Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3.

by Benson John Lossing

At this moment, when the debate had been going on for several days and the spirit of the opposition began to flag, Albert Gallatin came to the support of his party, in a speech which at once gave him the position of republican leader in the house, the honor of which had been divided between Madison and Giles, of Virginia. Gallatin was a native of Geneva, in Switzerland, and then only thirty years of age. He had been only eleven years in the country, two of which he had served the people of his adoption in a military capacity. After the Revolution he established himself on the Monongahela, in western Pennsylvania, where his talents soon caused him to be called into public life. He was engaged, as we have seen, in the Whiskey Insurrection, but with patriotic intentions, as he alleged; and by a large popular vote he was elected to a seat in the house of representatives. Although a foreign accent was plainly visible when he spoke, he was so fluent in language, so earnest in manner, and so logical in argument, that his youth and foreign birth were forgotten for the moment, and he was listened to with the greatest pleasure.

Gallatin had heard the speeches on both sides with marked attention, and was prepared to take new ground in his own. Quoting from Vattel on the law of nations, he went on to show that slaves, being real estate, were not a subject of booty, but, on the restoration of peace, fell back to their former owners, like the soil to which they were attached. He attempted to excite, evidently for party purposes, sectional hatred by declaring that while the rights of the South and West had been sacrificed by the treaty, in respect to negroes, the Indian trade, and the navigation of the Mississippi, means had been found to protect the commercial interests of the North. With the same breath, however, he denounced the commercial articles of the treaty as utterly worthless, and adroitly charged the senate, by insinuation, with ignorance respecting the East Indian trade, falsely assuming that because the treaty did not, by express provisions, secure the East Indian coasting trade, and the direct voyage from India to Europe by American vessels, that these privileges had been relinquished.

Like Madison, he regarded the provision respecting neutrals as yielding everything to the semi-piratical policy of Great Britain. He contended strenuously for the dishonest measure of sequestration of private debts due to British subjects, as a means of coercion, and condemned that most just provision of the treaty, bearing upon that subject, without stint. While we have promised full indemnity to England, he said, for every possible claim against us, we had abandoned every claim of a doubtful nature, and agreed to receive the western posts under the most degrading restrictions concerning the trade with the Indians. We had gained nothing, he said, by the arrangements respecting trade and navigation, while we had parted with “every pledge in our hands, every power of restriction, every weapon of self-defence.”

He admitted that if this treaty should be rejected, another as favorable might not be obtained; but he argued, that while the United States would lose the western posts and the indemnity for spoliations, they would be pecuniary gainers by escaping the payment of the British debts. He did not wish, nor did his party, an utter rejection of the treaty, but a suspension or postponement of it, until the British should cease their encroachments, and reparations for such wrongs might be obtained. He scouted as utterly chimerical, the idea that war would necessarily follow such postponement, or even a positive rejection; and he treated the menaces of the dissolution of the Union with scorn. He significantly asked, Who will dissolve the government? The opposition majority had no motive for doing it, and he did not believe that the federalists would, at the first failure of their power, revenge themselves by overthrowing the government. He expressed his belief that the people, from one end of the Union to the other, were strongly attached to the constitution, and that they would punish any party or set of men who should attempt to subvert it. He rested in full security on the people, against any endeavor to destroy the Union or the government. He regarded the cry of disunion and of war as designed only to work upon the fears of Congress, and force an acquiescence in the treaty. “It was the fear of being involved in a war,” he said, “that the negotiations with Great Britain had originated; under the impression of fear the treaty had been negotiated and signed; fear had promoted its ratification; and now, every imaginary mischief was conjured up to frighten the house, to deprive it of that discretion which it had the right to exercise, to force it to carry this treaty into effect.” He also charged the merchants of Philadelphia and other seaports[94] with having formed a combination to produce alarm, and to make their efforts more effectual, had also combined to cease insuring vessels, purchasing produce, or transacting any business, to induce the people to join in the attempt to force the house to pass laws for carrying the treaty into effect.”

“To listen calmly to this denunciation of Washington and Jay,” says Hildreth, “as having pusillanimously surrendered the honor of their country—Washington in setting on foot and in ratifying, and Jay in having negotiated, the treaty—coming as it did from the mouth of one whose evident youth and foreign accent might alone serve to betray him as an adventurer, whose arrival in the country could hardly have been long anterior to the termination of the Revolutionary struggle, was somewhat too much for human nature to bear. There was also something a little provoking in the denunciation of the merchants as having conspired to terrify the house, coming from a man who had first obtained general notoriety, it was now hardly four years since, by the publication of his name at the bottom of a series of resolutions, of which the avowed object was to frighten public officers from the discharge of their duty by threats of a social interdict and non-intercourse—a method of proceeding which had ended in violent resistance to the laws and armed insurrection. Nor is it very surprising, all things considered, that many of the federalists were inclined to look on Gallatin as a foreign emissary, a tool of France, and employed and paid to make mischief.”[95]

