UNITED
STATES / CONDITIONS
…Now it is what thirty-four years of free
and good government have made it. It shows how soon the labor of men
would make a paradise of the whole earth, were it not for
misgovernment, and a diversion of all his energies from their proper
object -- the happiness of man, -- to the selfish interests of
kings, nobles, and priests. |
Ellen
W. Coolidge
27 Aug 1825 |
UNITED
STATES / CONDITIONS AND PROSPECTS
Our difficulties are indeed great, if we
consider ourselves alone. But when viewed in comparison to those of
Europe, they are the joys of Paradise. In the eternal revolution of
ages, the destinies have placed our portion of existence amidst such
scenes of tumult and outrage, as no other period, within our
knowledge, had presented. Every government but one on the continent
of Europe, demolished, a conqueror roaming over the earth with havoc
and destruction, a pirate spreading misery and ruin over the face of
the ocean. Indeed, my friend, ours is a bed of roses. And the system
of government which shall keep us afloat amidst the wreck of the
world, will be immortalized in history. We have, to be sure, our
petty squabbles and heart burnings, and we have something of the
blue devils at times, as to these rawheads and bloodybones who are
eating up other nations. But happily for us, the Mammoth cannot
swim, nor the Leviathan move on dry land; and if we will keep out of
their way, they cannot get at us. |
Walter
Jones
5 Mar 1810 |
UNITED
STATES / CONDITIONS IN, COMPARED TO ENGLAND
And, first, we have no paupers, the old and
crippled among us, who possess nothing and have no families to take
care of them, being too few to merit notice as a separate section of
society, or to affect a general estimate. The great mass of our
population is of laborers; our rich, who can live without labor,
either manual or professional, being few, and of moderate wealth.
Most of the laboring class possess property, cultivate their own
lands, have families, and from the demand for their labor are
enabled to exact from the rich and the competent such prices as
enable them to be fed abundantly, clothed above mere decency, to
labor moderately and raise their families. They are not driven to
the ultimate resources of dexterity and skill, because their wares
will sell although not quite so nice as those of England. The
wealthy, on the other hand, and those at their ease, know nothing of
what the Europeans call luxury. They have only somewhat more of the
comforts and decencies of life than those who furnish them. Can any
condition of society be more desirable than this? Nor in the class
of laborers do I mean to withhold from the comparison that portion
whose color has condemned them, in certain parts of our Union, to a
subjection to the will of others. Even these are better fed in these
States, warmer clothed, and labor less than the journeymen or
day-laborers of England. They have the comfort, too, of numerous
families, in the midst of whom they live without want, or fear of
it; a solace which few of the laborers of England possess. They are
subject, it is true, to bodily coercion; but are not the hundreds of
thousands of British soldiers and seamen subject to the same,
without seeing, at the end of their career, when age and accident
shall have rendered them unequal to labor, the certainty, which the
other has, that be will never want? And has not the British seaman,
as much as the African, been reduced to this bondage by force, in
flagrant violation of his own consent, and of his natural right in
his own person? and with the laborers of England generally, does not
the moral coercion of want subject their will as despotically to
that of their employer, as the physical constraint does the soldier,
the seaman, or the slave?
But do not mistake me. I am not advocating slavery. I am not
justifying the wrongs we have committed on a foreign people by the
example of another nation committing equal wrongs on their own
subjects. On the contrary, there is nothing I would not sacrifice to
a practicable plan of abolishing every vestige of this moral and
political depravity. But I am at present comparing the condition and
degree of suffering to which oppression has reduced the man of one
color, with the condition and degree of suffering to which
oppression has reduced the man of another color; equally condemning
both. Now let us compute by numbers the sum of happiness of the two
countries. In England, happiness is the lot of the aristocracy only;
and the proportion they bear to the laborers and paupers, you know
better than I do. Were I to guess that they are four in every
hundred, then the happiness of the nation would be to its misery is
one in twenty-five. In the United States it is as eight millions to
zero, or as all to none. But it is said they possess the means of
defence, and that we do not. How so? Are we not men? Yes; but our
men are so happy at home that they will not hire themselves to be
shot at for a shilling a day. Hence we can have no standing armies
for defence, because we have no paupers to furnish the materials.
