The rise and growth of American politics; a sketch of constitutional development

Preface

The purpose of this work is to tell the story of our politics so as to explain their nature and interpret their characteristics. Consideration of questions of public policy or of party issues does not enter into the plan, and they are referred to only as they have affected the formation of political structure ; but in this respect their influence has been so continuous that the work presents a view of our political history from colonial times to the present day. The object, however, has been to give an explanation of causes rather than a narrative of events, so that the reader may understand the actual system of government under which we live.

Our politics do not become intelligible until they are viewed as an offshoot from English politics, and the growth of the variety is studied with regard to the characteristics of the stock. This is the method pursued in the present work, with results which, I hope, will show the operation of principles of order and progress. "•*

H. J. F.

Pittsburgh, Penn.

Part I

I. Colonial Methods .

II. The Political Ideas of the Fathers

III. The Conservative Reaction .

IV. The Restoration

V. Class Rule ....

PAGE

I

34 45 59

Part II

VI. Setting Up the Government .

VII. The Origin of Parties ....

VIII. The Ruling Class Divided .

IX. Political Force

X. Democratic Tendencies ....

XL Establishing the Machine

XII. The Nationalizing Influence of Party

XIII. Democratic Reform ....

XIV. The Veto Power

XV. The Presidency as a Representative Institutior

XVI. The Convention System

XVII. The Transformation of the Constitution .

*75 188 197 208 vm

Chapter I

English colonies at the present day do not afford a parallel to the political conditions of the American colonies at the time of the outbreak of the Revolution. The imperial sovereignty is now a protectorate which does not interfere with colonial independence in domestic affairs, and party divisions in the colonies take place on issues quite distinct from those which agitate English constituencies. But before the Revolution of 1776, England exercised its jurisdiction whenever it saw fit, action being generally for the purpose of binding American trade to suit English interests. The colonies had to keep agents at Westminster to look after their interests. In such a capacity Benjamin Franklin began his illustrious diplomatic career. American politics were merged into the general movement of English politics. Colonists were Whigs or Tories as hotly as in England. John Adams tells us : " In every colony divisions have always prevailed. In New York, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and all the rest, a court and country party has always contended. Whig and Tory disputed sharply before the Revolution and in every step during the Revolution." 1

There was, however, very little community of sentiment between the people of the various colonies. The facilities of travel and intercourse which now give a national fluidity to opinion and apply a steady corrective to local prejudice, were then unknown. Intense antipathies were cherished by people in one locality against those of another. When the colonies assumed the powers of states, these prejudices acquired great importance. They had to be reckoned with at almost every step taken by the Continental Congress. With the very beginning of federal government, sectional antipathies infused into national politics a rancor, some of whose bitterness still remains. In a letter written in 1815, when sectional hatred had reached a maddening pitch, John Adams said : " It sprang from the little intercourse and less knowledge which the people of the then British

1 Adams' Works, Vol. X., p. 23.

provinces possessed of each other antecedently of the American Revolution, and instead of being dissipated by an event so honorable to them all, has been cherished and perpetuated for political party purposes."

Colonial society was a copy of English society of the same period, a little caricatured. The caste spirit was rather more pronounced, for it had more to contend with, and hence was disposed to emphasize visible distinctions. People were expected to dress according to their rank and keep their proper place. At the inn, the parlor and club-room were reserved for the gentry ; the tradesman and his wife went to the tap-room or the kitchen. A man's seat in church was expected to correspond with his social position. Even in New England, whose levelling tendencies were one source of the prejudice felt against that section in other colonies, it was the practice to " dignify the congregation " in the assignment of sittings. Common people wore leather and homespun ; gentlemen put flounces of lace on their. linen, adorned their coats and waistcoats with gold and silver braid, wore silks and satins, even in such colors as red and blue, and crowned the ornate edifice of their attire by removing the natural thatch of their heads to give place to the crisp volutes and frizzed convexities devised by the art of the perruquier. When men could dress in such fashion, imagine to what monstrosities of elegance the ladies were pushed to maintain the superiority of their sex! Brissot de Warville, a French traveller, who visited this country soon after the Revolutionary War, was astonished at the luxurious fashions and costly dress of the ladies, and thought some gowns he saw at a party given by Cyrus Griffin, president of Congress, were scandalously indecent. Simplicity of dress did not come in until after the French Revolution.

