Friday, December 26, 2014

Jefferson’s First Inaugural Address, Part III: Providence and Principle, contd.

Throughout his First Inaugural Jefferson added further to his list of qualities or values which he felt set America apart. Some of these had to do specifically with elements of the nation’s political culture. In the second paragraph he praised his countrymen’s tolerance for error and their faith in reason. “If there be any among us,” he wrote, “who would wish to dissolve this Union of to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments to the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.” This statement seems to be a response to several different ideas. First, it was arguably an acknowledgement of a practical reality. Few governments in the early 19th-century world (that Jefferson was aware of) valued freedom of speech and expression as much as the United States did, or enshrined it as a root value in their constitutions. Jefferson was rightly proud of this fact, and wished to countrymen to feel the same. At the same time he was perhaps reiterating another Enlightenment value, the importance of free debate. Jefferson believed that a truly enlightened society resolved internal conflicts via free and open discussion. In such a society, error was not considered dangerous because it would eventually and inevitably be overcome by the truth. Jefferson believed in 1801 that this was true of the United States, and that the fact was worth celebrating. Last it seems possible, if not likely, that Jefferson was attempting a slight jab at the outgoing Adams administration. Threatened by slanders and calls to insurrection, Adams and his Federalist cohorts had drafted the much-reviled Alien and Sedition Acts in the late 1790s. In Jefferson’s eyes this represented a fundamental error on their part; not only had they demonstrated an apparent fear of free debate (perhaps because they knew on some level they that they were wrong), but they violated the rights of any number of American citizens. Though the Federalists had been soundly defeated in 1800, and Jefferson seemed to be in a rather conciliatory temper, I don’t think he was above taking one last parting shot.

Further in the second paragraph of his First Inaugural, Jefferson asserted that the American government was the strongest on earth. While I think this a rather odd thing to say for a man who had not three years earlier criticized that same government for being too powerful, arbitrary and unresponsive, his stated reasoning is quite telling. America, Jefferson argued, was the only country in the world in which the average citizen would, “fly to the standard of the law, and would meet invasions of the public order as his own personal concern.” By the standards of the early 19th century this was rather strange notion. Few, if any, countries then in existence could have boasted of the same level of civic engagement that Jefferson claimed for his. A baker living in the countryside of France or a miner working in the coalfields of Wales during this same period would likely have cared less for the health of the public order (having to do with government, national finance, or what have you) than for the price or yeast or rates for day-labour in their district. If they couldn't vote or hold office, what concern was it of theirs what went on in the capital, or which ministers had been accused of what abuses? But in the United States every man was concerned with law and government because he knew his rights were vested there. If the Bill of Rights of the United States Constitution was the rock-bottom guarantor of the liberties and freedoms of every American and that same Constitution was somehow overthrown or called into question, did that not concern every citizen equally? In essence, what Jefferson was keen to point out was not necessarily the quality of the United States government or the ingenuity of its balance of power and responsibility, but the high degree of political consciousness that he saw in his fellow Americans. He may indeed have believed that America’s was the strongest government in the world, but only because it was structured in such a way as to awaken and harness the vigilance of the people.

In addition to paying tribute to the many virtues he felt his nation and countrymen possessed, Jefferson also took the opportunity with his First Inaugural to lay out the basic principle which he felt were the most sacred and fundamental to his ideal federal administration. These, listed in paragraph four, included: “A well disciplined militia, our best reliance in peace and for the first moments of war,” “economy in the public expense, so that labor may be lightly burdened,” “the honest payment of our debts and sacred preservation of the public faith,” “encouragement of agriculture, and of commerce as its handmaid,” and “freedom of the press.” It’s also worth noting that Jefferson described these principles as, “the bright constellation which has gone before us and guided out steps through an age of revolution and reformation.” This would seem to be a dense and weighty declaration. But while Jefferson tried to frame his promotion of these ideals as a return to the first principles that had guided the American Revolution from the start, in fact he seems to have instead been attempting to refute and reverse many of the efforts of his Federalist predecessors.

In encouraging a reliance on militias rather than standing armies, for instance, Jefferson was doubtless trying to both assert the primacy of the states over the federal government in military matters at the same time that he aimed a jab at the Federalist’s short-lived provisional army of 1798. This particular force was raised on a provisional basis during a period of intense diplomatic tension with the French Republic in the late 1790s during which France began to attack and seize American merchant vessels. It was vehemently opposed at the time by Jefferson and the Republicans, partially because they feared it might be turned against supposedly disloyal elements of American society, and partially because command of it had been turned over to their avowed enemy, Alexander Hamilton. Believing themselves true adherents to the principles of republicanism, Jefferson and his followers held that because militias were controlled on a state by state basis and could only be called to serve in time of war the potential for their misuse was severely limited when compared to a national army. That the army of 1798 was nominally commanded by a Federalist President, practically led by a Federalist General, and staffed almost exclusively by Federalist officers no doubt added to the Republicans’ anxieties. Fortunately for them the army was disbanded before it could be put to use, and in the years since that time the American people had elected a president who fundamentally opposed the use of a standing military. His statement on the primacy of the militias might thus been seen as an assurance on Jefferson’s part to his supporters and critics alike: there would be no repeat of 1798. 

