ton's popularity was in a marked degree diminished by his committing the country to neutrality when France went to war with England. When, in addition to this, he signed Jay's treaty, which secured commercial privileges, indeed, in our trade with the English, but which gave up unquestionable international rights, indignation turned to wrath; and the man who had been universally revered as the savior of his country was freely and most cruelly denounced as little better than a traitor. But the tide turned. The commercial advantages secured Reaction. by Jay's treaty proved more considerable than had been thought, and placated not a few among the opposition. The insane impudence of Genet and the excesses of his Republican supporters had alienated the moderate and the thoughtful. John Adams was elected President, and his party once more gained a majority in Congress. France, too, straightway did all she could to strengthen the reaction. By insulting and hostile measures she brought about an actual conflict of arms with the United States, and Federalist ascendency was apparently once more assured. Fall of the But the war spirit thus so suddenly and unexpectedly created in their behalf only lured the Federalists to their own destruction. Blinded by the ardor and self-confidence of the moment, they forced through Congress the arbitrary Alien and Sedition Laws. These laws excited the liveliest hostility and fear throughout the country. Virginia and Kentucky, at the suggestion of no less persons than Jefferson and Madison, uttered their famous Resolutions. The Federalists had added to their original sin of representing the moneyed and aristocratic classes, and to their later fault of hostility to France and friendship for England, the final offence of using the powers of the federal government to suppress freedom of speech and trial by jury. It was a huge and fatal blunder, and it was never retrieved. With the close of John Adams's administration the power of the Federalists came to an end. Jefferson was the fittest possible representative of the reaction against them. Not only did he accept quite Thomas completely the abstract French democratic philosophy which had proved so hot an influence in the blood of his fellow Republicans while they sought to support the revolution in France; he also shared quite heartily the jealousy felt by the agricultural South and West towards cities, with their rich merchants and manufacturers, towards the concentration of capital, towards all" special interests." Both in dogma and in instinctive sympathies he was a typical Democrat. The future, it turned out, was with the Republican party. The expansion of the country proved to be an Democracy expansion also of democratic feeling and predominant. method. Slowly, steadily, the growth of new communities went on, communities chiefly agricultural, sturdily self-reliant, strenuously aggressive, absorbed in their own material development, not a little jealous of the trading power in the East. The old Federalist party, the party of banks, of commercial treaties, of conservative tradition, was not destined to live in a country every day developing a larger "West," tending some day to be chiefly “West.” For, as was to have been expected, the political example of the new States was altogether and unreservedly on the side of unrestricted popuof suffrage. lar privilege. In all of the original thirteen States there were at first important limitations upon the suffrage. In this point their constitutions were not copied by the new States; these from the first made their suffrage universal. And their example reacted powerfully upon the East. Constitutional revision soon began in the old States, and constitutional revision in every case Extension meant, among other things, an extension of the suffrage. Parties in the East speedily felt the change. No longer protected by a property qualification, aristocracies like that of New England, where the clergy and the lawyers held respectable people together in ordered party array, went rapidly to pieces, and popular majorities began everywhere to make their weight tell in the conduct of affairs. 66 Monroe's Monroe's terms of office served as a sort of intermediate season for parties, ·a period of disintegration and germination. Apparently it was a time of political unity, an era of good feeling," when all men were of one party and of one mind. But this was only upon the presidency. surface. The Federalist party was a wreck, and had left the title "Federalist " a name of ill-repute which few any longer chose to bear; but the Federalist spirit and the Federalist conception of politics were not dead. These were still vital in the minds of all who wished to see the material and political development of the country quickened by a liberal construction and progressive employment of the powers of the general government. Such germs were quick, therefore, to spring up into that National Republican party which was to become known in later days as "Whig," and which was to carry on the old Federalist tradition of strong powers extensively employed. While Monroe remained President such divisions as existed showed themselves for the most part merely as individual differences of opinion and personal rivalries. Divergent proposals of policy there were, votes and counter-votes; Congress by no means presented the picture of a happy family. In the very middle of the period, indeed, came the sharp contest over the admission of Missouri as a slave State, with its startling threat of sectional alienation. But party lines did not grow distinct; party organization was slow to take form. 9. Election of 1824, 1825. By the presidential campaign of 1824 party politics were given a more definite form and direction. That campaign has, with more force than elegance, Nominations. been described as "the scrub race for the presidency." The old parties were no longer in existence; the old party machinery would no longer work. It had been customary to give party candidates their nomination by congressional caucus; but the caucus which now got together to nominate William H. Crawford of Georgia consisted of a mere handful of his personal friends. New England made it known that her candidate was John Quincy Adams; Clay was put forward by political friends in the Legislatures of Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, Illinois, and Ohio; the legislators of Tennessee and many State conventions in other parts of the country put Andrew Jackson in nomination. A bitter personal contest ensued between men all nominally of the same party. So far as it turned upon principles at all, it was generally understood that Clay and Adams were in favor of a broad construction of the Constitution, and a liberal expenditure of the federal revenue for internal improvements; while Crawford and Jackson were strict constructionists, and therefore inclined to deny the constitutionality of such outlays. The results of the election were Results of not a little novel and startling. It had been a the election. great innovation that a man like Andrew Jackson should be nominated at all. No other candidate had ever been put forward who had not served a long apprenticeship, and won honorable reputation as a statesman in the public service. There had even been established a sort of succession to the presidency. Jefferson had been Washington's Secretary of State; Madison, Jefferson's; Monroe, Madison's. In this line of succession John Quincy Adams was the only legitimate candidate, for he was Secretary of State under Monroe. Jackson had never been anything of national importance except a successful soldier. It was unprecedented that one so conspicuously outside the ranks of administrative and legislative service should seek the highest civil office in the gift of the people. It was absolutely startling that he should receive more electoral votes than any of the other candidates. And yet so it happened. Jackson received 99 votes, while only 84 were cast for Adams, 41 for Crawford, 37 for Clay. It was perhaps significant. too, that these votes came more directly from the people than ever before. Until 1820, presidential electors had been chosen in almost all the States by the state legislatures; but in 1824 they were so chosen in only six States out of the twenty-four. In the rest they were elected directly by the people, and it was possible to estimate that almost fifty thousand more votes had been cast for the Jackson electors than for those who had voted for Adams. No one of the candidates having received an absolute majority of the electoral vote, the election went into the House of Representatives, where, Choice by the House. with the aid of Clay's friends, Adams was chosen. It was then that the significance of the popular majority received its full emphasis. The friends of Jackson protested that the popular will had been disregarded, and their candidate shamefully, even corruptly, they believed, cheated of his rights. The dogma of popular sovereignty received a new and extraordinary application, fraught with important consequences. Jackson, it was argued, being the choice of the people, was "entitled" to the presidency. From a constitutional point of view the doctrine was nothing less than revolutionary. It marked the rise of a democratic theory very far advanced beyond that of Jefferson's party, and destined again and again to assert itself as against strict constitutional principle. |