day proves to me more and more that this American world was not made for me." 1 But he had not failed. Although in hands that he distrusted, the republic was safe; and no one had done more than he to make it so. 1 Works, VIII, 591. VI CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES OF THE F WE knew the full and exact truth respecting our first party revolution, we could reason more wisely in regard to later ones and act more prudently in regard to those which are to come. The materials on which to base a judgment of this revolution are abundant and excellent. There is little or no dispute respecting important matters of fact. Of particular value are the opinions which we find in the private correspondence of party leaders and of other interested and sagacious men of that day. Instructive, too, are the histories of the Federalist period, some of which compare favorably with the best works on other periods. And yet, despite the abundance and quality of the material and the skill of those by whom it has been worked, I am compelled to think that in one respect the results are not satisfying; it seems to me that as a rule the factor of party has not been appreciated at its true worth. The views to which I beg your attention are the results of a study prompted by the conviction that since the establishment of party government the key to political history is to be found in a study of the nature and history of party. It is agreed that among the factors which had weight in the struggle of the year 1800, the following deserve special mention: (1) Peace with France, since this took from the Federalists the popularity which they had enjoyed as the war party of 1797 and 1798 and left upon them the odium of having pushed unduly far burdensome war preparations which the event had proved unnecessary. 1 Annual Report of the American Historical Association for 1894, pp. 531539; Government Printing Office, 1896. (2) The quarrels of Adams and Hamilton, which on the eve of the election developed factions within the party that were little less hostile to one another than to the common enemy. (3) The blunders in party strategy committed by the Federalists in passing the Alien and Sedition Acts, in raising the term of naturalization from five to fourteen years, in claiming for the federal courts a common law jurisdiction, and in pushing prosecutions under the Alien and Sedition Acts in the doubtful Middle States. (4) The Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions. Concerning the influence of the peace with France and of the Federalist dissensions and war measures there is and can be no question - they were each and all greatly hurtful to the party in power. Concerning the influence of the fourth factor, the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions, there is a wide difference of view. Quite too generally these famous utterances have been condemned on the ground of their supposed relationship to later sectional movements; - that in New England between 1807 and 1814, in South Carolina in 1832, and in the Southern division of the Union in 1861. It is quite true that they were quoted as authority by the sectionalists of the North as well as those of the South; on the other hand, it should be remembered, first, that the true source of sectionalism is to be found in what Calhoun called the contrariety of the interests of the sections, rather than in the theories of the Constitution, and second, that the motive which gave birth to the resolutions had in it absolutely nothing of a sectional nature. Their aim was to protect those rights of the individual citizen which had been violated by the Alien and Sedition Acts; - rights which were as much an object of concern to Matthew Lyon of Vermont, as to any citizen of Virginia or South Carolina. It is true that the authors of the resolutions found no way of escape from unconstitutional and tyrannous legislation on the part of the national government save in a theory of the rights of the States which history has proven untenable, and public opinion now decisively rejects; but it should be kept in mind that the theory of the Union which now prevails had not been accepted in 1798 by the mass of the American people. How little the views of Madison and Jefferson jarred upon the comparatively immature and feeble national sense of a hundred years ago may be inferred from two circumstances - first, the extent, in that period immediately subsequent, of the defection of the Federalists themselves from the national idea, and second, the formal acceptance of the doctrine of State sovereignty by a great and successful party at a later period when the spirit of nationality had reached a stage of development considerably more advanced. Indeed, it is probable that at the date of their issue a considerable majority of American citizens accepted the theory of the Union on which the resolutions were based. But our present concern is not so much the relationship of the resolutions to sectionalism as their immediate effect upon the fortunes of the Republican party. In the principles of that party the rights of the individual and the rights of the States then held the first place. Every true Republican believed that the Federalist legislation of 1798 was unconstitutional, and therefore, to quote the words of Jefferson, "as null and void as if Congress had commanded the people to bow down and worship a graven image"; and many Republicans, among them Jefferson himself, believed that this legislation was part of a conspiracy to transform our Government into a monarchy. Protection through the federal judiciary they did not consider a possibility. That body was regarded as thoroughly partisan; and one of its members at least, Judge Chase, had given good ground for that opinion. What Jefferson wrote John Dickinson at the close of 1801 tells fairly the prevalent view: "They, the Federalists, have retired into the judiciary as a stronghold. There the remains of Federalism are to be preserved and fed from the Treasury, and from that battery all the works of Republicanism are to be beaten down." 1 1 Jefferson, Works, IV, 424. In fact, during the years under consideration, the distrust of the early Republicans toward the federal judiciary was not less general than that of the later Republicans during the first five years which followed the publication of the Dred Scott decision. It seemed, therefore, an imperative necessity that a protest as solemn, as earnest, and as influential as possible should be uttered, and this was what the resolutions accomplished. Silence under such circumstances would have appeared cowardly, and must have proved demoralizing. The fact that the legislatures of most of the other States rejected both the theory and the propositions embodied in the resolutions signifies little in regard to the attitude of the people, for those legislatures had been chosen under the influence of the war fever. Perhaps the greatest party advantage which the resolutions secured was this: they drew the attention of the Republicans to domestic affairs and to their own political principles, and in this way weakened and broke the spell of France which had done more than all things else to hurt their usefulness as citizens and to bring them into discredit as a party. Taken as a whole I think it reasonable to conclude that peace with France, the errors of the Federalists, and the issue of the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions were the immediate causes of the Republican victory. They seem to me to explain satisfactorily why this occurred in 1800 rather than four years later. But to know immediate causes is not enough, if it can be shown that a more important cause lies behind and brings these into operation. Why, in the year 1798, were the Federalists stricken with judicial blindness? Why, in 1801, could John Adams truly write: "No party that ever existed knew itself so little or so vainly overrated its own influence or popularity as ours. None ever understood so ill the causes of its own power or so wantonly destroyed them." 1 I think the answer is this: the useful work for the sake of which this party came into existence was done, and the time 1 Works, IX, 582. |