The Greeks and Romans had no standing armies, yet they defended
themselves. The Greeks by their laws, and the Romans by the spirit
of their people, took care to put into the hands of their rulers no
such engine of oppression as a standing army. Their system was to
make every man a soldier, and oblige him to repair to the standard
of his country whenever that was reared. This made them invincible;
and the same remedy will make us so. In the beginning of our
government we were willing to introduce the least coercion possible
on the will of the citizen. Hence a system of military duty was
established too indulgent to his indolence. This is the first
opportunity we have' had of trying it, and it has completely failed;
an issue foreseen by many, and for which remedies have been
proposed. That of classing the militia according to age, and
allotting each age to the particular kind of service to which it was
competent, was proposed to Congress in 1805, and subsequently; and,
on the last trial was lost, I believe, by a single vote only. Had it
prevailed, what has now happened would not have happened. …
With this force properly classed, organized, trained, armed and
subject to tours of a year of military duty, we have no more to fear
for the defence of our country than those who have the resources of
despotism and pauperism.
But, you will say, we have been devastated in the meantime. True,
some of our public buildings have been burnt, and some scores of
individuals on the tide-water have lost their movable property and
their houses. I pity them, and execrate the barbarians who delight
in unavailing mischief. But these individuals have their lands and
their hands left They are not paupers, they have still better means
of subsistence than 24/25 of the people of England. Again, the
English have burnt our Capitol and President's house by means of
their force. We can burn their St. James' and St Paul's by means of
our money, offered to their own incendiaries, of whom there are
thousands in London who would do it rather than Starve. But it is
against the laws of civilized warfare to employ secret incendiaries.
Is it not equally so to destroy the works of art by armed
incendiaries? Bonaparte, possessed at times of almost every capital
of Europe, with all his despotism and power, injured no monument of
art. If a nation, breaking through all the restraints of civilized
character, uses its means of destruction (power for example) without
distinction of objects, may we not use our means (our money and
their pauperism) to retaliate their barbarous ravages? Are we
obliged to use for resistance exactly the weapons chosen by them for
aggression? When they destroyed Copenhagen by superior force,
against all the laws of God and man, would it have been
unjustifiable for the Danes to have destroyed their ships by
torpedoes? Clearly not; and they and we should now be justifiable in
the conflagration of St. James' and St. Paul's. And if we do not
carry it into execution, it is because we think it more moral and
more honorable to set a good example, than follow a bad one. |
Thomas
Cooper
(Doctor)
10 Sep 1814 |
UNITED
STATES / UNIQUENESS
I do not know whether I am able at present to
form a just idea of the situation of our country. If I am, it is
such as, during the bellum omnium in omnia of Europe, will
require the union of all its friends to resist its within and
without. …
The last hope of human liberty in this world rests on us. We ought,
for so dear a state, to sacrifice every attachment and every enmity.
Leave the President free to choose his own coadjutors, to pursue his
own measures, and support him and them, even if we think we are
wiser than they, honester than they are, or possessing more enlarged
information of the state of things. If we move in mass, be it ever
so circuitously, we shall attain our object; but if we break into
squads, every one pursuing the path he thinks most direct, we become
an easy conquest to those who can now barely hold us in check. I
repeat again, that we ought not to schismatize on either men or
measures. Principles alone can justify that if we find our
government in all its branches rushing headlong, like our
predecessors, into the arms of monarchy, if we find them violating
our dearest rights, the trial by jury, the freedom of the press, the
freedom of opinion, civil or religious, or opening on our peace of
mind or personal safety the sluices of terrorism, if we see them
raising standing armies, when the absence of all other danger points
to these as the sole objects on which they are to be employed, then
indeed let us withdraw and call the nation to its tents. But while
our functionaries are wise, and honest, and vigilant, let us move
compactly under their guidance, and we have nothing to fear. Things
may here and there go a little wrong. It is not in their power to
prevent it. But all will be right in the end, though not perhaps by
the shortest means. |
William
Duane
(Colonel)
28 Mar 1811 |
UNITY
/ EASTERN PARTIES
In our last conversation you mentioned a
federal scheme afloat, of forming a coalition between the
federalists and republicans, of what they called the seven eastern
States. The idea was new to me, and after time for reflection I had
no opportunity of conversing with you again. The federalists know,
that, eo nominee, they are gone forever. Their object,
therefore, is, how to return into power under some other form.
