|
|
31. Second Term as President
r. Jefferson was re-elected by a vote of one hundred and sixty-two to fourteen. The only States which voted for his opponent, Pinckney, were Connecticut and Delaware, with two districts in Maryland. George Clinton was elected Vice-President by the same majority over Rufus King. The unanimity of the vote on this occasion, while it pronounced judgment of approbation on the character of the administration, is really unexampled in the history of the United States, considering the circumstances of the times. The vote subsequently given to Mr. Monroe, for example, though more nearly unanimous, was much less extraordinary. The latter vote was given in a season of calm; the former amid the violence of a political tempest.
On the 4th of March, 1805, Mr. Jefferson re-entered upon the duties of the chief magistrate for another term. The same absence of all parade and ostentation that characterized the former was rigorously observed on this occasion.
In his second inaugural message, Mr. Jefferson spoke of the influence of seditious intruders operating upon the prejudices and ignorance of the Indians, which had always embarrassed the general government in its efforts to change their pursuits and ameliorate their unhappy condition. "These persons," said he, "inculcate a sanctimonious reverence [in the Indians] for the customs of their ancestors: that whatsoever they did must be done through all time; that reason is a false guide, and to advance under its counsel in their physical, moral, or political condition is perilous innovation; that their duty is to remain as their Creator made them, ignorance being safety and knowledge full of danger. In short, my friends, among them is seen the action and counteraction of good sense and bigotry. They, too, have their anti-philosophers who find an interest in keeping things in their present state, who dread reformation, and exert all their faculties to maintain the ascendency of habit over the duty of improving our reason and obeying its mandates." (2nd Inaugural, 1805. ME 3:379)
New principles were advanced in this message regarding the appropriation of the surplus revenue of the nation after the final redemption of the public debt. The epoch being not far distant when that propitious event might be safely calculated to happen, the President thought it a fit occasion to suggest his views on the most eligible arrangement and disposal of the public contributions upon the basis which would then be presented. Should the impost duties be suppressed and that advantage given to foreign over domestic manufactures? Should they be diminished, and upon what principles? Or should they be continued and applied to the purposes of internal improvement, education, etc.? These were questions that he submitted to the consideration of the people and subsequently urged upon the attention of the legislature in his official communications. The President did not hesitate to recommend that the revenue, when liberated by the redemption of the public debt, should, by a just repartition among the States and a corresponding amendment of the Constitution, be applied in time of peace to rivers, canals, roads, arts, manufactures, education, and other great objects of public utility within each State; and in time of war, to defraying the accumulated expenses of such a crisis from year to year, to which the current resources would be fully adequate without encroaching on the rights of future generations by burthening them with the debts of the past. War would then be but a suspension for the time being of useful works, and the restoration of peace, a return to the progress of improvement untrammeled by pecuniary embarrassments. Instead, therefore, of reducing the revenue arising from the consumption of foreign articles to the actual amount necessary for the current expenses of the government, the President recommended its continuance with certain modifications and its application to works of internal improvement. On some articles of more general and necessary use, he advised a suppression of the impost; but the great mass of the articles on which duties were paid were foreign luxuries, purchased by those who were rich enough to use them without feeling the tax. Their patriotism certainly, he thought, would prefer a continuance of the general system which, while not oppressive to themselves, would prove advantageous to the nation by furnishing the means of such objects of public improvement as might be thought proper to add to the constitutional enumeration of federal powers. By these operations, new channels of communication would be opened between the States, the lines of separation made to disappear, their several interests identified, and their union cemented by new and indissoluble ties.
He placed education among the first and worthiest of the objects of public care in its application of the surplus revenue; "not that it would be proposed to take its ordinary branches out of the hands of private enterprise, which manages so much better all the concerns to which it is equal; but a public institution can alone supply those sciences which, though rarely called for, are yet necessary to complete the circle, all the parts of which contribute to the improvement of the country, and some of them to its preservation." (6th Annual Message, Dec. 2, 1806. ME 3:423) In pursuance of this idea, he recommended to the consideration of Congress "a national establishment for education," with such an extension of the federal powers as should bring it within their jurisdiction. He believed an amendment of the Constitution, by consent of the States, necessary as well for this as for the other objects of public improvement that he recommended because they were not among those enumerated in the Constitution and to which it permitted the public money to be applied. So early as 1806, he informed Congress that by the time the State legislatures should have deliberated upon the appropriate amendment to the Constitution, the necessary laws be passed, and arrangements made for their execution, the requisite amount of funds would be on hand and without employment. He contributed liberally to the establishment of the proposed institution and used every exertion to carry it into operation; but the germ was unhappily blighted by sectional jealousies.
he happy and advantageous train in which the affairs of the nation were established during the President's first term left little for the remainder of his administration except to maintain peace and neutrality amidst the convulsions of a warring world and to rescue the union from one of the most nefarious and daring conspiracies recorded in modern history. The measures called into action by these two formidable difficulties developed two opposite extremes of character in the government which were so admirably adapted each to its respective exigency as to have worked out for the country an almost supernatural deliverance. The forbearance and moderation manifested under the pressure of the crisis were as necessary to our safety as the energy and promptitude with which the internal enemy was crushed and laid prostrate at the feet of government.
