1799.]

nates.

the points fixed upon as ultimata, in case the negotiations with France should be renewed, and after preparing certain papers necessary to the vindication of the direct tax recently imposed for defraying the additional expenses incurred by the preparations for war. It would have been wiser to remain at his post, since he well knew that he had unwilling subordiIn the absence of the President, every kind of procrastination ensued. On the 6th of March, Mr. Murray was informed that a distinct pledge must be obtained from the French Foreign Minister, that the Envoys should be received and treated with due respect; and that no indirect unofficial communication would be permitted, nor any variation of the designated policy be listened to, unless the Directory should themselves prefer to send a Minister to Philadelphia. These instructions did not reach Murray until May. Talleyrand repeated the assurances previously given, and complained of the delays which were now being unnecessarily made. The French Minister's note arrived in America on the 30th of July. Adams then urged upon the heads of Departments the propriety of completing all arrangements for the Commission with the utmost despatch. They acted, nevertheless, with elaborate slowness, in the manifest hope of defeating the attempt at peace. Indeed, the plot at length became so serious, that Mr. Stoddert, the Secretary of the Navy, wrote to Adams that his presence was absolutely necessary at Trenton, whither the public offices had been temporarily transferred, in consequence of an outbreak of yellow fever at Philadelphia. The Cabinet, it appeared, had been discussing the advisability of suspending the mission for some time. This idea was suggested by intelligence recently received from Paris, announcing that the rule of the Directory was at an end, that Talleyrand and many of the other Ministers had resigned, and that there were strong probabilities of the Jacobins being restored to power. The altered condition of affairs in France offered a valid excuse for re-considering the course which had been adopted so many months before; and the President himself saw that it would be reasonable to suspend the mission for awhile, until the result of the new revolution should be ascertained.

Adams arrived at Trenton on the 10th of October, and at once met the members of his Cabinet. Nothing was then decided; but the warparty soon obtained an accession of strength by the news of British and Russian successes over the French. It was thought by many that the French Republic would soon be at an end, and the Bourbons reinstated in power. The defeat of the contemplated mission was now regarded as almost

551

certain by the war-party; but they were in fact on the eve of a great reverse. On the evening of the 15th of October, Adams summoned his Cabinet to a meeting. When its members had assembled, the President laid before them the draft of instructions to the Commissioners which had been prepared by the Secretary of State. After a long discussion, this document met the unanimous approval of the Ministers. The Cabinet Council broke up about eleven o'clock at night, believing that the great struggle, as to whether the Commission should be sent at all, was only postponed until the next day. Very early on the following morning, however, two of their number received from the President a brief direction in writing, that the papers agreed upon for the use of the Commissioners should be forthwith made out, and that the frigate United States should be put in readiness to receive them, and set sail for France on or before the 1st of November.* On the 5th of that month the Commissioners started for Europe, and the ultimate result of their negotiations was to re-establish peace between the two countries.

But, almost before they could commence their duties, the head of the American army, and, taken altogether, the greatest character of that epoch and nation, had attained his final rest. A neglected cold had caused the death of Washington, on the 14th of December, 1799, after little more than a day's illness. He expired, in the sixty-eighth year of his age, in his beloved house at Mount Vernon, surrounded by that quiet and that domestic affection which he coveted above all things, and which came as a sacred solace and conclusion to a life of turmoil, danger, and contest. It may be said of him, as of many other great men, that his work was finished before he himself departed. Had he lived longer, he would perhaps have added nothing to his fame. He had helped to free his nation; he had lived to organise the political constitution of his country; he had added eight years of wise administration to eight of sterner service, and to a long career of preparation for the one great task. It would be difficult to imagine how anything more could have been placed upon the record, worthy of that which had already been accomplished. With men of special greatness, death is the completion and consecration of the full magnificence of their lives; and such, it may be said, was the case with Washington. The popular grief at

In this narrative of the events of Mr. Adams's Admistration, great use has been made of the Life of that statesman, by his grandson, Charles Francis Adams, which was published at Boston, U.S., in 1856, and which, as regards many matters, was based on information not previously given to the world.

