~   ~
FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY:' 2
FROMi THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
BY
CHARLES INGERSOLL.
"La liberte est un alimnent dle bon suc, nmais de forte digestion; il faut des estomaes
bien sains pour le supporter."                                   J. J. ROUSSEAU.
PHILADELPHIA:
J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO.
l 875.
i'~x
.- t
,., \-  t4,                
REGARDEJ) 
Entered, according to Act of Congress, in tihe year 1875, by
CHARLES INGERSOLL,
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington. 
PREFACE.
THESE pages, which have been much curtailed
froii what were prepared for the press, in the
hope, by diminishing their number, of increasing
the chance of their being read, rest on a position,
not, indeed, very new, that it is from the people
government like ours must take its measure; that
democratic institutions are meaningless when the
people leave the watch; beginning to flag when a
single citizen deserts his duty; and getting worse
and worse as skulking goes on.
Democracy is now, and always has been, a word
of fear in the United States; it is so everywhere.
But whatever we have we owe to it. Prince Gortscha,koff, in the darkness of Russian despotism,
may be an honester man than Mr. Disraeli; but
the Englishman stands in the light; he accounts, if
not to the people, to the country.
3 
PREFACE.
On this idea our institutions rest. We trust
society. But it is composed of materials bad and
good.   If our institutions reflect only the bad
materials, government is bad and the laws badly
administered. They are good, or, as good as they
can be made, when they reflect all1. If, reflecting
all, they are, still, bad, the experiment we make,
and which every political philosopher, even the
most hopeful, Mr. Jefferson, for example, has regarded as an experiment, fails, so far. Not entirely, but so far.
Every candid man must admit that society,
with us so highly capable, does not infilse itself
into government.  Government is not inspired by
all, but, as in other parts of the world, by the
few. It means the few, not the mnany. It has
the same vice here as everywhere.
There are at least two stages of the experiment
of representative democracy. There is the experiment whether the masses possess will and stuff
enough of character to have themselves represented; and there is, afterwards, the experiment
whether a government which does represent them
is capable of governing.
4 
PREFACE.
Under monarchical institutions the central
idea is the divinity of the king,; whom it is a
religion to respect, though he be the meanest of
mortals. Under democratic institutions the central idea is the divinity of the people; but we do
not respect them at all.
Tile word democracy is used by the author, only,
in its broad sense, not that of party. We are a
democracy, a representative one; and there can
be no party in the United States, whatever it may
call itself, that is not democratic.   It was meant,
at first, in the questions here considered, not to
touch points on which there are party differences,
but that was found impossible, and given up.
Party the writer must see (as who does not?)
through the mists of his prejudices, and have for
his errors, if he fall into them, the excuse that
all have.
I    DELPHIA, December, 1874.
5
4
*,:
14
I, 
0
0 
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
Democracy at the Time of the Revolution
PAGE
9
CHAPTE R  II.
Democracy in the Federal Convention.
CHAPTER III.
Demnocracy an Experiment...
CHAPTER IV.
I)emocracy under the New Government.
CHAPTER V.
Democracy comes into Power..
CHAPTER VI.
Apathy of the People.
CHAPTER VII.
Democracy  tested  by  the  Institution  of
Slaveryv.....
17
79
87
114
. 134
Doiiiestic
148 
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER VIII.
Federalisni.
CIIAPTER IX.
Demniocracy has to make its Way  against Estal]ishe(d
Ideas and the Force of Authoritv.. 
CHAPTER X.
Predictions.
CIIAPTER XI.
Recapitulation
CHAPTER XII.
Concluding Observations...
s
PAGE
.'. 222
240
257
. 265
271 
FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY
FROM THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
CHAPTER I.
DEMOCRACY AT THE TIME OF THE REVOLUTION.
SECTION I.
INTRODUCTORY.
THE world resounds with peans to liberty, but
not with the praises of democracy, though without democracy liberty is incomplete. Those who
have thought and written for the instruction and
amusement of mankind have been, commonly, in the
interest of the great, and of those children of fortune whose support and patronage could be profitable, but whose inclinations are not with the people.
Shakspeare, writing to please, three centuries ago,
made the masses contemptible alike for tragedy
and comedyv; and, at the end of the last century,
a demnagogue, who exclaimed, the people, the poor
29
REGARDED
2
9 
10    FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM
people, was denounced, not because he was a wretch
who cared for nobody, but because he made his
exclamation in the sense of a declared and deadly
foe of the aristocracy. It was their cue to think
the people vile. Shall they be always thought
vile? To say that the voice of the people is the
voice of God is blasphemous; but to say that the
voice of all must be more like the voice of God
than any other that is heard on earth, is neither
blasphemous nor foolish.
In the Old World, where democracy must come
out of the depths of ignorance, with revolution in
its wake, the many, with eager hope, and the few,
with profound apprehension, look to the day when
the title to power will be the gift of the people. In
the New World the sentiment towards democracy
is anomalous. Where the means of comfort and
happiness are within the easy reach of all, democracy cannot be wholly out of favor. But it may
sink, of which we have warnings; for, though the
day may not return when the people will be wholly
without consideration, yet the many may prove
no better than the few, and government, always,
remain a problem
It cannot be superfluous, in a country which
God has blessed with opportunities such as ours,
to calculate some of the chances of this prodigious 
THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
experiment, of which posterity, not we, are to see
the solution.
Democracy is no natural system. It is easier
to be a slave than a freeman. Through men's
weakness, the inclination is to power; to glitter
and show; to the aristocratic; to high birth, with
wealth for its accessory, and the qualities of the
man consigned to the chapter of accidents. This
yearning is seen in every country. It is seen, in
the United States, in the ridiculous assumption
of titles of honour, and the adoration of foreign
rank with a certain uneasiness at having none of
our own. At Rome, though the same man might
be magistrate, priest, and soldier, classification was
endless. Not a small part of mankind live in
caste to this day; people come into the world to
conditions in life that are immutable. Women,
who are half the world, and by their helplessness
an aristocracy, being the part of creation which
God has given us to toil and provide for, seldom
love equality. The idea of an order of men of
hereditary dignity is one which there never has
been, and never will be, a time when thoughts
will not recur to.
Three hundred years ago Europe was rude, and
the well-born spread tables for those of inferior
condition, who fed at their expense, and submitted
11 
12   FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM
in return to every species of indignity. A system
which compelled one of the first of human beings,
because he was not privileged, to crawl at the feet
of his insulter, because he was, may assort with
inveterate prejudices, but it is not civilized.*
People used to buy from princes fragments of
authority, and apply them to protect their own
acquisitions, which otherwise would have been
wasted  by  the  hand  of power.   In this way
arose equality; republics in Italy and Switzerland;
and cities everywhere. It was the foundation of
modern liberty.  Men, being judges of their own
wants, purchased the right to take care of them.
It was the origin of the system, which, in the
United States, has gone so far; and now, there
seems to be a purpose to counteract, of leaving to
every patch of territory as much as possible of its
government. It was the dawn of the modern denmocratic principle, the first concession to society;
not to a class, but to the people. It was the beginning of that freedom which boasts, not, I'am a
Roman citizen, but, Ianam a man.
* Shakspeare is believed to have been the victim of some
extraordinary ill treatment on the part of a young Furl of
Pembroke, and to have submitted.  See Hallan's and other
writers' ideas about it, Introduction to the Literature of
Europe, vol. iii. pp. 37-40. 
THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
SECTION II.
THE REVOLUTION OF 176-PREPOSSESSIONS AGAINST DEMOCRACY.
When the Revolution began, the educated
thought of America was far from democratic, it
was English; but we were free, though dependent,
and democracy was a social fact. This was true
of some of the colonies more than of others, but
everywhere a fact; and when the home government was set aside it became political as well as
social.  The Revolution was not a social revolution, and the principal change the colonies underwent was the transfer of allegiance; the crown
passed from the king to the people. They were
democratic, by dint of circumstances at work long
before the Revolutionary leaders were born. Democracy was a growth; not coming of thought or
study, not found by research, or in the meditations
of lawgivers, but springing from the earth, like a
fountain. It was the instinct of the people, the
production of society, as we see society, unaided
by statesmanship and learning, sometimes hindered by them, advance itself from century to
century. Far from being urged by those who
encouraged the people to break with the British
crown, it was expressly and strongly disclaimed
13 
FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM
by them; but it was inevitable. Had the people,
instead of being eager for it, been, like their great
men, indisposed to democracy, where were the institutions to which they could turn? where the
materials out of which to construct a government
not democratic? where the power that was not in
the people? How were they to set up a monarchy? how preserve and protect it with no aristocratic support? Democracy was a fate, and the
only open question was, how much democracy.
Did, then, our fathers, the men we worship,
movers of a revolution, did they repent, would they
draw back, were they false to the people? They
hesitated to jump in the dark; they paused before
what was terrible; terrible because it was unknown,
untried, and against the prejudices and opinions of
the world. Awed by the doubts, and respecting the
traditions, of mankind, then controlled by prejudices wholly aristocratic, they had no confidence in
the people, and gave way to democracy with reluctance. Whoever will take up and examine the
works of the most liberal thinkers upon the economy of nations will be satisfied that, before our
time, the capacity of society to regulate itself to
the extent now attempted in the United  States,
never was so much as conceived or imagined.
14 
THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
SECTION III.
ANCIENT AND MODERN DEMOCRACY.
Of ancient democracy, which dates long before
representation, we have a very imperfect understanding, for want of knowledge of the organization of ancient society. In the events of the old
republics, their wars, tumults, and disturbances,
we have the instruction of history, but we have
only a faint idea of the mutual relations and
daily existence of individuals.   The  prevalence
of frightful debauchery and barbarous cruelty,
side by side with exalted virtue, like those stupendous architectural remains that leave everything modern to look so puny and insignificant, of
people who were, at the same time, destitute of
the common conveniences and appliances of daily
life, makes it probable that ancient and modern
liberty differ more than we can understand, and
that from the old to the new there can be neither
sound argument nor safe deduction.
Modern democracy has not had its hundred
years, but it seems to be making its way like a
Providence, regardless what men think of it, or do.
In Europe, their only'democratic revolution which
ran its course, that of France in 1789, was a dis
15 
16   FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM
appointment; too much was looked for.  That of
England in 1640 was a disappointment. In 1848,
the people were a miserable failure. Nowhere in
Europe have they made their proofs; nowhere in
America have they achieved a triumph to silence
their enemies. It is, by a large portion of the intelligence of the world, regarded askance where it
is not regarded with terror.
But, by what shall it be judged? By time.
Democracy came into the world as other systems
came before it; as feudalism came, and then mnonarchy, to be judged by their works. There could
be no other demonstration. Men did not know
till they saw that the feudal system was to rule
Europe, redeem society, rescue civilization, and restore order; that feudalism being worn out, the
right of one man to rule all the rest, by the grace
of God, would establish itself everywhere, and
occupy the field. 
THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
CHAPTER II.
DEMOCRACY IN THIE FEDERAL CONVENTION.
SECTION I.
THE CONVENTION NOT DEMOCRATIC.
TUE men who met in convention, in May, 1787,
to frame our fundamental laws, saw democracy
as Numa saw the empire of the Cmsars; they
saw its infancy, they did not see it conquer the
world. The day was not come when the French
Revolution, the career of their own posterity,
and democratic  movement everywhere, brought
forward the masses, and cast a shadow on birth
and station.
During the war, Washington wrote to a friend,*
who was raising a regiment, "' I earnestly recormC "mend to you to be circumspect in your choice of
c officers. Take none but gentlemen." A few years
earlier, Mr. Adams, who succeeded Washington,
as the second President of the United States, had
been placed in his class, at his New England
* Letter to Colonel George Baylor, January 9, 1777:
Sparks's Washington, vol. iv. p. 269.
17 
18   FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM
school, " according to the dignity of his birth" and
"the rank of his parents."*
A great experiment was to be made; a people,
new in their ideas, and starting in their career,
demanded at the hands of their chiefs, not pure
democracy, which, necessarily, was out of the question, but an open government, with institutions
that would leave to it ample scope; and the convention submitted to the consideration of the people
what they called their plan, with more fear than
hope; and with little thought that their grain of
democracy would multiply to the harvest of today.   They were not confident, like their constituents; but Mr. Madison, who knew them well,
has thus recorded their deserts:t 1' I feel it," he
says, " a duty to express my profound and solemn
* "The distinction of ranks was observed with such punc"tilious nicety, that, in the arrangement of members of every
"class, precedence was assigned to every individual accord"ing to the dignity of his birth, or to the rank of his parents.
"John Adams was thus placed the fourteenth in a class of
"twenty-four, a station for which he was probably indebted
"rather to the standing of his maternal family than to that
"of his father."' See Works of John Adams, vol. i. p. 14:
Fragment of a biography of John Adams by his son John
Quincy Adams.
t Madison Papers, vol. ii. p. 718: Mr. Madison's "Intro"duction to the Debates in the Convention." 
THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
"conviction, derived from my intimate opportunity
'of observing and appreciating the views of the
"convention, collectively and individually, that
"there never was an assembly of men, charged
"with a great and arduous trust, who were more
pure in their motives, or more exclusively or
"anxiously devoted to the object committed  to
them, than were the members of the federal con'vention of 1787, to the object of devising and
proposing a constitutional system which should
best supply the defects of that which it was to
replace, and best secure the permanent liberty
and happiness of their country."
He might have added that, judged by their debates, either the convention of 1787 was a body
of men very superior to the convention of their
ancestors, which sat in 1688, or that in it, the
people having no influence, conclusions had to
be reached by processes singularly cramped. But
these American statesmen, though more adventurous than those of a hundred years before, had not
stirred the people to democracy, only to independence.   Four years before, they were claimed as
British subjects, and eleven years before they
boasted they were. The English constitution, made
by nobody, a bundle of customs, which gave liberty
to those high enough to reach it, was imitated as
19 
FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM
far as possible; it was the freest the modern world
had seen; and under it these gentlemen had lived,
and enjoyed a large measure of liberty.
In the troubles which preceded the Revolution,
and the wars and troubles that followed, thle colonial feeling, of which Franklin spoke, in his examination before the British House of Commons, in
1766,* when he said, the people of the colonies
"have not only a respect but an affection for Great
Britain, to be an Old England man was of itself
'a character of some respect, and gave a kind of
"rank among us," was yet in life; it had been
shaken, but not uprooted. It was the feeling of
Mr. Jefferson, after hostilities had actually begun,
and Washington was in the field at the head of
an army, when he saidt he would rather be in
* The celebrated examination he underwent, the 3d of
February, 1766, as to the repeal of the Stamp Act. See
Sparks's Franklin, vol. iv. p. 169.
t "This would be thought a hard condition to those who
"still wish for re-union with their parent country.   I am
"sincerely one of those, and would rather be in dependence
"on Great Britain, properly limited, than on any nation on
"earth, or than on no nation.  But I am one of those, too,
"who, rather than submit to the rights of legislating for us
"assumed by the British Parliament, and which late experi"ence has shown they will so cruelly exercise, would lend
." my hand to sink the whole island in the ocean." Letter to
20 
TiE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
dependence upon Great Britain, than on any
nation on earth, or than on no nation.   There
was not in the convention one man possessed of
what would be, now, called a democratic spirit.
While their study was to devise institutions which
might reconcile the country to their own ideas, and
to more government than the people wanted, they
did not run counter to the popular feeling, or
trifle with it. The answer of that lawgiver to
the question, what laws he had given his country,
when he said, As good as they can bear, was profound.
We were an unhoused people in 1787, but if
there had been an attempt to put on us institutions less than democratic, they would have been
rejected. New ideas move slow, and those, of all
others, with whom they move slowest, are the
men, like those of the federal convention, who,
having grown up under the old ideas, have to put
new ones in action, and answer for the consequences. The members of the federal convention
indulged not in the high and hopeful vein. In
adjusting representation to population, it was suggested that the number of representatives in Congress might become excessive, on the proposed
Mr. Randolph, August 23, 1775: Jefferson's Works, vol. i.
p. 201.
21 
22   FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM
unalterable basis of one representative, in the
lower house, to every forty thousand of population.* The answer was, " It is not to be supposed
"that the government will last so long as to pro"duce this effect. Can it be supposed that this
"vast country, including the western territory,
"will, one hundred and fifty years hence, remain
"one nation?... If the government should
"continue so long, alterations may be made in the
"constitution in the manner proposed in a sub"sequent article."
SECTION II.
THEIR VIEWS OF A JUDICIARY.
We go on to show in their proceedings, by the
record of thernm,t how the members of the con
* Madison Papers, vol. iii. pp. 1262, 1263.
t Journal of the Federal Convention, committed by them
at their adjournment to the keeping of Washington, as the
President of the body, with directions to retain it "subject
"to the order of Congress, if ever formed under the Consti"tution," placed by him in the Department of State, and,
under act of Congress of 27th March, 1818, published in
1819. Proceedings and debates in the Federal Convention,
which Mr. Madison, from day to day, wrote out, and which
comprise both a journal and report of debates, published
after his death by Congress, with other papers of his, in the
year 1840, and known as the Madison Papers. 
THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
vention of 1787, assembled to maklie a government
for us, men born in a remote corner of the British realm, but educated by a revolution; citizens
of a world nearly a hundred years behind ours in
political knowledge, but infinitely superior to any
statesmen whom, to-day, we could bring together,
treated that question of democracy, to them a
source of nothing but uneasiness, and to which
every succeeding year adds interest and importance.
The old Confederacy may be said to have had
neither Executive nor Judiciary.* The convention resolved that the new establishment should
be endowed with, what was almost unknown in
those days, and still is rare, three departments
or divisions of government, each independent of
the others, legislative, executive, and judicial. To
the judiciary they did not hesitate to give, in accordance with their decidedly conservative views,
a life tenure, under executive appointment; the
judges to be, except in cases of conviction of high
crimes and misdemeanors, irremovable from office,
and their salaries incapable of reduction. From
this frame of a judicial establishment the convention do not seem to have varied for a moment.
The judiciary of their republic was to be high
* Excepting for admiralty cases.
23 
24   FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM
above the reach of influence, and wholly and absolutely independent of power; more independent
than that of the monarchy from which they had
parted.  It has, in effect, higher duties to perform.
SECTION III.
THEIR VIEWS OF A LEGISLATURE-H-ESITATION TO SUBMIT THE
CHOICE OF MEMBERS TO THE PEOPLE.
We  pass to legislative power.  The members
of the federal convention were not elected by the
people; they were delegated by the legislatures of
their States.  On the 31st of May, in committee
of tile whole, the resolution, " that the members of
c tte fir,st bi'agch of the,iatioial legislature ougl ht to
"be elected by the people of the several States, being
taken up,"* Mr. Sherman'-{ "  opposed the election by the people, insisting that it ought to be
"by the state legislatures.  The people, he said,
';immediately, should have as little to do as may
be about the government.  They want information, and are constantly liable to be misled.  Mr.
* Madison Papers, vol. i. pp. 753-757.
t Roger Shermnan, delegate fiom  Connecticut, member of
the Congress of the Revolution, and signer of the Declaration of Independence.  After the organization of the federal
governmenett, he sat in the Ilouse of Representatives, and
afterwards in the Senate. 
THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
"Gerry.* The evils we experience flow from the
"excess of democracy.  The people do not want
"virtue, but are the dupes of pretended patriots.
"In Massachusetts it had been fully confirmed by
"experience, that they are daily misled into the
"most baneful measures and opinions by the false
"reports circulated by designing men, and which
"no one on the spot can refute. One principal
"evil arises from the want of due provision for
"those employed in the administration of govern"ment.  It would seem to be a maxim of democ"racy to starve the public servants. He mentioned
"the popular clamor in Massachusetts for the re"duction of salaries, and the attack made on that
"of the Governor, though secured by the spirit
"of the constitution itself. He had, he said, been
"too republican heretofore; he was still, however,
"republican; but had been taught by experience
* Elbridge Gerry, delegate from Massachusetts, a member
of the Congress of the Revolution, and signer of the Declaration of Independence. After the organization of the federal government, member of the House of Representatives;
minister to France; elected, by the Democratic party, VicePresident of the United States on the ticket with Mr. Madison, in 1813, and, by the Democratic party of Massachusetts,
Governor of that State, in 1810. He refused to sign the
Constitution.
3
25 
26   FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM
"the danger of the levelling spirit.  Mr. Mason*
s argued strongly for an election of the larger
"branch by the people.  It was to be the grand
c depository of the democratic principle of the
c government. It was, so to speak, to be our
* George Mason, delegate from Virginia, friend and neighbour of Washington, and an ardent supporter of the Revolution; regarded as one of the ablest men of his dav. His
statue stands, one of a group, in front of the Capitol at
Richmond. Mr. Madison (Rives's Life of Madison, vol. i.
p. 162, note) wrote of his services in the convention, to his
grandson, who was preparing materials for his ancestor's
biography:  "He  sustained throughout  the proceedings of
"the body the high character of  a powerful reasoner, a pro"found statesman, and a devoted republican."   Mr. Hamilton described him (Hamilton's Works, vol. vi. p. 557) as
"professing popular doctrines."   He  refused to sign  the
constitution, deeming the powers  it conferred  excessive;
and, for the same reason, opposed, with Patrick Henry and
others, its adoption by his State in the Convention of Virginia, of which he was a member. Mr. Jefferson said of him
(Jeffersoni's Works, vol. i. pp. 40, 41), " I had many occasional
"and strenuous coadjutors in debate"  (this was in the
Legislature of Virginia), " and one, most steadfast, able
"and zealous, who was himself a host.  This was George
"Mason, a man of the first order of wisdom among those
"who acted on the theatre of the Revolution, of expansive
"mind, profound judgment, cogent in argument, learned in
"the law of our former Constitution, and earnest for the
"republican change on democratic principles." 
THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
"House of Commons.   It ought to know and sym pathize with every part of the community;  and
ought therefore to be taken not only from differ ent parts of the whole republic, but also from
different districts of the larger members of it;
which had in several instances, particularly in
"Virginia, different interests and views, arising
"from difference of produce, of habits, &c., &c. He
admitted that we had been too democratic, but
"was afraid we should incautiously run into the
opposite extreme. We ought to attend to the
rights of every class of the people.  He had often
'wondered  at the indifference  of the  superior
"classes of society to this dictate of humanity and
"policy; considering, that, however affluent their
'circumstances or elevated their situations might
"be, the course of a few years not only might,
'but certainly would, distribute their posterity
"throughout the lowest class of society. Every
Ccselfish motive, therefore, every family  attach ment, ought  to recommend  such  a system of
"policy as would provide no less carefully for the
rights and happiness of the lowest, than of the
"highest  order of citizens.  Mr.  Wilson* con  * James WTilson, delegate from Pennsylvania, member of
the Confederate Congress, signer of the Declaration of Independence, a Judge of the Supreme Court of the United
States by appointment of Washington.
27 
28   FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM
tended strenuously for drawing the most numerous branch of the Legislature immediately from
the  people.  He was for raising  the  federal
pyramid to a considerable altitude, and for that
"reason wished to give it as broad a basis as possi" ble. No government could long subsist without
' the confidence of the people.... Mr. Madison
"considered the popular election of one branch
"of the National Legislature as essential to every
"plan of free government.  He observed, that in
" some of the States one branch of the Legislature
"was composed of men already removed from the
"people by an intervening body of electors. That
"if the first branch of the General Legislature
"should be elected by the State Legislatures, the
"second branch elected by the first, the Executive
"by the second together with the first,-;and other
"appointments  again made for the subordinate
"purposes by the Executive, the people wouldt be
"lost sight of altogether; and tile necessary sym"pathy between them and their rulers and officers
"too little felt. He was an advocate for the policy
"of refining the popular appointments by succes"sive filtrations, but thought it might be pushed
"too far.... Mr. Gerry did not like the elec"tion by the people.  The maxinms taken from
"the British constitution were often fallacious
6 
THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
"when applied to our situation, which was ex"treinely  different.   Experience,  he  said, had
"shown that the State Legislatures, drawn imme"diately from the people, did not always possess
"tlleir confidence. He had no objection, however,
"to an election by the people, if it were so qualified
"that men of honor and character might not be
"unwilling to be joined in the appointments.  He
"seemed to think the people might nominate a
"certain number, out of which the State Legisla"ture should be bound to choose. Mr. Butler*
"thought an election by the people anl impracticable mode."  No other gentleman addressed the
convention. "On the question for an election of
"the first branch of the National Legislature, by
'the people, Massachusetts, New York, Pennsyl"vania, Virginia North Carolina, Georgia, Aye-6;
"New Jersey, South Carolina, No-2; Connecticut,
"Delaware, divided."
It is not so striking that so much disbelief was
expressed in the people, and utterance given to
ideas so totally different from those to-day acted
on, familiarly and confidently, as it is that there
should not have been in this assembly found one
single man to entertain a full belief the other
* Pierce Butler, delegate from South Carolina, and under
the federal government a Senator in Congress.
29 
30   FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM
way;* certainly not one to express it, when to
doubts of the people such decided expression was
given.
It was carried by the votes of a majority of the
States to give the election, to the people, of the
House of Representatives, lest the people, as Mr.
Madison said, "' be lost sight of altogether;" to attend, as Mr. Mason said,' to the rights of every
' class;" because, as Mr. Wilson said,  no govern inent could long subsist without the confidence
"of the people."  Such was the tone of the reasoning of those who maintained the people's rights.
But some days after, the sixth of June, these views
not being acceptable, abstemious as they were, an
attempt was made to change the vote.
CMr. Pinckney,t according to previous notice,
* In his thoughts on the plan, when laid before him, Mr.
Jefferson said, "I like the power' given the Legislature to
"levy taxes, and for that reason solely I approve of the
"greater House being chosen by the people directly. For
"though I think a House so chosen will be very far inferior
"to the present Congress, will be very illy qualified to legis"late for the Union, for foreign nations, &c., yet this evil
"does not weigh against the good, of preserving inviolate the
"fundamental principle, that the people are not to be taxed
"but by representatives chosen immediately by themselves."
Letter from Mr. Jefferson to Mr. Madison, Paris, December
20, 1787: Jefferson's Works, vol. ii. pp. 328, 329.
t Charles Pinckney, delegate from South Carolina, and
.    r  iii 
THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
and rule obtained, moved, that the first branch
'of the National Legislature be elected by the
State Legislatures, and not by the people."...
But, after debate* C on the question for electing
"the first branch by the State Legislatures as
"moved by Mr. Pinckney, it was negatived,-Con"necticut, New Jersey, South Carolina, Aye 3;
' Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Dela ware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, Geor' gia, No-8."  Again, the twenty-first of June,
General Pinckneyt moved, that the first branch,
instead of being elected by the people, should be
elected in such manner as the Legislature of each
.State should direct;"... when "on the question of General Pinckney's motion to substitute
election of the first branch in such mode as the
"Legislatures should appoint, instead of its being
elected by the people,-Connecticut, New Jersey,
Delaware, South Carolina, Aye-4;  Massachu"setts, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, North
Carolina, Georgia, No-6;  Maryland divided.
Governor of that State; minister to Spain, and Senator in
Congress under the Constitution.
*Madison Papers, vol. ii. pp. 800-808.
t Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, delegate from South
Carolina, a general officer in the war of the Revolution,
and afterwards, under the Constitution, minister to France;
candidate for the Vice-Presidency in 1800.
31 
FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM
General Pinckney then moved that the first
branch be elected by the people in such mode as
'~ the Legislatures should direct; but waived it on
its being hinted that such a provision might be
"more properly tried in the detail of the plan.
"On the question for the election of the first
" branch by the people,-Massachusetts, Connecti"cut, New York, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Vir"ginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia,
"Aye-9; New Jersey, No-1; Maryland divided."
The opposition to popular election of the lower
House of Congress appears to have ended here.
At a later period of the session,* the 7th of
August, when the draft of the proposed Constitution had been reported by a committee with a provision that the electors of the House of Representatives should have the qualifications requisite for
electors of the most numerous branch of the State
Legislature, the question of popular suffrage, again,
was debated. The object of the committee had
been to avoid giving umbrage. Voters were to
have the qualifications of voters for the members
of the House of Representatives of the State; each
State to choose, therefore, for itself, restricted or
unrestricted suffrage.
There was a wide diversity of opinion as to
* Madison Papers, vol. iii. pp. 1249-56.
32 
THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
qualifications. Mr. Gouverneur Morris and others
were for confining suffrage to freeholders; Dr.
Franklin thought " we should not depress the
"virtue and public spirit of our common people."
Apparently, the convention governed themselves
by the same motive with the commnittee which reported the clause, and they adopted it, Tem. con.
Mr.  Madison said, "Whether the Constitutional
"qualification ought to be a freehold, would with
"him depend much on the probable reception such
a change would meet with in the States where
the right was now exercised by every description
"of people. In several of the States a freehold
"was now a qualification.  Viewing the subject in
"its merits alone, the freeholders of the country
"would be the safest depositaries o(,f republican
"liberty.  In future times, a great majority of the
"people will not only be without landed, but any
"other sort of property.  These will either coin" bine, under the influence of their common situa"tion,-in which case the rights of property and
"the public liberty will not be secure in their
"hands,-or, what is more probable, they will be"come the tools of opulence and ambition, in which
"case there will be equal danger on another side."
33 
34   FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM
SECTION IV.
THEIR VIEWS OF AN EXECUTIVE-ITS DIFFICULTIES —FRANKLIN'S
VIEWS; HAMILTON'S; JEFFERSON'S IN A LETTER TO MR. MADISON.
We come to Executive power, to this day the
strain on democracy. Next to apportionment of
representation between the small and large States,
a question which well-nigh broke up the convention, it was the Executive question that most perplexed their ingenuity and excited their fears.
Apportionment of representation pertained to the
constantly varying fact of population.  Of the
small States, alarmed for their independence, time
has qualified the fears, and made one of them, New
York, which in 1787 sought protection for weakness, the most powerful in the Union; but time
has not diminished the fears of Executive power:
it has incre'tsed them.  It involves considerations
as lasting as the vices of our nature; and has more
perils than in 1787 were seen. It is the democra,tic problem in its most formidable shape.
The convention took up the question of an Executive* the 1st of June, being the third day after
they entered on the consideration of a frame of
government; and having, at various meetings, en
* Journal, p. 88. 
THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
deavored, in vain, to unite on an Executive clause,
the subject, which was considered, in all, more
than every third day of all the days the convention sat, between the 29th of May, when business
began, and the 17th of September, the day of the
final adjournment, was referred, on the 31st of
August, to a committee, appointed by ballot, of one
member from each State.  This committee, on the
4th of September,* thirteen days only before the
final adjournment, reported back a resolution in
favor of an Executive to consist of a single individual, holding office four years, elected by electors
appointed by each State, as its Legislature might
direct.  The  report of this committee, with  alterations, more or less material, which continued
to be made by the convention, down to the 15thi
of September, forty-eight hours only before the
adjournment, was, in its main features, adopted.
It gives us the system, amended by vote of Congress and the States, in the years 1803-4, after
the attempt of the House of Representatives to
make Mr. Burr President, which still exists.
The apprehensions of the convention may be
imagined from what was said by its oldest member, and not least cheerful spirit, Franklin.t c All
* Journal, p. 324.
t Madison Papers, vol. ii. p. 790.
05 
FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM
profitable offices," he said, "will be ait his disposal. The first man put at the helm will be a
"good one. Nobody knows what sort may come
"afterwards. The Executive will be always in"creasing here as elsewhere, till it ends in
monarchy."
Franklin moved that the Executive receive no
salary, and, instead, his necessary expenses be paid;
his idea seems to have been that the same rule
ought to extend to as many as possible of the government functionaries.  In moving his amendment
he made a speech, and said, urging his opinions,
"There is a natural inclination in mankind to
"kingly government.  It sometimes relieves them
"from aristocratic domination. They had rather
"have one tyrant than five hundred.  It gives more
"of the appearance of equality among citizens, and
"that they like. I am apprehensive, therefore,
"perhaps too apprehensive, that the government of
"these States may. in future times end in a monarchy.  But this catastrophe I think may be long
delayed, if in our proposed systern we do not sow
"the seeds of contention, faction, and tumnult, by
"making our posts of honour places of profit." He
instanced, as serving unpaid, Washington during
the Revolutionary war, sheriffs of counties in
England, French counsellors of parliament, and
36 
THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
members of the Society of Friends sitting to decide
lawsuits of their fellows.*
The idea of Mr. Jefferson that the Presidential
office, the President being perpetually re-eligible,
would be, in effect, an office for life, seems to show
either that he looked, like Franklin, to somewhat remote events; or, for the present, had
formed a very inadequate conception of the pressure of party jealousies to prevent continuity of
service.  He wrote from France to his friend Mr.
Madison, the vessel of all his thoughts,t "Reason
"and experience tell us, that the first magistrate
"will always be re-elected if he may be re-elected.
"He is then an officer for life. This once ob"served, it becomes of so much consequence to
"certain nations, to have a friend or foe at the
"head of our affairs, that they will interfere
"with money  and with arms.  A  Galloman, or
"an Angloman, will be supported by the nation
"he befriends. If once elected, and at a second
"or third election outvoted by one or two votes,
"he will pretend false votes, foul play, hold pos"session of the reins of government, be sup"ported by the States voting for him, especially if
"they be the central ones, lying in a compact body
* Madison Papers, vol. ii. pp. 773-775.
t Letter fromn Paris, December 20, 1787: Jefferson's
Works, vol. ii. p. 330.
37 
38   FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM
themselves, and separating their opponents; and
" they will be aided by one nation in Europe, while
the majority are aided by another.  The election
"of a President of America, some years hence, will
"be much more interesting to certain nations of
'Europe, than ever the election of a King of
"Poland was.  Reflect on all the instances in his tory, ancient and modern, of elective monarchies,
"and say if they do not give foundation for my
"fears; the Roman  Emperors, the Popes while
"they were of any importance, the German Em"perors till they became hereditary in practice, the
"Kings of Poland, the Deys of the Ottoman depend"encies. It may be said, that if elections are to be
"attended with these disorders the less frequently
"they are repeated the better.   But experience
"says, that to free them from disorder they must
"be rendered less interesting by a necessity of
"change. No foreign power, nor domestic party,
"will waste their blood and money to elect a per"son who must go out at the end of a short period.
"The power of removing every fourth year by the
"vote of the people, is a power which they will not
"exercise, and if they were disposed to exercise
"it, they Would not be permitted.  The King of
"Poland is removable every day by the Diet. But
"they never remove him" 
THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
Like Franklin, Mr. Jefferson failed to foresee
the full effect of a Presidential election upon the
democratic element; and both of them seem to look
to Executive power as leading direct to tyranly,
and not by the smooth road of a corrupted suffrage.
Eighty-six years' experience has not convinced
the country that the federal convention, who, looking round, saw no example from which to copy,
and had to decide without precedents, endowed
their republican Executive with superfluous power,
power which must not, necessarily, be somewhere
given, or which could advantageously have been
withheld from him, or bestowed elsehow or elsewhere. The public mind has settled on no Executive constitutional amendment; still less does the
past show that the Executive ought to have any
other constituency than the people; yet it will not
be doubted that could the convention have seen, as
we see them, the elections of a President, and the
use he makes of his power, their fears would have
multiplied. When Hamilton said, "as to the Executive, it seemed to be admitted that no good one
"could be established on republican principles," he
was right, if republican principles mean government maintained by its own influence; and not, in
the full sense of their better signification, governinent maintained by the people.
39 
FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY RFGARDED FROM
Let us amend ourselves, not the Constitution.
It ()ught.to reconcile us, if not to patience, to deliberation, that since the federal government has
been in action, not one scheme has ever been produced for mnodifying Executive power, or the mode
of electing, except that which proposes what is
hardly at change, the direct vote of the people
instead of electoral colleges which has had sufficient merit to attract attention; and most of them
have been strongly objectionable. Mr. Calhoun's*
was a double Executive, an extraordinary mistake.
The recent change, not by amendment, but new
construction of the Constitution, by which the
Senate are consulted upon removals from office, has
had the effect not of purifying pa,tronage, but of
drawing more into its vortex the Senators. When
the amendment was proposed in 1826, the most
plausible and the least of an alteration, to take
the election from the electoral colleges and give it
to the people, a striking suggestion, among others,
made in opposition to it iii debate in the Ilouse of
Representatives, was, that to substitute a general
poll for the vote by electors chosen by States, with
an appeal, if no choice were effected, to the Hlouse
of Representatives voting by States, would be cen
* Discourse on the Constitution and Government of the
United States: Calhoun's Works, vol. i. pp. 392-395.
40 
THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
tralzing in its effect on federal institutions. It
may be remarked, too, in illustration of the revolutions in men's opinions, that this fear was sugg,ested by a member from  New  York, and the
amendment  disregarding it was proposed  by  a
member from South Carolina.
An elective chief is an experiment. We do not
see power turn the heads of judges and legislators;
only of the Executive. He may be drawn from
obscurity and return to it; but he does not resign,
like a minister; he is upheld till his sands are
run, like a king, and upheld in courses which,
in a minister, would not be tolerated: this is the
constitution. It has been the history, in bad times,
of all countries, that no crime is too great to gain
Executive power or to retain it.
These men who sat in the convention were in
presence of a question, this, as Hamilton called it,
of an Executive chief "on republican principles,"
which has been never solved. Anxious to do their
duty, not rash in its performance, fearing the Executive, fearing democracy more; when they came
to this part of their proceedings the debates show
they paused, hesitated, changed their minds again
and again, and took back what they had done, only
to repeat it; and at last were far from satisfied
with their work. What else could they do? But
4
41 
FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM
it is the source from which have flowed the worst
ills that afflict us, and is the immediate source of
the gravest of the fears for the fate of our institutions. The lack of energy they witnessed in the
Confederacy, for war or peace, as well as their own
inclinations, disposed them to a vigorous Executive.
They resolved to bestow, and they did bestow, and
the States were prevailed on to accept, Executive
powers, only nominally less than those of the tnonarch from whose rule they had emancipated thenmselves; for he was but a king; while the Presidenrt combines the conditions of minister and king
too; and his power of patronage has been found
capable to be carried much beyond the degree of
mischief which Franklin imagined for it.
