Читать книгу Inquiry Into the Origin and Course of Political Parties in the United States - Martin Van Buren - Страница 10

Table of Contents

The Federal Party in Power under the New Constitution—Agency of Individuals in the Formation and Ratification of the latter—Prospects of the Opening Administration of the Government—Unwise Course of the Federal Party—President Washington—His Peculiar Relations with the People and with Parties—His first Cabinet—Character of the Differences between Jefferson and Hamilton—The latter sustained—Hamilton's Position, Power, and Influence upon the subsequent Course of Parties—His Monarchical Views—Various Authorities in Relation to the latter—Fidelity of Washington to the Republican Form of Government—Importance of correctly Understanding the Extent of Hamilton's Influence during the Administrations of Washington and John Adams—Personal and Official Relations between Washington and Members of his Cabinet—Evidences of the Spread of Monarchical Views among Officers and Public Men in Washington's Time—His Steadfast Adherence to the last to the Republican Form—His Permanent Hold upon the Affections of the People, even while they repudiated certain Leading Principles of his Administration.

The period in our political history to which our inquiry has conducted us, was one of the greatest interest. The successful effort that had been made to compel Great Britain to acknowledge our Independence; the government of the Confederation, and the causes that led to its abandonment; the grave step taken in a better direction by the formation and ratification of the new Constitution, with the hopes and fears excited by the last great movement, were well calculated to impress profoundly the minds of those who had been actors in such important scenes. The success of the Federal party in the first election held under the new Constitution was complete. For the first time since its organization, that party possessed the unrestricted control of the national legislature. If any thing could have been thought wanting to insure its permanent success, that was believed to be secured by the consent of General Washington to be the first President of the new government about to be organized under a constitution, to the paternity of which they had established so fair a claim. Neither the formation nor the ratification of that instrument were altogether the work of avowed members of that party; but as between the two parties they had clearly the best title to be regarded as its authors. The merits of individuals in that great work were various. Alexander Hamilton, the able and undisputed leader of the Federal party, from its origin to his death, did comparatively nothing either toward its formation or adoption by the Federal Convention. His most useful services were rendered in the New York State Convention, by which it was ratified, and in his contributions to the numbers of "The Federalist." These were formally declared as the measure of his services in that regard, in reply to a direct inquiry long after Hamilton's death, by his best informed and always devoted friend, Gouverneur Morris, as will be seen hereafter. It was, beyond all doubt, from Madison that the Constitution derived its greatest aid in respect as well to its construction as to its passage through the Convention, and its ratification by the States.

The character and political career of James Madison were sui generis—as much so as though far different from those of John Randolph. Possessed of intellectual powers inferior to none, and taking an unsurpassed interest in the course of public affairs, he seemed invariably to bring to the discussion of public questions a thoroughly unprejudiced mind. Whilst in the speeches of his contemporaries we seldom fail to perceive that the argument submitted was framed to support a foregone conclusion—to recommend a measure for which the speaker cherished a personal preference—it is rare indeed, if ever, that any such indications are to be found in those of Mr. Madison. Whilst the former present themselves as advocates, the latter appears in the attitude of an umpire between rival opinions, who has made it his business to search for the truth, and is determined to abide the result of his investigations, uninfluenced in the formation of his decision by preferences or prejudices of any description. The most acute observer in reviewing the writings, speeches, and votes of Mr. Madison during the exciting periods of which we are speaking, when governments as well as individuals were to an unusual extent in a state of transition, would find it difficult to place his finger upon any of them in respect to which the justice of this description would not be manifest.

Mr. John Quincy Adams, in his Jubilee Address, heretofore alluded to, describes Mr. Madison and General Hamilton as being, at this period, "spurred to the rowels by ambition."[9] Both of these gentlemen were, doubtless, ambitious of the fame which is acquired by serving one's country honestly and efficiently, and we have no sufficient reason for assuming that Mr. Adams meant more than that. It is, nevertheless, but justice to those truly great men to add that so far as high-reaching ambition is indicated by abjuring unpopular opinions and assuming those which are believed to be otherwise; by professing attachment to principles not really cherished for their own sake, or by personal intrigues of any description to acquire or increase popular favor, I sincerely believe that there were no two men of their day less liable to the imputation. Mr. Madison's course at the period of which we are speaking and during his antecedent public life, was, to a remarkable extent, divested of a partisan character. He supported, ably and perseveringly, many, if not most of the propositions for the adoption of which the Federal party was particularly solicitous, whilst representing one of the most decided Anti-Federal States in the Confederacy, without losing the confidence of his constituents, or even hazarding its loss. He was, throughout, in favor of giving to the federal head an independent right to levy and collect its necessary revenue and to regulate commerce, and was from the beginning in favor of a convention to revise the Constitution. In that body he was one of the majority in favor of the course I have described, and which resulted in the present Constitution. His successful and brilliant efforts in favor of the new system of government placed him at the head of its friends; but there was no time when Mr. Madison can, with truth and fairness, be said to have belonged to the Federal party; he all the time represented a State which took the lead in opposition to that school, his political affinities and associations were in general adverse to that organization, and, as I have said, he never forfeited the good opinion of his State. She seems always to have confided in his sincerity and in the integrity of his motives, and to have been willing to allow him to follow the dictates of his own judgment in regard to particular measures.

