The resignation of Randolph in 1795 marked the complete disappearance of Washington's non-partisan cabinet. He fought hard to prevent this event, not realizing how much his ideal was incompatible with representative government. Party lines were now strong, and the men of the Revolution, who, like Washington, had well-developed notions of the dignity of office, were not willing to enter a field in which personal abuse and popular passion held sway.
Five men of Revolutionary distinction refused the secretaryship of state in 1795 before a man was found to accept it — Timothy Pickering, of Massachusetts.
Pickering was a man of intellectual ability, industry, and energy, who had done good service in lower administrative positions; but his promotion to a cabinet position was too rapid for the best results. His worst points were a consuming ambition to take the leadership of the Federalist party; for he could see how popular feeling was removing Hamilton from party control. He counted on the support of the financial classes and cared little for the interests of those sections which were not in his favor. For his political opponents his feeling and conduct were brusque to the extent of narrowness. He was personally vindictive and unscrupulous. As the guiding spirit in the cabinet he kept closely in touch with the policy of Hamilton, but he applied it with a hand that irritated more frequently than it commanded the persons who ought to have been his friends.
The other members of the cabinet were Oliver Wolcott, secretary of the treasury; James McHenry, secretary of war; and Charles Lee, attorney-general. Wolcott was a kind of understudy of Hamilton. He was a good accountant, an industrious administrator, and faithful to the interests of the treasury, and he regretted the embarrassed condition into which the unexpected expenses of the time brought it. He lacked originality, and in distress was able to do nothing better than appeal to Hamilton for suggestions. McHenry had been anxiously hoping for a lower office when suddenly fortune threw a cabinet position into his lap. Washington pronounced him "Hobson's choice," and his career confirmed the epithet. Lee was an insignificant man, considered because he was connected with a powerful family in Virginia, where eminent Federalists were few. Since Marshall and Carrington, as well as the decrepit Henry, had already refused to enter the cabinet, Lee was as good an appointment as the Federalists of the state afforded.
The name of Washington was enough to preserve harmony and cooperation in this cabinet. He took advice freely from Hamilton, and his unsurpassed common sense dominated the life of the entire government. Against him there was never, on the part of a man of influence, a question of obedience or difference of opinion. But when John Adams undertook to carry on the government with the same advisers the story was different. His weaker hand lost grasp on the situation, and dissensions marred all the policies that he tried to enforce.
While the growth of party transformed the cabinet into a Federalist group, it also intensified the life of the Republicans. The Jay treaty and the loud cry of aristocracy, monarchy, and plutocracy bred deep popular emotions, ever the basis of party life. Hatred of Federalists and hatred of Republicans characterized respectively two great groups of people. In the lurid struggle between the two, but little of calm reason appeared. It was the first step of our democracy along the road of national development. Happily, in a century of progress we have learned to march with a surer and a more decorous pace.
December, 1795, brought to the Republicans in Congress a great gain in the appearance of Albert Gallatin in the House. He was a Swiss who had received a good education, a man with a taste for learning, a strong but not a brilliant debater, and a devotee to the best ideas of Republicanism. Elected to the Senate by the legislature of Pennsylvania in 1793, the Federalists refused to allow him to take his seat, on the technical point that he had not been a citizen of the United States for nine years. This partisan action made him a national figure, and he entered the House as a man of influence.
Gallatin was, above all things, versed in finance. Next to Hamilton he was the best-informed man in fiscal matters then before the public. His appearance in Congress was opportune for his party, for in this field they had always been weak. It meant also that a strong fight would be opened against the financial policy of the Federalists. The Republicans rallied around him with enthusiasm, in the belief that they had at last found one who could meet Hamilton on his own ground.
Gallatin had already mastered the financial situation, and on April 21, 1796, he delivered a speech in which he declared that the debt of the nation had increased since 1789 by five million dollars. It was a distinct challenge to the enemy, and for six weeks it remained unanswered. Finally, Smith, of South Carolina, who was accustomed to draw his financial data from Hamilton, arose to reply. He exploited a long list of figures, and came to the conclusion that the debt had not been increased, but reduced by two million dollars in the period mentioned.