SECTION V.
THEIR VIEWS OF AN  EXECUTIVE, CONTINUIJED-OF  THE THREE
DRAFTS OF A CONSTITUTI'ION, TWO PROPOSED GIVING THE CHIOICE
OF THE EXECUTIVE TO THiE LEGISLATURE.
Of the three projects before the convention, that
of Mr. Pinckney, and those of the States of Virginia and New Jersey, the two last proposed an
Executive chosen by the Legislature. Tile resolution of the Virginia draft for the groundwork of a
closer union of the States, presented the 29th of
May, in the name of that delegation, at the open
42 
THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
ing of the business of the convention, and which
they adopted, for, as it were, a point of departure, was, "that a National Executive be insti"tuted, to be chosen by the National Legislature
,for the term of        years."*  The resolution
contained in what was known as the New Jersey
plan, presented the 15th of June, a plan especially
meant to subserve the views of the smaller States,
gave, like that of the Virginia delegation, the
choice of the Executive to Congress; but it divided,
unlike the Virginia draft, Executive power among
two or more persons.  It proposedt   that the
"United States in Congress be authorized to elect
a Federal Executive to consist of         persons,
to continue in office for the term of     years.
By Mr. Pinckney's plan, laid by hinm, as an
individual member, before the convention, on the
same day with that coming from the Virginia delegation, it was proposed that Executive power be
vested in a President; and that he should be
elected for         years."    By  whom  to be
elected was not suggested. The suggestion was
not ventured by Mr. Pinckney who should choose
the chief of the republic, nor how he was to be
controlled should he conspire against it.
These were the several constitutional plans, so
* Journal, p. 68.    t Ib., pp. 124, 125.   1 Ib., p. 77.
43 
44   FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM
called that of Mr. Pinckney, and those of the delegations of New Jersey and Virginia, which were
before the convention for their consideration.
That of Mr. Hamilton, presented in the course of
his speech of the 18th of June, suggesting those
doubts of republican government, which were at
that day more freely than now avowed, was said
by him, in the course of his observations, to be
produced as explanatory of his constitutional
views, but not with any purpose or hope of its
being adopted by the convention.* Of the three
schemes of government, there existing neither retal
nor pretended confidence in the people, though
finally appealed to, the appointment of an Executive by the Legislature was proposed in two of
them; but none proposed a popular election.
SECTION VI.
THIEIR VIEWS OF AN EXECUTIVE, CONTINUED —MOTION FOR A CHOICE
BY THiE PEOPLE NEGATIVED, TWO STATES ONLY VOTING FOR IT.
The Virginia draft being under consideration,
before other opinions had been expressed on the
floor, Mr. Wilson, who, Franklin perhaps excepted, may be said, judged by the debates, to
have been the person, in the whole body, of the
most liberal views, and whom Washington, never
* Journal, p. 130; Madison Papers, vol. ii. pp. 878-892. 
THE AM,ERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
prodigal of praise, called* "'as able, candid, and
"honest a member as was in the convention," rose,
and thus modestly introduced his idea, of a more
democratic source of Executive power than the
votes of a legislative assembly.  lIe said,t "he
"was almost unwilling to declare the mode which
he wished to take place, being apprehensive that
"it might appear chimerical. He would say, how"ever, at least that in theory he was for an election
"by the people. Experience, particularly in New
"York and Massachusetts, showed that an election
"of the first magistrate by the people at large was
"both a convenient and successful mode.  The
"objects of choice in such cases must be persons
"whose merits have general notoriety. He wished
"to derive not only both branches of the Legisla"ture from the people without the intervention of
"the State Legislatures, but the Executive also,
"in order to make them as independent as possible
"of each other, as well as of the States."
Such was the voice of approbation, in 1787, of
the mighty people.   Theory said they must be
trusted, and, practically, no other course would
consist with republican principles.
* Letter to Mr. Stuart, October 17, 1787: Sparks's Washington, vol. ix. p. 271.
t Madison Papers, vol. ii. p. 766.
45 
46   FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM
Mr. Mason "favors the idea, but thinks it im practicable. Hle wishes, however, that Mr. Wil"son might have time to digest it into his own
"form." Accordingly, the next day, the 2d of
June, Mr.. Wilson* produces  his scheme;  and
moves to substitute for the mode of election proposed in the Virginia draft,  tthat the executive
magistracy shall be elected in the following man ner: That the States be divided into          dis"tricts, and that the persons qualified to vote in
each district for members of the first branch of
the National Legislature elect        members for
their respective districts, to be electors of the
executive magistracy; that the said electors of
the executive magistracy meet at, and they,
"or any        of them, so met, shall proceed to
"elect by ballot, but not out of their own body,
person-in whom the executive authority
"of the National Government shall be vested."
"Ont the question for agreeing to Mr. Wilson's
"substitute, it was negatived,- Pennsylvania,
"Maryland, Aye-'2; Massachusetts, Connecticut,
"New York, Delaware, Virginia, North Carolina,
"South Carolina, Georg,ia, No-S8." Two States
for, and eight against electing the Executive by the
* Madison Papers, vol. ii. pp. 768, 769.
t Ib., p. 770. 
THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
people. "On* the question for electing the Exec"utive by the National Legislature, for the term
"of seven years, it was agreed to,-Massachusetts,
"Connecticut,  New  York,  Delaware,  Virginia,
"North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Aye-8;
"Pennsylvania, Maryland, No-2."
SECTION VII.
THEIR VIEWS OF AN EXECUTIVE, CONTINUED-MOTION, AGAIN, FOR
CHOICE BY THE PEOPLE VOTED DOWN, ONE STATE FOR IT, ONLY.
Here seemed to end, by this heavy majority
against it, the consideration of the question of a
popular election of the head of the government.
But the choice by the Legislature, though it might
be unavoidable, being obviously objectionable, Mr.
Gerry, on the 9th of June, introduced the subject
again; and, to avoid, as he said, "intrigue and
"corruption between the Executive and Legisla"ture,"t moved the appointment of the Executive
of the Union by the Executives of the States.
This was voted down, every State against it, except
Delaware, of which the vote was divided.
On the 17th of July, the resolution for a choice
by the Legislature, until then in committee, came
into the House, and was again debated; Mr.
* Madison Papers, vol. ii. p. 770.
t Ib., pp. 828-830.
47 
FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM
Gouverneur Morris,* a supporter of the strongest
form of government, and an avowed disbeliever in
any other, going beyond Mr. Wilson, and declaring
for an election directly by the people.t Mr. Mor
ris's idea, doubtless, was not so much to give to
the people as to fortify the Executive; his motion
was to "strike out National Legislature, and in" sert citizens of the United States."... " If the
"people should elect," he said, "they will never
"fail to prefer some man of distinguished charac"ter, or services."... " If the Legislature elect,
* Gouverneur Morris, a citizen of New York, by which
State he was sent to the Continental Congress, where he
became a prominent member;  and afterwards, being temporarily a resident of Philadelphia, was chosen one of the
Pennsylvania delegation to the Convention, in the proceedings of which he bore a distinguished part, and towards the
close had imposed on him the office of reducing to system
and order the various resolutions of that body during their
four months' session; a task he so happily accomplished as to
give to the Constitution of the United States a clearness of
method and expression which has made conscientious doubts
about its meaning rare. He was appointed by Washington
agent of the United States at London when circumstances
were such that we could yet send no minister there; and
afterwards the minister at Paris.  On his return home he
was elected to the Senate, where he opposed, but in a manly
and independent manner, the administration of Mr. Jefferson.
t Madison Papers, vol. ii. pp. 1119-1124.
48 
THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
"it will be the work of intrigue, of cabal, and of
"faction;"... " real merit will rarely be  tile
"title to the appointment."... "It is said the
"people will be led by a few designing men. This
"might happen in a small district. It can never
"happen throughout the continent."*
While Mr. Wilson, a friend of the people, and
Mr. Morris, a friend of power, united in these
views, which at last prevailed, the "patronage,"
which Franklin's sagacity denounced, lay behind,
and has enabled power to organize a system throwinrg legislative cabal into the shade and darkening
the rights of the people. The debate proceeded:
Mr. Pinckney said, he "did not expect this ques"tion would again have been brought forward; an
"election by the people being liable to the most
"obvious and striking objections. They will be
"led by a few active and designing men. Tile
'most populous States by combining in faivor of
"the sanme individual will be able to carry their
"points."  "Mr. Sherman thought that the sense
"of the nation would be better expressed by the
"Legislature, than by the people at large.  The
"latter will never be sufficiently informed of char"acters, and, besides, will never give a majority of
"votes to any one man. They will generally vote
* Madison Papers, vol. ii. pp. 1119-1124.
49 
50   FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM
"for some man in their own State, and the largest
"State will have the best chance for the appoint"ment."  "Mr. Mason said, he conceived it would
be as unnatural to refer the choice of a proper
"character for Chief Magistrate to the people, as
it would to refer a trial of colors to a blind man.
"The extent of the country renders it impossible
"that the people can have the requisite capacity
"to judge of the respective pretensions of the can"didates." "Mr. Williamson* conceived that there
was the same difference between an election, in
"this case, by the people and by the Legislature,
"as between an appointment by lot and by
"choice.
"On the question of an election by the people,
"instead of the Legislature, it passed in the nega"tive,i-Pennsylvania,  Aye-1;  Massachusetts,
"Connecticut, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland,
"Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Geor"gia, No-9."
* Hiugh Williamson, delegate from North Carolina, and
member of the Confederate Congress.
t Madison Papers, vol. ii. p. 1124. 
THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
SECTION VIII.
THEIR VIEWS OF AN EXECUTIVE, CONTINUED MOTION TO GIVE
THE CIIOICE TO THE STATE LEGISLATURES VOTED DOWN AGAIN UNANIMOUSLY VOTED TO GIVE THE CHOICE TO THE LEGISLATURE.
"Upon this Mr. L. Martin moved that the Ex"ecutive be chosen by electors appointed by the
"several Legislatures of the individual States.*
"Mr.  Broome  seconds.t   On  the  question,  it
"passed in the negative,-Delaware, Maryland,
"Aye-2; Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Jer"sey, Pennsylvania,  Virginia,  North  Carolina,
"South Carolina, Georgia, No-8. On the ques"tion on the words,'to be chosen by the National
"'Legislature,' it passed unanimously in the affirm"ative." The Legislative body, therefore, was to
choose the Executive; this seemed settled.
SECTION IX.
THEIR VIEWS OF AN EXECUTIVE, CONTINUED-RECONSIDERATION
AND VOTE TO CHOOSE BY ELECTORS APPIOINTED BY STATE LEGIS LATURES.
On the 19th of July,2 the third day after it had
passed unanimously to choose by the Legislature,
it was moved by Mr. Gouverneur Morris, who
* Madison Papers, vol. ii. pp. 1124, 1141-1150.
t Jacob Broome, a delegate from Delaware.
I Journal, pp. 190, 191; Madison Papers, vol. ii. pp. 11411150.
51 
52   FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM
had not abandoned his broader views, and passed
unanimously, " to reconsider generally the consti"tution of the Executive;" when " Mr. Ellsworth*
"moved  to strike out the appointment by the
"National Legislature, and to insert to be chosen
"by electors, appointed by the Legislatures of the
"States;" according to certain ratios of population
designated by him.  "The question, as moved by
"Mr. Ellsworth, being divided, on the first part,
"shall the National Executive be appointed by
"'electors?'-Connecticut, New Jersey, Pennsyl"vania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, Aye-6;
"North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, No-3;
'Massachusetts,  divided.  On  the second part,
' shall the electors be chosen by the State Legis"' latures?'-Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Jer"sey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, North
"Carolina, Georgia, Aye-8; Virginia, South Caro"lina, No-2.   The part relating to the ratio in
"which the States should choose electors was post"poned nern. cont."
Some of the States which had voted on the
17th for election by the National Legislature, and
* Oliver Ellsworth, delegate from Connecticut; a member
of the Confederate Congress. Under the federal government
he was a Senator, minister to France, and the Chief Justice
of the United States. 
THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
against an election by electors chosen by the State
Legislatures, now had changed their votes, and
supported the mode of election which on the 17th
they opposed. Pennsylvania, which on the 17th
voted for an election by the people, in voting
on the 19th for an election by electors, probably,
changed her vote and not her opinion; accepting
an election by electors, one directly by the people,
which would seem to have been her preference,
not being attainable.
SECTION X.
THEIR VIEWS OF AN EXECUTIVE, CONTINUED-ANOTHER RECONlSID    ERATION —VOTES FOR A CHOICE BY THE LEGISLATURE.
Five days later, the 24th of July, the appointmrnent of the Executive by electors being reconsidered, the convention fell back to the ground they
first occupied.*  c Mr. Houstont moved that he be
"appointed by the National Legislature, instead
of electors appointed by the State Legislatures,
taccording to the last decision of the miode."
After debate, the vote was taken " on Mr. Hous"ton's motion, that the Executive be appointed
* Journal, pp. 200, 201; Madison Papers, vol. ii. pp. 1188
1196.
t Williamn Houston, delegate from Georgia. He did not
sign the Constitution.
53 
FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGAI[DED FROM
"by the National Legislature,-New Hampshire,
"Massachusetts,  New  Jersey,  Delaware, North
"Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Aye-7; Con"necticut, Pennsylvanina, Maryland, Virginia, No
"-4." Thus they returned once more to their resolve to appoint the Executive by the Legislature.
Notwithstanding this vote, the debate was, perhaps irregularly, continued, on the question of the
mode  of choice, incidentally to the questions of
length of service and eligibility for more than one
term; and Mr. Wilson moved that the Executive
be chosen every"          years by       electors to be
"taken by lot from the National Legislature, who
"shall proceed imnmediately to the choice of an
Executive, and not separate until it be made."
The motion was held to be not- out of order, and
Mr. King* moved a postponement, and was sec * Rufus King, delegate from  Massachusetts, and one of
the representatives of that State in the Confederate Congress.  He removed to New York, whence he was chosen, in
1789, to the Senate of the United States.  Of Federal politics, his course, nevertheless, was such in coming forward to
the support of the country in the war of 1812, that the New
York Legislature, then Democratic, called him from private
life, to which he had retired, and elected him a Senator.  He
was minister to En,gland, where he represented the country
in Washington's time, during all the time of Mr. Adams, and
part of that of Mr. Jefferson.  He was again minister to
England under Mr. John Quincy Adams.
54 
THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
onded by Mr. Wilson, " who did not move this as
"the best mode.  IHis opinion remained unshaken
"that we ought to resort to the people for the
"election. On the question of a postponement it
"was agreed to, neno. con."
"The next day, the 25th of July, the clause
"relative to the Executive being again under con"sideration," the subject was in some confusion
frotm debate being persisted in after a vote- apparenitly final had been taken. Two motions were
made, unsuccessfully: the. first was, that thle Executive be appointed, in certain events, by the
National Legislature, in others, by electors chosen
by the State Legislatures; the second was, that
the Executive be appointed by the Governors and
councils of States, and, where there were no councils, by electors chosen by the State Legislatures.
"Mr. Gerry and Mr. Butler mnoved to refer the
"resolution relating to the Executive (except the
"clause making the Executive consist of a single
"person) to the committee of detail.  Mlr. Wilson
"hoped that so important a branch of the system
"would not be committed until a general principle
"should be fixed by a vote of the House," and the
House* adjourned without a vote;  no  "general
principle" being fixed.
* Journal, pp. 201-203; Madison Papers, vol. ii. pp. 11971207.
55 
56   FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM
The next day, on the meeting of the convention,
Mr. Mason rose, and, with a mixture of sarcasm
and admonition, spoke thus: "In every stage of
the question relative to the Executive, the diffi culty of the subject, and the diversity of the
'opinions concerning it, have  appeared.   Nor
have any of the modes of constituting that De partment been satisfactory. First, it has been
proposed that the election should be made by the
people at large; that is, that an act which ought
to be performed by those who know most of emi'; nent characters and qualifications, should be per"formed by those who know least; secondly, that
the election should be made by the Legislatures
'of the States; thirdly, by the Executives of the
"States.  Against these modes, also, strong objec"tions have been urged. Fourthly, it has been
'proposed that the election should be made by
"electors chosen by the people for that purpose.
"This was at first agreed to, but, on further con"sideration, has  been  rejected.   Fifthly, since
"which, the mode of Mr. Williamson, requiring
"each freeholder to vote for several candidates,
"has  been proposed.  This seemned, like  many
"other propositions, to carry a plausible face, but
"on the closer inspection is liable to fatal objec"tions.... Sixthly, another expedient was 
THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
proposed by Mr. Dickinson, which is liable to so
palpable and material an inconvenience that he
had little doubt of its being by this time rejected
by himnself.... Seventhly, among other ex"pedients a lottery has been introduced.
"After reviewing all these various modes, he was
"led to conclude that an election by the National
"Leg,islature, as originally proposed, was the best.
"If it was liable to objections, it was liable to
"fewer than any other.  He conceived, at the
"Csame time, that a second election ought to be
c;absolutely prohibited.  Having for his primary
object-for the polar star of his political conduct
-the preservation of' the rights of the people,
"he held it as an essential point, as the very pal ]ltdium of civil liberty, that the great officers of
state, and particularly the Executive, should at
"fixed periods return to that mass from which they
"were at first taken, in order that they may feel
"and respect those rights and interests which are
"sagain to be personally valuable to them.  He conecluded with moving, that the constitution of the
"Executive, as reported by the committee of the
"whole, be reinstated;" namely, that the Executive "be chosen by  the National Legislature."
The question being taken on Mr. Mason's motion,
"cit passed in the affirmative,-New Hampshire,
5
57 
58   FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM
New Jersey, Marylan(d, Virginia, North Carolina,
"South Carolina, Georgia, Aye-7;  Connecticut,
" Pennsylvania, Delaware, No-3; Massachusetts
c not on the floor." *
SECTION XI.
THEIR VIEWS OF AN EXECUTIVE, CONTINUED —COMMITTEE REPORT
THE DRAFT OF A CONSTITUTION WITH A PROVISION FOR THE
CHOICE OF THE EXECUTIVE BY THE LEGISLATUIRE.
On the same day, after resolving that it be an
instruction to the committee to receive a clause or
clauses requiring certain qualifications of property
and citizenship for the Executive, Judiciary, and
Legislature, every  resolution  of the convention,
those relative to powers legislttive, executive, and
judicial, and all others, together with the "'propo"sitions offered by Mr. C. Pinckney on the 29th
"of May, and by Mr. Pattersont on the 16th of
"June," were referred, in effect, whatever had been
done, since the first day's session, to what was
styled the committee of detail; and the conveiln.tion adjourned from the 26th of' July to the 6th of
August, " that this committee might prepare and
*Madison Papers, vol. ii. pp. 1207-1210.
t William Patterson, delegate from New Jersey, the introducer of what were called the New Jersey Resolutions,
a Senator of the United States, Governor of New Jersey,
and afterwards Judge of the Supreme Court of the United
States. 
THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
"report the constitution."*  On the 6th of August
their draft, comprised in twenty-three articles, was
submitted by the committee, and a copy furnished
to each member.
The Executive section, the first of the tenth
article, was reported as follows:t "The Executive
"power of the Unite(i States shall be vested in a
"single person. His style shall be,'The Presi"' dent of the United States of America,' and his
'title shall be,'His Excellency.'  He  shall  be
"elected by ballot by the Legislature. He shall
"hold his office during the term of seven years;
"but shall not be elected a second time."
SECTION XII.
THEIR VIEWS OF AN EXECUTIYE, CONTINUED —EFFORTS TO TAKE THE
CHOICE FROM THE LEGISLATURE, ENDING IN A REFERENCE TO A
COMMITTEE OF ONE DELEGATE FROM EACH STATE, WHO REPORT A
CHOICE BY ELECTORS: SUBSTANTIALLY THE EXISTING SYSTEM.
The convention now proceeded to consider, article by article, the committee's draft, and on the
24th of August reached the Executive section, the
first of the tenth article. "On the question for
'" vesting power in a single person,-it was agreed
* Madison Papers, vol. ii. pp. 1210-1220; Journal, pp.
203-206.
t Journal, pp. 224, 225.
59 
60   FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM
"to, nen. con.*  Mr. Carroll-t moved to strike out
"'by the Legislature,' and insert' by the people.'~
"Mr. Wilson seconded him; and on the question,
"-Pennsylvania, Delaware, Aye-2; New Hamp;shire, Massachusetts  Connecticut, New  Jersey,
'"Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Caro"lina, Georgia, No-9."  Again a popular vote was
supported by two States only.
"4Mr. Gouverneur Morris now moved that the
"President'shtoll be chosen  by  electors to be
"chosen by the people of the several States.'  Mr.
Carroll seconded him; and on the questioln, it
"passed in the negative,~-Connecticut, New Jer"sey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Virginia, Aye-5;
' New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Maryland, North
"Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, No-6. Mr.
"Daytonll moved to postpone the consideration of
* Madison Papers, vol. iii. p. 1417.  The words of the
Journal are, "Separate questions being taken on the first,
"second, and third clauses of the first section, tenth article,
"as reported, they passed in the affirmative.'"
t Daniel Carroll, delegate from Maryland, member of Congress under the Confederacy, and under the Constitution of
the United States.
J Madison Papers, vol. iii. p. 1418; Journal, pp. 286, 287.
~ Madison Papers, vol. iii. pp. 1420, 1421.
Jonathan Dayton, delegate from New Jersey; under the
Constitution Speaker of the House of Representatives, and
afterwards a Senator. 
THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
"the two last clauses of Article 10, Sect. 1, which
"was disagreed to without a count of the States.
' Mr. Broomne moved* to refer the two clauses
"to a committee, of a member from each State;
'"and on the question, it failed, the States being
c equally  divided,-New  Jersey,  Pennsylvania,
' Delaware, Maryland,  Virginia, Aye-5;  Newv
" Hampshire, Massachusetts, North Carolina, South
"Carolina, Georgia, No-5; Connecticut divided.
" On the question taken on the first part of Mr.
" Gouverneur  Morris's motion, to wit:' shall be
"'chosen by electors,' as an abstract question it
"failed, the States being equally divided,t-New
" Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Virginia, Aye
'"-4; New Hampshire, North Carolina, South
"Carolina, Georgia, No —4;  Connecticut, Mary"land, divided; Massachusetts, absent. The con" sideration of the remaining clauses of Article 10,
"Sect. l, was then postponed."
Mr. Hamilton said, in.his speech of the 18th of
June, that a republican Executive was a problem;
and the convention, whose task was to found an
empire, but an empire for the free, had, so far,
failed to find the solution of it.'"This subject,"
said Mr. Wilsoni,' "has greatly divided the house,
* Madison Papers, vol. iii. p. 1421.
$ Ibid., p. 1491.
61
t Ibid. 
62    FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM
and will also divide the people out of doors.
It is, in truth, the most difficult of all on which
we have to decide."*  Mr. Williamson, objecting
to a single magistrate, said, "he will be an elect"ive king, and will feel the spirit of one.  He
"will spare no pains to keep himself in for life,
"and will then lay a train for the succession
"of his  children.   It was  pretty  certain, he
C;thought, that we should at some time or other
"have a king; but he wished no precaution to be
"omnitted that might postpone the event as long
"as possible.  Ineligibility a second time appeared
"to him to be the best precaution."  Mr. Randolph,- on the same subject, said, "we have, in
~'some revolutions of this plan, made  a bold
stroke for monarchy."
If election by the people was too democratic, in
the sense of these opinions, appointment by Congress seenled to follow; but, that Congress should
appoint was equally against the sense of the convention. Mr. Wilson's reckoning was that it wasp
"4the unanimous sense that the Executive should
Madison Papers, vol. ii. p. 1189.
t Edmund Randolph, delegate fromnt Virginia, Governor of
that State, and Attorney-General; under the Constitution Attorney-General of the United States and Secretary of State.
I Madison Papers, vol. ii. p. 1147. 
TIHE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
"not be appointed by the Legislature unless he be
rendered ineligible a second time."  It was, said
the same gentleman, very decidedly and strongly,
if not unanimously, regarded to be a false principle
in layiiig the foundations of the republic, to put
the election of the Executive in the hands of the
makers of the laws. It was thought damaging,
if not ruinous, to both those branches of the government.
In republics the legislative is understood to be
the strongest power.*  They desired to balance a
power which, in not remote history, had been seen
to overwhelm the sovereign in England, and was
about to repeat in the kingdom of their French
ally what had happened in the mother country.
They feared to put the President at the feet of the
Legislature; they feared'to make Congress the
scene of perpetual intrigue. A Legislature, composed of men of education and intelligence, might
be more discerning of merit than the masses, and
* The President, between 1864 and 1868, was compelled
to administer his office with a cabinet, some, or all, of whom
were hostile to him; he had not power to change them.  By
the act of March  2, 1867, his powers  as Commander-inChief were crippled.  The veto power fell before the twothirds majorities in both Houses.  The power to remove,
any more than appoint, without the consent of the Senate,
was taken away.
63 
64   FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM
less liable to the sway of passion; but could it be
ventured to leave them, besides making the la'ws,
the unbridled choice of the citizen to whom was
to be committed the power to see them executed;
the power of action, the power of appointment,
the power of pardon, the veto power. and others
destined to the chief of the government?
On Friday, the 31st of August this difficult
question, to posterity, so momentous, to democracy
so unmanageable, hitherto, was once more referred
for consideration. It was committed, with other
unsettled points, to a committee, chosen by ballot,
of one member from each State; and on the 4th of
September they reported a President to hold office
four years, to be elected by electors appointed, in
each State, in such manner as its Legislature might
direct; and from this, as a principle, the convention, having adopted it,* the 6th of September, by
a vote of nine States against two, did not depart.
They adhered from no confidence in it; despair
of a better, the impossibility to satisfy themselves
in the adjustment, should the Legislature choose
the President, of points like that of the veto, impeachrnent, and others  pertaining to Executive
powers and restrictions, where executive and legis
* Journal, pp. 332-338; Madison Papers, vol. iii. pp. 14851492. 
THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
lative functions must mix and conflict; and the
conviction that the perils of cabal were, in any
event, inseparable from an election by the Legislature, was the consideration which reconciled the
convention to the systemn they at last adopted of
electors; but not electors chosen, necessarily, by
the people; "electors appointed in each State in
"such manner as its Legislature might direct."
When the report of the committee came in, "Mr.
Randolph and Mr. Pinckney wished for a partici"ular explanation and discussion of the reasons
"for changing the mode of electing the Execu"tive.  Mr. Gouverneur Morris said, he would
"give the reasons of the committee, and his own.
The first was the danger of intrigue and faction,
" if the appointment should be made by the Legis"lature. The next was the inconvenience of an
"ineligibility required by that mode, in order to
"lessen its evils.  The third was the difficulty of
"establishing a court of impeachment, other than
"the Senate, which would not be so proper for the
"trial, nor the other branch, for the impeachment
"of the President, if appointed by the Legislature.
"In the fourth place, nobody had appeared to be
"satisfied with an appointment by the Legislature.
"In the fifth place, many were anxious even for
'an immediate choice by the people.  And, finally,
65 
66   FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM
"the sixth reason was the indispensable necessity
"of making the Executive independent of the
"Legislature. As the electors would vote at the
same time, throughout the United States, and at
,so great a distance from each other, the great
evil of cabal was avoided.  It would be impossi ble, also, to corrupt them.  A conclusive reason
"for making the Senate, instead of the Supreme
"Court, the judge of impeachments, was, that the
" latter was to try the President, after the trial of
"the impeachment."
That by this system the convention intended
the electors actually, not nominally, to choose the
President might be inferred from the prevalent
feeling against democracy.   It has been seen that,
when the question was before the convention, of
what seems to have been regarded as the suggestion of a popular vote, opinions in strong disparagement of such a choice were expressed in
unqualified terms; but it ought to be not uninstructive to see that gentlemen the most decided
in anti-democratic views faLvored an election, in
some sort, by tile people.
Mr. Gouverneur Morrist said, "'He ought to be
"elected by the people at large, by the freeholders
* Madison Papers, vol. iii. pp. 1489, 1490
t Ibid., vol. ii. p. 1119. 
THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
"of the country.... If the people should elect,
'they will never fail to prefer some man of dis"tinguished character, or services; some Inman, if
"he might so speak, of continental reputation.
... HIle moved to strike out'National Legis"'Tlature,'  and  insert'citizens  of  the  United
States'."  Again* "cit is said the people will
"be led by a few designing men.   This  mliglht
happen in a siriaill district.  It can never hatppen
"thlroughout the continent.  It is said the multi"tude will be uninformed. It is true they would
"be uninformed of what passed in the legislative
"conclave, if the election were to be made there;
"but they will not be uninformed of those great
"and illustrious characters which have merite(l
"their esteem  and  confidence.... Appoint"ruents  made  by  numerous  bodies  are always
"worse than  those made  by single responsible
cindividuals or by the people at large."  He said,
on another occasion, "lie saw no alternative for
"making the Executive independent of the Legis"lature, but either to give himn his office for life, or
"make him eligible by the people." Mr. Dickinsont said he thought that "insuperable objections
* Madison Papers, vol. ii. pp. 1121, 1122.
t John Dickinson, delegate from Delaware, author of the
"Farmer's Letters;" took an active part in the Revolution;
6fr 
68   FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM
"lay against an election of the Executive by the
" National Legislature; as also by the Legislatures
or Executives of the States.  He had long leaned
"towards an election by the people, which he re"garded as the purest and best source.  Objections
"he was aware lay against this manode, but not so
"great, he thought, as against the other modes."*
Mr. Hamiltont was in favor of an appointment
by electors chosen by the people. In the draft
of a constitution laid before the convention in the
course of his speech of the 18th of June, his Executive clause made the "Executive authority of
"the United States to be vested in a governor,
"to be elected to serve during good behaviour;
"the election to be made by electors chosen by
"the people in their election districts aforesaid."
Mr. King,~ a friend, personal and political, of Mr.
Hamilton, "was much disposed to think that in
"such cases the people at large would choose
"wisely.... On the whole, he was of opinion
"''that an appointment by electors chosen by the
"people for the purpose would be liable to fewest
" objections."
member of the Confederate Congress; and, at different times,
President of the States of Delaware and Pennsylvania.
* Madison Papers, vol. ii. p. 1206.      t Ibid., p.891.
1 Ibid., pp. 1146, 1147. 
THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
SECTION XIII.
THEIR VIEWS OF EXECUTIVE POWER, CONCLUDED.
Thus, after eight times it had been voted down,
did those very gentlemen the most opposed to
democracy assist to bring the convention to popular election of Executive power. Through inherent causes, and the contrivances of politicians,
and, above  all of them, that by which every
office in the United States depends, on the event
of the vote for President, it has proved to be the
heaviest drag on the virtue of the people. Democracy's worst ills have rushed in through the
gap opened to make and unmake Presidents. If
every public functionary were voted for at the
same election, the President at the head of the
poll, and the rest following in their order, it would
not be a severer test of our patriotism than elections of the President as we have them. Could
they have seen, in 1787, what all see now, the
operation of the system by which democracy, without abdicating its authority, delegates it to choose
Presidents, and prepare the ground for their four
years' administration of the government, they
might have been tempted to consider the scheme*
* Mr. Wilson suggested "that the Executive be elected for
"six years by a small number, not mnore than fifteen, of the
69 
FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM
suggested to them of a choice by lot. If it made
Presidents by lot, democracy could not have diverged more than it has from the qualifications
and the standard of character for that high office,
as they were understood in the convention.
SECTION XIV.
T'HE MERITS OF THE FEDERAL CONVENTION.
The framers of the constitution, virtuous and excellent men, may have been too averse to democracy, and had too little expectation from it, and
their posterity too much; no party spirit possessed
them, no personal motive; never, unless on the
one question of the representation of the smaller
States, did a feelini which could not be commended, seem to darken their minds. But they
were fallible that is certain; and they were full
of fear of that great movement which, while they
are sleeping in their graves, is striding onward.
Two obstacles-fi,st, that the powers of the delegations of States did not authorize the making of a
new constitution, but limited them to amendments
of that already existing in the Articles of Confeder
"National Legislature, to be drawn from it, not by ballot,
"but by lot, and who should retire immediately and make
"the election without separating."  Madison Papers, vol. ii.
p. 1193; ib., pp. 1208, 1209.
70 
THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
ation; and, second, that those Articles had been
solemnly settled as a frame of government, binding forever, until unanimously abrogated by the
vote of every State, the convention overcame by
totally disregarding them.   They  exercised  the
new power, of revolution. Not to surmount these
obstacles would have been to see tied the hands
of the people.  Without authority to make a new
government, they made one.  Without authority
to judge the Articles of Confederation, they sat,
judged and condemtned themn. They resolved that
the new constitution go into effect though but nine
States of the thirteen chose to adopt it; leaving
out, it might be, Rhode Island, which had not
sent delegates to the convention, and three States
more; notwithstanding the explicit language of
the thirteenth Article of Confederation to the
contrary.
Thus the convention, so undemocratic in faith,
was democratic in works, and found access to rule
and order from the confusion which had prevailed
since the close of the war, by the wide door of
democracy.  It was an exercise of the right of revolution,* a right that had made, (ed now unma(de,
* "At that time," before the organization of the Constitution,' Rhode Island and North Carolina mig,ht justly have
"pleaded that their sister States were bound to them by a
71 
FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM
the Confederacy. The Articles of Confederation
by the thirteenth article declared that they "shall
"be inviolably observed by every State, and the
"Union shall be perpetual;  nor shall any alter"ation, at any time hereafter, be made in alny
"of them unless such alteration be agreed to in
a congress of the United States, and be after"wards  confirmed  by  the Legislature of every
State."
The Lacedemonian lawgiver went into volul)tary banishment lest his people should  change
the institutions he gave them;  and the federal
convention made it difficult to alter theirs. To
propose an amendment they required a vote of
two-thirds of both Houses of Congress, or of two
"compact, into which they had voluntarily entered, with
"stipulations that it should undergo no such alteration but
"by unanimous consent. That the Constitution was a Con"federate Union founded upon principles totally different,
"and to which not only they were at liberty to refuse their
"assent, but which all the other States combined could not,
without a breach of their own faith, establish among them"selves without the free consent of all the partners to the
"prior contract.... They passed upon the old Confedera"tion the same sentence which they had pronounced in dis"solving their connection with the British nation." Discourse of John Quincy Adams before the Historical Society
of New York, 30th April, 1839, pp. 64, 65.
72 
THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
thirds of the States; to carry an amendment, the
votes of three-fourths of the States. Since 1787, a
Bill of Rights has been added to the Constitutioii;
a clause construing the clause touching suits against
a State; and a clause to prevent repetition of the
attempt made, in the House of Representatives, at
the Presidential election of the year 1800. Though
in the form of amendments, they cannot be called
changes. They were bult the Constitution as intended by its framers. Of the recent changes,
since the war, not less can be said than that they
were the work of violence.*
Let it be the praise of the framers of the Federal government that, thiough they gave nothing,
if we abuse their gifts; and gave in fear, it is a
government under which we have lived nearly a
century without one important provision of it, to
this timne, discovered, for which another convention
would be sure to find a better; and with only one
omission, namely, of a provision for the policy of
creating new States on newly acquired territory,
which another convention might deem it indispensable to supply. Limited beings that we are, this
assembly, which did their work so well that experience points to no flaw in it, had to be compelled
to their task by the ignorant many; that very de
* See infra.
6
73 
74   FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM
mocracy which they despised. Mr. Madison, when
the Constitution was before the country for consideration, said,* " there can be no doubt that there
are subjects to which the capacities of the bulk of
mankind are unequal, and on which they must
and will be governed by those with whom they
happen to have acquaintance  and confidence.
"The proposed Constitution is of this description.
"The great body of those who are both for and
against it must follow the judgment of others,
"not their own." Mr. Madison said sooth; but
there are subjects more vast than constitutions;
"subjects" to which the " bulk of mankind" alone
are equal. Great movements must be the work
of society itself.  We owe the democratic idea to
the people. If they had not produced democracy
before they called a convention, very different
would have been our institutions.  To the duty
committed to those statesmen they were equal;
and they were beyond all thought of comparison
more capable than any men who have served us
since. To the accomplishment of their task went
not only that zeal, integrity, and ability which
their cotemporaries and posterity have united to
applaud, but good fortune too. The framers of
* Letter to Edimiund Randolph, January 10, 1788: Madison Papers, vol. ii. p. 663. 
THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
the Constitution had the good fortune to serve a
new country, a people who were still in the days
of their freshness and youth; full of hope, unbroken by age.
Despite their merits, and the merits of their constituents, it may be asserted, how great soever the
temptation of the States to rid themselves of the
confusion that prevailed, by reason of the incornmpetency of confederate power, unable to raise revenue, unable to regulate trade, too weak to cope
with foreign nations, especially England, whose
unfriendliness threatened to reach the point of a
renewal of hostilities, that this Constitution was
adopted, not so much in the hope of contentment
under the new government, as compelled by fear
of remaining longer under the old. Had the proposal prevailed which was urged in the convention, to refer the draft of what they called their
plan to the ordeal of a consideration in Congress*
as well as by the States; or had the course of
* It was voted expressly by the convention, against the
opinions of Mr. Hamilton and others, not to submit the
Constitution to the "approbation" of Congress. (Madison
Papers, vol. ii. pp. 1468-76, and 1536-41.) It was "laid
"before Congress," with the opinion of the convention that
it should be "submitted to a convention of delegates chosen
"in each State by the people thereof, under the recommenda"tion of its Legislature, for their assent and ratification."
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76   FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM
events chanced to oppose to its ratification more
delay than actually took place; had the Constitution not been speedily agreed to; had a second
convention been called, as proposed; the opportunity would have been lost, the consent of the
necessary number of States would not have been
obtained, we would have drifted in uncertainty,
our destinies would not have been fixed or our
political fortunes settled in 1789. Faction would
have ended in an appeal to the sword.  Civil war
would have found us, seventy years sooner than it
did, with arms in our hands, turned against one
another.
