This proposition received only thirteen votes out of forty-nine. Many of those opposed to it were quite ready to grant that it was hard upon the veterans of the war that they, who had received so little and who had borne so much, should not now be recognized as creditors when at last the government was able to pay its debts. But the House could not indulge in sentimental legislation. That would be to launch the ship of state upon another sea of bankruptcy. There were in the hands of the people tens of millions of paper money not worth at the current rate a cent on the dollar. If everybody who had lost was to be paid, the point would soon be reached where n.o.body would be paid at all. A limit must be fixed somewhere; let it be at these certificates of debt which were the evidence of a contract made between the government and its creditors.
These could be paid, and they should be paid, to those who were in lawful possession of them. The law, if not the equity, of the case was clearly against Madison. That the government should be absolutely just to everybody who had ever trusted to it, and lost by it, was impossible.
It was a bankrupt compelled to name its preferred creditors, and it named those whom it was in honor and law bound to take care of, and over whose claims there was, on the whole, the least shadow of doubt. That the loss should remain chiefly with the soldiers of the Revolution, and the gain fall chiefly to those who were shrewd enough, or had the means to speculate in the public funds, was a lamentable fact; but to discriminate between them was not within the right of the government.
That he would have had it discriminate was creditable to Madison"s heart; it was rather less creditable to his head.
Of course, underneath all this debate there lay other considerations than those merely of debtor and creditor, of moral and legal obligation, of pity for the soldiers, and of strict regard for the letter of a contract. Mr. Hamilton and his friends, it was said, were anxious to establish the public credit, not so much because they wished to keep faith with creditors as because they wished to strengthen the government and build up their own party. The reply to these accusations was, that the other side, under pretense of consideration for the soldiers and others on whom the burden of the war had borne most heavily, concealed hostility to the Const.i.tution and a consolidated government. These were not reflections to be spoken of in debate, but they were not the less cherished, and gave to it piquancy and spirit. There was truth on both sides without doubt.
Though defeated in this measure, Madison was not less determined in his opposition to the a.s.sumption of the debts of the States. Of these debts some States had discharged more than others; and he complained, not without reason, of the injustice of compelling those which had borne their own burdens unaided to share in the obligations which others had neglected. He was unfortunate, however, in a.s.suming a superiority for Virginia over some of the Eastern States, and especially over Ma.s.sachusetts, in services rendered in the struggle for independence.
The comparison provoked a call for official inquiry; and that proved that Ma.s.sachusetts alone had sent more men into the field during the war than all the Southern States together. It was not much to be wondered at, when this fact was considered, that the debt of Ma.s.sachusetts should be larger than that of Virginia by $800,000. The difference between Virginia and South Carolina was the same, the truth being that the war had cost Ma.s.sachusetts more money to pay her soldiers for the general service, and South Carolina more to repel the enemy upon her own soil, than it had cost Virginia for either purpose. Ma.s.sachusetts and South Carolina were again found acting together, simply because each of them had a debt--$4,000,000--larger than that of any other State. The total debt of all the States was about $21,000,000; and as that of North Carolina, Pennsylvania, or Connecticut, when added to the $8,000,000 of Ma.s.sachusetts and South Carolina, amounted to half, or more, of the whole sum, there was no difficulty in forming a strong combination in favor of a.s.sumption. No combination, however, was strong enough to carry the measure on its own merits, notwithstanding its advocates attempted to defeat the funding of the domestic debt of the Federal Union unless the debts of the several States were a.s.sumed at the same time.
The domestic debt, however, was at length provided for, and the a.s.sumption of the debts of the States was rejected till that bargain, referred to in the preceding chapter, which gave to the Southern States the permanent seat of government, was concluded. It would not have been difficult, probably, to defeat that piece of political jobbery by a public exposure of its terms. Why Madison did not resort to it, if, as seems certain, he knew that such a bargain had been privately made, can only be conjectured. Perhaps he saw that Hamilton, who was applauded by his friends and denounced by his enemies for his clever management, had, after all, only made a temporary gain; and that Jefferson, whose defense was that Hamilton had taken advantage of his ignorance and innocence, would not, had he not been short-sighted, have made any defense at all.
