CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY DATE DUE JK176 1887""" ""'™""'' '-"'"^ The Kenlucky resolutions of 1798. olin 3 1924 030 454 544 Cornell University Library The original of tliis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924030454544 The Kentucky Resolutions OF 1798 An Historical Study ETHELBERT DUDLEY WARFIELD, A.M., LL.B. BARRISTEK-AT-LAW NEW YORK & LONDON P. PUTNAM'S SONS S^c gmclitrbotkct ^ress 1887 @ .- ■ V COPYRIGHT BY E. D. WARFIELD 1887 Press of G. P. Putnam's Sons New York DEDICATED TO THE CHERISHED MEMORY OF MY WIFE iii CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. Introduction ..... CHAPTER II. Kentucky's Growth towards the Resolutions . . .21 CHAPTER III. John Breckinridge the Mover of the Resolutions . . 49 CHAPTER IV. The Resolutions ... ... 74 CHAPTER V. The Resolutions before the States and Congress . .no CHAPTER VI. The Authorship of the Resolutions .... 133 CHAPTER VII. The Doctrines and Effects of the Resolutions . . 166 PREFACE. This little work was first suggested several years ago by a sense of the inadequacy of the historical accounts of the Kentucky Resolutions of 1798. This feeling has steadily increased ever since, and its correctness must be apparent to every one who has remarked the great influence these Resolu- tions have had upon our constitutional and political history. While they have been the cause and occa- sion of much debate and transitory discussion, there is no connected account of the causes and circumstances of their adoption, and their relation to the subsequent history of this country, except such as under many limitations is to be found in the histories of the United States under the Con- stitution. None of these are calculated to make the subject plain to the average reader, and there is scarcely one that is not positively in error as to some important fact. The original documents, many of which have always been accessible^ have been singularly neg- lected, and misstatements that at first crept in by inadvertence or unwarranted assumptions, not only have never been corrected by recourse to the sources, viii Preface. but have been repeated till they became the seed of error, later writers competing with each other in reiterating the mistakes of all those who preceded them. The materials used in this book, while no printed work treating of the subjects embraced in its pur- view has been intentionally neglected, are chiefly the original sources — the newspapers of the day and the written accounts of actors upon the stage, but especially the letters and manuscripts of the time, and of the men who were the leaders in the movements against the Alien and Sedition laws, Of all the sources consulted none can be compared for interest and importance to the hitherto almost untouched store of manuscripts forming the Breck- inridge papers and containing John Breckinridge's literary remains. Some part of the contents of this volume has already been published in a series of articles in the Magazines of American and Western History, but in a very abridged form aiid rather for the sake of provoking criticisms which might lead to a full and complete treatment of the questions connected with the Resolutions than as a permanent contribu- tion to American history. It is hoped that the evidence herein set out may be regarded as justifying a final judgment upon the important and somewhat mooted points of the real mover of the Resolutions in the Kentucky legisla- ture and their true text. It is, perhaps, too much to hope that any final solution of the problems of authorship and interpretation is now, or ever will Preface. ix be reached. Some new light has been found even upon these difficult questions, and some advance towards a final statement of all the evidence may have been made, even though the desired end has not been attained. If no other good is accom- plished, yet if some part of the credit that is justly due to John Breckinridge, the mover and responsi- ble author of these Resolutions be recovered, this work has not been written in vain. Thanks for aid and encouragement are due to many friends, who have added so much to the ac- complishment of my task that I cannot deny myself the public recognition of their assistance. Chief among these, are Prof. Alexander Johnston, Hon. Wm. C. P. Breckinridge, Col. R. T. Durrett, Pres. James C. Welling, and Hon. James Schouler. Ethelbert D. Warfield. Grasmere, near Lexington, Ky., Mid-Summer, 1887. THE KENTUCKY RESOLUTIONS OF 1798. CHAPTER I. IN TROD UCTION. The history of the Resolutions of 1798, of the causes which led to them, their authorship, and their influence upon the history of the United States, involves so many problems, and those prob- lems are of so nice a character, that any one must needs feel the greatest hesitancy in undertaking to write it. Questions that have divided men into parties and factions, especially if bitter feelings have been engendered and conflicts provoked by them, must always afford difficult fields for the his- torian. The partisan finds little to commend in the conclusions of the most righteous judge, and if the doctrinaire has preempted the domain, his judgments are apt to prevail with those whose natural inclinations lead in the direction which he has pursued. Party passion on each side has done its worst to make the history of these resolutions difficult, and doctrinaires have appeared to repre- sent almost every possible point of view. Much as 2 Introduction. they have been discussed, and many as are the theories that have been promulgated concerning them, no attempt has as yet been made to write their history in a full and connected form. Cer- tainly it may justly be assigned a place among those departments of American history esteemed worthy of separate treatment ; and now that the mists of passion and prejudice that so long forbade any attempt at a candid discussion are nearly dis- sipated, it may not be too much to hope that the day is at last come when a fair-minded and dis- passionate narrative may be written, the general uncertainty that clings to the whole subject be dis- pelled, and some of the errors that have crept into the most weighty accounts be corrected. A clear knowledge of the causes that led to the Resolutions of 1798-9 is indispensable to the under- standing of the problems connected with them. < 'They had the primary cause of their existence not in any temporary condition of affairs, but in the great natural diversity of sentiment common to all men. The trend of human thought constantly leads men, according to their natural temperaments, to separate themselves into two great parties. By whatever names they may be known at different times and places, the one may be roughly designated as Conservative, and the other as Progressive. According to the condition of public affairs the efforts of the one party are directed towards the pres- ervation intact of the existing government and the resistance of all change, or towards the steady strengthening of the hands of authority, and an Biirodiiction. 