually, as he saw them going on from crimes that 
 were great to crimes that were greater, incited by the 
 demagogues who flattered them and roused their pas- 
 sions and appetites, and blindly raging because they 
 were of necessity disappointed in the golden prospects 
 held out to them. He scorned the follv of the enthu- 
 siasts and doctrinaires who had made a constitution all 
 sail and no ballast, that overset at the first gust; who 
 had freed from all restraint a mass of men as savage 
 and licentious as they were wayward; who had put the 
 executive in the power of the legislature, and this latter 
 at the mercy of the leaders who could most strongly in- 
 fluence and inflame the mob. But his contempt for the 
 
 468 
 
MINISTER TO FRANCE 
 
 victims almost exceeded his anger at their assailants. 
 The king, who could suffer with firmness, and who could 
 act either not at all, or else with the worst possible effect, 
 had the head and heart that might have suited the 
 monkish idea of a female saint, but which were hope- 
 lessly out of place in any rational being supposed to be 
 fitted for doing good in the world. Morris wrote home 
 that he knew his friend Hamilton had no particular 
 aversion to kings, and would not believe them to be 
 tigers, but that if Hamilton came to Europe to see for 
 himself, he would surely believe them to be monkeys; 
 the Empress of Russia was the only reigning sovereign 
 whose talents were not "considerably below par." At 
 the moment of the final shock, the court was involved 
 in a set of paltry intrigues "unworthy of anything above 
 the rank of a footman or a chambermaid. Every one 
 had his or her little project, and every little project had 
 some abettors. Strong, manly counsels frightened the 
 weak, alarmed the envious, and wounded the ener- 
 vated minds of the lazy and luxurious." The few such 
 counsels that appeared were always approved, rarely 
 adopted, and never followed out. 
 
 Then, in the sweltering heat of August, the end came. 
 A raving, furious horde stormed the chateau, and mur- 
 dered, one by one, the brave mountaineers who gave 
 their lives for a sovereign too weak to be worthy of 
 such gallant bloodshed. King and queen fled to the 
 National Assembly, and the monarchy was over. Im- 
 mediately after the awful catastrophe Morris wrote to 
 a friend: "The voracity of the court, the haughtiness 
 of the nobles, the sensuality of the church, have met 
 their punishment in the road of their transgressions. 
 The oppressor has been squeezed by the hands of the 
 oppressed; but there remains yet to be acted an awful 
 
 469 
 
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS 
 
 scene in this great tragedy, played on the theatre of the 
 universe for the instruction of mankind." 
 
 Not the less did he dare everything, and jeopardize 
 his own life in trying to save some at least among the 
 innocent who had been overthrown in the crash of the 
 common ruin. When on the 10th of August the whole 
 city lay abject at the mercy of the mob, hunted men 
 and women, bereft of all they had, and fleeing from a 
 terrible death, with no hiding-place, no friend who could 
 shield them, turned in their terror-struck despair to the 
 one man in whose fearlessness and generous gallantry 
 they could trust. The shelter of Morris's house and 
 flag was sought from early morning till past midnight 
 by people who had nowhere else to go, and who felt that 
 within his walls they were sure of at least a brief safety 
 from the maddened savages in the streets. As far as 
 possible they were sent off to places of greater security; 
 but some had to stay with him till the storm lulled for 
 a moment. An American gentleman who was in Paris 
 on that memorable day, after viewing the sack of the 
 Tuileries, thought it right to go to the house of the 
 American minister. He found him surrounded by a 
 score of people, of both sexes, among them the old 
 Count d'Estaing, and other men of note, who had fought 
 side by side with us in our war for independence, and 
 whom now our flag protected in their hour of direst 
 need. Silence reigned, only broken occasionally by the 
 weeping of the women and children. As his visitor was 
 leaving, Morris took him to one side, and told him that 
 he had no doubt there were persons on the watch who 
 would find fault with his conduct as a minister in re- 
 ceiving and protecting these people; that they had come 
 of their own accord, uninvited. "Whether my house 
 will be a protection to them or to me, God only knows; 
 
 470 
 
MINISTER TO FRANCE 
 
 but I will not turn them out of it, let what will happen 
 to me; you see, sir, they are all persons to whom our 
 country is more or less indebted, and, had they no such 
 claim upon me, it would be inhuman to force them into 
 the hands of the assassins." No one of Morris's coun- 
 trymen can read his words even now without feeling a 
 throb of pride in the dead statesman who, a century 
 ago, held up so high the honor of his nation's name in 
 the times when the souls of all but the very bravest 
 were tried and found wanting. 
 
 Soon after this he ceased writing in his diary, for fear 
 it might fall into the hands of men who would use it to 
 incriminate his friends; and for the same reason he had 
 also to be rather wary in what he wrote home, as his 
 letters frequently bore marks of being opened, thanks 
 to what he laughingly called "patriotic curiosity." He 
 was, however, perfectly fearless as regards any ill that 
 might befall himself; his circumspection was only exer- 
 cised on behalf of others, and his own opinions were 
 given as frankly as ever. 
 
 He pictured the French as huddled together, in an 
 unreasoning panic, like cattle before a thunder-storm. 
 Their every act increased his distrust of their capacity 
 for self-government. They were for the time agog with 
 their republic, and ready to adopt any form of govern- 
 ment with a huzza; but that they would adopt a good 
 form, or, having adopted it, keep it, he did not believe; 
 and he saw that the great mass of the population were 
 already veering round, under the pressure of accumulat- 
 ing horrors, until they would soon be ready to welcome 
 as a blessing even a despotism, if so they could gain 
 security to life and property. They had made the com- 
 mon mistake of believing that to enjoy liberty they had 
 only to abolish authority; and the equally common con- 
 
 471 
 
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS 
 
 sequence was that they were now, through anarchy, on 
 the highroad to absolutism. Said Morris: "Since I 
 have been in this country I have seen the worship of 
 many idols, and but little of the true God. I have seen 
 many of these idols broken, and some of them beaten 
 to the dust. I have seen the late constitution in one 
 short year admired as a stupendous monument of hu- 
 man wisdom, and ridiculed as an egregious production 
 of folly and vice. I wish much, very much, the happi- 
 ness of this inconstant people. I love them, I feel grate- 
 ful for their efforts in our cause, and I consider the 
 establishment of a good constitution here as the prin- 
 cipal means, under Divine Providence, of extending the 
 blessings of freedom to the many millions of my fellow 
 men who groan in bondage on the continent of Europe. 
 But I do not greatly indulge the flattering illusions of 
 hope, because I do not yet perceive that reformation of 
 morals without which liberty is but an empty sound." 
 These words are such as could only come from a genu- 
 ine friend of France, and champion of freedom; from 
 a strong, earnest man, saddened by the follies of dream- 
 ers, and roused to stern anger by the licentious wicked- 
 ness of scoundrels who used the name of liberty to cloak 
 the worst abuses of its substance. 
 
 His stay in Paris was now melancholy indeed. The 
 city was shrouded in a gloom only relieved by the fren- 
 zied tumults that grew steadily more numerous. The 
 ferocious craving once roused could not be sated; the 
 thirst grew ever stronger as the draughts were deeper. 
 The danger to Morris's own person merely quickened 
 his pulses, and roused his strong, brave nature; he liked 
 excitement, and the strain that would have been too 
 tense for weaker nerves keyed his own up to a fierce, 
 half-exultant thrilling. But the woes that befell those 
 
 472 
 
MINISTER TO FRANCE 
 
 who had befriended him caused him the keenest grief. 
 It was almost unbearable to be seated quietly at dinner, 
 and hear by accident "that a friend was on his way to 
 the place of execution," and to have to sit still and won- 
 der which of the guests dining with him would be the 
 next to go to the scaffold. The vilest criminals swarmed 
 in the streets, and amused themselves by tearing the 
 earrings from women's ears, and snatching away their 
 watches. When the priests shut up in the carries and 
 the prisoners in the abbaie were murdered, the slaughter 
 went on all day, and eight hundred men were engaged 
 in it. 
 
 He wrote home that, to give a true picture of France, 
 he would have to paint it like an Indian warrior, black 
 and red. The scenes that passed were literally beyond 
 the imagination of the American mind. The most hide- 
 ous and nameless atrocities were so common as to be 
 only alluded to incidentally, and to be recited in the 
 most matter-of-fact way in connection with other 
 events. For instance, a man applied to the Conven- 
 tion for a recompense for damage done to his quarry, 
 a pit dug deep through the surface of the earth into the 
 stone bed beneath : the damage consisted in such a num- 
 ber of dead bodies having been thrown into the pit as 
 to choke it up so that he could no longer get men to 
 work it. Hundreds, who had been the first in the land, 
 were thus destroyed without form or trial, and their 
 bodies thrown like dead dogs into the first hole that of- 
 fered. Two hundred priests were killed for no other 
 crime than having been conscientiously scrupulous 
 about taking the prescribed oath. The guillotine went 
 smartly on, watched with a devilish merriment by the 
 fiends who were themselves to perish by the instrument 
 their own hands had wrought. "Heaven only knew 
 
 473 
 
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS 
 
 who was next to drink of the dreadful cup; as far as 
 man could tell, there was to be no lack of liquor for 
 some time to come." 
 
 Among the new men who, one after another, sprang 
 into the light, to maintain their unsteady footing as 
 leaders for but a brief time before toppling into the dark 
 abyss of death or oblivion that waited for each and all, 
 Dumouriez was for the moment the most prominent. 
 He stood toward the Gironde much as Lafayette had 
 stood toward the Constitutionalists of 1789: he led the 
 army, as Lafayette once had led it; and as the consti- 
 tutional monarchists had fallen before his fellow repub- 
 licans, so both he and they were to go down before the 
 even wilder extremists of the "Mountain." For the 
 factions in Paris, face to face with the banded might 
 of the European monarchies, and grappling in a grim 
 death-struggle with the counter-revolutionists of the 
 provinces, yet fought one another with the same fe- 
 rocity they showed toward the common foe. Never- 
 theless, success was theirs; for against opponents only 
 less wicked than themselves they moved with an infi- 
 nitely superior fire and enthusiasm. Reeking with the 
 blood of the guiltless, steeped in it to the lips, branded 
 with fresh memories of crimes and infamies without 
 number, and yet feeling in their very marrow that they 
 were avenging centuries of grinding and intolerable 
 thraldom, and that the cause for which they fought was 
 just and righteous; with shameless cruelty and corrup- 
 tion eating into their hearts' core, yet with their fore- 
 heads kindled by the light of a glorious morning — they 
 moved with a ruthless energy that paralyzed their op- 
 ponents, the worn-out, tottering, crazy despotisms, rot- 
 ten with vice, despicable in their ludicrous pride of 
 caste, moribund in their military pedantry and fore- 
 
 474 
 
MINISTER TO FRANCE 
 
 doomed to perish in the conflict they had courted. The 
 days of Danton and Robespierre are not days to which 
 a French patriot cares to look back; but at any rate he 
 can regard them without the shame he must feel when he 
 thinks of the times of Louis Quinze. Danton and his 
 like, at least, were men, and stood far, far above the 
 palsied coward — a eunuch in his lack of all virile virtues 
 — who misruled France for half a century; who, with 
 his followers, indulged in every crime and selfish vice 
 known, save only such as needed a particle of strength, 
 or the least courage, in the committing. 
 
 Morris first met Dumouriez when the latter was min- 
 ister of foreign affairs, shortly before the poor king was 
 driven from the Tuileries. He dined with him, and 
 afterward noted down that the society was noisy and 
 in bad style; for the grace and charm of French social 
 life were gone, and the raw republicans were ill at ease 
 in the drawing-room. At this time Morris commented 
 often on the change in the look of Paris: all his gay 
 friends gone; the city sombre and uneasy. When he 
 walked through the streets, in the stifling air of a sum- 
 mer hot beyond precedent, as if the elements sympa- 
 thized with the passions of men, he met, instead of the 
 brilliant company of former days, only the few peace- 
 able citizens left, hurrying on their ways with fright- 
 ened watchfulness; or else groups of lolling ruffians, 
 with sinister eyes and brutalized faces ; or he saw in the 
 Champs de Mars squalid ragamuffins signing the peti- 
 tion for the decheance. 
 
 Morris wrote Washington that Dumouriez was a bold, 
 determined man, bitterly hostile to the Jacobins and all 
 the extreme revolutionary clubs, and, once he was in 
 power, willing to risk his own life in the effort to put 
 them down. However, the hour of the Jacobins had not 
 
 475 
 
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS 
 
 yet struck, and the revolution had now been permitted 
 to gather such headway that it could be stopped only 
 by a master genius; and Dumouriez was none such. 
 
 Still he was an able man, and, as Morris wrote home, 
 in his military operations he combined the bravery of a 
 skilled soldier and the arts of an astute politician. To 
 be sure, his victories were not in themselves very note- 
 worthy; the artillery skirmish at Valmy was decided by 
 the reluctance of the Germans to come on, not by the 
 ability of the French to withstand them; and at Je- 
 mappes the imperialists were hopelessly outnumbered. 
 Still the results were most important, and Dumouriez 
 overran Flanders in the face of hostile Europe. He at 
 once proceeded to revolutionize the government of his 
 conquest in the most approved French fashion, which 
 was that all the neighbors of France should receive lib- 
 erty whether or no, and should moreover pay the ex- 
 pense of having it thrust upon them; accordingly he 
 issued a proclamation to his new fellow citizens, "which 
 might be summed up in a few words as being an order 
 to them to be free forthwith, according to his ideas of 
 freedom, on pain of military execution." 
 
 He had things all his own way for the moment, but 
 after a while he was defeated by the Germans; then, 
 while the Gironde tottered to its fall, he fled to the very 
 foes he had been fighting, as the only way of escaping 
 death from the men whose favorite he had been. Mor- 
 ris laughed bitterly at the fickle people. One anecdote 
 he gives is worth preserving: "It is a year ago that a 
 person who mixed in tumults to see what was doing, 
 told me of a sans-culottes who, bellowing against poor 
 Lafayette, when Petion appeared, changed at once his 
 note to 'Vive Petion!' and then, turning round to one 
 of his companions, ' Vois tu ! C'est notre ami, n'est-ce 
 
 476 
 
MINISTER TO FRANCE 
 
 pas ? Eh bien, il passera coinme les autres.' And, lo ! 
 the prophecy is fulfilled; and I this instant learn that 
 Petion, confined to his room as a traitor or conspirator, 
 has fled, on the 24th of June, 1793, from those whom 
 he sent, on the 20th of June, 1792, to assault the king 
 in the Tuileries. In short you will find, in the list of 
 those who were ordered by their brethren to be arrested, 
 the names of those who have proclaimed themselves to 
 be the prime movers of the revolution of the 10th of 
 August, and the fathers of the republic." 
 
