The Life of Albert Gallatin

by Henry Adams

6th March, 1798.

... The task imposed upon me by my friends to write my speech, of which they are going to print two thousand copies, leaves me no time to converse with you. I had rather speak forty than write one speech. I have received your letter, and will expect you anxiously; the roads are very deep, but the weather delightful.... You will receive by this day’s post the papers containing the French intended decree. It will, I am afraid, put us in a still more critical situation. They behave still worse than I was afraid from their haughtiness they would. May God save us from a war! Adieu....

13th March, 1798.

... I feel now as desirous that you should not be on the road during this boisterous, damp weather as I was anxious last week to see you arrived.... I cannot form any conjecture of the plans of our statesmen; they have got a majority, and if they are unanimous among themselves they may do what they please. So far as I can judge and hear, it seems that the other despatches of our commissioners at Paris will not be communicated to us, under the plea that they contain details which might injure their personal safety there; but it is whispered that the true reason is because their contents might injure the party, either because they declare that their powers were not sufficient, or because they intimate that France has no objection to treat with the United States, but has some personal objections to the individuals appointed for that purpose. This last reason, if true, appears to me a very bad plea on the part of France, who have nothing to do, that I can see, with the personal character or politics of the envoys our government may think fit to appoint. But it is perhaps apprehended by our Administration that a knowledge of the fact would injure their own character here by evincing a want of sincerity or of wisdom. I rather think, although it is extremely doubtful, that the arming merchantmen will not take place; but it is probable that the frigates will be armed and a dozen of vessels that may carry from fourteen to twenty guns be purchased, and both placed in the hands of the President to act as convoys and to protect the coast (by coast I mean not only our harbors, but to the extent of one or two hundred miles off) against the privateers, who may be expected to come on a spring cruise to take British goods in our vessels. All this will be very expensive, of little real utility, and may involve us still deeper. It seems to me that it would be wiser to wait at all events, to bear with the loss of a few more captures, and to see whether peace will not be concluded this spring between France and England, an event which to me appears highly probable, and if it does not, what will be the result of the intended invasion. May God preserve to us the blessings of peace, and may they soon be restored to all the European nations!...

GALLATIN TO MARIA NICHOLSON.

Philadelphia, 10th July, 1798.

... I see the prosecutions of printers are going on. I do not admire much the manner in which the new editor of the Time-Piece conducts his paper. Cool discussion and fair statements of facts are the only proper modes of conveying truth and disseminating sound principles. Let squibs and virulent paragraphs be the exclusive privilege of Fenno, Porcupine & Co., and let those papers which really are intended to support Republicanism unite candor and moderation to unconquerable firmness. Pieces may be written in an animated style without offending decency. This is the more necessary at a time when the period of persecution is beginning, and at this peculiar crisis prudence might enforce what propriety at all times should dictate....

The Time-Piece was a newspaper originally edited by Freneau, the poet, who soon associated Matthew L. Davis in the direction. After a few months of editorship, Freneau seems to have retired, and in March, 1798, Davis became the sole responsible editor. The Time-Piece was short-lived, and expired about six weeks after Mr. Gallatin’s letter was written.

The speech on Foreign Intercourse, made on the 1st March, 1798, was that in which Mr. Gallatin rose to a freer and more rhetorical treatment of his subject than had yet been his custom. The motion was to cut off the appropriations for our ministers in Berlin and Holland, which would have limited our diplomatic service to Great Britain, France, and Spain. Mr. Gallatin began by proving, against the Federalist arguments, that the House might lawfully refuse appropriations, and then proceeded to attack the whole system of diplomatic connections and commercial treaties, asking whether, as a matter of fact, we had derived any commercial advantages from the commercial treaties we had made, and entering into an eloquent discussion of the dangers attending increase of executive patronage and influence. “What has become of the Cortes of Spain? Of the States-General of France? Of the Diets of Denmark? Everywhere we find the executive in the possession of legislative, of absolute powers. The glimmerings of liberty which for a moment shone in Europe were owing to the decay of the feudal system.” To Mr. Bayard, who had argued that the executive was the weakest branch of the government and most in danger of encroachment, he replied: “To such doctrines avowed on this floor, to such systems as the plan of government which the late Secretary of the Treasury (Mr. Hamilton) proposed in the convention, may perhaps be ascribed that belief in a part of the community, the belief, which was yesterday represented as highly criminal, that there exists in America a monarchico-aristocratic faction who would wish to impose upon us the substance of the British government. I have allowed myself to make this last observation only in reply to the gentleman who read the paper I alluded to.[37] It is painful to recriminate; I wish denunciations to be avoided, and I am not in the habit of ascribing improper motives to gentlemen on the other side of the question. Never shall I erect myself into a high-priest of the Constitution, assuming the keys of political salvation and damning without mercy whosoever differs with me in opinion. But what tone is assumed to us by some gentlemen on this floor? If we complain of the prodigality of a branch of the Administration or wish to control it by refusing to appropriate all the money which is asked, we are stigmatized as disorganizers; if we oppose the growth of systems of taxation, we are charged with a design of subverting the Constitution and of making a revolution; if we attempt to check the extension of our political connections with European nations, we are branded with the epithet of Jacobins. Revolutions and Jacobinism do not flow from that line of policy we wish to see adopted. They belong, they exclusively belong to the system we resist; they are its last stage, the last page in the book of the history of governments under its influence.”

The speech, which was in effect a vigorous and eloquent defence of Mr. Jefferson’s Mazzei letter, although that letter was barely mentioned in its course, is probably the best ever made on the opposition side in the Federalist days, and ranks with that of Fisher Ames on the British treaty, as representing the highest point respectively attained by the representative orators of the two parties. Doubtless Mr. Gallatin saw reason in his maturer age to modify his opinions of commercial treaties, for a large part of the twelve best years of his life was subsequently passed in negotiations for commercial treaties with England, France, and the Netherlands; possibly, too, he modified his hostility to diplomatic connections with Europe, for bitter experience taught him that too little diplomatic connection might produce worse evils than too much; but he never overcame his jealousy of executive power, and never doubted the propriety of his course in 1798. Whether the time is to come when Mr. Gallatin’s views in regard to the diplomatic service will be universally adopted may remain a matter for dispute; the essential point to be remembered is that in 1798 the majority in Congress made a deliberate and persistent attempt to place extraordinary powers in the hands of the President, with a view to the possible necessity for the use of such powers in case of domestic difficulties then fully expected to occur. The extreme Federalists hoped that a timely exercise of force on their side might decide the contest permanently in their favor. They were probably mistaken, for, as their correspondence shows,[38] there never was a time when the political formulas of Hamilton, George Cabot, Fisher Ames, Gouverneur Morris, and Rufus Griswold could have been applied even in New England with a chance of success; but it is none the less certain that a small knot of such men, with no resources other than their own energy and will, practically created the Constitution, administered the government under it for ten years, and at last very nearly overthrew it rather than surrender their power. Fisher Ames, one of their ablest chiefs, thought in 1806 that there were hardly five hundred who fully shared his opinions.[39] It was against the theoretical doctrines and ulterior aims of this political school that Mr. Gallatin was now waging active war.