        By promoting “economy in the public expense,” as well as, “the honest payment of our debts,” Jefferson was no doubt likewise attempting to blend sacred principle and subtle criticism. Believing in the freedom and ingenuity of the individual, Jefferson regarded the tax regime instituted by his rival Hamilton’s Treasury Department as an unnecessary means of exerting federal control over the American citizenry. By collecting taxes on purchased and manufactured goods, the federal government could control what people bought, how much money they had to spend, what kinds of businesses they went into, and essentially how they lived their lives. That these taxes were then used to fund entire federal departments which in turn where used to exert even more control over various aspects of the lives of everyday Americans, only added further insult to injury. “Economy in the public expense,” might thus be thought of as the early 19th-century equivalent of fiscal responsibility. By cutting back the scale of certain departments and initiatives (like the army, the navy, the national bank, and foreign embassies) Jefferson believed it was possible to run a more efficient government on a smaller budget. This would serve to decrease federal control over a host of policy areas and strengthen the authority of the states, as well as grant the American people greater economic independence. What money the government did collect, mainly from land sales and customs duties, would be put toward paying off the national debt that had been assumed under the Washington Administration.

When Jefferson was sworn in in 1801 the United States owed something on the order of $83 million, between the debts the government had contracted on its own and those it had adopted from the various states. Unlike Hamilton, who had advocated the use of the debt as an extremely powerful funding mechanism, Jefferson believed that continually borrowing money and collecting taxes to service the necessary interest payments was tantamount to institutionalizing corruption and dependence. By failing to ever pay off the debt entirely, and in fact expanding it through the use of a national bank, Jefferson believed that the federal government would essentially be chaining the American people, generation after generation, to an infinite and immovable burden. Holders of treasury bonds and bank stock would benefit greatly, though they performed no useful labour of their own, while citizens less able to afford such luxuries would be forced to pay tax upon tax without any conceivable return. Jefferson believed this policy socially destructive as well as dishonest, in that it led taxpayers to believe that they were aiding the elimination of the debt while it was in reality being increased. An honest fiscal policy, in his mind, would entail only the limited collection of revenue and a genuine attempt by the Treasury Department to pay off the national debt in full. In retrospect this was a tall order, considering the size of the debt and the comparatively minor revenue generated by customs fees, but Jefferson was doubtless feeling triumphant in 1801, and if nothing else was eager to dismantle the Federalist financial regime that he had railed against so futilely in the 1790s.          
The reasons that Jefferson had so opposed Hamilton’s economic program in the 1790s had little changed by 1801. He believed that large-scale banks (like Hamilton’s Bank of the United States) made the creation of factories possible. These factories would employ large numbers of people at relatively low wages, gathering them into cities where they lived cheek to jowl in hastily constructed tenements. Because they did not own their lodgings but rented them, they were thus beholden to or dependent on both their employers and their landlords. At the same time the unhealthy conditions and low wages brought about a general moral decline among the working poor, who spent their money not on improving themselves or their lot but on the prostitution, alcohol, and gambling that cities were all too happy to provide. This is hardly an objective assessment of early-19th century city life, but it was one Jefferson felt qualified to make. Having been raised in the pastoral west country of Virginia, and having spent significant periods of time in Philadelphia, Richmond, New York and Paris, he doubtless felt qualified to speak of the pros and cons of an urban versus a rural existence. For this reason, and once more to emphasize the Federalists’ defeat, he stated in his First Inaugural that the, “encouragement of agriculture, and of commerce as its handmaid,” was to be one of the key principles of his coming administration. As mentioned previously, Jefferson believed that only by owning land and providing for his own subsistence would a man be free to exercise his own opinions, and would better appreciate and defend the liberty he possessed and the laws that secured it. Commerce was necessary, certainly. Farmers needed markets in which to sell their surplus, and from which to purchase the equipment or luxury goods which they could not manufacture themselves. But in an off itself, and Jefferson believed this quite adamantly, commerce could serve no possible purpose save to increase the wealth of the few and the suffering of the many. While this was not a new position for Jefferson in 1801, it certainly seems an apt one to reiterate as the curtain came down on the Federalists and their political dominance.

In a similar mode, Jefferson made a point of emphasizing his intention as president to respect, “freedom of the press, and freedom of person under the protection of habeas corpus.” Again, these were not novel concepts in the United States at the turn of the 19th century. The freedom of newspapers and periodicals to publish what they wish had been instrumental to the success of the protesters and later revolutionaries of the 1760s and 1770s. The denunciations, essays, satires and calls for commercial boycotts and large-scale protests had served to rally the common people of the American colonies to the Patriot cause, and arguably helped make the American Revolution possible. Likewise, the right of habeas corpus had been regarded by many educated citizens of the colonies as a fundamental English liberty, and a cherished cultural and legal inheritance that had been guaranteed by the 1689 Bill of Rights. While I doubt very much that the Federalist would have disagreed with the importance Jefferson and the Republicans attached to protecting either of these rights, their actions over the course of the 1790s had opened them up for deserving criticism. The previously-mentioned Alien and Sedition Acts, drafted by a Federalist-dominated Congress and signed into law by a Federalist president, had greatly curtailed freedom of the press in the United States by making it a crime to publicly condemn, ridicule, or otherwise call in question the legitimacy of the federal government. In addition, the statutes gave the President of the United States the authority to summarily order the arrest of suspected resident aliens and have them imprisoned or deported without trial. As Jefferson had attempted to rally the people against these abuses of Federal power in his Kentucky Resolutions of 1798, so too did he draw attention to them in his First Inaugural three years later. The second time, albeit, he proceeded with a deal more subtlety; rather than call out the offences explicitly, he simply reaffirmed his adherence to a set of principles whose importance few would have needed reminding of, but which the Federalists had clearly violated.  