"With patriotic pride we review the life of our Washington, and compare him with those of other countries who have been pre-eminent in fame. Ancient and modern names are diminished before him. Greatness and guilt have too often been allied; but his fame is whiter than it is brilliant. The destroyers of nations stood abashed at the majesty of his virtues. It reproved the intemperance of their ambition, and darkened the splendour of victory." Adams, in his reply to this address, observed:"In the multitude of my thoughts and recollections on this melancholy event, you will permit me only to say that I have seen him in the days of adversity, in some of the scenes of his deepest distress and most trying perplexities; I have also attended him in his highest elevation and most prosperous felicity; with uniform admiration of his wisdom, moderation, and constancy. The life of our Washington cannot suffer by a comparison with those of other countries who have been most celebrated and exalted by fame. The attributes and decorations of Royalty could have only served to eclipse the majesty of those virtues which made him, from being a modest citizen, a more resplendent luminary. Misfortune, had he lived, could hereafter have sullied his glory only with those superficial minds who, believing that characters and actions are marked by success alone, rarely deserve to enjoy it. Malice could never blast his honour, and envy made him a singular exception to her universal rule. For himself, he had lived long enough to life and to glory. For his fellowcitizens, if their prayers could have been answered, he would have been immortal."

In accordance with the resolve of Congress, a funeral procession started, on the 26th of December, from the Legislative Hall to the German Lutheran church in Philadelphia, where an oration was spoken by General Lee, one of the most intimate of Washington's friends. Other funeral addresses were delivered in various parts of the Union, and the people wore crape on their left arm for thirty days. Never was a public man more generally and more sincerely mourned, and to our own time Washington retains in the hearts of his countrymen a position almost analogous with that of the semimythical heroes of antiquity in the affectionate remembrance of the nations which they raised from barbarism, or rescued from the tyranny of alien foes. The friends of Alexander Hamilton had, in the early summer of 1799, appealed to Washington to put himself forward once more as a candidate for the Presidential office. The idea was to some extent, though secretly, supported by the members of Adams's Cabinet; it met with great favour in

the New England States; and Gouverneur Morris, of New York, was commissioned to address to the Commander-in-Chief a specific request to this effect. Death prevented his knowing anything of the design; and it is probable that he would have refused to connect himself with it. He had done enough for duty, for fame, and for immortality, and it was not for him to stoop to the vulgar level of party intrigues.

The relations between Adams and his Ministers became every day more difficult and unsatisfactory. The latter were much under the influence of Hamil ton, and that influence was not at all favourable to the President. Adams accordingly resolved, in the early part of 1800, on changing some of them, but was anticipated, as far as concerned his War Minister, by the resignation of Mr. McHenry, His place was filled by Samuel Dexter, of Massachusetts; and at the same time Colonel Pickering was succeeded in the State Department by John Marshall, of Virginia-a lawyer of plain, blunt habits, but known to be well-disposed towards Adams. The change was for the better in some respects, but it set loose against the President the pent-up antagonism of Pickering and McHenry, who did not scruple to supply Hamilton with facts, derived from their recent official positions, which they thought would have the effect of damaging the Chief Magistrate in the popular estimation. Worse than this was the treachery of Oliver Wolcott, who, while retaining office as Secretary of the Treasury, and receiving the entire confidence of Adams, regularly supplied to his enemies the most confidential details of the Administration.*

The

The position of the President was harassed from two sides-that of the more extreme Federalists, who wanted him to make war on France, and that of the Democrats, who thought France had been opposed too much. The latter had many opportunities for enforcing their views with effect. Alien and Sedition laws were unpopular, and were in truth of so arbitrary a character as to furnish very good texts for the Opposition to dilate upon. It does not appear that Adams had anything to do with suggesting either of these laws; they were no part of his distinctive policy; yet he was doubtless responsible for them to the extent that he did not exercise his constitutional right of veto, but suffered them to pass, and afterwards used them whenever he found it convenient. The Alien Act—which authorised the President to expel from the country any foreigner, not a citizen, who might be suspected of conspiring against the Republic, or to imprison

* Life of Adams, by his Grandson, chap. 10.