Politics, the organic activity of society in its civic character, bore a like aristocratic stamp. As in England at the same period, the laws bore hardly on the poor and tended to perpetuate distinctions between patricians and plebeians. Poor Richard's saying, that the borrower is servant to the lender, had special point to it in the days of imprisonment for debt. The humane reforms, which in every civilized country have swept away the ancient barbarities of the penal code, were yet to be begun. The jails were sinks of filth and depravity ; and the whipping-post, the stocks, and the pillory were in active employment. The suffrage was closely restricted by property qualifications, and when it came to holding office these were raised to a point at which only men of wealth were eligible. Drinking was the inevitable accompaniment of the transaction of public business of almost every kind and at election times liquor flowed in abundance. In New England, the town-meeting system produced peculiar political methods which bore the stamp of Puritan church procedure, but in most of the colonies electioneering was carried on as in England. Candidates announced themselves in flourishing addresses to electors and were expected to maintain lavish hospitality. Among the items of a bill of election expenses incurred by Washington in 1757 are one hogshead and one barrel of punch, thirty-five gallons of wine, and forty-three gallons of hard cider.

Early in the history of the colonies variations from English methods began which eventually came to be regarded as American characteristics ; but Americanisms in politics, like Americanisms in speech, are apt to be Anglicisms which died out in England but survived in the new world. The American practice of requiring that representatives should be inhabitants of their districts, was an old idea of English politics. Anciently the king's writ, expressly confirmed by a statute of Parliament, required that none but resident burgesses should be elected to Parliament. The law was disregarded and became dead letter in England ; transplanted to America it lived and flourished.

The early introduction of the ballot in America was likewise the fruition of ideas which in England fell upon stony ground, but which found a fair field in the new world. Among the reform projects with which the political theorists of the seventeenth century busied themselves, the ballot occupied a prominent place. A political tract, published in the time of William and Mary, refers to the use of the ballot as being then an old established custom in the borough of Limmington, Hampshire ; but this was an exception which passed away, and the ballot was not established in England until the Australian system was adopted in 1872. In the colonies, however, the ballot system took root at an early period. It is prominent in the philosophic constitutions prepared for the proprietary colonies of South Carolina, West Jersey, and Pennsylvania. Theoretic considerations had probably, however, much less to do with the growth of the ballot system than the circumstances of colonial life. Before the formal introduction of the ballot anywhere, a practice had sprung up in Virginia, in the New England colonies, and perhaps elsewhere, of sending votes in writing to avoid the trouble of personal attendance at elections. This practice was suppressed in Virginia at an early date, but was methodized into a regular system throughout New England, where elections came to be known as " proxings " because the votes of the freemen were given by proxy by means of voting papers. At the time of the Revolution, New Jersey and North Carolina, which had at one time used the ballot, had adopted the English system of viva-voce voting, which also prevailed in New York, New Jer-

COLONIAL METHODS J

sey, Maryland, Virginia, and Georgia. Voting papers or ballots were in use throughout New England and in Pennsylvania, Delaware, and South Carolina. 1 The ballot, in the modern sense of a party ticket put into the hands of voters, is a comparatively late development. In 1794, John Adams extenuated " a very unwarranted and indecent attempt . . . upon the freedom of elections " committed by his own party, on the ground that " the opposite party . . . practise arts nearly as unwarrantable in secret, and by sending agents with printed votes." 2

Party organization, whose astonishing development since the adoption of the constitution causes it to be regarded as peculiar to the politics of the republic, is a growth from colonial politics, and its beginnings were common to England and America. In 1769, during the excitement over the famous Middlesex election, the holding of mass meetings first became a political practice in England, and many reform associations were organized. To keep up communication with one another they appointed committees on correspondence. The American Whigs were in hearty sympathy with these movements. Before the year was out the South Carolina assembly had an angry contention with the provincial council, because the latter refused to concur in a grant of

