The United States of America, Part 1: 1783-1830

by Edwin Erle Sparks

In a comprehensive view of the history of the making of the Union, these resolutions are of great importance. They form the first note of individualistic protest against the growing power of the Union. To them one must look for the first suggestion of the means to be employed. Unfortunately for this purpose, they are declamatory rather than constructive. They seek to arouse passion rather than to lay out a definite line of resistance. The only suggestion of immediate action is an instruction to the Kentucky Representatives to attempt to secure the repeal of the encroaching acts at the next session of Congress and an appeal to the other States to "concur in declaring these acts void and of no force."

Madison was no doubt in touch with the inception of the Kentucky Resolutions. To him was given the task of drawing up those to be adopted in the Virginia Legislature. So critical had the times become that he had resigned from Congress to accept a seat in his State Legislature. Although he composed a set of resolutions, as Jefferson had requested, he thought the proper remedy lay in a convention of delegates from the States rather than in the State Legislatures. The Constitution had been formed by a convention and not by the Legislatures. Therefore, to avoid having the Legislature seem presumptious, he had used only "general expressions," as he said, in his resolutions. "In case of a deliberate, palpable and dangerous exercise of other powers not granted by the said compact, the states, who are parties thereto," said his resolutions, "have the right and are in duty bound to interpose for arresting the progress of the evil." Upon this assumption, a protest was made against the Alien acts, which united unconstitutionally the legislative and judicial powers to those of the Executive; also against the Sedition law, which imposed a punishment expressly forbidden by one of the amendments to the Constitution.

Upon the question of a proper remedy, Madison went no farther than to beg that the other States would take "the necessary and proper measures" to maintain the rights and liberties reserved to the State or the people. But he lived to see this protracted warfare between the States and the Union reach a critical point, when it was desirable to know precisely what early protestors had meant. Madison explained that the resolutions advised only interposition by all the States. The plural form was universally used, and resistance by no one of them planned. No revolutionary action was contemplated. The legal remedies to be found in "interposition" he enumerated as remonstrances, instructions, elections, impeachment, amendment to the Constitution, and finally, if the usurpations became intolerable, a recourse to the right of revolution. Whatever hope Jefferson and Madison entertained of a united effort on the part of State Legislatures against the Alien and Sedition acts was dashed by the dissentient replies from all the New England States and by the lack of replies from the Southern States. They accounted for it by the tardiness with which State officials change, not always representing public opinion. The ease with which they carried all the States except seven in the ensuing election of 1800 enabled them to give the resolutions a large share of the credit for bringing about the victory.

In the midst of the war fever, Congress assembled in December, 1798, in the city of Philadelphia. No such glorious pomp and circumstance of war had ever been witnessed at the opening of a session. When President Adams read his address from the Speaker's platform to the assembled Houses, notifying them that France showed no inclination to yield, there sat at his right hand George Washington, summoned from Mount Vernon to become the Lieutenant-General and Commander-in-Chief of the provisional army against the Republic of France. Near him sat the new major-generals, Alexander Hamilton and Charles C. Pinckney, the latter one of the rejected envoys to France. Soon after the opening, Washington returned to his home, leaving Hamilton in command, an arrangement not consented to without reluctance by Adams, and destined to bear fruit later. The war measures were continued by the so-called "Logan act" providing punishment for any citizen of the United States who should, without authority, carry on communication with a foreign government with an intent to influence any action. It was brought out by Doctor Logan, a well-meaning Republican of Pennsylvania, who had unofficially gone to France in an effort to avert the threatened war and had held communication to this end with Talleyrand, Merlin, the First Director, and others. With the suspicion common to the times, the Federalists thought he was endeavouring to act as mediator or plotting some league with France in the event of war. This act marked the extreme limit, to the Republican mind, of the tyranny of the Central Government over citizens of a State.

It might have been fortunate if matters had been put to the test in 1798 and the following year. If resistance had assumed definite shape it would have been successful or it would have been overcome. The history of the Union would have been put forward more than half a century, or it would never have been written. For the time being, each side seemed inclined to go to the extreme point. The Federalists had taken their places in the Congress determined to ignore the scores of petitions for the repeal of the acts. They refused to debate motions to rescind, and came to successful votes as a "silent legislature." Another provisional army was authorised and further additions made to the regular army and navy. On the other hand, the Legislature of Kentucky, rendered even more defiant by the timid assurance in the replies of a few legislatures to her appeal and the decidedly unfavourable answers of a large number, renewed her resolutions of the preceding year in even stronger language. One new phrase, that "a nullification by those sovereigns of all unauthorized acts done under color of that instrument is the rightful remedy," was important because of the later use made of it. Jefferson had used "nullification" in his draft of 1798. It was no stronger than other words and phrases, yet, thirty years later, the words "interpose" and "protest" were passed by as too feeble, and "nullification" adopted as the proper term for open resistance, But that Kentucky did not mean forcible resistance is proved by her accompanying statement that she would bow to the laws of the Union because she was a party to the Federal compact. The Virginia Assembly reaffirmed its principles in resolutions and an address to the people the following year.