 About the time the sans-culottes had thus bellowed 
 against Lafayette, the latter met Morris, for the first 
 time since he was presented at court as minister, and 
 at once spoke to him in his tone of ancient familiarity. 
 The Frenchman had been brought at last to realize the 
 truth of his American friend's theories and predictions. 
 It was much too late to save himself, however. After 
 the 10th of August he was proclaimed by the Assembly, 
 found his troops falling away from him, and fled over 
 the frontier; only to be thrown into prison by the allied 
 monarchs, who acted with their usual folly and base- 
 ness. Morris, contemptuously impatient of the part he 
 had played, wrote of him : "Thus his circle is completed. 
 He has spent his fortune on a revolution, and is now 
 crushed by the wheel which he put in motion. He lasted 
 longer than I expected." But this momentary indigna- 
 tion soon gave way to a generous sympathy for the man 
 who had served America so well, and who, if without 
 the great abilities necessary to grapple with the tumult 
 of French affairs, had yet always acted with such un- 
 selfish purity of motive. Lafayette, as soon as he was 
 imprisoned, wrote to the American minister in Holland, 
 alleging that he had surrendered his position as a French 
 subject and was now an American citizen, and request- 
 
 477 
 
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS 
 
 ing the American representatives in Europe to procure 
 his release. His claim was of course untenable; and, 
 though the American Government did all it could on his 
 behalf through its foreign ministers, and though Wash- 
 ington himself wrote a strong letter of appeal to the 
 Austrian emperor, he remained in prison until the peace, 
 several years later. 
 
 All Lafayette's fortune was gone, and while in prison 
 he was reduced to want. As soon as Morris heard this, 
 he had the sum of ten thousand florins forwarded to the 
 prisoner by the United States bankers at Amsterdam; 
 pledging his own security for the amount, which was, 
 however, finally allowed by the government under the 
 name of compensation for Lafayette's military services 
 in America. Morris was even more active in befriend- 
 ing Madame de Lafayette and her children. To the 
 former he lent from his own private funds a hundred 
 thousand livres, enabling her to pay her debts to the 
 many poor people who had rendered services to her 
 family. To the proud, sensitive lady the relief was 
 great, much though it hurt her to be under any obliga- 
 tion: she wrote to her friend that he had broken the 
 chains that loaded her down, and had done it in a way 
 that made her feel the consolation, rather than the 
 weight, of the obligation. But he was to do still more 
 for her; for, when she was cast into prison by the savage 
 Parisian mob, his active influence on her behalf saved 
 her from death. In a letter to him, written some time 
 later, she says, after speaking of the money she had 
 borrowed: 'This is a slight obligation, it is true, com- 
 pared with that of my life, but allow me to remember 
 both while life lasts, with a sentiment of gratitude which 
 it is precious to feel." 
 
 There were others whose fortunes turned with the 
 
 478 
 
MINISTER TO FRANCE 
 
 wheel of fate, for whom Morris felt no such sympathy 
 as for the Lafayettes. Among the number was the Duke 
 of Orleans, now transformed into citoyen Egalite. Mor- 
 ris credited this graceless debauchee with criminal am- 
 bitions which he probably did not possess, saying that 
 he doubted the public virtue of a profligate, and could 
 not help distrusting such a man's pretensions; nor is it 
 likely that he regretted much the fate of the man who 
 died under the same guillotine which, with his assent, 
 had fallen on the neck of the king, his cousin. 
 
 It needed no small amount of hardihood for a man of 
 Morris's prominence and avowed sentiments to stay in 
 Paris when Death was mowing round him with a swath 
 at once so broad and so irregular. The power was pass- 
 ing rapidly from hand to hand, through a succession of 
 men fairly crazy in their indifference to bloodshed. Not 
 a single other minister of a neutral nation dared stay. 
 In fact, the foreign representatives were preparing to go 
 away even before the final stroke was given to the mon- 
 archy, and soon after the 10th of August the entire corps 
 diplomatique left Paris as rapidly as the various mem- 
 bers could get their passports. These the new repub- 
 lican government was at first very reluctant to grant; 
 indeed, when the Venetian ambassador started off 
 he was very ignominiously treated and brought back. 
 Morris went to the British ambassador's to take leave, 
 having received much kindness from him, and having 
 been very intimate in his house. He found Lord Gower 
 in a tearing passion because he could not get passports; 
 he had burned his papers, and strongly advised his 
 guest to do likewise. On this advice the latter refused 
 to act, nor would he take the broad hints given him to 
 the effect that honor required him to quit the country. 
 Morris could not help showing his amusement at the 
 
 479 
 
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS 
 
 fear and anger exhibited at the ambassador's, "which 
 exhibition of spirits his lordship could hardly bear." 
 Talleyrand, who was getting his own passport, also did 
 all in his power to persuade the American minister to 
 leave, but without avail. Morris was not a man to be 
 easily shaken in any determination he had taken after 
 careful thought. He wrote back to Jefferson that his 
 opinion was directly opposed to the views of such people 
 as had tried to persuade him that his own honor, and 
 that of America, required him to leave France; and that 
 he was inclined to attribute such counsel mainly to fear. 
 It was true that the position was not without danger; 
 but he presumed that, when the President named him 
 to the embassy, it was not for his own personal pleasure 
 or safety, but for the interests of the country; and these 
 he could certainly serve best by staying. 
 
 He was able to hold his own only by a mixture of 
 tact and firmness. Any signs of flinching would have 
 ruined him outright. He would submit to no insolence. 
 The minister of foreign affairs was, with his colleagues, 
 engaged in certain schemes in reference to the American 
 debt, which were designed to further their own private 
 interests; he tried to bully Morris into acquiescence, 
 and, on the latter's pointblank refusal, sent him a most 
 insulting letter. Morris promptly retorted by demand- 
 ing his passports. France, however, was very desirous 
 not to break with the United States, the only friend she 
 had left in the world; and the offending minister sent 
 a sullen letter of apology, asking him to reconsider his 
 intention to leave, and offering entire satisfaction for 
 every point of which he complained. Accordingly Mor- 
 ris stayed. 
 
 He was, however, continually exposed to insults and 
 worries, which were always apologized for by the gov- 
 
 480 
 
MINISTER TO FRANCE 
 
 ernment for the time being, on the ground, no doubt 
 true, that in such a period of convulsions it was impos- 
 sible to control their subordinate agents. Indeed, the 
 changes from one form of anarchy to another went on 
 so rapidly that the laws of nations had small chance of 
 observance. 
 
 One evening a number of people, headed by a com- 
 missary of the section, entered his house, and demanded 
 to search it for arms said to be hidden therein. Morris 
 took a high tone, and was very peremptory with them; 
 told them that they should not examine his house, that 
 it held no arms, and moreover that, if he had possessed 
 any, they should not touch one of them; he also de- 
 manded the name of "the blockhead or rascal" who 
 had informed against him, announcing his intention to 
 bring him to punishment. Finally he got them out of 
 the house, and the next morning the commissary called 
 with many apologies, which were accepted. 
 
 Another time he was arrested in the street for not 
 having a carte de citoyen, but he was released as soon 
 as it was found out who he was. Again he was arrested 
 while travelling in the country, on the pretense that his 
 passport was out of date; an insult for which the gov- 
 ernment at once made what amends they could. His 
 house was also visited another time by armed men, 
 whom, as before, he persuaded to go away. Once or 
 twice, in the popular tumults, even his life was in dan- 
 ger; on one occasion it is said that it was only saved by 
 the fact of his having a wooden leg, which made him 
 known to the mob as "a cripple of the American war 
 for freedom." Rumors even got abroad in England and 
 America that he had been assassinated. 
 
 Morris's duties were manifold, and as harassing to 
 himself as they were beneficial to his country. Some- 
 
 481 
 
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS 
 
 times he would interfere on behalf of America as a 
 whole, and endeavor to get obnoxious decrees of the 
 Assembly repealed ; and again he would try to save some 
 private citizen of the United States who had got him- 
 self into difficulties. Reports of the French minister of 
 foreign affairs, as well as reports of the comite de salut 
 public, alike bear testimony to the success of his en- 
 deavors, whenever success was possible, and uncon- 
 sciously show the value of the services he rendered to 
 his country. Of course it was often impossible to ob- 
 tain complete redress, because, as Morris wrote home, 
 the government, while all-powerful in certain cases, was 
 in others not merely feeble, but enslaved, and was often 
 obliged to commit acts the consequences of which the 
 nominal leaders both saw and lamented. Morris also, 
 while doing all he could for his fellow citizens, was often 
 obliged to choose between their interests and those of 
 the nation at large; and he, of course, decided in favor 
 of the latter, though well aware of the clamor that was 
 certain to be raised against him in consequence by those 
 who, as he caustically remarked, found it the easiest 
 thing in the world to get anything they wanted from 
 the French Government until they had tried. 
 
 One of his most important transactions was in refer- 
 ence to paying off the debt due by America for amounts 
 loaned her during the war for independence. The in- 
 terest and a part of the principal had already been paid. 
 At the time Morris was made minister, the United 
 States had a large sum of money, destined for the pay- 
 ment of the public debt, lying idle in the hands of the 
 bankers at Amsterdam; and this sum both Morris and 
 the American minister to Holland, Mr. Short, thought 
 could be well applied to the payment of part of our re- 
 maining obligation to France. The French Government 
 
 482 
 
MINISTER TO FRANCE 
 
 was consulted, and agreed to receive the sum; but hardly 
 was the agreement entered into before the monarchy 
 was overturned. The question at once arose as to 
 whether the money could be rightfully paid over to the 
 men who had put themselves at the head of affairs, and 
 who, a month hence, might themselves be ousted by 
 others who would not acknowledge the validity of a 
 payment made to them. Short thought the payment 
 should be stopped, and, as it afterward turned out, the 
 home authorities agreed with him. But Morris thought 
 otherwise, and paid over the amount. Events fully 
 justified his course, for France never made any difficulty 
 in the matter, and even had she done so, as Morris re- 
 marked, America had the staff in her own hands, and 
 could walk which way she pleased, for she owed more 
 money, and in the final adjustment could insist on the 
 amount paid being allowed on account of the debt. 
 
 The French executive council owed Morris gratitude 
 for his course in this matter; but they became intensely 
 irritated with him shortly afterward because he refused 
 to fall in with certain proposals they made to him as 
 to the manner of applying part of the debt to the pur- 
 chase of provisions and munitions for San Domingo. 
 Morris had good reason to believe that there was a 
 private speculation at the bottom of this proposal, and 
 declined to accede to it. The urgency with which it 
 was made, and the wrath which his course excited, con- 
 firmed his suspicions, and he persisted in his refusal 
 although it almost brought about a break with the men 
 then carrying on the government. Afterward, when 
 these men fell with the Gironde, he wrote home: 'I 
 mentioned to you the plan of a speculation on drafts 
 to have been made on the United States, could my con- 
 currence have been procured. Events have shown that 
 
 483 
 
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS 
 
 this speculation would have been a good one to the 
 parties, who would have gained (and the French nation 
 of course have lost) about fifty thousand pounds ster- 
 ling in eighty thousand. I was informed at that time 
 that the disappointed parties would attempt to have 
 me recalled, and some more tractable character sent, 
 who would have the good sense to look after his own 
 interest. Well, sir, nine months have elapsed, and now, 
 if I were capable of such things, I think it would be no 
 difficult matter to have some of them hanged; indeed 
 it is highly probable that they will experience a fate of 
 that sort." 
 
 Much of his time was also taken up in remonstrating 
 against the attacks of French privateers on American 
 shipping. These, however, went steadily on until, half 
 a dozen years afterward, we took the matter into our 
 own hands, and in the West Indies inflicted a smart 
 drubbing, not only on the privateers of France, but on 
 her regular men-of-war as well. He also did what he 
 could for the French officers who had served in America 
 during the war for independence, most of whom were 
 forced to flee from France after the outbreak of the 
 revolution. 
 
 His letters home, even after his regular duties had 
 begun to be engrossing, contained a running commen- 
 tary on the events that were passing around him. His 
 forecasts of events within France were remarkably 
 shrewd, and he displayed a wonderful insight into the 
 motives and characters of the various leaders; but at 
 first he was all at sea in his estimate of the military 
 situation, being much more at home among statesmen 
 than soldiers. He had expected the allied sovereigns to 
 make short work of the raw republican armies, and 
 was amazed at the success of the latter. But he very 
 
 484 
 
MINISTER TO FRANCE 
 
 soon realized how the situation stood ; that whereas the 
 Austrian and Prussian troops simply came on in well- 
 drilled reluctant obedience to their commanding officers, 
 the soldiers of France, on the contrary, were actuated 
 by a fiery spirit the like of which had hardly been seen 
 since the crusades. The bitterness of the contest was 
 appalling, and so was the way in which the ranks of the 
 contestants were thinned out. The extreme republicans 
 believed in their creed with a furious faith; and they 
 were joined by their fellow citizens with an almost equal 
 zeal, when once it had become evident that the invaders 
 were hostile not only to the republic but to France it- 
 self, and very possibly meditated its dismemberment. 
 
 When the royal and imperial forces invaded France 
 in 1792, they threatened such ferocious vengeance as 
 to excite the most desperate resistance, and yet they 
 backed up their high-sounding words by deeds so faulty, 
 weak, and slow as to make themselves objects of con- 
 tempt rather than dread. The Duke of Brunswick in 
 particular, as a prelude to some very harmless military 
 manoeuvres, issued a singularly lurid and foolish mani- 
 festo, announcing that he would deliver up Paris to 
 utter destruction and would give over all the soldiers 
 he captured to military execution. Morris said that 
 his address was in substance, "Be all against me, for 
 I am opposed to you all, and make a good resistance, 
 for there is no longer any hope"; and added that it 
 would have been wiser to have begun with some great 
 success and then to have carried the danger near those 
 whom it was desired to intimidate. As it was, the duke's 
 campaign failed ignominiously, and all the invaders 
 were driven back, for France rose as one man, her war- 
 riors overflowed on every side, and bore down all her 
 foes by sheer weight of numbers and impetuous enthu- 
 
 485 
 
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS 
 
 siasm. Her government was a despotism as well as an 
 anarchy; it was as totally free from the drawbacks as 
 from the advantages of the democratic system that it 
 professed to embody. Nothing could exceed the merci- 
 less energy of the measures adopted. Half-way wicked- 
 ness might have failed; but a wholesale murder of the 
 disaffected, together with a confiscation of all the goods 
 of the rich, and a vigorous conscription of the poor for 
 soldiers, secured success, at least for the time being. 
 The French made it a war of men; so that the price of 
 labor rose enormously at once, and the condition of the 
 working classes forthwith changed greatly for the better 
 — one good result of the revolution, at any rate. 
 
 Morris wrote home very soon after the 10th of August 
 that the then triumphant revolutionists, the Girondists 
 or party of Brissot, who had supplanted the moderate 
 party of Lafayette exactly as the latter had succeeded 
 the aristocracy, would soon in their turn be overthrown 
 by men even more extreme and even more bloodthirsty ; 
 and that thus it would go on, wave after wave, until at 
 last the wizard arose who could still them. By the end 
 of the year the storm had brewed long enough to be 
 near the bursting point. One of the promoters of the 
 last outbreak, now himself marked as a victim, told 
 Morris that he personally would die hard, but that most 
 of his colleagues, though like him doomed to destruc- 
 tion, and though so fierce in dealing with the moderate 
 men, now showed neither the nerve nor hardihood that 
 alone could stave off the catastrophe. 
 
