XVII. and it was therefore doubly rendered hopeless, as well by CHAPTER the defeat and total prostration of Burr, as by the adoption of that amendment by precisely the constitutional 1804. number of states- Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire, and Delaware in the negative. Among other objections urged in these states was this: that the amendment ought to have been recommended by two thirds of all the members of both houses, whereas the recommendation came in fact from a bare two thirds of those present and voting. The hold of the Federalists even on New England seemed about to part. The Republican party in Massachusetts had strenuously insisted on a choice of presidential electors by the people and by districts. The Federalists, who had a small majority in the Legislature, consented to give the choice to the people, but they insisted on a general ticket, hoping thus to secure the whole. To their infinite mortification, and greatly to the surprise even of the Republicans themselves, the Jeffersonian electoral ticket triumphed by a small majority. The same thing happened in New Hampshire, where the Republicans at the spring election had carried both branches of the Legislature, though Gilman, the Federal governor, had been re-elected by a majority of forty-four votes out of twenty-four thousand. Connecticut still stood firm. But the Republican minority, upheld by the patronage of the general government, had greatly increased in numbers, and was exceedingly busy; so much so as to excite no little alarm among the friends of "steady habits." At the head of the Republicans in this state was Pierrepont Edwards, lately appointed district judge, a son of the celebrated theologian, and maternal uncle of Burr, whom he resembled as well in accomplishments and address as in profligacy of private CHAPTER character, at least in whatever related to women. The XVII. favorite project of the Connecticut Republicans was a 1804. convention to frame a Constitution. The old charter of Charles II., in accordance with which the government continued to be carried on, according to them was no Constitution at all. Candor, at the same time, would have demanded the admission, that in no other state except Vermont, which had copied largely from Connecticut, and Rhode Island, of which the government rested on a similar royal charter, was the appeal to the popular vote so often and so generally made. A convention of Republican delegates at New Haven, called together by May 29. Edwards, had put forth an address to the people, which intimated the existing government to be a usurpation, and in which the necessity of framing a Constitution was warmly urged. The General Court of Connecticut took fire at this attack on their authority, and removed from office five of the signers, who, as justices of the peace, held their places at the pleasure of the Assembly—an act denounced by the Democratic papers throughout the country as a great piece of intolerance characteristic of Federalism and Connecticut. Yet why more intolerant than the removal of Federalists from office, so thoroughly carried out in all the Democratic states, does not very distinctly appear. The Federalists had also regained their ascendency in Delaware, where Nathaniel Mitchell had been chosen governor. Besides the Federal electors in this state and Connecticut, two more were chosen in Maryland, where the district system was still maintained. This was the whole of the lean minority, fourteen in all, which the Federalists were able to muster. Conformity to Jefferson's own principles, and to his opinions repeatedly expressed, would have required him XVII. to retire at the close of his first term; and, as things CHAPTER turned out, far better would it have been for his reputation to have done so. But he found a ready excuse for 1804. a second term in the "unbounded calumnies of the Federal party," which obliged him "to throw himself on the verdict of his country for trial." That verdict, as declared by the result of the election, was enough to flatter any man's vanity. The peaceful acquisition of Louisiana; the curtailments in the public expenses; the prosperous state of the finances leaving every year an increasing surplus; the vast extension, since the renewal of hostilities between France and England, of American trade, as yet but little disturbed by the belligerents, seemed palpably to give the lie to the gloomy predictions of the Federalists that the new administration and the Democratic party were not competent to carry on the government with credit and success. The country had reached a pitch of pecuniary prosperity never known before. The number of banks, which in 1802 was thirty-three, or thirtynine, including the six branches of the United States. Bank, with capitals amounting to twenty-four millions, had since considerably increased. The Bank of Philadelphia, the third state bank in that city, had lately been chartered, with a capital of two millions, paying the state $135,000 in cash as a bonus for the charter, besides other pecuniary inducements. Even Virginia had introduced the banking system by the charter of the Bank of Virginia at Richmond. Many insurance companies had been formed, and others for the construction of roads and bridges. Since the adoption of the Federal Constitution, the export of domestic produce had tripled in value, having reached the amount of forty-two millions. A trade to a much greater nominal amount, and rapidly in CHAPTER creasing, was carried on in the import and export of forXVII. eign produce, exclusively for the supply of foreign na1804. tions, on which very large profits were made. With all this Jefferson's policy had nothing to do. But as governments are often held responsible for pecuniary distresses over which they have no control, so they often get credit for a public prosperity growing entirely out of extraneous causes. Already, however, a dismal cloud, no bigger at this moment than a man's hand, began to lower in the eastern horizon. Though few depredations, as yet, had been committed by the belligerents, some of the inconveniences necessarily attending a war on the ocean began to be felt. The presence of English and French ships of war in the harbors of the United States, and the angry collisions to which their hostility to each other and their interferences with American shipping gave rise, called loudly for some effectual means of keeping them in order, especially as the commanders of these vessels did not hesitate to set the civil powers of the states at defiance. On the part of the British, the practice had been renewed with the war of impressment from American vessels in foreign harbors, on the high seas, and even on the very coast of the United States. Professedly these impressments were limited to British seamen serving on board American vessels; and generally it was so. But it was not on that account the less annoying to the prevalent party in America, influential with which were so many persons of foreign or igin, who insisted upon it as a point of national honor that American letters of naturalization should supersede and extinguish all other obligations. Toward the close of Adams's administration, Marshall, as Secretary of State, had very seriously pressed on the British ministry an arrangement of this subject, so fruitful of irritation. After the peace of Amiens the ne- CHAPTER XVII. gotiation had flagged; but when a new war was seen to approach, King had again brought it up, and with a flat- 1804. tering prospect of success. The outrage of seizing native-born American seamen and compelling them to serve in British ships of war was too flagrant to be palliated; yet this was constantly liable to happen, so long as careless and unscrupulous press-gangs, and captains of ships of war eager to fill up their crews, possessed the right to take any body from American vessels. Such a practice, giving occasion, as it did, to constant and cruel. wrongs and irritating collisions, was utterly inconsistent with solid peace and friendship between the two nations. Just before leaving London on his return to America, King so far prevailed with Admiral Lord St. Vincent (Sir John Jarvis), then at the head of the British Admiralty, that he consented to an agreement for five years that neither nation should take any seamen out of the ships of the other on the high seas, both nations contracting to prohibit, under heavy penalties, the carrying away from the ports of the other seamen not natives of the country to which the ship belonged. But, when the agreement came to be signed, not content with the right thus left of visitation and impressment as to all American vessels in any British harbor, St. Vincent claimed to except the narrow seas also, that is, the seas surrounding England, "they having been immemorially considered to be within the dominion of Great Britain." Such a pretension had indeed been set up in former times, and the Dutch, on sundry occasions, had been compelled to submit to it. But, rather than sanction any such obsolete pretense, or submit to such a curtailment of the original agreement, King preferred to let the whole matter drop. Destitute as the United States then were of |