BOOK III. THE TREASURY. 1801-1813. (continued 6)

General Dearborn is dangerously ill, and General Lewis doing little. Hampton has gone on to that quarter, but I fear an inactive command. General Wilkinson is expected soon, but I do not know what station will be assigned him. The idea of a commander-in-chief is in circulation, proceeding from the War Department, as I have reason to believe. If so, it will probably take a more decisive form when things are prepared for it. A security for his, the Secretary’s, advancement to that station is, I presume, the preparation desired.

Your friend.

I have seen the President, and found him in the state represented by Dr. Elgey.

THE SECRETARY OF STATE TO THE AMERICAN COMMISSIONERS.

Department of State, 5th August, 1813.

Gentlemen,—I am very sorry to be under the necessity of communicating to you an event of which there was no anticipation when you left the United States. The event to which I allude is the rejection by the Senate of the nomination of Mr. Gallatin, on the idea that his mission to Russia was incompatible with the office of Secretary of the Treasury. After the appointment of Mr. Jay, when Chief Justice of the United States, by President Washington, and of Mr. Ellsworth, when holding the same office, by President Adams, by which a member of a separate branch of the government was brought into an office under the Executive, and after the sanction given in practice as well as by law to the appointment of persons during the absence of a head of a Department to perform its duties, it was presumed that there would not be any serious or substantial objection to the employment in a similar service, for a short term and especial occasion, of a member of the Administration itself. Although this nomination was opposed in the Senate as soon as it was acted on, yet it was not believed that it would be rejected until the vote was taken. At an early stage the President was called on by a resolution of the Senate to state whether Mr. Gallatin retained the office of Secretary of the Treasury, and, in case he did, who performed the duties of that Department in his absence. The President replied that the office of Secretary of the Treasury was not vacated by Mr. Gallatin’s appointment to Russia, and that the Secretary of the Navy performed its duties in his, Mr. Gallatin’s, absence. After this reply, which was given in conformity with the President’s own views of the subject, and with those of Mr. Gallatin when he left the United States, it was impossible for the President, without departing from his ideas of propriety in both respects, to have removed Mr. Gallatin from the Treasury to secure the confirmation of his nomination to Russia. It would have been still more improper to have taken that step after the rejection of the nomination. The President resolved, therefore, to leave the mission on the footing on which it was placed by the vote of the Senate by which the nomination of Mr. Adams and Mr. Bayard was confirmed. Whatever has been done jointly under the commission given to the three commissioners by the President when you left the United States in compliance with your instructions, will not be affected by this event.

MONROE TO GALLATIN.

Washington, 6th August, 1813.

Dear Sir,—To the official communications which you will receive with this I have little to add. Indeed, as I know that the President intends to communicate to you in a private letter all the details which could not be included in a public one, I should not write you this except that I could not permit Mr. Wyer to sail without bearing this testimony of my good wishes towards you.

The Senate has got into a strange and most embarrassing situation, of which the rejection of your nomination and of that of Mr. Russell are proofs; many others were afforded during the session. The attempt to control the President, or at least to influence his conduct by a committee of the Senate authorized to confer with him, thereby placing a committee on a footing with the Chief Magistrate and without limitation as to what it might say or demand, was a very extraordinary measure. It was the more embarrassing as the occurrence took place at a time when the President was confined with a bilious fever which endangered his life. The pressure gave him, as you will readily conceive, the greatest concern, more particularly the rejection of your nomination and the question which grew out of it, your removal from the Treasury to secure your confirmation in the mission to Russia. Among the objections to that step, the sentiments of those friends who supported your nomination were entitled to and had great weight. They thought that your removal from the Treasury would operate as a sanction to the conduct of your opponents and a censure on themselves. Other objections were strong, but this was conclusive.

