Inquiry Into the Origin and Course of Political Parties in the United States

by Martin Van Buren

A sense of danger to the cause of republicanism in the United States was widely diffused through the public mind. There were indignities to be resented and wrongs to be redressed, besides new securities to be devised for the safety of long-cherished principles. These were considerations quite sufficient to rouse the lion of the Revolution from his lair to defend its choicest fruit from further profanation. Those classes, among the surviving patriots of that eventful day, of whom I have spoken as pervaded by a deeper hatred of kingly government than others among their Revolutionary associates, sprang to the rescue with alacrity and zeal. The descendants of the devoted spirits who first settled the ancient colony of Virginia were not unmindful of their hereditary obligations to resist the exercise of lawless power. Neither could the appeal fall unheeded on the ears of the representatives of the persecuted Huguenots, who had suffered so cruelly from the exercise of powers now sought to be revived, or of the Netherlanders of the Middle States, or on those sons of the Puritans of the East whose zeal in behalf of liberty had not been tempted to spend itself on trade and manufactures by the seductive influence of Hamilton's policy, and by the facilities they possessed for those pursuits.

Drawing its power from such sources, and sustained by a great preponderance of the landed interest in every part of the country, the old Republican party attained a degree of vigor and efficiency superior to that of any partisan organization which had before or has since appeared on the political stage. Mr. John Quincy Adams described it truly when he said that it had acquired a head which would have enabled it, if so disposed, "to have overthrown Washington's administration as it did that of his successor acting upon its principles." Jefferson's declaration to Mazzei that "we have only to awake and snap the Lilliputian cords with which they have attempted to bind us during the first slumbers that succeed our labors," was borne out by the result.

Although the audacious passion for monarchical government, which the leading Federalists had ventured to revive so soon after the Revolution, was the most exciting of the causes which inflamed the hearts and braced the nerves of the Republicans for the conflict,[31] that was not the first issue to be tried. The nature of the government to be substituted was a question that would not, in the natural order of things, arise until the fate of the existing Constitution had been settled; but as their blood was up and their hands at work, the Republicans resolved, if possible, to strangle the conspiracy against the new-born liberties of the country in both its branches by the same effort. The severity and success of the blows they directed against the restoration of the power and influence of the Crown, in any form, is strikingly illustrated by a comparison of the state in which that question was found and that in which it was left by the civil revolution of 1800. Whilst at the former period the superiority of kingly over republican government was the prevailing and absorbing sentiment among what were called the higher classes, as graphically described by Mr. Jefferson, and substantially corroborated by Gouverneur Morris's letter to Rufus King, the notion that the former would be ever practicable in this country was so thoroughly annihilated by that great struggle as never again to have been whispered in our politics. There is no exaggeration in the affirmation that there has been no day within the last forty years when a proposition for the reëstablishment of monarchy in the United States, however seriously made, could have excited any other emotion than ridicule or contempt, or would not have been deemed more appropriately punished by the administration of the straight-jacket than by a trial for treason. But there has been far greater difficulty in completing the work of resistance to Hamilton's efforts to overthrow the Constitution by subverting it, through the agency of his sapping and mining policy, which was the direct issue in the election of 1800. A constitution had been established, in the construction and ratification of which the Federal party had performed a greater and more effectual part than the party opposed to it. Its general provisions were fully adequate to the support of a republican government. By a successful incorporation of the representative system with the republican form, pure and simple, its framers had happily qualified and adapted the instrument to our extensive territory, and a provision for amendments furnished a remedy against existing defects. Of the latter the omission to secure specifically and adequately the individual natural rights of men against the exercise of arbitrary power was the most important—a defect in respect to which a large majority of the Anti-Federalists were, for reasons frequently referred to, most sensitive. The Constitution was ratified by several of the States, and amongst them by Virginia and New York, with accompanying resolutions, some of them passed by the State conventions with perfect unanimity, expressing opinions that it deserved revision and required amendments. Without such resolutions the ratification could not, we are forced to believe, have been effected. We have seen with what reluctance the first Congress, Federal by a large majority, consented to make any constitutional amendments, and that nothing short of Mr. Madison's wonderful perseverance could, in all probability, have effected their adoption; but they were obtained, proved satisfactory to the Anti-Federalists, and made them fast friends of the new Constitution.