In all, it seems Jefferson was intent in his First Inaugural on affirming the political and physical characteristics which he felt ensured his nation’s immanent prosperity, paying homage to the influence of Providence, and laying out the ideals he envisioned his administration embodying. In accomplishing the last of these three, he also attempted to assure his fellow citizens that the ideals he called out would be scrupulously upheld in spite of past missteps by previous governments, at the same time he sought to tag the Federalists once more for their indiscretions and emphasize that many of their prized policies were about to be undone. All this he managed to accomplish while maintaining a positive, forward-looking, and at times even conciliatory tone.

Not a bad day’s work.

Friday, December 19, 2014

Jefferson’s First Inaugural Address, Part II: Providence and Principle

At only six paragraphs stretching over approximately three pages, Jefferson’s First Inaugural manages to combine economy of expression with seemingly limitless vision. Coming from the scribe most responsible for the Declaration of Independence this should hardly be surprising. The Sage of Monticello has long been known for his eloquence, and his ability to convey to others the grandeur with which he viewed his nation’s potential. Indeed Jefferson’s place in history, his political career aside, is arguably as the wordsmith of the Revolution and the man who almost single-handedly gave birth to the vocabulary of American citizenship. His First Inaugural is very much a part of that effort. With an elegance that still manages to impress, it provided Americans in 1801 with a vision of their country that strove to rise beyond disputes over diplomacy, banking, taxes and censorship. Granted, Jefferson was very much a politician, and his opinions on all of these matters had been frequently expressed in the years leading up to his election as president. But in his mind, and doubtless in the minds of many Republicans, the election of 1800 represented a fundamental turning point in American history that required a corresponding political and cultural reorientation.

The Federalists, up to that point the only faction that had governed the United States, had been defeated (for good, as it turned out). Republicanism had triumphed thanks to the support of the common people, and the time had come to mend fences, unite as a nation and redefine what it was that America stood for. Where the Washington and Adams administrations had concerned themselves with regulating taxation, servicing the national debt, negotiating treaties with foreign powers, and protecting and expanding American commerce, Jefferson and his colleagues believed that the Federal government had a higher calling to serve. The United States, they believed, was a nation that had been blessed by Providence with near-limitless potential. The true end of government was to help the American people realize this potential by offering what protection and resources they could not provide for themselves. While the third part of this series will focus on discussing some of the inconsistencies in this message as Jefferson delivered it, this post will explore what it was that the 3rd President saw in America in 1801 and how he believed its greatness could be achieved.

Within the first paragraph of his First Inaugural Jefferson provided a very succinct summation of the elements he believed constituted America’s pre-eminence in 1801. The United States were, he wrote, “A rising nation, spread over a wide and fruitful land, traversing all the seas with the rich productions of their industry, engaged in commerce with nations who feel power and forget right, advancing rapidly to destinies beyond the reach of mortal eye.” This is truly a soaring vision, and the choice of terms reveals much about Jefferson’s personal views. By referring to his country as a “rising nation,” he perhaps sought to reaffirm the commonly held belief among his contemporaries that America was the culmination of Western philosophy and civilization, and the inevitable and logical conclusion of the reformist zeal of the Enlightenment. If this sounds grandiose, well, it was. But it’s important to remember that for men like Jefferson who believed very strongly in the lessons of the Enlightenment – natural rights, the universality of mankind, the importance of the search for truth – the fact that the United States seemed to embody those same values was extremely significant. Americans had, they thought, managed to condense almost two centuries of theory about politics and society and into a functioning government. They were understandably proud of themselves. In pointing to the “wide and fruitful land,” Jefferson pointed to what would become another major theme of his form of American nationalism, the importance of the land itself. America’s greatness, he believed, was in part a natural occurrence, a consequence of the land they inhabited and the things it made possible. The destiny of the American people was thus partially providential; whatever choices they made, whatever future they decided on, they owed the opportunities presented them and the resources at hand to fate and geography.  

That Jefferson also singled out the “rich productions of their industry” for praise is somewhat unusual, as he was no great fan of commerce or manufacturing (believing that they had an ultimately corrupting influence). He was, however, a proponent of the principle of free trade, notably championed by Scottish Enlightenment thinker Adam Smith. The later events of his second term as president would prove Jefferson’s dedication to the ideal of free trade among all nations as the key to world peace, and it seems likely that he would have attempted to seed the notion in his First Inaugural. Connected to that is the mention of “nations who feel power and forget right.” Though he believed that trade with foreign powers was necessary for America’s prosperity and the ultimate wellbeing of humanity at large, Jefferson had a rather low opinion of most the foreign regimes that he had encountered in his life and career. As a diplomat in the 1780s he had travelled extensively in Europe and been confronted time and again with governments who cared less for what was right than about maintaining their own power, stability, authority and wealth. The rise of the French Republic in 1793 was doubtless a beacon in the darkness for Jefferson’s idealism, but it too was eventually snuffed out. By 1801 the United States was alone among the republics of the world, and its newly-minted president was acutely aware of the fact.