1 Bishop's Colonial Elections, Chap. III.

2 Adams' Works, Vol. I., p. 474.

10,500 pounds currency (equal to about 1500 pounds sterling) as a contribution to the funds of the English Constitutional Society. In 1771, Samuel Adams wrote to Arthur Lee, of Virginia, — then in London and active in politics there as a supporter of the famous demagogue John Wilkes, — proposing that committees should be formed in the colonies to correspond with "the Society of the Supporters of the Bill of Rights " in England. 1 Towards the close of the following year, the Boston town meeting took the lead in banding together the Massachusetts town meetings by means of such committees of correspondence. Soon after, intercolonial committees of correspondence were organized under the lead of the Virginia House of Burgesses. These committees are the lineal predecessors of our state central committees.

Another feature of modern political methods which was derived from colonial politics is the 'caucus. It made its appearance in the politics of New England long before the Revolution. The historian William Gordon, writing in 1774, says the system was in operation fifty years before that time. An entry of February, 1773, in John Adams' diary, presents a picture whose traits are curiously modern. He writes: "This day I learned that the caucus club meets at certain times in the garret of Tom Dawes, the adjutant

of the Boston regiment. He has a large house, and he has a movable partition in his garret, which he takes down, and the whole club meets in one room. There they smoke tobacco till you cannot see from one end of the room to the other. There they drink flip, I suppose, and there they choose a moderator who puts questions to the vote regularly ; and selectmen, assessors, collectors, firewards, and representatives are regularly chosen before they are chosen in the town." 1

In the Middle and Southern colonies, the position of control held by the New England caucus was occupied by groups of leading men, the nature of whose association was as much social as political. Their influence was exercised in connection with the proceedings of the provincial assemblies, whose sessions brought on the gay season in the world of society. More closely resembling in their composition and demeanor the caucus club described by John Adams, were the committees of safety which sprang up during the Revolution, but for lack of such an instrument to work with as the town meeting, they had less direct political influence and were prone to mere rowdyism. Some did such work as Thomas Paine referred to in the second of his " Crisis " series of pamphlets, when he spoke of the shame felt by all sensible men at the tarring, feathering, and carting through the streets, of suspected loyalists.

1 Adams' Works, Vol. X., p. no.

During the Revolutionary period, constitutional means of popular participation in the conduct of government were so undeveloped that party as an agency of political control denoted little more than a connection of interest among the gentry. Even in caucus-ruled Boston, John Adams says that three rich merchants, Thomas Hancock, Charles Apthorp, and Thomas Green, when united could carry any election almost unanimously. He remarks that " half a dozen or at most a dozen families had always controlled Connecticut." * The course of New York politics was determined by the attitude of the great families — the Livingstons, the Schuylers and the Clintons. In the South, political power depended almost wholly on social influence and family connection. Democratic activities gave the Revolutionary movement explosive violence in Boston, and caused ferments in other centres of population which hastened the progress of events towards independence ; but the urban population was small — not one-thirtieth of the whole. There were but four cities in the country with over 10,000 inhabitants. Boston had a population of about 18,000. The chief city was Philadelphia, with 42,000 population. One-fifth of the total population of the country was embraced within the bounds of Virginia, a colony which had no large towns. The mass of the people were outside the area of democratic influence.

