The Life of John Marshall
Chapter 59 : Was.h.i.+ngton instructed our ministers to do all they could "unofficially"to

Was.h.i.+ngton instructed our ministers to do all they could "unofficially"

to help Lafayette, says Marshall; and "a confidential person [Marshall's brother James] had been sent to Berlin to solicit his discharge: but before this messenger had reached his destination, the King of Prussia had delivered over his ill.u.s.trious prisoner to the Emperor of Germany."[64] Was.h.i.+ngton tried "to obtain the powerful mediation of Britain" and hoped "that the cabinet of St. James would take an interest in the case; but this hope was soon dissipated." Great Britain would do nothing to secure from her allies Lafayette's release.[65]

Thus Marshall, in an uncommonly personal way, was brought face to face with what appeared to him to be the injustice of the French revolutionists. Lafayette, under whom John Marshall had served at Brandywine and Monmouth; Lafayette, leader of the movement in France for a free government like our own; Lafayette, hated by kings and aristocrats because he loved genuine liberty, and yet exiled from his own country by his own countrymen for the same reason[66]--this picture, which was the one Marshall saw, influenced him profoundly and permanently.

Humor as well as horror contributed to the repugnance which Marshall and men of his type felt ever more strongly for what they considered to be mere popular caprice. The American pa.s.sion for equality had its comic side. The public hatred of all rank did not stop with French royalty and n.o.bility. Because of his impa.s.sioned plea in Parliament for the American cause, a statue of Lord Chatham had been erected at Charleston, South Carolina; the people now suspended it by the neck in the air until the sculptured head was severed from the body. But Chatham was dead and knew only from the spirit world of this recognition of his bold words in behalf of the American people in their hour of trial and of need. In Virginia the statue of Lord Botetourt was beheaded.[67] This n.o.bleman was also long since deceased, guilty of no fault but an effort to help the colonists, more earnest than some other royal governors had displayed. Still, in life, he had been called a "lord"; so off with the head of his statue!

In the cities, streets were renamed. "Royal Exchange Alley" in Boston became "Equality Lane"; and "Liberty Stump" was the name now given to the base of a tree that formerly had been called "Royal." In New York, "_Queen Street_ became _Pearl Street_; and _King Street_, Liberty Street."[68] The liberty cap was the popular headgear and everybody wore the French c.o.c.kade. Even the children, thus decorated, marched in processions,[69] singing, in a mixture of French and English words, the meaning of which they did not in the least understand, the glories of "liberte, egalite, fraternite."

At a town meeting in Boston resolutions asking that a city charter be granted were denounced as an effort to "destroy the liberties of the people; ... a link in the chain of aristocratic influence."[70] t.i.tles were the especial aversion of the ma.s.ses. Even before the formation of our government, the people had shown their distaste for all formalities, and especially for terms denoting official rank; and, after the Const.i.tution was adopted, one of the first things Congress did was to decide against any form of address to the President. Adams and Lee had favored some kind of respectful designation of public officials. This all-important subject had attracted the serious thought of the people more than had the form of government, foreign policy, or even taxes.

Scarcely had Was.h.i.+ngton taken his oath of office when David Stuart warned him that "nothing could equal the ferment and disquietude occasioned by the proposition respecting t.i.tles. As it is believed to have originated from Mr. Adams and Mr. Lee, they are not only unpopular to an extreme, but highly odious.... It has given me much pleasure to hear every part of your conduct spoken of with high approbation, and particularly your dispensing with ceremony, occasionally walking the streets; while Adams is never seen but in his carriage and six. As trivial as this may appear," writes Stuart, "it appears to be more captivating to the generality, than matters of more importance. Indeed, I believe the great herd of mankind form their judgments of characters, more from such slight occurrences, than those of greater magnitude."[71]

This early hostility to ostentation and rank now broke forth in rabid virulence. In the opinion of the people, as influenced by the French Revolution, a Governor or President ought not to be referred to as "His Excellency"; nor a minister of the gospel as "Reverend." Even "sir" or "esquire" were, plainly, "monarchical." The t.i.tle "Honorable" or "His Honor," when applied to any official, even a judge, was base pandering to aristocracy. "Mr." and "Mrs." were heretical to the new religion of equality. Nothing but "citizen"[72] would do--citizen judge, citizen governor, citizen clergyman, citizen colonel, major, or general, citizen baker, shoemaker, banker, merchant, and farmer,--citizen everybody.

