In his whole att.i.tude towards the Revolution, Morris represents better than any other man the clear-headed, practical statesman, who is genuinely devoted to the cause of const.i.tutional freedom. He was utterly opposed to the old system of privilege on the one hand, and to the wild excesses of the fanatics on the other. The few liberals of the Revolution were the only men in it who deserve our true respect. The republicans who champion the deeds of the Jacobins, are traitors to their own principles; for the spirit of Jacobinism, instead of being identical with, is diametrically opposed to the spirit of true liberty.
Jacobinism, socialism, communism, nihilism, and anarchism--these are the real foes of a democratic republic, for each one, if it obtains control, obtains it only as the sure forerunner of a despotic tyranny and of some form of the one-man power.
Morris, an American, took a clearer and truer view of the French Revolution than did any of the contemporary European observers. Yet while with them it was the all-absorbing event of the age, with him, as is evident by his writings, it was merely an important episode; for to him it was dwarfed by the American Revolution of a decade or two back.
To the Europeans of the present day, as yet hardly awake to the fact that already the change has begun that will make Europe but a fragment, instead of the whole, of the civilized world, the French Revolution is the great historical event of our times. But in reality it affected only the people of western and central Europe; not the Russians, not the English-speaking nations, not the Spaniards who dwelt across the Atlantic. America and Australia had their destinies moulded by the crisis of 1776, not by the crisis of 1789. What the French Revolution was to the states within Europe, that the American Revolution was to the continents without.
CHAPTER XI.
STAY IN EUROPE.
Monroe, as Morris"s successor, entered upon his new duties with an immense flourish, and rapidly gave a succession of startling proofs that he was a minister altogether too much to the taste of the frenzied Jacobinical republicans to whom he was accredited. Indeed, his capers were almost as extraordinary as their own, and seem rather like the antics of some of the early French commanders in Canada, in their efforts to ingratiate themselves with their Indian allies, than like the performance we should expect from a sober Virginian gentleman on a mission to a civilized nation. He stayed long enough to get our affairs into a snarl, and was then recalled by Washington, receiving from the latter more than one scathing rebuke.
However, the fault was really less with him than with his party and with those who sent him. Monroe was an honorable man with a very un-original mind, and he simply reflected the wild, foolish views held by all his fellows of the Jeffersonian democratic-republican school concerning France--for our politics were still French and English, but not yet American. His appointment was an excellent example of the folly of trying to carry on a government on a "non-partisan" basis. Washington was only gradually weaned from this theory by bitter experience; both Jefferson and Monroe helped to teach him the lesson. It goes without saying that in a well-ordered government the great bulk of the employees in the civil service, the men whose functions are merely to execute faithfully routine departmental work, should hold office during good behavior, and should be appointed without reference to their politics; but if the higher public servants, such as the heads of departments and the foreign ministers, are not in complete accord with their chief, the only result can be to introduce halting indecision and vacillation into the counsels of the nation, without gaining a single compensating advantage, and without abating by one iota the virulence of party pa.s.sion. To appoint Monroe, an extreme Democrat, to France, while at the same time appointing Jay, a strong Federalist, to England, was not only an absurdity which did nothing towards reconciling the Federalists and Democrats, but, bearing in mind how these parties stood respectively towards England and France, it was also an actual wrong, for it made our foreign policy seem double-faced and deceitful. While one minister was formally embracing such of the Parisian statesmen as had hitherto escaped the guillotine, and was going through various other theatrical performances that do not appeal to any but a Gallic mind, his fellow was engaged in negotiating a treaty in England that was so obnoxious to France as almost to bring us to a rupture with her. The Jay treaty was not altogether a good one, and a better might perhaps have been secured; still, it was better than nothing, and Washington was right in urging its adoption, even while admitting that it was not entirely satisfactory. But certainly, if we intended to enter into such engagements with Great Britain, it was rank injustice to both Monroe and France to send such a man as the former to such a country as the latter.
