CHAPTER means of the previous question. XV. On the subject of giv ing publicity to the proceedings of Congress and affording 1801. facilities to reporters, the opposition, for obvious reasons, had always taken the liberal side. The sixth Congress terminated, late at night, on the March 4. third of March. Early the next morning, without waiting to attend the inauguration of his successor, ex-President Adams left Washington for his residence in Massachusetts, carrying with him, as the only acknowledgment of his past services, the privilege granted to Washington on his retirement from office, and afterward to his widow, and bestowed, likewise, on all subsequent ex-presidents and their widows, of receiving his letters free of postage for the remainder of his life. This abrupt departure, and the strict non-intercourse kept up for thirteen years between Adams and Jefferson, notwithstanding some advances, then and subsequently, on Jefferson's part, till finally the parties were reconciled by the intervention of Dr. Rush, and their common sympathy as to the second war against Great Britain, indicates, on the part of Adams, a sense of personal wrong, of the exact nature of which we possess at present no means of judging, except from the charge brought against Jefferson in Adams's confidential correspondence (1804), of "a mean thirst of popularity, an inordinate ambition, and a want of sincerity." The ex-president retired to Braintree in a state of mind little to be envied. Delighting as he did in distinction, and anxious for leadership and applause, had he still remained the head and champion of the Federalists, his proud spirit might have borne up with equanimity, if not with exultation, against the hatred of the opposition, the taunts and shouts of triumph with which they greeted his retirement, and the personal responsibility XV. to which he was held for the Alien and Sedition Laws, CHAPTER and every other obnoxious procedure of the past four years. But when to all this were added the curses, 1801. deeper, if not so loud, of the Essex Junto, responded to by a large part of the Federal leaders throughout the country, denouncing him as a traitor, who had sacrificed the good cause in a vain and foolish attempt to secure the votes and favor of the opposition by unworthy concessions, the ex-president's philosophy was completely overthrown. Eight years after, when time had somewhat fleshed over these wounds, they broke out again with new malignancy by reason of renewed attacks upon him in consequence of John Quincy Adams's abandonment of the Federal party. The celebrated Cunningham letters a repetition, on a larger scale, of the Tench Coxe correspondence, already referred to most of which were written at that time, and from which we have already had occasion to quote, present a striking proof how the most powerful judgments become incapable of discerning the truth through the disturbing medium of jealousy and anger, and how little of candor or justice is to be expected when hate and vindictive passion hold the pen. Even the old man's last hours, when past the verge of ninety, were disturbed by the publication, through another gross breach of confidence, of these same Cunningham letters, as a part of the electioneering machinery against John Quincy Adams's elevation to the presidency, provoking, as they did, a bitter criticism from Pickering, then, also, in extreme old age. To Adams's unwilling and ungraceful retirement and troublous unrest, John Jay, his compatriot and fellowlaborer in so many trying scenes for a quarter of a century, exhibited a striking contrast. Having refused to become again chief justice, and declining to be longer a CHAPTER candidate for the governorship of New York, considerXV. ing his debt to the public discharged, though ten years 1801. younger than Adams, he simultaneously withdrew into a voluntary retirement, protracted through a still longer period, and presenting, in its peacefulness and the universal respect which it attracted, a contrast to Adams's as marked as that between the ex-chief justice's mild but steady firmness, apparently forgetful of self, and the irritable vehemence and ever-active egotism, such marked traits in the ex-president's character. Those engaged in the heat of political struggles are almost always led to ascribe to trivial, temporary, and personal accidents a large part of that effect which is properly due to causes more remote, general, permanent, and inevitable. While the Essex Junto imputed to Adams the downfall of Federal ascendency, he bitterly retorted by imputing to their intrigues to defeat him, not that defeat only, but the ruin of the party also. It was not, however, the unfortunate divisions among themselves; and, though mere party politicians then and since may have thought so, it was not the Alien and Sedition Laws, the surrender of the pretended Jonathan Robbins, the additional army, the large naval expenditures, the eight per cent. loan, and the direct tax, the collection of which was going on during the presidential canvass, on the one hand, nor, on the other, the renewal of negotiations with France, that really lost to the Federalists the administration of the government. Those measures might, and no doubt did, contribute to determine the precise moment of that event; but, under any circumstances, it could not have been long deferred. From the first moment that party lines had been distinctly drawn, the opposition had possessed a numerical majority, against which nothing but the superior energy, XV. intelligence, and practical skill of the Federalists, backed CHAPTER by the great and venerable name and towering influence of Washington, had enabled them to maintain for eight 1801. years past an arduous and doubtful struggle. The Federal party, with Washington and Hamilton at its head, represented the experience, the prudence, the practical wisdom, the discipline, the conservative reason and instincts of the country. The opposition, headed by Jefferson, expressed its hopes, wishes, theories, many of them enthusiastic and impracticable, more especially its passions, its sympathies and antipathies, its impatience of restraint. The Federalists had their strength in those narrow districts where a concentrated population had produced and contributed to maintain that complexity of institutions and that reverence for social order, which, in proportion as men are brought into contiguity, become more absolutely necessaries of existence. The ultra democratical ideas of the opposition prevailed in all that more extensive region in which the dispersion of population, and the despotic authority vested in individuals over families of slaves, kept society in a state of immaturity, and made legal restraints the more irksome in proportion as their necessity was the less felt. Massachusetts and Connecticut stood at the head of the one party, supported, though not always without some wavering, by the rest of New England. The other party was led by Virginia, by whose finger all the states south and west of the Potomac might be considered to be guided. In the tide-water district of South Carolina, indeed, a certain number of the wealthier and more intelligent planters, led by a few men of talents and probity who had received their education in England, were inclined to support the Federal policy, so ably upheld in Congress by Smith, Harper, Pinckney, and Rutledge. But the mass of the CHAPTER Voting population felt and thought otherwise; nor could XV. the influence of a few individuals long resist a numerical 1801. preponderancy so decided. As for the states of Georgia, Tennessee, and Kentucky, and, except for a brief moment, North Carolina, they followed without doubt or hesitation in the wake of Virginia; and the rapidly-increasing backwoods settlements of all these states constantly added new strength to the opposition. Of the five states intervening between Virginia and New England, little Delaware alone adhered with unflinching firmness to the Federal side. Maryland and New Jersey, though wavering and undecided, inclined also the same way. The decision between Federalism and the so-called Republican party depended on the two great and growing states of Pennsylvania and New York; and from the very fact that they were growing, that both of them had an extensive back woods frontier, and that both were constantly receiving accessions of political enthusiasts from Europe, they both inclined more and more to the Republican side. Scarcely a session of Congress had passed that some new expense had not been authorized and some new tax imposed. A just regard to the welfare of the country had compelled Washington and the Federalists to throw themselves into the gap against the national hatred of England kindled in the Revolutionary war, and aggravated since by new aggressions and insolence, in the very spirit, it would seem, of those ministers by whom the Revolution had been provoked. On the other hand, they had been obliged to oppose that ardent zeal for France which gratitude for French assistance and enthusiasm for liberty combined to inspire. For the concluding six years of Washington's administration, there had always been in the House a majority against him; while the |