The traitorous conspiracy of Burr was one of the most flagitious of which history will ever furnish an example; and there was probably not a person in the United States who entertained a doubt of the real guilt of the accused. His purpose was to separate the western States from the union, annex Mexico to them, establish a monarchical government with himself at the head, and thus provide an example and an instrument for the subversion of our liberties. This American Cataline, cool, sagacious, and wary, had apparently engaged one thousand men to follow his fortunes without letting them know his projects further than by assurances that the government had approved them. The great majority of his adherents took his assertion for fact, but with those who would not and were unwilling to embark in his enterprises without the approbation of the government, the following stratagem was practised: A forged letter, purporting to be from the Secretary of War, was made to express this approbation and to say that the President was absent at Monticello, but that on his return, the enterprise would be sanctioned by him without hesitation. This letter was spread open on Burr's table so as to invite the eye of all who entered his room. By this means he avoided exposing himself to any liability to prosecution for forgery, while he proved himself a master in the arts of the conspirator. The moment the proclamation of the President appeared, undeceiving his deluded partisans, Burr found himself stripped of his surreptitious influence and left with about thirty desperadoes only. The people rose in mass wherever he appeared or was suspected to be, and by their energy the rebellion was crushed without the necessity of employing a detachment of the military, except to guard their respective stations. His first enterprise was to seize New Orleans, which he supposed would effectually bridle the upper country, reduce it to ready subjection, and plant him at the door of Mexico without an enemy in the rear. But when the ensigns of the union were unfurled, there was not a single native Creole and only one American that did not abandon his standard and rally under the banners of the Constitution. His real partisans were the new emigrants from the United States and elsewhere: fugitives from justice, disaffected politicians, and desperate adventurers.
The event was a happy one, however. It was always a source of exultation to the President, inasmuch as it realized his declaration on assuming the helm of public affairs that a republican government was "the strongest Government on earth... the only one where every man, at the call of the laws, would fly to the standard of the law and would meet invasions of the public order as his own personal concern." (1st Inaugural, 1801. ME 3:319) The atrocity of the crime, however, and the existence of the most conclusive proof compelled the President, as it did every other reflecting mind, to seek in some other hypothesis than the jealous provision of the laws in favor of life, the requital of this modern parricide. The result of the trial astonished the world and confounded the spectators from whose minds every doubt had vanished, when the investigation was suddenly arrested by the decision of the court. The very verdict of the jury, "that the accused was not proved guilty by any evidence submitted to them," was a virtual acknowledgment that the effect was in the application of the law or the law itself, not in the evidence of guilt; and this verdict was ordered to be recorded simply, "Not guilty." Indeed, all the consequences of the immovable tenure of the judiciary -- except by process of impeachment -- and their consequent irresponsibility to any practicable control were conspicuously demonstrated on this occasion. No further evidence was wanting to fix the President unalterably in the opinion which he had long entertained that in this defect of the Constitution lurked the canker which, unless timely eradicated, was destined to destroy the equilibrium of powers in the general government and between the general and state governments. In a letter written at this time, he wrote:
"All this, however, will work well. The nation will judge both the offender and judges for themselves. If a member of the Executive or Legislature does wrong, the day is never far distant when the people will remove him. They will see then and amend the error in our Constitution, which makes any branch independent of the nation. They will see that one of the great coordinate branches of the government, setting itself in opposition to the other two and to the common sense of the nation, proclaims impunity to that class of offenders which endeavors to overturn the Constitution, and are themselves protected in it by the Constitution itself; for impeachment is a farce which will not be tried again. If their protection of Burr produces this amendment, it will do more good than his condemnation would have done. Against Burr, personally, I never had one hostile sentiment. I never, indeed, thought him an honest, frank-dealing man, but considered him as a crooked gun or other perverted machine whose aim or stroke you could never be sure of. Still, while he possessed the confidence of the nation, I thought it my duty to respect in him their confidence, and to treat him as if he deserved it; and if this punishment can be commuted now for any useful amendment of the Constitution, I shall rejoice in it." (to William B. Giles, Apr. 20, 1807. ME 11:190)
hile on the subject of the independence of the judiciary, it may be proper to examine the opinions of Mr. Jefferson at a subsequent date and under a more dispassionate contemplation of the question than was practicable in the state of feeling excited by the case of Burr. The tenure of good behavior allotted to the federal judges was a defect in the Constitution which no one sought to correct at the time of its adoption, nor until the tendencies of the principle had begun to develop themselves by action. The amplitude of jurisdiction assumed during the federal ascendency, which made it nearly co-extensive with the common law, seems first to have awakened the thinking part of the public in general and Mr. Jefferson in particular to a sense of the dangerous error which made one of the three branches of government so effectually independent of the nation. His solicitude upon this important subject appeared to increase every year afterwards, following him steadily into his retirement as new occasions administered new aliment to his fears. The following extract of a letter to William T. Barry in 1822 evinces the state of his mind at that period and the earnestness of his endeavors to procure an amendment of the Constitution.