1 Adams' Works, Vol. VI., pp. 506, 530.

COLONIAL METHODS II

There are still to be found isolated districts, particularly in the South, which exhibit to a notable extent the prevailing social conditions of the Revolutionary period. One finds among the people in a locality of this sort an abundance of political prejudice combined with very little knowledge. When one seeks the basis of an opinion it is discovered to consist of popular confidence in the local magnate from which it was derived, and thus being really an article of faith between man and man it is held with peculiar fervor. This relationship is finely illustrated by an anecdote recorded by the Marquis de Chastellux, who visited America in 1 780-1 782. Governor Benjamin Harrison, of Virginia, said that when he was setting out with Jefferson and Lee to attend the first session of the Continental Congress, his anxiety over the crisis was increased by the fact that a number of the plain people of the neighborhood waited on him and said, "You assert that there is a fixed intention to invade our rights and privileges ; we own that we do not see this clearly, but since you assure us that it is so, we believe the fact." They expressed their confidence that he would do what was right, and returned to their homes to abide the issue whatever it might be, while he went on his way with a heavy consciousness of the trust reposed in him. 1

Such deference by the people must not be taken

1 Chastellux's Travels, Vol. II., p. 157.

to imply any subserviency of disposition. It was a necessary consequence of the fact that agencies for the creation of an intelligent public opinion were not in existence. There were only thirtyseven newspapers in the entire country in 1775, and they had no regular sources of intelligence. Leading men in different localities kept one another informed of political movements by correspondence. The political conditions were such that as a rule only those in social relations with the governing class — that is to say, the gentry — were in a position to obtain the information, and arrange the concert of action, necessary to the execution of political designs. The men who organized the Continental Congress and gave a national character to the Revolutionary struggle, who bombarded king and Parliament with constitutional arguments, and who finally declared their independence of the British crown, were men of the same breed as those who upset the throne of James II. The English revolutionists of 1688 called in William of Orange to depose James II. The American revolutionists of 1776 called in the French power to depose George III from his colonial dominion.

The scheme of taxing the colonies did not originate as a party measure. The great increase of imperial expenditure on account of the American civil and military establishment, caused by the French and Indian War, was likely to suggest it to any economical administration. The idea of imposing taxes was broached as early as 1739 when the Whig leader, Walpole, was at the head of affairs, but was rejected by that prudent statesman. The angry contention in Massachusetts over the issue of general search warrants for the discovery of smuggled goods, in which James Otis distinguished himself, and which John Adams regarded as the first step towards revolution, began while the elder Pitt was still prime minister. The passage in 1765 of the first stamp act met with little opposition in Parliament and was almost unnoticed in England. The violent outburst of resentment in America took English statesmen by surprise.

Although the stamp act was repealed by the short-lived Whig ministry of 1 765-1 766, the right of Parliament to tax the colonies was strongly affirmed ; but moderation and considerateness were such habitual characteristics of Whig policy that had the Whigs remained in power, means might have been found to satisfy imperial needs without outraging colonial sentiment. The real issue was one of home rule. The colonies had become too big to remain in tutelage to English politicians. A profound change in their relations to the home government would have been required in any event to make room for the growing spirit of self-reliance and incipient nationality. No class of men were less fitted to deal with such a delicate matter than the Tories under Lord North, whom George III raised to power in 1770 as the instrument of his personal will, and for whom he provided a parliamentary majority by the exercise of every influence which the crown could bring to bear. Their sole idea of dealing with American affairs was to meet colonial resistance with stubborn determination.

The burning interest with which party leaders in our own times follow the fortunes of a decisive campaign in an important state, affords as good an idea as different political conditions will allow, of the kind of feeling with which the English Whig leaders regarded the struggle of the American Whigs, but can give no idea of its depth or intensity. They believed their party existence — nay, the very life of the English constitution — was staked on the issue. At the time the American discontents broke out in open insurrection, the Whig party in England was in a dispirited state. The spirit of resistance to crown encroachments which had flamed so audaciously in the letters of Junius and in the diatribes of Wilkes seemed to have died out altogether. " England," wrote Chatham, "is no more like old England or England forty years ago than the Monsignori of modern Rome are like the Decii, the Gracchi, or the Catos." Burke declared : " The people have fallen into a total indifference to any matters of public concern. I do not suppose that there was ever anything like this torpor in any period of our history." Junius wrote to his publisher that it would be folly for him to write anything more, since the cause had become hopeless. The only effective resistance to the designs of the court was that which came from the colonies. If that was broken down, it was the belief of the Whig leaders that the ruin of English liberties would follow. The Duke of Richmond took steps to provide himself with a suitable asylum in France, in case American defeat should be the signal of proscription in England. 1 The Whig leaders compared the Continental troops to the army of deliverance led by William of Orange, in 1688, and with good reason. The surrender of Cornwallis gave the 1 death-blow to the system of personal rule which ( the king had laboriously erected, and ended a long crisis by definitely setting the course of English constitutional development in the ways of parliamentary government. A still more pregnant consequence was the establishment of American independence, leaving the American Whigs with separate political interests to administer in profoundly altered circumstances which soon caused changes of vast importance to human destiny.

