"1. Levees are done made away with. 2. The first communication to the next congress will be, like all subsequent ones, by message to which no answer will be expected. 3. The diplomatic establishment in Europe will be reduced to three ministers. 4. The compensation of collectors depends on you (Congress) and not on me. 5. The army is undergoing a chaste reformation. 6. The navy will be reduced to the legal establishment by the last of the month (May, 1801). 7. Agencies in every department will be revised. 8. We shall push you to the uttermost in economizing. 9. A very early recommendation has been given to the postmaster-general to employ no printer, foreigner or Revolutionary Tory in any of his offices."
James Madison was Mr. Jefferson's secretary of state; Henry Dearborn was secretary of war, and Levi Lincoln, attorney-general. Jefferson retained Mr. Adams's secretaries of the treasury and navy, until the following Autumn, when Albert Gallatin, a naturalized foreigner, was appointed to the first named office and Robert Smith to the second. The president early resolved to reward his political friends when he came to "revise" the agencies in every department. Three days after his inauguration, he wrote to Colonel Monroe, "I have firmly refused to follow the counsels of those who have desired the giving of offices to some of the Federalist leaders in order to reconcile. I have given, and will give, only to Republicans, under existing circumstances."
The doctrine, ever since acted upon, that "to the victor belong the spoils," was then practically promulgated from the fountain-head of government patronage; and with a cabinet wholly Democratic, when congress met in December, 1801, and with the minor offices filled with his political friends, Mr. Jefferson began his presidential career of eight years' duration. In his inaugural address he said, "Every difference of opinion is not a difference of principle. We have called by different names brethren of the same principle. We are all Federalists--we are all Republicans."
Vigor and enlightened views marked his course, so that even his political enemies were compelled to confess his foresight and sound judgment in regard to the national policy.
The administration of Jefferson was not marked with perfect peace abroad. Napoleon Bonaparte, the outgrowth of the French revolution, had overthrown monarchy in France and conquered almost all Europe. He was not a Washington, however, and the French people were only exchanging one tyrant for another.
The Algerians, those barbarous North African pirates, had been forcing the Americans to pay tribute. Captain Bainbridge, who commanded the frigate George Washington, for refusing to convey an Algerian ambassador to the court of the sultan at Constantinople, was threatened by the haughty governor with imprisonment.
"You pay me tribute, by which you become my slave, and therefore I have a right to order you as I think proper," said the dey.
Bainbridge was forced to obey the orders of the Barbarian.
[Illustration: Stephen Decatur.]
The Americans resolved to humble the Algerians, and a fleet was sent to Tripoli in 1803. The frigate Philadelphia, while reconnoitering the harbor, struck on a rock and was captured by the Tripolitans, who made her officers prisoners of war and her crew slaves.