Still, Jefferson felt there were reasons to be optimistic. As he put it, America was “advancing rapidly” towards a great destiny that neither he nor anyone else could envision or predict - and why not? The United States had managed to summon itself into existence in the 1770s and successfully confront one of the wealthiest and most formidable empires in the world. Subsequently it had dealt with internal rebellions, formulated a written constitution, created a series of complex government departments and apparatuses (including a bank and a national debt), subdued numerous Native American tribes on its western frontier and added three additional states to its number. From the perspective of one who had taken part in many of these events and knew firsthand the odds that were arrayed against their success, what other conclusion could there be than to say that America was destined for great things? While Jefferson may not have believed that certain nations were blessed by God, he certainly adhered to the notion that Providence had its role to play in the rise and fall of civilizations. And as near as he could tell, Providence seemed to be in America’s corner. This he repeated in the third paragraph of his First Inaugural, as he was listing the many aspects of the United States and its people that he believed were fundamental to its future prosperity. Specifically, he wrote that America was blessed to be, “kindly separated by nature and a wide ocean from the exterminating havoc of one quarter of the globe,” and possessed, “a chosen country, with room enough for our descendants to the thousandth and thousandth generation.” These statements speak not only to a philosophical understanding of America’s past and its future, but also to knowledge of contemporary political realities on the world stage.

Since the earliest days of permanent settlement in what would become the United States of America, the communities that migrated there often did so girded by the understanding that they were taking part in an attempt to reform or remake human society in their new surroundings. New England Puritans, Pennsylvania Quakers, Maryland Catholics and the first trustees in colonial Georgia; all believed in some sense that the societies they were setting out to create in North America would succeed in preserving and refining the virtues they held dear by escaping from the conflict and persecution that for them defined the Old World. Connected to this sense of escape was also an appreciation of the size of the land these migrants now inhabited and the possibilities that it offered. There were no feudal landowners to collect rent, no church lands or royal forests; America was a “virgin land,” a vast and untouched canvas upon which they could paint any destiny their imagination could conjure. Whether this was true or not, those early Americans believed it; in a way so too did their descendants. Men of Jefferson’s generation might not have considered the explicit blessing of God to have been bestowed on their specific community, but they were certainly willing to ascribe their fortunate position in the world to an abstract Providence having conferred its favor on the American people at large. Intolerant Europe was far at hand, and with it the kings and emperors who had always stood in the way of the kinds of social reformation the Enlightenment championed. This was not merely the dictate of fortune but of fate, a fact that Jefferson was keen his countrymen appreciate.

At the same time, Jefferson also seemed to be expressing thanks for America’s relative isolation and abundance of territory in light of certain contemporary events. More or less continuously from 1792 to 1815, Europe was convulsed by a series of wars that drew in nearly every major power and resulted in over six million casualties. Governments rose and fell, ancient royal families were deposed and exiled, cities burned, battles raged and the status quo was rewritten year by year. Physically far-removed from the scene of conflict, the United States managed to avoid being forced to choose sides thanks to the policy of steadfast neutrality promoted by the Washington Administration. This non-interventionist stance, however, did not completely shield America from some of the negative effects of the ongoing European conflagration. France and Britain, leaders of the two respective alliances and ever seeking advantage, still regarded the United States as a threat due to American merchants’ refusal to cease trading with either side. As a result, American overseas trade became prey to seizure by both belligerents, shipping and insurance rates rose dramatically, and New England merchants and Southern farmers alike suffered greatly. While war between France and the United States over this state of affairs had been narrowly avoided by the Adams Administration, the problem persisted into Jefferson’s first term in office. As a firm believer in the principle of free trade, a persistent critic of the European monarchies that were engaged in conflict, and a much disenchanted former proponent of the French Republic, Jefferson had a great deal to be disturbed by in 1801. Still, the fact that the United States had managed to avoid being dragged into an all-out war, and had suffered little else than economic damage, was a blessing, and one which Jefferson believed was clearly due to his country’s literal separation from the tumults of Europe.   

Meanwhile, as an entire generation of Europeans was being slashed to ribbons on one battlefield after another, something similarly transformative was occurring in the United States. As early as the 1780s, American began migrating in increasingly large numbers across the Appalachian Mountains and into the Western borderlands claimed by states like Virginia, Pennsylvania, New York and Connecticut. In spite of the efforts of the government under the Articles of Confederation who preferred to maintain cordial relations with the region’s native inhabitants by regulating the pace of settlement, the migration proceeded at a disarmingly rapid pace and resulted in decades of bloody conflict with the local indigenous tribes. The federally organized and governed Northwest Territory (encompassing most of the modern Midwest) subsequently became the site of numerous battles between American military forces and alliances of local bands of Shawnee, Delaware, Wyandot and Iroquois, among others. All told, the so called “Northwest Indian War” claimed over two thousand casualties between 1785 and 1795 and ended in the cessation by the defeated tribes of sizable portions of Ohio, Illinois and Michigan. The relative peace that the conclusion of hostilities brought about greatly increased the flood of settlement into the Old Northwest at the same time that similar migrations were taking place in the western regions of Virginia and the Carolinas. As a result of these population explosions, and the settlers displeasure at being so far separated from their states’ eastern power centres, Kentucky was carved out of Virginia in 1791, and Tennessee from North Carolina in 1796. Though the Congress that came into existence under the Constitution after 1789 attempted to slow the pace of westward movement by setting land prices high enough to dissuade those they felt were unsuitable, the human wave that surged across the west in the 1790s was anything but orderly or organized.