The event was a victory for the Whigs on both sides of the water, and was treated as such. Terms of separation were arranged without rancor. Nominally, the American interests were in charge of

1 Lecky's History of England, Vol. III., pp. 590, 591.

France ; but the American commissioners, by direct negotiation with the Whig ministry then in power, obtained greater concessions than France had intended, as it was not her policy to favor the rise of a great power in America. Her intention was that the sole navigation of the Mississippi, and dominion over the unoccupied Western country, should be the compensation which Spain would receive for entering the alliance against England. On her own account, France was opposed to giving so great a share in the Newfoundland fisheries as was claimed by the American commissioners. Yet, by the aid of their Whig friends, the American commissioners were successful at every point. The young nation was accorded liberal fishery rights, and territorial claims were conceded which provided a continental area in which to expand. 1 It was a generous settlement of the family quarrel.

1 Lecky's History of England, Vol. IV., pp. 278-284.

Chapter II

The writings of the statesmen of the Revolutionary period show that they regarded political institutions with prepossessions of another character than those which now influence men's minds. The world was very different then, and a different set of traditions guided opinion. Such conceptions as self-government, the sovereignty of the people, the rights of nationality, whose validity is now generally regarded as obvious, were then innovating ideas which had yet to make their way. Rousseau's " Social Contract," which developed the doctrine of the sovereignty of the people to extreme lengths, exerted marked influence upon French thought in the last quarter of the eighteenth century, but it had no visible effect upon English or American politics. The colonists did not trouble themselves about speculative conceptions of popular rights. It took practical grievances to move them, and in their remonstrances they had recourse to the laws and constitution of the realm. Only when they came to actual separation did they fall back upon the abstract principles of liberty which are set forth in the Declaration of c 17

Independence. That was a manifesto for a particular occasion, and history shows that only slowly and by degrees did it come to be regarded as an embodiment of principles of government.

Among the things which make Mr. Bryce's great work on " The Holy Roman Empire " a good preparation for the study of American history, is the fact that it brings vividly to the mind the recent origin of the cardinal ideas of our times. It exhibits to us a period when the ideas of nationality, which gradually emerged in Europe after the migrations of peoples had ceased, were opposed by venerable traditions of legality and civilization. To the jurists and reformers of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the development of nationality seemed to be a baleful disintegration of the Holy Roman Empire. The emperor was the Lord's Anointed, to whom kings and peoples owed their obedience. Dante did not see how freedom could be possible except under the government of an universal monarch, who, having no rival to fear and no further ambition to gratify, could have no motive save to rule in wisdom and in equity. To Petrarch, the existence of an imperial jurisdiction, coextensive with Christendom, was as obvious a necessity as that a body should have a head. In language, which reads like a bitter satire upon the condition of Europe at the present day, he remarks what a hideous portent would be a creature of many heads, biting and fighting one another.