Tracy, of Connecticut, replied to the most prominent points of Gallatin's speech. He denied that Vattel gave any such opinion as to slaves, as set forth by Gallatin; and called attention to the fact that the British did not refuse to restore them as booty, but because they were men set free by having joined the British standard, that freedom being the chief inducement held out to them. Other points he commented upon with equal force. He warmed with his theme, and at length became severely personal. The opposition, he said, ask, with an air of triumphant complacency, How is there to be war, if we are not disposed to fight, and Great Britain has no motive for hostilities? “But look at the probable state of things,” he continued: “Great Britain is to retain the western posts, and with them, the confidence of the Indians; she makes no compensation for the millions spoliated from our commerce, but adds new millions to our already heavy losses. Would Americans quietly see their government strut, look big, call hard names, repudiate treaties, and then tamely put up with new and aggravated injuries? Whatever might be the case in other parts of the Union, his constituents were not of a temper to dance round a whiskey-pole one day, cursing the government, and to sneak, the next day, into a swamp, on hearing that a military force was marching against them. They knew their rights, and, if the government were unable, or unwilling, to give them protection, they would find other means to secure it. He could not feel thankful to any gentleman for coming all the way from Geneva to accuse Americans of pusillanimity.”

This allusion to Gallatin elicited cries of order from many of the opposition, and for awhile the excitement in the house was intense. The chairman decided that Mr. Tracy was in order, and desired him to go on. He disclaimed any intention to be personal, asked pardon for any improprieties of which he might have been guilty in the heat of debate, and excused himself with the plea, that such charges against the American government and people, from such a source, were naturally very offensive.

Fourteen days had now been occupied with this debate, when Fisher Ames, of Massachusetts, whose feebleness of health had kept him away from the house a part of the session, and made him a quiet spectator until now, arose in his place, and addressed the assemblage on the great subject. It was known that he was to speak on that day (twenty-eighth of April), and the house was crowded with an audience eager to hear the orator. He was pale, tottering, hardly able to stand on his feet, when he first arose, but as he became warmed with the subject, his whole being seemed to gather strength every moment, and he delivered a speech which was never forgotten by those who heard it. It was the great speech of the session, exhibiting a wonderful comprehension of human nature and the springs of political action; logic the most profound; the most biting ridicule, and pathetic eloquence. His speech exhibits such a summary, in its allusions, to the scope of the arguments of the opposition, and throws such light upon the growth and state of parties, that we make long extracts from it.

“The suggestion a few days ago,” he said, “that the house manifested symptoms of heat and irritation, was made and retorted as if the charge ought to create surprise, and would convey reproach. Let us be more just to ourselves and the occasion. Let us not effect to deny the existence and the intrusion of some portion of prejudice and feeling into the debate, when, from the very structure of our own nature, we ought to anticipate the circumstance as a probability; and when we are admonished by the evidence of our senses that it is a fact, how can we make professions for ourselves, and offer exhortations to the house, that no influence should be felt but that of duty, and no guide respected but that of the understanding, while the peal to rally every passion of man is continually ringing in our ears? Our understandings have been addressed, it is true, and with ability and effect; but, I demand, has any corner of the heart been unexplored? It has been ransacked to find auxiliary arguments; and, when that attempt failed, to awaken the sensibility that would require none. Every prejudice and feeling has been summoned to listen to some peculiar style of address; and yet we seem to believe and to consider a doubt as an affront, that we are strangers to any influence but that of unbiassed reason.... It is very unfairly pretended, that the constitutional right of this house is at stake, and to be asserted and preserved only by a vote in the negative. We hear it said, that this is a struggle for liberty, a manly resistance against the design to nullify the existence of this assembly, and to make it a cypher in the government; that the president and senate, the numerous meetings in the cities, and the influence of the general alarm of the country, are the agents and instruments of a scheme of coercion and terror, and in spite of the clearest convictions of duty and conscience.

“It is necessary to pause here, and inquire whether suggestions of this kind be not unfair in their very texture and fabric, and pernicious in all their influences. They oppose an obstacle in the path of inquiry, not simply discouraging, but absolutely insurmountable. They will not yield to argument; for, as they were not reasoned up, they can not be reasoned down. They are higher than a Chinese wall in truth's way, and built of materials that are indestructible. While this remains, it is vain to say to this mountain, be thou cast into the sea. For I ask of the men of knowledge of the world, whether they would not hold him for a blockhead, that should hope to prevail in an argument, whose scope and object is to mortify the self-love of the expected proselyte? I ask further, when such attempts have been made, whether they have not failed of success? The indignant heart repels the conviction that is believed to debase it.... Let me expostulate with gentlemen to admit, if it be only by way of supposition, and for a moment, that it is barely possible they have yielded too suddenly to their own alarms for the powers of this house; that the addresses which have been made with such variety of forms, and with so great dexterity in some of them, to all that is prejudice and passion in the heart, are either the effects or the instruments of artifice and deception, and then let them see the subject once more in its singleness and simplicity....