Meanwhile Morris, instead of returning to America, was forced by his business affairs to prolong his stay abroad for several years. During this time he journeyed at intervals through England, the Netherlands, Germany, Prussia, and Austria. His European reputation was well established, and he was everywhere received gladly into the most distinguished society of the time. What made him especially welcome was his having now definitely taken sides with the anti-revolutionists in the great conflict of arms and opinions then raging through Europe; and his brilliancy, the boldness with which he had behaved as minister during the Terror, and the reputation given him by the French _emigres_, all joined to cause him to be hailed with pleasure by the aristocratic party. It is really curious to see the consideration with which he was everywhere treated, although again a mere private individual, and the terms of intimacy on which he was admitted into the most exclusive social and diplomatic circles at the various courts. He thus became an intimate friend of many of the foremost people of the period. His political observation, however, became less trustworthy than heretofore; for he was undoubtedly soured by his removal, and the excesses of the revolutionists had excited such horror in his mind as to make him no longer an impartial judge. His forecasts and judgments on the military situation in particular, although occasionally right, were usually very wild. He fully appreciated Napoleon"s utter unscrupulousness and marvelous mendacity; but to the end of his life he remained unwilling to do justice to the emperor"s still more remarkable warlike genius, going so far, after the final Russian campaign, as to speak of old Kutusoff as his equal. Indeed, in spite of one or two exceptions,--notably his predicting almost the exact date of the retreat from Moscow,--his criticisms on Napoleon"s military operations do not usually stand much above the rather ludicrous level recently reached by Count Tolsto.
Morris was relieved by Monroe in August, 1794, and left Paris for Switzerland in October. He stopped at Coppet and spent a day with Madame de Stael, where there was a little French society that lived at her expense and was as gay as circ.u.mstances would permit. He had never been particularly impressed with the much vaunted society of the salon, and this small survival thereof certainly had no overpowering attraction for him, if we may judge by the entry in his diary: "The road to her house is up-hill and execrable, and I think I shall not again go thither."
Mankind was still blind to the grand beauty of the Alps,--it must be remembered that the admiration of mountain scenery is, to the shame of our forefathers be it said, almost a growth of the present century,--and Morris took more interest in the Swiss population than in their surroundings. He wrote that in Switzerland the spirit of commerce had brought about a baseness of morals which nothing could cure but the same spirit carried still further:--"It teaches eventually fair dealing as the most profitable dealing. The first lesson of trade is, My son, get money. The second is, My son, get money, honestly if you can, but get money. The third is, My son, get money; but honestly, if you would get much money."
He went to Great Britain in the following summer, and spent a year there. At one time he visited the North, staying with the Dukes of Argyle, Atholl and Montrose, and was very much pleased with Scotland, where everything he saw convinced him that the country was certain of a rapid and vigorous growth. On his return he stopped with the Bishop of Landaff, at Colgate Park. The bishop announced that he was a stanch opposition man, and a firm whig; to which statement Morris adds in his diary: "Let this be as it will, he is certainly a good landlord and a man of genius."
But Morris was now a favored guest in ministerial, even more than in opposition circles; he was considered to belong to what the czar afterwards christened the "parti sain de l"Europe." He saw a good deal of both Pitt and Grenville, and was consulted by them not only about American, but also about European affairs; and a number of favors, which he asked for some of his friends among the _emigres_, were granted. All his visits were not on business, however; as, for instance, on July 14th: "Dine at Mr. Pitt"s. We sit down at six. Lords Grenville, Chatham, and another come later. The rule is established for six precisely, which is right, I think. The wines are good and the conversation flippant."
Morris helped Grenville in a number of ways, at the Prussian court for instance; and was even induced by him to write a letter to Washington, attempting to put the English att.i.tude toward us in a good light.