This great step made in 1787 was, iii every
sense, tentative: democracy was an experimient;
the Union* was an experiment; the Constitution
* Witness Mr. Jefferson:" I still hope the French Revolu"tion will issue happily.  I feel that the permanence of our
own leans in some degree on that, and that a failure there
'would be a powerful argument to prove there must be a
"failure here."  (Letter to Mr. Rutledge, August 25, 1791
Jefferson's Works, vol. iii. pp. 285, 286.) "I have been among
"the most sanguine in believing that our Union would be
"of long duration.  I now doubt it much, and see the event
"at no great distance." (Letter to William Short, April 13,
1820: Jefferson's Works, vol. vii. p. 158.) The nature of
his genius made novelty, change, and experiment less alarming to Mr. Jefferson than to other men. See his letter about 
THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
was an experiment; and it was an experiment
that of persuading the States to accede to it.  For
the first time, men gave theImselves a government;
and they did it reluctantly; they had their State
governments, and hesitated to take another. The
sixth President of the United States, Mr. John
Quincy Adams, said the adoption of the federal
Constitution was  "extorted  fromn the  grinding
"necessity of a reluctant nation."* Several of
the delegates to the federal convention refused their
names to it. A majority of the New York delegates
at an early period of the session had retired.
Rhode Island declined to send a delegation, and
afterwards to call a State convention to consider
the draft. The State convention of North Carolinta rejected it. In Virginia it was accepted by
drawbacks, to Mr. Crawford, of June 20, 1816, Jefferson's
Works, vol. vii. p. 7.  "You have fairly stated the alterna"tives between which we are to choose: 1. Licentious con"merce and gambling speculations for a few, with eternal
war for the many; or, 2. Restricted commerce, peace, and
"steady- occupations for all.  If any State in the Union will
"declare that it prefers separation with the first alternative,
"to a'continuance in union without it, I have no hesitation
"in saying,' let us separate.' "  Only a genius for which
experiment had no terrors could say so.
* "The Jubilee of the Constitution; a Discourse," etc.,
by John Quincy Adams, ut supra.
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78   FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM
a vote of eighty-nine against seventy-nine; in
Massachusetts, by one hundred and eighty-seven
against one hundred and sixty-eight; and in New
York, after, in effect, it had been rejected, it was
accepted by a majority of a single vote. 
THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
CHAPTER III.
DEMOCRACY AN EXPERIMENT.
SECTION I.
ALL THE FEDERAL CONVENTION COULD DO WAS TO EXPERIMENT ON
THE GOOD BEHAVIOUR OF THE PEOPLE.
THE Constitution of the United States, in the
form we have it, so reluctantly yielded, so hesitatingly accepted, after all, is nothing but an
experiment of the virtue of the people.   That
blessing of liberty, which the world is hurrying
after, is in no government or form of government 
it is in the people; it depends on themselves. Much
was said in the convention, and much has been said
since, of a'1 strong government" for the United
States. The government of the ITnited States
never was so strong as from 1860 to 1864. It had
more than all the strength that was ever thought
of for it; an immense army, unlimited revenue,
liberty suspended; yet, with all these powers in
use, it lived on the popular breath, and could not
have survived the loss of it for a month.   A
citizen of the United States, with the advantage
79 
80   FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM
over Plato of a people with twenty-three hundred
years' more experience than his, should hlie imagine
a perfect commonwealth, would lay his fotindations not as that philosopher did.  To  make a'
perfect commonwealth, he must begin with a perfect people. Either is impossible. But the commonwealth of the modern Plato must depend on
the people. Not the people in the sense of those
who hate them, not the mob, but society, the
whole body and frame of things, industry, wealth,
art, genius, learning; the wit of man in all its
forms.
SECTION II.
WHY THEi EXPERIMJENT OUGHT TO SUCCEED.
If the people are, at best, but a mob, or too
much occupied with their own affairs to think of
those of the public, free governments and constitutions are in vain.  If nothing can be rested on the
people, and it would, as Mr. Gouverneur Morris
said, be as vain to expect permanency from them
C as to construct a palace on the surface of the sea,"
we must despair.
It would be delusion to fancy that society, unaided, can govern itself, but it is no delusion to
believe that society is to have  more influence
than in former days, and government less; that
the society of Russia is less capable of support to a 
THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
government than the society of Switzerland, where
of the twenty-four members of the Confederate
Republic seven are pure democracies, the people
ruling, not by their representatives, but in general
assemblies of the citizens.   Should society ever
reach that point of fancied perfection which brings
to each citizen his fair average of happiness, government will be reduced to a shadow.
Improvement is the improvement of society.
Riches, invention, discovery, the compass, the art
of printing, have improved society. What are the
improvements of government?  There are none;
none that have been accepted by the nations
of the earth as improvements, the representative
system, only, excepted;  a discovery which, in
statecraft, corresponds with that of the compass in
science. If that great movement which pervades
the world, and acquires force daily, means no more
than to better governments, it means nothing.  It
must mean to better the people. A despotic governinent may be good; a republican government
may be bad.
The people may be a disappointment, but the
day is past when they were not to be counted;
when Frederick the Great said that happiness and
prosperity depended on the discipline of the army;
and even Adani Smith said that "civil governi
81 
82  FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM
'~/ment, so far as it is instituted for the security of
"property, is in reality instituted for the defence
"of the rich against the poor, or of those who
"have some property against those who have none
"at all."  Neither the Scotch philosopher nor
the German king had imagined democracy.  This
movement, of which so many say they see not
what it is to come to, can any of them say what
is to stop it? The world gravitates to plurality.
There used to be one church of Apostolic founda tion and uniform belief; there are now hundreds.
It is not to the wisdom of their rulers that men
aire indebted for their prosperity.  It is a source
at once of pride and melancholy to reflect how
little we owe to them, in this republic. We have
chosen Chief Magistrates twenty-two times, and
found but one man who could be trusted in the
dark. It is society, the people, through advancing
civilization, who scatter the seeds of liberty. Society seeks its health by the same providence that
teaches the plant to seek the lighlt. It does not
seek its destruction. Like the human body, it is a
machine with vices, but it is meant to live. If
Mr. Jefferson, with his ideas, which were those of
public purity and virtue, could have a glimpse of
our condition to-day, he would despair; but that
is because he had formed, with all his enthusiasm 
THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
for democracy, no adequate conception of the selfsustaining power of society. He thought that the
question of self-government depended on the virtue of the people; and so it does, but it is the
virtue of strength. Virtue in his sense is only a
part of it. Washington had this advantage over
all who have succeeded hinm; he let the country
find its own way. It was his largeness of soul;
his achieved greatness, an advantage he had over
statesmen and politicians with characters to make,
and impatient to begin to make them. There has
not been one administration of the government of
the United States which took on itself the initiative, without mischief. A man may be a statesman of a high order, and not discover what is best
for his country; but the country is sure to discover
it. Washington said the people had to feel before
they see; which is perfectly true; and the consequence is that it is long before they are roused
to their condition; in that, unlike a single great
mind, which seizes instantly the situation. But
the people last for centuries, and can mature their
schemes and they command resources to carry
them through. Russia has been an empire ruled
by ambitious monarchs, controlled by able mninisters. Since their career began as a European power,
which was about the time of the settlement of
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84   FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM
these colonies, they have of neighbouring nations
overturned several and alarmed all; but could
Russia have expanded into freedom, and had no
Peters and Catherines, they would to-day, instead
of being a barbarous empire with a civilized court,
be a civilized people. Without Louis the Fourteenth, there might have been no palaces and
gardens of Versailles, and the identical artists and
authors whom he encouraged and rewarded might
not have produced their works; but such governmnents, though they may not, like his, end in great
reverses, only throw back a nation. What is a
man closeted with his minister, to the activity of
a whole people?
Governments contrive, but no government ever
was known whose schemnes and specialties were
as reliable as the instincts of individuals. The
progress of civilization may be traced in transfers,
to individuals, of cares and franchises of which
governments once had the monopoly. There is
hardly a limit to this capacity of society for the
performance of duties which we are taught to consider are proper only to government. Where the
power of competition can be brought to bear, there
is no power to compare with it. That the people
trespass on the province of government is held up
as an evidence of American imperfection; but no, 
THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
we are to be regarded: therefore, as the more perfect society.  If the multitudes of franchises of
industrial and other enterprises, for the protection
and well-being of the community, could be reckoned, in yielding which the States of the American
Union have stepped aside frori a public function
to subrogate individuals to carry it on, we would
easily perceive what a vast proportion o(-f the offices
of government are now performed by the people,
and well performed. See how despotically governed
countries lag behind those that are free, for want
of confidence in the safety of labour and capital
invested in public objects!
Of the English East India Company, a few merchants, it was said by one of the first of writers
and thinkers, by whom the operations of that
company  were, withal, severely criticised as a
nuisance and monopoly, injurious to the freedom
of trade,*    In wars and negotiation the councils
of Madras and Calcutta have upon several occa"sions conducted themselves with a resolution and
decisive wisdom which would have done honour
"to the Senate of Rome in the best days of that
"Republic." There is scarce a duty of government,
in this or any other country, that is not abused;
many, to the point of being nothing but abuses;
* Wealth of Nations, vol. ii. p. 484, 7th ed., Lond., 1793.
85 
86   FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM
while of those which, in a free country, are in the
hands of individuals, few are only abused, most
are reasonably well performed, and many so well
as to be open to no censure.
If from the people of the United States were
withdrawn, at the same moment, the Federal and
State establishments, with all their appliances and
means of compulsion, and we were left with no
governmnents at all, ruin would not ensue; the
best portions of society would appear, and the
worst, those who now are uppermost, politically,
would disappear, exactly as in Europe the worst
would appear and the best disappear; and public
affairs proceed, until new establishments could be
formed. This would be the people. 
THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
CIIAPTER IV.
DEMOCRACY UNDER THiE NEW GOVERNMENT.
SECTION I.
OPPOSITION TO DEMOCRACY.
THE same class of statesmen who framed the
Constitution, their fears of democracy in no wise
abated, filled the new government, and led what
is known as the old federal party, then comprising a due portion of the patriotism, and the
greater portion of the educated intelligence, of
the country. Their effort was to resist the prevailing current; if not to stifle, to prevent, at
least, the expansion of the democratic principle;
an effort, of which, not by its success, for that
was impossible, but through the mischief and confusion of the attempt, the consequences  might
have been serious; for it is a serious misfortune
when the government is at variance with the
creed of its people.
At the head of the new Executive, by unanimous voice, was Washington, a man lofty in
his nature, regarding, perhaps, the scheme of
87 
88   FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM
democracy as doubtful; but having in him, with
a combination of qualities that grow, from age to
age, in the admiration of mankind, that wisdom
of virtue and clearness of mind which taught
him, whatever his ascendant, not to use it to disturb the irrevocable policy of a free people. He
was not one of those intelligences described as
meni ahead of their age,' but he was far above it;
and he made an impression on the world of which
mere intelligence, however great, is not capable.
History does not inquire how subtle the genius of
Cato was; he filled the world; and so did Washington.  Cato's death at Utica made less sensation
than Washington's on his Virginia farm, and the
Roman occupies less space to-day than the American will two thousand years hence. It is not
easy to see how the country could have surmounted so many obstacles, and so soon have
got its new direction, without him.
The papers, including those of the most intimate nature, of prominent men of the end of the
last century, now published, make too plain for
posterity to doubt the views and purpose of the
federal gentlemen of that period. That purpose,
better understood by us than by their coteinporaries, was, by infusing a high degree of energy
into the measures, movements, and action of the 
THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
central government, to expel from it as much as
could be thrown off, of the democratic principle.
It had found its way into the Constitution, could
it be rejected? When, after the revolution had
gained head in France, Marie Antoinette, at one
of her interviews with Barnave, asked him, in
female terror, what she was to do:  Madarn, was
the answer, you m?ust love te ])eol)e. And wlat,
said her majesty, does tha t mean?  Bonne foi, was
the significant reply of the Girondist. The old
federal party counted in their ranks much of the
integrity and, in their day, most of the ability of
the country; but they did not love the people.
Their mneasures they may  have thought wisely
taken  but it was not bonne foi which inspired
them. The influence of democracy was to be contracted, the authority of the States to be limited,
the capacity of the government to be enlarged;
the federal constitution, which had been, in
1787-8, held up in tile State conventions and a
multitude of publications, especially the papers of
The Federalist, as sufficing to all its ends, was to
be fortified at the expense of the rights reserved
to the States, and the perfectness of the common
liberty.
Posterity, should democracy prove a failure,
may justify the federal chiefs, but, sceptics  as
7
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90   FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM
they were, in what with the people was a religion,
and their construction of the Constitution an afterthought, they neither could have, nor did they
deserve, popular sympathy. Their doctrine, a denial of popular virtue, and a contradiction of the
whole spirit of the country, was neither tenable
at the polls, nor warranted by that candour which
not even in party politics may be despised with
impunity. It was based upon the idea, so discouraging to democratic hopes, that the people
should receive the impulse, not give it.
SECTION II.
THE FORMATION OF PAR'I'IES.
Much ingenious research has been expended
on the origin of parties in the United States;
whether they dated before the Revolution, or
with it, or sprang, afterwards, out of opposition
to the federal Constitution; or from the feeling
roused by the French Revolution; or whether
they had their birth in the personal  amnbitions
of Jefferson and Hamilton, and the measures by
those statesmen, respectively, advocated. But let
us strip ourselves of prejudice, and confess they
had a remoter origin, a broader sense, deep-seated
in the human breast; the love of liberty in some,
and the corresponding fear of it in others; a love 
THIE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
or fear common to all, and of which every man
partakes.   Hence  did  our  political  differences
arise; it was the struggle of the many against the
control of the few. To understand the failure of
the party led by Mr. Hamilton, it is not necessary
to investigate their measures. It was enough that
they distrusted the people. That party, when
they lost power, in 1800, ought, like other parties,
to have recovered it ag(ain, but it was impossible;
once fallen, the federalists could rise no more.
They wanted more than the Constitution, when
less would have satisfied the country.
It was the lot of democracy to bear odiums not
its own. The government of the United States
was inaugurated with the opening of the first
session of the Congress of the Union, held in New
York, the 4th of March, 1789. Sixty-one days
after, the 4th of May, 1789, the French Revolution, whose democracy was noble in its aspirations,
but not instructed by time, inaugurated itself
with the opening of the States-General at Versailles. Nowhere was French democracy encoutntered with bitterer and more persistent animosity
than by the orators and writers, rich or well paid,
of the aristocracy of England. Nowhere did their
efforts more avail to cool the enthusiasm for liberty, and exalt the apprehensions of democracy,
91 
92    FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM
than in the United States, where the ideltity )f
blood and language helped the fiercest of British
diatribes to attentive listeners, and where impressions were made which, aided by the horrors
that ensued in France, have proved enduring.
They are upon us to this day, and democracy is
a name and an idea, in many minds, associated,
as it was a hundred years ago, with the ignorance and crimes of the lowest rabble. Whlen
France and England engaged in a furious war,
arising out of the change in France from  mtonarchical to popular government, our deep obligations to France, and our inherited sympathy with
England, embarrassed and confused, withal, as, on
every side, we were, by the insults and injuries
heaped on us, in their madness, by both belligerents, produced a feelingr so eccentric that politics
seemed, though led by men of the first order, to
have the weakness of copies. They depended less
on their intrinsic merits than on preferences and
aversions for foreign nations. Washington, in his
letter to Patrick Henry, of October, 1795, tendering him the department of State, and setting forth
the qualities he desired to find in the head of his
Cabinet, points to this: "I want," he said, "an
"American character, that the powers of Europe
may be convinced we act for ourselves, and not 
THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
"for others.  This, in my judgment, is the only
"way to be respected abroad and happy at home,
" and not, by becoming the partisans of Great
"Britain and'France, create dissensions, disturb
"public tranquillity, and destroy, perhaps forever,
"the cement which binds the Union."  Hie described a man like hiinself, and not to be found.
SECTION III.
MONARCHICAL TENDENCIES.
To the reproach so often cast upon the party
calling itself democratic, which came into power
upon the federal defeat in 1800, that they found
little to change in a government they had so
heavily condemned, the best answer, certainly the
most candid, is, that it was rather a terror of
federal doctrine, than anything that had been
accomplished. by that party, which  roused  the
people of the United States to blast, once for all,
the political fortunes of men who had framed
their Constitution, and had so large a share in
bearing them through the Revolution. There was
a mutual terror. Among the federal leaders it
was a terror of the mob;  among the people at
large, a terror of  monarchy.   Each  thought  a
monster was to be loosed on them.
Led by Mr. Jefferson, a gentleman by birth and
93 
FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM
habits, American democracy was as disgusting
to the federalists as the cotemporary offspring of
the Marats and Robespierres; differing from it,
as they believed, for the hour only, to come at
last, by the same means, to the same end.  There
does not seem to have been one man of the old
federal party, whose correspondence has come
down to us, whose fears of democracy were not
of the most exaggerated sort.* But not so much
did the federal dislike of the masses smooth the
way of Mr. Jefferson to their hearts, and, after
him, to a long democratic possession of Executive
power, as the belief and persuasion of the masses
that monarchy, if not contemplated, was coveted
by the federalists and thlought by them to be
the natural and necessary end of the democratic
experiment.
The citizen of the United States, of the present
day, though the feeling of repulsion to democracy
is anything but extinct, must wonder at the ideas
* See the letters of the correspondents of Washington,
Jay, Gouverneur Morris, Wolcott, Adams, Franklin, Iredell,
and, above all, Jefferson and Hamilton, passim.  The gossip
about Hamilton and his friends which, in his Ana, Mr. Jefferson has recorded, and commended to posterity, and the
anonymous newspaper attacks of Hamilton upon Jefferson,
when they were sitting together in Washington's councils,
show the extravagances of the day.
94 
THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
of eighty years ago.   "The thling," said* Mr.
Gouverneur Morris, just before the election of
Mr. Jefferson, "which  in my opinion, has done
" most mischief to the federal party, is the ground
"given by some of them to believe that they wish
"'to establish a monarch."   Mr. Hamilton said,t
"The jealousy of monarchy, which is as actual
"as ever, still furnishes a handle by which the
" factious mislead well-meaning persons." How
could men who  loved their country so well as
these two men did, fail to do justice to its fears?
It would have been marvellous, with as strong a
bias as so many of them had, if their party did
not transgress; and it would have been still more
marvellous if the people did not fear it.
To call these gentlemen monarchists, when
there was not one of them who would have attempted to set up a monarchy, is unjust. What
can be justly said is that they did not see the
way  to  democracy.   But party degenerates  to
bigotry, and in the United States we have the
intolerances in politics, that in other countries
they have in religion. It is common to say of Mr.
* Letter from Gouverneur Morris to Rufus King, June 4,
1800: Sparks's Life of Morris, vol. iii. p. 128.
t Letter from Hamilton to Rufus King, January 5, 1800:
Hailiilton's Works, vol. vi. p. 415.
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96   FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM
Hamilton that he was a monarchist; and if he was,
the more honour to him that he zealously served
the republic. But it is not common to recognize
the fact that Hlamilton's opinions were far from
being singular, and that among leading federalists
of that day there was more doubt of republican
than of monarchical government. Mr. Jefferson's
memorandums of conversations, and anecdotes, not
always authentic, which are the least creditable
to his head and heart of all that he left behind
him, the professed object of which was to perpetuate the evidence of the inclinations of his party
rivals, might have been spared, had he known
posterity was to see those gentlemen in the sure
and clear light of their familiar correspondence.
The evidence thence derived is authentic and irresistible.
- From an officer of the army, representing, it
was believed, other officers, had come to Washington, the year before the close of the war, and prior
in date to what are called the Newburgh Papers,
an overture to make him a king.'  Among Hamilton's papers may  be seen the correspondence
between him and Governor Clinton, in the year
* Sparks's Washington, vol. viii. pp. 300, 301, and note.
See the Newburgh Papers, Sparks's Washington, vol. viii.
pp. 392-406, and Appendix, pp. 551-556. 
THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
1804, touching an imputed scheme, alleged to go
so far as to propose one of the English reigning
family for the American monarch, with other provisions for a royal establishment, including a perpetual alliance between the two countries, offensive
and defensive, Canada being transferred to us, and
a portion of the British navy.* Hamilton's purpose
in addressing Clinton was to discover the parties
who as he believed had charged himn with being
accessory to this project; a charge which he denounced, and, no doubt, most truly, as "a very
"odious slander;" but it was supposed to be worth
contradiction.  Washington says to Mr. Madison,+
in a letter of the 31st of March, 1787, "I amn
'fully of opinion that those who lean to a mon"archical government have either not consulted
"the public mind, or that they live in a region
"which  (the levelling principles in which  they
"were bred being entirely eradicated) is nmuch(
" more productive of monarchical ideas, than is
" the case in the Southern States, where, from
"the habitual distinctions which have always
"existed among the people, one would have ex" pected the first generation and the most rapid
"growth of them.  I am  also clear that, even
* Hamilton's Works, vol. vi. pp. 561-565.
t Sparks's Washington, vol. ix. pp. 247, 248.
97 
FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM
C admitting  the  utility  nay, necessity, of the
form, the  period is not arrived for adopting
the change without shaking the peace of this
country to its foundation."  Within  the same
eventful twelvemonth, the country then ripening to a Constitutional convention, he wrote
to Mr. Jay,* "What astonishing changes a few
years are capable of producing! I am told even
'respectable characters speak of a monarchical
"form  of government  without  horror.   From
"thinking proceeds speaking;  thence to acting
"is often but a single step.  But how  irrevo"4cable and tremendous!  What a triumph of our
"enemies to verify their predictions!  What  a
"triumph for the advocates of despotism to find
"that we are incapable of governing ourselves,
" and that systems founded on the basis of equal
" liberty are merely ideal and fallacious!  Would
"to God  that wise measures  may be taken in
"time to avert the consequences we  have  but
"too much reason to apprehlend."-t  On the 7th
* John Jay, President of the Confederate Congress; minister to Spain; one of the Conmmissioners to negotiate the
peace of Independence, at Paris; Secretary for Foreign Affairs; Governor of New York; under the Constitution,
Chief Justice of the United States, and minister to England.
t Letter, August 1, 1786: Sparks's Washington, vol. ix.
p. 187.
98 
THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
of January, 1787, about four months before the
meeting of the convention, Mr. Jay* writes to
Washington, "Shall we have a king?  Not in my
"opinion, while other expedients remain untried."
In the convention, Mr. Madison, looking to even
the possibility of popular acceptance of monarchical institutions, said, "he conceived it to be
of great importance  that  a stable  and  firm
government, organized in the republican form,
"should be held out to the people. If this be
not done, and the people be left to judge of this
'species of government by the operations of the
defective systems under which they now live, it
"is much to be feared the time is not distant,
cwhen, in universal disgust, they will renounce
"the blessing which they have purchased at so
"dear a rate, and be ready for any change that
"may be proposed to themn."t  Mr. Dickinson,
so ardent a patriot that, at an early period of the
war, when he had lost his seat in Congress, he
shouldered a musket and served in the ranks as
a common soldier, said, in debating, in the convention, the Executive question, "a limited mon
* Letter, January 7, 1787: Sparks's Washington, vol. ix.
p. 511, Appendix; Life and Writings of John Jay, by his
soil, Williamn Jay, vol. i. p. 256.
+ Madison Papers, vol. ii. p. 853.
.
99 
100  FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM
"Carchy he considered as one of the best govern"C ments in the world. It was not certain that
" the  same  blessings were derivable from  any
"other form.  It was certain that equal blessings
"had never yet been derived from any of the
republican forms. A limited monarchy, however,
"was out of the question; the spirit of the times,
"the state of our affairs, forbade the experiment,
"if it were desirable."* Mr. Gerry, elected, by
the democratic party, Governor of Massachusetts,
in 1810, and afterwards elected, on the ticket with
Mr. Madison, Vice-President of the United States,
said,t "Perhaps a limited monarchy would be the
"best government, if we could organize it by cre"ating a House of Peers; but that cannot be
"done." A quarter of a century later, Mr. Gouverneur Morris wrote,~ "Those who formed our
cConstitution were not blind to its defects.  They
believed a monarchical form to be neither solid
"nor durable...
"Fond, however, as the framers of our National
"Constitution were of republican government,
"they were not so much blinded by their attach
* Madison Papers, vol. ii. p. 778.
t Yates's Minutes, June 12, 1787; Elliott, vol. i. p. 408.
Letter from Gouverneur Morris to Robert Walsh, February 5, 1811: Sparks's Morris, vol. iii. pp. 262, 263.
,:'   " "    *-v: 
T1IE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
"ment, as not to discern the difficulty, perhaps
"impracticability, of raising a durable edifice from
"crumbling materials. History, the parent of p0"litical science, had told them, that it was almost
"as vain to expect permanency from democracy,
"as to construct a palace on the surface of the
"sea.  But it would have been foolish to fold
"their arms and sink into despondency because
"they could neither form nor establish the best
"of all possible systems."
It was Hiamilton's opinion, in 1787, that, should
the Federal Constitution not be adopted,'a dis"memberment of the Union, and monarchlies in
"different portions of it, may be expected." * Marshall, in his Life of Washington, intimates that
the opposition to the convention, partly, arose
from the designs of those who, desiring monarchy, believed there was no so sure road to it
as the "road to misery;" and opposed the call for
a convention, thinking that'" times must be worse
"before they could be better," t and they might
gather royal fruit from the public wretchedness.
The views of Hamilton, the federal chief, without
* "Impressions as to the N\ew Constitution:" Hamilton's
Works, vol. ii. p. 621.
t Marshall's Life of Washington, vol. v. pp. 109, 110, chap.
ii.
101 
102   FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM
rival or competitor, from the rise of that party
to his untimely death, we have from the most
friendly pen that could have recorded them; and
in some detail. "fGeneral Hamilton had little
cshare in forming the Constitution. He disliked
it, believing all republican government to be
radically defective.... He hated republican
sgovernment, because he confounded it with
democratical government, and he detested the
latter, because hlie believed it must end in des'potisrnm, and be, in the mean time, destructive
'to public morality....  He heartily assented,
nevertheless, to the' Constitution, because he
considered it as a band, which might hold us
together  for some  titne, and  he  knew  that
'national sentiment is the offspring of national
cexistence.  He trusted, moreover, that in the
changes and  chances of time, we  should be
'involved in some war, which might strengthen
cour Union and nerve the Executive.... He
",never failed on every occasion to advocate
"the excellence of, and avow  his attachment to,
" monarchical government." *
* Sparks's Gouverneur Morris, vol. iii. p. 260: Letter to
Robert Walsh, February 5, 1811. 
THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
SECTION IV.
HAMILTON.
With the unbounded attachment of his followers, Hamilton, whose fame sustains itself with
posterity, had, as a leader, the inexpiable fault
of distrust in all he did. What trust could he
put in an effort to prop what he deemed a false
system?  It is melanchloly to see him give way,
at last, to the despondent conviction of the ruinous disadvantage of his position as a supporter
of institutions which he absolutely distrusted.
"Mine" he writes in 1802, "is an odd destiny.
' Perhaps no man in the United States has sacrieficed or done more for the present Constitution
"than myself; and, contrary to all my anticipations of its fate, as you know from the very
'beginning, I am still laboring to prop the frail
" and worthless fabric. Yet I have the murmurs
" of its friends no less than the curses of its foes
"for my  reward.  What  can  I do better than
" withdraw froln the scene?  Every day proves
" to me more and more that this American world
"was not made for me."*
* Haimilton's Works, vol. vi. p. 530: Letter to Gouverneur Morris, February 27, 1802.
103 
104  FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM
That Hamnilton looked, in his more hopeful
days, to the federalists being able to overcome,
in administering it, what he deemied the defects
of the government, appears in his "Impressions of
"the New Constitution," dated in 1787; he says,*
"A  reunion with Great Britain, from universal
"disgust at a state of commotion, is not imposc;sible, though not much to be feared. The most
"plausible shape of such a business would be the
"establishment of a son of the present monarch in
"the supreme government of this country, with
a family compact."...' A  good  administra'tion will conciliate the confidence and affection
of the people, and perhaps enable the govern"ment to acquire more consistency than the pro posed Constitution seems to promise for so great
a country.   It may  then triumph altogether
over the State governments, and reduce them
to anl entire subordination, dividing the larger
cStates into smaller districts.  The organs of the
"general government may also acquire additional
" strength."
Another fault of Hamilton, and which would not
have been found in Jay or Marshall had they led
the federalists, he shared with eminent statesmen
of all times; but than which none can be of more
* Hamilton's Works, vo]. ii. p. 421. 
THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
hindrance to the American politician, who needs
must look to the favour of the people. It was
the propensity to intrigue. The so-called Miranda
expedition was a desperate intrigue; equally dangerous whether it failed or succeeded, and destructive to the independent existence of the
United States. His proposal to Mr. Jay, then
Governor of New York, after the issue of their
elections, in 1800, had insured the Presidential
vote of the State to Mr. Jefferson, to call together
the Legislature, which, though superseded by that
just elected, had still constitutional life, to meet
in extraordinary session, and change the mode of
choosing electors, from choice by the Legislature to
that by popular districts, thus dividing the New
York vote, and taking part of it from Jefferson,
was a temptation to the virtue of Mr. Jay that
was sternly rejected.* His other project, of the
same year, which met no more success, though
supported with a degree of laborious contrivance
that was truly astonishing, including the marvellous mistake of his letter of crimination of the
* See Hamilton's letter to Jay: Hamilton's Works, vol.
vi. pp. 438-440.  "On this letter is the following endorse"ment in the Governor's hand:'Proposing a measure for
"'party purposes, which I think it would not become me to
"'adopt.'"  Life of Jay, vol. i. p. 414.
8
105 
106 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM
federal candidate, to defeat, at the same blow, both
Mr. Adams and Mr. Jefferson, and make the people, without meaning it, or knowing it, elect Mr.
Pinckney President, who was the candidate for
Vice-President, is a blot on a name which none
ought to desire to see blemished.*
These were the irregularities of political discontent.  It was not the funding system, or the
French war, which gave triumph to the people.
It was the just fears they entertained of men who
hated their principles.
SECTION V.
WASHINGTON.
When we turn to the disputes that shook the
country between the opposing counsels of Mr.
Jefferson and Mr. Hamilton, the conduct of Washington calming the dissensions seems the wisdom
of a God. In truth, it was that of a man immeasurably their superior. " I believe the views
4 of both of you to be pure and well meant, and
that experience only will decide with respect
* See Hamilton's Works, vols. vi. and vii.; History of the
Republic, by John C. Hamilton; Memoirs of the Administrations of Washington and John Adams, edited from the
papers of Oliver Wolcott, Secretary of the Treasury, by
George Gibbs. 
TiHE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
"to the salutariness of the measures  which are
"the subjects of dispute."*  It was that greatness
which rises above the passions of men.
It is not common to find the opinions of any
man incapable of distortion, and the attempt has
been to distort, to party service, the opinions of
Washington.  Of Jefferson and Hamilton it may
be said, not disparagingly, that they were party
men; in the same sense in which the same thing
may be said of other great public servants and
benefactors, in any country. But Washington was
a man of a different order; in the amplest sense
out of reach of the prejudices of party, he uniformly discouraged, disliked, and despised it. He
was a man, if ever there was one, who may be
counted always to mean as much as he said; and
most emphatically did he declare his apprehensions of party; witness the Farewell Address. He
said in 1795,t he was "one who is of no party,
"and his sole wish is to pursue with undeviating
"steps a path which would lead this country to
"respectability, wealth, and happiness."  The persons Washington had about him during his last
* Letter to Jefferson, October 18, 1792: Sparks's Washington, vol. x. p. 306.
t Letter to Mr. Pickering, July 27, 1795: Sparks's Washington, vol. xi. p. 40.
107 
108  FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM
term of administering the government, were generally federalists; contrary to his strong desire.
When Mr. Jefferson's place was filled by Mr Pickering, and Mr. Haminilton's by Mr. Wolcott, he had
a less able cabinet, but history can say no more;
he parted with their predecessors with reluctance.
We look in vain in all the acts, and words,
written and spoken, of Washington, for a justification of the assertion in the preface to the Ana of
Mr. Jefferson, who, like other active minds, when
work was done took to scribbling, that, from the
moment of his own "retiring from the administra"tion, the federalists got unchecked hold of Gen"eral Washington;" that "his energy was abated,
"a listlessness of labour, a desire for tranquillity
"had crept over him, and  a willingness to let
"others act and even think for him;" and hence,
as Jefferson argued, that he fell under party influences. IHe had not fallen under Mr. Jefferson's
influence; that was the difficulty; Mr. Hainilton
found the same difficulty, and felt more bitterly
about it than Mr. Jefferson. Posterity, with all
the facts before them, may flatly deny Mr. Jefferson s conclusions.
Mr. Jefferson could know personally nothing;
for he does not seem to have been at the seat of
government from thie period of his resignation of 
THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
his secretaryship to that of his return to Philadelphia, at the close of Washington's administration,
to take his seat as Vice-President. His relations
with Washington, meanwhile, were limited to the
exchange of four or five letters, and those not on
political subjects. Posterity, without the best evidence, would reject the idea that Washington was a
man for such  listlessness;" he never was listless;
to the last his impulses, not to say passions, were
high and strong.*   Imperfectly educated, which
made the assistance of secretaries aids, and ministers with habits of thought and literary labour,
acceptable, if not necessary to him; cautious, but,
like even the most rapid spirits, glad, in administering a government, to avail himself of the judgment
of others; where is the evidence that he was open
to influences which men of the highest order would
not court and invite, and which, in effect, they
always do court and invite?  The effort made to
* Mr. Jefferson retired "from the administration" the 31st
of December, 1793; two years after, the 1st of January,
1796, Washington made his celebrated answer to the French
minister, Adet, when the flags of that country were presented to the United  States' Born,  sir, in a land of
"liberty," etc., perhaps the most zealous language Washington ever used, and, as was well known at the time, most
annoying to the federal party.
109 
110  FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM
show, by facts, party influence over the mind of
Washington has been made and failed; it has
come to nothing, and enough is known, now, of
the true history of those days, to satisfy us that
it will never find support.
Jefferson, who was, to use a favourite word of
his, a Galloman, as Hamilton, with the whole positiveness of his nature, was an Angloman, did not
content himself with the high impartiality of
Washington. His pride alone would have made
him inaccessible to what are called influences.
Doubtless, Jefferson would have drawn him further
in his own direction, and his conclusions, which
were not only those of a party man, but, at the
period of which he speaks, a dissatisfied party
man, must have, to sustain them, two supports,
neither of which do they possess. They must be
specific, and they must rest on established facts.
The division of parties was between federalists,
so called from their favouring the adoption of the
Federal Constitution, and what were called republicans.   Washington  was  a federalist  as  a
framer of the Constitution, and a steadfast adherent to it after it had been put in action. But
Madison was a federalist in the same sense, and
perhaps more fully than any other person; yet he
led the democratic party for years. Other merl 
THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
bers of the convention, signers of the Constitution,
went with him and Mr. Jefferson, in opposing what
was called the federal party; for example, Governor Langdon,* of New Hampshire, and Governor
Mifflin,t of Pennsylvania. To what is known, in
common acceptation, as politics, Washington never
put his hand. Mr. Jay's Treaty was, of all questions during his Presidency, the most agitated,
in and out of Congress. Not only the Treaty, but
Washington himself was assailed; yet he appointed
Mr. Rutledge, one of the assailants of the Treaty,
Chief Justice, to succeed Mr. Jay, who made it;
and the Senate, who were politicians, rejected Mr.
Rutledge's nomination, for his opposition to a government measure. When Washington took into
his cabinet Mr. Jefferson and Mr. Hamilton, he
took them, not, as in later days, ministers have
been chosen to represent parties.  That would
have been to stoop.
If these two great men who disputed his favour,
and other statesmen since, above all, his successors
in the Presidency, could have had imbued in them
* John Langdon, delegate from New Hampshire; Governor of that State; member of the Confederate Congress;
and Senator of the United States under the Constitution.
] Thomas Mifflin, delegate from Pennsylvania; Governor
of that State; and member of the Confederate Congress.
ill
I 
112 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM
Washington's truly democratic idea, that the Executive was meant for a public servant, and not
a party leader, our institutions would find more
favour than they do.   This man, so stern and
inflexible, said to a correspondent, in 1793, who
had written to him, objecting to the schemes of
Mr. Hamilton, "I only wish, whilst I am a ser"vant of the public, to know the will of my mas"ters, that I may govern myself accordingly."
A sentiment, be it said, which, as none can doubt
the sincerity of him who uttered it, showed his
intimate appreciation of our system; for if the
people are only to be led, then where is popular
government? To another correspondent, writing
to him on Hamilton's financial policy, and the
feeling it had produced, he says, " Your descrip'~ tion of the public mind in Virginia gives me pain.
It seems to be mnore irritable, sour, and discon" tented than, from the information I received, it
"is in any other State in the Union, except Massachusetts, which, from the same causes, but on
' quite different principles, is tempered like it."t
Equal censure of Virginia and Massachusetts!
* Letter to Edmund Pendleton, September 23, 1793:
Sparks's Washington, vo]. x. p. 371.
t Letter to David Stuart, June 15, 1790: Sparks's Washington, vol. x. p. 94. 
THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
Opposition to the separate rights of the States
was federal doctrine. Do any believe that Washington, who, from the chair of the convention, witnessed State jealousies of those rights, and saw
them conceded, could have contemplated their
transgression?   Who can fail to see that Washington's mastery over Hamilton and Jefferson, and
the mortifications of vanity which he made them
undergo, were very useful to the public? The key
to Washington's disinclinations to party, and to
his doubts of the measures of party leaders, it is
easy to apply. Party daily compounds with what
conscience disapproves; and to Washington, the
only man strong enough to make his conscience
his only guide, it was not necessary to compound.
113 
114  FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM
CHAPTER V.
DEMOCRACY COMES INTO POWER.
SECTION I.
THE FIRST THREE DEMOCRATIC EXECUTIVES; THEIR SUCCESS.