Undoubtedly they have but one means, which is to divide the
republicans, join the minority, and barter with them for the cloak
of their name. I say, join the minority; because the
majority of the republicans not needing them, will not buy them. The
minority, having no other means of ruling the majority, will give a
price for auxiliaries, and that price must be principle. It is true
that the federalists, needing their numbers also, must also give a
price, and principle is the coin they must pay in. Thus a bastard
system of federo-republicamism will rise on the ruins of the true
principles of our revolution. And when this party is formed, who
will constitute the majority of it, which majority is then to
dictate? Certainly the federalists. Thus their proposition of
putting themselves into gear with the republican minority, is
exactly like Roger Sherman's proposition to add Connecticut to Rhode
Island. I cannot believe any portion of real republicans will enter
into this trap; and if they do, I do not believe they can carry with
them the mass of their States, advancing so steadily as we see them,
to an union of principle with their brethren. It will be found in
this, as in all other similar cases, that crooked schemes will end
by overwhelming their authors and coadjutors in disgrace, and that
he alone who walks strict and upright, and who, in matters of
opinion, will be contented that others should be as free as himself,
and acquiesce when his opinion is fairly overruled, will attain his
object in the end. |
Gideon
Granger
16 Apr 1804 |
UNITY
/ MISSOURI QUESTION
…The banks, bankrupt law, manufactures,
Spanish treaty, are nothing. These are occurrences which, like waves
in a storm, will pass under the ship. But the Missouri question is a
breaker on which we lose the Missouri country by revolt, and what
more, God only knows. From the battle of Bunker's Hill to the Treaty
of Paris, we never had so ominous a question. It even damps the joy
with which I hear of your high health, and welcomes to me the
consequences of my want of it. I thank God that I shall not live to
witness its issue. Sed haec hactenus. |
John
Adams
10 Dec 1819 |
UNITY
/ MISSOURI QUESTION
I thank you, dear Sir, for the copy you have
been so kind as to send me of the letter to your constituents on the
Missouri question. It is a perfect justification to them. I had for
a long time ceased to read newspapers, or pay any attention to
public affairs, confident they were in good hands, and content to be
a passenger in our bark to the shore from which I am not distant.
But this momentous question, like a fire-bell in the night, awakened
and filled me with terror. I considered it at once as the knell of
the Union. It is hushed, indeed, for the moment. But this is a
reprieve only, not a final sentence. A geographical line, coinciding
with a marked principle, moral and political, once conceived and
held up to the angry passions of men, will never be obliterated; and
every new irritation will mark it deeper and deeper. I can say, with
conscious truth, that there is not a man on earth who would
sacrifice more than I would to relieve us from this heavy reproach,
in any practicable way. The cession of that kind of
property, for so it is misnamed, is a bagatelle which would not cost
me a second thought, if, in that way, a general emancipation and
expatriation could be effected; and, gradually, and with due
sacrifices, I think it might be. But as it is, we have the wolf by
the ears, and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go. …
I regret that I am now to die in the belief, that the useless
sacrifice of themselves by the generation of 1776, to acquire
self-government and happiness to their country, is to be thrown away
by the unwise and unworthy passions of their sons, and that my only
consolation is to be, that I live not to weep over it. If they would
but dispassionately weigh the blessings they will throw away,
against an abstract principle more likely to be effected by union
than by scission, they would pause before they would perpetrate this
act of suicide on themselves, and of treason against the hopes of
the world. To yourself, as the faithful advocate of the Union, I
tender the offering of my high esteem and respect. |
John
Holmes
22 Apr 1820 |
UNITY
/ PARTY POLITICS / ARISTOCRATICAL PARTY
The aspect of our politics has wonderfully
changed since you left us. In place of that noble love of liberty
and republican government which carried us triumphantly through the
war, an Anglican monarchical aristocratical party has sprung up,
whose avowed object is to draw over us the substance, as they have
already done the forms, of the British government. The main body of
our citizens, however, remain true to their republican principles;
the whole landed interest is republican, and so is a great mass of
talents. Against us are the executive, the judiciary, two out of
three branches of the legislature, all the officers of the
government, all who want to be officers, all timid men who prefer
the calm of despotism to the boisterous sea of liberty, British
merchants and Americans trading on British capital, speculators and
holders in the banks and public funds, a contrivance invented for
the purposes of corruption, and for assimilating us in all things to
the rotten as well as the sound parts of the British model. It would
give you a fever were I to name to you the apostates who have gone
over to these heresies, men who were Samsons in the field and
Solomons in the council, but who have had their heads shorn by the
harlot England. In short, we are likely to preserve the liberty we
have obtained only by unremitting labors and perils. But we shall
preserve it; and our mass of weight and wealth on the good side is
so great, as to leave no danger that force will ever be attempted
against us. We have only to awake and snap the Lilliputian cords
with which they have been entangling us during the first sleep which
succeeded our labors. |
Philip
Mazzei
24 Apr 1796 |
UNITY
/ PARTY POLITICS / BRITISH INFLUENCE
The British ministers … found some hopes
on the state of our finances. They have hoped more in their Hartford
convention. Their fears of republican France being now done away,
they are directed to republican America, and they are playing the
same game for disorganization here, which they played in your
country. The Marats, the Dantons and Robespierres of Massachusetts
are in the same pay, under the same orders, and making the same
efforts to anarchise us, that their prototypes in France did there.