I presume that the business on which you and Mr. Bayard left this country is settled by this time, or will be before you receive this letter. If Great Britain accepted the mediation with a sincere desire to make peace, the treaty would have been soon concluded. If she rejected it, a very short time would have enabled you to conclude a treaty of commerce with Russia. So that in either event we expect soon to have the pleasure of seeing you here.

With great respect and esteem, I am, &c.

MRS. MADISON TO MRS. GALLATIN.

29th July, 1813.

... You have heard no doubt of the illness of my husband, but can have no idea of its extent and the despair in which I attended his bed for nearly five weeks. Even now I watch over him as I would an infant, so precarious is his convalescence. Added to this are the disappointments and vexations heaped upon him by party spirit. Nothing, however, has borne so hard as the conduct of the Senate in regard to Mr. Gallatin. Mr. Astor will tell you many particulars that I ought not to write, of the desertion of some whose support we had a right to expect, and of the manœuvring of others always hostile to superior merit. We console ourselves with the hope of its terminating both in the public good and Mr. Gallatin’s honorable triumph....

A. J. DALLAS TO MRS. GALLATIN.

22d July, 1813.

My dear Madam,—Our friend Mr. Macon has just written to me that Mr. Gallatin’s nomination has been rejected by a majority of one vote. I find from another quarter that Mr. Anderson and Mr. Stone voted against it.

I did not choose to tease you with the agitation of the subject while I was at Washington. The question turned upon this; if Mr. Madison would declare the Secretary’s office vacant, the Senate would confirm the nomination; but he firmly refused to do so. The Federalists were very busy on the occasion; but the malcontent junto of self-styled Republicans were worse; and Armstrong,—he was the devil from the beginning, is now, and ever will be. In short, every art has been employed to defeat the mission, to ruin the Administration, and to depreciate Mr. Gallatin. In the last object the host of ill-assorted enemies will fail; but the political mischief that has been done and will be done is incalculable....

J. J. ASTOR TO GALLATIN.

New York, 9th August, 1813.

Dear Sir,—By this opportunity you will receive an account of the strange, if not wicked, proceedings of the Senate. The President has been led astray by some of its members in the belief of a majority in favor of the nomination and retaining you at same time as Secretary of the Treasury. He made this a point on which they split. I came to Washington some few days after the rejection had passed. It was well understood that if he would re-nominate with an understanding to appoint another Secretary, the nomination should be confirmed. It was evident that he was much at a loss; what from personal attachment to you, not knowing what might be your wish and your feelings, and what in the difference of opinion of your own friends, together with a natural dislike to yield to the Senate, he was in great perplexity and hesitation. My decided opinion was to have a nomination made, for, from a letter which you wrote to Mr. Worthington, I was clearly of opinion that you contemplated what would likely happen in the Senate; but many of your friends being entirely unacquainted with your ideas on this subject, there was a difference of opinion between them. I advised Mr. W. to tell Mr. Madison that he had such a letter from you, and to make it known to your friends, which if he had done in time, I believe the President would not have made it a point as he did. I mentioned to him of the letter, but it was too late, for he began to believe that in consequence of the armistice on the continent there would be no negotiation, and, not willing to part with you or to have you withdrawn from the Administration without your own desire, he determined to hold on as he did. He may be right, but I think I would have done otherwise. He certainly suffered much in mind on your account; but I think I should have let the public good take the lead. He may have many reasons which I know nothing of; your own feelings were certainly of weighty consideration with him....

I wonder that you did not impart your ideas to some of your friends; no one, except Mr. Worthington, seemed to know anything about it. I wish I had known half as much, and I would have made use of it to effect. Though I might have run risk to displease you, I should have done good to the country, unless there be no negotiation, in which case you cannot return too soon. On every account you are wanting at Washington....

W. H. CRAWFORD TO GALLATIN.

Paris, 20th April, 1814.

