Our history narrates no fall from an exalted position more melancholy, or more richly deserved, than his. Without being dissipated, he was a bad and unprincipled man from the start. He might have been the pride of his country, like Hamilton and Jefferson, being the equal of both in abilities, and at one time in popularity. The school-books have given to him and to Benedict Arnold an infamous immortality, comparing the one with Cain, and the other with Judas Iscariot.
The most important measure connected with Jefferson's long administration was the Non-importation Act, commonly called the Embargo. It proved in the end a mistake, and shed no glory on the fame of the President; and yet it perhaps prevented a war, or at least delayed it.
The peace of 1783 and the acknowledgment of American independence did not restore friendly relations between England and the United States. It was not in human nature that a proud and powerful state like England should see the disruption of her empire and her fairest foreign possession torn from her without embittered feelings, leading to acts which could not be justified by international law or by enlightened reason. Accordingly, the government of Great Britain treated the American envoys with rudeness, insolence, and contempt, much to their chagrin and the indignation of Americans generally. It also adopted measures exceedingly injurious to American commerce. France and England being at war, the Americans, as neutrals, secured most of the carrying trade, to the disgust of British merchants; and, declaring mutual blockade, both French and English cruisers began to capture American trading-ships, the English being especially outrageous in their doings. Said Jefferson, in his annual message in 1805: "Our coasts have been infested and our harbors watched by private armed vessels. They have captured in the very entrance of our harbors, as well as on the high seas, not only the vessels of our friends coming to trade with us, but our own also. They have carried them off under pretence of legal adjudication; but not daring to approach a court of justice, they have plundered and sunk them by the way, or in obscure places where no evidence could arise against them, maltreated the crews, and abandoned them in boats in the open sea, or on desert shores without food or covering." In view of these things, the President recommended the building of gunboats and the reorganization of the militia, and called attention to materials in the navy-yards for constructing battleships. The English even went further and set up a claim to the right of search; sailors were taken from American ships to be impressed into their naval service, on the plea--generally unfounded--that they were British subjects and deserters. At last British audacity went so far as to attack an American frigate at Hampton Roads, and carry away four alleged British sailors, three of whom were American born. The English doctrine that no man could expatriate himself was not allowed by America, where immigrants and new citizens were always welcome; but in the case of native Americans there could be no question as to their citizenship. This outrage aroused indignation from one end of the country to the other, and a large party clamored for war.
But the policy of Jefferson was pacific. He abhorred war, and entered into negotiations, which came to nothing. Nor, to his mind, was the country prepared for war. We had neither army nor navy to speak of. It was plain that we should be beaten on the land and on the sea. Much as he hated England, he preferred to temporize, and build a few gunboats,--which everybody laughed at.
Nor did the French government behave much better than the English. It looked upon the United States as an unsettled and weak country, to be robbed with impunity. At last, driven from the high seas, the Americans could rely only on the coasting-trade. "One half the mercantile world was sealed up by the British, and the other half by the French."
Jefferson now appealed to Congress, and the result was the Non-importation Act, or Embargo, forbidding Americans to trade with France and England. This policy was intended as a pressure on English merchants. But it was a half-measure and did not affect British legislation, which had for its object the utter annihilation of American commerce. Neither France nor England was hurt seriously by the Embargo, while our ships lay rotting at the wharves, and our merchants found that their occupation was gone. The New England merchants were discouraged and discontented. It was not they who wished to see their ships shut up by a doubtful policy. They would have preferred to run risks rather than be idle. But Jefferson paid no heed to their grumblings, feeling that he was exhibiting to foreign powers unusual forbearance. It is singular that he persevered in a policy that nearly the whole body of merchants censured and regarded as a failure; but he did, and Congress was subservient to his decrees. No succeeding president ever had the influence over Congress that he had. He was almost a dictator. He found opposition only among the Federalists, whose power was gone forever.
At last, when the farmers and planters joined with the shipping interests in complaining of the Embargo, Jefferson was persuaded that it was a failure, and three days before his administration closed it was repealed by Congress. But even this measure did not hurt the party which he had marshalled with such transcendent tact; for his friend and disciple, James Madison, was elected to succeed him in 1809.
The Embargo had had one result: it deferred the war with Great Britain to the next administration. That conflict of 1812-15 was not a glorious war for America except on the ocean. It was not entered upon by the British with any hope of the conquest of the country, but to do all the harm they could to the people who had achieved their independence. On the part of the United States it was simply a choice between insult, insolence, and injury on the one hand, and on the other the expenditure of money and loss of life, which would bear as hard on England as on the United States. Both parties at last wearied of a contest which promised no permanent settlement of interests or principles. The Federalists deprecated it from the beginning. The Republican-Democracy sustained it from the instinct of national honor. Probably it could not have been avoided without the surrender of national dignity. It was the last of our wars with Great Britain. Future difficulties will doubtless be settled by arbitration, or not settled at all, in spite of mutual ill-will. England and America cannot afford to fight. Our late Civil War demonstrated this,--when, with all the ill-feeling between the two nations, war was averted. The interests of trade may mollify and soften international jealousies, but only forbearance and the cultivation of mutual and common interests can eradicate the sentiments of mutual dislike.
However, it was not the Embargo, nor the meditated treason of Aaron Burr, nor the purchase of Louisiana, important as these were, which gives chief interest to the eight years of Jefferson's administration, and made it a political epoch. It was the firm growth and establishment of the Democratic party, of which Jefferson was the father and leader, as Hamilton was the great chieftain of the Federalist. With the accession of Jefferson to power, a new policy was inaugurated, which from his day has been the policy of the government, except in great financial emergencies when men of brain have had the direction of public affairs. Democratic leaders like Jackson and Van Buren, representing the passions or interests or prejudices of the masses, it would seem, have been generally unfortunate enough to lead the country into financial difficulties, because they have conformed to the unenlightened instincts of the people rather than to the opinions of the enlightened few,--great merchants, capitalists, and statesmen, that is, men of experience and ability. And when these men of brain have extricated the country from the financial distress which men inexperienced in finance and ignorant of the principles of political economy have brought about, the democratic leaders have regained their political ascendency, since they appealed, more than their antagonists, to those watchwords so dear to the American heart, the abolition of monopolies, unequal taxation, the exaltation of the laboring classes,--whatever promises to aggrandize the nation in a material point of view, or professes to bring about the reign of "liberty, fraternity, and equality," and the abolition of social distinctions.
It cannot be doubted that the policy of Jefferson, while it appealed to the rights and interests of "working-men," of men who labor with their hands rather than by their brains, has favored the reign of demagogues,--the great curse of American institutions. Who now rule the cities of New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Cincinnati, and Chicago? Is it not those who, in cities at least, have made self-government--the great principle for which Jefferson contended--almost an impossibility? This great statesman was sufficiently astute to predict the rule of the majority for generations to come, but I doubt if he anticipated the character of the men to whom the majority would delegate their power. Here he was not so sagacious as his great political rivals. I believe that if he could have foreseen what a miserable set the politicians would generally turn out to be,--with their venality, their unscrupulousness, their vile flatteries of the people, their system of spoils, their indifference to the higher interests of the nation,--his faith in democracy as a form of government would have been essentially shaken. He himself was no demagogue. His error was in not foreseeing the logical sequence of those abstract theories which made up his political religion,--the religion of humanity, such as the French philosophers had taught him. But his theories pleased the people, and he himself was personally popular,--the most so of all our statesmen, not excepting Henry Clay, who made many enemies.