For the a.s.sumption of the state debts by the general government was only a distribution of a single local burden; and this was a small price for Virginia and the other Southern States to pay for the permanent possession of the federal capital.
While these questions were pending, another was thrown into the House which was not disposed of for nearly two months. The debates upon it, Madison said in one of his letters, "were shamefully indecent," though he thought the introduction of the subject into Congress injudicious.
The Yearly Meeting of Friends in New York and in Pennsylvania sent a memorial against the continued toleration of the slave trade; and this was followed the next day by a pet.i.tion from the Pennsylvania Society for the Promotion of the Abolition of Slavery, signed by Benjamin Franklin as president, asking for a more radical measure.
"They earnestly entreat," they said, "your serious attention to the subject of slavery; that you will be pleased to countenance the restoration of liberty to these unhappy men, who alone in this land of freedom are degraded into perpetual bondage, and who, amidst the general joy of surrounding freemen, are groaning in servile subjection; that you will devise means for removing this inconsistency from the character of the American people; that you will promote mercy and justice towards this distressed race; and that you will step to the very verge of the power vested in you for discouraging every species of traffic in the persons of our fellow-men."
The words were probably Franklin"s own, and, as he died a few weeks after they were written, they may be considered as his dying words to his countrymen,--counsel wise and merciful as his always was.
A memorable debate followed the presentation of these memorials. Even in the imperfect report of it that has come down to us, the "shameful indecency" of which Madison speaks is visible enough. Franklin, venerable in years, exalted in character, and eminent above almost all the men of the time for services to his country, was sneered at for senility and denounced as disregarding the obligations of the Const.i.tution. But the wrath of the pro-slavery extremists was specially aroused against the Society of Friends, and was unrestrained by any considerations of either decency or truth. In this respect the debate was the precursor of every contest in Congress upon the subject that was to follow for the coming seventy years. The Quakers were the representative abolitionists of that day, and the measure of bitter and angry denunciation that was meted out to them was the same measure which, heaped up and overflowing, was poured out upon those who, in later times, took upon themselves the burden of the cause of the slave.
The line of argument, the appeals to prejudice, the disregard of facts and the false conclusions, the misrepresentation of past history and the misapprehension of the future, the contempt of reason, of common sense, and common humanity, then laboriously and unscrupulously arrayed in defense of slavery, left nothing for the exercise of the ingenuity of modern orators. A single difference only between the earlier and the later time is conspicuous; the "plantation manners," as they were called five and twenty years ago, which the Wises, the Brookses, the Barksdales, and the Priors of the modern South relied upon as potent weapons of defense and a.s.sault, were unknown in the earlier Congresses.
Mr. Madison and some other members from the South, particularly those from Virginia, opposed the majority of their colleagues, who were unwilling that these memorials should be referred to a committee. "The true policy of the Southern members," Madison wrote to a friend, "was to have let the affair proceed with as little noise as possible, and to have made use of the occasion to obtain, along with an a.s.sertion of the powers of Congress, a recognition of the restraints imposed by the Const.i.tution." This in effect was done in the end, but not till near two months had pa.s.sed, within which time the more violent of the Southern members had ample opportunity to free their minds and exhaust the subject. The more these people talked the worse it was, of course, for their cause. Had Madison"s moderate advice been accepted then, and had that example been followed for the next sixty or seventy years, it is quite likely that the colored race would still be in bondage in at least one half of the States. But there was never a more notable example of manifest destiny than the gradual but certain progress of the opposition to slavery; for there never was a system, any attempt to defend which showed how utterly indefensible such a system must needs be. Every argument advanced in its favor was so manifestly absurd, or so shocking to the ordinary sense of mankind, that the more it was discussed the more widespread and earnest became the opposition. Had the slaveholders been wise, they would never have opened their mouths upon the subject.
But, like the man possessed of the devil, they never ceased to cry, "Let me alone!" And the more they cried, the more there were who understood where that cry came from.