 Meanwhile the king, as Morris wrote home, showed 
 in his death a better spirit than his life had promised; 
 for he died in a manner becoming his dignity, with calm 
 courage, praying that his foes might be forgiven and his 
 deluded people be benefited by his death — his words 
 
 486 
 
MINISTER TO FRANCE 
 
 from the scaffold being drowned by the drums of San- 
 terre. As a whole, the Gironde had opposed putting 
 the king to death, and thus capping the structure whose 
 foundations they had laid; they held back all too late. 
 The fabric of their system was erected on a quagmire, 
 and it now settled down and crushed the men who had 
 built it. "All people of morality and intelligence had 
 long agreed that as yet republican virtues were not of 
 Gallic growth"; and so the power slipped naturally into 
 the grasp of the lowest and most violent, of those who 
 were loudest to claim the possession of republican prin- 
 ciples, while in practice showing that they had not even 
 the dimmest idea of what such principles meant. 
 
 The leaders were quite at the mercy of the gusts of 
 fierce passion that swayed the breasts of their brutal 
 followers. Morris wrote home that the nominal rulers, 
 or rather the few by whom these rulers were directed, 
 had finally gained very just ideas of the value of popular 
 opinion; but that they were not in a condition to act 
 according to their knowledge; and that if they were 
 able to reach harbor there would be quite as much of 
 good luck as of good management about it, and, at any 
 rate, a part of the crew would have to be thrown over- 
 board. 
 
 Then the Mountain rose under Danton and Marat, 
 and the party of the Gironde was entirely put down. 
 The leaders were cast into prison, with the certainty 
 before their eyes that the first great misfortune to 
 France would call them from their dungeons to act as 
 expiatory victims. The Jacobins ruled supreme, and 
 under them the government became a despotism in 
 principle as well as in practice. Part of the Convention 
 arrested the rest; and the revolutionary tribunals ruled 
 red-handed, with a whimsical and ferocious tyranny. 
 
 487 
 
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS 
 
 Said Morris: "It is an emphatical phrase among the 
 patriots that terror is the order of the day; some years 
 have elapsed since Montesquieu wrote that the principle 
 of arbitrary governments is fear." The prisons were 
 choked with suspects, and blood flowed more freely than 
 ever. Terror had reached its highest point. Danton 
 was soon to fall before Robespierre. Among a host of 
 other victims the queen died, with a brave dignity 
 that made people half forget her manifold faults; and 
 Philippe Egalite, the dissolute and unprincipled scoun- 
 drel, after a life than which none could be meaner and 
 more unworthy, now at the end went to his death with 
 calm and unflinching courage. 
 
 One man had a very narrow escape. This was 
 Thomas Paine, the Englishman, who had at one period 
 rendered such a striking service to the cause of Amer- 
 ican independence, while the rest of his life had been as 
 ignoble as it was varied. He had been elected to the 
 Convention, and, having sided with the Gironde, was 
 thrown into prison by the Jacobins. He at once asked 
 Morris to demand him as an American citizen; a title 
 to which he of course had no claim. Morris refused to 
 interfere too actively, judging rightly that Paine would 
 be saved by his own insignificance and would serve his 
 own interests best by keeping still. So the filthy little 
 atheist had to stay in prison, "where he amused him- 
 self with publishing a pamphlet against Jesus Christ." 
 There are infidels and infidels; Paine belonged to the 
 variety — whereof America possesses at present one or 
 two shining examples — that apparently esteems a blad- 
 der of dirty water as the proper weapon with which to 
 assail Christianity. It is not a type that appeals to the 
 sympathy of an onlooker, be said onlooker religious or 
 otherwise. 
 
 488 
 
MINISTER TO FRANCE 
 
 Morris never paid so much heed to the military events 
 as to the progress of opinion in France, believing "that 
 such a great country must depend more upon interior 
 sentiment than exterior operations." He took a half- 
 melancholy, half-sardonic interest in the overthrow of 
 the Catholic religion by the revolutionists; who had as- 
 sailed it with the true French weapon, ridicule, but ridi- 
 cule of a very grim and unpleasant kind. The people 
 who five years before had fallen down in the dirt as the 
 consecrated matter passed by, now danced the carma- 
 gnole in holy vestments, and took part in some other 
 mummeries a great deal more blasphemous. At the 
 famous Feast of Reason, which Morris described as a 
 kind of opera performed in Notre Dame, the president 
 of the Convention, and other public characters, adored 
 on bended knees a girl who stood in the place ci-devant 
 most holy to personate Reason herself. This girl, 
 Saunier by name, followed the trades of an opera dancer 
 and harlot; she was "very beautiful and next door to 
 an idiot as to her intellectual gifts." Among her feats 
 was having appeared in a ballet in a dress especially 
 designed, by the painter David, at her bidding, to be 
 more indecent than nakedness. Altogether she was ad- 
 mirably fitted, both morally and mentally, to personify 
 the kind of reason shown and admired by the French 
 revolutionists. 
 
 Writing to a friend who was especially hostile to 
 Romanism, Morris once remarked, with the humor that 
 tinged even his most serious thoughts, "Every day of 
 my life gives me reason to question my own infallibil- 
 ity; and of course leads me farther from confiding in 
 that of the Pope. But I have lived to see a new religion 
 arise. It consists in a denial of all religion, and its vota- 
 ries have the superstition of not being superstitious. 
 
 489 
 
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS 
 
 They have this with as much zeal as any other sect, 
 and are as ready to lay waste the world in order to make 
 proselytes." Another time, speaking of his country 
 place at Sainport, to which he had retired from Paris, 
 he wrote: "We are so scorched by a long drought that 
 in spite of all philosophic notions we are beginning our 
 procession to obtain the favor of the bon Dieu. Were it 
 proper for un homme public et jprotestant to interfere, I 
 should be tempted to tell them that mercy is before 
 sacrifice." Those individuals of arrested mental de- 
 velopment who now make pilgrimages to our Lady of 
 Lourdes had plenty of prototypes, even in the atheis- 
 tical France of the revolution. 
 
 In his letters home Morris occasionally made clear- 
 headed comments on American affairs. He considered 
 that "we should be unwise in the extreme to involve 
 ourselves in the contests of European nations, where 
 our weight could be but small, though the loss to our- 
 selves would be certain. We ought to be extremely 
 watchful of foreign affairs, but there is a broad line be- 
 tween vigilance and activity." Both France and Eng- 
 land had violated their treaties with us; but the latter 
 "had behaved worst, and with deliberate intention." 
 He especially laid stress upon the need of our having a 
 navy; "with twenty ships of the line at sea no nation 
 on earth will dare to insult us"; even aside from indi- 
 vidual losses, five years of war would involve more na- 
 tional expense than the support of a navy for twenty 
 years, and until we rendered ourselves respectable, 
 we should continue to be insulted. He never showed 
 greater wisdom than in his views about our navy; and 
 his party, the Federalists, started to give us one; but it 
 had hardly been begun before the Jeffersonians came into 
 power, and, with singular foolishness, stopped the work. 
 
 490 
 
MINISTER TO FRANCE 
 
 Washington heartily sympathized with Morris's views 
 as to the French Revolution; he wrote him that events 
 had more than made good his gloomiest predictions. 
 Jefferson, however, was utterly opposed to his theories, 
 and was much annoyed at the forcible way in which he 
 painted things as they were; characteristically enough, 
 he only showed his annoyance by indirect methods — 
 leaving Morris's letters unanswered, keeping him in the 
 dark as to events at home, etc. Morris understood all 
 this perfectly, and was extremely relieved when Ran- 
 dolph became secretary of state in Jefferson's stead. 
 Almost immediately afterward, however, he was him- 
 self recalled. The United States, having requested the 
 French Government to withdraw Genet, a harlequin 
 rather than a diplomat, it was done at once, and in re- 
 turn a request was forwarded that the United States 
 would reciprocate by relieving Morris, which of course 
 had to be done also. The revolutionary authorities both 
 feared and disliked Morris; he could neither be flattered 
 nor bullied, and he was known to disapprove of their 
 excesses. They also took umbrage at his haughtiness; 
 an unfortunate expression he used in one of his official 
 letters to them, "ma cour," gave great offense, as being 
 unrepublican— precisely as they had previously ob- 
 jected to Washington's using the phrase "your people" 
 in writing to the king. 
 
 Washington wrote him a letter warmly approving of 
 his past conduct. Nevertheless Morris was not over- 
 pleased at being recalled. He thought that, as things 
 then were in France, any minister who gave satisfaction 
 to its government would prove forgetful of the interests 
 of America. He was probably right; at any rate, what 
 he feared was just what happened under his successor, 
 Monroe— a very amiable gentleman, but distinctly one 
 
 491 
 
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS 
 
 who comes in the category of those whose greatness is 
 thrust upon them. However, under the circumstances, 
 it was probably impossible for our government to avoid 
 recalling Morris. 
 
 He could say truthfully: "I have the consolation to 
 have made no sacrifice either of personal or national 
 dignity, and I believe I should have obtained every- 
 thing if the American government had refused to recall 
 me." His services had been invaluable to us; he had 
 kept our national reputation at a high point, by the 
 scrupulous heed with which he saw that all our obliga- 
 tions were fulfilled, as well as by the firm courage with 
 which he insisted on our rights being granted us. He 
 believed "that all our treaties, however onerous, must 
 be strictly fulfilled according to their true intent and 
 meaning. The honest nation is that which, like the 
 honest man, 'hath to its plighted faith and vow for- 
 ever firmly stood, and though it promise to its loss, 
 yet makes that promise good'"; and in return he de- 
 manded that others should mete to us the same justice 
 we meted to them. He met each difficulty the instant 
 it arose, ever on the alert to protect his country and his 
 countrymen; and what an ordinary diplomat could 
 barely have done in time of peace, he succeeded in do- 
 ing amid the wild, shifting tumult of the revolution, 
 when almost every step he made was at his own per- 
 sonal hazard. He took precisely the right stand; had 
 he taken too hostile a position, he would have been 
 driven from the country, whereas had he been a sym- 
 pathizer, he would have more or less compromised 
 America, as his successor afterward did. We have 
 never had a foreign minister who deserved more honor 
 than Morris. 
 
 One of the noteworthy features in his letters home 
 
 492 
 
MINISTER TO FRANCE 
 
 was the accuracy with which he foretold the course of 
 events in the political world. Luzerne once said to him, 
 "Vous dites toujours les choses extraordinaires qui se 
 realisent"; and many other men, after some given event 
 had taken place, were obliged to confess their wonder 
 at the way in which Morris's predictions concerning it 
 had been verified. A notable instance was his writing 
 to Washington: "Whatever may be the lot of France 
 in remote futurity ... it seems evident that she must 
 soon be governed by a single despot. Whether she will 
 pass to that point through the medium of a triumvirate 
 or other small body of men, seems as yet undetermined. 
 I think it most probable that she will." This was cer- 
 tainly a remarkably accurate forecast as to the precise 
 stages by which the already existing despotism was to 
 be concentrated in a single individual. He always in- 
 sisted that, though it was difficult to foretell how a 
 single man would act, yet it was easy with regard to a 
 mass of men, for their peculiarities neutralized each 
 other, and it was necessary only to pay heed to the in- 
 stincts of the average animal. He also gave wonder- 
 fully clear-cut sketches of the more prominent actors in 
 affairs; although one of his maxims was that "in ex- 
 amining historical facts we are too apt to ascribe to 
 individuals the events which are produced by general 
 causes." Danton, for instance, he described as always 
 believing, and, what was worse for himself, maintain- 
 ing, that a popular system of government was absurd 
 in France; that the people were too ignorant, too incon- 
 stant, too corrupt, and felt too much the need of a mas- 
 ter; in short, that they had reached the point where 
 Cato was a madman, and Caesar a necessary evil. He 
 acted on these principles; but he was too voluptuous 
 for his ambition, too indolent to acquire supreme power, 
 
 493 
 
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS 
 
 and he cared for great wealth rather than great fame; 
 so he "fell at the feet of Robespierre." Similarly, said 
 Morris, there passed away all the men of the 10th of 
 August, all the men of the 2d of September; the same 
 mob that hounded them on with wild applause when 
 they grasped the blood-stained reins of power, a few 
 months later hooted at them with ferocious derision as 
 they went their way to the guillotine. Paris ruled 
 France, and the sans-culottes ruled Paris; factions con- 
 tinually arose, waging inexplicable war, each in turn 
 acquiring a momentary influence which was founded on 
 fear alone, and all alike unable to build up any stable 
 or lasting government. 
 
 Each new stroke of the guillotine weakened the force 
 of liberal sentiment, and diminished the chances of a 
 free system. Morris wondered only that, in a country 
 ripe for a tyrant's rule, four years of convulsions among 
 twenty-four millions of people had brought forth neither 
 a soldier nor yet a statesman, whose head was fitted to 
 wear the cap that fortune had woven. Despising the 
 mob as utterly as did Oliver Cromwell himself, and 
 realizing the supine indifference with which the French 
 people were willing to accept a master, he yet did full 
 justice to the pride with which they resented outside 
 attack, and the enthusiasm with which they faced their 
 foes. He saw the immense resources possessed by a na- 
 tion to whom war abroad was a necessity for the preser- 
 vation of peace at home, and with whom bankruptcy 
 was but a starting-point for fresh efforts. The whole 
 energy and power lay in the hands of the revolutionists; 
 the men of the old regime had fled, leaving only that 
 "waxen substance," the propertied class, "who in for- 
 eign wars count so much, and in civil wars so little." 
 He had no patience with those despicable beings, the 
 
 494 
 
MINISTER TO FRANCE 
 
 traders and merchants who have forgotten how to fight, 
 the rich who are too timid to guard their wealth, the 
 men of property, large or small, who need peace, and 
 yet have not the sense and courage to be always pre- 
 pared to conquer it. 
 
 In his whole attitude toward the revolution, Morris 
 represents better than any other man the clear-headed, 
 practical statesman, who is genuinely devoted to the 
 cause of constitutional freedom. He was utterly op- 
 posed to the old system of privilege on the one hand, 
 and to the wild excesses of the fanatics on the other. 
 The few liberals of the revolution were the only men in 
 it who deserve our true respect. The republicans who 
 champion the deeds of the Jacobins are traitors to their 
 own principles; for the spirit of Jacobinism, instead of 
 being identical with, is diametrically opposed to the 
 spirit of true liberty. Jacobinism, socialism, commu- 
 nism, nihilism, and anarchism — these are the real foes 
 of a democratic republic, for each one, if it obtains con- 
 trol, obtains it only as the sure forerunner of a despotic 
 tyranny and of some form of the one-man power. 
 
 Morris, an American, took a clearer and truer view 
 of the French Revolution than did any of the contem- 
 porary European observers. Yet while with them it 
 was the all-absorbing event of the age, with him, as is 
 evident by his writings, it was merely an important 
 episode; for to him it was dwarfed by the American 
 Revolution of a decade or two back. To the Europeans 
 of the present day, as yet hardly awake to the fact that 
 already the change has begun that will make Europe 
 but a fragment, instead of the whole, of the civilized 
 world, the French Revolution is the great historical 
 event of our times. But in reality it affected only the 
 people of western and central Europe; not the Russians, 
 
 495 
 
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS 
 
 not the English-speaking nations, not the Spaniards who 
 dwelt across the Atlantic. America and Australia had 
 their destinies moulded by the crisis of 1776, not by the 
 crisis of 1789. What the French Revolution was to the 
 states within Europe, that the American Revolution 
 was to the continents without. 
 