The sublime ideal of universal peace and justice under the wise providence of a supreme magistrate, elevated above the reach of temptation, was never held more fervently than during the incessant war and political chaos of the Middle Ages. It was never absolutely renounced, but its hopelessness as a practicable design gradually removed it from serious consideration. Its vitality as a political principle was shown even during the present century in an astonishing way, by Napoleon Bonaparte's efforts to convert the kingdoms of Europe into dependencies of his empire. " There will be no repose in Europe," he said, " until it is under one head, under an emperor whose officers would be kings." 1

At the time of the American Revolution, the Holy Roman Empire still preserved a nominal existence. In the Federalist, the term " the Emperor" is used as an unique, distinctive title; but the old conception of the Emperor as the supreme magistrate of Christendom was extinct, and in its place the idea of a balance of power in Europe had been developed as a practical expedient for the control of international relations, while as a basis of social order royal authority was solidly fixed in public confidence. Political ideas take their stamp from impressions received during the unfolding of race destiny. During the Middle Ages, no other political institution rendered such

1 Taine's Modern Regime, Vol. I., note to p. 36.

service to the public welfare as kingship. It was the upholder of justice, the redresser of grievances, the guardian of the commonwealth, the conservator of the public peace ; it was the shelter of the people against the arrogance of the nobles. The substitution of hereditary succession for election strengthened these functions by placing the crown beyond the reach of bargain and intrigue. The change established a self-perpetuating national magistracy of indefeasible tenure. In the instinctive effort to raise up an authority strong enough to counteract the disintegrating influences of feudalism, it was for centuries the great aim of European jurisprudence to develop regalian rights so as to confer upon royal authority the omnipotence with which the Roman law vested the head of the state. Sanctions of divine right were attached to kingship which were originally attributed to imperial authority alone. Monarchy came to be regarded as a part of the natural order of things, the likeness in human affairs of God's providence in the universe. Popular dislike of individual kings weakened this sentiment no more than dislike for a president of the United States weakens respect for the constitution. Revolts at particular acts of royal authority might take place, but the principle of constitutional law that royal authority should be supreme might not be questioned. The distinction is finely illustrated, with perfect fidelity to historic truth, by the sentiment which Dumas puts in the mouth of one of his famous musketeers. Athos tells his son : " Learn how to distinguish the king from royalty ; the king is but a man ; royalty is the gift of God. Whenever you hesitate as to whom you ought to serve, abandon the exterior, the material appearance, for the invisible principle ; for the invisible principle is everything. Should the king prove a tyrant — for power begets tyranny — love, respect royalty, that divine right." 1

Popular assemblies, institutions originally common to the barbarian peoples who parcelled Europe among them, were so much in the way of the executive power required by the militancy of the times that they were gradually shorn of authority and almost suppressed. The historian Taine dates the deposit of absolute authority in the French crown from the English invasions of the fifteenth century, when the life of the nation depended upon the removal of every restraint upon the ability of the king to command at will all its resources. Only in a country naturally sheltered from invasion, as was England, could parliamentary bodies safely retain their authority. At the time when the disaffection of the American colonies began, the various Continental powers seemed to enjoy conditions of security and progress strictly in proportion to the extent to which hindrances upon the efficiency of executive power had been removed. The Italian republics which sprang up during the Middle Ages

1 Alex. Dumas' Twenty Years After, Chap. XXII.

had passed away, leaving odious memories of crime and disorder. Venice was in a state of hopeless decay. Most of the Swiss cantons had fallen under the rule of narrow oligarchies. Poland, which had preserved the principle of elective kingship originally common among European peoples, was declining into anarchy. The principle of vitality which upheld Holland amid the corruption and enfeeblement of the states general seemed to be the quasi-royal position obtained by the House of Orange in 1749. All the vigorous states of the continent were despotic in constitution. 1 The extinction of means of participation in the government must not be regarded as implying a sense of oppression among the people. As a general thing they were no more aggrieved by it than the residents of the District of Columbia were in our own time by the abolition of their legislature. The Revolution of 1772 in Sweden, by which Gustavus III crushed the authority of the Parliament, was hailed with joy by his people. The abolition of serfdom, the removal of many feudal oppressions, the betterment of social conditions, and the enlargement of liberty of thought were derived from the exercise of royal power, while such extraneous organs of constituted authority as still survived were apt to be centres of resistance to reform. 2 Voltaire, the great apostle of liberalism,