The elements for the rise of parties

CHAPTER XVII

DECLINE OF THE FEDERALISTS

I. RISE OF POLITICAL PARTIES

THE first three years of Washington's administration saw no political parties. The adoption of the Constitution ended the first party contest. The Federalists were left, almost without opposition, to organize the government they had established, and, within a few months, party lines were wiped out. It is sometimes said that Washington tried to reconcile the two old parties and so appointed to his Cabinet two leaders from the Antifederalists, - Jefferson and Randolph. This is absurd. Jefferson had criticized the Constitution, though less se

verely than Hamilton had, — but he, too, had used his influence for its ratification. And, though Randolph refused to sign the final draft of the Constitution at Philadelphia, he had, afterward, in the Virginia convention, been one of the chief leaders for ratification. The Cabinet represented

merely the different wings of the old Federalist party.

But elements were present for new divisions. Men soon found themselves for or against the plans of the government according as they favored (1) aristocracy or democracy, (2) commercial or agricultural interests, (3) a strong or a weak government, and (4) English or French sympathies.

Sectional groupings

And these divergent views arranged themselves in two groups. The commercial interests wished a strong central government, and favored England because our commerce was mainly with that country. Likewise, they were more impelled toward aristocracy-to which they had always 1 After the Revolution almost as exclusively as before, — which suggests that the English navigation acts had not in great measure diverted colonial commerce from its natural channels.

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been inclined because aristocratic England was now the champion of the old order against democratic France, in the wars of the French Revolution. On the other hand, the democratic portion of society had its chief strength in agricultural districts. It kept its Revolutionary hatred for England, and was warmly attached to France, formerly our ally and now the European champion of democracy. And, according to universal democratic feeling in that day, it looked with distrust upon any strong government.

Unhappily, the new party lines were largely sectional. Commercial New England was mainly Federalist; the agricultural South was Republican. Hamilton stood Hamilton for the aristocratic, pro-English tendency; Jeffer- and son, for the democratic, pro-French view. Soon the Jefferson two were contending in the Cabinet (in Jefferson's phrase) "like cocks in a pit." By 1792 both had resigned, and these divergent views in the country had crystallized into new political parties. Jefferson believed that Hamilton's policy, if not checked, would result in monarchy; and he called his own party "Republican." His opponents tried to discredit it by stigmatizing it "Democratic," and shrewdly took to themselves the old name "Federalist."

Years

The "Republican

1792

Jefferson first uses the term Republican as a party name in a letter to Washington in May, 1792: "The Republican party among us, who wish to preserve the government in its present form later he affirmed he had heard Hamilton call the party of Constitution "a shilly-shally thing, of mere milk and water, which . . . was good only as a step to something better"; and later still he declared, "The contests of that day were contests of principle between the adherents of republican and of kingly government.'

But if Jefferson accused his opponents of plotting against the Republic, they, even more absurdly, accused him of plotting to overthrow all society, in the interest Party of bloody anarchy or at least of a general pro- bitterness scription of property (page 335). It took a generation

for men to learn that political difference did not mean moral viciousness. Many years afterward, Madison characterized the party divisions more fairly: "Hamilton wished to administer the government into what he thought it ought to be; while the Republicans wished to keep it as understood by the men who adopted it.”

Washington's patriotism so exalted him that the Republicans were unwilling to oppose his reëlection. In 1793 he again received every electoral vote. Adams became Vice President again, by 77 votes to 50 for George Clinton. The Republicans were sadly handicapped in their canvass for Clinton by their lack of a candidate of their own for the presidency; but they secured a strong majority in the new House of Representatives.

Washington refused to be a candidate for a third term. Then, in 1796, came a true party contest. The Federalist members of Congress in caucus nominated Adams and Thomas Pinckney. Republican Congressmen nominated Jefferson. Adams won by three votes.

