Jefferson and Hamilton

by Claude G. Bowers

Scarcely had he begun the practice of his profession when he took a commanding position. Hard work, a noble ambition, and native talent made him a success. But he could not have been a Livingston and indifferent to politics. Very early his capacity and popularity swept him into the fight. Strangely enough, he immediately became the idol of the masses. This aristocrat was a democrat who was able to move in the crowd with a distinction that commanded respect while compelling affection. Perhaps the artisans, the clerks, the lowly were flattered by his smile and condescension, perhaps captivated by his fighting mettle—whatever the cause, they loved him, gathered about and sustained him. The Tammany of his time marshaled its forces for him, and all the wit and wiles of Hamilton could not harm him. But the Federalists hated him. What moral right had a man of wealth and intellectual distinction and social prestige to affiliate with the ‘mob’? They hated him as deserters are hated—he was an American Égalité to Mrs. Bingham’s drawing-room, and Wolcott hated him less because he ‘lived like a nabob’ than because he fought like the devil.[1107]

III

Quite a different type was Albert Gallatin—and yet both were born aristocrats. From the beginning of the republic at Geneva in the sixteenth century, his family had been second to none in prestige and power. The governmental system was aristocratic; his people were uncompromising aristocrats, and five Gallatins had been, at one time or another, head of the State. Into this reactionary atmosphere he was born, and in it he passed his youth. At the home of his grandmother, a domineering but clever old autocrat, who believed in the divine right of the aristocracy to rule, he often met Voltaire. Strange couple, that old woman worshiping tradition, and that cynical old philosopher sneering it away. And yet in his family Gallatin was an exotic. Instinctively he despised the system his people thought sacred. Rousseau may have influenced him, but he was probably born with democracy in his blood. When his grandmother arranged to get him a commission in the mercenary army of her friend the Landgrave of Hess, and he scornfully refused on the ground that he would ‘never serve a tyrant,’ the old woman boxed his ears—but without jarring his principles.[1108] He was a grave disappointment in the family circle. It is a notable coincidence that like Hamilton he was remarkably precocious. He graduated from the Academy of Geneva in his seventeenth year, first in his class in mathematics, natural philosophy, and Latin translation. There, too, he had studied history under Müller, the eminent historian, and in the facts and philosophy of world history he was to have no equal in American public life. Nothing contributed more to his desertion of his country than his hatred of its petty aristocracy, its autocratic rule.

He was a dreamer in his youth. Was it Rousseau who planted in him a dislike of cities and a passion for the wilderness? Secretly he left Geneva and came to America, landing in Boston. He carried a letter of introduction from Benjamin Franklin to his son-in-law, the father of the editor of ‘The Aurora’ at Philadelphia. A few dreary months in Boston, a happier winter in a cabin in the wilderness of northern Maine, a year at Harvard as a teacher of French, a short time in Philadelphia in a boarding-house with Pelatiah Webster, the political philosopher, and the lure of land speculation led him to Virginia. There, in Richmond, some of his happiest days were passed. Society was courteous, kindly, and there he came in contact with great minds. John Marshall invited him into his office with the prediction that he would distinguish himself at the Bar, and Patrick Henry advised him to go West, with the observation that he was intended for statesmanship. At this time he was a youth of twenty-one with a pronounced foreign accent. Washington met him, and, impressed with his keenness, offered to make him his land agent—an honor happily declined. Then into the wilderness of Pennsylvania; a house on a hilltop which he called ‘Friendship Hill’; a domestic tragedy—the death of his young wife; and soon the Whiskey Boys, keen of vision as Marshall, Henry, or Washington, literally swept him into public life.

He was primarily a democrat and an opponent of strong government. Fascinated by the work of the Constitutional Convention, he thought the Executive had been given too much power. But he was opposed to tinkering with constitutions once adopted.[1109] As a member of the convention to revise the Constitution of Pennsylvania, he worked as earnestly as had Madison in the greater convention, fighting with moderation, but persistence for a popular government, for the freedom of the press, and popular suffrage. It is significant that when the subject of courts was reached he sought the advice of John Marshall—and received it.[1110] His views on the French Revolution were those of Jefferson. He recognized the many excesses, the greed of demagogues for power, and he did not expect ‘a very good government within a short time,’ but he knew ‘their cause to be that of mankind against tyranny’ and that ‘no foreign nation has the right to dictate a government to them.’[1111] One glance at Genêt revealed to him the naked man—‘totally unfit for the place he fills,’ his abilities ‘slender.’[1112] Yet, like Jefferson, despite the massacres in Paris and the Genêt excesses in Philadelphia, he clung to France because, ‘if France is annihilated, as seems to be the desire of the combined powers, sad indeed will the consequences be for America.’[1113] If he opposed the Excise Law, as was his right, he had a reason, and it was sane.[1114] The charge the Federalists were to make, that he had incited the hard-pressed pioneers to violations of the law, was maliciously false. Throughout that insurrection, his part was hard, and he met it with sanity and courage.