 496 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 STAY IN EUROPE 
 
 Monroe, as Morris's successor, entered upon his new 
 duties with an immense flourish, and rapidly gave a suc- 
 cession of startling proofs that he was a minister alto- 
 gether too much to the taste of the frenzied Jacobinical 
 republicans to whom he was accredited. Indeed, his 
 capers were almost as extraordinary as their own, and 
 seem rather like the antics of some of the early French 
 commanders in Canada, in their efforts to ingratiate 
 themselves with their Indian allies, than like the per- 
 formance we should expect from a sober Virginian gen- 
 tleman on a mission to a civilized nation. He stayed 
 long enough to get our affairs into a snarl, and was then 
 recalled by Washington, receiving from the latter more 
 than one scathing rebuke. 
 
 However, the fault was really less with him than with 
 his party and with those who sent him. Monroe was 
 an honorable man with a very unoriginal mind, and he 
 simply reflected the wild, foolish views held by all his 
 fellows of the Jeffersonian democratic-republican school 
 concerning France — for our politics were still French 
 and English, but not yet American. His appointment 
 was an excellent example of the folly of trying to carry 
 on a government on a "non-partisan" basis. Wash- 
 ington was only gradually weaned from this theory by 
 bitter experience; both Jefferson and Monroe helped to 
 teach him the lesson. It goes without saying that in 
 a well-ordered government the great bulk of the em- 
 ployees in the civil service, the men whose functions 
 
 497 
 
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS 
 
 are merely to execute faithfully routine departmental 
 work, should hold office during good behavior, and 
 should be appointed without reference to their politics ; 
 but if the higher public servants, such as the heads of 
 departments and the foreign ministers, are not in com- 
 plete accord with their chief, the only result can be to in- 
 troduce halting indecision and vacillation into the coun- 
 sels of the nation, without gaining a single compensating 
 advantage, and without abating by one iota the viru- 
 lence of party passion. To appoint Monroe, an extreme 
 Democrat, to France, while at the same time appoint- 
 ing Jay, a strong Federalist, to England, was not only 
 an absurdity which did nothing toward reconciling the 
 Federalists and Democrats, but, bearing in mind how 
 these parties stood respectively toward England and 
 France, it was also an actual wrong, for it made our 
 foreign policy seem double-faced and deceitful. While 
 one minister was formally embracing such of the Pari- 
 sian statesmen as had hitherto escaped the guillotine, 
 and was going through various other theatrical per- 
 formances that do not appeal to any but a Gallic mind, 
 his fellow was engaged in negotiating a treaty in Eng- 
 land that was so obnoxious to France as almost to bring 
 us to a rupture with her. The Jay treaty was not alto- 
 gether a good one, and a better might perhaps have 
 been secured; still, it was better than nothing, and 
 Washington was right in urging its adoption, even while 
 admitting that it was not entirely satisfactory. But 
 certainly, if we intended to enter into such engagements 
 with Great Britain, it was rank injustice to both Mon- 
 roe and France to send such a man as the former to 
 such a country as the latter. 
 
 Meanwhile Morris, instead of returning to America, 
 was forced by his business affairs to prolong his stay 
 
 498 
 
STAY IN EUROPE 
 
 abroad for several years. During this time he journeyed 
 at intervals through England, the Netherlands, Ger- 
 many, Prussia, and Austria. His European reputation 
 was well established, and he was everywhere received 
 gladly into the most distinguished society of the time. 
 What made him especially welcome was his having now 
 definitely taken sides with the antirevolutionists in the 
 great conflict of arms and opinions then raging through 
 Europe; and his brilliancy, the boldness with which he 
 had behaved as minister during the terror, and the repu- 
 tation given him by the French emigres, all joined to 
 cause him to be hailed with pleasure by the aristocratic 
 party. It is really curious to see the consideration with 
 which he was everywhere treated, although again a mere 
 private individual, and the terms of intimacy on which 
 he was admitted into the most exclusive social and 
 diplomatic circles at the various courts. He thus be- 
 came an intimate friend of many of the foremost people 
 of the period. His political observation, however, be- 
 came less trustworthy than heretofore; for he was un- 
 doubtedly soured by his removal, and the excesses of 
 the revolutionists had excited such horror in his mind 
 as to make him no longer an impartial judge. His fore- 
 casts and judgments on the military situation in par- 
 ticular, although occasionally right, were usually very 
 wild. He fully appreciated Napoleon's utter unscrupu- 
 lousness and marvellous mendacity; but to the end of 
 his life he remained unwilling to do justice to the em- 
 peror's still more remarkable warlike genius, going so 
 far, after the final Russian campaign, as to speak of old 
 Kutusoff as his equal. Indeed, in spite of one or two 
 exceptions — notably his predicting almost the exact 
 date of the retreat from Moscow — his criticisms on 
 Napoleon's military operations do not usually stand 
 
 499 
 
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS 
 
 much above the rather ludicrous level recently reached 
 by Count Tolstoi. 
 
 Morris was relieved by Monroe in August, 1794, and 
 left Paris for Switzerland in October. He stopped at 
 Coppet and spent a day with Madame de Stael, where 
 there was a little French society that lived at her ex- 
 pense and was as gay as circumstances would permit. 
 He had never been particularly impressed with the 
 much-vaunted society of the salon, and this small sur- 
 vival thereof certainly had no overpowering attraction 
 for him, if we may judge by the entry in his diary: 
 "The road to her house is uphill and execrable, and I 
 think I shall not again go thither." Mankind was still 
 blind to the grand beauty of the Alps — it must be re- 
 membered that the admiration of mountain scenery is, 
 to the shame of our forefathers be it said, almost a 
 growth of the present century — and Morris took more 
 interest in the Swiss population than in their surround- 
 ings. He wrote that in Switzerland the spirit of com- 
 merce had brought about a baseness of morals which 
 nothing could cure but the same spirit carried still 
 farther: "It teaches eventually fair-dealing as the most 
 profitable dealing. The first lesson of trade is, My son, 
 get money. The second is, My son, get money, hon- 
 estly if you can, but get money. The third is, My 
 son, get money; but honestly, if you would get much 
 money." 
 
 He went to Great Britain in the following summer, 
 and spent a year there. At one time he visited the 
 North, staying with the Dukes of Argyle, Atholl, and 
 Montrose, and was very much pleased with Scotland, 
 where everything he saw convinced him that the coun- 
 try was certain of a rapid and vigorous growth. On his 
 return he stopped with the Bishop of Landaff, at Col- 
 
 500 
 
STAY IN EUROPE 
 
 gate Park. The bishop announced that he was a stanch 
 opposition man, and a firm Whig; to which statement 
 Morris adds in his diary: "Let this be as it will, he is 
 certainly a good landlord and a man of genius." 
 
 But Morris was now a favored guest in ministerial, 
 even more than in opposition circles; he was considered 
 to belong to what the czar afterward christened the 
 "parti sain de l'Europe." He saw a good deal of both 
 Pitt and Grenville, and was consulted by them not only 
 about American but also about European affairs; and 
 a number of favors which he asked for some of his 
 friends among the emigres were granted. All his visits 
 were not on business, however; as, for instance, on 
 July 14: "Dine at Mr. Pitt's. We sit down at six. 
 Lords Grenville, Chatham, and another come later. 
 The rule is established for six precisely, which is right, 
 I think. The wines are good and the conversation flip- 
 pant." Morris helped Grenville in a number of ways, 
 at the Prussian court, for instance; and was even in- 
 duced by him to write a letter to Washington, attempt- 
 ing to put the English attitude toward us in a good 
 light. Washington, however, was no more to be carried 
 off his feet in favor of the English than against them; 
 and the facts he brought out in his reply showed that 
 Morris had rather lost his poise, and had been hurried 
 into an action that was ill-advised. He was quite often 
 at court; and relates a conversation with the king, 
 wherein that monarch's language seems to have been 
 much such as tradition assigns him — short, abrupt sen- 
 tences, repetitions, and the frequent use of "what." 
 
 He also saw a good deal of the royalist refugees. 
 Some of them he liked and was intimate with; but the 
 majority disgusted him and made him utterly impatient 
 with their rancorous folly. He commented on the 
 
 501 
 
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS 
 
 strange levity and wild negotiations of the Count d'Ar- 
 tois, and prophesied that his character was such as to 
 make his projected attempt on La Vendee hopeless from 
 the start. Another day he was at the Marquis de Spi- 
 nola's: "The conversation here, where our company 
 consists of aristocrats of the first feather, turns on 
 French affairs. They, at first, agree that union among 
 the French is necessary. But when they come to par- 
 ticulars, they fly off and are mad. Madame Spinola 
 would send the Duke of Orleans to Siberia. An abbe, 
 a young man, talks much and loud, to show his esprit; 
 and to hear them one would suppose they were quite 
 at their ease in a petit sonper de Paris." Of that pon- 
 derous exile, the chief of the house of Bourbon, and 
 afterward Louis XVIII, he said that, in his opinion, he 
 had nothing to do but to try to get shot, thereby re- 
 deeming by valor the foregone follies of his conduct. 
 
 In June, 1796, Morris returned to the Continent, and 
 started on another tour, in his own carriage; having 
 spent some time himself in breaking in his young and 
 restive horses to their task. He visited all the different 
 capitals, at one time or another; among them, Berlin, 
 where, as usual, he was very well received. For all his 
 horror of Jacobinism, Morris was a thorough American, 
 perfectly independent, without a particle of the snob in 
 his disposition, and valuing his acquaintances for what 
 they were, not for their titles. In his diary he puts 
 down the Queen of England as "a well-bred, sensible 
 woman," and the Empress of Austria as "a good sort 
 of little woman," and contemptuously dismisses the 
 Prussian king with a word, precisely as he does with 
 any one else. One of the entries in his journal, while 
 he was staying in Berlin, offers a case in point. "July 
 23, I dine, very much against my will, with Prince 
 
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 Ferdinand. I was engaged to a very agreeable party, 
 but it seems the highnesses must never be denied, un- 
 less it be from indisposition. I had, however, written 
 a note declining the intended honor; but the messenger, 
 upon looking at it, for it was a letter patent, like the 
 invitation, said he could not deliver it; that nobody 
 ever refused; all of which I was informed of after he 
 was gone. On consulting I found that I must go or 
 give mortal offense, which last I have no inclination to 
 do; so I write another note, and send out to hunt up 
 the messenger. While I am abroad this untoward in- 
 cident is arranged, and of course I am at Bellevue." 
 While at court on one occasion he met, and took a 
 great fancy to, the daughter of the famous Baroness 
 Riedesel; having been born in the United States, she 
 had been christened America. 
 
 In one of his conversations with the king, who was 
 timid and hesitating, Morris told him that the Aus- 
 trians would be all right if he would only lend them 
 some Prussian generals — a remark upon which Jena 
 and Auerstadt later on offered a curious commentary. 
 He became very impatient with the king's inability to 
 make up his mind; and wrote to the Duchess of Cum- 
 berland that "the guardian angel of the French Repub- 
 lic kept him lingering on this side of the grave." He 
 wrote to Lord Grenville that Prussia was "seeking little 
 things by little means," and that the war with Poland 
 was popular "because the moral principles of a Prus- 
 sian go to the possession of whatever he can acquire. 
 And so little is he the slave of what he calls vulgar prej- 
 udice, that, give him opportunity and means, and he 
 will spare you the trouble of finding a pretext. This 
 liberality of sentiment greatly facilitates negotiation, 
 for it is not necessary to clothe propositions in honest 
 
 503 
 
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS 
 
 and decent forms." Morris was a most startling phe- 
 nomenon to the diplomatists of the day, trampling with 
 utter disregard on all their hereditary theories of finesse 
 and cautious duplicity. The timid formalists, and more 
 especially those who considered double-dealing as the 
 legitimate, and in fact the only legitimate, weapon of 
 their trade, were displeased with him; but he was very 
 highly thought of by such as could see the strength and 
 originality of the views set forth in his frank, rather 
 overbold language. 
 
 At Dresden he notes that he was late on the day set 
 down for his presentation at court, owing to his valet 
 having translated halb zwolf as half past twelve. The 
 Dresden picture-galleries were the first that drew from 
 him any very strong expressions of admiration. In the 
 city were numbers of the emigres, fleeing from their 
 countrymen, and only permitted to stop in Saxony for 
 a few days; yet they were serene and gay, and spent 
 their time in busy sightseeing, examining everything 
 curious which they could get at. Morris had become 
 pretty well accustomed to the way in which they met 
 fate; but such lively resignation surprised even him, and 
 he remarked that so great a calamity had never lighted 
 on shoulders so well fitted to bear it. 
 
 At Vienna he made a long stay, not leaving it until 
 January, 1797. Here, as usual, he fraternized at once 
 with the various diplomatists; the English ambassador, 
 Sir Morton Eden, in particular, going out of his way to 
 show him every attention. The Austrian prime min- 
 ister, M. Thugut, was also very polite; and so were the 
 foreign ministers of all the powers. He was soon at 
 home in the upper social circles of this German Paris; 
 but from the entries in his journal it is evident that he 
 thought very little of Viennese society. He liked talk- 
 
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 ing and the company of brilliant conversationalists, and 
 he abominated gambling; but in Vienna every one was 
 so devoted to play that there was no conversation at 
 all. He considered a dumb circle round a card-table as 
 the dullest society in the world, and in Vienna there was 
 little else. Nor was he impressed with the ability of the 
 statesmen he met. He thought the Austrian nobles to 
 be on the decline; they stood for the dying feudal sys- 
 tem. The great families had been squandering their 
 riches with the most reckless extravagance, and were 
 becoming broken and impoverished; and the imperial 
 government was glad to see the humiliation of the 
 haughty nobles, not perceiving that, if preserved, they 
 would act as a buffer between it and the new power 
 beginning to make itself felt throughout Europe, and 
 would save the throne if not from total overthrow, at 
 least from shocks so fierce as greatly to weaken it. 
 
 Morris considered Prince Esterhazy as an archtypi- 
 cal representative of the class. He was captain of the 
 noble Hungarian Guard, a small body of tall, handsome 
 men on fiery steeds, magnificently caparisoned. The 
 prince, as its commander, wore a Hungarian dress, scar- 
 let, with fur cape and cuffs, and yellow morocco boots; 
 everything embroidered with pearls, four hundred and 
 seventy large ones, and many thousand small, but all 
 put on in good taste. He had a collar of large diamonds, 
 a plume of diamonds in his cap; and his sword-hilt, 
 scabbard, and spurs were inlaid with the same precious 
 stones. His horse was equally bejewelled; steed and 
 rider, with their trappings, "were estimated at a value 
 of a quarter of a million dollars." Old Blticher would 
 surely have considered the pair "very fine plunder." 
 
