A motion to strike out the words “self-constituted societies” elicited a warm debate. “It has been argued,” said one of the members (Sedgwick) who traced the origin of these societies to Genet, “that to censure them might be construed into an attack on the freedom of public discussion. He was sorry,” he said, “to see a disposition to confound freedom and licentiousness. Was there not an obvious distinction between a cool, dispassionate, honest, and candid discussion, and a false, wicked, seditious misrepresentation of public men and public measures? The former was within the province of freemen; it was, indeed, their duty; the latter was inconsistent with moral rectitude, and tended to the destruction of freedom and to the production of every evil that could afflict a community.” The speaker then described the Democratic Societies as “self-created, without delegation or control, not emanating from the people, or responsible to them; not open in their deliberations; not admitting any but those of their own political opinions; permanent in their constitution, and of unlimited duration.” These, he said, “modestly assumed the character of popular instructors, guardians of the people, guardians of the government. Every man in the administration who had assented to its acts they had loaded with every species of calumny—slanders—which they knew to be such. They had not even spared that character supposed to have been clothed with inviolability—not the paltry inviolability of constitutional proscription, but an inviolability infinitely more respectable, founded on the public gratitude, and resulting from disinterested and invaluable services.”
The motion upon which this debate arose was finally carried in committee of the whole, but by a very small majority. The struggle was renewed when it was reported to the house. Finally, a compromise was effected by inserting in the address a declaration of great concern on the part of the house, “that any misrepresentations whatever of the government and its proceedings, either by individuals or combinations of men, should have been made, and so far have been credited as to foment the flagrant outrage which had been committed on the laws.”
It was very evident, from the debates and the votes on this and other questions brought up by the president's message, that the government was growing stronger, and the opposition in Congress weaker. Jefferson, the father of the opposition, who had declared that his retiracy from the political world should be profound, was alarmed at these manifestations of the declining strength of his party, and he was moved to let his voice be heard once more. On the twenty-eighth of December he wrote to Madison, the republican leader in the lower house, an angry letter concerning the president's remarks about the “self-created societies,” saying:—
“The denunciation of the Democratic Societies is one of the extraordinary acts of boldness of which we have seen so many from the faction of monocrats. It is wonderful indeed that the president should have permitted himself to be the organ of such an attack on the freedom of discussion, the freedom of writing, printing, and publishing.” After making an ungenerous attack upon the Society of the Cincinnati, he proceeded: “I here put out of sight the persons whose misbehavior has been taken advantage of to slander the friends of popular rights; and I am happy to observe that, as far as the circle of my observation and information extends, everybody has lost sight of them, and views the abstract attempt on their natural and constitutional rights in all its nakedness. I have never heard, or heard of, a single expression or opinion which did not condemn it as an inexcusable aggression.”
Then, in full sympathy with the whiskey insurrectionists, he said: “And with respect to the transactions against the excise law, it appears to me that you are all swept away in the torrent of governmental opinions, or that we do not know what these transactions have been. We know of none which, according to the definitions of the law, have been anything more than riotous. There was, indeed, a meeting to consult about a separation. But to consult on a question does not amount to a determination of that question in the affirmative, still less to the acting on such a determination; but we shall see, I suppose, what the court lawyers, and courtly judges, and would-be embassadors will make of it. The excise law is an infernal one. The first error was to admit it by the constitution; the second, to act on that admission; the third and last will be, to make it the instrument of dismembering the Union, and setting us all afloat to choose what part of it we will adhere to. The information of our militia returned from the westward is uniform, that though the people there let them pass quietly, they were objects of their laughter, not of their fear; that one thousand men could have cut off their whole force in a thousand places of the Alleghany; that their detestation of the excise law is universal, and has now associated to it a detestation of the government; and that separation, which perhaps was a very distant and problematical event, is now near, and certain, and determined in the mind of every man. I expected to have seen some justification of arming one part of society against another; of declaring a civil war the moment before the meeting of that body which has the sole right of declaring war; of being so patient of the kicks and scoffs of our enemies, and rising at a feather against our friends; of adding a million to the public debt, and deriding us with recommendations to pay it if we can.”
But the medicines of most powerful friends could not cure the mortal malady that now afflicted the Democratic Societies. As it happened with Genet, their founder, so it now happened with these societies; the great mass of the people had learned to reprobate them. The denunciations of the president, co-operating with the downfall of the Jacobin clubs in France—kindred societies—soon produced their dissolution. Monroe, in an official despatch, had set in its true light the character of the Jacobin clubs, as interfering with the government; and in the United States, their confréres, the Democratic societies, soon sank into merited obscurity.
In his message, Washington announced that “the intelligence from the army under the command of General Wayne was a happy presage to military operations against the hostile Indians north of the Ohio.” Wayne, as we have seen, had succeeded St. Clair after that veteran's unfortunate defeat in the autumn of 1791. He marched into the Indian country in 1793, and near the spot where St. Clair was surprised he built Fort Recovery. There he was attacked by the Indians at the close of June, 1794, but without receiving much damage. General Scott arrived there not long afterward from Kentucky, with eleven hundred volunteers, and then Wayne advanced to the confluence of the Maumee and Au Glaize rivers, “the grand emporium,” as he called it, of the Indians. They fled precipitately; and there Wayne built a strong stockade, for the permanent occupation of that beautiful country, and called it Fort Defiance.
The main body of the Indians had retired down the Maumee about thirty miles, where they took a hostile attitude. With about three thousand men, Wayne marched against them, and near the present Maumee City he fought and defeated them, on the twentieth of August. He then laid waste their country, and the trading establishment of the British agent in their midst was burned. There seemed little doubt that he had stirred up the savages against the Americans.
Wayne fell back to Fort Defiance three days after the battle; and at the beginning of November, after a successful campaign of three months, during which time he had marched three hundred miles along a road cut by his own army, gained an important victory, driven the Indians from their principal settlement, and left a strong post in the heart of their country, he placed his army into winter-quarters at Greenville. The western tribes were humbled and disheartened; and early in August, the following year, their principal chiefs and United States' commissioners met at Greenville and made a treaty of peace. The Indians ceded to the United States a large tract of land in the present states of Michigan and Indiana, and for more than ten years afterward the government had very little trouble with the western savages.
In his message, Washington urged the adoption of some definite plan for the redemption of the public debt. “Nothing,” he said, “can more promote the permanent welfare of the nation, and nothing would be more grateful to our constituents.” At his request, Hamilton, the secretary of the treasury, prepared a plan, digested and arranged on the basis of the actual revenues for the further support of the public credit. It was one of the ablest state papers of the many that had proceeded from his pen during his official career. It was reported on the twentieth of January, 1795, and this was Hamilton's last official act. He had, on the first of December, immediately after his return from western Pennsylvania, addressed the following letter to the president:—