The difference between the two contentions was a matter of book-keeping. The sinking-fund, which had been relied upon to wipe out the debt, did not grow as had been expected. The interest on the whole debt for 1790 was funded along with the principal, and the money which had been collected to pay it was then turned into the sinking-fund to the amount of $434,855. Other sums went to that fund to the amount of $522,925, and bonds were purchased below par whose face value was $2,307,661. This was an insignificant growth in a fund whose purpose was to wipe out a debt of seventy-seven million dollars. Besides this, there was a large floating debt, and it was owed to the bank, whose pressing for repayment gave its enemies an. opportunity to descant on the tyranny of this monopoly. Smith's reply to Gallatin was made on the last day of the session; and he thus gave the latter an opportunity, which he improved, to publish a long "Sketch of the Finances of the United States." It was an able but an intricate criticism of Hamilton's system from the beginning of the government to the day of publication, and it served the political purposes of the Republicans.
Against certain improper financial practices of Congress, Gallatin threw himself from the beginning of his career in the House. He secured, without opposition, the creation of a committee of ways and means, which should consider all bills involving money votes. The effect was important. Before that time financial measures had been adopted chiefly through the suggestion of the secretary of the treasury; now the House itself became the guiding spirit in such matters, with the result that the power of the executive in financial legislation was materially decreased. Another practice had been to make general appropriations for the use of the departments. Gallatin and his followers demanded specific appropriations, and the old custom was abandoned.
The state of the treasury became alarming when in 1796 Wolcott tried to sell five million dollars worth of six-percent. bonds which Congress had just authorized. Although they were offered at eighty-five percent, of their par value, he could place no more than eighty thousand dollars worth. War in Europe made it impossible to sell them there, and the greater profitableness of investments in America made people here unwilling to place their money at six-percent. interest. To get funds for immediate demands he was forced to sell a part of the government's stock in the bank. From Hamilton he received scant comfort when he unburdened his woes. "I received your letter of the 1st," wrote his mentor; "I deplore the picture it gives, and henceforth wish to forget that there is a bank or treasury in the United States."
In this situation the campaign of 1796 opened. To the eminent satisfaction of the Republicans, Washington let it be known that he was not to be considered, and the withdrawal of his name opened the way for a clear party contest. Washington's action had been taken, not so much because he sought retirement in his old age as because he was disgusted with the abuse of the Republicans. He was charged with betraying the pledge given to France, and with taking more salary than was allotted to him. His mail was even tampered with, in the hope of finding political matters of advantage to his opponents, and a most shameful forgery of letters in 1777 was searched out and reprinted as genuine. He was sensitively devoted to official integrity, and all these attacks cut him to the quick.
Most telling of all, perhaps, was the attack which Tom Paine delivered from across the water. This erratic American had been for some years in France. He had expatriated himself and become a member of the French Convention. Robespierre threw him into prison and our minister failed to get him out. Paine appealed to Washington, who refused to interfere in the internal policies of the French government; and he was not set free till the end of the Terror. Conceiving a deep hatred of Washington, he now, in his peculiarly direct and nervous style, launched against the president forty pages like the following: "Elevated to the chair of the presidency, you assumed the merit of everything to yourself, and the natural ingratitude of your constitution began to appear. You commenced your presidential career by encouraging and swallowing the grossest adulation, and you travelled America from one end to the other to put yourself in the way of receiving it. You have as many addresses in your chest as James I." And this: "As to you sir, treacherous to private friendship (for so you have been to me, and that in the day of danger), and a hypocrite in public life, the world will be puzzled to decide whether you are an apostate or an impostor; whether you have abandoned good principles, or whether you ever had any." This abuse was delivered in the belief that the author owed it to history to set forth the true character of Washington.
The Republicans were at no loss for a candidate for the presidency. Jefferson had long been the head of the party, and to him they now turned, with Aaron Burr, of New York, as a second. But the Federalists were not so certain. Adams, through his present position and through his New England support, had a strong following; but he was not acceptable to Hamilton and the leaders who had controlled the party. He was a tactless, conscientious man, who did not lend himself to party cooperation. For some time he had not worked well with Hamilton, and the latter rightly felt that Adams's elevation would mean his own decline. His ingenuity conceived a plan, which was too shrewd by half, to bring out a southern man along with Adams, have them run side by side till the electoral college came to the voting, when a few of his own friends were to refuse to vote for Adams, which would bring in the other man as president. He first thought of Patrick Henry for his southern candidate, but Henry refused the honor. Then he turned to Thomas Pinckney, of South Carolina, who had just negotiated the Spanish treaty and was popular on account of it. He was a man of the best character, but without important administrative experience, and it is probable that he would as president have been much under Hamilton's influence. It was impossible for Hamilton to keep his scheme from getting to the ears of the New England supporters of Adams, and this fact of itself would have killed it. The campaign received peculiar interest from the part that the French minister, Adet, took in it. Genet, Fauchet, and Adet, who successively represented France in America after 1793, were all in close touch with the leaders of the Republican party, but only the last came out openly to influence an election.