Washington, however, was no more to be carried off his feet in favor of the English than against them; and the facts he brought out in his reply showed that Morris had rather lost his poise, and had been hurried into an action that was ill advised. He was quite often at court; and relates a conversation with the king, wherein that monarch"s language seems to have been much such as tradition a.s.signs him--short, abrupt sentences, repet.i.tions, and the frequent use of "what."
He also saw a good deal of the royalist refugees. Some of them he liked and was intimate with; but the majority disgusted him and made him utterly impatient with their rancorous folly. He commented on the strange levity and wild negotiations of the Count d"Artois, and prophesied that his character was such as to make his projected attempt on La Vendee hopeless from the start. Another day he was at the Marquis de Spinola"s: "The conversation here, where our company consists of aristocrats of the first feather, turns on French affairs. They, at first, agree that union among the French is necessary. But when they come to particulars, they fly off and are mad. Madame Spinola would send the Duke of Orleans to Siberia. An abbe, a young man, talks much and loud, to show his _esprit_; and to hear them one would suppose they were quite at their ease in a _pet.i.t souper de Paris_." Of that ponderous exile, the chief of the House of Bourbon, and afterwards Louis XVIII, he said that, in his opinion, he had nothing to do but to try to get shot, thereby redeeming by valor the foregone follies of his conduct.
In June, 1796, Morris returned to the continent, and started on another tour, in his own carriage; having spent some time himself in breaking in his young and restive horses to their task. He visited all the different capitals, at one time or another; among them, Berlin, where, as usual, he was very well received. For all his horror of Jacobinism, Morris was a thorough American, perfectly independent, without a particle of the sn.o.b in his disposition, and valuing his acquaintances for what they were, not for their t.i.tles. In his diary he puts down the Queen of England as "a well-bred, sensible woman," and the Empress of Austria as "a good sort of little woman," and contemptuously dismisses the Prussian king with a word, precisely as he does with any one else. One of the entries in his journal, while he was staying in Berlin, offers a case in point. "July 23d, I dine, very much against my will, with Prince Ferdinand. I was engaged to a very agreeable party, but it seems the highnesses must never be denied, unless it be from indisposition. I had, however, written a note declining the intended honor; but the messenger, upon looking at it, for it was a letter patent, like the invitation, said he could not deliver it; that n.o.body ever refused; all of which I was informed of after he was gone. On consulting I found that I must go or give mortal offense, which last I have no inclination to do; so I write another note, and send out to hunt up the messenger. While I am abroad this untoward incident is arranged, and of course I am at Bellevue." While at court on one occasion he met, and took a great fancy to, the daughter of the famous Baroness Riedesel; having been born in the United States, she had been christened America.
In one of his conversations with the king, who was timid and hesitating, Morris told him that the Austrians would be all right if he would only lend them some Prussian generals--a remark upon which Jena and Auerstadt later on offered a curious commentary. He became very impatient with the king"s inability to make up his mind; and wrote to the d.u.c.h.ess of c.u.mberland that "the guardian angel of the French Republic kept him lingering on this side of the grave." He wrote to Lord Grenville that Prussia was "seeking little things by little means," and that the war with Poland was popular "because the moral principles of a Prussian go to the possession of whatever he can acquire. And so little is he the slave of what he calls vulgar prejudice, that, give him opportunity and means, and he will spare you the trouble of finding a pretext. This liberality of sentiment greatly facilitates negotiation, for it is not necessary to clothe propositions in honest and decent forms." Morris was a most startling phenomenon to the diplomatists of the day, trampling with utter disregard on all their hereditary theories of finesse and cautious duplicity. The timid formalists, and more especially those who considered double-dealing as the legitimate, and in fact the only legitimate, weapon of their trade, were displeased with him; but he was very highly thought of by such as could see the strength and originality of the views set forth in his frank, rather over-bold language.
