The Crime of Caste in Our Country

by Benjamin Rush Davenport

In 1800 Adams was a candidate for re-election, and fully expected to be successful. But the Democratic-Republican party, as the opposition was now called, defeated him, and elected to the Presidency its great leader, Thomas Jefferson.

At a glance, it will be seen that the Republican of 1800 was the father of the Democratic party, the canonized Thomas Jefferson. The people, even thus early in the history of our nation, had begun to give evidence of that discontent at the aristocratic tendencies that even “The Father of his Country,” George Washington, and his successor, John Adams, displayed.

It would be considered almost sacrilege were we to republish here the many attacks that were made upon George Washington, when President of the United States, on account of the odor of aristocracy with which he had become so strongly impregnated before the Revolution, and which clung to him like the scent of the roses to the shattered vase. While there can be no doubt, of course, in the minds of us all, that Washington was pre-eminently a patriot, with a firm and steadfast faith in the doctrine of the rights of the people; still, he belonged to a section, to a State, that had been settled by Cavaliers who believed that they were somewhat better by birth than the Pilgrims of New England. And, having been born and educated in that atmosphere, it is small wonder that his character should have been somewhat attainted by his surroundings.

Upon Washington’s elevation to the Presidential chair he surrounded the executive mansion with more of the air of ceremony and evidences of “caste” than were pleasant to the mass of the people. He was attacked, during his first and second terms, by pamphleteers, who, in most scurrilous articles, wrote of him as one designing to perpetuate aristocracy and “caste” in our country. The debt of gratitude which the new Republic and the people thereof owed Washington was too great for any effect to be produced similar to the revolution in 1892. However, an impression was made; reluctantly, John Adams, Washington’s Vice-President, was elected as second President of the Union. This reluctance became apparent by his failure to be re-elected four years later.

A Minister from the United States to England always seems to become a suspicious object in the minds of the people of America. No man ever added to his popularity by being sent as Minister to the Court of St. James. John Adams, who was our first Minister, was but the beginning of a long list of unfortunates. In fact, the American people will heartily endorse the opinion of that great statesman, James G. Blaine, which is being so vigorously advocated by the New York Herald, that foreign Ministers are expensive and useless appendages of this Republic. The election of John Adams was occasioned more by the reflected glory of Washington and the gratitude of the people, which, like the rays of the declining sun, became diminished as it sunk behind the horizon of time. In Thomas Jefferson, the people, even thus early in the history of our nation, saw their friend. His simplicity of life, purity of character, and honesty of purpose, surrounded his name with the same halo, in the sight of the people, as that with which the names of Jackson, Lincoln and Cleveland have since been made luminous. Though Jefferson was called a Republican, still, to the people, he was a Democrat in the sense that democracy means equality.

Never was there a statesman more thoroughly imbued with the principles of popular liberty than Jefferson. “Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God”—Oliver Cromwell’s saying—was the motto engraved on his seal. He had taken a leading part in the colonies’ struggle for freedom. He was a member of the Continental Congress, Governor of Virginia during the war, and—a yet greater title to immortality—author of the Declaration of Independence. After the war he had been sent as American Minister to France, where he sympathized warmly with the revolution against Bourbon tyranny.

Jefferson’s election to the Presidency was universally regarded as a great popular triumph. He was hailed everywhere as “the Man of the People,” and the day that saw him inaugurated was celebrated with such rejoicings as had not been witnessed since the news of peace came, in 1783. No business, no labor was done on the 4th of March, 1801. It was a day of powder and parades, of church services, of bell-ringing, of speeches, and illuminations. The country’s satisfaction seemed unanimous.

“The exit of aristocracy” was a toast drunk at one great banquet that evening; and when it had been duly honored, the band appropriately struck up the “Rogue’s March.”

The inauguration itself was a simple affair enough. It has, indeed, been asserted that Jefferson rode up Capitol Hill without a single attendant, tied his horse to a picket fence, and walked alone into the Senate chamber to take the oath of office. Professor McMaster offers evidence to prove this story inaccurate. Jefferson was not surrounded, on his induction into the Presidency, by such throngs as attended the inaugurations of Washington and Adams in New York and Philadelphia. But he went to the Capitol in the midst of a gathering of citizens, with the accompaniment of drums, flags, cannon, and a troop of militia. His dress was, as usual, that of a plain citizen, without any distinctive badge of office. On taking the oath of office he said, in a brief speech to the Senate: “I know that some honest men fear that a republican government cannot be strong—that this government is not strong enough. I believe this, on the contrary, to be the strongest government on earth.”

Jefferson’s administration—so economical, business-like, and democratic as to have made “Jeffersonian simplicity” a proverb—met with such approval that when he was re-elected in 1804 only fourteen votes were recorded against him. Only in one State—Massachusetts—was there any excitement in the campaign.