To this point the Louisiana precedent was closely followed, and Randolph seemed to have no excuse for refusing to do in 1805 what he had done in 1802; yet nothing could be surer than that the Randolph of 1805 was a very different man from the Randolph of three years before, as the Republican party of 1805 widely differed from the party which first elected Jefferson to the Presidency. No double-dealing, hesitation, or concealment was charged against Randolph. According to his own story, he called upon the President immediately, and learned, not without some surprise, that an appropriation of two millions was wanted to purchase Florida. He told the President without reserve “that he would never agree to such a measure, because the money had not been asked for in the Message; that he could not consent to shift upon his own shoulders or those of the House the proper responsibility of the Executive; but that even if the money had been explicitly demanded, he should have been averse to granting it, because, after the total failure of every attempt at negotiation, such a step would disgrace us forever,”—with much more to the same effect, which was mildly combated by Jefferson.[108]
The next day, December 7, the committee met, and Randolph, as he probably expected, found that Bidwell alone intended to support the Administration. Bidwell did not venture to act as the direct mouthpiece of the President, but undertook on his own authority to construe the Message as a demand for money, and proposed a grant to that effect. The rest of the committee gravely followed Randolph in professing to find no such meaning in the Message; Bidwell’s motion had no supporter, and was promptly overruled. Jefferson’s labored Resolutions, which Nicholson carried in his pocket for the committee to adopt, were suppressed; Nicholson returned them the next day to Gallatin, with a brief expression of his own decided disapproval.[109]
The committee separated, not to meet again for a fortnight; but during the following week Randolph had several interviews with the President and Secretary of State. Madison told him “that France would not permit Spain to adjust her differences with us; that France wanted money, and that we must give it to her, or have a Spanish and French war.”[110] If Madison said this he told the truth. Randolph made an unfair use of the confidential words; for he proclaimed them as his excuse for declaring a public and personal war on the Secretary of State, which he waged thenceforward in a temper and by means so revolting as in the end to throw the sympathies of every unprejudiced man on the side of his victim.
“From the moment I heard that declaration,” said Randolph afterward, “all the objections I originally had to the procedure were aggravated to the highest possible degree. I considered it a base prostration of the national character to excite one nation by money to bully another nation out of its property; and from that moment, and to the last moment of my life, my confidence in the principles of the man entertaining those sentiments died, never to live again.”
These words would have carried more conviction had Randolph’s quarrel with Madison not been of much older date. In truth he wanted a means to break down the secretary’s chance of election as President, and he thought to find it here. As he said openly in Congress and in the press, “his confidence in the Secretary of State had never been very high, but now it was gone forever.”[111]
The serious charge against Madison was one which Madison alone could reveal. Down to October 23 he had held Randolph’s view and had protested against turning the Spanish negotiation into a French job. He could hardly blame Randolph for adhering to an opinion which had been held by President and Cabinet until within a few weeks, when they had abandoned it without explanation or excuse.
Stubbornly refusing to act, Randolph, December 14, mounted his horse and rode to Baltimore, leaving the President for the moment helpless. Every hour’s delay shook party discipline, and imperilled Armstrong’s success. The President appealed to Nicholson; but Nicholson also disliked the intended policy, and could be persuaded to use his influence only so far as would enable the committee to act, with the understanding that its action would be adverse to the President’s wishes. Although the situation was still secret, it threatened to become scandalous, and soon became so altogether.
December 21 Randolph returned. As he dismounted at the Capitol, he was received by Nicholson, who told him of the irritation which his delay had caused. The committee was instantly called together. As Randolph went to the committee-room he was met by Gallatin, who put into his hands a paper headed, “Provision for the purchase of Florida.” Although Gallatin’s relations with Randolph were friendly, they did not save the Secretary of the Treasury from a sharp rebuff. Randolph broke out roughly; he would not vote a shilling for the purchase of Florida; the President should not be allowed to throw upon Congress the odium “of delivering the public purse to the first cut-throat that demanded it;” on the record the Executive would appear as recommending manly and vigorous measures, while Congress would appear as having forced him to abandon them, when in fact it was acting all the while at Executive instigation; “I do not understand this double set of opinions and principles,—the one ostensible, the other real: I hold true wisdom and cunning to be utterly incompatible.” With this sweeping censure of President, Cabinet, and party, Randolph turned his back on Gallatin and walked to the committee-room. There he had no trouble in carrying matters with a high hand. Instead of recommending an appropriation, the committee instructed Randolph to write to the Secretary of War asking his opinion what force was needed to protect the Southern frontier.
Christmas was then at hand, and not a step had yet been taken. Unless the spirit of faction could be crushed, not only was the fate of Madison sealed, but the career of Jefferson himself must end in failure. Nothing could be done with Randolph, who in a final interview at the White House, flatly declared “that he too had a character to support and principles to maintain,” and avowed his determined opposition to the whole scheme of buying Florida of France. Jefferson, little as he liked to quarrel, accepted the challenge. Negotiations then ceased, and a party schism began.
If Randolph could not be overcome in debate, he might at least be overborne by numbers; if the best part of the old Republican party went with him, the rank and file of Northern and Western democrats would remain to support the Administration. Once more the committee was called together. Bidwell moved to appropriate two millions for foreign relations; the majority rejected his motion and adopted a report echoing the warlike tone of the President’s public message, and closing with a Resolution to raise troops for the defence of the Southern frontier “from Spanish inroad and insult, and to chastise the same.” This report was laid before the House by Randolph Jan. 3, 1806, when two additional Resolutions were immediately moved,—one appropriating money for extraordinary expenses in foreign intercourse, the other continuing the Mediterranean Fund for a new term of years; and the three Resolutions were referred to the House in Committee of the Whole, with closed doors.