CHAPTER lay the project before the British ministry, by whom it X. was rejected on the very ground that it might compro

1797. mit the neutrality of the United States.

July 18.

June 24.

Though expelled from the Senate, Blount by no means lost the confidence of his constituents. On his arrival at Knoxville, he was received there with great ceremony, and was presently elected to the State Senate, of which he was chosen president.

With the proceedings against Blount terminated a session in which party spirit had reached a sharpness and bitterness exceeding any thing hitherto known. Many warm repartees had been exchanged. Blount, of the House, brother of the senator of that name, and who had already immortalized himself by calling for the yeas and nays on the complimentary address to Washington at the last session, took great offense at a retort by Thatcher, of Massachusetts, which he construed into a charge that he belonged to a French faction, so much so that he sent Thatcher a challenge. Thatcher, besides declining to receive it, read to Macon, by whose hand it had been sent, a very pointed lecture on the folly of dueling, which he presently sent to the newspapers by way of offset to the publication by Blount of his letter of challenge-a letter which exhibited a good deal too much of the backwoods bully and blackguard. No notice, however, was taken in the House of this breach of privilege by a challenge for words spoken in debate.

"You and I," wrote Jefferson to Edward Rutledge, "have formerly seen warm debates and high political passions. But gentlemen of different politics would then speak to each other, and separate the business of the Senate from that of society. It is not so now. Men who have been intimate all their lives cross the streets. to avoid meeting, and turn their heads another way lest

X.

June 17.

they should be obliged to touch their hats. This may CHAPTER do for young men, with whom passion is enjoyment; but it is afflicting to peaceable minds.” Another letter to 1797. Burr, professedly written for the purpose of "recalling himself to the memory of," and "evincing his esteem for" that political coadjutor, sheds a strong light on the ideas entertained by the opposition; many of them, as appears from the previous part of this chapter, very mistaken ones, especially the notion that the administration was anxious to plunge the country into a war with France. You well know," says Jefferson in his letter, "how strong a character of division had been impressed on the Senate by the British treaty. Common error, common censure, and common efforts of defense had formed the treaty majority into a common band, which feared to separate even on other subjects. Toward the close of the last Congress it had been hoped that their ties began to loosen, and their phalanx to separate a little. This hope was blasted at the very opening of the present session by the nature of the appeal which the president made to the nation, the occasion for which had confessedly sprung from the fatal British treaty. This circumstance rallied them again to their standard, and hitherto we have had pretty regular treaty votes on all questions of principle, and, indeed, I fear that so long as the same individuals remain, we shall see traces of the same division. In the House of Representatives the Republican body has also lost strength. The non-attendance of five or six of that description has left the majority very equivocal indeed. A few individuals of no fixed system at all, governed by the panic or the prowess of the moment, flap, as the breeze blows, against the Republican or the aristocratic bodies, and give to the one or the other a preponderance entirely accidental.

Hence

CHAPTER the dissimilar aspect of the address, and of the proceed

X. ings subsequent to that. The inflammatory composition

1797. of the speech excited sensations of resentment which had

son.

The

It

slept under British injuries, threw the wavering into the war scale, and produced the war address. Bonaparte's victories and those on the Rhine, the Austrian peace, British bankruptcy, mutiny of the seamen, and Mr. King's exhortations to pacific measures, have cooled them down again, and the scale of peace preponderates. threatening propositions, therefore, founded on the address, are abandoned one by one, and the cry begins now to be that we have been called together to do nothing. The truth is, there is nothing to do, the idea of war be ing scouted by the events of Europe; but this only proves that war was the object for which we were called. proves that the executive temper was for war, and that the convocation of the representatives was an experiment of the temper of the nation, to see if it was in uniEfforts at negotiation, indeed, were promised, but such a promise was as difficult to withhold as easy to render nugatory. If negotiation alone had been meant, that might have been pursued without so much delay, and without calling the representatives; and if strong and earnest negotiation had been meant, the additional nomination would have been of persons strongly and earnestly attached to the alliance of 1778. War, then, was intended. Whether abandoned or not, we must judge from future indications and events, for the same secrecy and mystery are affected to be observed by the present which marked the former administration. I had always hoped that the popularity of the late president being once withdrawn from active effect, the natural feelings of the people toward liberty would restore the equilibrium between the executive and legislative departments which

X.

had been destroyed by the superior weight and effect of CHAPTER that popularity, and that their natural feelings of moral obligation would discountenance the ungrateful predilec- 1797. tion of the executive in favor of Great Britain. But, unfortunately, the preceding measures had already alienated the nation who were the object of them, had excited reaction from them, and this reaction has on the minds of our citizens an effect which supplies that of the Washington popularity. The effect was sensible on some of the late congressional elections, and this it is which has lessened the Republican majority in Congress. When it will

be re-enforced must depend on events, and these are so incalculable that I consider the future character of our republic as in the air; indeed, its future fortune will be in the air if war is made on us by France, and if Louisiana becomes a Gallo-American colony.

"I have been much pleased to see a dawn of change in the spirit of your state. The late elections have indicated something which, at a distance, we do not understand. However, what with the English influence in the lower, and the Patroon influence in the upper parts of your state, I presume little is to be hoped. If a prospect could be once opened upon us of the penetration of truth into the Eastern States; if the people there who are unquestionable Republicans could discover that they have been duped into the support of measures calculated to sap the very foundation of Republicanism, we might still hope for salvation, and that it would come, as of old, from the East. But will that region ever awake to the true state of things? Can the Middle, Southern, and Western States hold on till they awake? These are painful and doubtful questions; and if, in assuring me of your health, you can give me a comfortable solution of them, it will relieve a mind devoted to the preserva

CHAPTER tion of our republican government in the true form and X. spirit in which it was established, but almost oppressed

1797. with apprehensions that fraud will at length effect what

force could not, and that, what with currents and counter-currents, we shall in the end be driven back to the land from which we launched twenty years ago. Indeed, my dear sir, we have been but a sturdy fish on the hook of a dexterous angler, who, letting us flounce till we have spent our force, brings us up at last."

"I am tired of the scene, and this day se'nnight shall change it for one where to tranquillity of mind may be added pursuits of private utility, since none public are admitted by the state of things."

The selection of the envoys to France had been, since the commencement of the session, a subject of great interest both in and out of the cabinet. The president, as we have seen, had been of opinion, and the same view had been taken by Hamilton, that one of the envoys ought to be selected from that party in the country regarded by the French as their especial friends. Madison had been thought of as the proper person for that purpose both by Hamilton and Adams; but, besides his unwillingness to accept the mission, already intimated by Jefferson, the feeling in the cabinet was so strong against him that the president had early laid aside the idea of his nomination. Madison, indeed, was altogether too cautious to risk his political prospects in any such doubtful enterprise, or to come out in so turbulent a orisis from that retirement into which, with his newly-married wife, he had lately withdrawn. John Marshall, of Richmond, formerly an officer in the Revolutionary army, now a leading advocate at the Virginia bar, a Federalist, but a man of great moderation, was selected in Madison's place. As Pinckney was to make one of the new embassy, if the opposi