I do not say that all who met at Hartford were under the same
motives of money, nor were those of France. Some of them are Outs,
and Wish to be Ins; some the mere dupes of the agitators, or of
their own party passions, while the Maratists alone are in the real
secret; but they have very different materials to work on. The
yeomanry of the United States are not the canaille of Paris.
We might safely give them leave to go through the United States
recruiting their ranks, and I am satisfied they could not raise one
single regiment (gambling merchants and silk-stocking clerks
excepted) who would support them in any effort to separate from the
Union. The cement of this Union is in the heart-blood of every
American. I do not believe there is on earth a government
established on so immovable a basis. Let them, in any State, even in
Massachusetts itself, raise the standard of separation, and its
citizens will rise in mass, and do justice themselves on their own
incendiaries. …Have then no fears for us, my friend. The
grounds of these exist only in English newspapers, edited or endowed
by the Castlereaghs or the Cannings, or some other such models of
pure and uncorrupted virtue. Their military heroes, by land and sea,
may sink our oyster boats, rob our hen roosts, burn our negro huts,
and run off. But a campaign or two more will relieve them from
further trouble or expense in defending their American possessions.
|
Marquis
de Lafayette
14 Feb 1815 |
UNITY
/ POLITICAL PARTIES / DIFFERENCE BETWEEN TWO MAJOR PARTIES
Amidst this mass of approbation which is given
to every other part of the work, there is a single sentiment which I
cannot help wishing to bring to what I think the correct one. …Stating
in volume one, page sixty-three, the principle of difference between
the two great political parties here, you conclude it to he, "whether
the controlling power shall be vested in this or that set of men."
That each party endeavors to get into the administration of the
government, and exclude the other from power, is true, and may be
stated as a motive of action: but this is only secondary; the
primary motive being a real and radical difference of political
principle. An honest man can feel no pleasure in the exercise of
power over his fellow citizens.
Power is not alluring to pure minds, and is not, with them, the
primary principle of contest. This is my belief of it; it is that on
which I have acted; and had it been a mere contest who should be
permitted to administer the government according to its genuine
republican principles, there has never been a moment of my life in
which I should have relinquished for it the enjoyments of my family,
my farm, my friends and books.
You expected to discover the difference of our party principles in
General Washington's valedictory, and my inaugural address. Not at
all. General Washington did not harbor one principle of federalism.
He was neither an Angloman, a monarchist, nor a separatist. He
sincerely wished the people to have as much self-government as they
were competent to exercise themselves. The only point on which he
and I ever differed in opinion, was, that I had more confidence than
he had in the natural integrity and discretion of the people, and in
the safety and extent to which they might trust themselves with a
control over their government. |
John
Melish
13 Jan 1813 |
UNITY
/ POLITICAL PARTIES / DISSENSION IN THE CABINET
I am sorry to learn that your rural occupations
impede so much the progress of your much to be desired work. You owe
to republicanism, and indeed to the future hopes of man, a faithful
record of the march of this government, which may encourage the
oppressed to go and do so likewise. Your talents, your principles,
and your means of access to public and private sources of
information, with the leisure which is at your command, point you
out as the person who is to do this act of justice to those who
believe in the improvability of the condition of man, and who have
acted on that behalf, in opposition to those who consider man as a
beast of burden made to be rode by him who has genius enough to get
a bridle into his mouth.