At Dresden he notes that he was late on the day set down for his presentation at court, owing to his valet having translated _halb zwolf_ as half past twelve. The Dresden picture galleries were the first that drew from him any very strong expressions of admiration. In the city were numbers of the _emigres_, fleeing from their countrymen, and only permitted to stop in Saxony for a few days; yet they were serene and gay, and spent their time in busy sightseeing, examining everything curious which they could get at. Morris had become pretty well accustomed to the way in which they met fate; but such lively resignation surprised even him, and he remarked that so great a calamity had never lighted on shoulders so well fitted to bear it.
At Vienna he made a long stay, not leaving it until January, 1797. Here, as usual, he fraternized at once with the various diplomatists; the English amba.s.sador, Sir Morton Eden, in particular, going out of his way to show him every attention. The Austrian prime minister, M. Thugut, was also very polite; and so were the foreign ministers of all the powers.
He was soon at home in the upper social circles of this German Paris; but from the entries in his journal it is evident that he thought very little of Viennese society. He liked talking and the company of brilliant conversationalists, and he abominated gambling; but in Vienna every one was so devoted to play that there was no conversation at all.
He considered a dumb circle round a card-table as the dullest society in the world, and in Vienna there was little else. Nor was he impressed with the ability of the statesmen he met. He thought the Austrian n.o.bles to be on the decline; they stood for the dying feudal system. The great families had been squandering their riches with the most reckless extravagance, and were becoming broken and impoverished; and the imperial government was glad to see the humiliation of the haughty n.o.bles, not perceiving that, if preserved, they would act as a buffer between it and the new power beginning to make itself felt throughout Europe, and would save the throne if not from total overthrow, at least from shocks so fierce as greatly to weaken it.
Morris considered Prince Esterhazy as an archtypical representative of the cla.s.s. He was captain of the n.o.ble Hungarian Guard, a small body of tall, handsome men on fiery steeds, magnificently caparisoned. The Prince, as its commander, wore a Hungarian dress, scarlet, with fur cape and cuffs, and yellow morocco boots; everything embroidered with pearls, four hundred and seventy large ones, and many thousand small, but all put on in good taste. He had a collar of large diamonds, a plume of diamonds in his cap; and his sword-hilt, scabbard, and spurs were inlaid with the same precious stones. His horse was equally bejeweled; steed and rider, with their trappings, "were estimated at a value of a quarter of a million dollars." Old Blucher would surely have considered the pair "very fine plunder."
The Prince was reported to be nominally the richest subject in Europe, with a revenue that during the Turkish war went up to a million guilders annually; yet he was hopelessly in debt already and getting deeper every year. He lived in great magnificence, but was by no means noted for lavish hospitality; all his extravagance was reserved for himself, especially for purposes of display. His Vienna stable contained a hundred and fifty horses; and during a six weeks" residence in Frankfort, where he was amba.s.sador at the time of an imperial coronation, he spent eighty thousand pounds. Altogether, an outsider may be pardoned for not at first seeing precisely what useful function such a merely gorgeous being performed in the body politic; yet when summoned before the bar of the new world-forces, Esterhazy and his kind showed that birds of such fine feathers sometimes had beaks and talons as well, and knew how to use them, the craven flight of the French n.o.blesse to the contrary notwithstanding.
Morris was often at court, where the constant theme of conversation was naturally the struggle with the French armies under Moreau and Bonaparte. After one of these mornings he mentions: "The levee was oddly arranged, all the males being in one apartment, through which the Emperor pa.s.ses in going to chapel, and returns the same way with the Empress and imperial family; after which they go through their own rooms to the ladies a.s.sembled on the other side."