ON the 4th of March, 1801, democracy came in
with the Presidency of Mr. Jefferson; he established a democratic party, raised the standard of
victorious opposition to those who would prevent
the onward progress of a great movement, reconciled to it, in a degree, the education and intelligence of the country, and helped to its place, its
rights and the respect that was due to it, the creed
of the majority of the people of the United States.
He could not make democracy universal; but he
made it orthodox. His government was prosperous, subject to the one blemish of a policy pacific
to excess, and the consequent endurance by the
country of wrongs which ought never to have been
endured, which were not redressed by embargoes
and non-intercourse, and came to war at last. His
genius, his integrity which has survived all the attacks on it, overcame prepossessions, personal and 
THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
political, and contributed to enable his two immediate successors to retire, after, each, eight fortunate
years of office, leaving the world in reluctant admiration of a great experiment. For twenty-four
years, democracy, derided by Mr. Hamilton and
his followers, grew in the opinion of the world.
At no time did it give more uneasiness to those
who love it not; and at no time was it so studiously decried.
For sober encouragement of rational hope, no
period can be pointed to, at which those who
desire the advancement of human freedom, and
who are not to be satisfied with government like
that of Washington, which turned on the individual virtues of an unequalled man, can look
with more complacency than the twenty-four years
comprised in the administration of the government of the United States by Mr. Jefferson, Mr.
Madison, and Mr. Monroe. The reins of central
power were held with a just and easy hand, and
designs were no longer entertained of dismantling
the States of their constitutional  rights.  Mr.
Jefferson's were called French principles; but the
theory, and, for the most part, the practice, of his
democracy was to leave the people to themselves;
while in French democracy, unfortunately the government does everything.
115 
116 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM
SECTION II.
DEMOCRACY UNDERGOES A CHANGE.
When Mr. Monroe withdrew, the country
paused, in the choice of a successor, among  citizens, all men of mark, but who sought the Presidential office, an element then new.  Among the
competitors for his place, who were Mr. Crawford,
Mr. Adams, General Jackson, Mr. Calhoun, and
Mr. Clay, the question was of persons only. As
between Mr. Adams, who, in obtaining Mr. Monroe's place, and General Jackson, who, in his turn,
at the close of Mr. Adams's four years, defeated
him and came in, there was, again, no question
that was not personal. It was a personal struggle
for power. It was, if the comparison can be admitted, as strictly a conflict of persons, as those
decided with the sword, between the rival candidates for the supremacy of declining Rome.  Like
them, it marked an era. The time seemed to come
when republican government was to undergo a
change, and approach a more dangerous stage of
political existence. Party differences of the democratic and federal parties, at the end of the last
and beginning of the present century, ran high;
but it was not till after the contest for the succes 
THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
sion to Mr. Monroe, that party, having no principles to settle, the federalists being as a party
extinct, and measures no longer in question, began
to wear the livery of men. Upon the coalition
between Mr. Adams and Mr. Clay, which gave to
Mr. Adams the Presidency by a vote of States, in
the House of Representatives, there arose to the
government of Mr. Adams an opposition of the
most unsparing kind; differing from any which
had preceded it; a personal opposition to Mr.
Adams, and a personal support of General Jackson, as his competitor said to be wronged by the
election of Mr. Adams.
In historical events, to determine effect to its
cause is often as difficult after the fact as before.
At the end of the last century, in thle loss of their
American colonies, which proved a gain to British
trade, wealth, and navigation, British statesmen,
looking forward, saw nothing but ruin. To-day,
the American looks back and asks himself the
question, Are personal ambitions the cause that
so much true democracy has become nothing but
falsehood, or are they only an attending circumstance, the cause lying deeper?
117 
118 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM
SECTION III.
LIBERTY DOES NOT INSURE GOOD GOVERNMENT.
The institutions of a country taken by centuries,
ought to be the reflection of its society. But the
curious observer, who came among us to study
the ways of democracy, would see a society in the
vigour of youth, and institutions with the infirmities of age; fallen in favour, while the people they
were organized to protect, rise without protection,
in much of what goes to enhance the happiness of
the country and add to the pride of its citizens.
The people of the United States possess  the
singular advantage of having been always free;
an advantage common to no other people. They
have, ever, been unequivocally and absolutely free.
The facilities for acquiring pecuniary independence, the comforts of home, the vanities of life,
activity of spirit, pride of country, are the lot of
all. All Americans have ambition, and the effect
has been nationality to excess; with the spirit of
individuality, a virtue for which there is no excess. But this is the people. What is the government? A man may have independence, sincerity, and pride, and as a politician give them 
THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
little exercise. It may be said that the general
tendency of all government is downwards. There
is no reason why government in this free country
should not have as many vices, though perhaps
not of the same kind, as in the most despotic
state. We are not wrong when we suppose ourselves, as a population, high above the standard
of others; but no citizen of the United States can
think that, in point of government,  the same
superiority is to be claimed; that the thrift and
intelligence which belong to us as men, characterize us when we come to engage in public duties
and the performance of the functions of office.
Why should the American people submit to this
humiliating difference?
SECTION IV.
RESPONSIBILITY.
The principle of government is responsibility.
Nelson said, England expects every man to do his
duty; a Turk would have said, the Sultan; an Imperialist, the Aulic Council; but this hero said, the
people expected it, and to them was the responsibility.  He referred his men to the country, which,
he said, looked to them to hold it up. If opinions
could be expressed as freely to-day as they were
in 1787, it would be said, in 1874, that the people
119 
120   FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM
of the United States have no such expectation
whatever as that the servants they employ will do
their duty.
There is said to be a looseness in democratic
government; the laws not being executed because
they are laws, but because the execution of them
is expected by public opinion. In this censure
there may be truth; but our government is loose
because its public opinion is base.  It is that of
some venal combination which gave it power, and
to which: and not to the people, it answers. The
government is unlike the people, because it neither
is chosen by the people, nor answers to them.
The world is said to be governed too much;
which ought to be understood, too much for the
governing, and too little for the governed. In
no other sense is it true that it is governed too
much, for men both need governing, and like to
be governed. In this democracy of ours, we are
most governed when the people are least feared.
The mnore inactive the people, the worse is the
government. Tile President of the United States,
who rules four years, the Governor of Pennsylvania, who rules three, love the people less than any
monarch who is to be succeeded by his son; and
they must be made to fear their responsibility to
those whom they do not love.  What is to be the 
THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
public servant's motive to his duty? It must be
what is called responsibility, but which, in effect,
is fear. When we were colonies, all who were in
authority stood in fear, each of his superior, in
due gradation, one to the other, till they came to
the Crown and Parliament in London. Having
thrown aside this fear, we must find another.
SECTION V.
IN DEMOCRATIC GOVERNMENT TIlHE RESPONSIBILITY IS TO ALL.
Since we worshipped the sober democracy of
Mr. Jefferson, its altars have been profaned with
corruptions and environed with perils which, in
his time, were unknown. The horror he taught
of great establishments;  his dislike to moneymaking, unless with the plough, where are they?
He did not know that democracy was destined so
soon to flourish, side by side, with the tallest
weeds and rankest vices.
It is the commonest of mistakes to think the
past is good, and the present bad, and deceive ourselves; but there are things which we know, and
cannot deceive ourselves about. We know that
on each occasion of the nine first Presidential
elections, power was unsought. We know this
has long ceased to be. We know, and only a
great public change can account for it, that in
9
121 
122 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM
the revolution of 1776, a country of sunme three
millions of people produced illustrious men; and
in that of 1860, the same country, ten times as
populous, did not produce one. No merit appeared that was not military. We know that
Washington  offered the Department of State to
nine different persons, of various politics, all of
whom declined the first place in the government.
We know that, now, the appetite for place is universal. The day when a monarch will be the
American Executive, is farther off than Franklin
thought, philosopher and front-rank man though
he was; but the negligences of democracy have
produced what Franklin may have looked for first,
and which now we have, a government that
answers to itself, and not to the people; a government without responsibility.
The earlier Presidents, men whom everybody
knew, were put in their seats by the people.  It
became, in later years, usual for those representing
the people in Congress, to recommend candidates
to them. After the election of Mr. Adams, at the
controversy of 1824-5, when the Congressional
recommendation given to Mr. Crawford was ratified neither by the people nor the House of Representatives voting by States, a mode was adopted,
which has since prevailed, with extensive conse 
THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
quences.   They  have  extended  themselves  to
every office in the country, from the highest to
the lowest. The people are supposed to appoint
delegates, and the delegates appoint the candidates;
but to any plan of action it is a necessarily implied
condition that the persons of the drama perform
their parts, and in the action of a democracy the
part of the people must not be omnitted.  If the
people, the power which ought to appoint the delegates, do not appoint them, another power gets the
people's place.* Gouverneur Morris reasoned well,
* The fact is familiar, and appears in every variety of
form. Mr. Lincoln, by the will of a convention of delegates,
became the candidate of his party, and was elected President
in 1860, when  his name, out of his State, was unknown.
Mr. Pierce, in the same way, was made President in 1852,
though not much more known to the country than Mr. Lincoln. In both cases, men of national reputation were set
aside by the delegates, who find their account, personally,
in having inferior men the holders of executive power. So
delegates sent to conventions, instructed by popular constituencies, or what are made to seem so, to support a. certain
candidate, reject him, and take a candidate who had not been
thought of. This happened when Mr. Van Buren was set
aside, and Mr. Polk nominated and elected. Mr. Burr is said
to have said to a young acquaintance, You will live to see the
President of the United States nominated by twenty thousand men in a field. It is much worse; twenty thousand
men in a field would not be governed by a spirit of bargain,
sale, and fraud.
123 
124 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM
that to the people, who ought to know their men.
ought to be committed the choice of their federal
head. He assumed, believing it or not, that they
were equal to the performance of this duty; but,
in his day, it was not imagined that by combinations, now so familiar, their power could be taken
from them.
SECTION VI.
THE MEANS BY WHICH IT COMES THAT GOVERNMENT IN THE UNITED
STATES IS NOT RESPONSIBLE TO ALL.
One of the last signs of the decay of the old
French monarchy, the great places being filled by
the great, was a general thirst for small places,
which sprang up in all parts of the kingdom, and
enabled Executive power to bind its hungry followers to unscrupulous devotion. The disease of
a falling monarchy has seized on a young republic.
The proposal in the federal convention to fortify
the central Executive by making the Governors of
States dependent on the President was held inadmissible; but no Governor of a State can be elected,
or, being elected, can maintain himself, on any
other principle than one akin to that which the
convention refused to entertain or consider; so
with all State offices, all federal offices, all municipal offices, and the members of all legislative 
THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
and deliberative bodies, municipal, State, and
federal.
They look to the President, for to him they are
bound. The allegiance is due of every placeman,
every law-nmakler, every public functionary in the
entire Union, to a chief residing at the metropolis;
or, worse, to his rival in the field, disputing the
succession; and he, in return, owes his confidence
to each and all of these subordinates. The system
is made to work more easily by means of removals from office at each change of political power.
A system exists by which every interest is bound
up with Presidential patronage and aspirations. If
no influence but that of the people were felt in the
election of the mayor of a city, their inclinations,
if not regulated by considerations of the public
good, would turn upon personal or party preferences; but they would be municipal in their character; municipal considerations, municipal preferences, all referring themselves to the affairs of
the city. Why should the people ask whether an
aspirant to be the city chief would favour the pretensions of a certain aspirant to the Presidency?
The answer is, that the same machinery used to
ends of federal patronage, is applied to those of
city government.  They who have the means to
control votes, to the election of a President, can
125 
126  FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDFD FROM
control them to the election of a mayor. The
like is true of all elections, and of all political
movements. They are all controlled by the same
hands. This system has possessed itself of suffrage, to the exclusion of the people, as far as it
is possible to exclude them; and that is well-nigh
entirely. As almost all Executives and Legislatures, municipal, State, and federal, are elected
at the polls, and all placemen whatever who are
not appointed by authority which, itself, has been
elected at the polls, it is plain that by the control of suffrage, power can be, as, in effect, it is
absolutely, consolidated. Democracy gives way to
oligarchy; the many to the few.
Republican central authority and its band of
myrmidons does not, like royal authority, control
local government; does not choose members of
municipal, State, and federal Legislatures;  cannot appoint, cannot remove Governors of States,
or mayors of cities, or any State or municipal
functionaries; but, nevertheless, these characters
all hold their places on condition of suit, having
obtained them on a pledge of it.  By this means,
the Executive, the width of the continent from
the spot where the influence is exercised, binds
up with federal policy and his personal interests
the local concerns of the meanest or greatest muni 
THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
cipality; and central power goes, by the most despicable instruments, on the meanest errands, to
every corner of the republic.  Every election is
the President's. Every movement, however small
it may seem, is for or against him.  Thus is expelled the local spirit, the spirit of independence,
which is the very blood of the heart of liberty;
and we prepare for the day predicted by Franklin.
We have, not a monarchy, but we have a hierarchy.
Such is the power that corrupts the politics of
the country, and brings upon democracy doubts
which are thickening around us. Suffrage represents, not the people, but combinations that usurp
their place, and whose contrivances are the counterfeit of the popular will.
SECTION VII.
THE CITY OF PHIILADELPHIA.
The city of Philadelphia contains seven hundred
and fifty thousand inhabitants, one-fifth of the
people of the State of Pennsylvania, whose population is three million five hundred thousand; being an eleventh part, as the city is a fiftieth part,
of the population of the Union, according to the
census of 1870. Suppose the vote of the whole
country, at a Presidential election, taken in eleven
127 
128  FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FRO.Mf
fractions. The hfalndful of persons who, in Philadelphia, represent the Executive interest, and control
to its needs, not on the day of the election only,
but every day of the whole year, and permanently,
all the immense and costly concerns of the citizens
of Philadelphia, cast one of eleven votes that
make the President; granting that by means of
the city these Pretorians control the State, as
commonly they can and do. If they do not with
the city control the State, they cast one vote
in fifty. That is to say, they make one link
of the fifty or eleven links, of the chain that
binds thile Union  to the footstool of Executive
power.*
* Whence does this handful of persons gather their power?
They are not tyrants; they can hardly be called demagogues.
They get it by sitting down in an empty seat, that of the
people. There are about one hundred thousand votes in the
city, and the law, now, divides them among about six hundred and fifty divisions so called, or polling-places; of some
one hundred and sixty voters, or eighty of each party, to each
division. Party'calls, annually, on its voters to come and
choose delegates to meet in convention and select the party
candidates, but they do not come, and the party managers
do it for them. Of the six hundred and fifty divisions there
is, perhaps, not one in which a majority of the voters are not
well-disposed citizens; but the well-disposed are not represented.'The delegates choose candidates like themselves,
leaving to the voter, when he comes to the poll, no option 
THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
SECTION VIII.
THE CITIZENS' NEGLECT OF DUTY, WHAT IT COMES TO.
Governments have a principle of action; a fundamental principle, which being violated, all goes
wrong. We live under democratic government.
At the people's commnand, authority was left to
them in 1787. But there are political currents
that are as opposite to one another as the upper
and lower currents of the ocean; and democracy,
which in 1787 was so much coveted, and was odious too, is though coveted odious still. But it is
not the hatred of it that accounts for its abuses,
it is the indifference of the people to the democratic task, the task they took on themselves; the
task of the control and mastery over those who
serve them. Ask your fellow-citizenl his will about
public affairs, he expresses himself warmly; he
but to vote according to bidding, or not at all. What prevents the citizens of each division (it would not cost, during
the year, the idlest or busiest man six hours of his time)
taking as much interest in providing candidates for office as
they do to fill offices in their associations of business, pleasure,
charity, or devotion? If there be divisions in which the
majority are bad people, there will be, as democracy can rise
no higher than its source, bad candidates, but they will be
rare.
129 
130 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY'REGARDED FROM
takes a deep interest in them. But ask him what
he is doing towards procuring a representation of
his will, he is doing nothing. This is not democratic governmenlt, but it is the government under
which we live; and it has become bad government.
Why should the people of Italy, Hiolland, Belgium, Germany, France, England, have better governments than ours, more obedience, more order,
more system, public functionaries less ignorant
and more capable than ours? The American
citizen is free in his person; but, of his property,
more is mortgaged to the public than in any
other country. It is a signal proof of misgoverninent that, being the youngest country of the
world, we are the most heavily taxed.*  When
* We might take, for the position, general, and perhaps
uncontradicted, belief.  But the report of the commissioners
of the 16th of February, 1871, appointed to revise the laws
for assessment and collection of taxes in the State of New
York, sustains the assertion in the text.  "The  aggregate
"per capita taxation of the whole country" (namely, the
United States), "according to these different estimates, would
"therefore be $21.83, $19.26, and $16.09, respectively; the
"last figures representing probably the minimum, and indi"cating a larger per capita taxation than any modern nation
has ever before been subjected to, continuously, in time of
"peace." (Page 9.) It more than sustains the text, if the
rate, per capita, of the most heavily taxed other countries is, 
THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
the people of Europe see their money lavished on
showy establishments, they may not think it well
spent; but, with us, it disappears in the collection.
If the two interests which divide the cares of
men, their persons and their property, are equally
dear to us, they are very unequally protected. It
would be astonishing to see ourselves represented
by persons, so many of them destitute of qualificatiollns, did we not know that, in point of fact, they
do not represent us.   As a new people we may
be unfinished; the older countries may have a
more strict economy, more perfect command of
labour.  But let us admit that, in the civilized
world, there is no government in which office is
so little warrant as in ours, of personal respectability. There must be in the United States,
where we say we choose them, more discreditable
persons in public employ, men indifferent to their
duties, and unworthy of them, than in any European country, however governed. This may seem
unaccountable; but no, ours is the country of all1
others, where those who give the places and those
who fill them have the least interest in seeing the
public served.
as it is thought to be, very much below the ascertained minimum of $16.09 of the United States.
131 
132 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM
SECTION IX.
Ours is centralization, not as proposed to the
convention and overruled, but democratically.
When Mr. Hamilton, as Mr. Jefferson understood
him, said, Purge the British constitution of its corruption and you r?ake it an impracticable government, he may have been right, speaking of a centralized country, which was an oligarchy; but a
corrupt democracy, corrupted universal suffrage,
is centralization indeed! An established church,
a standing army, an hereditary aristocracy, are
sources of power that consist with public order
and security, as we see in so many countries of
the world; but democratic institutions, with suffrage controlled by Executive power, is the worst
source to which authority could possibly trace
itself. If, in Great Britain, the head of the mninistry, or of the opposition, to make good his pretensions to the lead, should put in motion machinery like ours, hle would shake the kingdom.
Under despotic government, even the measure of
the sudden change of all the placemen could be
resorted to but once. It would break everything
to pieces. Only the robust articulation of a demo
CENTRALIZATION. 
THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
cratic society has enabled us to bear it. Agitation,
which commonly is from the extremities to the
centre, with us, more dangerous, is from the centre
to the extremities. We have incessant turmoil,
but not as the price of liberty.
! If Mr. Hamilton could have reversed the instincts of his countrymen, and the longings of the
nations of the earth, and, turning back upon its
source the current of popular feeling, made his
experiment of a constitution, by which the Executive and Senate were on life tenure, and the
Governors of States appointed by the General
Government, with a negative on State laws, our
institutions, thus committed to a few, and removed
from the influence of the many, might have endured till the country shrunk to a monarchy, or
relieved itself by revolution) Concentrated to the
Presidential election, democracy may be compared
to a river whose volume of water, in its course
towards the sea, has to pass a point where its
channel is too narrow for it, and the stream,
which before was salutary and refreshing, becomes a turbid and filthy torrent.
133 
134  FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM
CHAPTER VI.
APATHY OF THE PEOPLE.
SECTION I.
ITS EFFECTS IN A DEMOCRACY.
MOST of the British constituencies once were
popular; but, in progress of time, some by corruption, others through indifference of the many, fell
to the few, and so much of popular power was lost,
going to the aristocracy, a respectable order. If,
in the United States, where the respectable order
is the people, power is lost, it goes to conspirators,
whose trade is plunder.
In the debates in the British Parliament, on the
Reform Bill of 1831-2, it was said by one of the
Commons, opposing the reform, that any six hundred and fifty gentlemen, picked up-such was
the  expression-at  Hlyde  Park  Corner,  would
make a very good House of Commons; meaning,
that these persons would, other things equal,
frame the laws and mould the policy of Great
Britain as well as if they had been voted for in
six hundred and fifty popular constituencies. If 
THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
the fact be assumed, that the people are not to
influence, the observation had wisdom as well as
wit. It was a way of complaining of the project
to take one of the Houses of Parliament out of
the hands of a class, and give it to the people.
Their system was oligarchal, and the British constitution, when they passed the Reform Bill, was
disturbed, if not changed. In the United States,
our system is democratic, and to contrive against
the people, whose power, openly, none dare to
disturb, is a crime.
Let democracy be a mistake, we can work no
other vein till that is exhausted.   " The circum"stances and habits of every country," said Mr.
Burke,  "which  it is always  perilous and  pro"ductive of the greatest calamities to force, are
"to decide on the formr of government."
In Europe, the interest taken by the citizen in
his government is smli-tl, and less and less as it
approaches absolutism; in this country, less and
less,is it approaches the influence of the few.
Party is like in army, the officers think and the
ranks obey.   It is no substitute for the noble
independence of individual opinion To know
the vote of the member of any legislative body
in the whole country, on any subject, political
or not, you have only to know his faction. Indi
135 
136  FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM
viduality, which is the core of the man, has been
taken away from him.  If the people cannot think
for themselves, democracy is a false system. If
that popular judgment, which is the surest, is
inaccessible, or, being accessible, is unmanageable, we  must return to aristocracy, which has
produced good and great men.  They are never
produced by democracy when the people are in
that languid condition wilere there is no efficient public opinion. If we had had a public
opinion, we would not have had a civil war; for
a public sentiment that was active and efficient
would not have suffered itself to be forced, contrary to all its prejudices, into the vagaries of the
abolitionists.
The South American republics had governments as well designed as ours, and they failed
because the people did not take interest enough
in them to support them.  "In Connecticut," said
Roger Sherman, insisting to the federal convention
that the term of service of Senators ought to be
short, "we have existed one hundred and thirty two years under an annual government;" but, he
added, "as long as a man behaves himself well he
"is never turned out of office."  Evidently, the
virtue of that government was in the people.
But, see the effects of the apathy of the people! 
THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
From the time of Mr. Jefferson's coming in, to this
day, democracy has been in the ascendant; yet, in
1861, the government, with the weight of its accumulated sins, went crashing to the ground, and a
long and doubtful conflict of arms followed, dragging democracy at the heels of a soldiery. For
the last thirty of the sixty years elapsed since Mr.
Jefferson's election to the Presidency, the power
of the people was not exercised, and the tenure of
office was independent both of the will of the people and the behaviour of the incumbent; the consequence has been bad government. That exhausts
the patience and wears out the spirit of a people.
Men, for the sake of repose, surrender their liberty.
It was thus hostilities closed between the States,
in 1865. The people of the South, tired of war,
which is the exaggeration of bad government, exchanged their liberties for a promise. They were
promised they should plough their lands in peace.
SECTION II.
THE PEOPLE OF TOWNS.
By the census of 1870* it appears that, in the
United States, of its 38,558,371 people there are
* "Ninth Census of the United States.  Statistics of Popu"lation. Tables I. to VIII., inclusive."
10
137 
138  FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM
5,675,775, nearly one-seventh, who inhabit towns
and cities of upwards of 26,766 inhabitants. Add
to these the smaller towns of 10,000 inhabitants,
or perhaps 5000, and it will be seen how much of
what passes for popular will is counterfeit; for
those who usurp the people's office control much
of all this town population.
It was provided, by the late convention to revise
the Constitution of Pennsylvania, that, in towns of
upwards of one hundred thousand inhabitants, not
more than two hundred and fifty votes should be'
taken at the same polling-place. It was meant to
diminish the opportunities for fraud; but fraud
will never end, as long as the people will tolerate
it. Elections at these small polls will be with
more difficulty carried by fraud, until the day
comes when the managers of them learn to apply
it more readily, the smaller the poll is; and that
will be soon. No precaution avails if the people
are indifferent.
Patriotism is common enough as a sentiment;
but, for purposes of action, it must be a virtue, and
a difficulty of free government is that this virtue
ought not to be rare.
If, of two hundred and fifty voters, two hundred
and forty-five stand by and let five choose their
representatives, this means want of patriotism. 
THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
At the State election for Pennsylvania held in
November, 1874, the city of Philadelphia polled
for the minority ticket about forty-seven thousand
votes; of which not less than ten thousand had
to be brought to the polls by the payment of the
half-dollar tax which qualifies the voter, out of a
public purse raised for the purpose. Five thousand dollars were thus expended in sums of half
a dollar. Without this the votes might have been
lost. On the other side, that of the majority, the
probability is that a much larger number of their
votes had to be so taken care of.
SECTION III.
WASHINGTON'S IDEAS.
At so early a period as the year 1786, before, in
Dolitics, corruption could have been thought of, a
nephew of Washington wrote to him, "We have
"lately instituted a society in these lower counties,
'called the Patriotic Society.  As it is something
"new, and there are a few men both good and
"sensible who disapprove of it, it will be a high
"gratification to me to know your sentiments of it,
"if you will be so kind as to communicate them.
" The object of the institution is to inquire into the
"state of public affairs; to consider in what the
139 
140 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM
" true happiness of the people consists, and what
"are the evils which have pursued, and still con"tinue to molest us; the means of attaining the
"former and escaping the latter; to inquire into
"the conduct of those who represent us, and to
"give them our sentiments upon those laws which
"ought to be, or are already made." Washington answered,... Generally speaking, I have
"seen as much evil as good result from such so"'cieties as you describe the constitution of yours
' to be.  They are a kind of imperium in imperio,
"and as often clog as facilitate public measures.
"I am no friend to institutions, except in local
"matters, which are wholly, or in a great measure,
"confined to the county of the delegates.... May
"not a few members of this society, more sagacious
"and designing than the rest, direct the measures
"of it to private views of their own?  May not
"this embarrass an honest, able delegate, who
" hears the voice of his country from all quarters,
"and thwart public measures?"*
Did he see in these societies the germ of those
middle men, the curse of democracy, who being
neither people nor government, act for both?
These Virginia gentlemen, whose scheme Waslh  * Letter to Bushrod Washington, September 30, 1786:
Sparks's Washington, vol. x. pp. 198, 199. 
THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
ington condemned, meant to substitute themselves
for the people, for whom he thought there must be
no substitute. A system by which persons are
delegated to devise principles for the people and
rules for their representatives eats at the root of
democracy. It is not mere stringency of party that
makes the American legislator too timid and too
bold. It is stringency of party controlled by cabals
and conventions which stand between him and responsibility to the people.
Eleven years later, when Washington had retired to Mount Vernon and from the public service, as he supposed, forever, he writes to a correspondent, " The President's speech will, I conceive,
" draw forth, mediately or immediately, an expres"sion of the public mind; and, as it is the right
"of the people that this should be carried into
"effect, their sentiments ought to be unequivocally
"known, that the principles on which the govern"ment has acted, and which, from the President's
"speech, are likely to be continued, may either be
"changed, or the opposition, that is endeavouring
"to embarrass every measure of the Executive,
"may meet effectual discountenance."* Such was
this man's idea of duty. The Executive was to
* Letter to Thomas Pinckney, May  28, 1797:  Sparks's
Washington, vol. xi. p. 202.
141 
142  FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM
draw forth" " an expression of the public mind,
"and, as it is the right of the people that this
"should be carried into effect," to change, if need
were, his policy, and make it accord with it. A
President, now, who changed his front, would be
ruined. His business would be, in case of hesitationi in the public mind, to summon to the field his
office-holders.
SECTION IV.
JEFFERSON'S IDEAS.
Writing to a friend in 1816, Mr. Jefferson said,*
"Where every man is a sharer in the direction of
his ward-republic, or of some of the higher ones,
and feels that he is a participant in the governmlent of affairs, not merely at an election one
day in the year, but every day; when there shall
not be a man in the State who will not be a
"memnber of some one of its councils, great or
small, he will let the heart be torn out of his
body sooner than his power be wrested from him
by a Chasar or a Bonaparte. How powerful did we
"feel the energy of this organization in the case of
the Embargo!  I felt the foundations of the government shaken under my feet by the New Eng
* Letter to Mr. Cabell, February 2, 1816: Jefferson's
Works, vol. vi. p. 544. 
THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
"land townships. There was not an individual in
"their States whose body was not thrown with all
"its momentum  into action; and although the
whole of the other States were known to be in
' favour of the measure, yet the organization of this
"little selfish minority enabled it to overrule the
"Union."  These were the people.  They were to
make up their own minds. Have we returned to,
once more, the European idea that they were to
have their minds made up for them? He urges
on his correspondent that " the way to have good
"and safe government, is not to trust it all to one,
"but to divide it among the many;" to divide and
subdivide "these republics from the great national
" one down, through all its subordinations, until it
"ends in the administration of every man's farm
"by himself;" to avoid "cthe generalizing and con"centrating all cares and powers into one body,
"no matter whether of the autocrats of Russia
"or France, or of the aristocrats of a Venetian
" Senate."
SECTION V.
THEI BETTER CLASSES.
With a waywardness that is wonderful, the elements of society the most interested in government, the respectability, the capacity, the property,
143 
144  FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM
the education, stand aloof from it.  The  silly
boast, so often heard, of abstinence from politics,
ought to be looked upon as a marvel of folly;
for where will these abstinent citizens find themselves at last, if their private concerns cannot come
for succour to that common and general welfare
of the republic, and of republican liberty, without which all the rest is idleness and vanity? If
the enlightened, the learned, the wise, the rich,
choose to stand aside from public duties and affairs,
and commit to their own unaided efforts, without
that precept and example, which it is important
they should have, their less fortunate fellow-citizens, let them cease to complain of the disappointments of democracy.
SECTION VI.
THE PEOPLE'S INFLUENCE.
What is that influence which is not judicial, is
not legislative, is not executive? It is the influence of the people; and if meant to exist, it is
meant to be felt.   When Hamilton  said to the
federal convention, speaking of the British House
of Lords, C; it is a most noble institution," he meant
for influence, more than legislation; the influence
of the landholders, who in England have been the
people since the division of the island after the 
THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
Conquest. Look at any legislative body, aristocratic or democratic; how few really able men,
how many ruled by motive merely selfish and
scarcely honest. Without the influence of society,
namely, the pressure from without, what is government?   Hamilton wanted  influence in order
that faction might not snatch it; and that has
happened; faction has snatched it. His fear has
come to pass.   Is democracy, as he called it, a
"poison";* as Mr. Gerry called it, "the worst of
all political evils"?t Hamilton, whom we cite,
not in derogation of a great and illustrious citizen,
but as a representative man, whose opinions controlled those of a train of followers, thought the
landholders could wield an influence and the
people could not.   Actually the people do not
wield it. What makes the pride of the citizen is
his importance; but where is it if his influence is
gone? Where is the pride of the citizen when,
through political contrivances to which he is becoming almost reconciled, he sees himself in the
keeping of the venal and the vile?
* Letter to Mr. Sedgwick, July 10, 1804: Hamilton's
Works, vol. vi. p. 568.
t Madison Papers, vol. iii. p. 1603.
145 
146  FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM
SECTION VII.
FAULTS OF GOVERNMENT ARE THE FAULTS OF THE PEOPLE.
The faults of government in the United States
must be looked for in the people.   They let their
will be intercepted by a scum which lies on the surface. and that scum is reflected in their government
and institutions. The institutions of England reflect the selfishness of an aristocracy, mixed with
a certain awe of the people.  The institutions of
Asia, where they were told three thousand years
ago, "thou shalt not plough with an ox and an ass
"together," and where they are told like things
to-day, reflect barbarism. It was remarked of the
Scotch Highlanders, who, by the Act of' Union of
1701, became citizens of Great Britain, that, for
years, they had none of the advantages of their
citizenship, by reason of the rudeness of their
society.  If the Constitution  and laws of this
Union were transferred to Asia, they might stand
in the book unaltered, and be nothing but a despotism; as the British government would have
been in 1701, had all its subjects been Highlanders. We may be sure the vices of governments will be as great as the people will bear.
The ultimate point of virtue, of which government
is capable, is marked by society.  It cannot be 
THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
better than society, and may be much worse.
Whlen they lived on revenues of their own, kings
were solitary tyrants. Wheii, royal revenues being
mortgaged and sold, the people began to come forward, and taxing them had to be resorted to, the
prince found himself, in some sort, a member of
society.
14 o 
148 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM
CHAPTER VII.
DEMOCRACY TESTED BY THE INSTITUTION OF DOMESTIC
SLAVERY.
SECTION I.
ADMITTED INTO THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES.
THE people of the United States, with the confidence of freemen, who, making the laws, are more
ready to obey than those who, reluctantly receiving, are swift to disregard them, to form their
union, imposed on themselves the constitutional
necessity to respect the institution of slavery.
But, when Providence let the mother-country
gratify its avarice in the trade of slaves and curse
their colonies with buying and holding them,
Divine wisdom prepared for the new democracy
discredit and shame.
SECTION II.
FOREIGN INFLUTENCE.
It had been among the fears on the floor of the
convention of 1787, that foreign influence would be
brought to bear on the election of the President of 
THiE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
the United States; and some years after, the
subject of abolishing their slavery and slavetrade was discussed in England, a foreign country
whose influence in the United States has been
great. The feeling was confined to England. In
1814, after much agitation there, it had become
so prominent that a communication was made
to the government of France, by the British
Embassador, that the French newly-established
royalty was expected, by their recently-acquired
English friends, to take the abolition of the slavetrade into immediate consideration. The British
Embassador, who was the Duke of Wellington,*
that made known this expectation, was sneeringly asked by the French minister who received
it, whether it was really possible that the King, his
master, whose soldiers, native-born Englishmen, he
enlisted into slavery for life, could disturb himself
about the bondage of a few barbarous Africans.
The French minister expressed the common European sentiment of that day.
But English agitation increased, and enlarged
its sphere, from abolition, so far as it could be
reached, of the trade in slaves by themselves
and other nations, to the emancipation of their
own negroes, which took place in the year 1834.
* Despatches of the Duke of Wellington, vol. xii.
149 
150  FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM
From that day forth, British benevolence, which
had the undeniable merit of paying a sum of
money for the freedom of their own slaves, addressed itself confidently, and more openly than
before, to fanatical feeling, and democratical susceptibilities, in the United States. It gave unhappy reality to the fears of 1787. It lent the
aid of the British press, inspired by the sentiment of a few persons, and the natural jealousy
of all England of the rising fortunes of those who
had been their colonists and now were their rivals,
to the struggle of American agitation, which
finally subjected the election of a President of
the United States to the degradation and shame
of a foreign and hostile influence. But for British
meddling, we might never have seen recent events.
Its countenance gave to fanaticism that mothercountry respectability which, in the last century,
was acknowledged, unlamented, by the Jeffersons
and Franklins. With an incomparable national
vanity, we have never had, to this day, pride
enough to overcome that colonial feeling, which
long ago ceased to be respectable. 
THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
SECTION III.
SLAVERY AND FREEDOM.
Forced on us for the sake of English gains,
though slavery had prevailed in all the colonies,
it was, after their independence, abolished by those
of the North, where it was found to be unprofitable.
In the South, where it was profitable, it remained.
The prejudice of race, nowhere stronger than in
the North, and the feeling of resentment towards
those who, under pretence of bettering the condition of the unfortunate blacks, aspired to unsettle
the compromises of the Constitution, were illustrated in the North by acts of popular fury against
the originators of the agitation. In the universal
and honest horror of the people, with which the
principles of those men were received in all parts
of the Northern States, seemed to beat the pulse of
the country. But though there has been no time
when the world did not abound in slaves, and the
citizen of the United States saw in his bondmen
the poor negroes, by nature beneath improvement,
not creatures like himself, capable of enlightenment and education, the enforced service of human
beings could never be less than odious.
It was reproached to the South that they were
an aristocracy; but there was more equality and
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152  FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM
more freedom in the South than in the North,
when the slave line was passed.  "I do not mean,
sir," said Mr. Burke, in his speech on the conciliation of Americas'"to commend the superior
"morality of the sentiment, which has at least as
much pride as virtue in it; but I cannot alter the
"nature of man.  The fact is so; and these people
"of the southern colonies are much more strongly,
"and with an higher and more stubborn spirit, at'tached to liberty than those to the northward.
"Such were all the ancient commonwealths; such
c; were our Gothic ancestors; such in our days were
" the Poles; such will be all masters of slaves who
"are not slaves themselves. In such a people the
"haughtiness of domination combines with the spirit
"of freedom, fortifies it, and renders it invincible."
The mind must be diseased, or greatly deceived,
to make a general defence of slavery; but to us
it was by no means an universal evil. How far it
may have aided, as Burke supposed, to fire the
spirit of liberty, need not be inquired; but that
political virtue, more important to a republic than
private virtue, which has become less and less
common in the North, did not decay in the South.
The honour of the country was always safe with
them. The political South produced more truly
independent spirits than the North.   The corre 
THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
spondence, lately published, of Mr. Crittenden,*
shows a public man, during a career of fifty years
of service without a stain, who never looked, in all
that time, to the right or the left, and yet had,
from first to last, at the hands of his constituents, a
political support, as steady as the honourable confidences of private life. But a people half slaves
when around them all are free, are at incurable
disadvantage. It is a weakness, that steals on their
whole organization.
Slaves were ever regarded by their Southern
masters as weakness to the commonwealth, the
heaviest burden on prosperity, and a possession
the most uncertain of all  This feeling was well
expressed in the federal convention by a delegate
from North Carolina, when, the question being on
leaving South Carolina, and Georgia out of the
Union, or permitting themT to import negroes for a
limited period, he said that, c both in opinion and
c practice, he was against slavery; but thought it
"more in favour of humanity, from a view of all
circumstances, to  let in  South Carolina  and
Georgia on those terms, than to exclude them
" from the Union." 
* Life of John J. Crittenden, with Selections from his Corresponderice and Speeches; edited by his daughter, Mrs.
Chapman Coleman.