In one respect Mr. Madison declared that the memorial of the Friends demanded attention. If the American flag was used to protect foreigners in carrying on the slave trade in other countries, that was a proper subject for the consideration of Congress. "If this is the case," he said, "is there any person of humanity that would not wish to prevent them?"[13] But he recognized the limitations of the Const.i.tution in relation to the importation of slaves into the United States, and the want of any authority in the letter of the Const.i.tution, or of any wish on the part of Congress, to interfere with slavery in the States. On these points he would have a decisive declaration, without agitation, and with as little discussion as possible, and there would have dropped the subject. It only needed, he evidently thought, that everybody, North and South, should understand the Const.i.tution to be a mutual agreement to let slavery altogether alone, when the bargain would be on both sides faithfully adhered to.
This was all very well with the numerous persons who were quite indifferent to the subject, or who thought it very unreasonable in the blacks not to be quite willing to remain slaves a few hundred years longer. But there were two other cla.s.ses to reckon with, and Mr. Madison was not much inclined to be patient with either of them. To let the subject alone was precisely what the hot-headed members from the South were incapable of doing then, as they proved to be incapable of doing for the next seventy years. On the other hand, all the pet.i.tioners could really hope for was that there should be discussion. The galleries were crowded at those earliest debates, as they continued to be crowded on all such occasions in subsequent years. Many went to learn what could be said on behalf of slavery, who came away convinced that the least said the better. Agitation might disturb the harmony of the Union, which was Madison"s dread; it might lead to the death of an abolitionist, as it sometimes did in later times; but it was sure in the end to be the death of slavery, though its short-sighted defenders could never understand why. They could never be made to see that its most dangerous foes were the friends of its own household, who could not hold their tongues; that for their case all wisdom was epitomized in the vulgar caution "to lie low and keep dark;" that the exposure of the true character of slavery must needs be its destruction, and that nothing so exposed it as any attempt to defend it. Slavery was quite safe under the Const.i.tution, as Mr. Madison intimated, if its friends would only leave it there and claim no other protection.
Advocates are never wanting in any court who believe that the most effective line of defense is to abuse the plaintiff. The Quakers, it was said, "notwithstanding their outward pretenses," had no "more virtue or religion than other people, nor perhaps so much." They had not made the Const.i.tution, nor risked their lives and fortunes by fighting for their country. Why should they "set themselves up in such a particular manner against slavery"? Did they not know that the Bible not only allowed but commended it, "from Genesis to Revelation"? That the Saviour had permitted it? That the Apostles, in spreading Christianity, had never preached against it? That it had been--the ill.u.s.tration was not altogether a happy one--"no novel doctrine since the days of Cain"? The condition of these American slaves was said to be one of great happiness and comfort; yet almost in the same breath it was a.s.serted that to excite in their minds any hope of change would lead to the most disastrous consequences, and possibly to ma.s.sacre. The memorialists were bidden to remember that, even if slavery "were an evil, it was one for which there was no remedy;" for that reason the North had acquiesced in it; "a compromise was made on both sides,--we took each other, with our mutual bad habits and respective evils, for better, for worse; the Northern States adopted us with our slaves, and we adopted them with their Quakers." Without such a compromise there could have been no Union, and any interference now with slavery by the government would end in a civil war. These people were meddling with what was none of their business, and exciting the slaves to insurrection. Yet how forbearing were the people of the Southern States who, notwithstanding all this, "had not required the a.s.sistance of Congress to exterminate the Quakers!"
This was not conciliatory. Those who had been disposed at the beginning to meet the pet.i.tions with a quiet reply that the subject was out of the jurisdiction of Congress were now provoked to give them a much warmer reception. They could not listen patiently to the abuse of the Quakers, and, though they might acquiesce in the toleration of slavery, they were not inclined to have it crammed down their throats as a wise, beneficent, and consistent condition of society under a republican government. Even Madison, who at first was most anxious that nothing should be said or done to arouse agitation, while acknowledging that all citizens might rightfully appeal to Congress for a redress of what they considered grievances, was moved at last to say that the memorial of the Friends was "well worthy of consideration." While admitting that under the Const.i.tution the slave trade could not be prohibited for twenty years, "yet," he declared, "there are a variety of ways by which it [Congress] could countenance the abolition, and regulations might be made in relation to the introduction of [slavery] into the new States to be formed out of the western territory."