Where Federalists like John Adams and Alexander Hamilton reacted with horror at what they perceived as the chaos that had taken root on the western frontier of the United States, however, Jefferson and his Republican cohorts saw in the migrants and the communities they were establishing a source political power, security, and future prosperity. What the Republicans realized, far quicker than their opponents, was that the growth and emergence of territories and eventually states in the West was altering the political map of the United States. Being mainly farmers who cared more for cheap credit and an outlet for their produce than promoting manufacturing, shipping, or other forms of commerce, the interests of Westerners seemed inevitably to lie more with the Republican-dominated Southern than Federalist-dominated Northern states. At the same time their composition, which included many landless workers and small farmers who had failed to achieve prosperity in their home states and sought to try again in the West, aligned neatly with the emerging Republican ideology of small government, decentralization and “the common man.” By appealing to these emerging western communities and promoting issues that were close to their hearts, like cheap land, low interest rates and decentralized banking, the Republicans were able to place the West firmly in their camp by 1800.

As one of the leaders of the Republican faction, Jefferson was particularly pleased by the fact that the American West was being settled by agriculturalists. Unlike residents of cities, who owned little personal property and could be easily manipulated by their employers or landlords, he believed that men who owned and worked their own land developed a far more independent mindset, and could be depended on to behave in the virtuous, rational, self-interested manner that a republic demanded of its citizens. Furthermore, because the security of their property depended on the security of their local communities, and because they had more to lose than landless workers or merchants, Jefferson asserted that settlers who embraced an agrarian lifestyle could be relied on to rise to the defence of their government when it was threatened from within or without. In time, the growth of the agriculturally-dominated American West would thus secure a future for the United States defined by stability, security, and in time prosperity as American farmers increasingly supplied the needs of a hungry world. For any of this to occur, however, America would need room to grow. Luckily, or perhaps providentially, the United States was possessed in 1801 of, “room enough for our descendants to the thousandth and thousandth generation,” or so Jefferson claimed in his First Inaugural. Whether this would prove true or not is another matter, but it does indicate where the 3rd President’s mind was focused at the beginning of his first term in office, and foreshadows some of the events that would come to define his administration and his place in American history.

Friday, December 12, 2014

Jefferson’s First Inaugural Address, Part I: Context

            And so we return once more to old T.J. I don’t suppose I ever intended to spend so much of my time in this series discussing the thoughts and writings of a single man, but Jefferson ever proves to be a fascinating subject. Not only did he write voluminously, and preserve seemingly every single letter he wrote from young adulthood until his death, but his contradictions, his idealism, and his at-times shocking radicalism make him very difficult to get a handle on unless one is willing and able to take the long view of his life and career. I say this because Jefferson was, in my view, someone whose opinions seemed to mutate and evolve over time with surprising regularity as he was exposed to new problems and had his prior assumptions tested. What he held as the gospel truth in 1780 he could vehemently disagree with by 1805. Even across a shorter timeline, his capacity to say one thing and do another can be terribly confusing for the scholar who tries to pin him down as being an advocate of this or that ideology or system of belief. His critics thought him inconsistent, though he doubtless regarded himself as a flexible and undogmatic thinker. Perhaps they were both right.

            This is, of course, my rambling way of introducing the next document I’d like to discuss – Jefferson’s First Inaugural Address. Delivered as a written draft to Congress in 1801, Jefferson being a notoriously poor public speaker, it represents the furthest afield I've yet delved into the Sage of Monticello’s public career. Thus far I've shone a light on Jefferson as a young man in his thirties helping to draft the Declaration of Independence, as Governor of Virginia striking a blow for freedom of conscience, and as Vice-President and secret leader of a nation-spanning protest movement. Now I turn to him as President, a mature statesman in the last public office he would ever hold and very intent on making use of the powers he had railed against only a few short years before. Though I obviously won’t be discussing some of the events that defined Jefferson’s troubled second term, when he seemed to abandon all pretence of ideological consistency, I do believe there are hints of what was to come in his First Inaugural and evidence of how his thinking had changed. I’ll be pointing out a few examples myself, but I encourage my readers (all five of you) to go back and review some of the Jefferson documents I’ve covered so far and see for themselves how time and circumstances changed the way he thought and wrote about government, society, and the roles to be fulfilled by each.

            As I recall, we last left Jefferson in 1798 as he seemed intent on pushing the envelope of political resistance in the United States about as close to civil war as it had yet experienced. Luckily for all involved the crisis of the moment that prompted both the passage of the loathsome Alien and Sedition Acts and Jefferson’s radical response in his Kentucky Resolutions was peacefully resolved in relatively short order. In spite of past failed attempts President Adams persisted in his peace overtures towards the belligerent French, and thanks in no small part to the efforts of his envoy, Secretary of State John Marshall, war between France and America was averted. Unfortunately for Adams and his Federalist allies, however, news of the treaty with France came too late to affect the outcome of the presidential election of 1800.

