All through March he sat in silence listening to the debate on Livingston’s Resolutions, groaning under his physical disability. ‘I am not a sentry, not in the ranks, not on the staff,’ he wrote in disgust. ‘I am thrown into the wagon as part of the baggage.’[1153] With the debate on the treaty itself about to begin, he wrote that he was ‘not fit for debate on the treaty and not able to attend through a whole sitting.’[1154] Thus he watched the swaying fortunes of the fight, sick and feeble, but expected to save the day in a pinch. When he rose that April day to make the final effort for his party, there was drama in the general appreciation of his condition. That Ames enjoyed it, we have no doubt. It was so much like Chatham carried into the House of Peers wrapped in his flannels.
IX
Ames was a consummate actor that spring day. Not without art did he begin with a reference to his frailty. Here was a man ready to die for a cause. Impassionedly he pleaded against passion. The treaty, he said, had ‘raised our character as a nation.’ Its rejection would be a ‘violation of public faith.’ It had ‘more critics than readers,’ and ‘the movements of passion are quicker than those of understanding.’ Lightly he touched upon the constitutional question, and then hastened to his purpose—to discuss the consequences of rejection, to play on fear. With this he expected to win his fight—with this he won. Reject the treaty and leave the posts in the hands of the British and invite war?
‘On this theme,’ he said in his most thrilling tones, ‘my emotions are unutterable. If I could find words for them ... I would swell my voice to such a note of remonstrance, it would reach every log house beyond the mountains. I would say to the inhabitants, wake from your false security, your cruel dangers, your more cruel apprehensions are soon to be renewed; the wounds yet unhealed, are to be torn open again; in the day time your path through the woods will be ambushed, the darkness of midnight will glitter with the blaze of your dwellings. You are a father—the blood of your son shall fatten your corn field. You are a mother—the war whoop shall waken the sleep of the cradle.... By rejecting the posts we light the savage fires, we bind the victims. This day we undertake to render account to the widows and orphans whom our decision will make; to the wretches who will be roasted at the stake; to our country; and I do not deem it too serious to say, to our conscience and God. The voice of humanity issues from the shade of the wilderness; it exclaims that while one hand is held up to reject this treaty, the other grasps a tomahawk. It summons our imagination to the scenes that will open.... I can fancy that I listen to the yells of savage vengeance and the shrieks of torture; already they seem to sigh on the western wind; already they mingle with every echo from the mountains.’
How the frontiersmen in the gallery must have stared at this solicitude for them from a Federalist of New England!
Then, in closing, a perfect piece of art. ‘I have perhaps as little personal interest in the event as any one here. There is, I believe, no member who will not believe his chance to be a witness to the consequences greater than mine. If, however, the vote should pass to reject, and a spirit should rise as it will, with the public disorder to make confusion worse confounded, even I, slender and almost broken as my hold upon life is, may outlive the governments and Constitution of my country.’ He sank into his seat. ‘My God,’ exclaimed a Federal Judge, ‘did you ever hear anything like it?’ Crusty old John Adams wiped his eyes. Accept, said Ames, or England will turn the savages upon you; accept, or your Constitution will be overthrown; accept, or the Republic will be destroyed.
The Federalists were jubilant—as was Ames, none the worse for the speech. Soon Christopher Gore was writing him from London that he knew his speech was ‘in the hands of Mr. Pitt, Mr. Dundas and Lord Grenville.’[1155] The Jeffersonians were alarmed. Madison was bitter because of the summons to ‘follow Washington wherever he leads.’[1156] Soon he was to find that ‘the name of the President and the alarm of war’ had done mischief.[1157] When the roll was called, several enemies of the treaty had been frightened from the firing line. Patton of New Jersey had a convenient illness. Varnum was unavoidably absent. Freeman of New Hampshire had obtained leave of absence, and a newly elected Democrat from Maryland discreetly withheld his credentials until after the fight was over. By a majority of three the House decided to appropriate. Even so, it was the most expensive victory the Federalists had won, for the majority in the country was on the other side. Out of the struggle had emerged a new great leader to serve the Jeffersonians, Albert Gallatin. Jefferson had been so delighted with his speech that he wrote Madison that it deserved a place in ‘The Federalist.’[1158] During the remainder of the session, he was to cause much mental distress with his fiscal reform plans and his attacks on the Treasury.
X
Jefferson had followed the fight on the treaty from his mountain, making no personal effort to influence the result. It had not been so easy as he had hoped to forget politics in the cultivation of his peas, and when Congress met he had subscribed for Bache’s paper.[1159] He divided the friends of the treaty into two classes; the honest who were afraid of England, and the dishonest who had pecuniary motives. At no time did he question the honesty of Washington. In his letters to Madison he poured forth his innermost thoughts, but beyond this his correspondence had not been extensive.
It is the fashion to set down as a pose his pretended indifference to the Presidency in 1796, but there is evidence enough that he was deeply concerned over his health. He had begun, as he thought, ‘to feel the effects of age,’ and was convinced that his health had ‘suddenly broken down.’[1160] In a letter to Washington touching on political topics, he wrote that he would ‘put aside this disgusting dish of old fragments and talk ... of peas and clover.’[1161] In July, with the Federalist press, in expectation of his candidacy, intemperately denouncing his letter to Mazzei, he was writing a friend his estimate of the height of the Blue Ridge Mountains, explaining his plan for a moulding-board, and expressing his indignation because of the silly attacks on the memory of Franklin.[1162]