11
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154  FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM
No man could say what was to be the solution
of the problem of negro slavery; and no man can
say, now; for who can insist on the gain by emancipation, when we still have the negro?  In Europe
the question was resolved by time; slavery gave
way before the changes of society, and the last of
it disappeared in the present century.* "To set
* "In almost no part of Germany, at the end of the
"eighteenth century, was slavery completely abolished, and
"in mnost places the people were positively attached to the
" glebe, as in the Middle Ages. Almost all the soldiers who
"composed the armies of Frederick II. and Maria Theresa
"were actual slaves.  In most of the German  States, in
"1788, the peasant could not quit the seignory, and if he did
"he could be pursued, wherever he was, and brought back
" by force, etc. Hie could neither rise, nor change his occu"pation, nor marry, but by the consent of his master. A
"large part of his time must be given to his service,," etc.
L'ancien Regime et la Revolution, par Alexis de Tocqueville,
pp. 57, 58.
Arote to p. 57 (p. 370) of that work:
"Dates of abolition of slavery in Germany.
"It will be seen by the following table that the abolition
"of slavery in most of the countries of Germany is very
"recent. Slavery was abolished:
"1. In the territory of Baden in 1783;
"2. In Hohenzollern in 1789;
"3. In Schleswig and Holstein in 1804;
"4. In Nassau in 1808.
"5. Prussia.  Frederick William I. had abolished, from 
THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
"the slaves afloat at once," said a great emancipationist, Washington, with his habitual moderation
of language, and at a time when they were in
number not much more than half a million,*
"would, I really believe, be productive of much
" inconvenience and mischief." But the father of
"1717, slavery in his domains.  The code of the great Fred"erick, as we have seen, pretended to abolish it in the whole
"kingdom;  but in reality he only abolished the severest
"form, leibeigenschaft; he preserved it under its mild form,
"erbunterthaenigkeit.  It was only in 1800 it ceased entirely.
"6. In Bavaria slavery disappeared in 1808.
"7. A decree of Napoleon, dated at Madrid, in 1808, abol' ished it in the grand duchy of Berg, and in various other
"small territories, such as Erfurth, Baireuth, etc.
"8. In the kingdom of Westphalia its abolition dates
"from 1808 and 1809.
"9. In the principality of Lippe-Detmold, from 1809;
"10. In Lippe-Schomburg, from 1810;
"11. In Swedish Pomerania, also from 1810;
"12. In Hesse.Darmstadt, from 1809 and 1811;
"13. In Wiirtemberg, from 1817;
"14. In Mecklenburg, from 1820;
"15. In Oldenburg, from 1814;
"16. In Lusatia, in Saxony, from 1832;
"17. In Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, from 1833 only;
"18. In Austria, from 1811.  From 1782, Joseph II. had
"abolished the leibeigenschaft; but slavery under its mild
"form, erbunferthaeniglceit, lasted until l 811."
* Letter to La Fayette, Mount Vernon, May 10, 1786.
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1 56 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM
his country never imagined giving them political
power.
By the census of 1870, of the population of the
United States more than the eighth part is
negroes;* we are by one-eighth less capable of
self-government  than before we  gave votes  to
them. It is probable that in the United States, of
the very humblest part of society, there were few
men not competent to the exercise of the right of
suffrage; we may conjecture that not a citizen in
fifty was incompetent. But, by giving the negro a
vote, it is every eighth voter that is incompetent;
a sudden and frightful degradation.   Were the
population of the United States all negroes, their
institutions would not last a year.   They would
not last much longer if half were negroes. What
the influence is to be of the eighth part being
negroes remains to be seen. If there be anything
which the Almnighty, who leaves so much dark and
impenetrable, has made plain, it is that the works
of his hand are meant to differ in perfectness; and
that it is not training and education which makes
* See Ninth Census of the United States, Statistics of
Population, Tables I. to VIII., inclusive: p. 3, total population, year 1870, 38,538,371; p. 4, total white population,
year 1870, 33,589,377; p. 5, total free colored population,
year 1870, 4,880,009. 
THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
the difference between orders of animals and races
of men; between the intellectuality of the Hlottentot and of the countrymen of Raphael and
Galileo.
The aborigines are a very superior race to the
negro; what would be thought of the statesmnan
who should transfer to the cultivated fields and
cities of this Union what remains unslaughtered in
their woods of those unfortunate beings to whom
the North American continent once belonged; bestowing on them civil rights, and making them
numerical majorities in some States, and voters
in all?
If we are to have a negro level, or a level
measured and adjusted to the relative proportion
between white and negro population, our intelligence and virtue, public and private, must come
down to it. Congress, the newspapers, state papers,
art, science, and literature, the whole intercourse
of life, all that we say and do, must descend to it.
SECTION IV.
THE MISSOURI QUESTION.
Before the slavery question was made to bear
on the Presidency, and when it first showed itself,
in the forln of the Missouri restriction, Mr. Jeffer
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158 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM
son, than whom was no truer emancipationist, and
the quickness of whose political vision was one of
his distinguishing traits, looking out from his retirement at the condition of the country, thus
expressed his fears for the future; he expressed
them with that zeal which sometimes interfered
with  the  soundness of his conclusions:  "With
' us things are going on well; the boisterous sea of
liberty indeed is never without a wave, and that
"from Missouri is now rolling towards us, but we
shall ride over it as we have over all others.  It
' is not a moral question, but one merely of power.
Its object is to raise a geographical principle for
" the choice of a President, and the noise will be
"kept up till that is effected.  All know that per"mitting the slaves of the South to spread into
"the West will not add one being to that unfortu"nate condition, that it will increase the happi"ness of those existing, and, by spreading them
"over a larger surface, will dilute the evil every"where, and facilitate the means of getting finally
"rid of it, an event more anxiously wished by
"those on whom it presses than by the noisy pre"tenders to exclusive humanity.   In the mean
time, it is a ladder for rivals climbing to power."*
* Letter to La Fayette, December 26, 1820: Jefferson's
Works, vol. vii. p. 194. 
THIE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
It is a wretched fact, but none the less true, that
in the contests of States right and wrong matter
little. Power cuts the knot; argument there may
be, but power settles it. We have made numerous
treaties in adjustment of controversies with Great
Britain, and, for the most part, have had reason
on our side, and the best of the argument, as the
weaker party commonly has; but every case went
against us until 1871, when the Alabama case, the
most doubtful we ever debated, was determined in
our favour. It was not right and wrong, but the
balance of power, much altered of late years, that
ruled the Alabama question on principles which
half a century before were appealed to in vain.
So, with power, the Slavery question changed too.
That question first appeared, in the federal convention, at a time when the difference of power
between the North and South was almost nothing.
The question was how population should be
counted with a view, particularly, to representation; and the South, holding many slaves, said
they must be counted; the North, holding few,
said, No,* if animals of draft and burden are
* Madison Papers, vol. ii. pp. 842, 843. Mr. Gerry: "Why,
"then, should the blacks, who were property in the South,
"be in the rule of representation more than the cattle and
"horses of the North?"
159 
160 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM
counted, we must count our horses as well as our
slaves; and what is known as the three-fifths rule
was established, which was a just settlement. The
parties, when they made it, had nearly equal
power. By that settlement, a slave, North or
South, was reckoned, for purposes of representation, at two-fifthis less than the freeman, and on
this basis democracy elected its great men. But in
1819 a seed was sown which produced deadly fruit;
out of it grew events which have exhibited the
weakness of democracy; events, the ultimate consequences of which remain to be developed.
The population of the North had much increased
over that of the South; and when, in that year,
Missouri applied for admission to the Union, the
House of Representatives, by a vote of eighty-seven
against seventy-six,* refused her admittance as a
* The vote on the clause of the bill prohibiting "the fulr"ther introduction of slavery" wvas 87 to 76; on the clause
providing that children born after the admission of the State
to the Union shall be free at the age of twenty-five years, the
vote was 82 to 78; on ordering the bill engrossed for a third
reading, the vote was 97 to 56. (Annals of Congress, pp.
1214, 1215, February 16, 1819.) In the Senate, voting by
States, the majority was against the restriction. The Compromise Bill passed the House the 2d of March, 1820, by
a vote of 134 to 42. Annals of Congress, pp. 1587, 1588,
March 1, 1820. 
THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
slave State. This was power; the simplest exercise of it; unconstitutional in the highest sense,
for it violated the Constitution in a way that disturbed the foundations of the Union. From territory which had been acquired from France by
the common treasure of the Union, the South was
excluded.
SECTION V.
THE EQUALITY OF THE STATES.
To refuse to a new State the rights which the
old States had, was to deny her equality with them.
The State of Missouri must be equal to Pennsylvania; no State could be above another, or have
superior rights  to another.   Pennsylvania  had
abolished slavery; she might restore it: Virginia
tolerated slavery; she might abolish it: but this
was not to be so with Missouri.  If this restriction
could be placed on Missouri, so could another; her
suffrage might be abridged, her religious freedom;
she might have a restricted press, or curtailed
representation in Congress. Upon the rule of the
inequality of one State with another, the vital
principle of the Union was gone. The pernicious
consequences of inequality, the impossibility of
union on any terms short of equality, have been
signally developed by events since the close of the
161
'.  *.: I   *I 
162 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM
war. But war was not necessary to the establishment, in reason, of a rule so plain. Union cannot
be founded on the degradation of a party to it.
To banish immediate fears, what was called the
Missouri Compromise followed, saving the Union,
for the time. It was made the condition of the
admission of Missouri that thenceforth no States
should hold slaves north of the line 36~:30';
that in "territory ceded by France to the United
"States, under the name of Louisiana, which lies
"north of 360 30' of north latitudes not included
"in the limits of the State contemplated by this
act," namely, the State of Missouri,  slavery and
involuntary servitude, otherwise  than for the
"punishment of crime, whereof the parties shall
"be duly convicted, shall be, and is hereby, forever
prohibited." Thus the South, instead of being
excluded from all the newly-acquired territory,
were excluded from part of it; and this was the
Missouri Compromise. It was a constitutional
change effected, not by amendment of the Constitution, but by a law of Congress. A statute recast
the States in a new relation with one another,
neither consistent with concord, nor conceived by
the founders of the Union. Better would it have
been, could the area of slavery have remained
without a limit, and the Union have lived in
II:...:.. - 
THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
peace; but the weakness of the South had been
brought to light, and party was prompt to use
it. In 1819 the ground was laid for those agitations which came  to civil war in 1861.   The
South, though, as Mr. Jefferson said of slavery,
it was  "not a moral question, but one  merely
of power," lost caste as well as power.   They
had submitted to an injury that was a standing
affront, and it became the available precedent
for universal solution of all questions that afterwards arose about negro slavery, which was established to be, not only a moral wrong, but a
political disability. Such was the Missouri Compromise, a compromise that was a fatal blow to
the Constitution. It was eagerly sought by the
South, reluctantly consented to by the North.
From that day the most vulnerable of our institutions, negro slavery, ceased to have constitutional protection.   It had  to look  to acts of
Congress.
SECTION VI.
HOW THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE BILL OBTAINED THE EXECUTIVE
APPROVAL.
The means by which the Missouri act obtained
the signature of the President, Mr. Monroe, is a
piece of history that was brought to light in 1848,
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164  FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM
in a debate in the Senate. The question was on
the territorial government of Oregon.*  Among
Mr. Monroe's manuscripts was found, written with
his own hand, a paper marked "Interrogatories,
"Missouri-March  4th, 1820-to the  heads of
"departments and attorney-general-questions"Has Congress a right, under the powers vested in
it by the Constitution, to make a regulation pro"hibiting slavery in a Territory? Is the eighth
"section of the act which passed both Houses on
"the 3d inst., for the admission of Missouri into
"the Union, consistent with tile Constitution?"
With it was found the draft of a letter in Mr.
Monroe's writing, the draft not addressed, but the
letter supposed to have been written to General
Jackson. The text of the draft, which is somewhat interlined, reads thus:  "Dear  Sir,-The
"question which has lately agitated Congress and
"the public has been settled, as you have seen, by
"the passage of an act for the admission of Mis"souri as a State, unrestrained, and Arkansas,
"likewise, when it reaches  maturity, and  the
establishment of 36~ 30' north latitude as a line,
"north of which slavery is prohibited, and per"mitted to the south. I took the opinion, in
"writing, of the administration, as to the constitu
* Congressional Globe, July 26, 1848, pp. 1178, 1179. 
THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
"tionality of restraining Territories, [and the vote
"of each member was unanimous and] which was
" explicit in favour of it, and as it was that the
"eighth section of the act was applicable to Terri"tories only, and not to States when they should
"be admitted into the Union. On this latter point
"I had at first some doubt; but the opinions of
'others, whose opinions were entitled to weight
"with me, supported by the sense in which it was
"viewed by all who voted on the subject in C(on"gress, as will appear by the Journals, satisfied
"me respecting it."
In the same debate were produced, obtained
from the family of Mr. John Quincy Adams, then
dead, but in 1820 Mr. Monroe's Secretary of State,
and during the whole of both terms of his Presidency, these extracts fromrn the diary of Mr.
Adams.   "March 3, 1820. When I came this day
"to my office, I found there a note requesting me
"to call at one o'clock at the President's house. It
"was then one, and I immediately went over.  He
"expected that the two bills, for the admission of
"Maine and to enable Missouri to make a consti"tution, would have been brought to him for his
"signature; and he had summoned all the mere"bers of the administration to ask their opinions
"in writing, to be deposited in the Department of
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166 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM
"State, upon two questions: 1. Whether Congress
" had a constitutional right to prohibit slavery in
" a Territory? and 2d. Whether the eighth section
"Cof the Missouri bill (which  interdicts slavery
"forever in the territory north of 36i latitude)
"was applicable only to the territorial state, or
"c would extend to it after it should become a State?
"As to the first question, it was unanimously
"agreed that Congress have the power to prohibit
"slavery in the Territories.  March 5. The Presi"dent sent me  yesterday the two questions in
"writing, upon which he desired to have answers
"in writing, to be deposited in the Department of
"State.   He wrote me that it would be in time,
"if he should have the answers to-morrow. The
" first question is in general terms, as it was stated
"at the meeting on Friday.   The second was
"modified to an inquiry whether the eighth sec"tion of the Missouri bill is consistent with the
"Constitution. To this I can without hesitation
"answer by a simple affirmative, and so, after some
"reflection, I concluded to answer both. March 6.
... I took to the President's my answers to his
" two constitutional questions, and he desired me
"to have them deposited in the Department, to"gether with those of the other members of the
"administration.  They differed only as they as 
THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
"signed their reason for thinking the eighth sec"tion of the Missouri bill consistent with the
"Constitution, because they considered it as only
"'applying to the territorial term;  and I barely
"gave my opinion, without assigning for it any
"explanatory reason.  The President signed the
"Missouri bill this morning."
Thus, the Missouri Compromise may be said
to have received the Executive sanction because,
taken in its true meaning, it seemed so plainly
unconstitutional that another meaning had to be
given it. It was to be supposed, so Mr. Monroe
said, that Congress meant to restrict, not States,
only territory before becoming States; and that
from our acquired possessions north of 36~ 30'
slavery was excluded by this bill, while they were
in territorial condition; not when they camne in as
States; they were not then controlled or controllable. They might, as might those south of the
line, or the original States, whether north or south,
establish  or abolish  slavery at their pleasure.
This, as distinctly appears by Mr. Monroe's words,
namely, "cThe eighth section of the act was appli"cable to Territories only, and not to States when
"they should be admitted into the Union," was assumed by him to be its meaning. It was the construction on which he signed the bill. "On this
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168  FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM
"latter point," he says, "I had at first some doubt;
"but the opinions of others, whose opinions were
"entitled to weight with me" (meaning his cabinet),  supported by the sense in which it was
"viewed by all who voted on the subject in Con"gress, as will appear by the Journals, satisfied me
"respecting it."
But, what support is given by the Journals?
None whatever. The bill for the admission of
Missouri having gone from the House to the Senate
with a clause against slavery, the Senate struck it
out, and inserted the eighth or compromise section;
and, a committee of conference being appointed, the
compromise was agreed to by both Houses. The
bill which had originally been only for the admission of Missouri, became also a bill for the future
limitation of slavery in the " territories ceded by
"France;" and its title was amended accordingly.
Originally, it concerned only Missouri; now, it concerned all the " territory ceded by France to the
"United States."  The Senate Journal, therefore,
of the 2d of March, 1820, page 203, after the entry that the bill passed, contains the entry of the
amendment of its title: " It was agreed to amend
"the title by adding thereto and to prohibit slavery
"in certain Territories8." So the House Journal of
the next day, the 3d of March, page 279, after the 
THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
entry of the concurring vote on the Senate amendments, proceeds thus:' The amendment to the
"title to add to the words and to prohibit slavery
"in certain Territories was then also concurred in."
This amendment of title, necessary to accuracy,
but not altering the prohibition, is all which the
Journals furnishl bearing upon the sense in which
the compromise "was viewed by all who voted on
the subject in Congress;" and which being, as
Mr. Monroe construed it and all the members of
his cabinet but Mr. Adams, that the limitation
applied to Territories, not States, enabled him to
sign the bill.  Here is history; for the existence
of the rough draft of Mr. Monroe's letter may be
taken to be authenticated, and nothing to remain
in question but the less material fact whether the
letter was actually sent.
Mr. Monroe was so upright a man  that Mr.
Jefferson somewhere says of him, If his soul were
turned wrong side out, not a spot would be found on
it; but, not choosing to understand Congress unconstitutionally, he thought himself at liberty to giye
to this bill a construction which, being constitutional, was in contradiction of its meaning.  If
the title of the act was susceptible of a double construction, the debate in Congress, like the language
of the body of the act, was not. The restrict:on
12
169 
170 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM
was upon States, too clearly.   The cry was, No
more slave States. The compromise was, No more
slave States north of 36~ 30'. Slavery in the States,
not in the Territories, was the question; slavery
in the Territories was a very inferior consideration.
The question debated was the constitutional right
of Congress to place a restriction on the State of
Missouri. The bill, as it passed the House, placed
the restriction on the State of Missouri. Missouri,
as a State, was not to tolerate slavery; the House
voted again and again, in the course of the debate
and proceedings, their prohibition of the toleration
of slavery by Missouri as a State of the Union. The
bill, as it passed, declared that the "further intro"duction of slavery or involuntary servitude" was
prohibited;" and that "all children born within
the said State after the admission thereof into
"the Union, shall be free at the age of twenty-five
"years." Mr. Monroe chose to sign the compromise in a constitutional sense; but it is none the
less certain that the whole country, then, and ever
since, all the States for fifty years, their Representatives in Congress, and the Judiciary, have
read it as stamping with inequality the States
coining into the Union after the 6th of March,
1820, north of the line 36~ 30' north.
The constitution of a country, more especially 
THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
if it be a written constitution, must be sacred, or
there can be no safety. Its violation is avenged
by Providence. Not that special providence which
men arrogate to their protection, but that general
providence of a wise Creator by which what is bad
leads to worse.
SECTION VII.
THE CALN PETITION IN THE SENATE.
The slavery agitation did not begin in 1819. If
it was meant to begin, the attempt failed. What
Mr. Jefferson witnessed was but the gathering of
the clouds; the storm did not burst till after his
death. Mr. Webster said in the Senate, on the
7th of March, 1850, "These abolition societies
"commenced their course of action in 1835."
Taking his date as correct, though the South were,
at that time, full of fear, the agitation had not yet
assumed a political form, and the assurance was
given them of all Northern members of the Senate,
strongly and unanimously expressed, in the session of 1835-6, in a highly-interesting debate, to
which, now, we turn, that this agitation, which,
then begun, stopped not till it was able to make,
and did make, a President of the United States,
need not be a subject of alarm, and could never
have any countenance, political or other, from the
171 
172   FEARS FOR.DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM
people of the North.   They denounced it as parricidal, ruinous to the slave-holding States, and
leading North and South to inevitable disunion.
They declared it incredible that such a fearful
topic should, anywhere, be taken up for discussion
by a political party. According to every Northern
Senator's opinion, political agitation against slavery
was out of the question; a baseness not even to
be imagined. Every word then uttered was true,
less predictions and promises. The debate began
the 11th of January, 1836. Mr. Buchanan presented to the Senate, and gave rise to it, the
Memorial of the Caln Quarterly Meeting of the
religious society of  Friends  in Pennsylvania,
praying Congress to abolish slavery and the slavetrade in the District of Columbia."
The disposal of this petition, for the sake of allimportant example, was the subject, at intervals,
of anxious and, apparently, candid discussion, from
the day it was presented till the 11th of March
following, exactly two months;* and brought to
their feet Senators from every part of the Union,
and of all diversities of opinion, so far as diversity there was on this subject at that day. Mr.
Buchanan moved that the petition be received and
* Gales and Seaton's Congressional Debates, 1835-6, pp.
99-810, part 1. 
THiE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
rejected, and his motion prevailed by a vote of
thirty-four to six. One of the six was Mr. Webster himself; like the majority, he and the five
other Senators composing the minority, only
looked, in their votes, to the best method of
avoiding agitation, in detesting and deploring the
idea of which all united; Senators from Ohio,
Pennsylvania, New York, Vermont, New Hampshire, Connecticut, and New Jersey taking part
in the debate, and expressing sentiments similar
to those of Senators from Southern States. But
the right of petition was said to be involved, and
must be treated gently. Abolition itself was a
thing much too inconsiderable to be feared in
any form; and that it should force its way into
politics was out of the question. This, indeed, was
true in 1836 as it was in 1860, if what these gentlemen called politics meant the will of the people,
and not the aspirations and contrivances of politicians. One of the Northern Senators indignantly
exclaimed,* "It has been said that this question
" must and would mingle itself with the politics of
"the day. It has been said by a distinguished
"Senator that it would be mixed with the ap"proaching public elections. Sir, I was sorry to
* Gales and Seaton's Congressional Debates, 1835-6, p.
744, part 1.
173 
174 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM
"hear that declaration.  It was too plainly as"serted that those who happened to live north
"of a given line would be regarded as unworthy
" of political trust, from the mere fact that they
"resided in a non-slave-holding country. Such a
"sentiment illy comports with the magnanimity,
"the love of justice, which has uniformly char"acterized the South." The vote was taken in a
very full Senate; there were, at that time, twentyfour States, and of the forty-eight Senators, all
but eight were present and voted; Mr. Calhoun,
though present, refused to vote, his own motion,
which was that the petition be not received,
having been defeated.   By this debate it most
distinctly appears that at this time, 1836, the
agitation on which party soon after rode into power
was regarded as too disgraceful ever to have the
countenance of honest men and good citizens.
Comparing it with the debates at Washington
twenty-five years later, and the declaration of
principles of the party which met twenty-five
years later at Chicago to nominate a President
it is plain, in the prodigious change of tone produced by agitation merely, what was a crime
having grown to be a virtue, that agitation would
have done the work of emancipation without the
assistance of the war. 
THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
SECTION VIII.
AGITATION.
The North, in 1836, reasoned as the South did
in 1860, that union was impossible if the a,gitation
went on; that to appeal from the constitutional
guarantees of this most uncertain of all possessions,
to the natural, necessary, inevitable prejudices of
every human being, and on such agitation to plant
party engines and establish political doctrine, must
be fatal. It was not the enactment of new laws
that was feared; it was agitation.  Abolition of
the slave-trade in the District of Columbia was
but what one of the Virginia delegation, Mr. Randolph, called for, twenty years before, in the House
of Representatives, and had a committee raised to
inquire into; and as to slavery in the Territories,
it was a grave subject, and Mr. Monroe's cabinet,
principally Southern men, ruled it, in 1820, unanimously against the more Southern view. Were
agitation organized against the citizen who adhered to the religion of his fathers it would be
vain to assure him lie had the protection of the
Constitution. Against agitation, he would answer,
there can be no protection.
Moral strength and moral weakness are the
175 
176  FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM
most absolute of all strengths and of all weaknesses. Even the strength of war was said by a
great commander to be made up of five elements,
of which three were moral, and two physical. Of
Southern slavery the moral weakness was incurable. It had arrayed against it universal opinion,
and of none more than the South themselves.
When Mr. Everett declared in debate, in the
House of Representatives, that the relation of
master and slave in his sentiment waINs not immoral, the rebuke came from Virginia, and it was
severe, that a Northern man was not to be envied
such a sentiment as that.
The law of slavery was submitted to the Supreme Court and decided. Agitation arose against
the Court, threats to abolish the Court, to abridge
its jurisdiction, to alter the tenure of the judges.*
* If this case had been decided, instead of in 1856, before
the Missouri question prepared the ground for that agitation
which, finally, was pressed to war between the States, it
would have passed unchallenged. The views taken of the
negro race, and their relations to citizens of the States, and
the United States, are simply those to be found everywhere
in our history, social and political, at any time before the
period when party seized upon the subject for purposes of
its own. It had been debated with all that zeal common to
newspapers and popular assemblies; and when the law and
facts, which had been cast to and fro, came to be treated 
THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
The decision, like that of any human tribunal,
may have been right, or tnay have been wrong;
judicially, and political party saw every point, which they
had so noisily insisted on, quietly settled by the law and the
book, and settled against them, and against what they chose
to consider the rules of humanity and justice, the rage of
agitation knew no bounds.
Mr. Taney's first predecessor in the Chief-Justiceship was
Mr. Jay; appointed by Washington; an admirable man, and
of strong religious sentiments.  He was President of a society established in New York early in 1785, "for promoting
"the mnanumission of slaves, and protecting such of them as
"have been or may be liberated."  His opinions on domestic
slavery were of the extremest kind.   In 1780, during the
war, he wrote to a friend (Life of John Jay, by his son,
William Jay, vol. i. p. 229), "Till America comes into this
"measure" (the gradual abolition of slavery) " her prayers
"to heaven for liberty will be impious.  This is a strong ex"pression, but it is just."  But he thought that the question
of the "manumission of slaves" was subject to that of the
laws of the country, and even to that of men's comfort and
convenience, as in the days of Christ, and by his coirmmands.
"In the year 1798," says his son and biographer (Life of
John Jay, by his son, William Jay, vol. i. p. 235), "being
"called on by the United States marshal for an account of his
"taxable property, he accompanied a list of his slaves with the
"following observations:' I purchased slaves and manumit
"' them at proper ages, and when their faithful services shall
"' have afforded a reasonable retribution.' As free servants
"became more common," pursues his biographer, "he was
"gradually relieved from the necessity of purchasing slaves."
177 
178  FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM
but here was the law, the judgment of a court of
competent jurisdiction.
SECTION IX.
THIE PRESIDENCY.
There has been much unprofitable debate
whether the South did not aggravate the slavery
agitation by their mistaken violence.   Calmness
under aggression may soothe, or it may provoke;
but the first and the great mistake of the South
was in the Missouri Compromise, before the final
day of agitation came.  The vaulting ambition of
Mr. Douglas repealed the Missouri Comipromise
in 1854.  It had been always threatening  us, but
the repeal was instant mischief. When the South
gave up such a fast-anchored principle as State
equality, to fall back on a dogma so difficult as
that on which the Southern delegations broke up
the Charleston convention,* they abandoned a position that was impregnable, to retire in quest of
what was nowhere to be found.   The Northern
Senators of 1836 did not know the weakness of
* The right to establish the law of slavery in a Territory
by carrying a single slave there, which was casuistry, and
could come to nothing, though it were constitutional law. In
this empty principle, and the elaboration of it, was the weakness of the Dred Scott decision. 
THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
their constituents; they did not know democracy
was destined to ebb till the people would have
but one duty, that of making Presidents. Political justice, shadowy at best, vanished before the
question of the Presidency. A topic for agitation
going, every fourth year, to the extremrnest violence, slavery was an anvil on which every candidate hammered out his pretensions. The question
of slavery would have remained within the body
of the States, each, in peace, resolving it for itself,
had not the wave of agitation rolled it over the
Union.   The enemies of the constitutional guarantees of slavery, regarded as madmen, were the
contemptuous and avowed foes of union on any
other terms than those of immediate and indiscriminate manumission of the slaves.  The politicians stood aloof from them, denied their principles, professed an abhorrence of their purposes, but
availed themselves of the political uses of their agitatioli Slavery, now a dead lion which every ass
may kick, then was a power founded in the Constitution, figuring in the laws, represented in Congress,
warranted by the practice of virtuous communities
and the lives and virtues of the best and noblest
of our statesmen;  and abolitionism was a scandal
disavowed by all but a few fanatics. But with its
help was to be secured Executive patronage.
179 
180  FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM
In vain did the South, steady to its principles,
agricultural and unchanged, for the South of 1860
was the South of the day of Washington, some times in the language of fury, sometimes of reason
and remonstrance, appeal to justice, to humanity,
to the compact of the States, to the necessities of
their position; slavery was a target never taken
down, and on it every blow told. The North, the
seat of populous cities, and of much of the wealth
and industry of the world, was no longer the North
of 1787.   The South was the same South, the
North was another North; its interests, habits,
occupations, all had changed.   The plantations,
rural life, and patriarchal existence of the South,
not a Northern man in a thousand had even seen,
or wanted to see, still less had formed any just
idea of.
Our astonishment knew no bounds when, in the
civil war, the feelings of almost all the world were
-found to be with the slave-holders;* but the great
* It is common to flatter ourselves that this was a merely
aristocratic feeling, and hatred of democracy; but it was
also general irrepressible disgust at injustice.  In the "Personal Life of George Grote," the historian, a republican in
principle, and strongly opposed to slavery, the author, who
is his widow, says (p. 314), "He once said in conversing
"with myself, in 1867, about the United States,'I have out"'lived my faith in the efficacy of republican government 
THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
pulse of mankind beats generously, and against
the wronger.
In 1844 the abolitionists first put forward a
candidate for the Presidency. He received in the
whole country, so hateful were their doctrines,
and so fearful of contamination were even the
most unscrupulous party managers, only sixty-six
thousand three hundred and sixty-four votes.  In
1856, twelve years later, these fanatics were joined
in their combinations, preparatory to the coming
election, and afterwards at the polls, by the greedy
leaders of the opposition to the party then governing the  country.   This alliance took place
after a change of leaders, and till then was impossible, but it was the beginning of the final
triumph. United, they received one million three
hundred and forty-one thousand eight hundred
and twelve votes a large minority of tile vote of
the Union; the fearful shadow of coming events.,
At the next election of a President, in 1860, the
"'regarded as a check upon the vulgar passions in a nation,
"'and I recognize the fact that supreme power lodged in
"'their hands may be exercised quite as mischievously as by
"'a despotic ruler like the first Napoleon.  The conduct of
"' the Northern States in the late conflict with the Southern
"' States has led me to this conclusion, though it costs iiie
"' much to avow it, even to myself.'"
181 
182  FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM
candidate of these combined interests succeeded;
making good Mr. Jefferson's prediction that what
he called the noise would be kept up till the object
should be effected of choosing a President by geographical lines; he polled a plurality of the votes.
They were sectionally divided, and democracy
passed into its darkest eclipse. If it could not
maintain the Union, what could it do? It had
failed in the simplest of its functions.
SECTION X.
THE SLAVERY AGITATION NOT DEMOCRATIC MADNESS, BUT DEMO                 CRATIC WEAKNESS.
Democracy failed through weakness, not passion.
Passion is sometimes noble, and it is always respected. Lulled with assurances that no harm
was meant, that the Union and the Constitution
were dear to all alike, to venal politicians as much
as to themselves, the people lent their votes.
Against those fierce associates of the politicians to
whom they lent them, conspirators who wore no
disguise, unhesitating wretches, the people had
been warned by every statesman, without one
single exception, who ever had their willing confidence. Not only had they been warned; they
had accepted the warning, and promised themselves to profit by it. But they slept on the vol 
THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
cano. It was the sleep of childhood or of folly,
which keeps no watch. They left everything to
the office-seekers till roused from their dreams by
the cannon at Fort Sumter.*
A man may be loaded with crime; a government may be nearly as bad; but a people are never
base or false. Nobody ever heard of a people
who, knowingly, united in an act of cowardice or
cruelty. They are deceived. The atrocities of the
French Revolution were not the work of the people,
but of a few hundreds of them, who abused the
weakness of all the rest; and the people of the
United States, when they lent themselves to the
anti-slavery agitation, were weaker than the French
when they lent themselves to the work of the guillotine. An unenlightened people might, in igno
*.The same slowness to the sense of danger that was exhibited between 1836 and the year 1860, when the war broke
otit, was again exhibited between the year 1864 when the
war ended, and 1876. We would not meddle unnecessarily
with party matters, but may be allowed to observe on the
fact, one where parties agreed, that the abuses which followed the war were altogether monstrous; yet till the
autumn elections of 1874 the people, though perfectly sensible to them, wholly omitted to take measures for their cure.
It was not blindness of the people; it was only that democracy when it does not do its duty, and leaves it to others to
do, is trifled with.
183 
184  FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM
rance or stupidity, transfer power to a single hand;
but, as an act of weakness, it would not be more
preposterous than that of the educated and intelligent citizens of the United States when they put
themselves in the power of the abolitionists.
The situation in 1860 was democracy painted
by its enemies; the people practised on, and their
peace destroyed. When their eyes opened, they
called for settlenment with the South.  This was
the call; and it was well-nighl unanimous. But
lo! without the change of one vote in either house
of Congress! When an English minister arrays
his force in Parliament against the country, his
votes begin to leave him; but not one Senator, not
one Representative in the whole American Congress heeded the loud cry of the American people.
SECTION XI.
THE PEOPLE.
When we look back to acknowledge it waIs,
in the race for Executive patronage and on pretences disavowed, when the danger arose, by all
but those who never flinched, that small men and
small ambitions brought a people so flourishing
and happy as we were to seekning ruin; the Union
going to pieces and not a man left whose head was 
THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
high enough above the crowd to command attention and a hearing, deniocracy must be admitted
to appear in its meanest light. There were neither
leaders nor  citizens.   No  leaders, because there
were no citizens; no citizens, because citizenship
had left the care of the country to party in its
worst form. The people had no influence; the
rabble of office-seekers played a game for their
places, with no regard to the people; staking party
success for, the  people  knew not what, and, as
eventually proved, for the establishment of principles which had been by the people detested in the
past, and, now, were condemned by them in their
loudest tones.
The law of self-preservation may be badly administered, but it regulates every society.   The
South  saw in  the  slavery  agitation their peace
ruined  their property gone, their personal safety
imperilled, their approaching total destruction; and
they sought relief in revolution.* The North saw
* The discourse, already quoted, of Mr. John Quincy
Adams, before the Hlistorical Society of New York, delivered in 1839, and which may be said to be ultra in some of
the views there expressed in derogation of State rights, when
the speaker comes to the question, that of revolution, which
arose with the slave States twenty years later, holds this
language: "In the calm hours of self-possession, the right
"of a State to nullifv an act of Congress is too absurd for
13
185 
186  FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM
in Southern secession the wreck of the country.
But so paltry had become the populous North,
"argument, and too odious for discussion. The right of a
"State to secede from the Union, is equally disowned by
"the principles of the Declaration of Independence.  Nations
"acknowledge no judge between them upon earth, and their
"Governments, from necessity, must in their intercourse with
"each other decide when the failure of one party to a con"tract to perform its obligations, absolves the other from the
"reciprocal fulfilment of his own. But this last of earthly
"powers is not necessary to the freedom or independence
"of States, connected together by the immediate action of the
"people, of whom they consist.  To the people alone is there
"reserved, as well the dissolving, as the constituent power,
"and that power can be exercised by them only under the
"tie of conscience, binding them to the retributive justice
"of Heaven.
"With these qualifications, we may admit the same right
"as vested in the people of every State inI the Union, with
"reference to the General Government, which was exercised
"by the people of the United Colonies, with reference to the
"supreme head of the British empire, of which they formed
"a part-and under these limitations have the people of each
"State in the Union a right to secede from the confederated
"Union itself.
"Thus stands the RIGHT (sic). But the indissoluble
"link of union between the people of the several States of
"this confederated nation is, after all, not in the right, but
"in the heart.  If the day should ever come, (may Heaven
"avert it,) when the affections of the people of these States
"shall be alienated from each other;  when the fraternal 
THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
that no Northern party, and not one Northern
leader of party, demanded armed resistance of the
"spirit shall give way to cold indifference, or collisions of
"interest shall fester into hatred, the bands of political asso"ciation will not long hold together parties no longer attracted
"by the magnetism of conciliated interests and kindly svm"pathies; and far better will it be for the people of the d(is"united States to part in friendship from each other, than to
"be held together by constraint.   Then will be the time for
"reverting to the precedents which occurred at the formation
"and adoption of the Constitution, to form again a more per"fect union, by dissolving that which could no longer bind,
"and to leave the separated parts to he reunited by the law
"of political gravitation to the centre."
The day did come; Heaven did not avert it; fraternal spirit
did give way, and with good reason; for  1o mnea who  had
either feelings or interests would have borne longer with
peril and provocation than the slave-holding States.  But
when Mr. Adams says, "far better will it be for the disunited
"States to part in friendship from each other," in order to
establish his conclusion, he ought to have shown where the
friendship was to come from when once there was disunion.
When the Union is dissolved, all is over, and war is at hand.
There can be no other practical view of the case of disunion.
The affair of Fort Sumter did nothing but put the South in
the wrong, and precipitate what was inevitable, at last. If
Mr. Buchanan had used his armed force by land and sea, as
Jackson did in 1832, to prevent war, though the case was
more difficult, probably, there would have been none in 1861,
more than in 1832; and if it had come, being a war in the
Union, both sides fighting for the same flag, it would have
187 
188  FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM
Southern movement.   Had it not been accompanied by insult the most gross, as well as injury
the deepest, war, inevitable at last, would have
been postponed. The cry in the North was that
the enemy was not in the South, but in their midst;
and had not the a,ttack upon Fort Sumter given
another direction to popular fury, it would have
vented itself on the authors of the agitattionII. Had
democracy come, and with no better reason than a
scramble for office, to this contemptible condition
of helpless disorder which the aristocratic world
had longed to see, and, longing for, predicted?