            This brings us, of course, to Jefferson himself. Having lost the election of 1796 to his estranged friend John Adams, and been forced to serve for four years as his Vice-President, Jefferson was keen to try his luck once more in the nation’s highest contest. As in 1796, his running mate in 1800 was a New Yorker named Aaron Burr. I don’t wish to turn too far from the subject at hand, but I feel it important to render a word or two about Burr before I go on. One of the most dynamic figures in early 19th-century New York politics, Burr remains an exceedingly enigmatic figure. Unlike many of his contemporaries he didn't write extensively (outside of his private journals and correspondence), and seemed content to keep his own counsel on most matters. As a result, colleagues, rivals and modern historians alike have grappled with trying to understand his motivations and what he stood for. I believe this at least partially accounts for the widespread distrust with which many outside his inner circle viewed him; with few concrete opinions to ascribe to him, Burr became a target of rumour, speculation, and libel. What we do know is that his political efforts in New York in the late 1790s proved extremely effective at securing a solid and flexible Republican power base. By creating a robust alliance of workers and recent immigrants, thanks to his efforts to reform land laws and establish a Republican-controlled bank, Burr made New York instrumental to any Republican victory in 1800 and himself instrumental to New York.  It would thus be, I think, going too far to call Jefferson and Burr allies, as the events of 1800 and 1801 would demonstrate. In the moment, however, their interests were aligned.      

            It proved to be a very short moment indeed, however. The understanding between Jefferson and Burr, as many members of the Republican faction were to tell it, was that Jefferson’s name would sit at the top of the ballot, Burr would deliver New York, and in eight years Jefferson would step aside and endorse Burr as his successor. What ended up happening, and which no one seemed to foresee, was that the two men found themselves in a tie. At that time there were 138 electoral votes up for grabs, with 70 needed for a victory. Adams, still the Federalist standard-bearer in spite of tensions within that faction, secured 65 votes. Jefferson and Burr, meanwhile, took 73 each. This deadlock led the election to be turned over to the outgoing House of Representatives, who were to vote as states instead of individual members. This was, understandably, an embarrassing situation all around. Jefferson, veteran politician, was doubtless disconcerted by the upstart Burr’s near-victory and suspected him of taking steps to swing the election away from the venerable Virginian. For his part, Burr seemed completely unwilling to pull his name from contention and honor the prior agreement he’d made with Jefferson. It was, he claimed, not his place to interfere in a free election; the people had spoken, and the chips must fall where they may. The Federalists, stung by the loss of the presidency and both houses of Congress, were in the meantime intent on prolonging the stalemate as long as possible in order to further embarrass the Republicans. Because many of them were also absolutely resistant to the thought of having to vote for Jefferson, a man they regarded as the standard-bearer of Republicanism and their faction’s greatest adversary, six out of the eight states then controlled by the Federalists voted for Burr on the first of what would prove to be thirty-six ballots.

            The rest of the country, meanwhile, did not take the confusion in Washington with good humour. Over the course of the House’s thirty-six ballots, from the 11th to the 17th of February, 1801, Republican newspapers called for military intervention in case their Federalist enemies hijacked the occasion to remain in power. The Republican governors of Virginia and Pennsylvania, James Monroe and Thomas McKean, respectively, began the process of readying their state militias for mobilization, and mobs gathered in the nation’s capital and declared that they would take steps to prevent a victor in the presidential contest being declared by the Federalists other than Jefferson or Burr. Correspondence from the period between Jefferson and Monroe indicates that the Republicans were genuine in their threats, and that they were indeed prepared to potentially plunge the country into civil war to prevent a Federalist “usurpation.” Throughout these proceedings Alexander Hamilton, arch-Federalist and staunch opponent of Jefferson and the Republicans, had been engaged in a feverish correspondence with his colleagues in Congress. Rather than instruct them to remain resolute in their resistance to any kind of Republican victory, however, Hamilton actually attempted to convince them to vote for Jefferson. Their political and ideological disagreements aside, and they were many, Hamilton claimed that Jefferson was at least a man of principles and far preferable to someone like Burr, who in his mind possessed none at all. It’s difficult to say how successful Hamilton was, but on the thirty-sixth ballot James A. Bayard, Federalist and sole Representative of Delaware, rendered a blank ballot and convinced his allies from Maryland and Vermont to do the same. The victor needed the support of nine out of the total sixteen states in order to prevail; this action allowed the Republican Congressman from Maryland and Vermont to swing their states in Jefferson’s favor, giving him a final total of ten states to Burr’s four.

            His triumph secure and war averted, Jefferson was understandably in a rather charitable mood by the time of his inauguration. Granted, his feelings toward his now Vice-President Burr would continue to deteriorate over the course of the next eight years, and his conflicts with the Federalists were far from over. But for the moment he could afford to be magnanimous. His First Inaugural Address was very much that, but amidst all the platitudes, the reassurances of America’s place in history and its destiny as one of the world’s great civilizations, there was an undercurrent of irritation aimed at the men he knew to be his critics. Jefferson had long been frustrated by the viciousness of politics. His experiences as Governor of Virginia and Secretary of State had soured him on public service in an environment where men were quick to judge and slow to listen, and would stoop very low indeed to get what they wanted. This same man found himself, in early 1801, the undisputed possessor of the most powerful office in the nation. Though he had railed against the perceived abuses of the Adams presidency and the potentially tyrannical nature of the office itself, he was more than willing to use those same powers to achieve his own goals. The United States, Jefferson believed, needed to be set right again, and damn the critics if they couldn't see it.     