To address the master of ceremonies at a dinner or banquet or other public gathering as "Mr. Chairman" or "Mr. Toastmaster" was aristocratic: only "citizen chairman" or "citizen toastmaster" was the true speech of genuine liberty.[73] And the name of the _Greek_ letter college fraternity, Phi Beta Kappa, was the trick of kings to ensnare our unsuspecting youth. Even "[Greek: Ph.B.K.]" was declared to be "an infringement of the natural rights of society." A college fraternity was destructive of the spirit of equality in American colleges.[74]

"_Lese-republicanisme_" was the term applied to good manners and politeness.[75]

Such were the surface and harmless evidences of the effect of the French Revolution on the great ma.s.s of American opinion. But a serious and practical result developed. Starting with the mother organization at Philadelphia, secret societies sprang up all over the Union in imitation of the Jacobin Clubs of France. Each society had its corresponding committee; and thus these organizations were welded into an unbroken chain. Their avowed purpose was to cherish the principles of human freedom and to spread the doctrine of true republicanism. But they soon became practical political agencies; and then, like their French prototype, the sowers of disorder and the instigators of insurrection.[76]

The practical activities of these organizations aroused, at last, the open wrath of Was.h.i.+ngton. They "are spreading mischief far and wide," he wrote;[77] and he declared to Randolph that "if these self-created societies cannot be discountenanced, they will destroy the government of this country."[78]

Conservative apprehensions were thus voiced by George Cabot: "We have seen ... the ... representatives of the people butchered, and a band of relentless murderers ruling in their stead with rods of iron. Will not this, or something like it, be the wretched fate of our country?... Is not this hostility and distrust [to just opinions and right sentiments]

chiefly produced by the slanders and falsehoods which the anarchists incessantly inculcate?"[79]

Young men like John Quincy Adams of Ma.s.sachusetts and John Marshall of Virginia thought that "the rabble that followed on the heels of Jack Cade could not have devised greater absurdities than" the French Revolution had inspired in America;[80] but they were greatly outnumbered by those for whom Jefferson spoke when he said that "I feel that the permanence of our own [Government] leans" on the success of the French Revolution.[81]

The American democratic societies, like their French originals, declared that theirs was the voice of "the people," and popular clamor justified the claim.[82] Everybody who dissented from the edicts of the clubs was denounced as a public robber or monarchist. "What a continual yelping and barking are our Swindlers, Aristocrats, Refugees, and British Agents making at the Const.i.tutional Societies" which were "like a n.o.ble mastiff ... with ... impotent and noisy puppies at his heels," cried the indignant editor of the "Independent Chronicle" of Boston,[83] to whom the democratic societies were "guardians of liberty."

While these organizations strengthened radical opinion and fas.h.i.+oned American sympathizers of the French Revolution into disciplined ranks, they also solidified the conservative elements of the United States.

Most viciously did the latter hate these "Jacobin Clubs," the principles they advocated, and their interference with public affairs. "They were born in sin, the impure offspring of Genet," wrote Fisher Ames.

"They are the few against the many; the sons of darkness (for their meetings are secret) against those of the light; and above all, it is a _town_ cabal, attempting to rule the _country_."[84] This testy New Englander thus expressed the extreme conservative feeling against the "insanity which is epidemic":[85] "This French mania," said Ames, "is the bane of our politics, the mortal poison that makes our peace so sickly."[86] "They have, like toads, sucked poison from the earth. They thirst for vengeance."[87] "The spirit of mischief is as active as the element of fire and as destructive."[88] Ames describes the activities of the Boston Society and the aversion of the "better cla.s.ses" for it: "The club is despised here by men of right heads," he writes. "But ...

they [the members of the Club] poison every spring; they whisper lies to every gale; they are everywhere, always acting like Old Nick and his imps.... They will be as busy as Macbeth's witches at the election."[89]

In Virginia the French Revolution and the American "Jacobins" helped to effect that change in Patrick Henry's political sentiments which his increasing wealth had begun. "If my Country," wrote Henry to Was.h.i.+ngton, "is destined in my day to encounter the horrors of anarchy, every power of mind or body which I possess will be exerted in support of the government under which I live."[90] As to France itself, Henry predicted that "anarchy will be succeeded by despotism" and Bonaparte, "Caesar-like, subvert the liberties of his country."[91]