In the midst of the warlike preparations, when the two republics seemed determined to test the patience of each other; when the Jeffersonians were bound hand and foot by the war craze; when Hamilton awaited the word which would at last league his country with England against French fanaticism and would also bring a realisation of his dream of a military command—in the midst of all this, President Adams, in February, suddenly sent to the Senate the nomination of the American Minister at The Hague to be an envoy to France! The Federalists were dumfounded at his change of position. If negotiations were renewed, peace might follow. Peace with France would mean hostility with England, if not a revival of the danger of absorption by French intrigue. Proud in their strength, the Federalists had assembled only to be undone and their warlike preparations made into an idle show by the actions of this headstrong John Adams, who insisted upon being the President of his own administration, and who would not take seasonable advice from his party. He had done what the members of his Cabinet had feared, although they now pretended to be surprised. For three months past he had invited suggestions for envoys in case France should yield, had drawn up a form of proposed treaty, and had ridiculed the idea of a French invasion of the United States. "There is no more prospect of seeing a French army here than in heaven," he said. Enforced by Hamilton, who "chanced to be present," the members of his Cabinet had wrestled with him for hours in a private conference at Trenton to turn him from his purpose of conciliation rather than war. He informed them, as he later informed Congress, that he had received assurance from Talleyrand that if another representative should be sent to France from the United States he would undoubtedly be received with the respect due to the representative of a free, independent, and powerful nation, thus using almost the precise words of Adams.

By the time the new envoys, whose appointment the Federalists did not dare openly to oppose, reached France, the Directory had fallen and Napoleon was First Consul. He saw the usefulness of the United States to his plans as a friend rather than an enemy, and was ready to bury all grievances in a treaty. The three envoys, Murray, Ellsworth, and Davie, had no difficulty in getting the United States relieved from the treaty obligation of 1778 and in arranging compensation for the damages inflicted on American commerce. Thus was closed by the Treaty of 1800 the series of events which came so near involving in war the two nations, the allies of a few years before.

Viewed as a part of the diplomatic history of the United States, this war of 1798 is simply an incident. In the story of the Union it plays a greater part. Regardless of its disastrous results to the Federalists, it undoubtedly first rallied the people to the standard of a union for the common defence against a foreign foe. The old Revolutionary spirit had been revived. A national respect had been created in the eyes of its constituents. This was essential to a proper respect in the eyes of other nations.

This national spirit, if the Administration had remained in the hands of the Federalists, might have grown too rapidly for the maintenance of a proper equilibrium. Hamilton, unhampered by an Adams, would have made the United States a party to European alliances, dangerous to American originality and American neutrality. Self-government would have assumed some form of European imitation. Drawn into the Napoleonic wars as allies of Britain, nothing but a miracle could have saved them from the legitimacy-restoring Congress of Vienna. What changes in American history might have followed! The desire of Britain for the Louisiana country, the claim of Spain to the Mississippi below the Ohio, silenced but not abandoned after 1783, the necessity for neutrality as a basis for the Monroe Doctrine, and the development of America free from the burden of a war-basis defence, must be considered in this connection. So many are the conditions and menaces that speculation pauses at predicting the results if the great law of reaction had not manifested itself at this juncture.

The decision of John Adams to renew negotiations with France thus became a turning-point in history, because it precipitated the threatened schism among the Federalists, led to the downfall of the party, and turned the National Government from centralisation toward decentralisation. Although Adams recognised all this, he nevertheless defended his decision as the most disinterested and meritorious action in his life. Years after, he said that he desired no other inscription on his gravestone than, "Here lies John Adams, who took upon himself the responsibility of the peace with France, in 1800." At the time he showed no spirit of yielding to his advisers, who declared his action "the great shade on the presidential escutcheon." They said they had been delivered to the enemy in the house of their friend. Hamilton confessed that the news of the mission would astonish him if anything from that quarter could astonish. Having complete mastery over the President's Cabinet and with a large following in Congress, Hamilton had become almost a dictator in the party during the war craze and the enforcement of the Alien and Sedition laws. With the talent of a born leader, he assumed charge of the War Department during the two years that he was a major-general. Adams resented every assumption and attempt at dictation.