 The prince was reported to be nominally the richest 
 subject in Europe, with a revenue that during the Turk- 
 
 505 
 
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS 
 
 ish war went up to a million guilders annually; yet he 
 was hopelessly in debt already, and getting deeper every 
 year. He lived in great magnificence, but was by no 
 means noted for lavish hospitality; all his extravagance 
 was reserved for himself, especially for purposes of dis- 
 play. His Vienna stable contained a hundred and fifty 
 horses; and during a six weeks' residence in Frankfort, 
 where he was ambassador at the time of an imperial 
 coronation, he spent eighty thousand pounds. Alto- 
 gether, an outsider may be pardoned for not at first 
 seeing precisely what useful function such a merely gor- 
 geous being performed in the body politic; yet when 
 summoned before the bar of the new world-forces, Ester- 
 hazy and his kind showed that birds of such fine feathers 
 sometimes had beaks and talons as well, and knew how 
 to use them, the craven flight of the French noblesse to 
 the contrary notwithstanding. 
 
 Morris was often at court, where the constant theme 
 of conversation was naturally the struggle with the 
 French armies under Moreau and Bonaparte. After 
 one of these mornings he mentions: "The levee was 
 oddly arranged, all the males being in one apartment, 
 through which the emperor passes in going to chapel, 
 and returns the same way with the empress and imperial 
 family; after which they go through their own rooms 
 to the ladies assembled on the other side." 
 
 The English members of the corps diplomatique in all 
 the European capitals were especially civil to him; and 
 he liked them more than their Continental brethren. 
 But for some of their young tourist countrymen he 
 cared less; and it is curious to see that the ridicule to 
 which Americans have rightly exposed themselves by 
 their absurd fondness for uniforms and for assuming 
 military titles to which they have no warrant, was no 
 
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 less deservedly earned by the English at the end of the 
 last century. One of Morris's friends, Baron Groshlaer, 
 being, like the other Viennese, curious to know the ob- 
 ject of his stay — they guessed aright that he wished to 
 get Lafayette liberated — at last almost asked him out- 
 right about it. "Finally I tell him that the only differ- 
 ence between me and the young Englishmen, of whom 
 there is a swarm here, is, that I seek instruction with 
 gray hairs and they with brown. ... At the arch- 
 duchess's one of the little princes, brother to the em- 
 peror, and who is truly an archduke, asks me to explain 
 to him the different uniforms worn by the young Eng- 
 lish, of whom there are a great number here, all in regi- 
 mentals. Some of these belong to no corps at all, and 
 the others to yeomanry, fencibles and the like, all of 
 which purport to be raised for the defense of their coun- 
 try in case she should be invaded; but now, when the 
 invasion seems most imminent, they are abroad, and 
 cannot be made to feel the ridiculous indecency of ap- 
 pearing in regimentals. Sir M. Eden and others have 
 given them the broadest hints without the least effect. 
 One of them told me that all the world should not laugh 
 him out of his regimentals. I bowed. ... I tell the 
 prince that I really am not able to answer his question, 
 but that, in general, their dresses I believe are worn for 
 convenience in travelling. He smiles at this. ... If 
 I were an Englishman I should be hurt at these exhibi- 
 tions, and as it is I am sorry for them. ... I find that 
 here they assume it as unquestionable that the young 
 men of England have a right to adjust the ceremonial 
 of Vienna. The political relations of the two countries 
 induce the good company here to treat them with polite- 
 ness; but nothing prevents their being laughed at, as I 
 found the other evening at Madame de Groshlaer's, 
 
 507 
 
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS 
 
 where the young women as well as the girls were very 
 merry at the expense of these young men." 
 
 After leaving Vienna he again passed through Berlin, 
 and in a conversation with the king he foreshadowed 
 curiously the state of politics a century later, and 
 showed that he thoroughly appreciated the cause that 
 would in the end reconcile the traditional enmity of the 
 Hohenzollerns and Hapsburgs. "After some trifling 
 things I tell him that I have just seen his best friend. 
 He asks who? and, to his great surprise, I reply, the 
 emperor. He speaks of him well personally, and I ob- 
 serve that he is a very honest young man, to which his 
 majesty replies by asking, 'Mais, que pensez vous de 
 Thugut.' 'Quant a cela, c'est line autre affaire, sire.' 
 I had stated the interest, which makes him and the em- 
 peror good friends, to be their mutual apprehensions 
 from Russia. 'But suppose we all three unite?' 'Ce 
 sera un diable de fricassee, sire, si vous vous mettez tous 
 les trois a casser les ceufs.' " 
 
 At Brunswick he was received with great hospitality, 
 the duke, and particularly the duchess dowager, the 
 King of England's sister, treating him very hospitably. 
 He here saw General Riedesel, with whom he was most 
 friendly; the general in the course of conversation in- 
 veighed bitterly against Burgoyne. He went to Munich 
 also, where he was received on a very intimate footing 
 by Count Rumford, then the great power in Bavaria, 
 who was busily engaged in doing all he could to better 
 the condition of his country. Morris was much in- 
 terested in his reforms. They were certainly needed; 
 the count told his friend that on assuming the reins of 
 power the abuses to be remedied were beyond belief — 
 for instance, there was one regiment of cavalry that had 
 five field-officers and only three horses. With some of 
 
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 the friends that Morris made — such as the Duchess of 
 Cumberland, the Princess de la Tour et Taxis, and 
 others — he corresponded until the end of his life. 
 
 While at Vienna he again did all he could to get 
 Lafayette released from prison, where his wife was con- 
 fined with him; but in vain. Madame de Lafayette's 
 sister, the Marquise de Montagu, and Madame de Stael 
 both wrote him the most urgent appeals to do what he 
 could for the prisoners; the former writing, "My sister 
 is in danger of losing the life you saved in the prisons 
 of Paris . . . has not he whom Europe numbers among 
 those citizens of whom North America ought to be most 
 proud, has not he the right to make himself heard in 
 favor of a citizen of the United States, and of a wife, 
 whose life belongs to him, since he has preserved it?" 
 Madame de Stael felt the most genuine grief for Lafay- 
 ette, and very sincere respect for Morris; and in her 
 letters to the latter she displayed both sentiments with 
 a lavish exaggeration that hardly seems in good taste. 
 If Morris had needed a spur the letters would have sup- 
 plied it; but the task was an impossible one, and Lafay- 
 ette was not released until the peace in 1797, when he 
 was turned over to the American consul at Hamburg, 
 in Morris's presence. 
 
 Morris was able to render more effectual help to an 
 individual far less worthy of it than Lafayette. This 
 was the then Duke of Orleans, afterward King Louis 
 Philippe, who had fled from France with Dumouriez. 
 Morris's old friend, Madame de Flahaut, appealed to 
 him almost hysterically on the duke's behalf; and he at 
 once did even more than she requested, giving the duke 
 money wherewith to go to America, and also furnish- 
 ing him with unlimited credit at his own New York 
 banker's, during his wanderings in the United States. 
 
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GOUVERNEUR MORRIS 
 
 This was done for the sake of the Duchess of Orleans, 
 to whom Morris was devotedly attached, not for the 
 sake of the duke himself. The latter knew this per- 
 fectly, writing: "Your kindness is a blessing I owe to 
 my mother and to our friend" (Madame de Flahaut). 
 The bourgeois king admirably represented the meanest, 
 smallest side of the bourgeois character; he was not a 
 bad man, but he was a very petty and contemptible 
 one; had he been born in a different station of life, he 
 would have been just the individual to take a promi- 
 nent part in local temperance meetings, while he sanded 
 the sugar he sold in his corner grocery. His treatment 
 of Morris's loan was characteristic. When he came into 
 his rights again, at the Restoration, he at first appeared 
 to forget his debt entirely, and when his memory was 
 jogged, he merely sent Morris the original sum, without 
 a word of thanks; whereupon Morris, rather nettled, 
 and as prompt to stand up for his rights against a man 
 in prosperity as he had been to help him when in ad- 
 versity, put the matter in the hands of his lawyer, 
 through whom he notified Louis Philippe that if the af- 
 fair was to be treated on a merely business basis, it 
 should then be treated in a strictly business way, and 
 the interest for the twenty years that had gone by 
 should be forwarded also. This was accordingly done, 
 although not until after Morris's death, the entire sum 
 refunded being seventy thousand francs. 
 
 Morris brought his complicated business affairs in Eu- 
 rope to a close in 1798, and sailed from Hamburg on 
 October 4 of that year, reaching New York after an 
 exceedingly tedious and disagreeable voyage of eighty 
 days. 
 
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CHAPTER XII 
 SERVICE IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE 
 
 Morrts was very warmly greeted on his return; and 
 it was evident that the length of his stay abroad had in 
 nowise made him lose ground with his friends at home. 
 His natural affiliations were all with the Federalist 
 party, which he immediately joined. 
 
 During the year 1799 he did not take much part in 
 politics, as he was occupied in getting his business af- 
 fairs in order and in putting to rights his estates at Mor- 
 risania. The old manor-house had become such a crazy, 
 leaky affair that he tore it down and built a new one; a 
 great, roomy building, not in the least showy, but solid, 
 comfortable, and in perfect taste; having, across the 
 tree-clad hills of Westchester, a superb view of the 
 Sound, with its jagged coast and capes and islands. 
 
 Although it was so long since he had practised law, 
 he was shortly engaged in a very important case that 
 was argued for eight days before the Court of Errors in 
 Albany. Few trials in the State of New York have ever 
 brought together such a number of men of remarkable 
 legal ability; for among the lawyers engaged on one side 
 or the other were Morris, Hamilton, Burr, Robert Liv- 
 ingston, and Troup. There were some sharp passages 
 of arms: and the trial of wits between Morris and Ham- 
 ilton in particular was so keen as to cause a passing 
 coolness. 
 
 During the ten years that had gone by since Morris 
 sailed for Europe, the control of the national govern- 
 ment had been in the hands of the Federalists; when he 
 
 511 
 
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS 
 
 returned, party bitterness was at the highest pitch, for 
 the Democrats were preparing to make the final push 
 for power which should overthrow and ruin their antag- 
 onists. Four-fifths of the talent, ability, and good sense 
 of the country were to be found in the Federalist ranks; 
 for the Federalists had held their own so far, by sheer 
 force of courage and intellectual vigor, over foes in real- 
 ity more numerous. Their great prop had been Wash- 
 ington. His colossal influence was to the end decisive 
 in party contests, and he had in fact, although hardly 
 in name, almost entirely abandoned his early attempts 
 at non-partisanship, had grown to distrust Madison as 
 he long before had distrusted Jefferson, and had come 
 into constantly closer relations with their enemies. His 
 death diminished greatly the chances of Federalist suc- 
 cess; there were two other causes at work that destroyed 
 them entirely. 
 
 One of these was the very presence in the dominant 
 party of so many men nearly equal in strong will and 
 great intellectual power; their ambitions and theories 
 clashed; even the loftiness of their aims, and their dis- 
 dain of everything small, made them poor politicians, 
 and with Washington out of the way there was no one 
 commander to overawe the rest and to keep down the 
 fierce bickerings constantly arising among them; while 
 in the other party there was a single leader, Jefferson, 
 absolutely without a rival, but supported by a host of 
 sharp political workers, most skilful in marshalling that 
 unwieldy and hitherto disunited host of voters who were 
 inferior in intelligence to their fellows. 
 
 The second cause lay deep in the nature of the Fed- 
 eralist organization: it was its distrust of the people. 
 This was the fatally weak streak in Federalism. In a 
 government such as ours it was a foregone conclusion 
 
 512 
 
IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE 
 
 that a party which did not believe in the people would 
 sooner or later be thrown from power unless there was 
 an armed break-up of the system. The distrust was 
 felt, and of course excited corresponding and intense 
 hostility. Had the Federalists been united, and had they 
 freely trusted in the people, the latter would have shown 
 that the trust was well founded ; but there was no hope 
 for leaders who suspected each other and feared their 
 followers. 
 
 Morris landed just as the Federalist reaction, brought 
 about by the conduct of France, had spent itself — 
 thanks partly to some inopportune pieces of insolence 
 from England, in which country, as Morris once wrote 
 to a foreign friend, "on a toujours le bon esprit de vou- 
 loir prendre les mouches avec du vinaigre." The famous 
 Alien and Sedition laws were exciting great disgust, and 
 in Virginia and Kentucky Jefferson was using them as 
 handles wherewith to guide seditious agitation — not 
 that he believed in sedition, but because he considered 
 it good party policy, for the moment, to excite it. The 
 parties hated each other with rancorous virulence; the 
 newspapers teemed with the foulest abuse of public men, 
 accusations of financial dishonesty were rife, Washing- 
 ton himself not being spared, and the most scurrilous 
 personalities were bandied about between the different 
 editors. The Federalists were split into two factions, 
 one following the President, Adams, in his efforts to 
 keep peace with France, if it could be done with honor, 
 while the others, under Hamilton's lead, wished war at 
 once. 
 
 Pennsylvanian politics were already very low. The 
 leaders who had taken control were men of mean ca- 
 pacity and small morality, and the State was not only 
 becoming rapidly democratic but was also drifting along 
 
 513 
 
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS 
 
 in a disorganized, pseudojacobinical, half-insurrection- 
 ary kind of way that would have boded ill for its future 
 had it not been fettered by the presence of healthier 
 communities round about it. New England was the 
 only part of the community, excepting Delaware, where 
 Federalism was on a perfectly sound footing; for in that 
 section there was no caste spirit, the leaders and their 
 followers were thoroughly in touch, and all the citizens, 
 shrewd, thrifty, independent, were used to self-govern- 
 ment and fully awake to the fact that honesty and 
 order are the prerequisites of liberty. Yet even here 
 democracy had made some inroads. 
 
 South of the Potomac the Federalists had lost ground 
 rapidly. Virginia was still a battle-field; as long as 
 Washington lived, his tremendous personal influence 
 acted as a brake on the democratic advance, and the 
 State's greatest orator, Patrick Henry, had halted be- 
 side the grave to denounce the seditious schemes of the 
 disunion agitators with the same burning, thrilling elo- 
 quence that, thirty years before, had stirred to their 
 depths the hearts of his hearers when he bade defiance 
 to the tyrannous might of the British king. But when 
 these two men were dead, Marshall — though destined, 
 as chief and controlling influence in the third division 
 of our governmental system, to mould the whole of that 
 system on the lines of Federalist thought and to prove 
 that a sound judiciary could largely affect an unsound 
 executive and legislature — even Marshall could not, 
 single-handed, stem the current that had gradually 
 gathered head. Virginia stands easily first among all 
 our commonwealths for the statesmen and warriors she 
 has brought forth ; and it is noteworthy that during the 
 long contest between the nationalists and separatists, 
 which forms the central fact in our history for the first 
 
 514 
 
IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE 
 
 three-quarters of a century of our national life, she gave 
 leaders to both sides at the two great crises : Washing- 
 ton and Marshall to the one, and Jefferson to the other, 
 when the question was one of opinion as to whether the 
 Union should be built up; and when the appeal to arms 
 was made to tear it down, Farragut and Thomas to the 
 North, Lee and Jackson to the South. 
 
 There was one eddy in the tide of Democratic success 
 that flowed so strongly to the southward. This was in 
 South Carolina. The fierce little Palmetto State has 
 always been a free-lance among her Southern sisters; 
 for instance, though usually ultrademocratic, she was 
 hostile to the two great Democratic chiefs, Jefferson 
 and Jackson, though both were from the South. At the 
 time that Morris came home, the brilliant little group 
 of Federalist leaders within her bounds, headed by men 
 of national renown like Pinckney and Harper, kept her 
 true to Federalism by downright force of intellect and 
 integrity; for they were among the purest as well as the 
 ablest statesmen of the day. 
 