The English members of the _Corps Diplomatique_ in all the European capitals were especially civil to him; and he liked them more than their continental brethren. But for some of their young tourist countrymen he cared less; and it is curious to see that the ridicule to which Americans have rightly exposed themselves by their absurd fondness for uniforms and for a.s.suming military t.i.tles to which they have no warrant, was no less deservedly earned by the English at the end of the last century. One of Morris"s friends, Baron Groshlaer, being, like the other Viennese, curious to know the object of his stay,--they guessed aright that he wished to get Lafayette liberated,--at last almost asked him outright about it. "Finally I tell him that the only difference between me and the young Englishmen, of whom there is a swarm here, is, that I seek instruction with gray hairs and they with brown.... At the Archd.u.c.h.ess"s one of the little princes, brother to the Emperor, and who is truly an _arch_-duke, asks me to explain to him the different uniforms worn by the young English, of whom there are a great number here, all in regimentals. Some of these belong to no corps at all, and the others to yeomanry, fencibles and the like, all of which purport to be raised for the defense of their country in case she should be invaded; but now, when the invasion seems most imminent, they are abroad, and cannot be made to feel the ridiculous indecency of appearing in regimentals. Sir M. Eden and others have given them the broadest hints without the least effect. One of them told me that all the world should not laugh him out of his regimentals. I bowed.... I tell the prince that I really am not able to answer his question, but that, in general, their dresses I believe are worn for convenience in traveling.
He smiles at this.... If I were an Englishman I should be hurt at these exhibitions, and as it is I am sorry for them.... I find that here they a.s.sume it as unquestionable that the young men of England have a right to adjust the ceremonial of Vienna. The political relations of the two countries induce the good company here to treat them with politeness; but nothing prevents their being laughed at, as I found the other evening at Madame de Groshlaer"s, where the young women as well as the girls were very merry at the expense of these young men."
After leaving Vienna he again pa.s.sed through Berlin, and in a conversation with the king he foreshadowed curiously the state of politics a century later, and showed that he thoroughly appreciated the cause that would in the end reconcile the traditional enmity of the Hohenzollerns and Hapsburgs. "After some trifling things I tell him that I have just seen his best friend. He asks who? and, to his great surprise, I reply, the Emperor. He speaks of him well personally, and I observe that he is a very honest young man, to which his Majesty replies by asking, "Mais, que pensez vous de Thugut." "Quant a cela, c"est une autre affaire, sire." I had stated the interest, which makes him and the Emperor good friends, to be their mutual apprehensions from Russia. "But suppose we all three unite?" "Ce sera un diable de frica.s.see, sire, si vous vous mettez tous les trois a ca.s.ser les oeufs.""
At Brunswick he was received with great hospitality, the Duke, and particularly the d.u.c.h.ess Dowager, the King of England"s sister, treating him very hospitably. He here saw General Riedesel, with whom he was most friendly; the general in the course of conversation inveighed bitterly against Burgoyne. He went to Munich also, where he was received on a very intimate footing by Count Rumford, then the great power in Bavaria, who was busily engaged in doing all he could to better the condition of his country. Morris was much interested in his reforms. They were certainly needed; the Count told his friend that on a.s.suming the reins of power, the abuses to be remedied were beyond belief--for instance, there was one regiment of cavalry that had five field officers and only three horses. With some of the friends that Morris made--such as the d.u.c.h.ess of c.u.mberland, the Princess de la Tour et Taxis and others--he corresponded until the end of his life.
While at Vienna he again did all he could to get Lafayette released from prison, where his wife was confined with him; but in vain. Madame de Lafayette"s sister, the Marquise de Montagu, and Madame de Stael, both wrote him the most urgent appeals to do what he could for the prisoners; the former writing, "My sister is in danger of losing the life you saved in the prisons of Paris ... has not he whom Europe numbers among those citizens of whom North America ought to be most proud, has not he the right to make himself heard in favor of a citizen of the United States, and of a wife, whose life belongs to him, since he has preserved it?" Madame de Stael felt the most genuine grief for Lafayette, and very sincere respect for Morris; and in her letters to the latter she displayed both sentiments with a lavish exaggeration that hardly seems in good taste. If Morris had needed a spur the letters would have supplied it; but the task was an impossible one, and Lafayette was not released until the peace in 1797, when he was turned over to the American consul at Hamburg, in Morris"s presence.