The dissensions between two members of the Cabinet are to be
lamented. But why should these force Mr. Gallatin to withdraw? They
cannot be greater than between Hamilton and myself, and yet we
served together four years in that way. We had indeed no personal
dissensions. Each of us, perhaps, thought well of the other as a
man, but as politicians it was impossible for two men to be of more
opposite principles. |
Joel
Barlow
24 Jan 1810 |
UNITY
/ PARTY POLITICS / DISSENSION A LESSER EVIL THAN DESPOTISM
You have found on your return a higher style of
political difference than you had left here. I fear this is
inseparable from the different constitutions of the human mind, and
that degree of freedom which permits unrestrained expression.
Political dissension is doubtless a less evil than the lethargy of
despotism, but still it is a great evil, and it would be as worthy
the efforts of the patriot as of the philosopher, to exclude its
influence, if possible, from social life. The good are rare enough
at best. There is no reason to subdivide them by artificial lines.
But whether we shall ever be able so far to perfect the principles
of society, as that political opinions shall, in its intercourse, be
as inoffensive as those of philosophy, mechanics, or any other, may
well be doubted. |
Thomas
Pinckney
29 May 1797 |
UNITY
/ PARTY POLITICS / FEDERALISM
You say that I have been dished up to you as an
anti-Federalist and ask me if it be just. My opinion was never
worthy enough of notice to merit citing, but since you ask it, I
will tell it to you. I am not a Federalist because I never submitted
the whole system of my opinions to the creed of any party of men
whatever, in religion, in philosophy, in politics, or in anything
else, where I was capable of thinking for myself. Such an addiction
is the last degradation of a free and moral agent. If I could not go
to heaven but with a party, I would not go there at all. Therefore,
I am not of the party of Federalists. But I am much farther from
that of the anti-Federalists. I approved, from the first moment, of
the great mass of what is in the new Constitution: the consolidation
of the government; the organization into executive, legislative, and
judiciary; the subdivision of the legislative; the happy compromise
of interests between the great and little States by the different
manner of voting in the different Houses; the voting by persons
instead of States; the qualified negative on laws given to the
executive, which, however, I should have liked better if associated
with the judiciary also, as in New York; and the power of taxation.
I thought at first that the latter might have been limited. A little
reflection soon convinced me it ought not to be. What I disapproved
from the first moment, also, was the want of a bill of rights to
guard liberty against the legislative as well as the executive
branches of the government; that is to say, to secure freedom in
religion, freedom of the press, freedom from monopolies, freedom
from unlawful imprisonment, freedom from a permanent military, and a
trial by jury in all cases determinable by the laws of the land. I
disapproved, also, the perpetual re-eligibility of the President.
|
Francis
Hopkinson
13 Mar 1789 |
UNITY
/ POLITICAL PARTIES / INFLUENCE OF BRITISH
It was to be expected that the enemy would
endeavor to sow tares between us, that they might divide us and our
friends. Every consideration satisfies me you will be on your guard
against this, as I assure you I am strongly. I hear of one stratagem
so imposing and so base that it is proper I should notice it to you.