 New York had been going through a series of bitter 
 party contests; any one examining a file of papers of 
 that day will come to the conclusion that party spirit 
 was even more violent and unreasonable then than now. 
 The two great Federalist leaders, Hamilton and Jay, 
 stood head and shoulders above all their Democratic 
 competitors, and they were backed by the best men in 
 the State, like Rufus King, Schuyler, and others. But, 
 though as orators and statesmen they had no rivals, 
 they were very deficient in the arts of political manage- 
 ment. Hamilton's imperious haughtiness had alienated 
 the powerful family of the Livingstons, who had thrown 
 in their lot with the Clintonians; and a still more valu- 
 able ally to the latter had arisen in that consummate 
 
 515 
 
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS 
 
 master of "machine" politics, Aaron Burr. In 1792, 
 Jay, then chief justice of the United States, had run for 
 governor against Clinton, and had received the majority 
 of the votes; but had been counted out by the return- 
 ing board in spite of the protest of its four Federalist 
 members — Gansevoort, Roosevelt, Jones, and Sands. 
 The indignation was extreme, and only Jay's patriotism 
 and good sense prevented an outbreak. However, the 
 memory of the fraud remained fresh in the minds of the 
 citizens, and at the next election for governor he was 
 chosen by a heavy majority, having then just come 
 back from his mission to England. Soon afterward his 
 treaty was published, and excited a whirlwind of in- 
 dignation; it was only ratified in the Senate through 
 Washington's great influence, backed by the magnif- 
 icent oratory of Fisher Ames, whose speech on this occa- 
 sion, when he was almost literally on his death-bed, 
 ranks among the half-dozen greatest of our country. 
 The treaty was very objectionable in certain points, but 
 it was most necessary to our well-being, and Jay was 
 probably the only American who could have negotiated 
 it. As with the Ashburton treaty many years later, 
 extreme sections in England attacked it as fiercely as 
 did the extreme sections here; and Lord Sheffield voiced 
 their feelings when he hailed the War of 1812 as offering 
 a chance to England to get back the advantages out of 
 which "Jay had duped Grenville." 
 
 But the clash with France shortly afterward swept 
 away the recollection of the treaty, and Jay was re- 
 elected in 1798. One of the arguments, by the way, 
 which was used against him in the canvass was that he 
 was an Abolitionist. But, in spite of his re-election, the 
 New York Democrats were steadily gaining ground. 
 
 Such was the situation when Morris returned. He 
 
 516 
 
IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE 
 
 at once took high rank among the Federalists, and in 
 April, 1800, just before the final wreck of their party, 
 was chosen by them to fill an unexpired term of three 
 years in the United States Senate. Before this he had 
 made it evident that his sympathies lay with Hamilton 
 and those who did not think highly of Adams. He did 
 not deem it wise to renominate the latter for the presi- 
 dency. He had even written to Washington, earnestly 
 beseeching him to accept the nomination; but Washing- 
 ton died a day or two after the letter was sent. In spite 
 of the jarring between the leaders, the Federalists nomi- 
 nated Adams and Pinckney. In the ensuing presidential 
 election many of the party chiefs, notably Marshall, of 
 Virginia, already a strong Adams man, faithfully stood 
 by the ticket in its entirety; but Hamilton, Morris, and 
 many others at the North probably hoped in their hearts 
 that, by the aid of the curious electoral system which 
 then existed, some chance would put the great Caro- 
 linian in the first place and make him President. In- 
 deed, there is little question that this might have been 
 done, had not Pinckney, one of the most high-minded 
 and disinterested statesmen we have ever had, emphat- 
 ically declined to profit in any way by the hurting of the 
 grim old Puritan. 
 
 The house thus divided against itself naturally fell, 
 and Jefferson was chosen President. It was in New 
 York that the decisive struggle took place, for that was 
 the pivotal State; and there the Democrats, under the 
 lead of the Livingstons and Clintons, but above all by 
 the masterly political manoeuvres of Aaron Burr, gained 
 a crushing victory. Hamilton, stung to madness by the 
 defeat, and sincerely believing that the success of his 
 opponents would be fatal to the Republic — for the two 
 parties hated each other with a blind fury unknown to 
 
 517 
 
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS 
 
 the organizations of the present day — actually proposed 
 to Jay, the governor, to nullify the action of the people 
 by the aid of the old legislature, a Federalist body, 
 which was still holding over, although the members of 
 its successor had been chosen. Jay, as pure as he was 
 brave, refused to sanction any such scheme of unworthy 
 partisanship. It is worth noting that the victors in 
 this election introduced for the first time the "spoils 
 system," in all its rigor, into our State affairs; imitating 
 the bad example of Pennsylvania a year or two previ- 
 ously. 
 
 When the Federalists in Congress, into which body 
 the choice for President had been thrown, took up Burr, 
 as a less objectionable alternative than Jefferson, Mor- 
 ris, much to his credit, openly and heartily disapproved 
 of the movement, and was sincerely glad that it failed. 
 For he thought Burr far the more dangerous man of the 
 two, and, moreover, did not believe that the evident in- 
 tention of the people should be thwarted. Both he and 
 Hamilton, on this occasion, acted more wisely and more 
 honestly than did most of their heated fellow partisans. 
 Writing to the latter, the former remarked: "It is dan- 
 gerous to be impartial in politics; you, who are temper- 
 ate in drinking, have never perhaps noticed the awk- 
 ward situation of a man who continues sober after the 
 company are drunk." 
 
 Morris joined the Senate at Philadelphia in May, 
 1800, but it almost immediately adjourned, to meet at 
 Washington in November, when he was again present. 
 Washington, as it then was, was a place whose strag- 
 gling squalor has often been described. Morris wrote 
 to the Princess de la Tour et Taxis that it needed noth- 
 ing "but houses, cellars, kitchens, well-informed men, 
 amiable women, and other little trifles of the kind to 
 
 518 
 
IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE 
 
 make the city perfect"; that it was "the very best city 
 in the world for a future residence," but that as he was 
 "not one of those good people whom we call posterity," 
 he would meanwhile like to live somewhere else. 
 
 During his three years' term in the Senate he was one 
 of the strong pillars of the Federalist party; but he was 
 both too independent and too erratic to act always with- 
 in strict party lines, and while he was an ultra-Federal- 
 ist on some points, he openly abandoned his fellows on 
 others. He despised Jefferson as a tricky and incapable 
 theorist, skilful in getting votes, but in nothing else; a 
 man who believed "in the wisdom of mobs, and the 
 moderation of Jacobins," and who found himself 'in 
 the wretched plight of being forced to turn out good 
 officers to make room for the unworthy." 
 
 After the election that turned them out of power, but 
 just before their opponents took office, the Federalists 
 in the Senate and House passed the famous judiciary 
 bill, and Adams signed it. It provided for a number of 
 new federal judges to act throughout the States, while 
 the Supreme Court was retained as the ultimate court 
 of decision. It was an excellent measure, inasmuch as 
 it simplified the work of the judiciary, saved the highest 
 branch from useless travelling, prevented the calendars 
 from being choked with work, and supplied an upright 
 federal judiciary to certain districts where the local 
 judges could not be depended upon to act honestly. 
 On the other hand, the Federalists employed it as a 
 means to keep themselves partly in power, after the na- 
 tion had decided that they should be turned out. Al- 
 though the Democrats had bitterly opposed it, yet if, 
 as was only right, the offices created by it had been left 
 vacant until Jefferson came in, it would probably have 
 been allowed to stand. But Adams, most improperly, 
 
 519 
 
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS 
 
 spent the last hours of his administration in putting in 
 the new judges. 
 
 Morris, who heartily championed the measure, wrote 
 his reasons for so doing to Livingston; giving, with his 
 usual frankness, those that were political and improper, 
 as well as those based on some public policy, but ap- 
 parently not appreciating the gravity of the charges he 
 so lightly admitted. He said: "The new judiciary bill 
 may have, and doubtless has, many little faults, but it 
 answers the double purpose of bringing justice near to 
 men's doors, and of giving additional fibre to the root 
 of government. You must not, my friend, judge of 
 other States by your own. Depend on it, that in some 
 parts of this Union justice cannot be readily obtained 
 in the state courts." So far, he was all right, and the 
 truth of his statements, and the soundness of his reasons, 
 could not be challenged as to the propriety of the law 
 itself; but he was much less happy in giving his views 
 of the way in which it would be carried out: "That the 
 leaders of the federal party may use this opportunity 
 to provide for friends and adherents is, I think, proba- 
 ble; and if they were my enemies, I should blame them 
 for it. Whether I should do the same thing myself is 
 another question. . . . They are about to experience 
 a heavy gale of adverse wind; can they be blamed for 
 casting many anchors to hold their ship through the 
 storm?" Most certainly they should be blamed for 
 casting this particular kind of anchor; it was a very 
 gross outrage for them to "provide for friends and ad- 
 herents" in such a manner. 
 
 The folly of their action was seen at once; for they 
 had so maddened the Democrats that the latter re- 
 pealed the act as soon as they came into power. This 
 also was of course all wrong, and was a simple sacrifice 
 
 520 
 
IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE 
 
 of a measure of good government to partisan rage. 
 Morris led the fight against it, deeming the repeal not 
 only in the highest degree unwise but also unconstitu- 
 tional. After the repeal was accomplished, the knowl- 
 edge that their greed to grasp office under the act was 
 probably the cause of the loss of an excellent law must 
 have been rather a bitter cud for the Federalists to 
 chew. Morris always took an exaggerated view of the 
 repeal, regarding it as a death-blow to the Constitution. 
 It was certainly a most unfortunate affair throughout; 
 and much of the blame attaches to the Federalists, al- 
 though still more to their antagonists. 
 
 The absolute terror with which even moderate Fed- 
 eralists had viewed the victory of the Democrats was 
 in a certain sense justifiable; for the leaders who led the 
 Democrats to triumph were the very men who had 
 fought tooth and nail against every measure necessary 
 to make us a free, orderly, and powerful nation. But 
 the safety of the nation really lay in the very fact that 
 the policy hitherto advocated by the now victorious 
 party had embodied principles so wholly absurd in prac- 
 tice that it was out of the question to apply them at all 
 to the actual running of the government. Jefferson 
 could write or speak — and could feel too — the most 
 high-sounding sentiments; but once it came to actions 
 he was absolutely at sea, and on almost every matter 
 — especially where he did well — he had to fall back on 
 the Federalist theories. Almost the only important 
 point on which he allowed himself free scope was that 
 of the national defenses; and here, particularly as re- 
 gards the navy, he worked very serious harm to the 
 country. Otherwise he generally adopted and acted on 
 the views of his predecessors; as Morris said, the Demo- 
 crats "did more to strengthen the executive than Fed- 
 
 521 
 
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS 
 
 eralists dared think of, even in Washington's day." As 
 a consequence, though the nation would certainly have 
 been better off if men like Adams or Pinckney had been 
 retained at the head of affairs, yet the change resulted 
 in far less harm than it bade fair to. 
 
 On the other hand the Federalists cut a very sorry 
 figure in opposition. We have never had another party 
 so little able to stand adversity. They lost their tem- 
 per first and they lost their principles next, and actually 
 began to take up the heresies discarded by their adver- 
 saries. Morris himself, untrue to all his previous record, 
 advanced various States'-rights doctrines; and the Fed- 
 eralists, the men who had created the Union, ended their 
 days under the grave suspicion of having desired to 
 break it up. Morris even opposed, and on a close vote 
 temporarily defeated, the perfectly unobjectionable 
 proposition to change the electoral system by designat- 
 ing the candidates for President and Vice-President; the 
 reason he gave was that he believed parties should be 
 forced to nominate both of their best men, and that he 
 regarded the Jefferson-Burr tie as a beautiful object- 
 lesson for teaching this point ! 
 
 On one most important question, however, he cut 
 loose from his party, who were entirely in the wrong, 
 and acted with the administration, who were behaving 
 in strict accordance with Federalist precepts. This was 
 in reference to the treaty by which we acquired Loui- 
 siana. 
 
 While in opposition, one of the most discreditable 
 features of the Republican-Democratic party had been 
 its servile truckling to France, which at times drove 
 it into open disloyalty to America. Indeed this sub- 
 servience to foreigners was a feature of our early party 
 history; and the most confirmed pessimist must admit 
 
 522 
 
IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE 
 
 that, as regards patriotism and indignant intolerance of 
 foreign control, the party organizations of to-day are 
 immeasurably superior to those of eighty or ninety 
 years back. But it was only while in opposition that 
 either party was ready to throw itself into the arms of 
 outsiders. Once the Democrats took the reins they 
 immediately changed their attitude. The West de- 
 manded New Orleans and the valley of the Mississippi; 
 and what it demanded it was determined to get. When 
 we only had the decaying weakness of Spain to deal 
 with, there was no cause for hurry; but when Louisiana 
 was ceded to France, at the time when the empire of 
 Napoleon was a match for all the rest of the world put 
 together, the country was up in arms at once. 
 
 The administration promptly began to negotiate for 
 the purchase of Louisiana. Morris backed them up 
 heartily, thus splitting off from the bulk of the Federal- 
 ists, and earnestly advocated far stronger measures than 
 had been taken. He believed that so soon as the French 
 should establish themselves in New Orleans we should 
 have a war with them; he knew it would be impossible 
 for the haughty chiefs of a military despotism long to 
 avoid collisions with the reckless and warlike back- 
 woodsmen of the border. Nor would he have been sorry 
 had such a war taken place. He said that it was a 
 necessity to us, for we were dwindling into a race of 
 mere speculators and drivelling philosophers, whereas 
 ten years of warfare would bring forth a crop of heroes 
 and statesmen, fit timber out of which to hew an em- 
 pire. 
 
 Almost his last act in the United States Senate was 
 to make a most powerful and telling speech in favor of 
 at once occupying the territory in dispute, and bidding 
 defiance to Napoleon. He showed that we could not 
 
 523 
 
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS 
 
 submit to having so dangerous a neighbor as France, 
 an ambitious and conquering nation, at whose head was 
 the greatest warrior of the age. With ringing emphasis 
 he claimed the Western regions as peculiarly our heri- 
 tage, as the property of the fathers of America which 
 they held in trust for their children. It was true that 
 France was then enjoying the peace which she had 
 wrung from the gathered armies of all Europe; yet he 
 advised us to fling down the gantlet fearlessly, not 
 hampering ourselves by an attempt at alliance with 
 Great Britain or any other power, but resting confident 
 that, if America was heartily in earnest, she would be 
 able to hold her own in any struggle. The cost of the 
 conquest he brushed contemptuously aside; he consid- 
 ered "that counting-house policy, which sees nothing 
 but money, a poor, short-sighted, half-witted, mean, and 
 miserable thing, as far removed from wisdom as is a 
 monkey from a man." He wished for peace; but he 
 did not believe the emperor would yield us the terri- 
 tory, and he knew that his fellow representatives, and 
 practically all the American people, were determined to 
 fight for it if they could get it in no other way; there- 
 fore he advised them to begin at once, and gain forth- 
 with what they wanted, and perhaps their example 
 would inspirit Europe to rise against the tyrant. 
 
