... Nothing but the hope of seeing you soon has kept in any degree my spirits from sinking. Whether in the plains or over the hills, whether in city or in retreat, I cannot live without you. It is trifling with that share of happiness which Providence permits us to enjoy to be forever again and again parted. I am now good for nothing but for you, and good for nothing without you; you will say that anyhow I am not good for much; that may be, but such as I am, you are mine, and you are my comfort, my joy, and the darling of my soul. Now do not go and show this to Maria; not that I am ashamed of it, for I glory in my love for you; but she will think my expressing myself that way very foolish, and I am afraid of her.
Early in October, 1802, they were again in Washington, and Mr. Gallatin resumed work with more philosophy. The rest of the Cabinet gradually assembled. When the time came for the Secretary of the Treasury to make his annual report to Congress, he was able to say, as the result of his first year’s administration, that the revenue from import duties, instead of $9,500,000 as he had estimated, had produced $12,280,000, a sum which exceeded “by $1,200,000 the aggregate heretofore collected in any one year, on account of both the import and the internal duties repealed by an Act of last session.” The report, however, was still cautious in its estimates for the future; in the face of possible losses in revenue, arising from peace in Europe, it adhered closely to last year’s estimates, and in the face of navy deficits for 1801 and 1802 still maintained $1,700,000 as the total appropriation for army and navy combined. The receipts and expenditures were still to be $10,000,000, and last year’s excess was to be held as a protection against a possible falling off in the revenue.
In his notes on the draft of Mr. Jefferson’s annual message, Mr. Gallatin’s criticisms this year seem to express the satisfaction he doubtless felt at the success they had met. Mr. Jefferson’s weakest side was his want of a sense of humor and his consequent blind exposure to ridicule. Mr. Gallatin himself now and then ventured to indulge a little of his own sense of humor at the cost of his chief, as, for instance, when he criticised the first paragraph of this message as follows: “As to style, I am a bad judge; but I do not like in the first paragraph the idea of limiting the quantum of thankfulness due to the Supreme Being, and there is also, it seems, too much said of the Indians in the enumerations of our blessings in the next sentence.” But occasionally he flatly opposed Mr. Jefferson’s favorite schemes, and it is curious to notice the results in some of these cases. This year, in regard to Mr. Jefferson’s famous recommendation of dry-docks at Washington, Mr. Gallatin’s note said: “I am in toto against this recommendation, 1st, because, so long as the Mediterranean war lasts, we will not have any money to spare for the navy; and 2d, because, if dry-docks are necessary, so long as we have six navy-yards, it seems to me that a general recommendation would be sufficient, leaving the Legislature free either to designate the place or to trust the Executive with the selection.” This was certainly travelling out of his own department into the bounds of another, and Mr. Jefferson adhered to his dry-docks in spite of Mr. Gallatin, who told him that the scheme would not command thirty votes in Congress; and this turned out to be the case.
1801-1813.
But the Mediterranean war was Mr. Gallatin’s great annoyance at present. His letters to Mr. Jefferson show how persistently he pressed his wish for peace. In one, dated August 16, 1802, he said: “I sincerely wish you could reconcile it to yourself to empower our negotiators to give, if necessary for peace [with Tunis, Tripoli, and Morocco], an annuity to Tripoli. I consider it no greater disgrace to pay them than Algiers. And, indeed, we share the dishonor of paying those barbarians with so many nations as powerful and interested as ourselves, that, in our present situation, I consider it a mere matter of calculation whether the purchase of peace is not cheaper than the expense of a war, which shall not even give us the free use of the Mediterranean trade.... Eight years hence we shall, I trust, be able to assume a different tone; but our exertions at present consume the seeds of our greatness and retard to an indefinite time the epoch of our strength.”