Gerry was still more emphatic in the a.s.sertion of the right of interference. He boldly a.s.serted that "flagrant acts of cruelty" were committed in carrying on the African slave trade; and, while n.o.body proposed to violate the Const.i.tution, "that we have a right to regulate this business is as clear as that we have any right whatever; nor has the contrary been shown by anybody who has spoken on the occasion." Nor did he stop there. He told the slaveholders that the value of their slaves in money was only about ten million dollars, and that Congress had the right to propose "to purchase the whole of them; and their resources in the western territory might furnish them with the means."
The Southern members would, perhaps, have been startled by such a proposition as this, had he not immediately added that "he did not intend to suggest a measure of this kind; he only instanced these particulars to show that Congress certainly had a right to intermeddle in the business." It is quite likely, had he pushed such a measure with his well-known zeal and determination, that it would have been at least received with a good deal of favor; and, as the admirers of Jefferson are tenacious of his fame as the author of the original Northwest Ordinance, so Gerry, had he seriously and earnestly urged the policy of using the proceeds of the sales of territorial lands to remunerate the owners of slaves for their liberation, would have left behind him a more fragrant memory than that which clings to him as a minister to France, and as the "Gerrymandering" governor of Ma.s.sachusetts. The debate, however, came to an end at last with no other result than that which would have been reached at the beginning without debate, except, perhaps, that the vote in favor of the reports upon the memorials was smaller than it might have been had there been no discussion.
Within less than two years, however, Warner Mifflin of Delaware, an eminent member of the Society of Friends, who was one of the first, if not the first, of that society to manumit his own slaves, pet.i.tioned Congress to take some measure for general emanc.i.p.ation. The pet.i.tion was entered upon the journal; but on a subsequent day a North Carolina member, Mr. Steele, said that, "after what had pa.s.sed at New York on this subject, he had hoped the House would have heard no more of it;"
and he moved that the pet.i.tion be returned to Mifflin and be expunged from the journal. Fisher Ames explained in a rather apologetic tone that he had presented the pet.i.tion at Mr. Mifflin"s request, because the member from Delaware was absent, and because he believed in the right of pet.i.tion, though "he considered it as totally inexpedient to interfere with the subject." The House agreed that the pet.i.tion should be returned, and Steele then withdrew the motion to expunge it from the journal.
In the next Congress, eighteen months afterward, the House took up the subject of the slave trade, apparently of its own motion, and a bill was pa.s.sed prohibiting the carrying on of that traffic from the ports of the United States in foreign vessels. The question was as inexorable as death, and the difference in regard to it then was precisely what it was in the final discussion of the next century which settled it forever. One set of men was given over to perdition if they dared so much as talk; the other set talked all the more, and went to the very verge of the Const.i.tution in act all the more, because they were bidden neither to speak nor to move. Courage was not one of Madison"s marked characteristics, but he never showed more of it than in his hostility to slavery.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Fisher Ames]
At the third session of the First Congress, which had adjourned from New York to Philadelphia, where it met in December, 1790, Madison led his party in opposition to the establishment of a national bank, which Hamilton had recommended; and again, as in the adjustment of the domestic debt, he and his party were defeated. He compared the advantages and the disadvantages of banks, and possibly he did not satisfy himself, as he certainly did not the other side, that the weight of the argument was against their utility. At any rate, he fell back upon the Const.i.tution as his strongest position. To incorporate a bank was not, he maintained, among the powers conferred upon Congress. The Federalists, who were beginning to recognize him as the leader of the opposition, were quite ready to accept that challenge. "Little doubt remains," said Fisher Ames in rising to reply, "with respect to the utility of banks." a.s.suming that to be settled,--whether he meant, or not, that such was the conclusion to be drawn from Madison"s argument on that point,--he addressed himself to the const.i.tutional question. If the incorporation of a bank was forbidden by the Const.i.tution, there was an end of the matter. If it was not forbidden, but if Congress may exercise powers not expressly bestowed upon it, and if by a bank some of the things which the federal government had to do could be best done, it would be not only right but wise to establish such an agency. This was the burden of the argument of the Federalists, and Madison and his friends had no sufficient answer. The bill was at length pa.s.sed by a vote of thirty-nine to twenty.
But it had still to pa.s.s the ordeal of the cabinet. The President was not disposed to rely upon his own judgment either one way or the other.
