The Life of Albert Gallatin

by Henry Adams

There was but one man whom I can positively assert to have been decidedly in favor of the attempt to make a President by law. This was General Henry Lee, of Virginia, who, as you know, was a desperate character and held in no public estimation. I fear from the general tenor of his conduct that Mr. Griswold, of Connecticut, in other respects a very worthy man, was so warm and infatuated a partisan that he might have run the risk of a civil war rather than to see Mr. Jefferson elected. Some weak and inconsiderate members of the House might have voted for the measure, but I could not designate any one.

On the day on which we began balloting for President we knew positively that Mr. Baer, of Maryland, was determined to cast his vote for Mr. Jefferson rather than that there should be no election; and his vote was sufficient to give us that of Maryland and decide the election. I was certain from personal intercourse with him that Mr. Morris, of Vermont, would do the same, and thus give us also the vote of that State. There were others equally prepared, but not known to us at the time. Still, all those gentlemen, unwilling to break up their party, united in the attempt, by repeatedly voting for Mr. Burr, to frighten or induce some of us to vote for Mr. Burr rather than to have no election. This balloting was continued several days for another reason. The attempt was made to extort concessions and promises from Mr. Jefferson as the conditions on which he might be elected. One of our friends, who was very erroneously and improperly afraid of a defection on the part of some of our members, undertook to act as an intermediary, and confounding his own opinions and wishes with those of Mr. Jefferson, reported the result in such a manner as gave subsequently occasion for very unfounded surmises.

It is due to the memory of James Bayard, of Delaware, to say that although he was one of the principal and warmest leaders of the Federal party and had a personal dislike for Mr. Jefferson, it was he who took the lead and from pure patriotism directed all those movements of the sounder and wiser part of the Federal party which terminated in the peaceable election of Mr. Jefferson.

Mr. Jefferson’s letter to Mr. Monroe dated February 15, 1801, at the very moment when the attempts were making to obtain promises from him, proves decisively that he made no concessions whatever. But both this letter, that to Mr. Madison of the 18th of February, and some others of preceding dates afford an instance of that credulity, so common to warm partisans, which makes them ascribe the worst motives, and occasionally acts of which they are altogether guiltless, to their opponents. There was not the slightest foundation for suspecting the fidelity of the post....

This interesting letter also suggests something more than appears on its surface. Evidently Mr. Gallatin meant to intimate, with as much distinctness as was decent, his opinion that it was not Mr. Jefferson who guided or controlled the result of this election, and that altogether too much importance was attached to what Mr. Jefferson did and said. The election belonged to the House of Representatives, where not Mr. Jefferson but Mr. Gallatin was leader of the party and directed the strategy. The allusion to General Samuel Smith’s intervention is very significant. Evidently Mr. Gallatin considered General Smith to have been guilty of what was little better than an impertinence in having intruded between the House and Mr. Jefferson with “erroneous and improper” fears of the action of men for whom Mr. Gallatin himself was responsible. This was the first occasion on which the Smiths crossed Gallatin’s path, and when he looked back upon it at the end of fifty years it seemed an omen.

Mr. Gallatin considered himself to be, and doubtless was, the effective leader in this struggle. He marshalled the forces; he fought the battle; he made the plans, and in making them he did not even consult Mr. Jefferson, but simply obtained his assent to what had already received the assent of his followers in the House. These plans, alluded to in the Muhlenberg letter, are printed in Mr. Gallatin’s Writings.[49] They were framed to cover every emergency. If the Federalists, acting on the assumption of a vacancy in the Presidential office, undertook to fill that vacancy by law, the Republicans were to refuse recognition of such a President and to agree on a uniform mode of not obeying the orders of the usurper, and of discriminating between those and the laws which should be suffered to continue in operation. In case only a new election were the object desired, without usurpation of power in the mean while, submission was on the whole preferable to resistance. An assumption of executive power by the Republicans in any mode not recognized by the Constitution was discouraged, and a reliance on the next Congress was preferred in any case short of actual usurpation. The idea of a convention to reorganize the government was not even suggested.

The crisis lasted until the 17th February, when the Federalists gave way and Mr. Jefferson’s election was quietly effected. With this event Mr. Gallatin’s career in Congress closed.

GALLATIN TO HIS WIFE.

Washington City, 15th January, 1801.