This was the background of this remarkable man when, at the age of thirty-five, he stepped forward with the confidence of a veteran to assume the intellectual leadership of the Jeffersonians in the House. A shy man in social relations, he was utterly fearless in debate. There was no mind in that body so well stocked with facts, and none with a broader vision or deeper penetration. There was no one more masterful in logic, more clear, downright, incisive in statement, and none more impervious to abuse. His was the dignity of a superior mentality. If his foreign accent was still pronounced, and members, priding themselves on their refinement and taste, sneered openly, he remained the perfect gentleman, indifferent to such jeers. In the midst of excitement, he was calm. When others were demoralized, he kept his head. No greater figure ever stood upon the floor of an American Congress than when Albert Gallatin appeared, to force notable reforms in the fiscal system, and to challenge the Federalists to an intellectual combat that would call forth their extreme exertions.

IV

One of the most important and brilliant debates in American history, surpassing that on the Foote Resolutions, was precipitated early in March when Edward Livingston threw a bomb into the complacent camp of the Federalists with resolutions calling upon the President to lay before the House the instructions and papers pertaining to the Jay Treaty. There was some maneuvering in the beginning to feel out the position of the enemy, and then the members settled down to a month of memorable debating. On the whole, the discussion was pitched upon a high plane, for the question was one of constitutional interpretation. Throughout, there was scarcely a touch of personalities, albeit Tracy, described by his admirers as the ‘Burke of Connecticut,’ and by his enemies as the ‘Burke of Connecticut without his intelligence,’ could not restrain a stupid sneer at the accent of Gallatin who led for the enemies of the treaty. A Pennsylvania member denounced Tracy’s vulgar conduct as ‘intolerable,’ and there were many cries of ‘order.’ With the brazen effrontery of his school, Tracy asked Speaker Dayton to decide, and that rather disreputable speculator, if not peculator, held it in order to insult Gallatin with impunity.[1115] But this incident was happily unique.

The Livingston Resolutions were based upon the theory that the House was a party to the treaty in that it would be asked to make appropriations to carry it into effect, and that the facts were necessary to the determination of its course. This was in perfect accord with the position of Jefferson.[1116] The Federalists contended that the President and Senate alone were officially concerned, and that the House was obligated to carry out any financial arrangements entered into in a treaty. Did not the Constitution specifically say that the treaty-making power was lodged in the President and the Senate? Conceded, replied the opposition, but the Constitution also said that money bills must originate in the House, and in making appropriations for any purpose the popular branch of Congress is constitutionally bound to use its own discretion. Both sides could, and did, appeal to the Constitution. There was nothing merely factious or obstructive in the fight of the opposition, and it is impossible to peruse the seven hundred and nine pages of the debates without a realization of the complete sincerity of the participants. Into the debate dashed all the leaders of the first order. The galleries were packed. The discussion was the sole conversational topic in streets and coffee-houses. The newspapers printed the leading speeches in full. Even the Federal courts injected themselves into the controversy, and one jurist introduced a denunciation of the enemies of the treaty into his charge to the grand jury.[1117] Fenno stupidly stumbled into the blunder of proving the opponents of the treaty a ‘Robespierre faction’ by quoting the London ‘Morning Chronicle,’[1118] and Cobbett, the Englishman and Federalist pamphleteer, selected this particular time to outrage the Philadelphia ‘rabble’ by filling his windows with pictures of kings, queens, princes, dukes, Pitt, Grenville, and George III. With studied insolence, he added some portraits of American Revolutionary heroes, and ‘found out fit companions for them.’ Thus he ‘coupled Franklin with Marat’ and ‘M’Kean and Ankerstrom.’[1119]

The burden of the debate was borne by Gallatin, Madison, Livingston, and Giles for the Resolutions, and by Sedgwick and Griswold against them. Livingston spoke with spirited eloquence and with that power of reasoning which was afterward to compel his recognition as one of the foremost political thinkers of his time.[1120] Giles sustained his reputation as a fluent, forceful, slashing debater. Madison spoke with moderation; but the honors of primacy fell to Gallatin. He was a revelation, and the Federalists were beside themselves with rage. Tall, and above medium size, his fine face aglow with intelligence, his black eyes burning with earnestness, his profile resembling in its sharp outlines that of a Frenchman, his accent foreign, his delivery slow and a little embarrassed, he spoke with a clarity and force that made the Federalists wince. Livingston was more showy, Giles more boisterous, Madison more academic. This new man was another Madison with greater punch.[1121] He did not wander a moment from his argument—the constitutional rights of the House in the case of treaties involving appropriations.