If Mr. Crittenden had possessed an influence
commensurate with his ability and the purity and
earnestness of the effort he made, at the close of
his long senatorial life, lie might have been spared
the tears of grief and indignation he is said to
have shed when his resolutions were voted down.
been a quarrel among the States, open to settlement, and not
of foreign countries, government against government, as it
became from 1861 to 1864. No citizen can love a government which he despises; and the government of the United
States became despicable under the doctrine of the unconstitutionality of what was called coercion. Would not there
have been coercion in 1814?  Were not, backed by South
and North, the government of the United States in actual
readiness to prevent the secession of the States which met at
Hartford in that year? 
THIE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
How enduring their effects, if the people were still
to be nothing, and their power to remain in the
keeping of the few, might be a question; but it
was not a question for the members of Congress.
They could have put forth their hands and stayed
the mischief. It is not the place of statesmen to
stand by and let their country perish; they must
prevent ruin to-day, and take to-morrow as it comes,
and its uncertainties with it. If uncertainty were
not a point of departure, why did Northern statesmen leave their country to that miserable lottery in
which they drew war? why did Southern statesmen
tempt their fellow-citizens to such a game as war,
against all the probabilities of Northern strength,
wealth, and population?
SECTION XII.
THE OUTGOING EXECUTIVE.
As, when the life of a monarch is ebbing, his
authority wanes, and, before his eyes are closed,
the reign of his successor begins, so in the United
States, when the administration is beaten at the
polls in November, and the President to lay down
his office at a fatst-approaching hour, a portion of his
power becomes illusion; it passes to the President
elect. The party that governs loses the power;
189 
190  FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM
the party that gets it does not govern. When Mr.
Adams was superseded by Mr. Jefferson in 1800,
this unavoidable defect of our institutions appeared; and again in 1824, when Jackson superseded the younger Adams.  But more disastrously
did it produce itself in 1861, when Mr. Lincoln
was coming in. Neither the outgoing nor the incoming President was a man for the emergency;
neither of them a self-reliant spirit: one, a statesman who filled with honour so many places, to fail
in the highest; the other, of the order of men who
fill places in their native village. His elevation to
the Presidency seemed to justify the very worst
fears entertained for democracy in 1787. Mr. Buchanan, loaded with responsibility for the faults of
every administration since 1824, a scapegoat who
bore into the wilderness the sins, not of the past
year but of thirty years, in his message at the opening of the session, said he left all to Congress. He
declared himself powerless to save the country, or
even to diminish its dangers. The impartial posterity to whose judgment, in the shades of his
retirement, he appealed from the too clamorous
injustice of his cotemporaries will never absolve
him from a fault not the least of political faults,
that of want of energy and decision.
From a President whose power was just expiring, 
THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
who had been constantly, during his whole term,
leaning to the South and from the North, when
he ought to have been rallying the North and controlling the South; who stood in dismay, when the
accumulating demands on  his courage ought to
have carried it to its highest point, little was
looked for.  His opponents were counting  the
minutes of his political life; those who were to
exercise the power of the new administration were
impatient to assume the reins of it; and such was
the eagerness for place, they not only seemed to be
unaware of the greatness of the peril, but actually
they were indifferent to it. War they did not believe was near, still less did they know what it
was; and the aroused passions of thirty millions
of people were unthought of. Thirst for office had
extinguished the love of country, and, with it, of
sound reason. The talk was of the right and
wrong of secession, and of the right and wrong
of coercion; as if secession was not revolution, and
coercion war.
Secession of the single State of South Carolina
would have been war, and foreign war as well as
domestic, for they must have sought foreign protection. When our minister at Paris, conferring
with the Minister of Foreign Affairs, told him
that the government of the United States was one
191 
192  FEARS FOR DEMIOCRACY R EGARDED FROM
of public opinion, and knew no law of force against
a State, and there would be no warn French diplomacy must have smiled. There would be no declaration of war; but the most inveterate war is that
which is waged without any declaration of it.
SECTION XIII.
MR. SEWARD.
The troubles of 1814 and 1833 were casual and
local; they were the effervescent passions of a, disturbed industry. In 1814 the country was already
in arms against a foreign enemy, and the government stood prepared for the movement of New
England;  and in 1833 the movement of South
Carolina had to deal with a government at the
head of which was Jackson. In 1860 the whole
body of democracy was sick.
The elevation to power at such a time of a man
so unknown as Mr. Lincoln was one of the evidences that public interests were not in the hands
of the people. It was not the first time the Presidency had been given to a man the people never
heard of.
The new President, in his Inaugural Address,
brought forward his remedy; it was to submit, not
altogether, but partially, to secession! If, not Mr. 
THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEIW.
Lincoln had been the choice of the convention
which mnet at Chicago, but Mr. Seward, as he so
nearly was, he would have submitted altogether;
but this Mr. Lincoln was too weak to do.   He
would have yielded every point necessary to enable him to carry on a government. A man of
expediencies, to insure his enjoyment of power he
would have surrendered at discretion, as he surrendered to England when he gave up the passengers by the Trent; as he wanted to surrender to
South Carolina when they called for Fort Sumter.
Agitation had done its work, and, Union or no
Union, the question, now, was to administer a
government.   Mr. Seward thought nothing had
happened that ought to make that impossible;
and even designated a time, three months distant,
for the return of quiet. What was done could be
undone, what was said could be unsaid.  He said,
at Rochester, in 1858,* "Shall I tell you what
"this collision means?... It is an irrepressible
"conflict between opposing and enduring forces."
He said at Washling,ton, in January, 1861,t  "The
* Rochester speech, as quoted in Greeley's "American
Conflict," vol. i. p. 301.
t Speech in the Senate, January 12, 1861.  (See Congressional Globe, 1860-61, p. 341.) This speech, which so packed
the Senate-chamber, floors, galleries, corridors, and every
193 
194  FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROMf
"different forms of labour, if slavery were not per"verted to purposes of political ambition, need
accessible spot, that they had to be cleared of all but privileged persons strictly within the standing order, before Mr.
Seward could go on, and was instantly telegraphed to every
corner of the country, was read with a more universal curiosity and intense interest than any speech ever delivered in
the United States, or, probably, in any state or country; for
it was to let men into the secret of their destiny, at an
hour when, to the common mind, it was inscrutable.   Alas,
it was nothing but a eulogy of the UTnion! an admission, in
one already quoted short sentence, of the falsehood of the
agitation which had brought the Union to dissolution. Mr.
Seward, a man of ability, if not a statesman, a shrewd politician, was as much the leader of his party as ever Mr. Clay
was; he may be said to have founded, as Hiamilton did
the federal, and Jefferson the democratic party, the party
of political abolitionism, that is, of anti-slavery agitation to
political ends. It had just elected a President, not himself a
man of experience and capacity, the situation was too gross
for that, but Mr. Lincoln, and Mr. Lincoln had chosen Mr.
Seward to pilot his administration. Before he left his seat
ill the Senate, he was to dispel the fears and doubts that
hung so thickly over us.  It was expected to learn from Mr.
Seward, who had pronounced alarm to be unnecessary, that
in sixty or ninety days the country would be relieved of its
anxieties. But the wizard who raised the storm could only
call for patience, and pronounce the praise of that patriotic
and perfect calmness which goes with a supreme love of
country, and he said he meant to adhere to, happen whlat
might!  This would  hleave been glorious, indeed, had he 
THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
"not constitute an element of strife in the Confederacy."
represented the injured party; but, standing where he did,
was cunning or folly, and never was public disappointment
more complete.   In his Rochester speech, less than two
years before, he said, "Either the cotton- and ri(e-fields of
"South Carolina, and the sugar plantations of Louisiana,
"will ultimately be tilled by free labour, and Charleston and
New  Orleans become marts for legitimate merchandise
"alone, or else the rye-fields and wheat-fields of Massachu"setts and New York must again be surrendered by their
"farmers to slave culture and to the production of slaves, and
"Boston and New York become once more markets for trade
"in the bodies and souls of men." This most preposterous
falsehood came from no vulgar orator, who might say anything to get a cheer, but a great leader, whose words were
measured.   "These antagonistic systems," he continued,
meaning slave and free labour, "are continually coming into
"closer contact, and collision results.  Shall I tell you what
"this collision means?  They who think that it is accidental,
"unnecessary, the work of interested or fanatical agitators,
"and therefore ephemeral, mistake the case altogether.  It
"is an irrepressible conflict between opposing and enduring
"forces.... It is the failure to apprehend this great truth
"that induces so many unsuccessful attempts at final com"promise between the slave and free States; and it is the
"existence of this great fact that renders all such pretended
"compromises, when made, vain and ephemeral." What,
when they came to power, would the party do, whose chief
held such language? They had power now; how would they
use it?  What would keep them  in place, and elect their
195 
196  FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM
SECTION XIV.
CONGRESS.
The annals of a free State are to be read in the
proceedings of its Legislative Assemblies. Cabinets deceive, but Legislative debate cannot deceive, though carried on by tile falsest of men.
In the lower house of Congress the crisis was met
with vain clamour and tile vile oratory of party.
Healing measures were neither seriously debated
nor fairly voted on; the extreme disorder that
prevailed, and an obvious recklessness, admonished
the country of its approaching end. In the Senate,
the leading men of the South gave just as much
aid to the Union as was necessary to their standing
with their constituents at home.  Of the Northern
Senators, every man who adhered to the incoming
administration voted against any measures which
might imperil party ascendency.
President at the expiration of four years? Plainly, the same
agitation, not the "work of interested or fanatical agitators,
"and therefore ephemeral," but an "irrepressible conflict."
:The minister of a monarch may blow hot, and cold, but can
the minister of the people? Are they fools? If there was
no reason why the different forms of labour should constitute
an element of strife in the Confederacy, then the Rochester
speech party meant to drive the Southern States from the
Union on false pretences. 
THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
The new party was ruled by those fierce spirits,
haters of the Union, who had driven it to the
precipice over which it was now their desire to
see it go; and their allies, the office-seekers, could
see, at the bottom of the pit, no safety for themselves so sure as in separation from the Southern
States. Every scheme of settlement failed. That
of Mr. Crittenden, which was sustained by a more
earnest and eager demand by the population of
t h e          United States than any public measure ever
had fromn the American people, may be said to
have arrested the attention of Congress. It was
promptly  rejected in the House by a vote of eighty
ayes to one hundred and thirteen nays.* Its main
feature was the Missouri Compromise line extended
to the Pacific. In the Senate, where it had a he(arin, every Senator, with not a single exception, (f
the party which had elevated to power the incomring President, put his negative on the Crittenden settlement.  It was four times voted on.
1. T le resolutions were, on the 15th of January,
refused a preference over the Pacific Railroad bill!
The vote was twenty-one to twenty-seven.t
* Congressional Globe, February 27, 1861, p. 1261.
t YEAS.-Messrs. Benjamin, Bigler, Bragg, Bright, Clingman, Crittenden, Fitch, Green, Hemphill, Johnson of Tennessee, Kennedy, Lane, Mason,  Nicholson, Pearce, Polk,
197 
19S  FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM
2. The next day, the 16th of January, Mr.
Cl,trk, of New Hampshire, moved an amendment
to Mr. Crittenden's resolutions, declaring settlement  unnecessary.   The  vote  on  Mr. Clark's
amendment was-yeas twenty-five, nays twentythree.*
3. Mr. Cameron, who for a moment seemed to
relent, on the 18th of January moved a reconsideration of the vote on Mr. Clark's amendment,
when every Republican Senator voted against the
reconsideration.   Mr. Cameron said, "My motion
"was made to accommodate the Senator from Kentucky; but I shall vote with my friends on this
Powell, Pugh, Rice, Saulsbury, and Slidell.-21. NAYS.Messrs. Anthony, Baker, Bingham, Cameron, Chandler,
Clark, Collanmer, Dixon, Doolittle, Durkee, Fessenden, Foot,
Foster, Grimes, Gwin, Hale, Harlan, King, Latham, Seward,
Simmons, Sumner, Ten Eyck, Trumbull, Wade, Wilkinson,
and Wilson.-27. (Congressional Globe, 1860-61, p. 381.)
* YEAS.-Messrs. Anthony, Baker, Bingham, Cameron,
Chandler, Clark, Collamer, Dixon, Doolittle, Durkee, Fessenden, Foot, Foster, Grimnes, Hale, Harlan,  King, Seward,
Simmons, Sumner, Ten Eyck, Trumbull, Wade, Wilkinson,
ind Wilson.-25.  NAYS.-Messrs. Bayard, Bigler, Bragg,
Bright, Clingman, Crittenden, Fitch, Green, Gwin, Hunter,
Johnson of Tennessee, Kennedy,  Lane,  Latham, Mason,
Nicholson, Pearce, Polk, Powell, Pugh, Rice, Saulsbury,
and Sebastian.-23. (Congressional Globe, 1860-61, p. 409.) 
THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
"side."   The vote was-yeas twenty-seven, nays
twenty-four.*
4. The 4th of March, Mr. Crittenden's resolutions, coming up for final consideration, failed, on
a direct vote; every Republican Senator voting
against them.  Yeas nineteen, nays twenty.t
The Senators from the States which immediately
after seceded agreed to accept the settlement, if
also accepted by the party of the incoming President, thus giving to the measure some hold on the
country. Mr. Douglas said, addressing the Senate,
* YEAS.-Messrs. Bayard, Bigler, Bragg, Bright, Clingman,
Crittenden, Douglas, Fitch, Green, Gwin, Hiemphill, Hunter,
Johnson of Arkansas, Johnson of Tennessee, Kennedy, Lane,
Latham, Mason, Nicholson, Pearce, Polk, Powell, Pugh,
Rice,  Saulsbury,  Sebastian,  and  Slidell.-27.  NAYS.Messrs. Anthony, Baker, Bingham, Cameron, Chandler,
Clark, Collamer, Dixon, Doolittle, Fessenden, Foot, Foster,
Grimes, Hale, Harlan, King, Seward, Simmons, Sumner,
Ten Eyck, Wade, Wigfall, Wilkinson, and Wilson.-24.
(Congressional Globe, 1860-61, p. 443.)
' YEAS.-Messrs. Bayard, Bigler, Bright, Crittenden,
Douglas, Gwin, Huntelr, Johnson of Tennessee, Kennedy,
Lane, Latham, Mason, Nicholson, Polk, Pugh, Rice, Sebastian, Thompson, and Wigfall.-19.   NAYS.-Messrs. Anthony, Bingham, Chandler, Clark, Dixon, Doolittle, Durkee,
Fessenden, Foot, Foster, Grimes, Harlan, King,  Morrill,
Sumner, Ten Eyck, Truiibull, Wade, Wilkinson, and Wilson.-20.  (Congressional Globe, 1860-61, p. 1405.)
199 
200  FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM
on tile 3d of January, c If you of the Republican
side are not willing to accept this, nor the propo" sition of the Senator from Kentucky (Mr. Critten"den), pray tell us what you are willingl to do.  I
"address the inquiry to the Republicans alone, for
"the reason that in the committee of thirteen, a
"few days ago, every member from the South, inceluding those from  the cotton States (Messrs.
"Toombs and Davis), expressed their readiness to
"accept the proposition of my venerable friend
"from Kentucky (Mr. Crittenden) as a final set"tlernent of the controversy, if tendered and sus"tained by the Republican members. Hence the
"sole responsibility of our disagreement, and the
only difficulty in the way of an amicable adjust"ment, is with the Republican party."*
Mr. Pugh said to them two months later, the 2d
of March, "The Crittenden proposition has been
"endorsed by the almost unanimous vote of the
"Legislature of Kentucky.  It has been endorsed
by the Legislature of the noble old Common"wealthl of Virginia.  It has been petitioned for
"by a larger iiuinber of electors of the United
'States than any proposition that was ever before
"Congress   I believe in my heart, to-day that it
"would carry an overwhelmling, majority of the
*Conigressional Globe, 1860-61, Appendix, page 41. 
THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
people of my State; aye, sir, and of nearly every
other State in the Union.   Before the Senators
of the State of Mississippi left this chamber, I
" heard one of them, who now assumes, at least, to
"be President of the Southern Confederacy, pro"pose to accept it and to maintain the Union if
'that proposition could receive the vote it ought
"to receive from the other side of this chamber."*
Governor Bigler, who took an active part in the
effort in the Senate,t some time after leaving his
seat, in a letter addressed to a number of his immrediate fellow-citizens, who had written to him for
information touching the position taken by the
Senators from the seceding States, said, in his
letter published in the newspapers of the 28th of
April, 1863,  It is not true that some Republican
" members of the Senate supported the Crittenden
"Compromise, and some opposed it. They opposed
"it throughout and without an exception. Their
"efforts to defeat it were in the usual shape of
* Congressional Globe, 1860-61, page 1390.
t Mr. Crittenden said of him, in his final speech on his
resolutions, that of the 2d of March, " I shall never forget
"the zeal and the industry with which mny honourable and
"my honoured friend from Pennsylvania has acted in this
"great matter. With a zeal untiring, and a hope inexhaust"ible, he has toiled on from day to day, with a labour that
"no other one, scarcely, could have borne."
14
201 
202  FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM
"postponements and amendments, and it was not
"until within a few hours of the close of the sescsion, that a direct vote was had on the propo" sition itself."
SECTION XV.
NORTHERN AND SOITTTHERN DEMOCRACY.
The South looked upon Northern democracy
as the members of the convention of'87 looked
upon all democracy, with fear; and surely no disciple of Mr. Jefferson could have witnessed, without profound apprehension, the withdrawal, from
whatever cause, of such numbers of the substantial
classes of the North from all care of the public
interests. The South had been told, by an unanimous Senate, when the Cain Petition was presented, in 1836, that the whole North abhorred
the doctrines of the abolitionists; but what avail
the abhorrences of those who vote for what they
abhor?
With fears of Northern democracy went a disposition to disparage it. Since the death of Mr.
Hamilton, the North had not produced one acknowledged leader;  they all came from slaveholding States. Webster was a great mind, but
not a leader; Douglas, who would have been a
leader, died before his time. 
THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
Southern democracy was said to turn on slavery;
but that was the Constitution of the United States.
In the North, it turned too often on tile contrivances of politicians, cries against slavery, cries
against secret societies, cries for secret societies,
cries against foreign votes, cries against religious
sects.
The Southern stand was real; it represented a
great interest; that of the North represented the
machinations of office-seekers. But when, to get
place, they joined their fortunes to fanatics, men
cherishing a hate, stirred by a passion, they fell
under an influence more potent than their own,
and stronger than the thirst of office; and they
became controlled by those they meant only to
use. Mischiefs camne thicker and faster than they
wanted, but it was too late to stop; and political
morals were gone.   The country had been long
in the hands of middle-men, an influence that is
always ruinous.   The citizen could not rise by
serving government or people; he had to serve a
middle interest, rulers of conventions, which had
mastered them both and cared for neither.  Mr.
Lincoln cared for the country, for he was its chief
magistrate; but the members of the Chicago convention did not, and to them he had to answer.
Franklin's sagacity saw that patronage was to
203 
204 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM
make Executive power a danger to the State; but
not that it was to give us a combination of the
seekers of patronage, who, choosing the Executive,
would mnake responsibility to themselves, instead
of to the people, a condition of their choice; still
less that a feeling, which can be compared only
to religious fury, was to enter into the question,
and predominate over even the appetite for place.
SECTION XVI.
PREPARATIONS FOR DIISUNIOiN.
The slave-holding States looked not to Congress
for a cessation of the clamour which imperilled the
lives, destroyed the property, and exhausted the
patience of their part of the country. Congress
had no such power. They asked what Congress
could give when they asked equal rights in the acquired territory; and this as an empty acknowledgment, for there was no acquired territory, or
almost none, which slave labour could cultivate;
but to give this would seem to be a truce.* The
* The Senators who voted against the Crittenden Comnpromnise said very little inl opposition to it. It had not the beiliefit of debate.  But Mr. Horace Greeley, in his work, "The
Amnerican Conflict," vol. i. pp. 378-381, debates it, as they
would not in the Senate, and candidly avows as a mnaiu objection to it that agitation was to be given up.  This, the true 
THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
attitude of the South was despair; it may have
been exaggerated by passion, but it was unaffected
objection, Mr. Greeley thus states: "IV. As a part of this
"compact, the North was to silence her lecturers, muzzle her
"press, chloroform her pulpits, and bully her people into a
"silence respecting slavery, which should be broken only
"by the utterances of vindication and panegyrics. Already
"the great publishing houses of our Northern cities had been
"very generally induced to mutilate the works they from
"time to time issued by expunging from them every passage
"or sentiment obnoxious to the fastidious, exacting taste of
"the slave-holders.  Some of our authors-Mr. James  K.
"Paulding conspicuous among them-had revised their own
"works, and issued new editions wherein their old-time
"utterances adverse to slavery had been supplanted by ful"some adulations of the system, or vehement abuse of its
"opponents. Our missionary, tract, and other religious or"ganizations had very generally been induced to expurgate
"their publications and their efforts of all anti-slavery ideas.
"Our great popular churches had either bent to the storm or
"been broken by it. And now the work was to be completed
"by a new and comprehensive' adjustment,' taking the place
"and, in part, the name of that'compromise' which the slave
"power had first forced upon the North and then coolly repu"diated; an adjustment which was to bind the free States
"over to perpetual complicity in slave-holding, and perpetual
"stifling of all exposure of, or remonstrance against, the ex"istence, the domination, and the diffusion of slavery. These
"strictures are neither impelled or colored by any unkindly
"feeling towards Mr. Crittenden, whose patriotism and fair"ness they are not designed to impeach.  He doubtless con
205 
206   FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM
and real.   They would accept concessions, but
they professed no confidence in them; they would
take them for what they might be worth; they
would accept Mr. Crittenden's proposal; they
might accept that of the Peace Conference; they
would take either, provisionally only.
What was the attitude of the North? When
Congress met in December, the Senate was in a
large majority against the incoming administration, and in the House of Representatives parties
were balanced; but before the 4th of March, by the
"sidered carefully and well what the South could be induced
"to accept; and he undoubtedly believed this to be embodied
"and presented in his plan of compromise. A slave-holder
himself; born, educated, and living amid the institution;
"he could not or did not realize that his conditions would
"seem inadmissible to any but the narrowest and most mis"erable fanatics.  Assuming his premises, regarding the mat"ter exclusively from the standpoint, and putting conscience
"and consistency entirely out of the question, his proposal
"was fair enough; and its cordial adoption would doubtless
"have exhilarated the stock market, and caused general
"rejoicing on exchanges, and around the dinner-tables of
"merchant princes. Its advocates with good reason claimed
"a large majority of the people in its favor, and clamored
"for its submission to a direct popular vote.  Had such a
"submission been accorded, it is very likely that the greater
"number of those who voted at all would have voted to
"ratify it." 
THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
withdrawal of the Senators and Representatives of
seceding States, the party of the new administration became a great nmajority in the lower House,
and in the Senate legislation was at their control
What, then, settlement with the South having been
voted, by those who now controlled Congress, inexpedient, were the measures directed against the
approaching Southern movement? The people of
the North had said, Anticipate it by a settlement;
but where is the evidence that their leaders were
not for separation, until the uprising of the people
after the insult at Fort Sumter took away from
them all option?
The cry had been of the North, the vain cry of
the unnoticed people, for years, that the South
would be driven to revolution; it had come;
it had happened in one State, and was imminent in all.  Before Congress adjourned, it had
happened in seven, and was an appeal to arms.
Did Congress take their measures as if it were
right or were wrong? Did they confess, or did
they deny? What did they do? They took on
themselves, not to justify revolution, for its justification must depend on results; but, to submit
to it. They did not proclaim disunion, but they
opened the way for it. The proofs are on their
journals.
207 
208 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM
A bill had been introduced * into the House of
Representatives for enforcing the Collection Laws
by receiving customs-duties on ship-board, under
naval and military protection, in those sea-ports
where, by reason of acts of secession, they could
not otherwise be collected; this bill was suffered
to drop. Another bill,+ of a more comprehensive
kind than that intended for the control of the
Southern trade, was introduced into the House
from the Committee on Military Affairs, to authorize the raising of a military force to uphold generally the laws in the seceded States.  It was also
suffered to drop; and Mr. Douglas, in his place, on
the 15th of March, during the session of the Senate after the adjournment of Congress, intimated,
in debate, uncontradicted, that this was by the
special request of the incoming government. Another movement was made, of the most unmistakable significance; the mail service in the seceded
States was discontinued by act of Congress. Mr.
Lincoln, in his address of the 4th of March, after
signifying, in general terms, that, leaving it to
its own way, he would not combat the secession
* Congressional Globe. Second session, Thirty-sixth Congress, 1860-61; part 2, pp. 1422, 1433.
t Congressional Globe. Second session, Thirty-sixth Congress, 1860-61; part 2, p. 1001. 
THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
movement,* declared, specifically, of the mail service, that it would not be continued if, as
he expressed  it, "repelled."   On  the  28th of
February,t Congress passed the act authorizing
the Postmaster-General to discontinue the mail
service of the United States in the country of
secession.
So degraded had become the uses of democracy
in the scramble for office, that the office-seekers
were not ashamed to measure their conduct, when
the life of the country was at stake, to what they
* "When hostility to the United States shall be so great
"and so universal as to prevent competent resident citizens
"from holding the federal offices, there will be no attempt to
"force obnoxious strangers among the people for that object.
"While the strict legal right may exist of the government to
"enforce the exercise of these offices, the attempt to do so
"would be so irritating, and so nearly impracticable withal,
"that I deem it better to forego for the time the use of such
offices."
t Act signed by the President the 28th of February, 1861,
Congressional Globe, p. 328, Appendix. Second session,
Thirtv-sixth Congress, 1860-61. It passed the House, yeas
131, nays 28, the 6th of February.  In the Senate the yeas
and nays on the passage of the bill have not been found; but
on the 20th of February there appears a motion to lay it on
the table, which was defeated,-yeas 14, nays 23. The next
day, the 21st of February, the vote to take up the bill was,
yeas 23, nays l15.
209 
210 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM
deemed the smallest hazard to their places;* and
Congress adjourned the 4th of March, accepting
the Southern alternative of a peaceful separation.
* "For several weeks after the inauguration, no stated cab"inet meetings were held."  (Mr. Ex-Secretary of the Navy
Welles, in his paper "Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Sew ard," in the
"Galaxy" for November, 1873, p. 688.) To understand better Mr. Welles, see a speech of Mr. Nesmith in the Senate,
delivered the 23d of March, on a motion to remove officers
and appoint new ones (Congressional Globe, p. 1496): "I
"know that the administration is very much embarrassed.
"I know that there is a throng here of countless spoilsmen
"who desire place.  I meet them everywhere.  I have had
"within the last two days some business to transact at the
"departments, and I have found every avenue to the office of
"every secretary and every head of a bureau of this govern"ment crowded with hungry office-seekers,-old men and
"young men; long, gaunt, lean young men; old, limping,
"bald-headed gentlemen,-choking up the avenues to the
"various secretaries of this government, when I had busi"ness relative to the interests of my constituents, and could
"not get an opportunity to have an interview with them.
"This state of facts exists, too, sir, at a time when the
"administration and the government should have something
"else to think about.  It is said that Nero fiddled while
"Rome was burning;  and here are forty thousand office"seekers fiddling around the administration for loaves and
"fishes while the government is being destroyed.
*      *     *      *      *      *      *      *     *
"If I were in the place of Mr. Lincoln, considering the
"present exigencies of the country, considering that the 
THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
In the session of the Senate, after the adjournment of Congress, between the 4th and 28th of
March, Mr. Douglas took up this subject, and,
"Union is dissolving and disintegrating beneath our feet, I
"would turn the federal bayonets against the office-seekers.
... I would settle those questions which are pressing on
"the administration, and which its advocates on this floor
"declare it has not had time to consider. I would deter"mine. first, whether we have a government or not.  I
"would settle upon some sort of policy, that the American
"people might know what was  in the future,-what  the
"administration was determined to do; whether we are to
"have peace or war; whether this state of suspense is to
"continue.  I say, I would put these gentlemen off until that
"was determined; and I think it becomes this body, as a
"conservative body, not being identified with those general
"questions of politics which have agitated the country, to
"take that view of the case.
"I apprehend that those gentlemen who are urgent for
"places here are gentlemen who are disappointed. I have
"met them in throngs.  [Laughter.]  To show how promis"cuous these sorts of crowds are, I will mention that the
"other morning I went up to one of the departments, being
"anxious to transact some business there which relates to a
"matter involving over two millions of dollars to my con"stituents; and I was found there by some gentleman from
"Illiniois who supposed I was an office-seeker; he mistook
"me for sonme friend of his, I apprehend, who wanted a post"office in the interior of Illinois; and, as I was standing in
"the crowd, waiting for an audience, he tapped me on the
211 
212  FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM
addressing, himself to it, said he was decidedly
,lgainst war;  and that he so construed the Ina:igural Address.  He reminded them  that they
had, with complete power in both Houses, allowed
Congress to adjourn, and, apparently on consultation with Mr. Lincoln, nothing done to prepare for
forcible measures. They had acted, as he thought,
well; but the anxieties of the country ought to be
relieved. To relieve, he said, those anxieties, he
moved a resolution of inquiry,* which was laid on
the table by a party vote of twenty-three to eleven;
a studied and concerted silence being maintained
by the friends of the administration, with the exceptions of Mr. Trurnbull and Mr. Wade, who expressed, indistinctly, their views, and Mr. lHale,lt
who expressed himself distinctly in favour of separation.$
"shoulder, and said,' I have fixed that little matter; you will
"'get that post-office.'  [Laughter.]
*      *      *      *      *      *      *      *     *
"I say, this system should not extend to the Senate, and
"I protest against the consideration of the question at this
" time."
* Congressional Globe, 1860-61.  Second session, Thirtysixth Congress, part 2, p. 1511.
t Congressional Globe, 1860-61.  Second session, Thirtysixth Congress, part 2, p. 1470.
"I do not know," said Mi'. Seward, in his speech to the
Senate, already cited, of the 12tl: of January, 1861, "what 
THiE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
Governments do not say, we will part with a
third of our territory and population; they let it
happen. When the mistakes of politicians have
made an alternative of miseries, they do not say
to a deceived and ruined people which misery they
adopt. They drift with the flood. Such, in their
miseries, was the way with the government and
their friends in Congress; they would neither oppose secession nor consent to it.  They came into
power promising sunshine, and, when the storm
arose, they had neither the hearts and confidence
of the people, nor the courage necessary to meet
the emergency. To part with the South, was a
responsibility they could not take on themselves;
but it was the end they looked to, for it was the
solution of the problem.
With proceedings in Congress exactly tallied
those of thle Executive. Witness the negotiations
of the State Department with the commissioners
and authorities of the seceded States, and the
conduct of the War  and Navy Departments, in
suffering officers to go home to serve their States,
resigning their commissions and discharging themselves of all duty to the government.
The case of General Johnston, the Quartermaster
"the Union would be worth, if saved by the use of the
"ssword."
213 
214  FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM
General of the army, is described in his work lately
published.* His parting with his commission illustrates all the cases; and they were very numerous
in both branches of the service. "Having been
"educated in such opinions, I naturally deter"mined to return to the State of which I was a
" native, join the people among whom I was born,
"and live with my kindred, and, if necessary,
"fight in their defence. Accordingly, the resigna"tion of my commission, written on Saturday, was
"offered to the Secretary of War Monday morning.
" That gentleman was requested at the same time,
to instruct the Adjutant-General, who had kindly
" accompanied me, to write the order announcing
"its acceptance, immediately....  Many officers
"of that army, of Southern birth, had previously
"resigned their commissions, to return to the States
"of which they were citizens, and many others did
"so later. Their objects in quitting the United
States army, and their intentions to enter the
"service of the seceded States, were well known
"in the War Department. Yet no evidence of
"disapproval of these intentions was given by
"the federal administration, nor efforts made  by
"it to prevent their execution."
* "Narrative of Military Operations during the Late War
"between the States," pp. 10, 11. 
THE AMERICAN P()INT OF VIEW.
This expectation of the chiefs of the new party
of a final separation, leaving South and North each
to enjoy its own power, continued long after the
war had begun.   It continued until the tide of
success changed from South to North.   It was
briefly, but clearly, expressed by Mr. Cameron in
1863, when the war was far into its second year.
Mr. Boyer, a member of the House of Representatives of Pennsylvania, testified before a committee
of that body thus: "General Cameron then said,
This ends it.  I will be Senator, and there is no
'doubt the Southern States will gain their inde pendence, and I will have more power than any
"other man in the State."*
SECTION XVII.
THE CIVIL WAR.
The seekers of patronage had done their work;
and the country was to be divided, or worse; for,
had a division been effected between the North
and the South, endless divisions and endless wars
would have ensued, making necessary new combinations; and those wars would have lasted, and
* Testimony of Thomas Jefferson Boyer, p. 11.  Report of
Select Committee of the House of Representatives of Pennsylvania under a Resolution of the 20th of January, 1863.
215 
2 16 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM
those combinations not have been completed, till
democracy was  trampled to the ground, and, perhaps, liberty was extinct. Once at war, a people
are in the hands of their government, though it be
of the meanest materials. The people of the North
gave soldiers, and montley more than could be used;
but the direction given to the war was the government's direction, not the people's.   In the South it
was no better. When the tide turned against themn,
they wanted the Union again; but their government prevented it, having, like the Northern goverument, motives of their own, distinct from the
people's.*
* IN THE UNION, the Northern States, by immense mnajorities, would have voted for justice, though the South stood to
their arms to demand it, so deep and perfect was the conviction of the injustice of that terrible agitation with which they
incessantly were goaded, and which not even slaves could
bear forever.   Whlat they called their independence was
common ruin, North and South, and the demand for it was
backed, at Fort Sumter, with as gross and deliberate an insult
as ever was offered. Had the South afterwards, instead of
pressing the war to the exhaustion of the means of carrying
it on, and thenl opening negotiations with men who would
have been, politically, wrecked by a peaceful adjustmient,
publicly offered to the PEOPLE of the North to return to the
Union, it would have told instantly at every election poll,
and swept the country of all vestige of opposition to an equal
and honourable peace. It would have given us the Union,' 
THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
The leaders had looked to separation; but not
so the people; they had to be reconciled to it. The
people of the North, astonished at the course of
events, stood still; the people of the South paused
before such a step as revolution, being full of the
uneasiness natural to a society on the eve of great
events, but especially a society like that of the
South, wholly incomplete in its organization, for
they were almost exclusively an agricultural people.
They had to be reconciled to separation by war.
The quarrels of nations turn often, like those of
individuals, on affronts. Our ancestors submitted
when  the mother-country interdicted  their infant
manufactures,* and  their commerce;  but they deand not the troubled country we live in. But the people, for
thirty years, had been nothing; it was that brought the war
on; and during the war, though it could not have gone
through a campaign had they taken their shoulders firom the
wheel, they were not more considered than they are in anv
country where arms silence the law.
* Lord Chatham, rated by the Colonies their best friend,
and certainly he said some magnificent things in their behalf,
declared in one of his speeches that he would not let the
Americans manufacture as much as a hob-nail. They were
prohibited every species of manufacturing industry carried
on in England; their trade was under the strictest monopoly;
confined to English ports; even the interchange of productions, among their own harbours, along the Atlantic coast,
limited and restricted, if not wholly forbidden; and these
15
217 
218  FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM
clared independence and rose in rebellion when
she imposed a small tax on their internal trade.
Great Britain, vitally interested in our dissensions, which, had they ended in separating the
States, would have left her marine without a rival,
called herself neutral, but she drew the sword and
demanded prompt satisfaction when Mr. Mason
and Mr. Slidell were taken from the deck of one
of her ships.  Negro slavery, the vile pretence of
which the South had been so long the victim-and
no giddy-headed prince ever invaded his neighbour's dominions on falser pretences * than those
on which we gave the South no rest-found, and
grievances of vassalage were regarded not intolerable until
the disputes about the right of Parliament to impose an interl al tax for purposes of revenue, which was taxation without representation, brought everything into debate, and our
ancestors roused to the consideration of men's natural rights;
which mankind had before that time not much considered,
but which, ever since, has been, and now is, at the root of
all reasoning upon the democratic problem.
* When the end was attained, immediately Congress
adopted the famous resolution that "the present deplorable
"civil war" was waged in no "spirit of oppression, nor pur"pose of overthrowing or interfering with the rights or estab"lished institutions" of the Southern States, in the House by
a vote of 119 to 2, and in the Senate 30 to 5 (Congressional
Globe, House, 22d of July; Senate, 25th of Jtuly, 1862); and
it was a correct expression of the feeling of the country. 
THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
left, after all the agitation of it, in the people of
the non-slave-holding States, a feeling as true to
the slave-holders as to themselves; but, instantly,
the cry was war when the affront came at Fort
Sumter.
SECTION XVIII.
AFTER THE WAR.
In a civil war begun by the South, the people
of the North reaped the reward of a long neglect
of all their duties;  and here ended the first act
of a long persecution, in malignity not exceeded by
any religious persecution, when we consider the
deep feeling of wickedness  and hate which inspired the originators of it, the old abolitionists.
In the nearly thirty years during which the South
were unrelentingly pursued, they made many nmistakes, but their crowning mistake was in forcing
the war.  It settled the old account and opened
a new one.
The South were driven to despair by agitation,
but not driven to war.  All that can justify war is
necessity, or success; and the Southern necessity
was the necessity to exasperate their people and
prevent accommodation. Success was out of the
question, because the immense odds in favour of
the North, and geographical considerations, rivers
219 
220 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM
and boundaries which could not be removed, to
say nothing of men's honour, and the future of
their country, were insurmountable bars to pernianent peace on terms of disunion. A man may
play with his own fortunes as desperate a game
as he pleases; but statesmen, to whom are committed, or who have assumed to themselves, the
care of the lives and fortunes of others, are bound
to moderation, to prudence, and respect to circumstances.   The Southern leaders threw away all
chances but those of battle. The same want of
moderation, stimulated by personal, selfish ambition, which, when nearly all the North sympathized with them, put the South on a career that
was headlong, and limited and contracted Northern
opposition to Mr. Lincoln's government to questions and considerations that were soon swept
away in the torrent of war, characterized, to the
last moment, the Southern leaders  and  turned
their faces against fair, liberal, and just accommodation, which the people of the North longed for,
and, when it was too late, the people of the South.
