And who was Fisher Ames, that his "Speeches" should be gathered and re-published sixty-three years after his death? He was a personage in his time. Let us look upon him in the day of his greatest glory.
It was April 28, 1796, at Philadelphia, in the Hall of the House of Representatives, of which Fisher Ames was a member. The House and country were highly excited respecting the terms of the treaty which John Jay had negotiated with the British government. To a large number of the people this treaty was inexpressibly odious; as, indeed, any treaty would have been with a power so abhorred by them as England then was. Some of the conditions of the treaty, we cannot deny, were hard, unwise, unjust; but, in all probability, it was the best that could then have been obtained, and Mr. Jay had only the alternative of accepting the conditions, or plunging his country into war. One great point, at least, the British government had yielded. After the Revolutionary war, the English had retained several western posts, to the great annoyance of settlers, and the indignation of the whole country. These posts were now to be surrendered, provided the treaty was accepted and its conditions fulfilled.
President Washington and the Senate had ratified the treaty—with reluctance, it is true; but still they had ratified it; and nothing remained but for the House of Representatives to appropriate the money requisite for carrying the treaty into effect. But here was the difficulty. The treaty was so unpopular that members of Congress shrunk from even seeming to approve it. There had been riotous meetings in all the large cities to denounce it. In New York, Alexander Hamilton, while attempting to address a meeting in support of it, was pelted with stones, and the people then marched to the residence of Mr. Jay, and burned a copy of the treaty before his door.
"Blush," said a Democratic editor, "to think that America should degrade herself so much as to enter into any kind of treaty with a power now tottering on the brink of ruin, whose principles are directly contrary to the spirit of Republicanism!"
A Virginia newspaper advised that, if the treaty negotiated by "that arch-traitor, John Jay, with the British tyrant, should be ratified," Virginia should secede from the Union. Indeed, the public mind has seldom been excited to such a degree upon any public topic.
It was in these circumstances that Fisher Ames rose to address the House of Representatives, in favor of the treaty. There was supposed to be a majority of ten against it in the House, and the debate had been for some days in progress. Madison and all the leading Democrats had spoken strongly against it; while Fisher Ames, the greatest orator on the side of the Administration, was suffering from the pulmonary disease from which he afterward died, and had been ordered by his physician not to speak a word in the House. Inaction at such a time became insupportable to him, and he chafed under it day after day.
"I am like an old gun," he wrote, in one of his letters, "that is spiked, or the trunnions knocked off, and yet am carted off, not for the worth of the old iron, but to balk the enemy of a trophy. My political life is ended, and I am the survivor of myself; or, rather, a troubled ghost of a politician that am condemned to haunt the field where he fell."
But as the debate went on, he could no longer endure to remain silent. He determined to speak, if he never spoke again; and the announcement of his intention filled the Representatives' Chamber with a brilliant assembly of ladies and gentlemen. Vice-President Adams came to the chamber to hear him, among other persons of note. The orator rose from his seat pale, feeble, scarcely able to stand, or to make himself heard; but as he proceeded he gathered strength, and was able to speak for nearly two hours in a strain of eloquence, the tradition of which fills a great place in the memoirs of the time. The report of it which we possess is imperfect, and the reading of it is somewhat disappointing; but here and there there is a passage in the report which gives us some notion of the orator's power. One of his points was, that the faith of the country had been pledged by the ratification of the treaty, and that consequently a refusal of the House to appropriate the money would be a breach of faith. This led him to expatiate upon the necessity of national honor.
"In Algiers," said he, "a truce may be bought for money; but when ratified, even Algiers is too wise or too just to disown and annul its obligation.... If there could be a resurrection from the foot of the gallows; if the victims of justice could live again, collect together and form a society, they would, however loath, soon find themselves obliged to make justice—that justice under which they fell—the fundamental law of their State."
This speech was afterward called Fisher Ames' Tomahawk Speech, because he endeavored to show that, if the posts were not surrendered and not garrisoned by American troops, the Indians could not be kept in check, and would fill the frontier with massacre and fire.