something more than the typical official. Monroe precisely filled the chair, and stood for the office, not for himself.

He left Washington June 2, 1817, accompanied only by his private secretary, Mr. Mason, and by General Joseph G. Swift, the Chief Engineer of the War Department. The ostensible object of his journey was to inspect the national defences. This explained his choice of a companion, and gave him at each point an aim beyond the reception of courtesies. With this nominal errand he travelled through Maryland to New York City, traversed Connecticut and Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Maine, then a district only. He went southward through Vermont, visited the fortifications at Plattsburg, travelled through the forests to the St. Lawrence, inspected Sackett's Harbor and Fort Niagara; went to Buffalo, and sailed through Lake Erie to Detroit. Thence he turned eastward again, returning through Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Maryland. He reached home September 17th, after an absence of more than three months.

During all this trip there occurred not one circumstance to mar the reception of the President, though there were plenty of hardships to test his endurance. Everywhere he was greeted with triumphal arches, groups of school-children, cavalcades of mounted citizens, and the roar of cannon. The Governor of

Massachusetts, by order of the Legislature, provided him with a military escort from border to border; no other State apparently did this, though the Governor of New Hampshire apologized for not having official authority to follow the example. Everywhere there were addresses of welcome by eminent citizens. Everywhere the President made answer. Clad in the undress uniform of a Revolutionary officer-blue coat, light underclothes, and cocked hat- he stood before the people a portly and imposing figure, well representing the men who won American freedom in arms. His replies, many of which are duly reported, seem now laudably commonplace and reason

ably brief; but they were held at the time to be "elegant and impressive."

We see a lingering trace of the more ceremonial period of Washington and Adams when the semi-official historian of Monroe's travels reports that in approaching Dartmouth, New Hampshire," although the road was shrouded in clouds of dust, he condescended to leave his carriage and make his entry on horseback." The more eminent Federalist leaders, except Mr. H. G. Otis, took apparently no conspicuous part in the reception; but their place was supplied by others. Elder Goodrich of the Enfield (New Hampshire) Shakers, addressed him with "I, James Goodrich, welcome James Monroe to our habitations;" and the young ladies of the Windsor (Vermont) Female Academy closed their address by saying, "That success may crown all your exertions for the public good is the ardent wish of many a patriotic though youthful female bosom." Later, when traversing “the majestic forests" near Ogdensburg, New York, "his attention was suddenly attracted by an elegant collation, fitted up in a superior style by the officers of the army and the citizens of the country. He partook of it with a heart beating in unison with those of his patriotic countrymen by whom he was surrounded, and acknowledged this unexpected and romantic civility with an unaffected and dignified complaisance."

Philadelphia had at this time a population of 112,000 inhabitants; New York, of 115,coo; Baltimore, of 55,000; Boston, of 40,000; Providence, of 10,000; Hartford, of Scoo; Pittsburg, of 7000; Cincinnati, of 7000; St. Louis, of 3500; Chicago was but a fort. The Ohio River was described by those who narrated this journey as an obscure and remote stream that had "for nearly six thousand years rolled in silent majesty through the towering forests of the New World." "It would not be," says a writer of that period, "the madness of a deranged imagination to conclude that this stream in process of time will become as much celebrated as the Ganges of Asia, the Nile of

Africa, and the Danube of Europe. In giving this future importance to the Ohio, the Mississippi and the Missouri cannot be forgotten as exceeding it in length and in importance. These astonishing streams may hereafter, as civilization progresses in the present wilds of the American republic, become rivals to the Ohio." When we consider that the region thus vaguely indicated is now the centre of population for the nation, we learn what a little world it was, after all, which was embraced in the Presidential tour of James Monroe. Even of that small realm, however, he did not see the whole during these travels. We know from a letter of Crawford to Gallatin, quoted by Mr. Gilman, that a good deal of jealousy was felt in the Southern States at Monroe's "apparent acquiescence in the seeming manworship" at the North; and Crawford thinks that while the President had gained in health by the trip, he had "lost as much as he had gained in popularity." The gain was, however, made where he most needed it, and another tour to Augusta, Nashville, and Louisville soon restored the balance.

The President being established at the seat of government, the fruits of his enlarged popularity were seen in the tranquillity and order of his administration. The most fortunate of officials, he was aided by the general longing for peace. He was yet more strengthened by the fact that he was at the same time. governing through a Democratic organization and on Federalist principles. Nominally he held the legitimate succession to Jefferson, having followed, like Madison, through the intermediate position, that of Secretary of State, which was in those days what the position of Prince of Wales was and is in England. But when it came to political opinions, we can now see that all which Federalism had urged-a strong government, a navy, a national bank, a protective tariff, internal improvements, a liberal construction of the Constitution-all these had become also Democratic doctrines. Were it not for their traditional reverence for Jefferson's name, it would sometimes have been

hard to tell Madison and Monroe from Federalists. In a free country, when a party disappears, it is usually because the other side has absorbed its principles. So it was here, and we never can understand the extinction of Federalism unless we bear this fact in mind. In the excitement of contest the combatants had already changed weapons, and Federalism had been killed, like Laertes in "Hamlet," by its own sword. For the time, as Crawford wrote, all were Federalists, all Republicans.

Henry Clay, who remains to us as a mere tradition of winning manners and ready eloquence, was almost unanimously elected and re-elected as Speaker of the House. But Clay was a Federalist without knowing it; he wished to strengthen the army, to increase the navy, to make the tariff protective, to recognize and support the South American republics. General Jackson too, the chief military hero of the period, developed the national impulse in a way that Jefferson would once have disapproved, by entering the territory of Spanish Florida (in 1818) to fight the Seminoles, and by putting to death as "outlaws and pirates" two British subjects, Arbuthnot and Ambrister, who led the Indians. Then the purchase of Florida for five millions was another bold step on the part of the central government, following a precedent which had seemed very questionable when Jefferson had annexed Louisiana. While buying this the nation yielded up all claim to what was afterwards Texas; and all these events built up more and more the national feeling-which was the bequest of Federalism-as distinct from the separate State feeling which was the original Democratic stock in trade.

It is the crowning proof of the pacified condition to which parties were coming that this peace survived what would have been, under other circumstances, a signal of war-the first and sudden appearance of the vexed question of slavery. It came upon the nation, as Jefferson said, "like a fire-ball in the night." It had slumbered since the adoption of the Constitution, and came up as an incident of the great emigration westward. For