The most auspicious prospects beamed upon the opening administration of the new government, and it is fair to presume that the anticipations thus inspired would have been triumphantly realized if those who had been selected to conduct it, and their successors for the ensuing twelve years, had accepted the Constitution in the sense in which it was known to have been understood by those who framed it, and by the people when they adopted it. A course thus right in itself, and thus acquiescent in the popular will by men, some of whom had been long suspected by many of their Revolutionary associates of not holding that will in very high respect, would not have failed to conciliate large portions of the Anti-Federal party. Their dread of the exercise of unauthorized power by a general government, of which the responsibility was, in their estimation, too remote to be safely trusted, and their apprehensions for the safety of State institutions, always an object of their greatest solicitude, might have been allayed, if not substantially subdued. These valuable objects accomplished, the great improvements in the condition as well of public as of individual affairs, unavoidably flowing from the reasonably harmonious action of a government which the Federal party had done so much to establish, and the crowning fact that these gratifying results were brought about in the name, and with the active coöperation of Washington, the object of universal respect and affection, would have secured to that party through the long lapse of time that has since intervened, at least as large a share in the control of the government as has been possessed by a party which became its successful rival, but which can scarcely be said to have then existed.

But the Federal party rashly turned its back upon the only course by which these advantages might have been secured, and in doing so, showed itself regardless of considerations which would not have escaped the attention of more discreet, if not wiser bodies. Its influential and leading men forgot that the administration did not, in point of fact, represent the political opinions in respect to the proper uses and spirit of governments in general of a majority of the people; that their party had acquired power solely by its wise course in regard to a single, though doubtless most important measure; and that even in respect to that large portions of the people felt, as expressed by John Quincy Adams, "that the Constitution itself had been extorted from the grinding necessity of a reluctant nation." The Federal party took its course also in momentary forgetfulness of the characters of those whose opinions it was about to violate, whose feelings were to be offended, and whose resentments it must incur. It overlooked what it had the fullest reason to know, that those whom it was about to drive into opposition were men, and the descendants of men, who had from the beginning, and at all times, and under all circumstances, been enthusiasts in devotion to liberty, and stern and uncompromising in demanding stringent restrictions upon delegated authority—as inflexible in their opinions, and as incapable of being driven from their support by the hand of power, or seduced by corruption, as human nature could be made in the schools of fiery trial in which they had been trained. The Federalists in power, or rather he who, through the great confidence of his chief, wielded that power, did nothing, if we except the personal efforts of Washington in favor of conciliation, absolutely nothing to soothe the feelings of their defeated opponents, or to allay their apprehensions, but much to exacerbate the former and to confirm the latter.

The justice of these allegations is fully proved by the acts of the public men of that day. From the official position of the first President, and the part he consequently took in the management of public affairs, a faithful survey of these cannot be made without embracing him in the review. This is treading upon privileged ground. No American, no good man, can approach it without feeling that it is such, or without being embarrassed by the apprehension that, however pure his intention, he may undesignedly outrage the sentiments of admiration and reverence by which it is naturally and properly intrenched. General Washington retired gracefully from his military command, with more true glory than ever fell to the lot of man. There have, doubtless, at times, appeared military leaders of more professional genius and science, but never one better adapted to the high duties to which he was called; never one of whom it could with more truth be said, to use a modern and comprehensive expression, that he was "the right man in the right place." Certainly without his seeking it, and doubtless against his wishes, he was transferred to the civil service of his country by his election to the office of President under the new Constitution. The administration, of which he thus became the constitutional head, adopted certain measures, proposed others, and set up claims to power under that instrument, of which many of his countrymen and personal friends could not approve, and which they felt themselves obliged to oppose; these, in the progress of time and events, became organized as a political party by which those objectionable measures and claims of power were perseveringly resisted, but without any diminution of respect for his character, position, and feelings. They overthrew the administration of his successor, which claimed to act upon his principles, succeeded to the control of the Federal Government, and have kept it ever since, with rare and limited exceptions, attributable to special causes.