 It was bold advice, and if need had arisen it would 
 have been followed; for we were bound to have Loui- 
 siana, if not by bargain and sale then by fair shock of 
 arms. But Napoleon yielded, and gave us the land for 
 fifteen millions, of which, said Morris: "I am content 
 to pay my share to deprive foreigners of all pretext for 
 entering our interior country; if nothing else were gained 
 by the treaty, that alone would satisfy me." 
 
 Morris's term as senator expired on March 4, 1803, 
 
 524 
 
IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE 
 
 and he was not re-elected; for New York State had 
 passed into the hands of the Democrats. But he still 
 continued to play a prominent part in public affairs, 
 for he was the leader in starting the project of the Erie 
 Canal. It was to him that we owe the original idea of 
 this great waterway, for he thought of it and planned 
 it out long before any one else. He had publicly pro- 
 posed it during the Revolutionary period; in 1803 he 
 began the agitation in its favor that culminated in its 
 realization, and he was chairman of the canal commis- 
 sioners from the time of their appointment, in 1810, 
 until within a few months of his death. The three first 
 reports of the commission were all from his pen. As 
 Stephen Van Rensselaer, himself one of the commis- 
 sioners from the beginning, said: "Gouverneur Morris 
 was the father of our great canal." He hoped ultimately 
 to make it a ship canal. While a member of the com- 
 mission, he not only discharged his duties as such with 
 characteristic energy and painstaking, but he also did 
 most effective outside work in advancing the enterprise, 
 while he mastered the subject more thoroughly in all 
 its details than did any other man. 
 
 He spent most of his time at Morrisania, but travelled 
 for two or three months every summer, sometimes go- 
 ing out to the then "far West," along the shores of 
 Lakes Erie and Ontario, and once descending the St. 
 Lawrence. At home he spent his time tilling his farm, 
 reading, receiving visits from his friends, and carrying on 
 a wide correspondence on business and politics. Jay's 
 home was within driving distance, and the two fine old 
 fellows saw much of each other. On the 25th of Decem- 
 ber, 1809, Morris, then fifty-six years old, married Miss 
 Anne Cary Randolph, a member of the famous Vir- 
 ginia family; he was very happy with her, and by her 
 
 525 
 
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS 
 
 he had one son. Three weeks after the marriage he 
 wrote Jay a pressing request to visit him: "I pray you 
 will, with your daughters, embark immediately in your 
 sleigh, after a very early breakfast, and push on so as 
 to reach this house in the evening. My wife sends her 
 love, and says she longs to receive her husband's friend; 
 that his sickness must be no excuse, for she will nurse 
 him. Come, then, and see your old friend perform his 
 part in an old-fashioned scene of domestic enjoyment." 
 Jay was very simple in his way of living; but Morris 
 was rather formal. When he visited his friend he al- 
 ways came with his valet, was shown straight to his 
 room without seeing any one, dressed himself with scru- 
 pulous nicety — being very particular about his pow- 
 dered hair — and then came down to see his host. 
 
 Although his letters generally dealt with public mat- 
 ters, he sometimes went into home details. He thus 
 wrote an amusing letter to a good friend of his, a lady, 
 who was desirous, following the custom of the day, to 
 send her boy to what was called a "college" at an ab- 
 surdly early age; he closed by warning her that "these 
 children of eleven, after a four years' course, in which 
 they may learn to smatter a little of everything, become 
 bachelors of arts before they know how to button their 
 clothes, and are the most troublesome and useless, some- 
 times the most pernicious, little animals that ever in- 
 fested a commonwealth." 
 
 At one time he received as his guest Moreau, the 
 exiled French general, then seeking service in the United 
 States. Writing in his diary an account of the visit, he 
 says: "In the course of our conversation, touching very 
 gently the idea of his serving (in case of necessity) 
 against France, he declares frankly that, when the oc- 
 casion arrives, he shall feel no reluctance; that France 
 
 52G 
 
IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE 
 
 having cast him out, he is a citizen of the country where 
 he lives, and has the same right to follow his trade here 
 as any other man." 
 
 He took the keenest pleasure in his life, and always 
 insisted that America was the pleasantest of all places 
 in which to live. Writing to a friend abroad, and men- 
 tioning that he respected the people of Britain, but did 
 not find them congenial, he added: "But were the man- 
 ners of those countries as pleasant as the people are re- 
 spectable, I should never be reconciled to their summers. 
 Compare the uninterrupted warmth and splendor of 
 America, from the first of May to the last of September, 
 and her autumn, truly celestial, with your shivering 
 June, your July and August sometimes warm but often 
 wet, your uncertain September, your gloomy October, 
 and your dismal November. Compare these things, and 
 then say how a man who prizes the charm of Nature can 
 think of making the exchange. If you were to pass one 
 autumn with us, you would not give it for the best six 
 months to be found in any other country. . . . There 
 is a brilliance in our atmosphere of which you can have 
 no idea." 
 
 He thoroughly appreciated the marvellous future that 
 lay before the race on this continent. Writing in 1801, 
 he says: "As yet we only crawl along the outer shell of 
 our country. The interior excels the part we inhabit 
 in soil, in climate, in everything. The proudest empire 
 in Europe is but a bauble compared to what America 
 will be, must be, in the course of two centuries, perhaps 
 of one!" And again: "With respect to this country, 
 calculation outruns fancy, and fact outruns calcula- 
 tion." 
 
 Until his hasty, impulsive temper became so soured 
 by partisanship as to warp his judgment, Morris re- 
 
 527 
 
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS 
 
 mained as well satisfied with the people and the system 
 of government as with the land itself. In one of his first 
 letters after his return to America he wrote: "There is 
 a fund of good sense and calmness of character here, 
 which will, I think, avoid all dangerous excesses. We 
 are free: we know it: and we know how to continue 
 free." On another occasion, about the same time, he 
 said: "Nil desperandum de republica is a sound prin- 
 ciple." Again, in the middle of Jefferson's first term: 
 "We have indeed a set of madmen in the administra- 
 tion, and they will do many foolish things; but there is 
 a vigorous vegetative principle at the root which will 
 make our tree flourish, let the winds blow as they may." 
 He at first took an equally just view of our political 
 system, saying that in adopting a republican form of 
 government he "not only took it, as a man does his 
 wife, for better or worse, but, what few men do with 
 their wives, knowing all its bad qualities." He observed 
 that there was always a counter-current in human af- 
 fairs, which opposed alike good and evil. "Thus the 
 good we hope is seldom attained, and the evil we fear 
 is rarely realized. The leaders of faction must for their 
 own sakes avoid errors of enormous magnitude; so that, 
 while the republican form lasts, we shall be fairly well 
 governed." He thought this form the one best suited 
 for us, and remarked that "every kind of government 
 was liable to evil; that the best was that which had 
 fewest faults; that the excellence even of that best de- 
 pended more on its fitness for the nation where it was 
 established than on intrinsic perfection." He de- 
 nounced, with a fierce scorn that they richly merit, 
 the despicable demagogues and witless fools who teach 
 that in all cases the voice of the majority must be im- 
 plicitly obeyed, and that public men have only to carry 
 
 528 
 
IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE 
 
 out its will, and thus "acknowledge themselves the 
 willing instruments of folly and vice. They declare 
 that in order to please the people they will, regardless 
 alike of what conscience may dictate or reason approve, 
 make the profligate sacrifice of public right on the altar 
 of private interest. What more can be asked by the 
 sternest tyrant of the most despicable slave ? Creatures 
 of this sort are the tools which usurpers employ in build- 
 ing despotism." 
 
 Sounder and truer maxims never were uttered; but 
 unfortunately the indignation naturally excited by the 
 utter weakness and folly of Jefferson's second term, and 
 the pitiable incompetence shown both by him, by his 
 successor, and by their party associates in dealing with 
 affairs, so inflamed and exasperated Morris as to make 
 him completely lose his head, and hurried him into an 
 opposition so violent that his follies surpassed the worst 
 of the follies he condemned. He gradually lost faith in 
 our republican system, and in the Union itself. His old 
 jealousy of the West revived more strongly than ever; 
 he actually proposed that our enormous masses of new 
 territory, destined one day to hold the bulk of our popu- 
 lation, "should be governed as provinces, and allowed 
 no voice in our councils." So hopelessly futile a scheme 
 is beneath comment; and it cannot possibly be recon- 
 ciled with his previous utterances when he descanted on 
 our future greatness as a people, and claimed the West 
 as the heritage of our children. His conduct can only 
 be unqualifiedly condemned; and he has but the poor 
 palliation that, in our early history, many of the lead- 
 ing men in New York, and an even larger proportion in 
 New England, felt the same narrow, illiberal jealousy 
 of the West which had formerly been felt by the Eng- 
 lish statesmen for America as a whole. 
 
 529 
 
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS 
 
 It is well indeed for our land that we of this genera- 
 tion have at last learned to think nationally, and, no 
 matter in what State we live, to view our whole coun- 
 try with the pride of personal possession. 
 
 530 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 THE NORTHERN DISUNION MOVEMENT AMONG 
 
 THE FEDERALISTS 
 
 It is a painful thing to have to record that the closing 
 act in a great statesman's career not only compares ill 
 with what went before, but is actually to the last de- 
 gree a discreditable and unworthy performance. 
 
 Morris's bitterness and anger against the government 
 grew apace; and finally his hatred for the administra- 
 tion became such, that, to hurt it, he was willing also 
 to do irreparable harm to the nation itself. He vio- 
 lently opposed the various embargo acts, and all the 
 other governmental measures of the decade before the 
 war; and worked himself up to such a pitch, when hos- 
 tilities began, that, though one of the founders of the 
 Constitution, though formerly one of the chief expo- 
 nents of the national idea, and though once a main 
 upholder of the Union, he abandoned every patriotic 
 principle and became an ardent advocate of Northern 
 secession. 
 
 To any reasoning student of American history it goes 
 without saying that there was very good cause for his 
 anger with the administration. From the time the 
 House of Virginia came into power, until the beginning 
 of Monroe's administration, there was a distinctly anti- 
 New England feeling at Washington, and much of the 
 legislation bore especially heavily on the Northeast. 
 Excepting Jefferson, we have never produced an Exec- 
 utive more helpless than Madison, when it came to 
 grappling with real dangers and difficulties. Like his 
 
 531 
 
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS 
 
 predecessor, he was only fit to be President in a time of 
 profound peace; he was utterly out of place the instant 
 matters grew turbulent, or difficult problems arose to 
 be solved, and he was a ridiculously incompetent leader 
 for a war with Great Britain. He was entirely too timid 
 to have embarked on such a venture of his own accord, 
 and was simply forced into it by the threat of losing 
 his second term. The fiery young Democrats of the 
 South and West, and their brothers of the Middle 
 States, were the authors of the war; they themselves, 
 for all their bluster, were but one shade less incompe- 
 tent than their nominal chief, when it came to actual 
 work, and were shamefully unable to make their words 
 good by deeds. 
 
 The administration thus drifted into a war which it 
 had neither the wisdom to avoid, nor the forethought 
 to prepare for. In view of the fact that the war was 
 their own, it is impossible to condemn sufficiently 
 strongly the incredible folly of the Democrats in having 
 all along refused to build a navy or provide any other 
 adequate means of defense. In accordance with their 
 curiously foolish theories, they persisted in relying 
 on that weakest of all weak reeds, the militia, who 
 promptly ran away every time they faced a foe in the 
 open. This applied to all, whether Eastern, Western, 
 or Southern; the men of the Northern States in 1812 
 and 1813 did as badlv as, and no worse than, the Vir- 
 ginians in 1814. Indeed, one of the good results of the 
 war was that it did away forever with all reliance on 
 the old-time militia, the most expensive and inefficient 
 species of soldiery that could be invented. During the 
 first year the monotonous record of humiliations and 
 defeats was only relieved by the splendid victories of 
 the navy which the Federalists had created twelve 
 
 532 
 
NORTHERN DISUNION MOVEMENT 
 
 years previously, and which had been hurt rather than 
 benefited in the intervening time. Gradually, however, 
 the people themselves began to bring out leaders: two, 
 Jackson and Scott, were really good generals, under 
 whom our soldiers became able to face even the Eng- 
 lish regulars, then the most formidable fighting troops 
 in the world; and it must be remembered that Jackson 
 won his fights absolutely unhelped by the administra- 
 tion. In fact, the government at Washington does not 
 deserve one shred of credit for any of the victories we 
 won, although to it we directly owe the greater number 
 of our defeats. 
 
 Granting, however, all that can be said as to the 
 hopeless inefficiency of the administration, both in mak- 
 ing ready for and in waging the war, it yet remains true 
 that the war itself was eminently justifiable, and was 
 of the greatest service to the nation. We had been bul- 
 lied by England and France until we had to fight to 
 preserve our national self-respect; and we very properly 
 singled out our chief aggressor, though it would perhaps 
 have been better still to have acted on the proposition 
 advanced in Congress, and to have declared war on 
 both. Although nominally the peace left things as they 
 had been, practically we gained our point; and we cer- 
 tainly came out of the contest with a greatly increased 
 reputation abroad. In spite of the ludicrous series of 
 failures which began with our first attempt to invade 
 Canada, and culminated at Bladensburg, yet in a suc- 
 cession of contests on the ocean and the lakes, we shat- 
 tered the charmed shield of British naval invincibility; 
 while on the northern frontier we developed under Scott 
 and Brown an infantry which, unlike any of the armies 
 of Continental Europe, was able to meet on equal terms 
 the British infantry in pitched battle in the open; and 
 
 533 
 
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS 
 
 at New Orleans we did what the best of Napoleon's 
 marshals, backed by the flower of the French soldiers, 
 had been unable to accomplish during five years of war- 
 fare in Spain, and inflicted a defeat such as no English 
 army had suffered during a quarter of a century of un- 
 broken warfare. Above all, the contest gave an im- 
 mense impetus to our national feeling, and freed our 
 politics forever from any dependence on those of a for- 
 eign power. 
 
 The war was distinctly worth fighting, and resulted 
 in good to the country. The blame that attaches to 
 Madison and the elder Democratic-Republican leaders, 
 as well as to their younger associates, Clay, Calhoun, 
 and the rest, who fairly flogged them into action, relates 
 to their utter failure to make any preparations for the 
 contest, to their helpless inability to carry it on, and to 
 the extraordinary weakness and indecision of their pol- 
 icy throughout; and on all these points it is hardly pos- 
 sible to visit them with too unsparing censure. 
 
 Yet, grave though these faults were, they were mild 
 compared to those committed by Morris and the other 
 ultra-Federalists of New York and New England. Mor- 
 ris's opposition to the war led him to the most extrava- 
 gant lengths. In his hatred of the opposite party he 
 lost all loyalty to the nation. He championed the Brit- 
 ish view of their right to impress seamen from our ships; 
 he approved of peace on the terms they offered, which 
 included a curtailment of our Western frontier, and the 
 erection along it of independent Indian sovereignties 
 under British protection. He found space in his letters 
 to exult over the defeats of Bonaparte, but could spare 
 no word of praise for our own victories. 
 