"I consider the party division of Whig and Tory the most wholesome which can exist in any government, and well worthy of being nourished to keep out those of a more dangerous character. We already see the power, installed for life, responsible to no authority (for impeachment is not even a scare-crow), advancing with a noiseless and steady pace to the great object of consolidation. The foundations are already deeply laid by their decisions for the annihilation of constitutional State rights and the removal of every check, every counterpoise to the engulfing power of which themselves are to make a sovereign part. If ever this vast country is brought under a single government, it will be one of the most extensive corruption, indifferent and incapable of a wholesome care over so wide a spread of surface. This will not be borne, and you will have to choose between reformation and revolution. If I know the spirit of this country, the one or the other is inevitable. Before the canker is become inveterate, before its venom has reached so much of the body politic as to get beyond control, remedy should be applied. Let the future appointments of judges be for four or six years and removable by the President and Senate. This will bring their conduct at regular periods under revision and probation, and may keep them in equipoise between the general and special governments. We have erred in this point by copying England, where certainly it is a good thing to have the judges independent of the King. But we have omitted to copy their caution also, which makes a judge removable on the address of both legislative houses. That there should be public functionaries independent of the nation, whatever may be their demerit, is a solecism in a republic of the first order of absurdity and inconsistency." (July 2, 1822. ME 15:388)
At the revolution in England, it was considered a great point gained in favor of liberty that the commissions of the judges, which had hitherto been during the pleasure of the king, should thenceforth be given during good behavior; and that the question of good behavior should be left to the vote of a simple majority in the two houses of parliament. A judiciary dependant on the will of the king could never have been any other than an instrument of tyranny; nothing, then, could be more salutary than a change to the tenure of good behavior, with the concomitant restraint of impeachment by a simple majority. The founders of the American republic were more cordial in their jealousies of the executive than either of the other branches. They therefore very properly and consistently adopted the English reformation of making the judges independent of the executive. But in doing this, they as little suspected they had made them independent of the nation by requiring a vote of two-thirds in the Senatorial branch to effect a removal. Experience has proved such a majority impracticable where any defense is made in a body that has the strong political partialities and antipathies that ordinarily prevail. In the impeachment of Judge Pickering of New Hampshire, no defense was attempted, otherwise the party vote of more than one-third of the Senate would have acquitted him.
The judiciary of the United States, then, is an irresponsible body; and history has established, if reason could not have foreseen, its slow and noiseless accession of influence under the sanctuary of such a tenure. If the mischief is acknowledged, the only question should be not when, but what should be the remedy. "I would not, indeed," writes Mr. Jefferson, "make them dependant on the Executive authority, as they formerly were in England; but I deem it indispensable to the continuance of this government that they should be submitted to some practical and impartial control: and that this, to be impartial, must be compounded of a mixture of state and federal authorities. It is not enough that honest men are appointed judges. All know the influence of interest on the mind of man, and how unconsciously his judgment is warped by that influence. To this bias add that of the esprit de corps, of their peculiar maxim and creed that 'it is the office of a good judge to enlarge his jurisdiction,' and the absence of responsibility, and how can we expect impartial decision between the General government, of which they are themselves so eminent a part, and an individual State from which they have nothing to hope or fear. We have seen too that, contrary to all correct example, they are in the habit of going out of the question before them, to throw an anchor ahead and grapple further hold for future advances of power. They are then in fact the corps of sappers and miners, steadily working to undermine the independent rights of the States and to consolidate all power in the hands of that government in which they have so important a freehold estate. But it is not by the consolidation, or concentration of powers, but by their distribution, that good government is effected." "I repeat," he adds, "that I do not charge the judges with wilful and ill-intentioned error; but honest error must be arrested where its toleration leads to public ruin. As for the safety of society, we commit honest maniacs to Bedlam; so judges should be withdrawn from their bench, whose erroneous biases are leading us to dissolution. It may indeed injure them in fame or in fortune; but it saves the republic, which is the first and supreme law." (Autobiography, 1821. ME 1:121)
From the renewal of hostilities between great Britain and France in 1803 down to the period at which the embargo was enacted, the commerce of the United States was subjected to depredations by the belligerents until it was nearly annihilated. In the tremendous struggle for ascendency which animated these powerful competitors and convulsed the European world to its center, the laws of nature and of nations were utterly disregarded by both, and the injuries inflicted on our commerce by the one were retaliated by the other: not on the aggressor, but on the innocent and peaceable victim to their united aggression.