... I arrived here only on Saturday last. The weather was intensely cold the Saturday I crossed the Alleghany Mountains, and afterwards I was detained one day and half by rain and snow.... Our local situation is far from being pleasant or even convenient. Around the Capitol are seven or eight boarding-houses, one tailor, one shoemaker, one printer, a washing-woman, a grocery shop, a pamphlets and stationery shop, a small dry-goods shop, and an oyster house. This makes the whole of the Federal city as connected with the Capitol. At the distance of three-fourths of a mile, on or near the Eastern Branch, lie scattered the habitations of Mr. Law and of Mr. Carroll, the principal proprietaries of the ground, half a dozen houses, a very large but perfectly empty warehouse, and a wharf graced by not a single vessel. And this makes the whole intended commercial part of the city, unless we include in it what is called the Twenty Buildings, being so many unfinished houses commenced by Morris and Nicholson, and perhaps as many undertaken by Greenleaf, both which groups lie, at the distance of half-mile from each other, near the mouth of the Eastern Branch and the Potowmack, and are divided by a large swamp from the Capitol Hill and the little village connected with it. Taking a contrary direction from the Capitol towards the President’s house, the same swamp intervenes, and a straight causeway, which measures one mile and half and seventeen perches, forms the communication between the two buildings. A small stream, about the size of the largest of the two runs between Clare’s and our house, and decorated with the pompous appellation of “Tyber,” feeds without draining the swamps, and along that causeway (called the Pennsylvania Avenue), between the Capitol and President’s House, not a single house intervenes or can intervene without devoting its wretched tenant to perpetual fevers. From the President’s House to Georgetown the distance is not quite a mile and a half; the ground is high and level; the public offices and from fifty to one hundred good houses are finished; the President’s House is a very elegant building, and this part of the city on account of its natural situation, of its vicinity to Georgetown, with which it communicates over Rock Creek by two bridges, and by the concourse of people drawn by having business with the public offices, will improve considerably and may within a short time form a town equal in size and population to Lancaster or Annapolis. But we are not there; the distance is too great for convenience from thence to the Capitol; six or seven of the members have taken lodgings at Georgetown, three near the President’s House, and all the others are crowded in the eight boarding-houses near the Capitol. I am at Conrad & McMunn’s, where I share the room of Mr. Varnum, and pay at the rate, I think, including attendance, wood, candles, and liquors, of 15 dollars per week. At table, I believe, we are from twenty-four to thirty, and, was it not for the presence of Mrs. Bailey and Mrs. Brown, would look like a refectory of monks. The two Nicholas, Mr. Langdon, Mr. Jefferson, General Smith, Mr. Baldwin, &c., &c., make part of our mess. The company is good enough, but it is always the same, and, unless in my own family, I had rather now and then see some other persons. Our not being able to have a room each is a greater inconvenience. As to our fare, we have hardly any vegetables, the people being obliged to resort to Alexandria for supplies; our beef is not very good; mutton and poultry good; the price of provisions and wood about the same as in Philadelphia. As to rents, I have not yet been able to ascertain anything precise, but, upon the whole, living must be somewhat dearer here than either in Philadelphia or New York. As to public news, the subject which engrosses almost the whole attention of every one is the equality of votes between Mr. Jefferson and Mr. Burr. The most desperate of the Federalists wish to take advantage of this by preventing an election altogether, which they may do either by dividing the votes of the States where they have majorities or by still persevering in voting for Burr whilst we should persevere in voting for Jefferson; and the next object they would then propose would be to pass a law by which they would vest the Presidential power in the hands of some man of their party. I believe that such a plan if adopted would be considered as an act of usurpation, and would accordingly be resisted by the people; and I think that partly from fear and partly from principle the plan will not be adopted by a majority. But a more considerable number will try actually to make Burr President. He has sincerely opposed the design, and will go any lengths to prevent its execution. Hamilton, the Willing and Bingham connection, almost every leading Federalist out of Congress in Maryland and Virginia, have openly declared against the project and recommend an acquiescence in Mr. Jefferson’s election. Maryland, which if decided in our favor would at once make Mr. J. President (for we have eight States sure,—New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Georgia), is afraid about the fate of the Federal city, which is hated by every member of Congress without exception of persons or parties; and I know that if a vote was to take place to-day we would obtain the vote of that State. Even Bayard from Delaware and Morris from Vermont (this last I suspect under the influence of Gouv. Morris) are inclined the same way. The vote of either is sufficient to decide in our favor. And from all those circumstances I infer that there will be an election, and that in favor of Mr. Jefferson. If not, there will be either an interregnum until the new Congress shall meet and then a choice made in favor of him also, or in case of usurpation by the present Congress (which of all suppositions is the most improbable), either a dissolution of the Union if that usurpation shall be supported by New England, or a punishment of the usurpers if they shall not be supported by New England. In every possible case I think we have nothing to fear. The next important object is the convention with France, which hangs in the Senate. The mercantile interest, Mr. Adams and Mr. Hamilton are in favor of its ratification. Yet I think it rather probable that either a decision will be postponed or that it shall be clogged by the rejection or modification of some articles, an event which might endanger the whole. I understand that Great Britain does not take any offence at the treaty itself, and that being the case, although I dislike myself several parts of the instrument, I see no sufficient reason why we should not agree to it....