XV. CHAPTER French insolence, and there was not now vitality enough left effectually to resist the opponents, who rose dexter1801. ously out of the dust in which they had been trodden, and, as if refreshed by the humiliation, renewed the contest with new vigor. But, though the Federal party thus fell never to rise again, it left behind it permanent monuments. The whole machinery of the Federal government, as it now operates, must be considered the work of that party. With every individual part of that machinery, as those parts were successively put into operation, the opposition, first as anti-Federalists, then as Republicans, and then as Democrats for so the more ultra began now to call themselves-had found most critical and pertinacious fault. We shall soon see how, themselves in power, notwithstanding all their former criticisms, they at once adopted, without essential change, the greater part of this very machinery, and how they were ultimately driven again to restore, with hardly an exception, all those portions of it with which, in conformity to their own theories, they had attempted at first to dispense; testimony as irrefragable as it was reluctant, that however the so-called Republican leaders might excel the Federalists in the arts of popularity, the best thing they could do, in the constructive part of politics, was humbly to copy the models they had once calumniated. 1 CHAPTER XVI. INAUGURATION OF JEFFERSON. STATE ELECTIONS. AP- The XVI. JEFFERSON had reached the presidential chair at a CHAPTER most fortunate moment. The storm which, four years before, had so alarmingly threatened as to make him 1801. willingly shrink into the position, comparatively obscure, but free from all responsibility, of vice-president, had now quite blown over. The prospect of a speedy peace in Europe promised effectual and permanent relief from those serious embarrassments to which, during war on the ocean, American commerce was ever exposed from the aggressions of one or of all the belligerents. treasury was fuller, the revenue more abundant than at any previous period. Commerce was flourishing, and the pecuniary prosperity of the country very great. All the responsibility of framing institutions, laying taxes, and providing for debts, had fallen on the ousted administration. Succeeding to the powers and the means of the Federal government without sharing any of the unpopularity at the expense of which they had been attained, and ambitious not so much of a splendid as of a quiet and popular administration, the new president seemed to have before him a very plain and easy path. CHAPTER Among other Federal pomps, Jefferson had formerly condemned with emphasis, as savoring of monarchy, any 1801. public ceremony at swearing the president into office. Yet, not to disappoint the multitude of his friends and partisans who had assembled to pay him honors, and, perhaps, now that his own turn had come, looking at the matter in a somewhat different light, on the morning March 4. of his accession to office, escorted by a body of militia and a procession of citizens, he proceeded to the Capitol, where the Senate had met in special session in obedience to a call issued by Adams some weeks before. Burr, already sworn in as vice-president, gave up the chair to Jefferson, taking a seat at his right hand. On his left sat Chief-justice Marshall, ready to administer the oath of office. The chamber was well filled, a large number of the members of the late House being present, to which body, just before its adjournment, Jefferson had sent notice of his intended public inauguration. But the absence of the late speaker, as well as of the late president, did not fail to excite remark. Before taking the oath, Jefferson delivered an inaugural address, a piece of studied and very elaborate composition, in many points strongly characteristic of its author. Elevated at last to the height of his political ambition, he seemed anxious now to quell the rage of that political storm on the wings of which he had ridden into office. Desirous to still the heavings of that "tempestuous sea of liberty," on which, as a member of the opposition, he had navigated so adventurously, he warmly urged the restoration of that "harmony and affection," without which, as he had now discovered, "liberty and even life itself are but dreary things." "Every difference of opinion," so he suggested, "is not a difference of principle. Brethren of the same principle, we XVI. are called by different names. We are all Republicans, CHAPTER we are all Federalists." He announced as the sum of good government "a wise frugality, which does not take 1801. from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned, and which, restraining men from injuring one another, leaves them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits;" a paraphrase of the favorite idea of his party, that the goodness of government is in proportion to the smallness of its quantity. Yet, in descending to particulars, he did not avoid the gross inconsistency of enumerating as "essential principles of government," "encouragement of agriculture and of commerce as its handmaid, the diffusion of information, and arraignment of all abuses at the bar of public opinion." The Federalists having accused him of hostility to the Federal Constitution, undue partiality for France, and of doctrines which tended to a repudiation of the public debt, he added to his list of essentials "the preservation of the Federal government in its whole constitutional vigor;" "peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none;" and "the prompt payment of our debts, and sacred preservation of the public faith.” Simultaneously with the removal of the public offices to Washington, two newspapers, the National Intelligencer and the Washington Federalist, had been established there; of which the former became, as it was originally intended to be, the official organ of the new administration. The editor, selected probably by Jefferson, was Samuel Harrison Smith, who had formerly published at Philadelphia the Universal Gazette, a miscellaneous journal of some pretensions. The new organ, subsequently known among the Federalists as the "national smoothing-plane," affected an almost prudish regard to decency and correctness of statement-qualities in which CHAPTER all its Republican predecessors had been sadly deficient; XVI. and so far the comparison was much in its favor. But 1801. in point of spirit and talent it fell far short of the old organ, the Aurora, by which its editor was presently spoken of with some contempt as "silky, milky Smith" -epithets, like that employed by the Federalists, descriptive enough of the ever-ready adulation with which all the acts of the administration and its supporters were somewhat nauseously glossed over. Toward the Federalists, however, very little either of milkiness or of silkiness was displayed. The long, formal, pedantic disquisitions in which the editor delighted to indulge, exhibited, indeed, a cold, clammy, political rancor, altogether more detestable and less easy to forgive than the passionate hate and vindictive malice of the Aurora. To the offices of Secretary of State, Secretary of the Treasury, and Attorney General, left vacant by the resMarch 5. ignation of the late incumbents, Jefferson nominated James Madison, Henry Dearborn, and Levi Lincoln, the latter an early leader of the opposition in Massachusetts, who had taken a seat in Congress prior to the close of the late session, having been chosen, after a warmly-contested election, to fill a vacancy in the Worcester district. As the Senate stood at present, still containing, as it did, of the members present a majority of Federalists, Jefferson did not think proper to make any further nominations; but, soon after the adjournment, May 15. he appointed as Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin, all along the financial member of the opposition, and who had come out, pending the presidential canvass, with a new pamphlet, in which he had undertaken to show an alarming increase of debt and expenditure. The Navy Department, after being refused by Chancellor LivJuly 22. ingston, was given to Robert Smith, brother of the Bal |