But the Tripolitan war and the difficulties with Morocco were soon thrown into the shade by events of a much more serious kind, which threatened to break down Mr. Gallatin’s arrangements in a summary way. In the course of the summer of 1802 it had become known that France, by a secret treaty, had acquired Louisiana from Spain, and had determined to take possession of that province. While our minister in Paris was reporting the progress of the movements which were to place a French army across the stream of the lower Mississippi, our government received information in October that the Spanish intendant at New Orleans had interdicted the right of deposit for merchantdise which had hitherto been enjoyed there by our citizens. Kentucky and Tennessee were exasperated at this step, and there was some danger that they might begin a war on their own account. The Administration at once took measures to guard against these perils, so far as was possible. A confidential message was sent to the Senate on January 11, containing the nomination of Mr. Monroe to act with Mr. Livingston, then minister in Paris, as special commissioners for the purchase of the eastern bank of the Mississippi. Another confidential message had been previously sent to the House, which debated upon it in secret session. What passed there is briefly mentioned by Mr. Gallatin in a note of the 3d December, 1805: “A public resolution ... was moved by Randolph and adopted by the House. A committee in the mean while brought in a confidential report to support and justify the President in the purchase he was going to attempt, and to this an appropriation law in general terms was added.”
After a few months of anxiety and silent preparation, the Administration had the profound satisfaction to see this storm disappear as suddenly as it had risen. The renewal of war between England and France led the First Consul not to accept the American offer to purchase Louisiana from the Mississippi to Pensacola, but to propose the sale of all Louisiana, which then embraced the whole western bank of the Mississippi from its source to the Gulf of Mexico. This idea was naturally accepted with eagerness by the Administration, and even Mr. Gallatin seems to have felt for once no hesitation about increasing the national debt, a necessary consequence of the purchase.
1803.
The session, however, did not pass away without producing an attack upon Mr. Gallatin’s management of the Treasury. This attack was not a very serious one, nor is it one that either then or now could be made interesting. The Federal party, which had created the United States Bank, viewed with jealousy the course pursued by the Administration towards that institution. Mr. Jefferson’s letters, in fact, show a deep and not very intelligent hostility to the bank. On the 7th October, 1802, he wrote to Mr. Gallatin that he should make a judicious distribution of his favors among all the banks, since the stock of the United States Bank was held largely by foreigners, and “were the Bank of the United States to swallow up the others and monopolize the whole banking business of the United States, which the demands we furnish them with tend shortly to favor, we might, on a misunderstanding with a foreign power, be immensely embarrassed by any disaffection in that bank.” On the 12th July, 1803, he renewed this proposition from another stand-point: “I am decidedly in favor of making all the banks republican by sharing deposits among them in proportion to the dispositions they show. If the law now forbids it, we should not permit another session of Congress to pass without amending it. It is material to the safety of Republicanism to detach the mercantile interest from its enemies and incorporate them into the body of its friends. A merchant is naturally a Republican, and can be otherwise only from a vitiated state of things.”[60] Mr. Gallatin gently put aside these demonstrations of Mr. Jefferson,[61] and administered his Department on business principles, with as little regard to political influence as possible. He looked on the bank as an instrument that could not be safely thrown away; without it his financial operations would be much more slow, more costly, more hazardous, and more troublesome than with it; indeed, he was quite aware that its fall would necessarily be followed by much financial confusion, and he had no mind to let such experiments in finance come between him and his great administrative objects. He was, therefore, by necessity a friend and protector of the bank.
The Federalists did not yet fully understand this fact, and they were disturbed at learning that Mr. Gallatin had sold, on account of the sinking fund, a certain number of bank shares in order to pay the Dutch debt. The shares were purchased by Alexander Baring under very favorable conditions, and the Federalists showed that they expected little from their motion by making it only on the last day of the session. At the same time Mr. Griswold, in an elaborate speech made on March 2, attacked the accounts of the sinking fund.[62] The only result of these combined attacks was to call out replies from the Administration speakers and a long letter from Mr. Gallatin himself on the operations of the sinking fund. This letter, replying to Mr. Griswold’s attack, was written in response to a resolution of the House, and was completed in time to be presented, before the close of the session, on the night of the 3d March. It appears to have met all Mr. Griswold’s criticisms. At all events, the attack seems to have made no impression, and in all probability the Federalists themselves intended only to punish Mr. Gallatin for the trouble he had so often in a similar manner inflicted upon them.