VII
Its leaders realized the hopelessness of their prospects. Many did not care. McHenry, smarting in Maryland, wrote Wolcott that the lack of courage and initiative on the part of the leaders, and their failure to fight Adams in the open, meant defeat. What did they do? ‘They write private letters,’ said the scornful poet-politician. ‘To whom? To each other, but they do nothing to give direction to the public mind. They observe even in their conversation a discreet circumspection generally, ill calculated to diffuse information.... They meditate in private.... If the party recovers its pristine character ... shall I ascribe it to such cunning, paltry, indecisive, back-door conduct?’[1852] And for once in his life McHenry was wise and right. Unable to meet the issues, the Federalist Big-Wigs still hoped to win through sharp practice. They got their cue from the Jeffersonians, who, finding from the election of the year before that the selection of electors by districts would result in the loss of one or two in Virginia, changed the law and provided for their election by the Legislature. This was enough for the Federalists in Massachusetts, where district elections would have given Jefferson at least two votes. Otis and others wrote the Speaker of the House and the President of the Senate to change the law and have the Legislature choose. The change was made. Estopped from complaining by their own action in Virginia, the Jeffersonians denounced the change in Massachusetts as a trick of the Essex Junto to rob Adams and elect Pinckney,[1853] and much bitterness was aroused. In Maryland the district system was favorable to the Jeffersonians and the Federalists there were importuned from without to have the Governor call an extraordinary session of the Legislature to give that body the power.[1854] Owing to the almost equal strength of the parties in that State, however, the leaders were afraid to act, and a series of letters appeared, first in the Baltimore ‘Gazette,’ and later in pamphlet form, citing the action of the Democrats in Virginia and the retaliation in Massachusetts. ‘Should the State of Maryland suffer itself to be bullied out of its rights ... by the clamors of the partisans in Virginia?’ demanded the author.[1855] ‘The Aurora’ charged that James Carroll had said at Annapolis that the Governor should call the General Assembly together to deprive the people of the right to vote for electors.[1856] But when it came to the test the courage of the Marylanders failed and no change was made.
Only in Pennsylvania did the Jeffersonians have a real grievance. The most sanguine of the Federalists could find no silver lining to the cloud here. Fitzsimmons complained that in Philadelphia, ‘a city of 60,000 inhabitants, not a man is to be found who is fit for the station who will accept the nomination for Congress.’[1857] The envenomed Uriah Tracy, after traveling through the State, thought the outlook hopeless. M’Kean had ‘brought forward every scoundrel who can read and write into office.’ The Democrats, ‘with the joy and ferocity of the damned,’ were enjoying ‘the mortification of the few remaining honest men.’ Tracy had seen ‘very many Irishmen’ throughout the State—‘the most God-provoking Democrats this side of hell.’ Then ‘the Germans are both stupid, ignorant and ugly, and are to the Irish what the negroes of the South are to their drivers.’ The Democrats were ‘establishing presses and newspapers in almost every town and county in the country and the Federal presses are failing for want of support.’[1858] Under these conditions the Federalists conceived the idea of depriving Pennsylvania of any voice at all in the election—an idea not unreasonable, since no provision had been made as to the method of choosing electors. In July, Senator Bingham had written Wolcott that there was little probability that the State would have ‘any agency in the election,’ but in any event its vote would be ‘equalized from the preponderance which the parties reciprocally possess in the two branches of the Legislature.’[1859]
In November, Governor M’Kean called an extraordinary session. In the Senate the Federalists had a small majority; in the House the Democrats had the advantage; on joint ballot the Democrats outnumbered their opponents. The Democrats urged a joint ballot; the Federalists laughed the proposal to scorn. Excitement rose to fever heat. Charges were made that Liston, the British Minister, was using money to affect the result.[1860] The State, at the moment, was Jeffersonian, and the legislators were deluged with petitions for a joint ballot, but petitions from the people had never impressed the Hamiltonians. These stood firm—holding the power of veto. At length they made a concession to the end that the State might not be deprived of any voice. The Senate could select seven electors, the House eight. The Democrats writhed and raved without avail. The Federalists were relentless.
CHAPTER XXI
DEMOCRACY TRIUMPHANT
I
THE final contest was staged in the new capital at Washington. It was as though destiny had arranged a new setting for the new drama on which the curtain was now rising. In the glamorous days of Federalist supremacy, Philadelphia, with its wealth, its fashion, and princely houses, harmonized with the spirit of government. The aristocratic party thrived in an atmosphere of luxury. Consistency called for a stage setting of more simplicity, in a wilderness suggesting the frontier, when the curtain rose on the triumph of democracy.
When that charming philosopher of cynicism, Gouverneur Morris, just elected to the Senate, reached the new capital in the clearing, after days of bumping and hardships on the woodsy road through Maryland, he looked about him with a smile and chuckled. Writing the Princesse de la Tour et Taxis, he poked gentle fun at the new seat of government. ‘We only need here houses, cellars, kitchens, scholarly men, amiable women, and a few other such trifles to possess a perfect city,’ he said, ‘for we can walk over it as we would in the fields and woods, and, on account of a strong frost, the air is quite pure. I enjoy it all the more because my room fills with smoke as soon as the door is closed.... I hasten to assure you that building stone is plentiful, that excellent bricks are baked here, that we are not wanting in sites for magnificent mansions ...; in a word, that this is the best city in the world to live in—in the future.’[1861]
Ten days before Morris wrote, Mrs. Adams had reached the capital in the wilds looking older and graver, and without a ceremonious reception, due to jealousies among the socially ambitious over the choice of a master of ceremonies.[1862] After the well-traveled roads to Philadelphia, the journey to Washington had been quite enough to add to both her age and gravity. On the way from Baltimore her party had been lost in the woods, wandering aimlessly about for two hours until rescued by a wandering negro. ‘Woods are all you see from Baltimore until you reach this city, which is only so in name,’ she wrote her daughter. ‘Here and there, a small cot, without a glass window, interspersed amongst the forest through which you travel miles without seeing a human being.’ Nor was the grandeur of the President’s house entirely to her liking. From her windows she could see on the Potomac the ‘vessels as they pass and repass.’ But a rapid survey of the large mansion with its numerous draughty rooms, convinced her that it would require thirty servants ‘to attend and keep the apartment in order, and perform the ordinary business of the house and stables.’ Not a single apartment finished. ‘The great unfinished audience [East] room I have made a drying room of to hang up the clothes in,’ she wrote glumly. But—added the tactful Abigail—‘when asked how I like it, say that I write you the situation is beautiful, which is true.’[1863] A few days later she wrote of the impatience of the ladies for a drawing-room, but ‘I have no looking glasses but dwarfs for this house, nor a twentieth part lamps enough to light it.’[1864] Had the disgusted Abigail fared forth for a peep into the living arrangements of others, she might have thought herself more fortunate. But surveying the city from her point of vantage she would have found little to tempt to a tour of inspection.
Even then, it was a ‘city of magnificent distances,’ the houses separated by miles of mud roads, not entirely free from stumps. Travel by night was precarious. Blackness impenetrable, except when the moon was at its full, settled down over the homes and the frog ponds. Morris, having made an evening call, was forced to remain all night, for the road was ‘not merely deep but dangerous to drive in the dark.’[1865] James A. Bayard and a party of Federalist leaders, venturing forth on a return to their lodgings from the home of a friend two miles from town, were caught in a storm, and the coachman losing his way, they drove about the waste lands throughout the night, threatened every moment by the ruts and ravines.[1866]