He asked, therefore, for the written opinions of the secretaries of the treasury and of state, Hamilton and Jefferson, and the attorney-general, Randolph. The same request was made to Madison, probably more because Washington held his ability and knowledge of const.i.tutional law in high esteem than because of the prominent part he had taken in the debate.
Hamilton"s argument in favor of the bill was an answer to the papers of the three other gentlemen, and was accepted as conclusive by the President.
FOOTNOTE:
[Footnote 13: The most serious difficulty in the way of the final suppression of the African slave trade in the present century was, that it could be carried on without molestation in American bottoms, under the American flag. The ruling power in the United States, from 1787 to 1860, was never willing that their own cruisers should meddle with the slavers, and resented as an insult to the flag the search, by the cruisers of other powers, of any vessel under the American flag, though it might be absolutely certain that she had come straight from the coast of Africa, and that her "between-decks" was crowded full of negroes to be sold as slaves in Cuba.]
CHAPTER XII
FEDERALISTS AND REPUBLICANS
Madison was a Federalist until, unfortunately, he drifted into the opposition. He was swept away partly, perhaps, by the influence of personal friends, particularly of Jefferson, and partly by the influence of locality,--that "go-with-the-State" doctrine, which is a harmless kind of patriotism when kept within proper limits, but dangerous in a mixed government like ours when unrestrained. Had he been born in a free State it seems more than probable that he would never have been President; but it is quite possible that his place in the history of his country would have been higher. The better part of his life was before he became a party leader. As his career is followed the presence of the statesman grows gradually dimmer in the shadow of the successful politician.
In the course of the three sessions of the First Congress the line was distinctly drawn between the Federal and Republican (or Democratic) parties. The Federalists, it was evident, had succeeded in firmly uniting thirteen separate States into one great nation, or into what, in due time, was sure to become a great nation. It was no longer a loose a.s.semblage of thirteen independent bodies, revolving, indeed, around a central power, but with a centrifugal motion that might at any time send them flying off into s.p.a.ce, or destroy them by collisions at various tangents. Those who opposed the Federalists, however, had no fear of a tendency to tangents; the danger was, as they believed, of too much centripetal forces and that the circling planets might fall into the central sun and disappear altogether. Even if there were no flying off into s.p.a.ce, and no falling into the sun, they had no faith in this sort of political astronomy. They were unwilling to float in fixed orbits obedient to a supreme law other than their own.
There is no need to doubt the honesty of either party then, whatever came to pa.s.s in later years. Nor, however, is there any more doubt now which was the wiser. Before the end of the century the administration of government was wrested from the hands of those who had created the Union; and within fifteen years more the Federal party, under that name, had disappeared. It would not be quite just to say that they were opposed for no better reason than because they were in power. But it is quite true that the principles and the policy of the Federalists survived the party organization; and they not only survived, but, so far as the opposite party was ever of service to the country, it was when that party adopted the federal measures. It was in accordance with the early principles of Federalism that the republic was defended and saved in the war of 1860-65; as it was the principles of the Democratic state-rights party, administered by a slaveholding oligarchy, that made that war inevitable.
Hamilton said, in the well-known Carrington letter in the spring of 1792, that he was thoroughly convinced by Madison"s course in the late Congress that he, "cooperating with Mr. Jefferson, is at the head of a faction decidedly hostile to me and my administration, and actuated by views, in my judgment, subversive of the principles of good government, and dangerous to the union, peace, and happiness of the country." At first he was disposed to believe, because of his "previous impressions of the fairness of Mr. Madison"s character," that there was nothing personal or factious in this hostility. But he soon changed his mind. Up to the time of the meeting of the First Congress there had always been perfect accord between them, and Hamilton accepted his seat in the cabinet "under the full persuasion," he said, "that from similarity of thinking, conspiring with personal good-will, I should have the firm support of Mr. Madison in the general course of my administration." But when he found in Madison his most determined opponent, either open or covert, in the most important measures he urged upon Congress,--the settlement of the domestic debt, the a.s.sumption of the debts of the States, and the establishment of a national bank,--he was compelled to seek for other than public motives for this opposition. "It had been,"
he declared, "more uniform and persevering than I have been able to resolve into a sincere difference of opinion. I cannot persuade myself that Mr. Madison and I, whose politics had formerly so much the same point of departure, should now diverge so widely in our opinions of the measures which are proper to be pursued."