France was much disappointed by the Jay treaty. Her minister sought to prevent its ratification, and failing in that plan turned to the election in the hope that a party would come in which would favor French interests. To secure Jefferson's election, Adet thought it wise to threaten Americans with a French war. His plans were aided by the fact that France, in anger at the adoption of the Jay treaty, suspended the functions of her minister, although he was not recalled to his native land. Continuing his policy of meddling, he wrote strong letters to the American government and gave copies of them to the newspapers. To his own government he avowed his purpose in explicit terms. Of one of his letters he said, "I have had it published in order to catch the public attention when presidential electors were about to be chosen and in order to determine what effect it would produce upon the government and to see what I might expect from the next session of Congress." Such impudent conduct on the part of a foreign representative had the only possible effect of injuring the party in whose behalf it was performed.
When the electors had been chosen, the Federalists were seen to have carried most of those from the states north of Pennsylvania, and the Republicans the majority in all the others. When the presidential electors of each state met to cast their votes, as the Constitution required, Adams received 71, Jefferson 68, and Pinckney 59 votes. Several Adams electors in New England, probably fearing lest Hamilton's scheme might succeed, refused to vote for Pinckney, and the election went to Adams and Jefferson. It was our first great contest of a purely political nature, and the closeness of the vote gave courage to the Republicans and chagrin to the Federalists. To Adams's sensitive nature it was always a matter of reproach that he was a "President by three votes."
Amid the lurid scenes on the political stage, Washington was preparing to escape to private life. His parting was signalized by his Farewell Address, a document which the generation which came after him was accustomed to hold as one of their most sacred political treasures. He began to prepare it, with the help of Madison, in 1792, when he thought of retiring. It was now finished with the large cooperation of Hamilton, and given to the public through the newspapers on September 19, 1796. Washington asked Hamilton when the document ought to appear, and the latter said that it ought to come about two months before the meeting of the electoral college. It was issued three months before that event.
The address itself was filled with the best advice. It contained many truths of a general nature; but it was not possible to speak of the things which the people of that day needed to hear without entering the field of party discussion. This was particularly true of those parts, perhaps the strongest phrases in the long paper, which warned the people against being drawn into the meshes of alien factions, and which cautioned them against an "irregular opposition" to government and against the neglect of the public dignity. It was not unnatural that the highly excited Republican leaders gave such words as these something more than an academic interpretation, although an interference with the impending election was far from Washington's intention.
His last communication to Congress was also made to turn to the same purport. The Federalist committee of the House which had the duty of replying to it brought in a paper that went beyond personal compliment and gave approval to the policies of Washington's administration. At this the Republicans took exception. They made fruitless efforts to get the reply modified to suit them, and these failing, twelve of their number at last voted against its adoption. Among those who refused to give Washington the compliment of a last God-speed were Andrew Jackson, Edward Livingston, Nathaniel Macon, and W. B. Giles, men long afterwards noted for their unyielding Republicanism. Giles probably expressed the feeling of this group when he said in the debate on the reply: "I must acknowledge that I am one of those who do not think as much of the President as others do. When the President retires from his present station, I wish him to enjoy all possible happiness. I wish him to retire, and that this was the moment of his retirement."
The near approach of the day on which he was to go out of office did not bring relenting to those who denounced Washington. March 4, 1797, Bache's Aurora sent after him this parting blast:
"If ever there was a period for rejoicing, this is the moment — every heart in unison with the freedom and happiness of the people, ought to beat high with exultation that the name of Washington from this day ceases to give a currency to political iniquity, and to legalize corruption. A new sera is now opening upon us, an aera which promises much to the people; for public measures must now stand on their own merits."
No doubt many well-intentioned people in America believed all that the editor asserted. But for Washington retirement meant release. He had long sought the quiet life of his estate, and the task of restoring his residence and repairing the waste on his lands was taken up with the zest of youth. For the storm of abuse which raged as he left office he had no complaint. The day before the Aurora made its rasping deliverance he wrote with his usual balance: will take place, and, whilst it is confined to our own citizens, it is not to be regretted; but severely indeed ought it to be reprobated, when occasioned by-foreign machinations. I trust, however, that the good sense of our countrymen will guard the public weal against this and every other innovation, and that, although we may have a little wrong now and then, we shall return to the right path with more avidity. I can never believe, that Providence, which has guided us so long, and through such a labyrinth, will withdraw its protection at this crisis."