On one plea the ruling party relied as an excuse for inactivity and as a defence against attack. Their enemies had said and believed that the democrats possessed neither virtue nor ability enough to carry on the government; but after eighteen months of trial, as the year 1803 began, the most severe Federalist could not with truth assert that the country had yet suffered in material welfare from the change. Although the peace in Europe, after October, 1801, checked the shipping interests of America, and although France and Spain, returning to the strictness of their colonial system, drove the American flag from their harbors in the Antilles, yet Gallatin at the close of the first year of peace was able to tell Congress[63] that the customs revenue, which he had estimated twelve months before at $9,500,000, had brought into the Treasury $12,280,000, or much more than had ever before been realized in a single year from all sources of revenue united. That the Secretary of the Treasury should miscalculate by one third the product of his own taxes was strange; but Gallatin liked to measure the future, not by a probable mean, but by its lowest possible extreme, and his chief aim was to check extravagance in appropriations for objects which he thought bad. His caution increased the popular effect of his success. Opposition became ridiculous when it persisted in grumbling at a system which, beginning with a hazardous reduction of taxes, brought in a single year an immense increase in revenue. The details of Gallatin’s finance fretted the Federalists without helping them.
The Federalists were equally unlucky in finding other domestic grievances. The removals from office did not shock the majority. The Judiciary was not again molested. The overwhelming superiority of the democrats was increased by the admission of Ohio, Nov. 29, 1802. No man of sense could deny that the people were better satisfied with their new Administration than they ever had been with the old. Loudly as New England grumbled, the Federalists even there steadily declined in relative strength; while elsewhere an organized body of opposition to the national government hardly existed. From New York to Savannah, no one complained of being forced to work for national objects; South Carolina as well as Virginia was pleased with the power she helped to sway.
Here and there might be found districts in which Federalism tried to hold its own; but the Federalism of Delaware and Maryland was not dangerous, and even in Delaware the Federalist champion Bayard was beaten by Cæsar A. Rodney in his contest for the House, and was driven to take refuge in the Senate. Pennsylvania, New York, Virginia, and North Carolina were nearly unanimous; and beyond the mountains democracy had its own way without the trouble of a discussion. Federalism was already an old-fashioned thing; a subject of ridicule to people who had no faith in forms; a half-way house between the European past and the American future. The mass of Americans had become democratic in thought as well as act; not even another political revolution could undo what had been done. As a democrat, Jefferson’s social success was sweeping and final; but he was more than a democrat,—and in his other character, as a Virginia republican of the State-rights school, he was not equally successful.
In the short session of 1802–1803 many signs proved that the revolution of 1800 had spent its force, and that a reaction was at hand. Congress showed no eagerness to adopt the President’s new economies, and dismissed, with silence almost contemptuous, his scheme for building at Washington a large dry-dock in which the navy should be stored for safety and saving. The mint was continued by law for another five years, and twenty thousand dollars were quietly appropriated for its support. Instead of reducing the navy, Congress decided to build four sixteen-gun brigs and fifteen gunboats, and appropriated ninety-six thousand dollars for the brigs alone. The appropriation of two millions as a first instalment toward paying for New Orleans and Florida was another and a longer stride in the old Federalist path of confidence in the Executive and liberality for national objects. The expenditure for 1802, excluding interest on debt, was $3,737,000. Never afterward in United States history did the annual expenditure fall below four millions. The navy, in 1802, cost $915,000; never afterward did it cost less than a million.