In the letter from which these extracts are made Jefferson and Madison are painted as almost equally black, though the color was laid the thicker on Jefferson, if there was any difference. Hamilton seemed to think that, if Jefferson was the more malicious, Madison was the more artful. He is accused of an attempt to get the better of the secretary of the treasury by a trick which was dishonorable in itself, and at the same time an abuse of the confidence reposed in him by Washington.
Before sending in his message at the opening of the Second Congress the President submitted it to Madison, who, Hamilton declares, so altered it, by transposing a pa.s.sage and by the addition of a few words, that the President was made to seem, unconsciously to himself, to approve of Jefferson"s proposal to establish the same unit for coins as for weights. This would have been to disapprove of the proposal of the secretary of the treasury that the dollar should remain the unit of coinage. The statement rests on Hamilton"s a.s.sertion; and as he had forgotten the words which made the change he complained of, and as the message was restored to its original form by the President when its possible interpretation was pointed out to him, it is impossible now to judge whether Madison may not have been quite innocent of the intention imputed to him. It is plain enough, however, that Hamilton was sore and disappointed at Madison"s conduct, and that he was quick to seize upon any incident that justified him in saying, "The opinion I once entertained of the candor and simplicity and fairness of Mr. Madison"s character has, I acknowledge, given way to a decided opinion that it is one of a peculiarly artificial and complicated kind." To justify this opinion, and as an evidence of how bitter Madison"s political and personal enmity toward him had become, he refers in the same letter to Madison"s relation to Freneau and his paper, "The National Gazette." "As the coadjutor of Jefferson," he wrote, "in the establishment of this paper, I include Mr. Madison in the consequences imputable to it."
The story of Freneau need not be repeated here at length, having been already told in another volume of this series of biographies. If there were anything in that affair, however, for which Jefferson could be fairly called to account, Madison may be held as not less responsible.
When the charge was made that he had a sinister motive in procuring for Freneau a clerkship in the State Department, and in aiding him to establish a newspaper, Madison frankly related the facts in a letter to Edmund Randolph. He had nothing to deny except to repel with some indignation the charge that he had helped to establish the journal in order that it might "sap the Const.i.tution," or that there was the slightest expectation or intention on his part of any relation between the State Department and the newspaper. Freneau was one of his college friends, a deserving man, to whom he was attached, and whom he was glad to help. There was nothing improper in commending one well qualified to discharge its duties for the post of translator in a government office; and as those duties, for which the yearly salary was only two hundred and fifty dollars, were light, there was no good reason why the clerk should not find other employment for leisure hours.
If Mr. Madison, having said this, had stopped there, his critics would have been silenced. But when he added that he advised his friend with another motive besides that of helping him to start a newspaper, then, as the expressive modern phrase is, he "gave himself away." There is a feeling, common even in those early and innocent days when such things were rare, that the editor, whose daily bread, whether it be cake or crust, comes from the bounty of the man in office or other place of power,--that an editor so fed, and perhaps fattened, is only a servant bought at a price. Madison said that to help a needy man whom he held in high esteem was his "primary and governing motive." But he adds: "That, as a consequential one, I entertained hopes that a free paper ... would be an antidote to the doctrines and discourses circulated in favor of monarchy and aristocracy; would be an acceptable vehicle of public information in many places not sufficiently supplied with it,--this also is a certain truth." What was this but an acknowledgment of the essential truth of the charge brought against Jefferson and himself? Not that he might not devoutly hope for an antidote to the poisonous doctrines of monarchy and aristocracy, though in very truth the existence of any such poison was only one of the maggots which, bred in the muck of party strife, had found a lodgment in his brain; not that it was not a commendable public spirit to wish for a good newspaper to circulate where it was most needed; not that it was not a most excellent thing in him to hold out a helping hand to the friend who had been less fortunate than himself,--but that, in helping his friend to a clerkship in a department of the government, his motive was in part that the possession of a public office would enable the man to establish a party organ. That was precisely the point of the charge which he seems to have failed to apprehend,--that public patronage was used at his suggestion to further party ends.
Freneau had intended to start a newspaper somewhere in New Jersey.
