Jefferson had not the cool, dispassionate judgment of Washington. He was a violent partisan. He believed the federalists were striving for a monarchy; he spoke of the great Chief-Justice Marshall, when he disagreed with a decision made by him, as a sly old fox. Both Jefferson and Madison were displeased with the rulings of Marshall on the trial of Burr for treason. The reason of their displeasure was the strict construction the Chief Justice gave to the law punishing that offence, not the too liberal wielding of the judicial powers. The enactment of the Alien and Sedition laws and their enforcement were to Jefferson outrageous violations of liberty, and of the very amendments to the Constitution for which Virginia and Massachusetts and New York had been so persistent. He believed that the federal party was determined to keep possession of the government by crushing out the freedom of the press and the people. To oppose this, to prevent what he thought was a tyrannical abuse of authority with the intent of perpetuating itself, he was willing to put to question the fundamental authority of the government to pull down the whole structure. He found that his own State, Virginia, did not acquiesce in the doctrines of Kentucky. By a letter of his of the date of November 17, 1798, it appears he sent a draft of the Kentucky resolutions to Madison, saying that we should distinctly affirm all these important principles, not however stating that he was the author. When he came into power, if he thought of the matter at all, he must have seen that the practice of nullification would be the end of all United States government. What these resolutions actually were had apparently not been understood by the other States. Madison, his Secretary of State, who always maintained the supremacy of the General Government, was his dear friend and undoubtedly then, as in after years, his adviser. Nor was his change of principles, if there were any change, more strange than his change of dress. Mr. Adams tells us he began his administration by receiving the gorgeously dressed foreign ministers in his threadbare coat, old much soiled corduroy small clothes, faded by many washings, and slippers without heels; for these clothes he afterwards substituted a dress of black, clean linen, and powdered hair. Is it Carlyle that says that clothes and principles are the same—that they make the man?
That Jefferson ever afterwards believed in the nationality of the Union, is shown by his administration and correspondence, and made evident by his acts in the crowning work of his life, the establishing of the University of Virginia. That he was the founder, he directed should be inscribed on the monument over his grave. In Charlottesville, where the mountains of the Blue Ridge come down to the plains that stretch many miles to the sea, was Monticello, Jefferson’s charming home, the seat of his unbounded hospitality, and close to that of Madison. Near by amongst the rolling hills, most picturesquely placed by the direction of Jefferson, are the pleasing colonnaded buildings of the University, planned by his own hand. It is the University’s boast, but questioned by Harvard College, that Jefferson introduced there the system of elective studies, that is now spreading so widely. There were but four things that Jefferson declared should be obligatory to the University: one was the study of the Federalist,—the work of Hamilton, Madison, and Jay, expounding the national doctrines of the founders of the Republic, with no countenance of those of the Kentucky resolutions. To-day Jefferson’s directions are observed, and the Federalist remains the text-book.[87]
No President until Lincoln, save perhaps Madison in his first administration, had so troublesome a time as Jefferson in his second term of office. The rights of the United States, a small, weak power, were not only disregarded by England and France in their deadly struggle, but decrees were issued confiscating property and vessels engaged in what by the laws of nations is now universally held to be a lawful trade. Great Britain impressed sailors from American vessels, and one of her men-of-war arrogantly fought and captured a smaller United States frigate, killing and wounding many of her crew, and taking from the disabled ship her claimed subjects.
Jefferson’s great panacea to cure these evils and to bring England and France to respect and grant our rights was the forcing of non-intercourse on the high seas between the United States and all foreign countries—an embargo on all shipping. By virtue of the power in the Constitution to regulate commerce, Jefferson and his party destroyed it. The vessels were left rotting at the wharves, and ship-building and the many industries depending upon it and the sale of the products of the country abroad were stopped. The New England States suffered particularly by this arbitrary decree; they had an extensive and flourishing neutral commerce; their merchants had amassed great wealth. They, as Mr. Webster said, brought the matter to trial before the United States Court; the case was decided against them, and they submitted. No Northern State passed any resolutions affirming the doctrine of its sovereignty and its right to judge of what seemed to many “a deliberate, palpable, and dangerous exercise of powers not granted” by the Constitution. Instead of asserting sovereignty to judge, the Massachusetts Legislature passed in 1809 a resolve proposing an amendment of the Constitution prohibiting the laying of an embargo beyond a limited period. The measure failed because of not obtaining the consent of the other States.
It is always to be carefully borne in mind that the declarations of Quincy, Pickering, and Griswold, brought forward by Southern writers, favoring or threatening a separation, were never made on the ground of the sovereignty of a State and its right to secede. The doctrine of those who held the most extreme opinions was that the policy and acts of the general government were so tyrannical and oppressive that the eastern commercial States were justified in rebellion and in separating themselves from the more southern States, where the political party was dominant, that had most grievously oppressed and impoverished them and annihilated their commerce in a futile attempt to injure Great Britain. This was not a claim of right to leave the Union and dissolve it at pleasure. Indeed, when the leaders went too far in their discontent, the people of the Eastern States would sometimes elect governors and representatives of the Republican party. The spirit of loyalty to the Union and the love of a common country would always spring up and assert itself when it came to the question of disunion and treason.
Towards the close of the war of 1812 there was great discontent at the failure of the government to repel the English forces from Maine, then a portion of Massachusetts. Troops raised in that State were sent to the defence of our more western Canadian boundary. Beyond the discontent, there was some disloyalty. At this time the Hartford convention was called by Massachusetts. That convention did not even pass resolutions of hostility to the Union. The convention was called to devise means of security and defence “not repugnant to their obligations as members of the Union,” and, according to Mr. Lodge, Josiah Quincy was not made a delegate by reason of his extreme views.[88] The convention neither asserted nor suggested nullification or secession, but proposed amendments to the Constitution. Its recommendations were of no particular importance.[89] The only persons who were affected by its doings were the members, who ever afterwards suffered politically from a taint of disloyalty. Peace soon came and terminated the oppressive grievances and removed the discontent.
Not only as stated in the beginning of this [article] is the Hartford convention with the Kentucky and Virginia resolutions brought forward by Mr. Lodge in proof of the weakness of the Union, but Southern orators and writers delight in referring to that convention in justification of nullification and secession. We have the journal of the proceedings, of the motions made and votes passed. Is it not the strongest proof possible of the universal belief in the nationality of our government that nobody, in that body of malcontents, suggested that any right existed to refuse an obedience to the laws and policy of the administration they deemed so oppressive?
After the purchase of Louisiana came that of Florida, also enlarging the territory of the Union and curtailing the relative power in it of each of the old States. The charter of a second United States Bank was granted by the party that in the first Congress had opposed it and claimed to be strict constructionists of the Constitution. Madison justified his assent on the ground of the general approval and the opinion of the Supreme Court establishing its constitutionality.[90] Historically there is no attempt to maintain, no assertion of, the doctrine of the Kentucky resolutions from the time they were passed until the debate in the Congress of 1830. The only trace of them is in the resolutions frequently passed by the Legislatures of States, which are mere opinions beyond their legislative powers, that certain laws of the government were unconstitutional and therefore null and void. If unconstitutional, they were and are null and void, but no State ever treated them as null and void. The United States Government, by its judiciary, however, took cognizance of all State laws in conflict with its laws and authority, and maintained uniformly its national supremacy.