Jefferson, with settled and burning hatred, now puts his branding-iron on Henry: "As to the effect of his name among the people, I have found it crumble like a dried leaf the moment they become satisfied of his apostacy."[946]
During the weeks which immediately followed his election, Marshall was busy reporting to Washington on the best men to be appointed as officers in the provisional army; and his letters to the Commander-in-Chief show a wide and careful acquaintance with Virginians of military training, and a delicate judgment of their qualities.[947]
By now the hated Sedition Law was justifying the political hydrophobia which it had excited among the Republicans.[948] All over the country men were being indicted and convicted for wholly justifiable political criticisms,—some of them trivial and even amusing,—as well as for false and slanderous attacks on public officers. President Adams himself had begun to urge these prosecutions. He was particularly bitter against the "Aurora," the Republican organ, which, according to Adams, contained an "uninterrupted stream of slander on the American government."[949] He thought that the editor ought to be expelled from the country.[950]
All this was more fuel to the Republican furnace. Wicked and outrageous as were some of these prosecutions, they were not so extravagant as the horrors which Republican politicians declared that the Sedition Laws would bring to every fireside.
During the summer after his election Marshall visited his father in Kentucky. Thomas Marshall was ill, and his son's toilsome journey was solely for the purpose of comforting him; but Jefferson could see in it nothing but a political mission. He writes to Wilson Cary Nicholas to prepare an answer to the States that had opposed the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions; but, says Jefferson, "As to the preparing anything [myself] I must decline it, to avoid suspicions (which were pretty strong in some quarters on the last occasion) [the Kentucky Resolutions].... The visit of the apostle Marshall[951] to Kentucky, excite anxiety. However, we doubt not that his poisons will be effectually counter-worked."[952]
Jefferson's suspicions were groundless. Marshall did not even sound public opinion on the subject. On his return to Richmond he writes the Secretary of State, who was the most active politician of Adams's Cabinet, and to whom Marshall freely opened his mind on politics, that "a visit to an aged & rever'd Father" prevented an earlier answer to a letter from Pickering; and, although Marshall has much to say, not one word is written of the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions. He is obsessed with the French question and of the advantage the French "party in America" may secure by the impression that France was not really hostile. "This will enable her [France's] party in America to attack from very advantageous ground the government of the United States."[953]
Now came the public circumstance that made the schism in the Federalist Party an open and remorseless feud. The President's militant declaration, that he would "never send another minister to France without assurances that he will [would] be received, respected, and honored as the representative of a great, free, powerful, and independent people,"[954] was perfectly attuned to the warlike spirit of the hour. The country rang with approval. The Federalist politicians were exultant.
Thereupon the resourceful Talleyrand wrote the Secretary of the French Legation at The Hague to intimate to Murray, the American Minister, that the French Directory would now receive a minister from the United States.[955] Murray hastened the news to Adams.[956] It was a frail assurance, indirect, irregular, unacknowledged to the world; and from men who had insulted us and who would not hesitate to repudiate Murray's statement if their purposes so required. Yet the President grasped by the forelock this possibility for peace, and, against the emphatic protest of his Cabinet, suddenly sent a second commission to try again for that adjustment which Marshall and his associates had failed to secure. It was the wisest and most unpopular act of Adams's troubled Administration.
The leading Federalist politicians were enraged. Indeed, "the whole [Federalist] party were prodigiously alarmed."[957] They thought it a national humiliation. What! said they, kiss the hand that had slapped our face! "The new embassy ... disgusts most men here," reported Ames from New England.[958] Cabot confirmed Ames's doleful message—"Surprise, indignation, grief, & disgust followed each other in swift succession in the breasts of the true friends of our country," he advised King.[959]
The Federalist leaders really wanted war with France, most of them as a matter of patriotism; some, undoubtedly, because war would insure party success in the approaching presidential election. Upon his return Marshall had prophesied formal declaration of hostilities from the Republic of France, when news of the dispatches reached Europe; and the war Federalists were sorely disappointed at the failure of his prediction. "Genl. Marshall unfortunately held the decided opinion that France would declare war when the Dispatches should appear; and T. Sewell with other good men were so strongly impressed with the advantage of such a declaration by them that they could not be persuaded to relinquish the belief in it—I was astonished that they should have attributed to the French such miserable policy." So wrote the able and balanced Cabot.[960] That France refused to adopt "such miserable policy" as Marshall had expected was sufficiently exasperating to the war Federalists; but to meet that country three fourths of the way on the road to peace was intolerable.