Marshall was as much opposed to the democratic societies as was Was.h.i.+ngton, or Cabot, or Ames, but he was calmer in his opposition, although vitriolic enough. When writing even ten years later, after time had restored perspective and cooled feeling, Marshall says that these "pernicious societies"[92] were "the resolute champions of all the encroachments attempted by the agents of the French republic on the government of the United States, and the steady defamers of the views and measures of the American executive."[93] He thus describes their decline:--

"The colossean power of the [French] clubs, which had been abused to an excess that gives to faithful history the appearance of fiction, fell with that of their favourite member, and they sunk into long merited disgrace. The means by which their political influence had been maintained were wrested from them; and, in a short time, their meetings were prohibited. Not more certain is it that the boldest streams must disappear, if the fountains which fed them be emptied, than was the dissolution of the democratic societies of America, when the Jacobin clubs were denounced by France. As if their destinies depended on the same thread, the political death of the former was the unerring signal for that of the latter."[94]

Such was the effect of the French Revolution on American thought at the critical period of our new Government's first trials. To measure justly the speech and conduct of men during the years we are now to review, this influence must always be borne in mind. It was woven into every great issue that arose in the United States. Generally speaking, the debtor cla.s.ses and the poorer people were partisans of French revolutionary principles; and the creditor cla.s.ses, the mercantile and financial interests, were the enemies of what they called "Jacobin philosophy." In a broad sense, those who opposed taxes, levied to support a strong National Government, sympathized with the French Revolution and believed in its ideas; those who advocated taxes for that purpose, abhorred that convulsion and feared its doctrines.

Those who had disliked government before the Const.i.tution was established and who now hated National control, heard in the preachings of the French revolutionary theorists the voice of their hearts; while those who believed that government is essential to society and absolutely indispensable to the building of the American Nation, heard in the language and saw in the deeds of the French Revolution the forces that would wreck the foundations of the state even while they were but being laid and, in the end, dissolve society itself. Thus were the ideas of Nationality and localism in America brought into sharper conflict by the mob and guillotine in France.

All the pa.s.sion for irresponsible liberty which the French Revolution increased in America, as well as all the resentment aroused by the financial measures and foreign policy of the "Federal Administrations,"

were combined in the opposition to and attacks upon a strong National Government. Thus provincialism in the form of States' Rights was given a fresh impulse and a new vitality. Through nearly all the important legislation and diplomacy of those stirring and interpretative years ran, with ever increasing clearness, the dividing line of Nationalism as against localism.

Such are the curious turns of human history. Those whom Jefferson led profoundly believed that they were fighting for human rights; and in their view and as a practical matter at that particular time this sacred cause meant State Rights. For everything which they felt to be oppressive, unjust, and antagonistic to liberty, came from the National Government. By natural contrast in their own minds, as well as by a.s.sertions of their leaders, the State Governments were the sources of justice and the protectors of the genuine rights of man.

In the development of John Marshall as well as of his great ultimate antagonist, Thomas Jefferson, during the formative decade which we are now to consider, the influence of the French Revolution must never be forgotten. Not a circ.u.mstance of the public lives of these two men and scarcely an incident of their private experience but was shaped and colored by this vast series of human events. Bearing in mind the influence of the French Revolution on American opinion, and hence, on Marshall and Jefferson, let us examine the succeeding years in the light of this determining fact.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] "That the principles of America opened the Bastille is not to be doubted." (Thomas Paine to Was.h.i.+ngton, May 1, 1790; _Cor. Rev.^2_: Sparks, iv, 328.) "The principles of it [the French Revolution] were copied from America." (Paine to Citizens of the United States, Nov. 15, 1802; _Writings_: Conway, iii, 381.)

"Did not the American Revolution produce the French Revolution? And did not the French Revolution produce all the Calamities and Desolations to the human Race and the whole Globe ever since?" (Adams to Rush, Aug. 28, 1811; _Old Family Letters_, 352.)

"Many of ... the leaders [of the French Revolution] have imbibed their principles in America, and all have been fired by our example."