1800.]

him if he persisted in remaining-was vindicated on the ground that there were at that time more than thirty thousand Frenchmen in the United States; that these were devoted to their native country, and were for the most part bound together by clubs or in some other way; and that there were also within the limits of the Federation at least fifty thousand persons who had been subjects of Great Britain, some of whom were persons of questionable character. The Sedition Act punished with heavy fines and imprisonment those who might circulate "any false, scandalous, and malicious writing against the Government of the United States, or either House of Congress, or the President." If the former of these laws was justified by existing circumstances, it can hardly be said that the latter was capable of defence. It was denounced by Jefferson, and not without reason, as calculated to sap the very foundations of Republicanism: one might go farther, and say that it was out of harmony with any political system, whether Republican or Monarchical, which professes to entertain a regard for personal liberty. Undoubtedly every State has the right, when necessary, to frame and enforce the most stringent and exceptional laws; but there does not seem to have been anything in the condition of America at that period to warrant so despotic a measure as the Sedition Act, which was plainly capable of being used for party purposes, and applied to the suppression of legitimate differences of opinion. At the close of the eighteenth century, two hundred newspapers were published in the United States, of which about a hundred and seventy-five were in favour of the Federalists; the remainder, which were for the most part conducted by aliens, were imperilled by the objectionable statutes. The Legislatures of Virginia and Kentucky declared both the Sedition and the Alien Acts to be unconstitutional, and they were eventually repealed. It was a happy release to be rid of them; yet it is well known that they had the approval of Washington.

*

Another cause of unpopularity was found in the war-taxes imposed by Adams's Administration. These provoked an insurrectionary movement in Pennsylvania in 1798, which it was found necessary to put down by a display of military force, and which afterwards led to an awkward difference of opinion between Adams and his Ministers. One of the persons arrested as a leader in these commotions was a man named John Fries, who was tried on a charge of treason, and found guilty by the verdict of a jury. Mr. Wolcott, in communicating the fact

* Lossing's History of the United States.

555

to the President, with whom it lay to sanction or remit the sentence of death, mentioned that the counsel for the prisoner had insisted that the offence committed did not amount to treason, and had reported a remark made by Fries, that persons of greater consequence than himself had been at the bottom of the business. The President evinced a disposition to exercise his constitutional right of setting aside the verdict; his Ministers saw no reason why the law should not take its course, and conceived that an example should be made. This was in May, 1799. Subsequently, the court which had condemned Fries granted a new trial, on the ground that one of the jury was proved to have prejudged the case. The second investigation took place before another judge; but Fries was again condemned. At the same time, two other persons lay under sentence of death for similar acts. When the question again came before the President, which was in May, 1800, he directed that a pardon should be made out for all the offenders. His Ministers were annoyed at this determination; and it was broadly asserted that the act was prompted by a desire to stand well in Pennsylvania, and to propitiate the Democratic party. It is possible that political considerations did in truth influence the President in the course which he followed.

Although there had been no actual declaration of war between the United States and France, hostilities had occurred at sea, both in 1799 and 1800. In February of the former year, the American frigate Constellation, of thirty-eight guns, commanded by Commodore Truxton, and the French frigate L'Insurgente, of forty guns, came into collision. The French frigate had previously taken the American schooner Retaliation; but she was now captured by the American Commodore. In a subsequent action, the same gallant officer compelled another French frigate, of fifty guns, to strike her colours; but she afterwards escaped in the night, after a loss of one hundred and sixty men in killed and wounded. The latter action took place on the 1st of February, 1800, when the disagreements between France and America were drawing towards a close. Napoleon Bonaparte had by that time seized on the supreme power. He was not at all inclined to add the American Republic to the formidable array of enemies whom he was called on to encounter; and he evinced every disposition to come to terms with the Government of the United States, provided the Commissioners appointed by Mr. Adams did not assume too arrogant a tone. Those gentlemen saw the necessity of peace, and made due recognition of