Mr. Munford, who is here, says he saw at New York before he left it,
an original letter of mine to Judge Breckenridge, in which are
sentiments highly injurious to you. He knows my handwriting, and did
not doubt that to be genuine. I enclose you a copy taken from the
press copy of the only letter I ever wrote to Judge Breckenridge in
my life: the press copy itself has been shown to several of our
mutual friends here. Of consequence, the letter seen by Mr. Munford
must be a forgery, and if it contains a sentiment unfriendly or
disrespectful to you, I affirm it solemnly to be a forgery; as also
if it varies from the copy enclosed. With the common trash of
slander I should not think of troubling you; but the forgery of
one's handwriting is too imposing to be neglected. A mutual
knowledge of each other furnishes us with the best test of the
contrivances which will be practised by the enemies of both. |
Aaron
Burr
1 Feb 1801 |
UNITY
/ PARTY POLITICS / JEFFERSON CALLED ANTI-FEDERALIST
You say that I have been dished up to you as an
anti-federalist, and ask me if it be just. My opinion was never
worthy enough of notice to merit citing; but since you ask it, I
will tell it to you. I am not a federalist, because I never
submitted the whole system of my opinions to the creed of any party
of men whatever, in religion, in philosophy, in politics or in
anything else, where I was capable of thinking for myself. Such an
addiction, is the last degradation of a free and moral agent. If I
could not go to heaven but with a party, I would not go there at
all. Therefore, I am not of the party of federalists. But I am much
farther from that of the anti-federalists. I approved, from the
first moment, of the great mass of what is in the new Constitution;
the consolidation of the government; the organization executive,
legislative, and judiciary; the subdivision of the legislative; the
happy compromise of interests between the great and little States,
by the different manner of voting in the different Houses; the
voting by persons instead of States; the qualified negative on laws
given to the executive, which, however, I should have liked better
if associated with the judiciary also, as in New York; and the power
of taxation. I thought at first that the latter might have been
limited. A little reflection soon convinced me it ought not to be.
What I disapproved from the first moment also, was the want of a
bill of rights, to guard liberty against the legislative as well as
the executive branches of the government; that is to say, to secure
freedom in religion, freedom of the press, freedom from monopolies,
freedom from unlawful imprisonment, freedom from a permanent
military, and a trial by jury, in all cases determinable by the laws
of the land. I disapproved, also, the perpetual re-eligibility of
the President. To these points of disapprobation I adhere. My first
wish was, that the nine first conventions might accept the
constitution, as the means of securing to us the great mass of good
it contained, and that the four last might reject it, as the means
of obtaining amendments. But I was corrected in this wish, the
moment I saw the much better. plan of Massachusetts, and which had
never occurred to me. With respect to the declaration of rights, I
suppose the majority of the United States are of my opinion; for I
apprehend, all the anti-federalists and a very respectable
proportion of the federalists, think that such a declaration should
now be annexed. The enlightened part of Europe have given us the
greatest credit for inventing the instrument of security for the
rights of the people, and have been not a little surprised to see us
so soon give it up. With respect to the re-eligibility of the
President, I find myself differing from the majority of my
countrymen; for I think there are but three States out of the eleven
which have desired an alteration of this. And indeed, since the
thing is established, I would wish it not to be altered during the
life of our great leader, whose executive talents are superior to
those, I believe, of any man in the world, and who, alone, by the
authority of his name and the confidence reposed in his perfect
integrity, is fully qualified to put the new government so under
way, as to secure it against the efforts of opposition. But, having
derived from our error all the good there was in it, I hope we shall
correct it, the moment we can no longer have the same name at the
helm. |
Francis
Hopkinson
13 Mar 1789 |
UNITY
/ PARTY POLITICS / PROMOTING THE PUBLIC GOOD
The candor manifested in your letter, and which
I ever believed you to possess, has alone inspired the desire of
calling your attention, once more, to those circumstances of fact
and motive by which I claim to be judged. I hope you will see these
intrusions on your time to be, what they really are, proofs of my
great respect for you. I tolerate with the utmost latitude the right
of others to differ from me in opinion without imputing to them
criminality. I know too well the weakness and uncertainty of human
reason to wonder at its different results. Both of our political
parties, at least the honest part of them, agree conscientiously in
the same object -- the public good; but they differ essentially in
what they deem the means of promoting that good. One side believes
it best done by one composition of the governing powers; the other,
by a different one. One fears most the ignorance of the people; the
other, the selfishness of rulers independent of them. Which is
right, time and experience will prove. We think that one side of
this experiment has been long enough tried, and proved not to
promote the good of the many; and that the other has not been fairly
and sufficiently tried Our opponents think the reverse. With
whichever opinion the body of the nation concurs, that must prevail.
My anxieties on this subject will never carry me beyond the use of
fair and honorable means, of truth and reason; nor have they ever
lessened my esteem for moral worth, nor alienated my affections from
a single friend, who did not first withdraw himself. Whenever this
has happened, I confess I have not been insensible to it; yet have
ever kept myself open to a return of their justice. I conclude with
sincere prayers for your health and happiness, that yourself and Mr.