From that moment that instrument ceased to be an object of solicitude with the leaders of the Federal party, hardly retaining favor with any of them. This result is by no means an unusual one in the history of parties whose feelings have become to any great extent embittered. The instances are rare indeed in which any public measure or act is at the same time entirely acceptable to all sides. The "Independent Treasury" is the only clear case of the kind among us that has fallen under my observation. The letters of the leading Federalists, which have now for the first time seen the light, prove their subsequent indifference, and, in many instances, active hostility to the Constitution. Not a few who imbibed Hamilton's feelings and shared in his views upon this point had been members of the Convention, and among those to whom I have awarded so large a share of credit for their conduct in making the Constitution what it is. This was justly their due. It is not to be doubted that several of them, as I have before said, participated largely in Hamilton's objections, and would have preferred a very different instrument; but they knew that none less favorable to the supposed interests of the State governments, or less liberal in other respects, would stand the slightest chance of ratification, more especially when the circumstance of disregard to the limits and restrictions of the authority by which they had been convened was taken into consideration. They saw nothing but injury, vast and complicated, to the country from their failure, and they evinced their patriotism in yielding to this wise foresight at the sacrifice of their individual preferences. Although many of them, doubtless, did not fully share Hamilton's absorbing preference for monarchy, they very generally went to the extent pointed out by John Quincy Adams in his Jubilee Address—that was for a government of more energy than was provided for by the Constitution presented by the Convention. This they had a right to desire and to work for through amendments in the way appointed by the Constitution, but in this way they knew they could not obtain what they wanted, and they therefore yielded their ready aid to the measures he proposed by which the Constitution was to be made to mean any thing, substantially, which those who were intrusted with its execution might believe would promote the general welfare. Hamilton's course in this regard seemed to the uninitiated extremely reckless, as he appeared desirous to select objects in respect to which the excess of authority under the Constitution which he exerted was most obvious, and the subjects themselves were those in respect to which the sensibilities of his opponents were the keenest. In the whole range of measures, which, if constitutional, might appropriately proceed from his department, he could not have found a single one as to which the intention of the framers of the Constitution, adverse to the power he exercised, was better understood than a United States Bank. Mr. Jefferson brought the facts which transpired in the Convention proving such intention to his notice, and to that of the President, and they were not controverted by either.

So in regard to the Sedition Law. One of the ten amendments was especially designed to prohibit such legislation, and there were no subjects to which the Anti-Federalists and Republicans were more alive than to the liberty of speech and of the press. The same thing may be said, in respect to public sensibilities, of the Alien Act. That Act conferred a power on the President, which, though one of the prerogatives of the Crown, no prime minister dare exercise at this day in the sense in which the President was authorized to exercise it.

Yet it is now known that of these last measures the first was passed upon Hamilton's suggestion, and Mr. Charles F. Adams informs us that neither was ever made the subject of executive consultation.

But I can well conceive that these considerations, which might deter other men, were but so many recommendations with Hamilton for the course he pursued. From first to last he thought the Constitution inadequate to the purposes of what he regarded as good government, and that the sooner it was gotten rid of the better for the country. There were moments when he allowed himself to hope that he might make it answer the purpose if he were allowed to go on with it as he began. But these were only momentary impressions that soon gave way to the settled convictions of his mind, his avowals of which were uniformly the same. He declared to Jefferson in 1792, "that the Constitution was a shilly-shally thing of mere milk and water, and was only good as a step to something better,"—a declaration which the latter communicated in self-defense to Washington; and in 1802 he describes it to his friend Morris, as we have seen, as "a frail and worthless fabric," reminding him at the same time of his knowledge that such had been his (Hamilton's) opinion "from the very beginning." It was, therefore, natural that a man of his intelligence and resolution, looking with entire confidence to its failure, should think it expedient to select the most palpable as well as the most flagrant violations of the Constitution, while it was yet in its infancy and feeblest condition, and thus to prepare the public mind for the degradation he had in store for it, and to insure its speedy overthrow.

These severe measures were rendered doubly odious by the manner in which the Sedition Law was executed, and by the steps adopted to suppress outbreaks of popular discontent, but which only swelled comparative rivulets into resistless torrents and rendered the Republican cause invaluable service by giving occasion to Madison's great Report on the Constitutionality of the Alien and Sedition Laws. The judgment of the country has ever been that a more able state paper never issued from the pen of any man. It covered the entire controversy between the two parties, traced its origin to the different views they entertained of the construction and obligatory character of the Constitution, and placed the republican creed in those respects upon grounds absolutely impregnable. Hamilton was a laborious writer, but only so because his writings were so voluminous; to write was with him a labor of love, and there was no man of his day who devoted more time to political disquisitions. There was scarcely any other great public question that occupied the public mind during that period on which a publication, offensive or defensive, is not to be found in his Works. Yet if he ever attempted a reply to that Report, which attracted general attention and became the flag under which the Republicans fought, I have never seen or heard of it. I may safely assume that he never did make such attempt.

The issue was fairly presented by Mr. Madison, through the Virginia Legislature, as depending upon the answers to the following questions:—

1. What are the true principles that should be applied to the construction of the Constitution?