There is, notwithstanding, in this great country, no hamlet, town, city, or place in which American citizens congregate, where the name of Washington is ever pronounced without the profoundest reverence, or in which there does not prevail an undying sense of gratitude for his public services. The history of the world will be searched in vain for a tribute of love and gratitude at all comparable to that which the people of the United States have rendered to him who was the commander of their armies in the war of the Revolution, and their first republican chief magistrate—a tribute, in paying which the only contest between political parties is as to which shall manifest the most zeal, and which shall attain the highest success.

Was ever before so great and so gratifying reward bestowed, including in its wide extent the noble, exalted, and well-won title of Pater Patriæ! This, the highest honor that man can receive on earth, was not, as of old, a title given to an adored chief by victorious soldiers who, however renowned for their valor, were always open to the influence of personal and temporary feelings; nor was it obtained through the instrumentality of a venal senate; neither did it originate in state-craft or priest-craft, which have in every age paid homage to the great men of the world for selfish and sinister purposes. The high honors paid to Washington proceeded from no such sources, nor were they exposed to the suspicions from which such bestowments are rarely free. They sprang from the disinterested and deliberate judgment of an intelligent, virtuous, and free people, who felt that he had, in his military capacity alone, done incomparably more than any other man for the establishment of their Independence, and that in all his civil service he had been actuated by the same upright motives which had governed his whole previous career, and that in that sphere also, as in every act of his life, he had placed the performance of public duties and the advancement of public interests before all other earthly considerations. Although many of them had differed from him in respect to some measures which had received his sanction, they were not on that account the less satisfied that he had, in the exercise of a rightful discretion, been influenced only by an earnest desire to promote the welfare of his country. So regarding his whole career, they with one accord gave him the highest place on the roll of fame and the first in their hearts.

This spontaneous and ample recognition of a debt of imperishable gratitude to a public benefactor, whose modesty was equal to his unsurpassed merit, was the act of a people often misrepresented, and as often misunderstood, but who have never been found wanting, in the end, in what was due to faithful public servants, to themselves, or to their political institutions.

We are, perhaps, yet too near the period of these great transactions to pronounce safely upon the general justice of their dealings with the contemporaries of Washington. But when time shall have relieved the subject more thoroughly from the adverse influences of family connections and partisan feelings, I have not a doubt that some American historian, loving his country and admiring the character of his countrymen, will take pleasure in holding up to the world a picture of the distribution of popular confidence and popular favors in their case also, which may safely be compared with that drawn from the history of any people.

Unbelievers may gainsay, and disappointed aspirants may rail at these deductions, but they nevertheless do no more than justice to the character of our people, before whom every public question and the acts and opinions of every public man, be he whom he may, may be freely canvassed. All that can be asked of him who seeks to vindicate and perpetuate the truth of history, is that he shall deal justly and candidly with his subject. From a scrutiny so conducted, no citizen will ask or expect that any public transaction, or the course of any public man shall be exempted.

No man could have accepted office with fewer temptations to depart from the line of duty than offered themselves to President Washington. His claims to the admiration of his countrymen and of the world were complete; reasonable in all his desires and happy in his domestic relations, he was possessed of property beyond either his wants or his desires, and was without children to inherit his estate or to succeed to the glories already attached to his name. The advantages to be derived by a republican magistrate from the consciousness of occupying such a position and of its being also appreciated by his constituents, are very great. The confidence inspired by these considerations was also strengthened by the fact that in the high and responsible stations in which he had been placed he had never failed to increase the good-will and respect of those by whom he had been appointed. But these circumstances of encouragement did not blind his cautious mind to a proper sense of the difficulties incident to the new duties he had assumed and to his want of experience in regard to them. In addition to the command of all the military force in the country in a more plenary form than that in which he had before possessed it, he was now intrusted with the superintendence and direction of large portions of the domestic and of all the foreign concerns of a great people just taking their position in the family of nations. First on the list of his responsible duties stood that of organizing a government constructed upon new and to a great extent untried principles, at a moment when the tendency of the French Revolution had been sufficiently developed to threaten political convulsions more portentous and more difficult to be dealt with than any that the world had ever witnessed; and he was called to the performance of this delicate task amidst party dissensions at home of the most violent nature, which many people apprehended might extend to a revolution in the character of the government itself. Firm in all his purposes Washington did not shrink from the application of his well-balanced mind to a survey of the difficulties that stood in his way, in making which no exaggerated estimate of his own capacities prevented him from foreseeing the embarrassments that might arise, and to some extent must arise, from the difference in the nature of many of the duties he was now called upon to discharge from those with which his past public life had made him familiar; and I have always thought that, among the great transactions of his career, there was scarcely one in which were exhibited more strikingly the strength of his judgment and the nobleness of his disposition, than in the formation of his first Cabinet.