(Gouverneur Morris to Was.h.i.+ngton, Paris, April 29, 1789; _Cor. Rev._: Sparks, iv, 256.)

"All the friends of freedom on this side the Atlantic are now rejoicing for an event which ... has been accelerated by the American Revolution.... You have been the means of raising that spirit in Europe which ... will ... extinguish every remain of that barbarous servitude under which all the European nations, in a less ... degree, have so long been subject." (Catharine M. Graham to Was.h.i.+ngton, Berks (England), Oct.

1789; _ib._, 284; and see Cobbett, i, 97.)

[2] See vol. I, chap. VIII, of this work.

[3] Marshall, ii, 155. "The mad harangues of the [French] National Convention were all translated and circulated through the States. The enthusiasm they excited it is impossible for me to describe." (Cobbett in "Summary View"; Cobbett, i, 98.)

[4] Jefferson to Humphreys, March 18, 1789; _Works_: Ford, v, 467.

[5] Jefferson to Madison, Aug. 28, 1789; _ib._, 490.

[6] _Boston Gazette_, Sept. 7 and Nov. 30, 1789; as quoted in Hazen; and see Hazen, 142-43.

[7] Gouverneur Morris to Was.h.i.+ngton, Paris, April 29, 1789; _Cor. Rev._: Sparks, iv, 256. Even Jefferson had doubted French capacity for self-government because of what he described as French light-mindedness.

(Jefferson to Mrs. Adams, Feb. 22, 1787; _Works_: Ford, v, 263; also see vol. I, chap. VIII, of this work.)

[8] Morris to Was.h.i.+ngton, July 31, 1789; _Cor. Rev._: Sparks, iv, 270.

[9] Lafayette to Was.h.i.+ngton, May 25, 1788; _Cor. Rev._: Sparks, iv, 216.

Lafayette's letters to Was.h.i.+ngton, from the beginning of the French Revolution down to his humiliating expulsion from France, const.i.tute a thermometer of French temperature, all the more trustworthy because his letters are so nave. For example, in March, 1790: "Our revolution is getting on as well as it can, with a nation that has swallowed liberty at once, and is still liable to mistake licentiousness for freedom." Or, in August of the same year: "I have lately lost some of my favor with the mob, and displeased the frantic lovers of licentiousness, as I am bent on establis.h.i.+ng a legal subordination." Or, six months later: "I still am tossed about in the ocean of factions and commotions of every kind." Or, two months afterwards: "There appears a kind of phenomenon in my situation; all parties against me, and a national popularity which, in spite of every effort, has been unshakable." (Lafayette to Was.h.i.+ngton, March 17, 1790; _ib._, 321; Aug. 28, _ib._, 345; March 7, 1791, _ib._, 361; May 3, 1791, _ib._, 372.)

[10] G. Morris to R. Morris, Dec. 24, 1792; Morris, ii, 15.

[11] _Ib._, i, 582-84.

[12] Louis Otto to De Montmorin, March 10, 1792; _Writings_: Conway, iii, 153.

[13] _Ib._, 154-56.

[14] Morris a.s.sociated with the n.o.bility in France and accepted the aristocratic view. (_Ib._; and see A. Esmein, Membre de l'Inst.i.tut: _Gouverneur Morris, un temoin americain de la revolution francaise_, Paris, 1906.)

[15] Marshall, ii, note xvi, p. 17.

[16] Recent investigation establishes the fact that the inmates of the Bastille generally found themselves very well off indeed. The records of this celebrated prison show that even prisoners of mean station, when incarcerated for so grave a crime as conspiracy against the King's life, had, in addition to remarkably abundant meals, an astonis.h.i.+ng amount of extra viands and refreshments including comfortable quant.i.ties of wine, brandy, and beer. Prisoners of higher station fared still more generously, of course. (Funck-Brentano: _Legends of the Bastille_, 85-113; see also _ib._, introduction.) It should be said, however, that the _lettres de cachet_ were a chief cause of complaint, although the stories, generally exaggerated, concerning the cruel treatment of prisoners came to be the princ.i.p.al count of the public indictment of the Bastille.

[17] Lafayette to Was.h.i.+ngton, March 17, 1790; _Cor. Rev._: Sparks, iv, 322.

[18] Was.h.i.+ngton to Lafayette, August 11, 1790; _Writings:_ Ford, xi, 493.