Morris was able to render more effectual help to an individual far less worthy of it than Lafayette. This was the then Duke of Orleans, afterwards King Louis Philippe, who had fled from France with Dumouriez.
Morris"s old friend, Madame de Flahaut, appealed to him almost hysterically on the duke"s behalf; and he at once did even more than she requested, giving the duke money wherewith to go to America, and also furnishing him with unlimited credit at his own New York banker"s, during his wanderings in the United States. This was done for the sake of the d.u.c.h.ess of Orleans, to whom Morris was devotedly attached, not for the sake of the duke himself. The latter knew this perfectly, writing: "Your kindness is a blessing I owe to my mother and to our friend" (Madame de Flahaut). The bourgeois king admirably represented the meanest, smallest side of the bourgeois character; he was not a bad man, but he was a very petty and contemptible one; had he been born in a different station of life, he would have been just the individual to take a prominent part in local temperance meetings, while he sanded the sugar he sold in his corner grocery. His treatment of Morris"s loan was characteristic. When he came into his rights again, at the Restoration, he at first appeared to forget his debt entirely, and when his memory was jogged, he merely sent Morris the original sum, without a word of thanks; whereupon Morris, rather nettled, and as prompt to stand up for his rights against a man in prosperity as he had been to help him when in adversity, put the matter in the hands of his lawyer, through whom he notified Louis Philippe that if the affair was to be treated on a merely business basis, it should then be treated in a strictly business way, and the interest for the twenty years that had gone by should be forwarded also. This was accordingly done, although not until after Morris"s death, the entire sum refunded being seventy thousand francs.
Morris brought his complicated business affairs in Europe to a close in 1798, and sailed from Hamburg on October 4th of that year, reaching New York after an exceedingly tedious and disagreeable voyage of eighty days.
CHAPTER XII.
SERVICE IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.
Morris was very warmly greeted on his return; and it was evident that the length of his stay abroad had in nowise made him lose ground with his friends at home. His natural affiliations were all with the Federalist party, which he immediately joined.
During the year 1799 he did not take much part in politics, as he was occupied in getting his business affairs in order and in putting to rights his estates at Morrisania. The old manor house had become such a crazy, leaky affair that he tore it down and built a new one; a great, roomy building, not in the least showy, but solid, comfortable, and in perfect taste; having, across the tree-clad hills of Westchester, a superb view of the Sound, with its jagged coast and capes and islands.
Although it was so long since he had practiced law, he was shortly engaged in a very important case that was argued for eight days before the Court of Errors in Albany. Few trials in the State of New York have ever brought together such a number of men of remarkable legal ability; for among the lawyers engaged on one side or the other were Morris, Hamilton, Burr, Robert Livingstone, and Troup. There were some sharp pa.s.sages of arms: and the trial of wits between Morris and Hamilton in particular were so keen as to cause a pa.s.sing coolness.
During the ten years that had gone by since Morris sailed for Europe, the control of the national government had been in the hands of the Federalists; when he returned, party bitterness was at the highest pitch, for the Democrats were preparing to make the final push for power which should overthrow and ruin their antagonists. Four-fifths of the talent, ability, and good sense of the country were to be found in the Federalist ranks; for the Federalists had held their own so far, by sheer force of courage and intellectual vigor, over foes in reality more numerous. Their great prop had been Washington. His colossal influence was to the end decisive in party contests, and he had in fact, although hardly in name, almost entirely abandoned his early attempts at non-partisanship, had grown to distrust Madison as he long before had distrusted Jefferson, and had come into constantly closer relations with their enemies. His death diminished greatly the chances of Federalist success; there were two other causes at work that destroyed them entirely.
One of these was the very presence in the dominant party of so many men nearly equal in strong will and great intellectual power; their ambitions and theories clashed; even the loftiness of their aims, and their disdain of everything small, made them poor politicians, and with Washington out of the way there was no one commander to overawe the rest and to keep down the fierce bickerings constantly arising among them; while in the other party there was a single leader, Jefferson, absolutely without a rival, but supported by a host of sharp political workers, most skillful in marshaling that unwieldy and hitherto disunited host of voters who were inferior in intelligence to their fellows.