Whether or not that known intention suggested that the project could be better carried out in Philadelphia, and a clerkship in the State Department would be an aid to it, the change of plan was adopted and the clerkship bestowed upon him. The paper--the first number of which appeared five days after his appointment--was, as it was known that it would be, an earnest defender of Jefferson and his friends, and a formidable opponent of Hamilton and his party. The logical conclusion was that the man, being put in place for a purpose, was diligent in using the opportunities the place afforded him to fulfill the hopes of those to whom he was indebted. Madison and Jefferson both denied, with much heat and indignation, that they had anything to do with the editorial conduct of the paper. No doubt they spoke the truth. They had to draw the line somewhere; they drew it there; and an exceedingly sharp and fine line it was. For it is plain that Freneau knew very well what he was about and what was expected of him, and his powerful friends knew very well that he knew it. They could feel in him the most implicit confidence as an untamed and untamable democrat, and one, perhaps, whose grat.i.tude would be kept alive by the remembrance of poverty and the hope of future favors. There was clearly no need of a board of directors for the editorial supervision of "The National Gazette," and it was quite safe to deny that any existed. The fact, nevertheless, remained that a seat had been given the editor at Mr. Jefferson"s elbow.
Three months before Madison heard that his relation to Freneau was bringing him under public censure, he showed an evident interest in the "Gazette" hardly consistent with his subsequent avowal of having nothing to do with its management. In a letter to Jefferson he refers to the postage on newspapers established by the bill for the regulation of post-offices, and fears that it will prove a grievance in the loss of subscribers. He suggests that a notice be given that the papers "will not be put into the mail, but _sent as heretofore_," meaning by that, probably, that they would be sent under the franks of members of Congress, or by any other chance that might offer. "Will you," he adds, "hint this to Freneau? His subscribers in this quarter seem pretty well satisfied with the degree of regularity and safety with which they get the papers, and highly pleased with the paper itself." This was careful dry-nursing for the bantling which had been provided with so comfortable a cradle in the State Department.
The political casuist of our time may wonder at the importance which attached to this Freneau affair. We are taught that "there were giants in those days," but we may also remember that in the modern science of "practical politics" they were as babes and sucklings. Madison was making good his place as a leader of the opposition hardly second to Jefferson himself. As with Hamilton, so with the Federalists generally, he fell more even than Jefferson fell in their esteem. He fell more, because he had farther to fall. No man had been more earnest than he for a consolidated government; no one had shown more activity to bring about a convention to frame a federal Const.i.tution; and when at last that work was done, no one, not even Hamilton himself, was more zealous to convince his countrymen that national salvation depended upon union, and that union was hopeless unless the Const.i.tution should be adopted.
The disappointment and the shock were all the greater when he gradually drew off from those who had hitherto counted him as on their side. They could not understand how he could find so much to oppose in the legitimate administration--as they believed it to be--of a Const.i.tution he had done so much to create, and the beneficent results of which he had foreseen and foretold. Or, if they understood him, it was on the supposition that he had thrown his convictions and his principles to the winds, abandoned his old friends and attached himself to new ones, from motives of personal ambition. This, of course, may not have been absolutely just. It is quite possible that he did not deliberately surrender his principles, but persuaded himself that he was as true as ever to the Const.i.tution. It is, nevertheless, certainly true that the men with whom he was now acting were the men who, having failed to prevent the adoption of the Const.i.tution, now aimed, by zealous endeavors for an a.s.sumed strict construction, to defeat the purpose for which it was framed.[14]
Naturally his motives were suspected, and his conduct narrowly watched.
Jefferson"s influence over him was known to be great, and Jefferson had had nothing to do with the framing of the Const.i.tution, had been doubtful at first of its wisdom, and gave his a.s.sent to it at last with many doubts. The Anti-Federal party was growing gradually stronger in Virginia as in all the Southern States; most of Madison"s warmest personal friends, as well as Jefferson, were of that party. What chance would he have in the public career he had marked out for himself if his path and theirs led in opposite directions? How much he was influenced by these considerations it is impossible to tell; perhaps he himself could not have told. Perhaps they were not even considerations, but only unconscious influences, which he would have thrown behind him had he recognized them as possible motives. To others, however, whether justly or not, they were quite sufficient to explain his course, and, once accepted, no other explanation was sought for. The appointment of Freneau to office at Madison"s request, followed by the almost immediate appearance of a violent party organ, edited by this clerk in Mr.