Friday, December 5, 2014

Anti-Federalist Papers: Brutus II, Part IV: Constitutionalism

As well as appealing to the sense he knew all reasoning Americans possessed of their innate and unalienable rights (British-derived though they mainly were), Robert Yates also raised several questions in Brutus II that concerned the specific wording of certain sections of the proposed constitution, and how those sections could potentially be applied. Unlike his inquires that had to do with natural rights, and which showed the mind of a political philosopher at work, Yates’ assertions which related to the actual text of the Constitution and its interpretation were the work of a practised legal scholar. Sharply focussed, Yates pinpointed two particularly troubling aspects of the draft of the Constitution that was submitted to the states in 1787/88 which would prove to be fundamental to two centuries of debate in the United States over the nature and extent of the federal government and the power it wields. In so doing, Yates’ intention was to further punctuate the need for a codified bill of rights to be included in the draft constitution then under debate. Unintentionally, however, he was reinforcing what I referred to in the previous post as one of the American people’s more unusual aspects; their abiding constitutionalism.

            Because of the experience they had gained living under charter-governed colonial regimes, and then put into practice themselves in the 1770s and 1780s in their respective states, Americans had become acutely aware of both the strengths and weaknesses of written constitutions. Worded too specifically and they could prove inflexible and burdensome; too vaguely and they could be easily abused. There was a delicate balance that needed to be struck, and in 1787/88 it was still unclear whether or not the delegates in Philadelphia had hit the mark. Then as now, speculation abounded as to what the overall intentions of the Framers had been; to largely preserve the independence of the states while creating a federal government that was more efficient within its limited sphere, or drastically alter the balance of power in favor of a centralized authority at the expense of the states?  After scrutinizing certain aspects of the raw text of the Constitution, Yates believed that the latter was the case and was keen to make it known.  

            The first criticism he leveled was one he seemed to happen upon almost unintentionally. The thrust of Yates’ argument in Brutus II concerned the necessity of including a bill of rights in the proposed constitution. The Framers, he wrote, had argued in defense of the exclusion by claiming that the existence of similar declarations of rights in the various state constitutions rendered a similar instrument in the federal charter redundant. To that end Yates discussed which of the rights represented in the state constitutions he felt were most essential, and then pointed to certain sections of the proposed constitution that made explicit mention of them. What he claimed to have uncovered ran quite contrary to the claims made by the Framers. In Section nine of Article one, Yates pointed out in paragraph eleven of Brutus II, the Constitution declared that the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended unless in cases of rebellion, that no bill of attainder (whereby a legislature could declare someone guilty of a crime without benefit of trial) or ex post facto laws shall be passed, and that no title of nobility shall be granted by the United States. Though Yates did not disagree with any of these declarations in principle, he was at a loss to explain their purpose. At no point did the Constitution explicitly grant the power of suspending habeas corpus, passing ex post facto laws, or any of the other offences that these statements would seem to guard against. In that case, what was the purpose of these restrictions? “The only answer that can be given is,” Yates wrote, “That these are implied in the general powers granted. With equal truth it may be said, that all the powers which the bills of rights guard against the abuse of, are contained or implied in the general ones granted by this Constitution.” By leveling this criticism Yates was drawing attention to what would become one of the most hotly debated concepts embodied in the Constitution, that of implied powers.

            As written constitutions are meant to explicitly demarcate and limit the powers and responsibilities of a government, the notion that there are certain actions a government could accomplish that are only implied (and not clearly stated) by its charter has historically proven to be extremely problematic. In the case of the United States Constitution, this idea is most often felt to be embodied by the “Necessary and Proper Clause.” Located in Article one, Section eight, it states that the United States Government has the power, “To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.” Constitutional interpretation being an inexact science at the best of times, this sentence has been used to justify any number of measures over the last two centuries of American history that would not seem to have been explicitly sanctioned by the nation’s governing charter. The Constitution, for instance, makes no explicit mention of the State Department, the Treasury, a national bank, or any cabinet secretaries. The Washington Administration, however, felt that all of these things were necessary and proper for the fulfilment of its stated duties and responsibilities. While this is not a particularly objectionable example, measures that have invoked the Necessary and Proper Clause often met with stiff resistance from advocates of strict constructionism who questioned the propriety of their government assuming too many powers that the Constitution did not clearly describe or limit. Robert Yates would seem to have been in this camp as well, though the offending clause was not the specific source of his chagrin.

            Rather, Yates’ alarm stemmed from the Framers’ apparent need to create explicit limits to powers which did not otherwise seem to exist. If, as they claimed, the bills of rights contained in the state charters were protection enough against the powers granted by the proposed constitution, why did they also feel the need to echo certain among them? If the state constitutions already guaranteed habeas corpus (and most of them did), and the federal constitution didn’t grant the explicit power to suspend it, why declare that the writ would not be violated? As aforementioned, the only conclusion Yates could see was that the Constitution contained far more implied powers than the Framers were willing to let on, and that the exclusion of a federal bill of rights was little more than an attempt to limit the restrictions on their use. This fact, as Yates understood it, was made all the more distressing by the second section of the Constitution he chose to highlight in Brutus II, the so-called “Supremacy Clause.”