The second cause lay deep in the nature of the Federalist organization: it was its distrust of the people. This was the fatally weak streak in Federalism. In a government such as ours it was a foregone conclusion that a party which did not believe in the people would sooner or later be thrown from power unless there was an armed break-up of the system.
The distrust was felt, and of course excited corresponding and intense hostility. Had the Federalists been united, and had they freely trusted in the people, the latter would have shown that the trust was well founded; but there was no hope for leaders who suspected each other and feared their followers.
Morris landed just as the Federalist reaction, brought about by the conduct of France, had spent itself,--thanks partly to some inopportune pieces of insolence from England, in which country, as Morris once wrote to a foreign friend, "on a toujours le bon esprit de vouloir prendre les mouches avec du vinaigre." The famous alien and sedition laws were exciting great disgust, and in Virginia and Kentucky Jefferson was using them as handles wherewith to guide seditious agitation--not that he believed in sedition, but because he considered it good party policy, for the moment, to excite it. The parties hated each other with rancorous virulence; the newspapers teemed with the foulest abuse of public men, accusations of financial dishonesty were rife, Washington himself not being spared, and the most scurrilous personalities were bandied about between the different editors. The Federalists were split into two factions, one following the President, Adams, in his efforts to keep peace with France, if it could be done with honor, while the others, under Hamilton"s lead, wished war at once.
Pennsylvanian politics were already very low. The leaders who had taken control were men of mean capacity and small morality, and the State was not only becoming rapidly democratic but was also drifting along in a disorganized, pseudo-jacobinical, half insurrectionary kind of way that would have boded ill for its future had it not been fettered by the presence of healthier communities round about it. New England was the only part of the community, excepting Delaware, where Federalism was on a perfectly sound footing; for in that section there was no caste spirit, the leaders and their followers were thoroughly in touch, and all the citizens, shrewd, thrifty, independent, were used to self-government, and fully awake to the fact that honesty and order are the prerequisites of liberty. Yet even here Democracy had made some inroads.
South of the Potomac the Federalists had lost ground rapidly. Virginia was still a battlefield; as long as Washington lived, his tremendous personal influence acted as a brake on the democratic advance, and the state"s greatest orator, Patrick Henry, had halted beside the grave to denounce the seditious schemes of the disunion agitators with the same burning, thrilling eloquence that, thirty years before, had stirred to their depths the hearts of his hearers when he bade defiance to the tyrannous might of the British king. But when these two men were dead, Marshall,--though destined, as chief and controlling influence in the third division of our governmental system, to mould the whole of that system on the lines of Federalist thought, and to prove that a sound judiciary could largely affect an unsound executive and legislature,--even Marshall could not, single-handed, stem the current that had gradually gathered head. Virginia stands easily first among all our commonwealths for the statesmen and warriors she has brought forth; and it is noteworthy that during the long contest between the nationalists and separatists, which forms the central fact in our history for the first three quarters of a century of our national life, she gave leaders to both sides at the two great crises: Washington and Marshall to the one, and Jefferson to the other, when the question was one of opinion as to whether the Union should be built up; and when the appeal to arms was made to tear it down, Farragut and Thomas to the north, Lee and Jackson to the south.
There was one eddy in the tide of democratic success that flowed so strongly to the southward. This was in South Carolina. The fierce little Palmetto state has always been a free lance among her southern sisters; for instance, though usually ultra-democratic, she was hostile to the two great democratic chiefs, Jefferson and Jackson, though both were from the south. At the time that Morris came home, the brilliant little group of Federalist leaders within her bounds, headed by men of national renown like Pinckney and Harper, kept her true to Federalism by downright force of intellect and integrity; for they were among the purest as well as the ablest statesmen of the day.