Adams may long enjoy the tranquillity you desire and merit, and see
in the prosperity of your family what is the consummation of the
last and warmest of human wishes. |
Abigail
Adams
11 Sep 1804 |
UNITY
/ POLITICAL PARTIES / ROLE OF MINORITY
Our majority in the House of Representatives
has been about two to one, in the Senate, eighteen to fifteen. After
another election it will be of two to one in the Senate, and it
would not be for the public good to have it greater. A respectable
minority is useful as censors. The present one is not respectable,
being the bitterest remains of the cup of federalism, rendered
desperate and furious by despair. We shall now be so strong that we
shall certainly split again; for freemen, thinking differently and
speaking and acting as they think, will form into classes of
sentiment. But it must be under another name. That of federalism is
become so odious that no party can rise under it As the division
into whig and tory is founded in the nature of man; the weakly and
nerveless, the rich and the corrupt, seeing more safety and
accessibility in a strong executive; the healthy, firm, and
virtuous, feeling a confidence in their physical and moral
resources, and willing to part with only so much power as is
necessary for their good government; and, therefore, to retain the
rest in the hands of the many, the division will substantially be
into whig and tory, as in England formerly. |
Joel
Barlow
3 May 1802 |
UNITY
/ POLITICAL PARTIES / PARTY NAMES
In truth, the parties of Whig and Tory are
those of nature. They exist in all countries, whether called by
these names, or by those of Aristocrats and Democrats, Cote Droite
and Cote' Gauche, Ultras and Radicals, Serviles, and Liberals. The
sickly, weakly, timid man fears the people, and is a Tory by nature.
The healthy, strong and bold, cherishes them, and is formed a Whig
by nature. |
Marquis
de Lafayette
4 Nov 1823 |
UNITY
/ REPUBLICANISM
I was only of a band devoted to the cause of
independence, all of whom exerted equally their best endeavors for
its success, and have a common right to the merits of its
acquisition. So also is the civil revolution of 1801. Very many and
very meritorious were the worthy patriots who assisted in bringing
back our government to its republican tack. To preserve it in that,
will require unremitting vigilance. Whether the surrender of our
opponents, their reception into our camp, their assumption of our
name, and apparent accession to our objects, may strengthen or
weaken the genuine principles of republicanism, may be a good or an
evil, is yet to be seen. I consider the party division of Whig and
Tory the most wholesome which can exist in any government, and well
worthy of being nourished, to keep out those of a more dangerous
character. |
William
T. Barry
2 Jul 1822 |
UNITY
/ RESTORED
I addressed a letter to you, my very dear and
ancient friend, on the 4th of March: not indeed to you by name, but
through the medium of some of my fellow citizens, whom occasion
called on me to address. In meditating the matter of that address, I
often asked myself, is this exactly in the spirit of the patriarch,
Samuel Adams? Is it as he would express it? Will he approve of it? I
have felt a great deal for our country in the times we have seen.
But individually for no one so much as yourself. When I have been
told that you were avoided, insulted, frowned on, I could but
ejaculate, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they
do." I confess I felt an indignation for you, which for myself
I have been able, under every trial, to keep entirely passive.
However, the storm is over, and we are in port. The ship was not
rigged for the service she was put on. We will show the smoothness
of her motions on her republican tack. I hope we shall once more see
harmony restored among our citizens, and an entire oblivion of past
feuds. Some of the leaders who have most committed themselves cannot
come into this. But I hope the great body of our fellow citizens
will do it. I will sacrifice everything but principle to procure it.
A few examples of justice on officers who have perverted their
functions to the oppression of their fellow citizens, must, in
justice to those citizens, be made. But opinion, and the just
maintenance of it, shall never be a crime in my view: nor bring
injury on the individual. Those whose misconduct in office ought to
have produced their removal even by my predecessor, must not be
protected by the delicacy due only to honest men. How much I lament
that time has deprived me of your aid. It would have been a day of
glory which should have called you to the first office of the
administration. But give us your counsel, my friend, and give us
your blessing; and be assured that there exists not in the heart of
man a more faithful esteem than mine to you, and that I shall ever
bear you the most affectionate veneration and respect. |
Samuel
Adams
29 Mar 1801 |
UNITY
/ THREAT OF SECESSION AND CIVIL WAR
Although I had laid down as a law to myself,
never to write, talk, or even think of politics, to know nothing of
public affairs, and therefore had ceased to read newspapers, yet the
Missouri question aroused and filled me with alarm. The old schism
of federal and republican threatened nothing, because it existed in
every State, and united them together by the fraternism of party.
