John Randolph of Roanoke was notorious for his eccentricities and vagaries, his attacks on all parties and all policies; if he had any opinion it was probably, as he said, that the Virginia resolutions and their explanations were “his political Bible.” What the resolutions and explanations are we have endeavored to set forth.
CHAPTER V.
SUPREMACY OF CONSTITUTION MAINTAINED.
In less than the brief space of two and a half years after the Kentucky resolutions were passed Jefferson became President. If he believed in those resolutions he should at once have made a general jail delivery. All those in prison under United States laws for counterfeiting or forging United States bank bills, robbing or embezzling from the mail, violating the custom-house laws, interfering with the judicial proceedings of the government, or committing any crime, except the few mentioned in the Constitution, should have been set free (for the Kentucky resolutions expressly denounced all the United States laws punishing those crimes “as altogether void and of no force”). Jefferson contented himself with pardoning those imprisoned under the Sedition laws.
In his inaugural address to Congress, at the very beginning of his administration, Jefferson announced principles totally and fundamentally opposed to the Kentucky resolutions. He pleaded for unity, and denied that every difference of opinion was a difference of principle. “We are all Republicans; we are all Federalists.”[81] He declared “the preservation of the general government, in its whole constitutional vigor, as the sheet-anchor of our peace at home and safety abroad.” He also said “absolute acquiescence in the decisions of the majority, the vital principle of republics from which there is no appeal but to force, the vital principle and immediate parent of despotism.”[82] Can anything be more directly opposed to the Kentucky resolutions, that give to every State a veto of every United States law or act that it deems unconstitutional, than these declarations of the preservation of the government in all its constitutional vigor and of absolute acquiescence in the will of the majority? Have they not been, ever since that inauguration day, the cardinal principles of Jeffersonian democracy? Perhaps it is strange that Jefferson, coming from Virginia, did not make the exception of the resolutions of the Legislature of that State, that in case of plain palpable usurpation of powers the people of the States could interpose to redress the evil by constitutional methods. Absolute acquiescence in every decision of the majority abrogates even the right of rebellion against oppressive usurpations that Webster announced. It is but reasonable to suppose that Jefferson would have made this exception of Webster’s and the reasonable affirmations of the Virginia resolutions, if he had been obliged to notice them. No possible argument, however, can reconcile these inaugural principles with the Kentucky resolutions. Is it possible that the great leader of the Republican party could have announced such doctrines if the Republican party of Virginia, of which he was the chief, held precisely the contrary, as Mr. Adams informs us?
Jefferson’s policy during the eight years of his administration was emphatically national, and not that of a favorer of State rights nor even of a strict construction of the powers delegated to the General Government. In March, 1806, he signed an act laying out and making a road from Cumberland, on the Potomac, in Maryland, to Ohio. Again he approved a bill for this purpose in 1810, though from his writings it is apparent he doubted their constitutionality. Madison, Monroe, and Jackson afterwards vetoed bills passed by Congresses of their political faith in favor of this or other roads, because, as they declared, they were beyond the powers granted by the Constitution.
During Jefferson’s administration a serious controversy between the United States and the great State of Pennsylvania as to the national powers of the government came to a crisis. During the revolutionary war the sloop Active, bound for New York with a cargo of supplies for the British, was taken from her master by Gideon Olmstead of Connecticut and three men, who had been impressed by the English and put on the vessel to assist in her navigation. An armed brig of Pennsylvania took the Active from Olmstead and his associates and brought her into the port of Philadelphia. The State Admiralty Court of Pennsylvania tried the case by a jury according to the State laws, awarding to Olmstead and his companions only one quarter of the prize money, and distributing the remainder to the State, and those interested in the brig taking the Active and a companion vessel. An appeal was made by Olmstead from the State court to the Continental Congress as the power that had control of the maritime affairs of the revolting colonies. Congress very properly insisted on its jurisdiction over such cases. The Admiralty Court of Pennsylvania, disregarding this right, ordered the sloop and cargo to be sold, and distributed the proceeds; the Continental Congress, not having the power to enforce its rights, let the matter pass. Some years afterwards, when our new government had gone into effect, Olmstead filed his libel before the United States District Court of Pennsylvania and obtained a decision in his favor reversing the decree of the Pennsylvania court. Judge Peters, of the United States District Court, hesitated to enforce this decree against Pennsylvania, wishing to obtain the sanction of the Supreme Court of the United States. A mandamus was issued by the Supreme Court directing its district court to enforce its decree, Chief-Justice Marshall saying that if a State could annul the judgment of a United States Court the Constitution itself became a solemn mockery. “The State of Pennsylvania can possess no constitutional power to resist the legal process which may be directed in this case.”
The State of Pennsylvania did resist and did pass laws and make military preparations to enforce them. Here was a clear case of conflict between a State and the United States as to the powers the State had given, and where, according to the Kentucky resolutions, and according to Jefferson, if he were the author, the State, as a party to the compact of government, there being no umpire, could lawfully resist and insist on the construction it gave to the case. While this conflict was pending, the Republican party, which was predominant in the United States Congress, both House and Senate, in order to enforce the authority of the United States and the decision of its Court, passed an act authorizing the President, in cases of insurrection or obstruction to the law, to employ such part of the land and naval force of the United States as shall be judged necessary. Jefferson signed this act in 1807, thus sanctioning the compelling of the obedience of a State to the General Government.