The reaction toward Federalist practices was more marked in the attitude of the Executive than in that of Congress. If Jefferson’s favorite phrase was true,—that the Federalist differed from the Republican only in the shade more or less of power to be given the Executive,—it was hard to see how any President could be more Federalist than Jefferson himself. A resolution to commit the nation without its knowledge to an indissoluble British alliance, was more than Washington would have dared take; yet this step was taken by the President, and was sustained by Madison, Gallatin, and Robert Smith as fairly within the limits of the Constitution. In regard to another stretch of the treaty-making power, they felt with reason the gravest doubts. When the President and Cabinet decided early in January, 1803, to send Monroe with two million dollars to buy New Orleans and Florida, a question was instantly raised as to the form in which such a purchase could be constitutionally made. Attorney-General Lincoln wished to frame the treaty or convention in such language as to make France appear not as adding new territory to the United States, but as extending already existing territory by an alteration of its boundary. He urged this idea upon the President in a letter written the day of Monroe’s nomination to the Senate.[64]
“If the opinion is correct,” said he, “that the general government when formed was predicated on the then existing United States, and such as could grow out of them, and out of them only; and that its authority is constitutionally limited to the people composing the several political State societies in that Union, and such as might be formed out of them,—would not a direct independent purchase be extending the executive power farther, and be more alarming, and improvable by the opposition and the Eastern States, than the proposed indirect mode?”
Jefferson sent this letter to Gallatin, who treated it without favor.[65]
“If the acquisition of territory is not warranted by the Constitution,” said he, “it is not more legal to acquire for one State than for the United States.... What could, on his construction, prevent the President and Senate, by treaty, annexing Cuba to Massachusetts, or Bengal to Rhode Island, if ever the acquirement of colonies should become a favorite object with governments, and colonies should be acquired? But does any constitutional objection really exist?... To me it would appear, (1) that the United States, as a nation, have an inherent right to acquire territory; (2) that whenever that acquisition is by treaty, the same constituted authorities in whom the treaty-making power is vested have a constitutional right to sanction the acquisition.”
Gallatin not only advanced Federal doctrine, but used also what the Virginians always denounced as Federalist play on words. “The United States as a nation” had an inherent right to do whatever the States in union cared to do; but the Republican party, with Jefferson, Madison, and Gallatin at their head, had again and again maintained that the United States government had the inherent right to do no act whatever, but was the creature of the States in union; and its acts, if not resulting from an expressly granted power, were no acts at all, but void, and not to be obeyed or regarded by the States. No foreigner, not even Gallatin, could master the theory of Virginia and New England, or distinguish between the nation of States in union which granted certain powers, and the creature at Washington to which these powers were granted, and which might be strengthened, weakened, or abolished without necessarily affecting the nation. Whether the inability to grasp this distinction was a result of clearer insight or of coarser intelligence, the fact was the same; and on this point, in spite of his speech on the Alien and Sedition Acts, Gallatin belonged to the school of Hamilton, while both were of one mind with Dallas. The chief avowed object of Jefferson’s election had been to overthrow the reign of this school. No Virginian could be expected within two short years to adopt the opinions of opponents who had been so often branded as “monocrats,” because of acting on these opinions. Although the Attorney-General’s advice was not followed, the negotiation for New Orleans was begun on the understanding that the purchase, if made, would be an inchoate act which would need express sanction from the States in the shape of an amendment to the Constitution.
There the matter rested. At the moment of Monroe’s appointment, the President, according to his letters, had little hope of quick success in the purchase of territory. His plan was to “palliate and endure,” unless France should force a war upon him; the constitutional question could wait, and it was accordingly laid aside. Yet the chief ambition of Southern statesmen in foreign affairs was to obtain the Floridas and New Orleans; and in effecting this object they could hardly escape establishing a serious precedent. Already Jefferson had ordered his ministers at Paris to buy this territory, although he thought the Constitution gave him no power to do so; he was willing to increase the national debt for this purpose, even though a national debt was a “mortal canker;” and he ordered his minister, in case Bonaparte should close the Mississippi, to make a permanent alliance with England, or in his own words to “marry ourselves to the British fleet and nation,” as the price of New Orleans and Florida. Jefferson foresaw and accepted the consequences of the necessity; he repeatedly referred to them and deprecated them in his letters; but the territory was a vital object, and success there would, as he pointed out, secure forever the triumph of his party even in New England.