But the coincidence of a marked principle, moral and political, with
a geographical line, once conceived, I feared would never more be
obliterated from the mind; that it would be recurring on every
occasion and renewing irritations, until it would kindle such mutual
and mortal hatred, as to render separation preferable to eternal
discord. I have been among the most sanguine in believing that our
Union would be of long duration. I now doubt it much, and see the
event at no great distance, and the direct consequence of this
question; not by the line which has been so confidently counted on;
the laws of nature control this; but by the Potomac, Ohio and
Missouri, or more probably, the Mississippi upwards to our northern
boundary. My only comfort and confidence is, that I shall not live
to see this; and I envy not the present generation the glory of
throwing away the fruits of their fathers' sacrifices of life and
fortune, and of rendering desperate the experiment which was to
decide ultimately whether man is capable of self-government?
|
William
Short
13 Apr 1820 |
UNITY
/ SPIRIT OF '76
The summum bonum with me is now truly
epicurian, ease of body and tranquillity of mind; and to these I
wish to consign my remaining days. Men have differed in opinion, and
been divided into parties by these opinions, from the first origin
of societies, and in all governments where they have been permitted
freely to think and to speak. The same political parties which now
agitate the United States, have existed through all time. Whether
the power of the people or that of the [unreadable] should prevail,
were questions which kept the States of Greece and Rome in eternal
convulsions, as they now schismatize every people whose minds and
mouths are not shut up by the gag of a despot. And in fact, the
terms of whig and tory belong to natural as well as to civil
history. They denote the temper and constitution of mind of
different individuals. To come to our own country, and to the times
when you and I became first acquainted, we well remember the violent
parties which agitated the old Congress, and their bitter contests.
There you and I were together, and the Jays, and the Dickinsons, and
other anti-independents, were arrayed against us. They cherished the
monarchy of England, and we the rights of our countrymen. When our
present government was in the mew, passing from Confederation to
Union, how bitter was the schism between the Feds and Antis! Here
you and I were together again. For although, for a moment, separated
by the Atlantic from the scene of action, I favored the opinion that
nine States should confirm the constitution, in order to secure it,
and the others hold off until certain amendments, deemed favorable
to freedom, should be made. I rallied in the first instant to the
wiser proposition of Massachusetts, that all should confirm, and
then all instruct their delegates to urge those amendments. The
amendments were made, and all were reconciled to the government. But
as soon as it was put into motion, the line of division was again
drawn. We broke into two parties, each wishing to give the
government a different direction; the one to strengthen the most
popular branch, the other the more permanent branches, and to extend
their permanence. Here you and I separated for the first time, and
as we had been longer than most others on the public theatre, and
our names therefore were more familiar to our countrymen, the party
which considered you as thinking with them, placed your name at
their head; the other, for the same reason, selected mine. But
neither decency nor inclination permitted us to become the advocates
of ourselves, or to take part personally m the violent contests
which followed. We suffered ourselves, as you so well expressed it,
to be passive subjects of public discussion. And these discussions,
whether relating to men, measures or opinions, were conducted by the
parties with an animosity, a bitterness and an indecency which had
never been exceeded. All the resources of reason and of wrath were
exhausted by each party in support of its own, and to prostrate the
adversary opinions; one was upbraided with receiving the
anti-federalists, the other the old tories and refugees, into their
bosom. Of this acrimony, the public papers of the day exhibit ample
testimony, in the debates of Congress, of State Legislatures, of
stump-orators, in addresses, answers, and newspaper essays; and to
these, without question, may be added the private correspondences of
individuals; and the less guarded in these, because not meant for
the public eye, not restrained by the respect due to that, but
poured forth from the overflowings of the heart into the bosom of a
friend, as a momentary easement of our feelings. In this way, and in
answers to addresses, you and I could indulge ourselves. We have
probably done it, sometimes with warmth, often with prejudice, but
always, as we believed, adhering to truth. |
John
Adams
27 Jun 1813 |
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