Union and Democracy

nting outside of communities like Philadelphia, Boston, and Charleston. Even in Philadelphia, the literary as well as the social and political capital, the poet Moore could fi

, boasted of her Dwight, her Trumbull, and her Barlow. The "Connecticut wits" are interesting personalities; but the society which could read, with anything akin to pleasure, Dwight's Conquest of Canaan-an epic in eleven book

med seventeen industries which had made notable progress, but most of these were household crafts. In 1790, Samuel Slater had duplicated the inventions of Hargreaves and Arkwr

able handmaid of agriculture, as Jefferson observed. The volume of trade expanded at an astonishing rate. The total value of exports mounted from $20,000,000 in 1790 to $94,000,000 in the year of Jefferson's inauguration. One half of this amount, how

aided materially in the building of an American marine, even in less prosperous times. The registered tonnage engaged in foreign trade increased from 346,254 in 1790 to 718,549 in 1801; and in coast trade, from 103,775 to 246,255. Yet there was an artificial quality in this prosperity. "Temporary benefits were mistaken for permanent advantages," writes a contemporary; "so certain were the profits on the foreign voyages, that commerce

es not consist so much in cultivating land as in killing it"; and the statement was scarcely less true when applied to the Northern farmer. The soil was rapidly exhausted by planting the same crop year after year, for it was easier to take up fresh land than to restore productivity to the old. Indeed, the comments of foreign travelers at the close of the century suggest doubts as to whether the Am

ferior quality, none of which was exported. A decade later thirty-five million pounds were raised, one half of which was exported; and Virginia, North Carolina, and Tennessee had begun the cultivation. This sudden development was due to the invention of the cotton

y could now cultivate cotton under an extensive system of agriculture with large immediate profits. Experience proved, however, that the system was extraordinarily wasteful, leading to a rapid exhaustio

s, yarn stockings, and slippers down at the heels, he seemed to an English visitor, who saw him in 1804, "very much like a tall, large-boned farmer." Jefferson would have been the last to resent this epithet. No man had a more profound respect for tillers of the soil. Years before he had written: "Generally speaking, the proportion which the aggregate of the other classes of citizens bears in any State to that of its husbandmen is the proportion of its sound to its healthy parts, and is

inauguration, "is so valuable to them, that they will be glad to purchase it, when the only price we ask is to do us justice. I believe we have in our own hands the means of p

list doctrine. This is to mistake the significance of the revolution which had occurred. A party had triumphed which Federalists firmly believed inimical to all government. The announcement that the fundamental principles to which all Americans were attached would guide the new Administration had a meaning which it would not have had if uttered by a Feder

ndeed, the best expression of his political philosophy. Nowhere is the governing purpose of his Administration stated more clearly than in a letter written just before his inauguration. "Let the general government be reduced to foreign concerns only, and let our affairs be disentangled from thos

rsuaded to accept the post. Two New Englanders, Henry Dearborn and Levi Lincoln, became Secretary of War and Attorney-General respectively. Far more difficult was the distribution of the lesser federal offices. Had Jefferson been free to follow his own inclination, he would probably have made few removals, even though such a course would have seemed somewha

cy of removal, the descent was easy. The point of equilibrium between the parties was soon passed. By the end of Jefferson's second term of office, the civil service was as preponderatingly Republican as it had been Federalist in 1800. It cannot be denied that Jefferson opened the door to the spoils system; but it should be stated also that he e

ress in a speech, since Republicans held this custom a reprehensible imitation of the British speech from the throne. Yet with characteristic indirection, Jefferson assigned other reasons for substituting a written message for the usual personal address. "I have had principal regard," said he, "to the convenience of the

, the debt, principal and interest, could be discharged within sixteen years. But the party was clamoring for the reduction of taxes. The problem before the Secretary of the Treasury was how to accomplish these antithetical purposes. The most unpopular tax was unquestionably the excise. If this were cut out and the estimated appropriation for the reduction of the debt were made, the Government would be unable to live within its income. The only alternative was to reduce expenditures. It was at this point that Jeffe

ways which were not less effective because they were personal and indirect. The leadership in the House of Representatives, which then overshadowed the Senate, fell to Southern rather than to Northern Republicans. In close touch with the Speak

cutive branches of the Government, had retreated into the judiciary as their 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 and destroyed." But no suggestion of this animus towa

ed a fear of the "ultimate censorial and controlling power" of the courts over all the departments of the Government-a control "over legislation, execution, and decision, and irresponsible to the people." In the background of the active mind of this Virginian was hostility to the new courts "because of their tendency to produce a gradual demolition of State Co

d the power of Congress by prescribing a tenure of office during good behavior. The challenge was disquieting, for with John Marshall on the bench of the Supreme Court, the Republican reformation of the courts might be brought to naught by

remain upon the statute book, but insisted upon the repeal of the Naturalization Act of the year 1798. The time of residence required of aliens befo

fter the results of the election were known were nullities, on the theory that a retiring President might not bind his successor. Two years later, in 1803, in the famous case of Marbury v. Madison, the Supreme Court, speaking through the Chief Justice, took sharp issue with the President. William Marbury had applied to the court for a mandamus to compel Madison, Secretary of State, to deliver his com

ision of the act unwarranted by the Constitution and therefore void. For the first time the Supreme Court asserted its power to pronounce an act of Congress repugnant to the Constitution not to be law, but void and of no effect. In substantiating its position, the court did not inquire into the difficult question whether the framers of the Constitution intended or expected the national judiciary to exercise this authority. It was enough for the purposes of the court that the Constitut

he Constitution, the court must decide which of these conflicting rules governs the case. "This is of the very essence of judicial duty." Moreover, the judges may not shut their eyes to the Constitution and see only the law, for they are bound by oath to administer justice not according to the laws alone, but "agreeably to the Constitu

dy. When the trial opened, Judge Pickering did not appear, but representations made by his son showed beyond a doubt that he was and had been for two years of unsound mind. To convict a man of misdemeanors for which he was not morally responsible seemed a travesty on justice. Yet there was no other constitut

ry at Baltimore. The repeal of the Judiciary Act, he had declared, had shaken the independence of the national judiciary to its foundations. "Our republican Constitution," said he, "will sink into a mobocracy-the worst of all possible governments." To appreciate the effect of this partisan outburst upon the President, one must recall that Chase was the j

ult task as a man could be. Instead of impeaching Chase for his indiscretion at Baltimore, Randolph dragged into the indictment his conduct on the bench during the trials of Fries and of Callender, and certain errors in law which he was alleged to have committed. The effect of these latter items was to range all the

, might be removed for a mistake in the administration of the law. Nicholson rejected this theory, contending that impeachment was essentially a criminal prosecution which aimed at not only the removal but also the punishment of the offender. Yet the managers had not specified any offense which could be called

article, which touched upon the real provocation for the trial,-the harangue at Baltimore,-received the highest vote; but nearly one fourth of the Republican Senators refused to sustain the managers. The acquittal of Chase was, therefore, a judgment against Randolph. He never recovered his lost prestige as the leader of his party in the House. Jefferson could accep

GRAPHI

onomic life the reader will turn to McMaster. A briefer account of the Jeffersonian régime may be found in Channing, The Jeffersonian System, 1801-1811 (in The American Nation, vol. 12, 1906). Henry Adams has also contributed two biographies to this period: Life of Albert Gallatin (1878), and John Randolph(1882). The Federalist point of view is admirably pre