CHAPTER VI. THE ADMINISTRATION OF JEFFERSON. THE election of Thomas Jefferson as President ushered the country into a new political era, wherein it was claimed the principles of a free democracy were to enjoy their fullest fruition. Adams had lost his reëlection partly because, in his earnest desire for peace, he went further than the heated patriotism of the masses would approve towards an adjustment with England and a composition of our differences with France. Coupled with this was the unpopularity of his two legislative measures occasioned by these troubles, the alien and sedition laws. "Free speech" and "a free press were among the most taking of Jefferson's party cries, based upon hostility to these acts. With the overthrow of the Federalists, the enforcement of the Constitution went into the hands of those who in minority had given it a construction which would return to plague them both in foreign and domestic affairs when burdened with the responsibilities of government. Mr. Jefferson selected as Secretary of State his faithful friend and champion, James Madison, who had won distinction, not in the diplomatic service, of which he possessed no experience, but since the war in the important field of reconstruction of the government. We have seen that he bore a conspicuous part with Hamil ton in framing and afterwards in defending the Constitution. During the past twelve years since that instrument had been the guide and rule of government, he had been an active member of Congress, but in the opposition, and usually in the minority. His taste and training fitted him best for service in deliberative assemblies, and it was in such bodies his life had been spent up to the date of his call to the Department of State. Fisher Ames, who was associated with him in Congress, in a private letter freely discussed his qualities and temperament during the First Congress. He writes that he is a man of sense, reading, address, and integrity; in person he is low and ordinary; he speaks low, decently as to manner, no more; his language is very pure, perspicuous, and to the point; much Frenchified in his politics; a little too much of a book politician; has a most exalted estimate of Virginia; is timid in politics, and very sensitive as to his popularity. He concludes: "He is our first man."1 Chief Justice Marshall said that if eloquence includes persuasion by convincing, Madison was the most eloquent man he ever heard.2 During all his political life he had been the warm friend and devoted follower of Mr. Jefferson, and because of this relation and of Jefferson's impressive personality and his disposition to rule, Madison's services as Secretary of State assumed quite a secondary character. It is said of Jefferson that he was more absolute as President than any other man who ever held that position, that while he listened to counsel, taking 1 Ames's Life and Works, 35. 2 Rives's Madison, 612. it was another matter; and that he was the author of the important measures of his administration. With a chief of such a temperament, the head of the Department of State had little opportunity to attain personal distinction. While his papers as secretary show the marks of his scholarly attainments, Madison's reputation rests not upon his administrative work, either as secretary or president, but upon his great services as a legislator, especially in the formation of the federal Constitution and his defense of its principles. On Jefferson's advent to power he found the foreign relations of the government in a pacific condition. Adams had devoted the greater part of his efforts as president to extricating the country from its embarrassing relations with England and France. In doing so he had forfeited his popularity and shipwrecked his party, but he had made smooth sailing for his successor, whose first diplomatic duty it was to attend to the exchange of ratifications and the proclamation of the treaty with France negotiated by the commissioners sent to Paris by Adams. Nothing further of moment occurred until(the great diplomatic achievement of his administration was consummated in the treaty for the acquisition of Louisiana. The negotiations to that end grew out of the efforts of the United States to secure the free navigation of the Mississippi and the use of a place or port of deposit at or near its mouth for the products of the river valleys for foreign export. As early as December, 1776, Congress passed a resolution looking to measures for securing these objects. Jay was sent during the war of independence to Spain on a special mission, having this for one of its chief objects. Franklin, in writing to him respecting his mission, said: "To part with the Mississippi were as if one should sell his street door." Jay's mission proved fruitless, and when he became Secretary of State under the Confederation we have seen that he again, but without avail, undertook the task of securing a treaty with these privileges. The matter was followed up by the administration of Washington, but not till 1795 was it possible to complete a treaty with Spain. (By it the free navigation of the Mississippi was secured, and the use of New Orleans as a port of deposit for three years with a stipulation for its continuance there or elsewhere; but these privileges were subject to many annoyances on the part of the Spanish authorities, under which the American settlers in the new territories west of the Alleghany Mountains ¡ became very restive. The vast territory known as Louisiana had been discovered and settled by the French. By a secret convention in 1762, during the Anglo-French war, the French government ceded so much of the territory as lay beyond the Mississippi, together with New Orleans, to Spain. By the treaty of peace of 1763 that part of the territory east of the Mississippi fell to Great Britain; but by the treaty of peace of 1783 it came again into the possession of Spain. Thus the territory remained Spanish up to 1800, when by a secret treaty it was retroceded to France.1 1 For Franco-Spanish treaties of 1762 and 1800 see Debates of Congress (Gales and Seaton), vol. 13, part 2, Appendix, 225, 229. Rumors of a meditated cession reached the United States in 1801, and created intense interest in this country. "Nothing, perhaps," Jefferson wrote, "since the Revolution has produced more uneasy sensations through the body of the nation." He had for many years given the subject of the free navigation of the Mississippi much attention, and he was fully alive to its importance. When the rumors were first received, instructions were promptly sent to our ministers in London, Paris, and Madrid to do all in their power to prevent the cession; but when these instructions were received the treaty had already been consummated, although Talleyrand denied to our minister in Paris nearly two years after the treaty had been signed that it existed. On receipt of the news, Jefferson wrote to Livingston, our minister at Paris: "It completely reverses all the political relations of the United States. There is on the globe one single spot, the possessor of which is our natural and political enemy. It is New Orleans. . . . The day that France takes possession of New Orleans fixes the sentence which is to restrain her within her low-water mark. It seals the union of two nations, who, in conjunction, can maintain exclusive possession of the ocean. From that moment we must marry ourselves to the British fleet and nation." 3 To Nemours he wrote: "The use of the Mississippi is so indispensable to us that we cannot hesitate one moment to hazard our existence for its maintenance.' 994 Secretary Madison, in his instructions 1 2 For. Rel. (folio) 510. 2 Ib. 512. 4 Ib. 205. |