They forfeited those claims to statesmanship, justly
earned long before, in better days, and till now
possessed; and their right, the great right of revolution, they degraded to the untenable and paltry
pretence of the right of secession. 
THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
But where have civil war and revolution left
us? In England, their revolution of 1688, begun
by the infatuation of a king, carried through by a
foreign prince, with his army, the people taking
no part, and the privileged classes none that was
positive, till it ceased to be perilous, was as successfil, the point of departure considered, as ours
was in 1776, which had the people to back it; and
it has left them institutions which have lasted two
hundred years. In the United States, where there
was no king to play the fool, only the people, their
revolution of 1860 has left democracy clouded
with doubts, and federal institutions, the only
ones on which it can rest, staggering with consolidation.
221 
222  FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM
CIIAPTER VIII.
FEDERALISM.
SECTION I.
OUR SAFETY IS THIERE.
TiHE President of the United States, whose
federal patronage  Franklin  feared would  make
him a king, became the head of an alliance controlling all patronage, federal, State, and municipal. The great federal places, originally, were
few; and the small, which were not many, were
confined to the humble services of posts and customs. Such was the Constitution; let any man
look at it to-day. Even before the recent enormnous increase of patronage by the war, federal
had swallowed up State power and become the
centre of democratic corruption; the worst of all
corruption, and the most ruinous.
How shall it be diminished?  By  the people
doing their duty; and their first duty is to take
into their hands the affairs of their States, their
cities, their counties, their boroughs, their towns,
their townships; all that Mr. Jefferson called
their ward republic8; thus, not amending the Con 
THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
stitution, but our conduct under it, by depriving
the centre of that usurped power over the States
by which we are hurried, no man knows whither.
Let us not lay these usurpations, and the corruptions which accompany them, to the door of
the war, and the party now in power; they are a
growth which had been sedulously cultivated for
thirty years before the war began.
In 1774, what was called the Quebec Bill was
objected to in the House of Comnmons because it
provided for the appointment in London of the
local legislatures of the Canadas.  But the mninister called to the bar of the House his witnesses,
who testified that the people of Canada liked
centralization, and did not want to elect their
own  legislatures.   Those  Canadians  are yet a
British dependency.   Two years later, in 1776,
the thirteen Colonies rose against the government in London because it took on itself the office
of their local legislatures; they waged a war of
rebellion, and, ceasing to be a British dependency,
established themselves as a federal republic.
In that form of government, safety comes with
the division of power,  and this is indispensable
when tile power is democratic.  That would be a
perfect federal system where the citizen served the
public as usefully, and sat as proudly, as a member
223 
224  FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM
of the Legislature of his State or province, as in
the halls of the central government; but this can
never be; moreover, it is in the nature of human
forces to be always gaining or losing; perfection
alone stands still, and wvith us State power has lost
ground and the central has gained. The State is
the lesser influence, and attracts not the aspiring;
but becomes to the politician who guides the destiny of the centre an inferior consideration. Mr.
Jefferson was the champion of State rights; but
when at the head of the Executive of the United
States and no longer a member of the Legislature
of his State, or its Governor or immediate representative, can we suppose he was capable of holding the balance true between State power and that
of the Union whose chief he was? Who would be?
SECTION II.
FEDERALISM IN ITS STRICTNESS WAS INSISTED ON IN 1787.
The tendency is to centralization. The States,
having an instinctive fear of it, when they nmet in
convention put themselves on a basis of. adjustments, which were the compromise on which they
rested the federal Union. To this compromise the
people agreed, to it they  might have disagreed;
and one of the representatives of the small State of 
THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
Delaware, debating it, said that his State, if denied
fair terms of union, by which he meant a vote
equal to that of Virginia, then the most populous
State, would withdraw and seek foreign alliance.
None gainsaid the position, none questioned the
right, none doubted tha,t the State of Delaware was
free to come into the Union, or to stand alone, or
ally itself, if it would, with a kingdom of the coIntinent of Europe, subject only to the understanding
at(d law of all nations that one country in the exercise of its rights must not derogate from the safety
of others. The remedy for such derogation would
have been war, the old and the universal remedy
of nations.   The violation of it by the State of
Delaware would have been warrant for the other
States taking up arms to reduce her to reason; as
three of the States of Europe, Holland, Germany,
and En(gland, took up arms to prevent a French
prince, though next in blood and the right hleir,
from ascending the throne of Spain arid prejudicing
common safety by giving undue preponderance to
the house of Bourbon. There was no other bar
to the threatened course of the little State of Delaware in 1787. The State of Rhode Island, which
came into the Union under moral compulsion,
might have persisted in the refusal to come in, but
it would have ended in the physical compulsion
'225 
226  FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM
of war. So it would have been with North Carolina, which stood off upon the same principle.
The men who sat in the convention had not been
taught, by use and experience, the perils of consolidation; the depths and shallows of the democratic
flood on which they launched our barque were to
them unknown; and the value of the States, as
States, was a contested point, not yet understood.
The idea of restricting their rights, and even of
blotting thenm out, consisted with theories of that
day.   The  convention  thought  the States  too
strong and the centre too weak; which was so
under the Confederacy; but time and events have
reversed it; and now, of all our problems, what
ought to be the simplest and easiest is that which
lies in the question between the federal principle
and centralization.
SECTION III.
FEDERALISM AN OBSTACLE TO THE EXCESSES OF DEMOCRACY.
Without the States, democracy would be despotism. The law-giver's art is displayed in breaking the force of power; we break it, when we
divide judicial power among two or more tribunals;
we break it, when we divide legislative power between a Senate and a House of Representatives; 
THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
but democracy is, of all others, the power of which
the law-giver has to break the force, for what
would be a constitution, or any writing, if democracy might read it as it pleases?   Against
democracy the States are the barrier; they are
the only barrier.   The sweep of the democratic
wave is broken at State lines. Could those gentlemen of the convention, in their attempt have
succeeded, who desired to see the States done
away, they would have left us to the mercy of
that ocean, the tempestuous ocean of democracy,
which they so much feared. The States are, as a
power, infinitely superior to what are called institutions, in the ordinary sense of that term, and
which are artificial only.
Aristocracy is an institution, and is a power or
barrier, but it is not like a State, indestructible,
whose existence fire and sword only can destroy.
Aristocracy is sanctioned by time, or exists by
patent;  and stands between the crown and the
people, to aid the weaker and resist the stronger 
in Russia it resists the crown, in England it resists
the people; but no aristocracy can oppose such
resistance to power as the States of this Union,
which are integral parts of the country itself, and
whose patent is population and territory.   Aristocracy, an institution the use of which isto give
227 
228  FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM
steadiness, the steadiness of birth, wealth, and
hereditation, makes one citizen, without regard to
merit or desert, another citizen's superior, which is
odious; the federal system of the United States,
leaving men equal or unequal according to their
faculties, natural and acquired, and alike members
of both organizations, that of the State and that
of the Union, violates no instinct, offends no10 prejudlice, and yet formidably and strongly resists that
demnocratic power whose unchecked force would be
the weakness of our government.
SECTION IV.
FEDERALISM IS STRENGTH.
In the antagonism of two forces we find our
streng(th; our institutions are strong when central
power is strong enough to unite the States and
not more. Such an union is liberty, and it is liberty we seek. He who looks to centralization, to
greatness, to our being a great and mighty empire,
looks backward, he looks to barbarism; he looks
forward who looks to the federal system giving us
a safe and happy liberty; greatness will come only
too fast. It is not the destruction of property, it
is not the disturbance of society by the late war
which causes, since its close, the changed condition
of the Southern States; it is the consolidation of 
THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
their governments  at Washington.   Had their
State power been left to them, and they had been
permitted to regulate their home affairs, the wasting effects of war would soon have disappeared
During the war it was the States and their subdivisions, what Mr. Jefferson called " ward repu)blics," which supported and carried it on. Far
from being a hindrance to the central governmient,
without the States the centre would have been
chaos.   Military operations may  need a single
hand, but no central power could have controlled
the country to such untiring military efforts as
were made, North and South, through the influence of the States.
It was a point not disputed in the British debates on the reforms of 1831-2, debates which
might stand in honourable memory of that country
were its other records blotted out, that institutions
are not to be made.   The most safe, solid, and
permanent parts of ours are not what they made
in 1787, but found made; protecting the old Confederacy, and which they left to protect the new.
Fortunate are the law-givers who find made  to
their hand power capable of giving protection to
their work. That, of the gentlemen who sat in the
convention, those the most fearful of democracy
should have been the most decided foes of State
229 
230 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM
power, might be called shortsightedness did we
not know that power, to be judged correctly, must
be seen in action. They could not know in 1787
how the turbidness of democracy would be stirred
by central power; and that the States were to be
our conservative feature.
SECTION V.
EXTENT OF TERRITORY.
Whoever will glance at the mnap of our territory
may ask himself the question, and answer it if he
can, how we are to live in freedom after the State
governnments have been, not taken away, for that
would be to let the whole structure fall to ruin,
but after they have been, by processes of centralization, abridged of their powers.   A country of
such extent as the United States can be free only
in the federal form; and it must not be a mockery;
federal governmnent or military is the alternative.
The sympathy, sometimes wondered at, which has
always existed between  the United States and
Russia, is one of the proofs of this. It is because
they are extremies that they meet. If Russia were
not, as she is, a despotism, there could only be a
Russia as a federation of States; if the United
States were not, as they are, a federation of States,
they could be only a Russia and a despotism. 
THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
SECTION VI.
SECESSION.
In regarding the question of State rights, let us
have no fear of secession. In 1860 secession was
but at name, it was a revolution. No publicists,
no tribunal however composed, of public men or
theorists, could ever have found the doctrine of
secession in the Constitution of the United States.
When the last clause of the sixth resolution of
the Virginia draft of a Constitution " authorizing
4an exertion of the force of tile whole against a
"delinquent State" ca,ne under consideration of
the federal convention,* Mr. Madison made an observation on it, which has been sometimes used to
support the doctrine of secession; he said, " that
thle more he reflected on the use of force, the
rmiore he doubted the practicability, the justice,
land the efficacy of it, when applied to people
"collectively, and not individually.  An union of
"the States containing such an ingredient seemed
"to provide fbr its own destruction.  The use of
force against a State would look more like a de"claration of war than an infliction of punishment;
"and would probably be considered by the party
* Madison Papers, vol. ii. p. 761.
231 
232  FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM
attacked as a dissolution of all previous compacts
by which it might be bound. He hoped that
"such a system would be framed as might render
"this resource unnecessary."  But the system now
existing, unknown to the Confederacy, by which
the powers of the central government operate
upon, not States, but individuals, had not then
been matured; and in the debates on the adoption
of the Constitution in the convention of the State
of New York, Mr. Hamilton, a different order of
mind and character from Mr. Madison, but, like
him, a great and good citizen, and without whose
unflagging zeal the Constitution could not have
been vindicated from the objections made to it
in New York, and that State would have joined
North Carolina and Rhode Island and refused to
ratify, in the same spirit with Mr. Madison, said,*
"It has been observed, to coerce the States is one
'of the maddest projects that was ever devised.
A failure of compliance will never be confined
"to a single State.... Here is a nation at war
with itself. Can any reasonable man be well
"disposed towards a government which makes war
' and carnage the only means of supporting itself,
-a government that can exist only by the sword?
iEvery such war must involve the innocent with
* Elliott's Debates, vol. ii. pp. 232, 233; June 20, 1788. 
THlE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
the guilty.  This single consideration should be
sufficient to dispose every peaceable citizen against
'such a government."
Mr  Hainilton and Mr. Madison did not mean
that the Union was to exist at the pleasure of the
parties; that States, delinquent in their federal
duties or disgusted with the delinquencies of
others might withdraw from a Union which had
ceased to please them.  They meant that to provide for war amnong the States, as a Constitutional
means of union, was absurd. They provided for
union; they did not provide for a dissolution of it.
In administering the government, the use of force
against States would look like, not a measure of
justice, but of war and punishment; irreconcileable with the idea of union.
Had the framers of the Constitution put in it a
provision that, in the event of a difference between
the federal government and one or more of the
States, the use of force against a State should be
resorted to, pursuant to the decree of some high
court of justice, constituted for this purpose, or
pursuant to the unanimous vote of both Houses
of Congress, or pursuant to a vote at the polls of
the people of five-sixths of the States, the incongruity pointed out by Mr. Madison would have been
not less obvious than it was in the clause of the
16
233 
234  FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM
draft to which he so successfully took exception;
for he moved, after the remarks which have been
quoted, " that the clause be postponed;" the report
adds,  this motion was agreed to nem. con.;  and,
being rendered unnecessary by the system adopted
of laws bearing upon citizens, not States, the clause
was never again brought forward.
The dissatisfied State or States might adhere to
their own conclusions, though the votes of Congress
or the people against them were unanimous, or
decrees of the courts never so clear. They might
refuse to submit. The citizens of thle South, when
they put their authority to break up the Union on
their attributes as States, were right if they meant
revolution; if they meant their rights as members
of the Union, they were not less wrong, neither
were they more wrong, than they would  have
been had the Constitution of 1787 provided, in
express language, against the right of secession; or
had there been a decision against the exercise of
the right by a Constitutional tribunal of undisputed
supremacy. 
THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
SECTION VII.
THE DOUBLE ALLEGIANCE.
When Mr. Jefferson said no country ought to
be as long as a century and a half without a revolution,* he said too mnuch; but let us not forget
that in less than one century we have had two
revolutions. None of our people will longer tolerate injury and affront than the Southern States
did. Thle South were not patient, but they bore
long with their afflictions.   From  1835, when
they began, to 1860, was twenty-five years; from
1808, when  the Embargo, interfering with New
England commerce, an infinitely smnall grievance
comnpared with that of the slavery agitation, went
into operation, to 1814, when the war, declared
against England, in pursuance of the Embargo
policy, brought three of the New England States to
preparations for immediate secession, was but six
years. The soundest principles are exactly those
in which discontents make their nest; and the
rights of the States have collie into disrepute by
having been so often their refuge.   Mr. Jefferson's
Kentucky Resolutions of 1798, even  Mr. Madi
* Jefferson's Works, vo]. ii. pp. 331, 332.
235 
236  FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM
son's Virginia Resolutions of 1797, were nothing
but discontents.   Neither Mr. Jefferson nor Mr.
Madison, when  they came  to the head of the
government, could have administered it on such
principles.
But it is not State rights, it is the opposite tendency which ought to be the object of fear. While
disunion is the greatest misfortune these States
could undergo, for nationalities are the work of
time, and no hand can form them, it is not their
greatest danger. It is consolidation, an enemy full
of cunning, and always at the door.
When the Constitution of the United States
was accepted by the States, what they feared, and
what they paused upon, was centralization. It
was their centralizing tendencies that destroyed
the old federal party, the desire of what they
called a high-toned government.  When the democratic party fell in 1860, it was centralization,
persisted in for years, which brought it to the
ground.   The party which succeeded to it  maintains its power by centralizing practices which carry
it every day nearer and nearer to the universal disgust of the whole public mind.  Men are blinded
by success. The party founded by Mr. Jefferson
lost its way by long enjoyment of power, that is,
by success; and the party which took its place, 
TIlE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
blinded with success in a war against seceding
States, has set up the victorious centre in opposition to the plainest rights of the States.
The loser in war need not ask for justice; had
the Revolution of'76 failed, Washington would
have been executed on Tower Hill. But though
with the event of the war the secession dogma
went down, and the consolidation dogma went
up, the elements of things are unchanged and uinchangeable; and like causes will, to the end, go on
producing like effects. If we remain a free people,
the same spirit that pronmpted the South to what
they called secession will prompt the North, or
the West, or the Middle, or any region where
insult aggrieves or oppression tramples, to seek
redress, and another conflict like that of 1860 will
ensue, ninety-nine citizens in a hundred, as then,
going with their States.
Mr. Clay once said in the Senate that his first
allegiance was to the federal government, and after
that to Kentucky; and he was right. The question was, whose was the supreme law under the
Constitution. He was controverting nullification;
in other words, the right of secession. But had
Mr. Clay said that if his State were driven by injustice to revolution he would take up arms against
her, he would have said more than any other man,
237 
238  FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM
Washington perhiap.s excepted, could have been
relied on to do.
Moreover, what is called the right of revolution
is the power of revolution.  It was not optional
with those citizens who were in the minority in the
Southern States, in 1861, to resist or submit when
their States, by organized action and great mnajorities, set themselves up against the Union. It was
necessity. This city of Philadelphia may be supposed to be as patriotic and disinterested as any
like number of persons; but who believes that had
the State of Pennsylvania seceded, the citizens of
Philadelphia would have  stood a siege for the
Union, or, leaving all they had behind them,
abandoned their firesides and taken shelter with
an idea? Would the wealth and wisdom of the
city have given that advice? would they have set
the example? Would such conduct accord with
either the nature of man, or that principle, the
consent of the governed, on which our governments rest? When the city took up arms in 1861,
it was a necessity, for the State was part of the
Union. Had the State not been part of the Union,
the necessity would have been to fight on the other
side.
Ours is a double allegiance. The State is our
country, the Union is our government, and though 
TIlE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
we may have more than one allegiance we can
have but one country; we love our country, we
respect our government;  one is a passion, the
other is a duty.   Laws and covenants unite the
State to the Union, but nature herself binds the
citizen to his State. Destructive to illusions, and
disgraceful to democracy, as the civil war  and
events preceding and following it have been, their
dangers not passed, their mischiefs perhaps permanent, at division of the country would have
been worse; and worse for the South than for the
North. But should centralization come to plague
us, and the citizen be again driven to measures
of despair, it would again be seen that the Union
is a creature of policy, to adhere to which scarce
a man would separate himself from his State.*
Who ever heard of the country of the world in
which the people declared against their own
homnes?   This may be human weakness;  but it
is a great inevitable fact.
* The general-in-chief of the army, in 1860, stood by the
Union, and made war on his State; and so did other officers,
both of the land and sea service; for the sailor's and soldier's
household gods commonly are found with his regiment or in
his ship.
239 
240  FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM
CIIAPTEIR IX.
DEMOCRACY HAS TO MAKE  ITS WAY AGAINST  ESTAB    LISHED IDEAS AND THE FORCE OF AUTHORITY.
SECTION I.
POLITICAL WRITERS.
Two celebrated writers, both of them kiiigsmnen,
thus, in the last century, approach the confines of
democratic liberty:  " If any ask me," says Mr.
Burke* "what a free government is, I answer, for
"any practical purpose, it is what the PEOPLE think
"so; and they, not I, are the natural, lawful, and
"competent judges of this matter."  Mr. Hume,t
with greater reluctance, and more wrappers to his
meaning, had said, not long before, " It is in vain
"to say that all governments are or should be, at
"first, founded on popular consent, as much as the
" necessity of human affairs will admit.... I
"maintain that human affairs will never admit of
"this consent; seldom of the appearance of it.
* Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol.
t Essay on the Original Contract. 
THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
"'But, that conquest or usurpation, that is, in plain
"terms, force, by dissolving the ancient govern"ment, is the origin of almost all the new ones
"which were ever substituted in the world.
"My intention here is not to exclude the consent
"of the people from being one just foundation of
"governmnent where it has place. It is surely the
"best and most sacred of any. I only pretend
"that it has very seldom had place in any degree,
"and never almost in its full extent: and that
"therefore some other foundation of government
"must also be admitted... The general obliga"tion which binds us to government is the inter"ests and necessities of society."
Advance their principles a step farther, let the
free citizen, whose governmerit has "1the consent
"of the people," a consent "surely the best and
"most sacred of any," stand sentinel over it, and
that liberty to which these writers allow a theory
acquires a reality.
SECTION II.
TRADITION.
According to immemorial use, as well as theory,
power belongs to privileged classes, with, incumbent on them, the corresponding duty of caringa
for the people. Such is tradition; and when in the
241 
242 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM
Old World they marvel at the license of the New,
it is under the influence of a habit of thought
which traces itself to times when liberal principles
were unknown, and popular government imnpossible. Their ancestors think for them in Europe.
Time leaves monuments behind it that are too
much for the wit of man. These are the effects
of a thousand years of history. There is no old
country where the government is supposed to exist
for the people; on the contrary, the people are
supposed to exist for the government. Even in
England, where they have a degree of respectability, and in France, where their title to it has been
vindicated by successive revolutions, the people are
thought to be usurpers; they are so regarded by
the upper orders, they so look upon themselves.
Montesquieu, who wrote with the noble instincts
of liberty, and every bias to free institutions, but
in Europe, where everything stands still, measured
by the American standard, supported his freedom,
a century and a half ago, with institutions which
can find no place in the world as we see it. His
thoughts were of greatness and dominion; he had
no thought of a republic like that of the United
States, with life in every fibre, yet of tame, domnestic habits. He had a society before his eyes,
in his own country, where the peasants, once vil 
THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
leins, and still loaded with unextinguished feudal
liabilities, shared their vintage with the priest,
ground their grain at the lord's mill, and, with
their beasts of burden, were driven to work in
the trenches, by the king's troops.  Ignorant, and
divided by provinces and dialects, they had no
commonL object; hardly a common language; and
the ends and uses of social combination were not
understood. As comnmunities they lived separate
from one another, and as individuals had but few
common and united interests.
It is to this traditionary formn of society the
most liberal Europeans* refer themselves in con
* Not excepting Mr. De Tocqueville, who leaves his American reader, having before him the familiar facts, often more
wondering at the author's ingenuity than satisfied with his
deductions. Not that we would deny him what he has
received, the highest praise, and from both the friends of
liberty and those who would discourage it. Mr. De Tocqueville saw a country, democratic, that is true, but with other
features too; unfinished, provincial, where the past does not
predominate, as in Europe, but made up of what Shakspeare
calls the "ignorant present;" and for what he sees and puts
down all to democracy, and then proceeds to reason from,
there are often causes so simple, and so different from those
imputed by him, that, mixed with much respect for a candid,
philosophic writer, not a little admiration of his earnest desire
to find the truth, and thanks for his French politeness to a
people not much accustomed to it, and the most unqualified
243 
244 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM
sidering that of the  United  States;  and the
shadows of their opinions darken both their path
and ours.  But in this New World, though we
denounce democracy often, (nd liberty sometimes,
it is as the spoiled children of good fortune. It is
not easy for us to believe Sir Robert Filmer was
followed by disciples, and had to be met in argument by Locke. Without an ancestry, and the first
people that ever had a fair start, to the American
it is as if there never had been tyranny, and the
applause of that part of his book in which he traces democratic force and virtue to decentralization,;we are reminded
often in his pages of a traveller who, astonished at new
objects, persists in finding the reason for them all.  American women are chaste, American men are brave,-we are
much obliged to himn,-but it is because they are democratic!!
And what does he mean by ouri tyranny of majorities?-a
phrase in fact without meaning, though often in the mouth
of less able and good men than Mr. De Tocqueville; unless,
indeed, he means that where there is power we commonly
find it exercised. In what part of the country did he see
that peculiar American tyranny of mind, "Vous penserez
"conmne moi ou vous mourrez"?   (Vol. ii. p. 114, fifth
Paris edition, 1836.) Could a man who had written of the
days of Louis the Fourteenth and Louis the Fifteenth as
severely as Mr. De Tocqueville, talk so?  How did he discover the democratic inability to impose and pay taxes, put
armies in the field, provide for the morrow, produce literary
merit, foster the arts?  We might multiply questions.
14 
THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
world began in light. Above all, and worth all
the rest, he has the pride of country, the sentiinent of nationality; every American citizen has
his share in the honour and shame of his country;
a consciousness unknown to the masses in Europe.
SECTION 1II.
INDUSTRY.
Virtue has been said to be indispensable to a
republic, and its element to be the love of the
republic. The author who has given to this observation such universal currency, his eye fixed on
the mistress of the ancient world, and ignorant of
more homely doctrine, which has been developed
since his timne, meant virtue and love of the republic as they prevailed at Rome, where the citizen
was absorbed in the State, which was everything,
while he was nothing; where there were no masses
that had respectability; in effect, no people, no
individuality; instead of which were classes, an
institution fatal to true freedom; where the city
had its palaces, and the man of the people his hlut,
and was without home or even privacy; where
poverty was honourable, there being little for
money to buy; and any labour but that of agriculture was ignoble, and performed by slaves.  They
did not respect industry; had no finance; lived on
245 
'246  FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM
the spoils of nations. The citizen found pursuing
a trade was degraded, and struck from the lists of
his tribe; his testament, if he had anything to bequeath, was annulled or confirmed at the pleasure
of the city; so little did they regard the rights of
property.
But the world has clhanged; poverty has ceased
to be honour to the man, and no State can be poor
and great   Withl labour, that has become respectable, has come a new era; thrift is honour, the
industry which acquires is driving to the wall
hereditary possession, whose measure is of past
ages. The earth used to be the only producer,
but now the fertility of man, his ingenuities and
contrivances, with vast increase from the stimulated earth, multiply production, and, with it,
individual wealth, happiness, liberty, independence,
and enjoyment.  At Rome there was war to make
the citizen love the republic; was his love better
than that of the American citizen who loves the
republic  that secures his industry?  Property,
which influences, and ought to influence to a degree, under whatever systemn, is well; it loves law
and order; buts industry is the rising wave; it
gains, gathers, and accumulates; it is growth and
activity, and loves the republic itself.
Could years be rolled back, that we might look 
THiE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
on those times when liberty had no existence, it
would be seen that men were everywhere without
industries. Industry is the handmaid of liberty;
for, though there may be liberty without industry,
there can be little industry, of any elevated sort,
without  liberty.   Population  consisted of two
classes, those to whom the land belonged, and
those who worked it, of whom none had what
is known to us as an industry, but were persons
bound to the glebe, and labourers as our negroes
were. These two classes represented what mnodern policy calls capital and labour; capital was
'a master, labour was a slave. But industry has
brought us a better day.  The Dutch, so distinguished in arts, arms, and literature, and by their
republican liberty, though it was short-lived by
reason of want of population enough to resist their
more populous neighbours, were an early example
of the prodigies of a national industry. It is idleness that keeps back Spain, a noble country. It
*is the wealth and industry of France, grown up
since the Revolution, which maintains, in a democratic society, the liberty of the French citizen.
It was the more independent condition, than in the
Continental countries, of the labour of England,
undisturbed by invading armies, that laid there
the foundations of freedom.
247 
248 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM
When Napoleon called England a nation of
shop-keepers, he pointed to what made them what
they are. It was industry which carried them
through the wars with him, against a multitude
of defeats in the field; it was Northern industry
which carried us throughl the war with the South,
against a multitude of' defeats in the field.  Whlen
the war began, the South had the readv-made soldiers, but the North had the wealth and industry,
and soon made soldiers. It is no determination to
be free that makes the citizen of the United States;
his spirit has not that fierce quality supposed to
belong to freedom. It is by no means Roman, a
name that is often used by us, and with a wellestablished meaning, though not an application
that is historically correct.
It may be said, though liberty is always noble,
that much of ours derives itself from the spirit
of thrift which maintains a character that years
ago manifested itself in the very different form described by Tacitus. But fortuitous circumstances
modify, unaccountably, the characteristics of a
people.   In their dissensions, at the end of the
last century, the people of the northwest of France;
and, between the years 1808 and 1814, the people
of nearly all parts of Spain, with such arms as they
could find themselves, made war, and resisted with 
THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
heroic valour what they thiought was tyranny; but
in our late dissensions no such spirit manifested
itself; no such heroism appeared; there was no
resistance that was not made by organized armies.
Was this the difference between a people who were
enlightened and had property and education, and
a people who had but little of either, and were
rude and ignorant?
SECTION IV.
AUTHORITY.
Authority celebrates itself and writes down the
people. Our ways, once, were held up to nothing
but scorn; even science.taught that everything
dwarfed in America. These were the teachings.
The French Emperor said in 1808, and hle was
echoed by whatever his tyranny had left of lit
erature in France, "toztt pour le peulle, rien par
lbe peuple;" but, vain man, could he have made
the people he called his people what, since 1789,
they had made themselves? Of those two rivals
for public favour, Mr. Itamilton and Mr. Jefferson,
Mr. Jefferson was the less vulnerable character;
but he was the friend of the people, and that covered him with defamation; Mr. Hamilton, more vulnerable, but orthodox and the friend of authority,
17
.249 
250  FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM
went comparatively unslandered. The abominations that sustained the revocation of the Edict
of Nantes, in wantonness of cruelty exceeded the
horrors of the French Revolution, which were
horrors with a cause; but the revoker of that
edict had instant celebration, and has remained,
ever since, one of the heroes of history, while the
men of the Revolution only began to be treated
with any degree of mercy and forbearance some
half a century after the fact.
No liberty has been so mnuch written up as that
of England, it is aristocratical; none has been the
subject of such unmeasured vituperation as that of
the United States, it is democratic. English institutions possibly are better, possibly worse, than
they will be in the more democratic day that is
coming, and which may be a total failure; but it is
undeniable that their accompaniment, apparently
their direct effect, is a very low condition of the
masses of the people. Our American institutions
may prove a total failure; but it is undeniable that
their accompaniment, apparently their direct effect,
is the high prosperity of the masses of the people. 
THIE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
SECTION V.
ENGLISH AUTHORITY.
In the earlier part of the last century, when
men began to awake to their natural rights, philosophiical minds of the Continent of Europe were
struck with the composition of English society.
They gave credit to the government; but it was a
society, formed to independent thought and existence, on which they paused in admiration.  Now,
English authority, of all in Europe, has been the
most liberal; but what administration of it can be
named to which England is indebted for liberty, or
for any portion or atom of it? What act, measure,
or course of measures of any monarch, minister,
or statesman exercising Lauthoority, and not acting
under compulsion from without, can be named, to
warrant such an attribution? If English authority
could have had its way, uninfluenced by external
pressure, instead of being voted their annual supplies by a legislature, they would be living on
feudal rights and the proceeds of crown lands.
Eng,land owes her prosperity to her liberty, and
her liberty to the efforts of society. Without that
she would have neither liberty nor prosperity; but
there is no period of English history when au
251 
252 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM
thority, left to its impulses, has not opposed any
concession whatever to this liberty which has made
the country all that it is. Were England united to
the adjacent continent by a strip of land, making
her government one of the sword, she would be a
kingdom of the third order.
Liberty is the shame of authority in all countries; to a degree, in the United States. Of nothing
was Charles the Second, in the seventeenth century, so ashamed as of the liberties of his country,
not then much; blushing to acknowledge them to
his cousin of France.  The same shlalne mantled
the cheek of the son of George the Third, in the
nineteenth century, when, at the close of the long
wars, between 1790 and 1815, by which liberty was
crippled, the despotic sovereigns of the Continent
visited himn in London to exchange congratulations.
Even political movements of mere humanity, inmprovements of' the poor, of the prisons, of the law,
have been forced on the English authority by society, and uniformly iregarded by authority as loosening its reins. 
THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
SECTION VI.
FRENCHII AUTHORITY.
France, so much cited contrariwise, is one of the
evidences of the virtues and fortitude of society.
By their Revolution of 1789, the French became a
society highly democratic; anrid, though from that
day they have never had stable institutions, and
not much of really free government, each successive government, since 1800, which may be taken
as the close of the Revolution, not excepting the
First Empire, when military violence enabled the
head of the State to regard more his own imperious
will than that of the people, has found itself coimpelled to yield the point of the perfect equality of
all before the law, to respect persons, to recognize
the rights of property, to leave open to the meanest
citizens the career of life, with full and free scope
to pursue their individual happiness in their own
way.
These were blessings unheard of while society
rested on the aristocratic basis.   A  democratic
frame of society has enabled them, and  nothing
else could have enabled them, to go through the
trials and withstand the difficulties attending perpetual changes of rulers.   With no other frame
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254  FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM
could society have existed at all.  The country
mnust have lapsed into barbarism.   Wealth and
population have increased; material cornforts, admitting men's wants ought to be measured like
those of the beasts that perish, are more improved
than in any other nation of Europe.  It may be
true that democracy, which, in France, has exhibited some of its worst features, prevents their
finding a slavish repose under the old authority;
but the fact remains, and it stands imprefgnable to
all the reasoning brought  cgainst their capacity for
democratic liberty, that this people, a people without special adaptation to freedom, but the contrary;
not grave, not steady, without an educated lower
class, passionately fond of that foe of liberty, war,
of which it has experienced, since and before the
Revolution, the bitterest trials, exists amid the
contending kingdoms of Europe, its manufactures,
arts, sciences, riches, and literature, all flourishing, indebted to no other source to which the miost
ingenious sophistry could trace their fi)rtunes, but
the democratic organization of their society. 
THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
SECTION VII.
AUTHORITY IN THE SOUTHERN STATES.
Before the emancipation of their slaves, the
South, though weak in resources of wealth and
population, were powerful as a society, and the
North complained of their undue weight in the
Union.*   They had, as a society, the tie of domestic slavery, which bound them firmly together.
Authority, government, was a secondary consider
* No complaint ever was so well and ill founded: so well,
because it rested in truth; so ill, because they were reproached with steadiness, with adherence to principles, with
seeing to the representation of their States by the better sort
of men.  These were virtues that were forced on them  by
the weakness of their position as holders of slaves, and made
easier to them by the simpler and purer manners of an agricultural people. No Northern man, though carrying with
him his instinctive, irresistible aversion to slavery, ever saw
the planting States without understandiug this and respecting it.  Life is not only "a mningled yarn," but a yarn most
strangely mingled.  The South  were reproached with the
means by which they earned their bread; and slavery was
most surely a mortal curse; yet it not only consisted with,
but it actually produced and sustained, a society, on the
whole, less erring than existed in the more prosperous
North, and, probably, than in the emancipated South will
exist, without it.
255 
2o56 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM
ation. Had secession happened in the North, the
discontented States would have been found disunited among themselves;  but the slave-holding
States went together, all in heart, and, all that
could, in act. It is true that, of their population
a portion being slaves, they lost much of that ingenuity, learning, education, thought, and other
value of man, which comes not with the ignorant
negro; and of their not homogeneous communities
one portion could not be in perfect sympathy with
the rest; but a society, so inferior in wealth and
numbers as the South was, knitted together with
the institution of slavery, had a tenacity which
protracted the war with them, and made victory
over inferior numbers and very inferior wealth
difficult. 
THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
CIIAPTER X.
PREDICTIONS.
SECTION I.
AMERICAN PREDICTION.
TIIOSE who founded our laws, in 1787, did not
appreciate democracy, but they consented to it;
and not only its roots are deeper, but its growth is
more flourishling than then. Let those who would
disparage it confess we have more prosperity than
the men of'87 hoped, more democracy than they
feared more of both than we can account for. ourselves, who have them before our eyes, on any other
principle than that the people are meant to take
care of themselves. The greatest geniuses have
failed in prediction.  The federal gentlemen predicted that the absence of state and ceremony in
Mr. Jefferson's government, and in his own republican manners, would be ruinous.   They  have
proved an example to all who came after him.
In the First Congress, a committee raised by the
Senate reported in favour of styling the President
"His Hlighness the President of the United States
257 
258 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED. FRO3M
"of America and Protector of their Liberties;" but
the more popular spirit of the House of Representatives declined to consider the subject. "'What
"can be," said Mr. IHamilton*, insisting to the
convention on the difficulties of establishing a
representative government for territory so extended as that of the United States,-" what can
"be the inducements fi)r gentlemen to come six
"hundred miles to a national legislature?"' Let
"the people elect a President," said other members
of the convention, "and you throw the choice into
"the hands of the Society of Cincinnati."t
Prediction is always sure to assume premises
which in the progress of events cease to exist, and
they have no sooner ceased than the prediction falls.
One hundred and fifty years ago, the national debt
* Elliott's Debates, vol. i. p. 421; Yates's Minutes.
t Madison Papers, vol. ii. pp. 1205-1208: Mr. Gerry, of
Massachusetts; Mr. Mason, of Virg,inia.
"This government will commence in a modern aristocracy;
"it is at present impossible to foresee whether it will, in
"its operation, produce a monarchy, or a corrupt, oppress"ive aristocracy; it will mlost probably vibrate some years
"between the two, and then terminate in the one or the
"other." (George Mason: Elliott, vol. i. p. 4,96.)  "It would
"end either in monarchy, or a tyrannical aristocracy; which,
"he was in doubt, but one or other he was sure."  Same:
Madison Papers, vol. iii. p. 1594. 
THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
of Great Britain was pronounced by the shrewdest,
coolest, and most impartial observers to be ruin;
and bankruptcy, it was said, must soon follow; the
error of the prediction was in assuming a taxable
basis, in ignorance of the flict that the basis would
be enlarged almost beyond reckoning.
The world sleeps in some centuries; of late it
has leaped forward.
The opinions of individuals who have never seen
democracy, nay, of those who have seen and condemned it, of what avail are these opinions, or
what ought they to avail, against the march of the
world? There are subjects even in politics that
are too vast for comprehension, and, as in religion,
we must believe or disbelieve, but we cannot prove.
In this new country of ours where nothing is fixed
but liberty, there is no stopping-place, when we
have passed liberty, till we come to the rule of
the sword.
In 1787, the members of the federal convention,
holding as fast as they could to the En,glish Constitution, which, since then, has so changed that
they would not recognize it if they saw it, hesitated upon the Constitution of the United States.
Jefferson did not hesitate about that; but see how
short he fell in his conclusions; for if he was right
about great cities and thick population, democracy
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260  FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM
must be given up.* " It is my principle," he said,
"that the will of the majority should prevail. If
"they approve the proposed Constitution in all its
parts, I shall concur in it cheerfully, in hlopes
"they will amend it whenever they shall find it
"works wrong.  This cannot deceive us, as long
"as we remain virtuous; and I think we shall be
"so, as long as agriculture is our principal object,
"which will be the case while there remain va"cant lands in any part of America. When we
"get piled on one another in large cities, as in
"Europe, we shall be corrupt, as in Europe, and
"go to eating one another, as they do there."
Ag,riculture is no longer what it was, we are
piled on one another in large cities, as in Europe,
we are corrupt, as in Europe, and have gone to eating one another, as they do in Europe; but democracy has advanced notwithstanding; and the
chances are more in fivour of the people to-day
than they were when Mr. Jefferson wrote in 1787.