 He actually advocated repudiating our war debt,* on 
 
 * As, for instance, in a letter to David R. Ogden, April 5, 1813. 
 
 534 
 
NORTHERN DISUNION MOVEMENT 
 
 the ground that it was void, being founded on a moral 
 wrong; and he wished the Federalists to make public 
 profession of their purpose, so that when they should 
 come back to power, the holders might have no reason 
 to complain that there had been no warning of their 
 intention. To Josiah Quincy, on May 15th, he wrote: 
 "Should it be objected, as it probably will to favor 
 lenders and their associates, that public faith is pledged, 
 it may be replied that a pledge wickedly given is not 
 to be redeemed." He thus advanced the theory that 
 in a government ruled by parties, which come into 
 power alternately, any debt could be repudiated, at any 
 time, if the party in power happened to disapprove of 
 its originally being incurred. No greenback demagogue 
 of the lowest type ever advocated a proposition more 
 dishonest or more contemptible. 
 
 He wrote that he agreed with Pickering that it was 
 impious to raise taxes for so unjust a war. He endeav- 
 ored, fortunately in vain, to induce Rufus King in the 
 Senate to advocate the refusal of supplies of every sort, 
 whether of men or money, for carrying on the war; but 
 King was far too honorable to turn traitor. Singularly 
 forgetful of his speeches in the Senate ten years before, 
 he declared that he wished that a foreign power might 
 occupy and people the West, so as, by outside pressure, 
 to stifle our feuds. He sneered at the words union and 
 constitution, as being meaningless. He railed bitterly 
 at the honest and loyal majority of his fellow Federal- 
 ists in New York, who had professed their devotion to 
 the Union; and in a letter of April 29, to Harrison Gray 
 Otis — who was almost as bad as himself — he strongly 
 advocated secession, writing among other things that 
 he wished the New York Federalists to declare publicly 
 that "the Union, being the means of freedom, should 
 
 535 
 
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS 
 
 be prized as such, but that the end should not be sacri- 
 ficed to the means." By comparing this with Calhoun's 
 famous toast at the Jefferson birthday dinner in 1830, 
 "The Union; next to our liberty the most dear; may we 
 all remember that it can only be preserved by respect- 
 ing the rights of the States and distributing equally the 
 benefit and the burden of the Union," it can be seen 
 how completely Morris's utterances went on all fours 
 with those of the great Nullifier. 
 
 To Pickering he wrote, on October 17, 1814: "I hear 
 every day professions of attachment to the Union, and 
 declarations as to its importance. I should be glad to 
 meet with some one who could tell me what has become 
 of the Union, in what it consists, and to what useful 
 purpose it endures." He regarded the dissolution of 
 the Union to be so nearly an accomplished fact that 
 the only question was whether the boundary should be 
 "the Delaware, the Susquehanna, or the Potomac"; 
 for he thought that New York would have to go with 
 New England. He nourished great hopes of the Hart- 
 ford Convention, which he expected would formally 
 come out for secession; he wrote Otis that the conven- 
 tion should declare that the Union was already broken, 
 and that all that remained to do was to take action for 
 the preservation of the interests of the Northeast. He 
 was much chagrined when the convention fell under the 
 control of Cabot and the moderates. As late as Janu- 
 ary 10, 1815, he wrote that the only proceeding from 
 which the people of his section would gain practical 
 benefit would be a "severance of the Union." 
 
 In fact, throughout the War of 1812 he appeared as 
 the open champion of treason to the nation, of dis- 
 honesty to the nation's creditors, and of cringing sub- 
 serviency to a foreign power. It is as impossible to 
 
 536 
 
NORTHERN DISUNION MOVEMENT 
 
 reconcile his course with his previous career and teach- 
 ings as it is to try to make it square with the rules of 
 statesmanship and morality. His own conduct affords 
 a conclusive condemnation of his theories as to the 
 great inferiority of a government conducted by the 
 multitude, to a government conducted by the few who 
 should have riches and education. Undoubtedly he 
 was one of these few; he was an exceptionally able man, 
 and a wealthy one; but he went farther wrong at this 
 period than the majority of our people — the "mob" as 
 he would have contemptuously called them — have ever 
 gone at any time; for though every State in turn, and 
 almost every statesman, has been wrong upon some 
 issue or another, yet in the long run the bulk of the 
 people have always hitherto shown themselves true to 
 the cause of right. Morris strenuously insisted upon 
 the need of property being defended from the masses; 
 yet he advocated repudiation of the national debt, 
 which he should have known to be quite as dishonest 
 as the repudiation of his individual liabilities, and he 
 was certainly aware that the step is a short one between 
 refusing to pay a man what ought to be his and taking 
 away from him what actually is his. 
 
 There were many other Federalist leaders in the same 
 position as himself, especially in the three Southern New 
 England States, where the whole Federalist party laid 
 itself open to the gravest charges of disloyalty. Morris 
 was not alone in his creed at this time. On the con- 
 trary, his position is interesting because it is typical of 
 that assumed by a large section of his party throughout 
 the Northeast. In fact, the Federalists in this portion 
 of the Union had split in three, although the lines of 
 cleavage were not always well marked. Many of them 
 remained heartily loyal to the national idea; the bulk 
 
 537 
 
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS 
 
 hesitated as to whether they should go all lengths or 
 not; while a large and influential minority, headed by 
 Morris, Pickering, Quincy, Lowell, and others, were 
 avowed disunionists. Had peace not come when it did, 
 it is probable that the moderates would finally have 
 fallen under the control of these ultras. The party de- 
 veloped an element of bitter unreason in defeat; it was 
 a really sad sight to see a body of able, educated men, 
 interested and skilled in the conduct of public affairs, 
 all going angrily and stupidly wrong on the one question 
 that was of vital concern to the nation. 
 
 It is idle to try to justify the proceedings of the Hart- 
 ford Convention, or of the Massachusetts and Connect- 
 icut legislatures. The decision to keep the New Eng- 
 land troops as an independent command was of itself 
 sufficient ground for condemnation; moreover, it was 
 not warranted by any show of superior prowess on the 
 part of the New Englanders, for a portion of Maine 
 continued in possession of the British till the close of 
 the war. The Hartford resolutions were so framed as 
 to justify seceding or not seceding as events turned out; 
 a man like Morris could extract comfort from them, 
 while it was hoped they would not frighten those who 
 were more loyal. The majority of the people in New 
 England were beyond question loyal, exactly as in 1860 
 a majority of Southerners were opposed to secession; 
 but the disloyal element was active and resolute, and 
 hoped to force the remainder into its own way of think- 
 ing. It failed signally, and was buried beneath a load 
 of disgrace; and New England was taught thus early 
 and by heart the lesson that wrongs must be righted 
 within, and not without the Union. It would have been 
 well for her sister section of the South, so loyal in 1815, 
 if forty-five years afterward she had spared herself the 
 
 538 
 
NORTHERN DISUNION MOVEMENT 
 
 necessity of learning the same lesson at an infinitely 
 greater cost. 
 
 The truth is that it is nonsense to reproach any one 
 section with being especially disloyal to the Union. At 
 one time or another almost every State has shown 
 strong particularistic leanings; Connecticut and Penn- 
 sylvania, for example, quite as much as Virginia or 
 Kentucky. Fortunately the outbursts were never sim- 
 ultaneous in a majority. It is as impossible to question 
 the fact that at one period or another of the past, many 
 of the States in each section have been very shaky in 
 their allegiance, as it is to doubt that they are now all 
 heartily loyal. The secession movement of 1860 was 
 pushed to extremities, instead of being merely planned 
 and threatened, and the revolt was peculiarly abhor- 
 rent, because of the intention to make slavery the "cor- 
 ner-stone" of the new nation, and to reintroduce the 
 slave trade, to the certain ultimate ruin of the Southern 
 whites, but at least it was entirely free from the mean- 
 ness of being made in the midst of a doubtful struggle 
 with a foreign foe. Indeed, in this respect the ultra- 
 Federalists of New York and New England in 1814 
 should be compared with the infamous Northern copper- 
 heads of the Vallandigham stripe rather than with the 
 gallant Confederates who risked and lost all in fighting 
 for the cause of their choice. Half a century before the 
 "stars and bars" waved over Lee's last intrenchments, 
 perfervid New England patriots were fond of flaunting 
 "the flag with five stripes," and drinking to the health 
 of the — fortunately still-born — new nation. Later on, 
 the disunion movement among the Northern Abolition- 
 ists, headed by Garrison, was perhaps the most abso- 
 lutely senseless of all, for its success meant the imme- 
 diate abandonment of every hope of abolition. 
 
 539 
 
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS 
 
 In each one of these movements men of the highest 
 character and capacity took part. Morris had by previ- 
 ous services rendered the whole nation his debtor; Gar- 
 rison was one of the little band who, in the midst of 
 general apathy, selfishness, and cowardice, dared to de- 
 mand the cutting out of the hideous plague spot of our 
 civilization; while Lee and Jackson were as remarkable 
 for stainless purity and high-mindedness as they were 
 for their consummate military skill. But the disunion 
 movements in which they severally took part were 
 wholly wrong. An Englishman of to-day may be 
 equally proud of the valor of Cavalier and Round- 
 head; but, if competent to judge, he must admit that 
 the Roundhead was right. So it is with us. The man 
 who fought for secession warred for a cause as evil and 
 as capable of working lasting harm as the doctrine of 
 the divine right of kings itself. But we may feel an 
 intense pride in his gallantry; and we may believe in 
 his honesty as heartily as we believe in that of the only 
 less foolish being who wishes to see our government 
 strongly centralized, heedless of the self-evident fact 
 that over such a vast land as ours the nation can exist 
 only as a Federal Union; and that, exactly as the lib- 
 erty of the individual and the rights of the States can 
 only be preserved by upholding the strength of the na- 
 tion, so this same localizing of power in all matters not 
 essentially national is vital to the well-being and dura- 
 bility of the government. 
 
 Besides the honorable men drawn into such move- 
 ments, there have always been plenty who took part in 
 or directed them for their own selfish ends, or whose 
 minds were so warped and their sense of political mo- 
 rality so crooked as to make them originate schemes 
 
 540 
 
NORTHERN DISUNION MOVEMENT 
 
 that would have reduced us to the impotent level of the 
 Spanish-American republics. These men were peculiar 
 to neither section. In 1803, Aaron Burr of New York 
 was undoubtedly anxious to bring about in the North- 
 east* what sixty years later Jefferson Davis of Missis- 
 sippi so nearly succeeded in doing in the South; and the 
 attempt in the South to make a hero of the one is as 
 foolish as it would be to make a hero of the other in the 
 North. If there are such virtues as loyalty and patriot- 
 ism, then there must exist the corresponding crime of 
 treason; if there is any merit in practising the first, 
 then there must be equal demerit in committing the 
 last. Emasculated sentimentalists may try to strike 
 from the national dictionary the word treason; but un- 
 til that is done, Jefferson Davis must be deemed guilty 
 thereof. 
 
 There are, however, very few of our statesmen whose 
 characters can be painted in simple, uniform colors, like 
 Washington and Lincoln on the one hand, or Burr and 
 Davis on the other. Nor is Morris one of these few. 
 His place is alongside of men like Madison, Samuel 
 Adams, and Patrick Henry, who did the nation great 
 service at times, but each of whom, at some one or two 
 critical junctures, ranged himself with the forces of dis- 
 order. 
 
 After the peace, Morris accommodated himself to the 
 altered condition with his usual buoyant cheerfulness; 
 he was too light-hearted, and, to say the truth, had too 
 good an opinion of himself, to be cast down even by the 
 signal failure of his expectations and the memory of the 
 by no means creditable part he had played. Besides, 
 
 * People sometimes forget that Burr was as willing to try sedition in the East 
 as in the West. 
 
 541 
 
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS 
 
 he had the great virtue of always good-humoredly yield- 
 ing to the inevitable. He heartily wished the country 
 well, and kept up a constant correspondence with men 
 high in influence at Washington. He disliked the tariff 
 bill of 1816; he did not believe in duties or imposts, 
 favoring internal, although not direct, taxation. He 
 was sharp-sighted enough to see that the Federal party 
 had shot its bolt and outlived its usefulness, and that 
 it was time for it to dissolve. To a number of Federal- 
 ists at Philadelphia, who wished to continue the organ- 
 ization, he wrote strongly advising them to give up the 
 idea, and adding some very sound and patriotic coun- 
 sel. "Let us forget party and think of our country. 
 That country embraces both parties. We must en- 
 deavor, therefore, to save and benefit both. This can- 
 not be effected while political delusions array good men 
 against each other. If you abandon the contest, the 
 voice of reason, now drowned in factious vociferation, 
 will be listened to and heard. The pressure of distress 
 will accelerate the moment of reflection; and when it 
 arrives the people will look out for men of sense, experi- 
 ence, and integrity. Such men may, I trust, be found 
 in both parties; and if our country be delivered, what 
 does it signify whether those who operate her salvation 
 wear a Federal or Democratic cloak?" These words 
 formed almost his last public utterance, for they were 
 penned but a couple of months before his death ; and he 
 might well be content to let them stand as a fit closing 
 to his public career. 
 
 He died November 6, 1816, when sixty-four years 
 old, after a short illness. He had suffered at intervals 
 for a long time from gout; but he had enjoyed general 
 good health, as his erect, commanding, well-built figure 
 
 542 
 
NORTHERN DISUNION MOVEMENT 
 
 showed; for he was a tall and handsome man. He was 
 buried on his own estate at Morrisania. 
 
 There has never been an American statesman of 
 keener intellect or more brilliant genius. Had he pos- 
 sessed but a little more steadiness and self-control he 
 would have stood among the two or three very foremost. 
 He was gallant and fearless. He was absolutely upright 
 and truthful ; the least suggestion of falsehood was ab- 
 horrent to him. His extreme, aggressive frankness, 
 joined to a certain imperiousness of disposition, made 
 it difficult for him to get along well with many of the 
 men with whom he was thrown in contact. In politics 
 he was too much of a free-lance ever to stand very high 
 as a leader. He was very generous and hospitable; he 
 was witty and humorous, a charming companion, and 
 extremely fond of good living. He had a proud, almost 
 hasty temper, and was quick to resent an insult. He 
 was strictly just; and he made open war on all traits 
 that displeased him, especially meanness and hypoc- 
 risy. He was essentially a strong man, and he was an 
 American through and through. 
 
 Perhaps his greatest interest for us lies in the fact 
 that he was a shrewder, more far-seeing observer and 
 recorder of contemporary men and events, both at home 
 and abroad, than any other American or foreign states- 
 man of his time. But aside from this he did much last- 
 ing work. He took a most prominent part in bringing 
 about the independence of the colonies, and afterward 
 in welding them into a single powerful nation, whose 
 greatness he both foresaw and foretold. He made the 
 final draft of the United States Constitution; he first 
 outlined our present system of national coinage; he 
 originated and got under way the plan for the Erie 
 
 543 
 
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS 
 
 Canal; as minister to France he successfully performed 
 the most difficult task ever allotted to an American 
 representative at a foreign capital. With all his faults, 
 there are few men of his generation to whom the coun- 
 try owes more than to Gouverneur Morris. 
 
 544 
 
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