It is difficult for one not particularly conversant with such matters to realize the obstructions which not unfrequently present themselves in the work of forming a good cabinet. These are sometimes the consequence of an overestimate of his own qualifications on the part of the chief magistrate elect, and a resulting disinclination to bring into the government men whose prominence before the country and whose great accomplishments as statesmen may depress his own importance in the action of the administration. This feeling, when it exists in only a moderate degree, is certain to be encouraged by the flatteries of friends, or more often by selfish men for the purpose of promoting their designs upon the patronage at the disposal of the incumbent. Against the dangerous influences of these classes President Washington was effectually guarded by elements in his own character decidedly unpropitious to both. But he was not so free from embarrassments arising from another source. He was at the commencement of his government surrounded by his fellow-soldiers, the officers of the army of the Revolution—veterans who had acquired high consideration by their meritorious services, and were endeared to him by their personal characters and their past and present sufferings. They were generally men whose judgments he could not but respect, and who, like their class in all countries, were not disposed to consider the aid of civilians in the administration of public affairs as imperatively necessary. The actual state of the country also, in regard to its party divisions and dissensions, was, as I have already said, perhaps the greatest source of perplexity and trouble.

Not discouraged by these difficulties, he proceeded to the formation of his cabinet in a spirit of patriotism and good sense, manifesting an anxious desire to allay, if he could not neutralize, the violence of party spirit, and to enlist in the administration of the new government and secure to the public service those of highest character and talents who belonged to, or were disposed to sympathize with, the party which had opposed the Constitution. With these noble views, he divided his cabinet equally between gentlemen of that school and members of the Federal party, and equally also between civilians and military men. For the two most responsible, as well as most difficult offices, to which were assigned duties least familiar to himself, he selected two gentlemen, who from their active patriotism and distinguished talents occupied high, if not the highest positions in the country, had already been placed at the head of the rival and conflicting opinions which divided it, and of whose personal uprightness and political independence he was well assured.

Down to the period which we have now reached, President Washington had, to a remarkable extent, kept himself aloof from partisan strife. This was partly owing to his great self-command and to his perception of the incompatibility of a participation in that field of action with the positions he occupied in the public service; and possibly, to some extent, to anticipations, not unnatural, that the future held in store for him a fame which would soar above parties. He had seen and known too much of men to allow himself to hope that the cabinet he had selected would be entirely free from disunion, or from those distractions likely to arise from the conflicting materials of which it was composed; but he did not at first appreciate fully the extent and bearing of the differences that existed between the opinions and public views of Jefferson and Hamilton. Hoping that these would be confined to particular points in the administration of affairs, he doubtless relied upon his personal influence to soothe the asperities they might produce, and at least to limit their adverse effect to the measures to which they might be from time to time applied. His confidence in this regard was well warranted by his past good fortune in removing obstacles that threatened injury to the country, by means of the general respect that was paid to his opinions and wishes by all classes of his countrymen. His success in allaying the spirit of insubordination that manifested itself among the officers of the army at Newburgh and for a season menaced seriously the character of the army and the peace of the country; in arresting a design which was supposed to be on foot in Congress, to make the sufferings and consequent indignation of the troops subservient to the promotion of the financial schemes of civilians; and in dispersing the storm which threatened to follow the establishment of the Cincinnati, with its hereditary honors, strikingly justified his confidence in the efficacy of any future efforts in the same direction.

More could not have been done, or in a better spirit, than Washington did to preserve harmony between the two leading members of his cabinet, and to secure their coöperation in the public service. No steps, consistent with a proper self-respect, as it now appears, were omitted on his part. If the differences in their views had been less radical these friendly efforts and applications must have succeeded, received as they were by both in the most becoming and grateful spirit.

But these commendable exertions were doomed to an unavoidable and final disappointment. The President might as well have attempted to combine the elements of fire and water as to secure a harmonious action in the administration of the Government between Jefferson and Hamilton. The antagonistic opinions of these great men upon the subjects of government and its proper administration were too profoundly planted in their breasts, and they were both too honest to depart from them without a corresponding change in their convictions, which there was no reason to anticipate, to admit of a hope for a different result.

Of the nature and extent of their differences of opinion it is my purpose to attempt some explanation in another place; but here I will only say, as I desire to say in advance, that I do not now believe, whatever my impression may have been, that they originated in any difference as to the objects at which they aimed, or that those objects, in either case, were other than the welfare and happiness of those for whom they were selected to act. They may have differed in opinion in respect to the condition, social and political, in which the mass of the people would be most likely to be prosperous and happy; they certainly did so, and that very widely, in regard to the public measures by which that prosperity and happiness would be promoted or diminished; and that diversity in their opinions arose mainly from their conflicting estimates of the capacity of the people for self-government. Upon that point they were opposed diametrically, and that opposition produced an unavoidable antagonism in their views of almost every public question.