To say that he could not solve the problem is no
disparagement of him; and is no more than is to
be said in any century about what is to follow in
the next.
* Letter to Mr. Madison, Paris, 20th of Decemnber, 1787:
Jefferson's Works, vol. ii. p. 332. 
THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
S ECTIO N II.
PREDICTION IS VAIN.
To predict the success or failure of great social
or political experimnents, we must predict the career of the world, and the condition of mankind
long after our time is past; an effort of which no
mind is capable.
Science predicts. Columbus predicted, if not the
discovery of a new world, the discovery of a new
way to the old one, and made his prediction good,
a great physical fact; but not, for that is a political
fact, the result of combinations which none could
foresee, that his new world would advance the
liberty and improve the happiness of mankind.
Gibbon said,* triumphantly, in the earlier days
of the French Revolution, predicting the downfall
of democracy before the wealth and  learning of
society and power and discipline of governments,
"In the civilized world the most numerous class is
c; condemned to ignorance and poverty." Whlat he
said was true in the last century, and is not untrue
yet; but, through combinations unforeseen, then,
that same class, still poor anrid ignorant, has become
formidable in all the best parts of Europe. It may
* Gibbon's Miscellaneous Works, vol. i. p. 271.
261 
262  FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM
be true that the destiny of the world, if democratic,
is to be bad, brutal, and tyrannical, like the monarchical, likle the aristocratical. The French Revolution excited hopes and fears, hopes for the Jeffersons, fears for the Gibbons and Burkes; but there
arose no prophet, not one man of the myriads of
philosophers, thlinkliers, and writers on that great
event, with anything likle a correct political forecast of its consequences. They saw not the day
when the degraded class wa,s to demand liberty as
a natural right, and none the less a right whether
they abused it or not.
Humne wrote the history of his country, and
never was it dressed in more charmling philosophy; but when he ca'me to predict, in his essay,
whether the British government inclines more
to absolute monarchy or to a republic," his philosophy went for nothing, and his prediction was
wrong. The French writers of the last century
who took the field for liberty, for which they
deserve the warmer commendation, because a literary merit so rare, do not seem to have formed
the remotest idea of the upheaval to which they
were contributing. Napoleon, a prodigious intellig,ence, lived when the world was at one of its
climacteric periods; but in his whole career, and
in all his voluminous writings and floods of conver 
THIE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
sation and thought that have come down to us, it
nowhere appears that, though sprung, it may be
said, from what was but the people, hIinself, he
had any just conception either what they were to
come to, or what they were capable of. The same
thing may be said of another far-seeing man,
Francis Bacon, who, living at another climacteric
period, poured his seminal ideas upon the world.
Who would turn to his politics? Who would
have turned to them  even  fifty years after his
death, in the day of Hampden?*
Time baffles us. Hamilton, a lover of his country, and a lover of liberty, thought posterity would
not be enough governed, as Jefferson, that they
could not be too little governed; he put his faith
in government to work out the problem of liberty,
as Jefferson, to the same end, relied on simple establishments and plain habits, the absence of luxury, the contempt of money.  Hamilton, who died
in 1806, lived to witness the eclipse of his doctrine; Jefferson has not been dead fifty years, and
* In his day the great were worshipped; and he was one of
the worshippers.  He said of his king, Heinry the Seventh, a
crafty tyrant, that lie was "a merciful prince; as in whose
"time there were but three of the nobility that suffered..
"As for the severity used upon those which were taken in
"Kent, it was but upon a scumr of the people."  HIistory of
the RIeign of King Henry the Seventh.
263 
264  FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM
where is his?  Washington, a colossus of a man,
prophesied not; he may have had less confidence
in democracy than his first minister, but he saw
in it the greatest work men had ever undertaken;
and he said to him, "he was determined the ex"periment should have a fair trial, and would lose
"the last drop of his blood in support of it."* He
knew how vain it was to look into the seeds of
time, and that even our own day is more than we
can understand; for, though the world as it advances almost always improves, there never was a
time, yet, when most of the wisest heads, if they
could have been consulted about it, would not have
counselled retrogression.
* Jefferson's Works, vol. vi. p. 288: Letter of the 2d of
January, 1814, to Walter Jones. 
THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
CHAPTER XI.
RECAPITULATION.
DEMOCRACY has been sneeringly called zero; and
it may, without a sneer, be called tabula rasa, for it
is only what the people are pleased to write; and
they write, it must be admitted, in very dissimilar
ways. In France it is equality. In England it is
wages. In Italy and Spain, where skepticism and
democracy abound, it is priests and soldiers. In
Germany it is lectures. We began in America
with admiration of the British Constitution, where
the aristocracy do the work, and take their own
reward, and the people's share is small of the
fruits of the earth or the blessings of heaven. It
was the ruin of its American  disciples, for the
people revolted against  a policy which was to
make them dependent on persons who regarded
themselves as superior to the rest.   They broke
in, with their votes, and, setting aside this policy,
put at the head of the government Mr. Jefferson.
There began their mistake; they dismissed themselves, then, to attend to their own affairs, leaving
18
265 
266  FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM
those of the public to Mr. Jefferson, afterwards to
Mr. Madison, afterwards to Mr. Monroe. All went
well as long as they had men of the Revolution,
which was a day of low wages and hard work;
or, it may be said, all went well till the country
changed; until, from being a country, poor, simple,
humble, and colonial, it aspired to empire, pride,
and covetousness; when all went wrong.   The
same weakness which made English liberty fail in
1649  and French in 1789, the unwillingness, or
inability, of the people, after possessing themselves
of power, to use it, and its consequent transfer to
a few hands, has been the failure of the people of
the United States. They have the power, but they
have not the control.
It has been a dispute whether the States or
the people made the Constitution. If it was the
people, and the words of the preamble are to be
taken literally, te the people do ordain, they did
not appreciate the magnitude of the task to which
they summoned themselves. It was not enough to
have good laws; it was necessary to mount guard
over them. True, no such thing had been seen
by any living man; perhaps it had been witnessed
in no former age. It is very certain that in no
modern age had the people thought themselves
capable of it. 
THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
But looking at their conduct, as it ought to
be looked at, they have not acted their part.
They  waited  for rulers,  and  they  came;  not
Cromwell, not Robespierre, not the man whom
Franklin promised; but men of no - reckoning,
shoals of office-seekers and office-holders, came and
volunteered to govern them.
The secret the people seem to toil to discover is
how to have freedom without trouble; to invent
institutions that will take care of themselves. Democracy, which never would have been heard of,
in 1787, had not the people carried it through;
which would  have been overruled  by the old
federal party, soon after, had not the people, again,
come to its rescue, neglects its work. It leaves it
to an oligarchy, better and worse than that of
their ancestors, better because not hereditary,
worse because it is the oligarchy of hunger and
nakedness, of plunder and corruption. Let him
that doubts look around!
A very famous politician, to solve the problem,
conceived the idea of giving to the people of his
country power in the remote distance. They were
to vote for voters who voted for others, and they
voted for citizens who, again, chose other citizens
on whom the power was to be conferred. It was
thought a wonderful contrivance; but not only it
267 
268  FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM
did not succeed,* but it is exactly the system of
straining influence from one rag to another, and
forcing out of democracy an aristocracy, which
American experience recognizes as the fruitful
source of abundant mnischiefs. Democracy is the
people, or nothing.
How can it be republican to separate the people
from power? But so effectually, by no more constitutional process than the arts of politicians, has
it been done, that the people of the United States
have lost the control of their affairs, though nearly
every one of their federal administrations, for
nearly sixty years, has affected to trace its origin
to Mr. Jefferson himself.
Suffrage is the only Constitutional denotement
of the people's will; but suffrage is nothing un
less they prepare  the ground  for it.   A  great
constructor of highways is reported to have said,
"What  you  call the road is nothing  but the
"roof; the road is underneath."  The suffrages of
the people are a roof. The road is underneath,
and the roof is nothing without support to it. In
other countries of the world some man seizes power,
* See it (Le Consulat et l'Empire, vol. i. pp. 73-1.11) described by Thiers, and the fate of all the projects of Sieves
for the French Republic, after the fall of the Directory in
the year 1800. 
THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
and submits to suffrage a question that has no alternative. In the United States, power is not obtained
by seizing it, but suffrage is as much trifled with
as if controlled by a crowned head. What does
this mean? Is it repugnance to the democratic
task? Do we hate the trouble of it? Is citizenship irksome?  There may be parts of Asia, but
there is no part of Europe, where the people are
despised and not represented; the sovereign nowhere despises the people, he endeavours to propitiate them; in other words, he represents them.
Their will prevails when it does not too much
interfere with his own. Is this to be the extent
of American  democracy?   When  Mr. Jefferson
said, educate the people, he meant as citizens, not
scholars.   He is to be understood that popular
government would be soon the worst government
if the people took their eyes off it. It may be
doubted how far the more educated classes are, as
citizens, superior to the rest, till we come to the
very bottom.   They partake of every foible of
humanity; they have no immunity from the
heresies of political priests and doctors; and as
to property, it is weakness as well as strength.
If the situation is not upon us to which Franklin, whose tendencies were democratic, pointed,
when he said Executive patronage would bring us
269 
270  FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM
to a master, has not that, for more than half a
century, been upon us to which Hamilton, whose
tendencies were aristocratic, pointed, when he said,
"You nor I, my friend, mlay not live to see the
"day, but most assuredly it will come, when every
vital interest of the state will be merged in the
all-absorbing question of who shall be the next
c President"?*
* See a conversation between Hamilton  and Governor
Lewis, of New York, referred to in Hamilton's History of
the Republic, vol. iii. p. 347. 
THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
CIIAPTER XII.
CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS.
SECTION I.
RECONSTRUCTION.
THOUGH in this day of democratic probation we
were like beings translated to some new planet,
where, to fix the qualities and magnitude of the
simplest object, it must undergo the experiment
of the touch; and though all problems whatever
of democratic policy with which we have perplexed
ourselves since the time of Washington were yet
unsolved, and just as doubtful as when Jefferson
and Hamilton divided in opinion upon the earliest,
and perhaps the simplest, of them, there is one
point on which the people ought not to pause,
namely, that of giving themselves a representation
that is equal to their own level, in every branch of
the public service. This is not the work of statesmen; it must be done by the broad and general
people.  He is a bad citizen who gives nothing to
his country; and he who gives only to the selfish ends of political reward, gives nothing. We
271 
272  FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM
cannot live on statesmanship, though statesmen
abounded; nor can there be statesmen till there
are citizens. Hiow are we to prosper without good
citizens; without millions of them?
We fain would think the condition of the country, to-day torn with factions is attributable to
late and great events. We flatter ourselves. It
is fruit gathered from a tree of our planting, fifty
years ago, the fruit of a neglected democracy,
which has become in our mouths dust and bitter
ashes.
The people of the United States were treated
by the politicians after the close of the war, in
1865, exactly as the Germans were treated in
1815, after the wars of thle French Revolution.
They were made nothing of:  We had been promised union, and they had been promised liberty.
When our war closed, the expectation of the
people was to see, what they had been told, a
thousand times, was to happen as soon as the
last cannon was fired, a restoration of the Union
as it had been, the reorganization of the States of
the South, their Senators and members again in
their seats in Congress and their people and governrnents at home peacefully employed in repairing
the ravages of battle. Nothing stood in the way.
There was what General Grant called in his ex 
THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
amination before a committee of Congress; a
" very fine feeling* manifested in the South," and
the Northern policy was to avail ourselves of it.
General Sherman's military convention of the lSth
of April, 1865, with General Johnston,t providing
for the re-establishment, forthwith, of the Southern
States, was the true and correct reflection of the
universal popular wish.
But what would have been the effect? Contentment to the people, not to the politicians. The
Southern votes would once more have united with
those of their Northern friends, and left the politicians then uppermost in a minority. To prevent
* See General Granit's testimony before the Judiciary Committee of the House of Representatives, page 304 of the cornpilation of public papers 1865-70, by Mr. McPherson, Clerk
of the House of Representatives.   Published by Philp &
Solomons, 1871, Washington. General Grant, in his report
to the President of December 18, 1865, after his "tour of in"spection through some of the Southern States," gives his
conclusion that "they are in earnest in wishing to do what
"they think is required by the government, not humiliating
"to them as citizens, and that if such a course was pointed
"out they would pursue it in good faith."
t It "guaranteed, so far as the Executive can, their polit"ical rights and franchises, as well as their rights of person
"and property, as defined by the Constitution of the United
"States, and of the States respectively." See McPherson,
1865-70, pp. 121, 122, for the convention at length.
273 
274  FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM
this, a scheme was imagined the most extraordinary that ever brought shame to a people, and
indignation to the cheek of freedom, that of subduing and mastering the Southern vote by giving
the right of suffrage to their emancipated slaves.
The sudden transfer of dominion from the master
to the slave, history afforded no precedent of in
any country; it was ruin in a form more cruel
than ever was conceived before.
The feeling against the poor blacks, a harmless
race, so conscious of their inferiority that they
had no desire to leave the humble position to
which that Almighty power, whose decrees cannot
be appealed from withl impunity, had assigned
them, was everywhere strong, and the question
of elevating them to citizenship could not be submitted to the people with even the remotest chance
of success. At a period when there were twentyfour States in the Union, every State had disqualified them, by Constitutional law,* those of New
England excepted, where there were almost no
blacks to be disqualified. In 1865, in one of the
New England States, the small State of Connec
* "The American Guide, comprising the Declaration of
"Independence, the Articles of Confederation, the Constitu"tion of the United States, and the Constitutions of the
"several States coimposing the Union." 
THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
ticut,* the majority against giving them the right
of suffrage was  6272.   In  Ohiot the  majority
against it, in 1867, when all possible efforts were
made to overcome the prepossessions of the people,
was 50,629.  In New York~ a vote was taken, in
1860, on allowing them a vote without a property
qualification. In the city of New York the result
was, yeas, 1640; nays, 37,471; in the State at
large, yeas, 197,503; nays, 337,984; in 1864, a
like proposition was defeated; yeas, 85,406; nays,
224,336.  In  Illinois,~ in 1862, a vote was taken
on the absolute and total exclusion of all negroes
from the State limits, when the yeas were 171,893;
the nays, 71,306; on granting them the right to
office and suffrage, the yeas were 35,649; the nays,
211,920;  for the enactment of prohibitory laws
against their conling to or voting in the State, the
yeas were 198,938; the nays, 44,414.  No other
votes of the people are known; but these may be
taken as fair examples of the universal popular
sentiment.
Give to the ruling party, besides their proper
strength, a certain number of States controlled by
* "For colored suffrage, 27,217; against, 33,489."  McPherson, 1865-70, p. 120.
t Congressional Globe, 1868, January 31, pp. 876-878.
1 McPherson, 1860-65, p. 241.               ~ Ibid.
275 
276  FEARS FOR DEMIOCRACY REGARDED FROM
negro votes, and against the power commanding
such a,n engine* the rest of the Union might vote
in vain. The government could not be changed
at the ballot-box, and our relief, like that of the
people of Mexico, must be found in revolution.
Great as the odds seemed to be against this
dreadful scheme, and great as the crime must be of
poisoning the fountain at which liberty must drink,
party, with the means it had at its disposal, was
not discouraged. The experiment began with what
is called the thirteenth amendment, declaring
slavery to be abolished in all parts of the United
States. It was proposed to the States under a
resolution of Congress of the 1st of February,
1865, and ratified without difficulty. The actual
abolishment of slavery had' been effected, and the
thirteenth amendment was a formal acknowledgment of what had already happened.
The next step was more difficult; the fourteenth
amendment. It was proposed to the States under
t resolution of Congress of the 13th of June,
1866.t   By this the negroes were to be made
* rhe States of the South would be like what, in England,
were called Treasury Boroughs, members to represent which
in Parliament were nominated by the minister of the Crown.
t "All persons born or naturalized in the United States,
"and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the 
THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
citizens. The required constitutional majority of
States to adopt an amendment is three-fourths.
There were thirty-seven States. Twenty-one adopted, thirteen rejected, and three did not vote. In
the Northern States it had a party vote in the
legislative bodies, to which alone Congress coinmitted the amendment.   In the South it was
everywhere  rejected.*   They  refused  to make
"United States, and of the State wherein they reside.  No
"State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge
"the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States;
nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or
"property without due process of law; nor dely to any person
"within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."
* "Virginia- Senate, January 9, 1867 — unanimously;
"House-I  for amendment.  North Carolina-Senate, De"cember 13, 1866-yeas 1, nays 44; House-yeas  10, nays
"93.  South Carolina-Senate; House, December 20, 1866
-yeas 1, nays 95.  Georgia-Senate, November 9, 1866"yeas 0, nays 36; House- yeas 2, nays 131.  Florida
"Senate, December 3, 1866-yeas 0, nays 20; House, De"cember 1-yeas 0, nays 49.  Alabama-Senate, December
"7, 1866-yeas 2, nays 27; House-yeas 8, nays 69.  Mis"sissippi-Senate, January 30, 1867-yeas  0, nays  27
"House, January 25-yeas 0, nays 88.  Louisiana-Senate,
"February 5, 1867-unanimnously;  House, February 6"unanimously. Texas-Senate; House, October 13, 1866
-yeas 5, nays 67.  Arkansas-Senate, December 15, 1866
"-yeas 1, nays 24; House, December 17-yeas 2, nays
"68."-McPherson, 1865-70, p. 194.
277 
278  FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM
themselves hewers of wood and drawers of water
to their slaves.
Congress at once fiercely turned upon the ten
late slave-holding States, of Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama.,
Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, and Arkansas, to
which they had appealed as States of the Union,
to adopt the amendment, and of whose adoption of
the thirteenth amendment they had availed themselves. They declared, in what were called the
reconstruction acts, that' no legal State govern ments or adequate protection for life and prop"erty" existed in those States, annulled their civil
authority, divided them into military districts, and
ordered elections under military officers to be held
for the adoption of the fourteenth amendment, the
negroes voting.*
* See Acts of the 2d of March and 23d of March, 1867, by
which it was enacted that whereas no legal State Government or adequate "protection for life and property now exists
"in the rebel States of Virginia, North Carolina, South Caro"lina, Georgia, Mississippi, Alabamia, Louisiana, Florida,
"Texas, and Arkansas, said rebel States shall be divided
"into military districts and made  subject to the military
"authority of the United States," the President to "detail a
"sufficient military force"' to that end, and "all interference
"under colour of State authority with the exercise of military
"authority shall be null and void until the people of said 
THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
It was done. On the 20th of July, 1868, the
Secretary of State, whose official duty it was, under
"rebel States shall be by law admitted to representation in
"the Congress of the United States; any civil governments
"which may exist therein shall be deemed provisional only
"and in all respects subject to the paramount authority of
"the United States to abolish, modify, control, or supersede
"the same," and until they shall be admitted to representation "all persons shall be entitled to vote," "of whatever
"race, colour, or previous condition, who have been resident
"in said State for one year," "except such as may be dis"franchised for participation in the rebellion," who are described to be, all who have "given aid or comfort to the
"enemies of the United States," namely, nearly the whole of
the white population, and, before the 1st of September, 1867,
"the commanding general in each district," etc., "shall cause
"a registration to be made" of voters, excluding disfranchised
persons and including negroes, and "shall appoint as many
"boards of registration as may be necessary," and after the
registration is completed, "at such times and places therein
"as the commanding general shall appoint and direct," "an
"election shall be held for delegates to a convention for the
"purpose of establishing a constitution and civil government
"for such State," the delegates "to be apportioned among the
"several districts" "by the commanding general,'" and, there
upon, elections shall be held to determine for or against a
convention, the election returns to be made to "the command" ing general," who is to open the returns and "niake procla"mation thereof;" and if the majority of votes be for a
convention, "the commanding general within sixty days" is
279 
280   FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM
Act of Congress of the 20th of April, 1818, to
announce in the newspapers, in which were published the laws of the United States, the adoption of
constitutional amendments, made his publication.
Let it be observed that in voting constitutional
amendments the States exercise their sovereignty;
they are remitted to their vote to adopt or reject
parts of a constitutional compact which, in 1787-8,
they voted to reject or adopt as a whole. There
is no power in the federal government, neither in
Congress, nor in the President, nor in the judges,
nor in all combined, to amend the Constitution, or
to give notice to the delegates elected to assemble in convention and frame a constitution, to be submitted to the
voters at an election held as the election was held for delegates, "and the returns thereof shall be made to the corn"manding general of the district;" and if the votes shall
ratify the constitution, which must "provide that the elective
"franchise shall be enjoyed" without regard to "race, colour,
"or previous condition," a copy of the constitution is to be
forwarded to the President, who is to transmit it to Congress, and, if the provisions of the reconstruction acts
have been all complied with, one of them being that the
"State by a vote of its Legislature" shall have adopted the
"amendment  of the Constitution of the United  States"
"known as article fourteen, etc.," and the said State "con"stitution shall be approved by Congress, the State shall be
"declared entitled to representation, and Senators and Repre"sentatives shall be admitted therefrom." 
THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
declare it amended.  The statute of 1818 for public
convenience, no more, made it incumbent on an
administrative officer, the Secretary of State, to
publish amendments in the "newspapers author"ized to promulgate the laws, with his certificate,
"specifying the States by which the same may
"have been adopted."  The States  exercise the
power, the Secretary of State makes publication
of it.
The responsibility for the reconstruction laws
ordering, as they did, military elections, and the
negroes to vote themselves the right of suffrage; as
if female suffrage were made lawful by women
voting it under the protection of the army of the
United States;  was divided among hundreds of
persons, namely, the different members of the two
Houses of Congress; but the Secretary of State,
Mr. Seward, had now, alone, to vouch that this
fundamental change, effected by fraud and force,
was free, lawful, and constitutional, and put his
name and the seal of the United States to it. This
hie refused to do.* He stated two difficulties: first
that of counting States where the negroes voted
themselves citizenship at elections held under military authority; and, second, an equally obvious
* See Mr. Seward's publication of the 20th of July, 1868:
McPherson, 1865-70, p. 379.
19
281 
282  FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM
difficulty, that of counting the States of Ohio and
New Jersey, which, at first, voted adoption, and
then changed their votes and voted to reject.
Could they change their votes? Were they to be
counted, or not? If they could change their votes,
there were not three-fourths of tile States for adoption. If they could not change, could the six
States of Florida, North Carolina, Arkansas, Louisiana, South Carolina, and Alabama, which were
now returned as voting for the amendment, but
which at first voted against it? If a State could
change its vote, two votes were wanted; if it could
not, six votes were wanted.
Congress, the day after Mr. Seward's refusal,
by joint resolution declared the amendment part of
the Constitution of the United States.* What is
* Were these proceedings violence, also, upon arithmetic?
When the 13th amendnment passed, there were 36 States, and
27, which is exactly 43 of 36, voted for it. (See Mr. Seward's
publication, McPherson, 1865-70, p. 6.) One more State
had since come into the Union, and there were now 37 States.
It was claimed that 29 States voted for the 14th amendment;
8 against it. In counting generally, dollars for example, 29
is 4, and more than -3, of 37, for the dollar can be taken by
fractions, halves, quarters, etc., thus: $2743 is 3 of $37.  But
( State cannot be divided, like a dollar, to count for the 3
-4
majority.  If this be so, the way to count is to take, first,
that number of States of which 4 is a multiple, then take 3
4 
THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
the moral of this tale, the most disgraceful of all
in American history?  The moral is that the peo
ple had come to be nothing but a despised crowd.
It had been long since the few accounted to the
inany; and these deeds of reconstruction were the
deeds of politicians who were responsible to them
of that number, then add to the original number the  additional State or States; and, without dividing any of them,
but taking their number as a whole multiple of 4, add their 4,
thus:
Of 36 States, the assenting 43 were..
The additional State must be one of 4, of which
there must be assenting...
Making requisite, for a 4 majority of the 37 States,
assenting States...
There were but assenting States...
Seven days after the joint resolution, and eight days after
his first publication (McPherson, 1865-70, p. 417), Mr. Seward made another, in which he says that Georgia, also, after
having refused had now assented, and putting himself, not on
the facts, not saving that the department had notice that the
amendment "had been adopted according to the provisions
"of the Constitution," as the law of the 20th of April, 1818,
required, but that the States had "taken the proceedings
"hereinafter recited upon or in relation to the ratification of
"the said proposed amendment," which he does not answer
for, puts himself on the joint resolution of eight days before,
and declares the amendment adopted.
283
. 27
3
30
29 
284  FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM
selves. As was said by one of the makers of that
Constitution these men trifled with,* though hirnmself no friend of the people,  "Every one knows
" that where responsibility ends, fraud, injustice,
"tyranny, and treachery begin."t
SECTION II.
POLITICAL MISTAKES.
Great mistakes have been made about democracy, and even about liberty.  Mr. Fox and his
friends, in and out of Parliament, thought French
liberty established, and so thought nearly all
France, when the Constituent Assembly made
their Declaration of the Rights of Man, and the
rush followed to the Tribune, of priests and nobles,
* Gouverneur Morris, in his letter, quoted supra, of the
5th of February, 1811.
t The fifteenth amendment, which declared that the right
of no citizen of the United States to vote, whatever his race,
colour, or previous condition of servitude, should be abridged
by any State, depends, for its effect in giving a vote to the
negro, on the fourteenth amendment, by which is taken from
the States the right to say who are their citizens. It was
published by the Secretary of State the 30th of March, 1870,
and obtained by similar means. It depends for validity on
the fourteenth in this, that without the fourteenth each State
would regulate its own suffrage. 
THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
to lay down their titles, tithes, feudal rights, and
prerogatives; but it was a mistake.
The five-and-twenty millions of French were
the same creatures they had been the day before;
not able to take care of themselves, still less of the
State; and Committees of Safety, Constitutional
and National Conventions, Directories, Consuls,
Emperors, Kings, Republics of all sorts, have followed, each falsely promising to the people that
liberty which Mr. Fox thought they had long before, and which they never would, to this day, have
had a particle of, but for those efforts of their own,
which brought about democracy; not government,
only democracy, and democracy not grafted on
laws and constitutions, but a natural growth; the
effect of their owning their lands and working for
themselves.
The people of the United States thought they had
only to riot in their liberty after they hlad secured
their independence; which, also, proved a great mistake; and in 1787, to save liberty from the ships
wreck of disorder, the Federal Constitution was resorted to.  In 1860 the Federal Constitution itself
was wrecked, and liberty got among the breakers;
and still labours with the tempest. But we were
not, either in 1787 or 1860, like thle French in
1789, a people just emancipated fronm the vassal
285 
286  FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM
age of ignorance.  We were as free as any people
ever were. We were a democratic society, and
had no first step to make. It is undeniable that it
was the people themnselves who prepared the crisis,
both in 1787 and 1860.  The country had been in
their uncontrolled keeping. From 1776 to 1789
we had a very insufficient government; but from
1789 to 1860 we had what was called, and, it may
be, was the best in the world, yet we broke down.
If the view which has been talken of the immediate causes of the crisis of 1860 be wholly ianidabsolutely erroneous, still the fact remains that a
spirit of faction, whether of the South, or of the
North, or both, overcame us in the midst of the
enjoyrnent of the very highest worldly prosperity;
and it was the faults of tile people that brought
the country to the verge of ruin.  Thotugh there
had not been a neg,ro slave il the whole country,
those faults would have brought us down.
As a people, we are very unlike the French,
and our condition, bounded by two oceans, with a
continent to ourselves is far from that of a people
of the European Continent, with their neighbours'
bayonets always at their throats; but we are in
the United States, and have been for many years,
as the French are, a democratic people, with a
government plunging from bad to worse. 
THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
Our ancestors feared democracy, so did their
ancestors, and the ancestors of their ancestors for
ages. The masses of the people differed with them,
and pledged instincts against wisdom; a pledge not
yet redeemed or forfeited. To put the wise in the
wrong, the people must become sentinels of democracy, and cease to be only devourers of its
fruits.
Its progress for a few generations has been said
to mix the elements and bring down among the
poorest and lowest of the community the descendants of those who but just before, were the highest,
and raise up to be the highest, if they have merit,
the humblest and most despised.  This is democracy and natural justice, a crucible in which many
prejudices of this country and an infinity of those
of the older ones will be melted down; whether
for good or ill the future will say.
SECTION III.
DESTINY.
We talk of our destiny. Wisdom is destiny;
weakness is destiny. What we call destiny is
nothing but the conduct of men; it is subject to
courses of folly, to counsels of prudence. With
untoward events we cannot flourish. The mill of
287 
288  FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM
democracy will not grind everything. Our destiny
trembled in the balance in the late civil war. If
the country had been broken in two pieces, it would
have been broken in twenty, and then what would
have been our destiny?  See the consequences, today, before our eyes, of a short war fought by two
parties, and inmagine the effects of ten or twenty
years' slaulghter and confusion among as many
petty States.   If the war had gone in favour
of the South, and the North were now in the
condition the South is in, would we think we
flourished? Until now, no country of which there
is any record ever was in a worse condition nine
years after a revolution was over, than it was
before it began.
Governor  McKean,*  writing  to  Mr.  Adams,
reckons the quota of population that supported
the revolution of 1776: "In your favour of the
'26th of November last, you say that you ven tured to say that about a third of the people of
'c the Colonies were against the revolution.  It re'quired much  reflection before I could fix my
opinion on this subject; but on mature delibera"tion I conclude you are right, and that more than
* Thomas McKean, member of the Confederate Congress,
signer of the Declaration of Independence, Governor and
Chief Justice of Pennsylvania under the Constitution. 
THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
'c a third of influential characters were against it."*'
The revolution these veterans, crowned with success
and honour, were reviewing, was a political revolution, and led by heroes. What would they have
thought had they been told that, in less than fifty
years, another revolution  would comne, social as
well as political, not led by heroes, indeed, with
out any leaders at all, for those who led wanted to
go in quite another direction? If they had been
told then that in 1860 their descendants would
send hungry delegates to miserable conventions, to
inaugurate a revolution, not with a third of influentiai characters against it, but every thinking man
in the whole country, they would have trembled
before such a destiny. Where would be our destiny if instead of Mr. Jefferson's acquiring Louisiana, in 1803), from the French, the English had
conquered it from the Spaniards, in 1800, and become our neighbours along the whole line of our
western frontier?
Demnagogueism tells us it is our destiny to be
free without care, without effort; by race.  Race
is much; our mistake is in supposing there is a
race superior to all the rest, and that our own.
We overrate ourselves. IHlad the Spaniards who
* See his letter of January, 1814: Life and Works of John
Adams, vol. x. p. 87.
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290  FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM
colonized the southern parts of the American continent found there, instead of gold and precious
stones, a soil yielding only the reward of hlard
work; had they not been under pupilage to viceroys, with vice-regal courts and great establishments; had they not been shut off with monastic
jealousy from the rest of the world, and ruled, as
the Austrian and Bourbon families ruled people,
and down to so recent a period as that of the war
of independence, in Spain, which began in 180ISOS,
and produced the independence of the Colonies as
well as of the mother-country, the Spanish blood
might have  been boasting, and with  as tmuch
reason as ours, that it was the blood of freedom.
If our English ancestors owe such freedom as they
have to geographical position, to their inhabiting
an island, let us ponder well how much we owe
to inhabiting a new world of sparse population and
abundant food.
It is hard to tell where liberty will flourish.
The people of Scotland have been taught freedom
by their association with the people of England.
Compare the qualities of the two people, and the
inference would be that England would have to
borrow freedom from the Scotch. If to keep alive
liberty to the point of democracy require exceptional qualities in men, what people shall enjoy it? 
THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
Are we to think that if the Swiss, or thie Dutch,
little nationalities tha(t conquered their freedom
from giants, had settled this coast of ours, and
could have protected the infancy of their Colonies,
their descendants would not be free?  Liberty has
been cast upon us, and not too well used.  As
Colonies, till the Stamp Act passed in 1765 we
complained of nothing; and after its repeal, of
nothing, till the Townshend Act of 1767, when
our troubles began again. The narrative in the
Declaration of Independence takes up our story
after the quarrel had begun.*  Our poverty did
not tempt the home government.  They did not
trample on us.  Troops were not sent to oppress
us and eat out the substance of the people; our
burdens were self-imposed;  provincial rule was
* See what Franklin said to the House of Commons in
February, 1766: "The temper of America towards Great
"Britain before the vear 1763... was the best in the
world.  They submitted willingly to the government of the
"crown, and paid, in their courts, obedience to the acts of
"Parliament....  They cost you nothing in forts, citadels,
"garrisons, or armies to keep them in subjection.   They
were governed by the country at the expense of a little
pen, ink, and paper; they were led by a thread."  Sparks's
Franklin, vol. iv. p. 169. And see the Address of Congress
to the people of Great Britain even as recently before the
Declaration of Independence as the 5th of September, 1774.
291 
292 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM
without pomp.  When the war of the Revolution
came, it was a duel fought on the point of honour;
it was not, like most wars of rebellion, the desperate effort of a wretched people to redeem themselves from bondage and misery.  We  fought for
ideas.  Twelve Colonies  took up the quarrel of
one, in which, and perhaps in all the Colonies,
but less in some than in others, the idea of independence, contending with attachments to En,land, long had been ripening. To this day of our
nationals life we have been put to but one great
test.   The  lives of nations, like those of individuals, must be a struggle; but, down to the time
of the civil ivar, conmparing our miseries with
those of the rest of the world, our wars with
theirs, our commotions  and  their  events with
commotions and events elsewhere, what has there
been to swell the democratic flood beyond its
banks?  It is mrisery that ruins nations, and their
liberties, if they have any.   We, first, began our
acquaintance with it in 1860.  We had our hardships in the Revolutionary war, and our difficulties
under the old Confederacy when the war was over;
and afterwards, in settling the poise of our new
institutions; again, in the formation of parties,
amid distractions arising out of the earthquake in
France; our neutral position was difficult among 
THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
the contending parties to the hostilities that followed; but how small were these to the troubles
with which the rest of the world laboured! It
may be truly said that there has been no day of
our short life when, if demnocracy had sunk into
the earth, the aristocracies of the world might not
have clapped their hands, and shouted over us in
just and reasonable exultation
Our destiny was democracy, and that is already
fulfilled, for we never shall be more democratic
than we are.  The rest, which is the means of
enjoyment of it, is uncertain. It depends on ourselves.  We may be more free, more happy, more
prosperous than we are, or less. What may we
justly boast? That we are an intelligent and energetic people unfettered by prejudices.  But their
intelligence and energies, politically, have been
directed for them, not by them.
Is democracy to prove so poor a thing as bad
government, with the right in the people to change
it when it becomes insufferable? Is the democratic
era to give us nothing better than the monarchical
an(l aristocratic? The American citizen gives to
his country ten minutes in the year, the time
required to cast his vote; he must give ten hours.
Let him do no more than that, and the people will
be represented; government will reflect the people,
293 
291 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM
and when they are reflected, democracy can do no
more.  Time must do the rest.  It is not certain
that under the influence of the people government
will go well; but it is certain that without it all
must go wrong.
We do not need the tonic of a war to nerve our
institutions, the idea which Gouverneur Morris*
attributed to Hamilton.  Time and habit will do
it; the government will gain respectability, and
the people will not lose it. They are a cement
that gives respectability to things in older countries,
which men accustomed to liberty can scarce believe
when they behold them.
Nearly everywhere in Europe, except in England, are to be seen soldiers, and there an assembly of a few hundred common-looking men settle
everything, for no other reason than because they
are supposed to represent the people; as soire of
them do, but all profess it.
The wants of liberty may be irreconcileable with
speculative thinking; public suffrage may be gross,
the press a monster, jury trial unintelligible, and,
as to deliberative bodies, they have been, at all
times, the ridicule of high intelligences, their delays, their hesitations, their uncertainties, their
many absurdities.
* See his letter, uit supra, of the 5th of February, 1811. 
THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
If our government is to be strong, its strength
mTnust come from below.   It can never  have  a
strength of its own, till the day comes for government which is strong because either it is aristocratic, or is maintained by soldiers. Locke, a friend
to liberty, when he put his hand to institutions for
the Colony of North Carolina, did not recognize
this fact, and failed. Franklin was one of the
most practical of men; but, with the ideas of his
day, he had it put into the Constitution of Pennsylvania that no change should be made in it by
the people without first obtaining the consent of a
board of censors. He wanted to check the people,
and they cancelled his constitution, board of censors, and all.  There may be checks  and there
may be balances, that is, checks and balances of
delegated authority, one departlnent checking another; but power'itself, what is to check that?
What shall check the power of the people? The
true and only answer is, the power of the States,
and their subdivisions, down to the ward republics.
Said Mir. Dickinson,* whose high-toned opinions,
in the convention, have been quoted, "If ancient
republics have been found to flourish for a mo"ment only, and then vanish forever, it only
"proves that they were badly constituted; and
* Madi,son Papers, vol. ii. p. 778.
29.5 
296 FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY REGARDED FROM
"that we ought to seek for every remedy for their
"diseases. One of these remedies he conceived to
" be the accidental lucky division of this country
"1 into distinct States; a division which some seemed
"desirous to abolish altogether.. In case of a
"consolidation of the States into one great republic,
"we might read its fate in the history of smaller
ones.
There is not one fault of the institutions of the
country, which they vainly would attempt to correct by constitutional change, that is not open to
correction by the people themselves.   Let the
people so administer them as to give, in the Union,
their independence to the States, and, in the States,
their independence to local governments.
In the Virginia Convention of 1829, where many
good and sensible men met to consider forms of
government, and the question was upon limiting
suffrage, one side said, If you fix,a limit, what is
it to be?  If of money, how much money?  If of
knowledge, how much knowledge?  You will find
nothing, such was the argument, that is not open
to the question how much, but the land. The
land, said they, is universal, and the choice is between freehold suffrage with a great universal
natural boundary, and, what you choose to call
universal, with no boundary at all. But how are 
THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.
the landholders better than the others? It is the
neglect of the duties of citizenship that we find to
be the difficulty, and the holders of property are
the mnost neglectful of all.
THE END.
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297