66 King Caucus

in 1796

Jefferson became Vice President.1

These nominations in 1796 mark the first use of the Congressional caucus for nominating purposes, — a device that was to hold sway for the next thirty-five years; but in New England town government the caucus was an old piece of political machinery. John Adams has left the earliest account of it as it appeared in Boston (Diary for February, 1773):

"This day I learned that the caucus club meets at certain times in the garret of Tom Dawes. He has a large house, and he has a movable partition in his garret, which he takes down, and the whole club meets in one room. There they smoke tobacco

1 Before the Twelfth Amendment, each elector voted for two men without naming one for President, one for Vice President. If all Federalist electors had voted for both their candidates, there would have been no choice for first place. To prevent this result, several Federalist electors threw away their second votes, so that Pinckney, on the winning ticket, received fewer votes than Jefferson, on the other. The consequence was absurd, President and Vice President from hostile parties.

RISE OF POLITICAL PARTIES

319 till you cannot see from one end of the room to the other. There they drink flip, I suppose, and there they choose a moderator, who puts questions to vote regularly; and selectmen, assessors, collectors, firewards, and representatives are regularly chosen before they are chosen by the town." (It was his control over this caucus which made Samuel Adams for so long the "boss" of Boston.)

By 1790, it had become customary in State legislatures for members of each party to "caucus" in order to nominate party candidates for State offices, and the device was now seized upon by the parties in Congress for national party nominations. Of course it destroyed at once and completely the intention of the Constitution that the chosen electors should "deliberate" and make their own choice, and so “refine the popular will." It remained now only for them to follow the "recommendation" of the party caucus. This illustrates the fact that party government was a new thing. The men who made the Consti- Party

ment new

tution did not foresee it. Those who dreamed of governit at all thought of it only as a dreaded possibility. The Constitution made no provision for the chief force which was to run it. But almost at once, for most useful purposes, the check of mutually balancing parties replaced the elaborate system of Constitutional checks devised by the Philadelphia Convention.

Said John Adams, in October, 1792: "There is nothing which I dread so much as the division of the Republic into two great parties, each under its leader. . . . This, in my humble apprehension, is to be feared as the greatest political evil under our Constitution." Soon, however, all free peoples were to adopt the device as the only workable plan, so far invented, for self-government. This need not blind us to its imperfections. Government by party Nature of seems to be most wholesome when party lines cor- party respond in fair degree to the natural differences government between conservatives and progressives. One part of society sees most clearly the present good and the possible dangers in

change, and feels that to maintain existing advantages is more important than to try for new ones. Another part sees most clearly the existing evils and the possible gain in change, and feels that to try to improve conditions, even at the risk of experiment, is more important than merely to preserve existing good. Each party draws its strength from some of the noblest and some of the basest of human qualities. The true reformer will find himself associated with reckless adventurers and self-seeking demagogues. The thoughtful conservative, struggling to preserve society from harmful revolution, will find much of his support in the inertia, selfishness, and stupidity of comfortable respectability, and in the greed of "special privilege." "Stupidity is naturally Tory"; and "Folly is naturally Liberal.” 1 Over against this handicap stands one mighty advantage. One of the marks of true party government is moderation, because the shifting of only a small fraction of the total vote will usually displace the ruling party.

Foreign

II. FOREIGN RELATIONS, 1793-1800

The French Revolution began one week after Washington became President, if it be dated in the usual way from the gathering of the States General. That tremendous troubles movement soon involved all Europe in war; and the new-born American nation had only four years of quiet, to arrange its pressing affairs, before it was drawn into serious foreign complications. Those complications absorbed much American energy, and vitally affected American development for twenty-five years, and they were of particular interest during this Federalist period.

At first popular sympathy went out enthusiastically to the French Republic in its desperate struggle against the "coalized

1 These lines are condensed roughly from a much longer passage in Lecky's England in the Eighteenth Century (I, 513–515). Colonel Higginson had the final quotation in mind probably, when he wrote of these first American political parties, "Some men became Federalists because they were high-minded; and some because they were narrow-minded; while the more far-sighted and also the less scrupulous became Republicans."