Under the joint operation of their edicts and proclamations, there was not a single port in Europe or her dependencies to which American vessels could navigate without being exposed to capture and condemnation. In this situation, the President wisely recommended an embargo; and in pursuance of his recommendation, the measure was adopted by Congress on the 22nd day of December, 1807, by overwhelming majorities in both houses.
In addition to the joint aggressions on our neutral rights under the sweeping paper blockades of both belligerents, Great Britain was in the separate habit of daily violations of our sovereignty in the form of impressments. The injuries perpetually arising from this source alone constituted an abundant cause of war and consequently of embargo. Denying the right of expatriation, the British ministry authorized the seizure of naturalized Americans wherever they could be found, under color of their having been born within the British dominions. From the abuses of this practice, sufficiently oppressive in its ordinary exercise, thousands of American citizens native born as well as naturalized were subjected to the petty despotism of naval officers acting as judges, juries, and executioners, and doomed to slavery and death or to become instruments of destruction to their own countrymen.
Minor provocations and injuries were, in June 1807, absorbed in the audacity of an aggression which is without a parallel in the history of independent nations at peace. By order of the British Admiral Berkley, the ship Leopard of fifty guns fired on the United States frigate Chesapeake of thirty-six guns within the waters of the United States in order to compel the delivery of part of her crew claimed as British subjects. After several broadsides from the Leopard and four men killed on board the Chesapeake, the latter struck, was boarded by the British, and had four men taken from her, three of them native American citizens, one of whom was hanged as a British deserter. Never since the battle of Lexington had there existed such a state of universal exasperation in the public mind as was produced by this aggression. Popular assemblies were convened in every considerable place at which resolutions were passed expressive of indignation at the outrage.
The President forthwith issued a proclamation interdicting British armed vessels from entering the waters of the United States and commanding all those therein immediately to depart. In this manner, peace was prolonged without any compromise of the national honor, and saving the right to declare war under better auspices on failure of an amicable reparation of the injury. By the time Congress assembled, the affair of the Chesapeake was hopefully committed to negotiation with the additional constraint which it imposed on the British government to settle the whole subject of impressments. And the depredations on our neutral rights by the rival belligerents under their orders in council or imperial decrees were put upon an equal footing and made the occasion of an embargo operating equally and impartially against both.
As a substitute for war, an embargo was the choice of a lesser evil in place of a greater, and at the same time annoyed the belligerent powers more than could have been done by open warfare. England felt it in her manufactures by privations of the raw material, in her maritime interests by the loss of her naval stores, and above all in the discontinuance of supplies essential to her colonies. Our commerce was the second in the world, our carrying trade the very first, and had the restraint upon them been rigidly observed, it might have inclined the European nations to justice. But the popular resistance was so great, so determined, and so daring that it was found impracticable to enforce obedience without provoking violence and insurrection. The consequence was that the practical efficacy of the embargo as an engine of coercion proved far less than the reasonable expectations of its friends.
Those engaged in foreign commerce and in the carrying trade were found to prefer the hazard of seizure and confiscation to a general embargo; and where the interests of any portion of the community are supposed to be affected by a public measure, no consideration of national advantage or dignity will ever reconcile the aggrieved party to the smallest pecuniary sacrifice. The opposition to the embargo was no doubt more strenuous from the circumstance that that portion of our citizens who were more immediately affected by its operation, particularly the merchants, considered themselves the best judges relative to the expediency of any restriction of the kind, and were inclined to look upon the act of the executive as arbitrary and ill-advised. So impracticable must it ever be found for the wisest government to consult the general welfare of the nation and at the same time provide for local wants or administer to sectional monopoly.
Top | Previous Chapter | Next Chapter | Front Page
© 1997 by Eyler Robert Coates, Sr.