New York had been going through a series of bitter party contests; any one examining a file of papers of that day will come to the conclusion that party spirit was even more violent and unreasonable then than now.
The two great Federalist leaders, Hamilton and Jay, stood head and shoulders above all their democratic compet.i.tors, and they were backed by the best men in the state, like Rufus King, Schuyler and others. But, though as orators and statesmen they had no rivals, they were very deficient in the arts of political management. Hamilton"s imperious haughtiness had alienated the powerful family of the Livingstones, who had thrown in their lot with the Clintonians; and a still more valuable ally to the latter had arisen in that consummate master of "machine"
politics, Aaron Burr. In 1792, Jay, then chief justice of the United States, had run for governor against Clinton, and had received the majority of the votes; but had been counted out by the returning board in spite of the protest of its four Federalist members--Gansevoort, Roosevelt, Jones, and Sands. The indignation was extreme, and only Jay"s patriotism and good sense prevented an outbreak. However, the memory of the fraud remained fresh in the minds of the citizens, and at the next election for governor he was chosen by a heavy majority, having then just come back from his mission to England. Soon afterwards his treaty was published, and excited a whirlwind of indignation; it was only ratified in the senate through Washington"s great influence, backed by the magnificent oratory of Fisher Ames, whose speech on this occasion, when he was almost literally on his death-bed, ranks among the half dozen greatest of our country. The treaty was very objectionable in certain points, but it was most necessary to our well-being, and Jay was probably the only American who could have negotiated it. As with the Ashburton treaty many years later, extreme sections in England attacked it as fiercely as did the extreme sections here; and Lord Sheffield voiced their feelings when he hailed the war of 1812 as offering a chance to England to get back the advantages out of which "Jay had duped Grenville."
But the clash with France shortly afterwards swept away the recollection of the treaty, and Jay was reelected in 1798. One of the arguments, by the way, which was used against him in the canva.s.s was that he was an abolitionist. But, in spite of his reelection, the New York Democrats were steadily gaining ground.
Such was the situation when Morris returned. He at once took high rank among the Federalists, and in April, 1800, just before the final wreck of their party, was chosen by them to fill an unexpired term of three years in the United States Senate. Before this he had made it evident that his sympathies lay with Hamilton and those who did not think highly of Adams. He did not deem it wise to renominate the latter for the Presidency. He had even written to Washington, earnestly beseeching him to accept the nomination; but Washington died a day or two after the letter was sent. In spite of the jarring between the leaders, the Federalists nominated Adams and Pinckney. In the ensuing Presidential election many of the party chiefs, notably Marshall of Virginia, already a strong Adams man, faithfully stood by the ticket in its entirety; but Hamilton, Morris, and many others at the North probably hoped in their hearts that, by the aid of the curious electoral system which then existed, some chance would put the great Carolinian in the first place and make him President. Indeed, there is little question that this might have been done, had not Pinckney, one of the most high-minded and disinterested statesmen we have ever had, emphatically declined to profit in any way by the hurting of the grim old Puritan.
The house thus divided against itself naturally fell, and Jefferson was chosen President. It was in New York that the decisive struggle took place, for that was the pivotal state; and there the Democrats, under the lead of the Livingstones and Clintons, but above all by the masterly political manoeuvres of Aaron Burr, gained a crushing victory. Hamilton, stung to madness by the defeat, and sincerely believing that the success of his opponents would be fatal to the republic,--for the two parties hated each other with a blind fury unknown to the organizations of the present day,--actually proposed to Jay, the governor, to nullify the action of the people by the aid of the old legislature, a Federalist body, which was still holding over, although the members of its successor had been chosen. Jay, as pure as he was brave, refused to sanction any such scheme of unworthy partisanship. It is worth noting that the victors in this election introduced for the first time the "spoils system," in all its rigor, into our state affairs; imitating the bad example of Pennsylvania a year or two previously.