Dear Sir,—...The French papers of yesterday state that you are added to the commission to treat at Gottenburg. Mr. Beasley says that Mr. Adams is also of the commission. I cannot believe that all of you are to proceed to Gottenburg. If you are going, I presume it is in consequence of your having vacated your seat in the Cabinet. I hope this conjecture is unfounded. This is the course which your enemies wished to compel you to adopt. I agree that the treatment you have received would justify the measure, but when I know the gratification which Messrs. Giles, Smith, and Leib will feel from your resignation, I cannot reconcile it to my feelings. All this mischief has grown out of Brent’s mobility or his thirst. The day before I left Washington I called on a number of the Senators and insisted on the danger of delay and urged them to decide the question before they adjourned. They decided every embarrassing question about 4 P.M., when Mr. Brent, as he says, out of complaisance to Mr. King, consented to let the nomination stand over till the next day. They had a decided majority, and Anderson, who voted against them on all the embarrassing questions, declared he would vote for the nomination. I have no doubt that he voted against it in the end. The desire to get Mr. Cheves into the Treasury had some influence upon two or three Senators. I told Mr. Madison that he would be pressed on that point....

A. J. DALLAS TO GALLATIN.

14th February, 1814.

Dear Sir,—If you receive this letter in Europe you will have an opportunity to hear from Mr. Clay and Mr. Russell all the public news of this country; and consequently it would be an unnecessary trouble both to you and to me to enter into a written detail. Your absence has embarrassed everybody. It is a subject of lasting regret that you did not confide to some friend your wishes respecting the course to be taken if the Senate should refuse to confirm your nomination as minister while you retained the office of Secretary, or if the business and casualties of the mission should protract your absence so long as to render it impracticable to keep the Treasury Department open for you. Mr. Bayard asked me whether you had reflected upon the first event as a probable one, and you merely smiled when I repeated his question to you. However, the arrangement is now made in the best manner to evince the President’s attachment and the public confidence by restoring you to the mission when it became indispensable to treat the Treasury Department as vacant. I do not believe that during any part of your public life you enjoyed more general respect and more valuable popularity than at the present crisis. Indeed, your name being restored to the mission has revived the hope of its success, which failed when your name was excluded. I look confidently to your return with additional claims to public gratitude and honors....

Lovers of historical detail may without much difficulty pick from the wreck and ruin of Mr. Gallatin’s administrative policy such fragments as survived their originator and became foundation-stones of the ultimate governmental system. Many such fragments there were, and of the first importance, but it is not by them that Mr. Gallatin is to be measured. No one has ever seriously questioned his supereminence among American financiers. No one who has any familiarity with the affairs of our government has failed to be struck with the evidences of his pervading activity and his administrative skill. His methods were simple, direct, and always economical. He had little respect for mere financial devices, and he labored painfully to simplify every operation and to render intelligible every detail of business. It may be doubted whether he ever made a mistake in any of his undertakings, and whether any work done by him has ever been found inefficient; but it is useless to catalogue these undertakings. His system was not one of detached ideas or of parti-colored design. As their scheme existed in the minds of Mr. Jefferson, Mr. Gallatin, and Mr. Madison, it was broad as society itself, and aimed at providing for and guiding the moral and material development of a new era,—a fresh race of men. It was not a mere departmental reform or a mere treasury administration that Mr. Gallatin undertook; it was a theory of democratic government which he and his associates attempted to reduce to practice. They failed, and although their failure was due partly to accident, it was due chiefly to the fact that they put too high an estimate upon human nature. They failed as Hamilton and his associates, with a different ideal and equally positive theories, had failed before them. Yet, whatever may have been the extent of their defeat or of their success, one fact stands out in strong relief on the pages of American history. Except those theories of government which are popularly represented by the names of Hamilton and Jefferson, no solution of the great problems of American politics has ever been offered to the American people. Since the day when foreign violence and domestic faction prostrated Mr. Gallatin and his two friends, no statesman has ever appeared with the strength to bend their bow,—to finish their uncompleted task.