            Located in Article six, and ever the bane of state’s rights advocates, the Supremacy Clause flatly declares that, “This Constitution, and the laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof, and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land [.]” In Yates’ mind this was tantamount to the Framers effectively abolishing all of the state constitutions, in as much as they would be considered null and void if they were found to be in conflict with the federal Constitution. Not only that, he continued in paragraph thirteen of Brutus II, but all laws passed by the Federal Congress in pursuance of the Constitution would likewise obliterate contradictory state statutes. “No privilege,” Yates wrote, “Reserved by the bills of rights, or secured by the state governments, can limit the power granted by this, or restrain any laws made in pursuance of it.” The argument the Framers made about the adequacy of the various state declarations of rights to guard the liberties of the people was thus entirely false. If the Federal Congress chose to abridge certain rights in pursuit of some higher objective and was not limited in any way by the text of the Constitution, the bill of rights of Massachusetts or Virginia could offer no effective legal barrier.

            Worse yet, if that was possible, was the potential for abuse inherent in the treaty-making abilities the Constitution granted the President. Along with the laws passed by Congress, the Supremacy Clause grants treaties signed by the United States the status of “supreme law of the land.” The terms of such treaties would thus supersede all state laws, up to and including their constitutions. As treaty-making powers rested solely with the President, and their adoption only required two-thirds of the Senate, Yates perceived that the terms of the Constitution effectively reduced the number of people would could drastically alter or abridge the civil rights of American citizens to a distressing few. How could the states how to guard against such a potentially arbitrary, and yet irresistible, exercise of federal power? “The most important article in any [state] Constitution may therefore be repealed,” Yates asserted in paragraph fourteen, “Even without a legislative act.” In all it was Yates’ overwhelming conclusion that a federal bill of rights was the best, and in some cases only solution, to problems presented by these kinds of alarming eventualities.    

            Having said all of that, and by way of conclusion, I think it’s important to recall a few things about the Anti-Federalists and their legacy. In as much as its supporters failed to achieve many of their stated objectives, chief among them the rejection of the Constitution or the inclusion of a bill of rights prior to ratification, Anti-Federalism was arguably on the losing side of one of the earliest and most polarizing political debates in post-Revolutionary American history. And though consequently many of its most ardent advocates became staunch opponents of the federal government that came into existence in 1789, anti-federal agitation gradually faded away as new ideological and regional fault lines began to take shape in the United States. By at least the turn of the nineteenth century, and certainly by the 1820s, few if any prominent Americans would have been quite so willing to denounce the Constitution and the government it created as Robert Yates, Patrick Henry, and their contemporaries had been in the late 1780s. In spite of this eventual disappearance, however, the Anti-Federalists left an indelible mark on the history and political culture of their country.

The United States Bill of Rights, taken up in June, 1789 as one of the first legislative measure of the First Congress, was a parcel of ten amendments to the Constitution that, among other things, guaranteed freedom of speech, religion and of the press, protected the right to bear arms and of trial by jury, and guarded against unlawful search and seizure and cruel and unusual punishment. Submitted for ratification in September of the same year, Virginia became the last of the original states to approve in December, 1791. As a clear and unambiguous declaration of the rights and liberties enjoyed by every single American, the Bill of Rights was precisely what many of the Anti-Federalists (Yates included) had demanded during the ratification debate. And because it was a part of the Constitution proper, the rights therein could not be abridged by either the Federal Congress or any of the various state legislatures without further amendments. Their unglamorous departure aside, it was a stunning victory for the Anti-Federalists – thanks to their efforts, their speeches and broadsides and essays, they had helped make the personal and unalienable sovereignty of the individual an unshakable cornerstone of the supreme law of the American republic.

            But more than that the Anti-Federalists, and the Federalists for that matter, helped establish one extraordinarily important fact about how American political culture could function. While in later periods, from the early nineteenth century to the present day, political conflict in the United States has been expressed in legislative deadlock and obstructionism, ad hominem personal attacks, and even threats of armed resistance, the disagreements between the Federalists and Anti-Federalists were comparatively restrained. Tempers ran hot at times, but the main forum of disagreement seemed to be confined to the printed page. Rational debate provided the battlefield and reason and rhetoric the weapons. Rather than relying on the loudness of the voices and the audacity of their claims, both sides counted on their audience being able to distinguish a valid argument from an invalid one. They helped things along, certainly, by structuring their assertions in such a way as to appeal or insinuate, but threats of violence or personal attacks rarely if ever seemed to factor into the efforts made by either the supporters or the critics of the United States Constitution.

The Anti-Federalists in particular seem to present a model of decorum and civility. They made a well-reasoned and impassioned case against the adoption of the Constitution, in the process pointing out many of its flaws and demonstrating how easily the new federal power could be abused. Having failed to achieve their main goal, with the ratification of the document they so ardently opposed, they didn’t threaten secession, lead an armed resistance from within their respective state governments or otherwise refuse to cooperate. Rather, many of them accepted the altered status quo, sought seats in the Federal Congress and continued to caution against runaway Federal power. In time this embryonic Anti-Administration bloc would evolve into the Democratic-Republican faction (whom I’ve spoken about before), one of the most influential political organizations in the history of the early United States. In spite of their “failure” in 1787/88, it seems, the Anti-Federalists achieved a great deal. And I would submit that this was because of the way they conducted themselves, their respect for reasoned debate, their acceptance of an unfavorable outcome, and their rejection of sensationalist tactics.

Anyway, that’s how I see it. By all means, judge for yourself: http://www.constitution.org/afp/brutus02.htm