Jefferson"s department, was quite enough to raise an outcry among the Federalists; and Madison"s explanation, when it came to be known, of his share in that business, did not add to his reputation either for frankness or political rect.i.tude. Perhaps it was at first more the seeming want of frankness that disgusted his old friends. They could have more readily forgiven him had he openly declared that he had gone over to the enemy, instead of professing to find in the Const.i.tution sufficient ground for hostility to their measures. These const.i.tutional scruples they sometimes thought so thin a disguise of other motives as to be better deserving of ridicule than of argument.
All he said and did was watched with suspicion. In the interval between the First and Second Congresses, he and Jefferson made a tour through some of the Eastern States, as they said, for relaxation and pleasure.
But it was looked upon as a strategic movement. Interviews between them and Livingston and Burr in New York were reported to Hamilton as "a pa.s.sionate courtship." They visited Albany, it was said, "under the pretext of a botanical excursion," but in reality to meet with Clinton.
Botany naturally suggests agriculture, and as they continued on their journey into New England they were accused of "sowing tares" as they traveled. Such treachery would have been considered as aggravated by hypocrisy had it been known then that on his return Mr. Madison wrote to his father from New York: "The tour I lately made with Mr. Jefferson, of which I have given the outlines to my brother, was a very agreeable one, and carried us through interesting country, new to us both." This was cool, if the journey really was a political reconnoissance.
Though Mr. Madison may have been for a time a special target for this kind of partisan rancor, it was by no means confined to him. Jefferson had a very pretty talent for exasperating his enemies, and n.o.body could long divide with him the distinction of being the best hated man in the country. A curious instance of it was given when the question was discussed, both in the First and Second Congresses, as to the successor to the presidency in case the office should become vacant by the deaths of both President and Vice-President. A bill was sent down from the Senate to the House providing, in case such a thing should ever happen, that the president _pro tempore_ of the Senate, or, should the Senate have no temporary president, the speaker of the House of Representatives, should succeed to the vacant office. The House sent back the bill with an amendment subst.i.tuting the secretary of state for the succession in the possible vacancy instead of the presiding officers of the two houses of Congress. Madison was very earnest for this amendment, but the Senate rejected it, and the House finally a.s.sented to the original bill. It was shown in the course of the debate that according to the doctrine of chances the office of president would not devolve, through the accident of death, upon a third person oftener than once in about eight hundred and forty years. The rejection of the amendment naming the secretary of state as the proper person to succeed to the presidency, in the improbable event supposed, was nevertheless resented by the Republicans as a direct reflection upon Mr. Jefferson.
Nor did the Federalists deny it. With grim humor they seized upon the opportunity, apparently, to announce that not with their consent should he ever be president, even by accident, though he should wait literally eight hundred and forty years. It was a long-range shot, but there could not have been one better aimed.
If before there had been some room for hope, Madison"s course in the Second Congress left no doubt as to which party he had cast his lot with. His hostility to the establishment of a bank was, he thought, justified by what he saw at the opening of the subscription books in New York. The anxiety to get possession of the stock was not to him an evidence of public confidence, and an argument, therefore, in favor of such an inst.i.tution, but "a mere scramble for so much public plunder."
He could only see that "stock-jobbing drowns every other subject. The coffee-house is in an eternal buzz with the gamblers." "It pretty clearly appears also," he said, "in what proportions the public debt lies in the country, what sort of hands holding it, and by whom the people of the United States are to be governed." Here, perhaps, was one cause of his hostility to Hamilton"s financial policy. Its immediate benefit was for that cla.s.s whose pecuniary stake in the stability of the government was the largest. This cla.s.s was chiefly in the Northern States, where capital was in money and was always on the lookout for safe and profitable investment. At the South, capital was in slaves and land, and could not be easily changed. If the Bank and the bondholders were to exercise--as he feared they would, and as he believed that the Federalists meant they should--a controlling influence over the government, it was certainly pretty apparent "by whom the people of the United States were to be governed." It would be the North, not the South; and he was a Virginian before he was a Unionist.