3 increase of the prerogative of the executive. While the other party in each instance adopts an opposite course. The natural bent of the one party is tow- ards a strong and highly centralized government, of the other towards a pure democracy. The one finds its dangerous extreme in absolute mon- archy with all the attendant theories of divine right, non-resistance, and so forth, while the latter finds its corresponding extreme in anarchy. In one form or another these opposing theories are always present in the state. Immediately after the Revolutionary war had left this country free but ex- hausted, they began to show themselves in various forms and different degrees of intensity in every part of the land. The general prostration and the natural weight of vis inertia told heavily on the feeble Federation, and the majority of thinking men watched with regret the slow, insidious work of disintegration. The essential weakness of the Federation was more and more widely recognized, till at last the tide set strongly towards a more efficient government, and by constant, almost heroic, efforts tfie dead weight of opposition was at length raised, and the country fairly made a na- tion. All but the most uncompromising foes of a strong central government joined in one way or another in the movement. The only notable ex- ceptions were to be found among the citizens of those States which hoped to gain by oppressing their weaker neighbors and monopolizing com- merce when the long impending ruin of the effete central government should become an accomplished 4 Introduction. fact. There were many men, indeed, who were for strengthening the federal head, who yet refused assent to the constitution offered them, but this was on specific not on general grounds. When once the youthful nation was launched on her voyage with the new Constitution, there was a rapid and radical shifting on the part of many. The terms Federalist and Anti-Federalist were applied to very different men at dates so near together as 1788 and 1790; and in a few more years there were fewer still who retained their old party-name, and this without any change of principles. Some of those who on various grounds had made the most determined fight in their several States against ratification, be- came under the new order of things devoted to the party of the administration, which claimed for itself the right to live under the honorable symbol of their late victory, the name of Federalist. No more no- table instance of this class could be cited than the leader of the Virginia minority, the eloquent Henry. Once committed to the new form, he became one of the President's staunchest coadjutors. On the other hand, Madison and Jefferson, who had been so instrumental in bringing about the Annapolis convention, and the former of whom had played such an able part in the Philadelphia conven- tion, drifted in the opposite direction. Jef- ferson who had wavered somewhat at first, was all for the Constitution if the amendments which were eventually secured could be obtained. But by all the dictates of his taste and temper he favored the least centralized form of government that would Introduction. 5 subserve the purposes of securing a permanent; union of the States, and of rendering that union secure against foreign interference ; and earnestly desired the widest latitude for the exercise of State and personal liberty in domestic affairs; and these natural proclivities had been confirmed and strength- ened by his residence in France. Madison was by nature very moderate in his views. In early life his position leaned rather towards the conservative and centralizing party, and in the last years of his life he returned to the same position, but under the in- fluence of his great chief and the irresistible current of opinion in Virginia he assumed from the time of the first Congress forth a position not to be distin- guished from that of Mr. Jefferson so long as the latter lived. It is safe to say that a large part of those who be- came known after the adoption of the Constitution as Anti- Federalists, were old Federalists who con- sidered the end they had labored to secure as at- tained when the Constitution was put into effect. They had regarded a strong central government as only a less evil than dismemberment, and when the latter fate was averted they winced at every act that carried the system they had helped to inaugurate into efficient action. The period of Washington's administration was almost entirely consumed in the work of organizing the new government and carry- ing out the provisions of the Constitution. The aspect of affairs when a vigorous nation, fully equipped, with all the insignia of power, had sup- planted the weak and visionary federation was not 6 Introduction. a little startling to men who had made this their bete noir. The prophet of such a change would have been laughed to scorn half a dozen years be- fore. Indeed, few of this class, even those who fancied themselves most familiar with the instru- ment, thought it possible to create such a power in so brief a space of time out of the Constitution. This was doubtless due to a failure to give adequate weight and consideration to two factors which were destined to effect materially the result ; first, the capacity of the country for great and rapid growth, and second, of even more immediate influence, the means and methods that would at once be called into being to effectuate the plain provisions of the Constitution. To those who occupied this position the financial operations of Hamilton were not merely unlooked-for, but they assumed the aspect of unwarranted, and even wicked, violations of the Constitution. Thus step by step as the work of or- ganization went on, the central government devel- oped a power and patronage which was at once surprising and highly disapproved of by many sometime ardent Federalists ; and thereby steadily estranging many from the administration, it built up an opposition, and an opposition that had a firmer party-basis than most of those who composed it realized. This fundamental division of political opinion, which has now come to be universally recognized, may be wholly or partly concealed by the temper of certain times or the absorbing claims of specific measures, but nevertheless it is always present, Introduction. 7 and according to the trend given to political action it is pronounced or obscure ; but when this or that diversion has ceased to operate, the old ruts are again followed and the old division made plain. The condition of public affairs, both at home and abroad, during the early years of our national life, ran in courses that made this great division most prominent. Individual tastes were reinforced or modified by the special advantages the one policy or the other offered to the different States or sec- tions of the country. These in turn, even as they dictated, were intensified and accentuated by lean- ings to British or French sympathies. As the one \ class of ideas was dominant in one country and the other in the other, they to a remarkable extent came to stand for the two policies. It is almost impossible, at the distance of nearly a century, to regard without the liveliest wonder the intense bitterness engendered by these different foreign attachments, and the tremendous influence which they exerted over the minds of our forefathers between the era of the Revolution and the second war with Great Britain. They were not a mere natural hostility against the mother country grow- ing out of the prolonged war, and an equally natural spirit of gratitude for the timely aid of France. They differed from such sentiments so widely as not even to be comparable to them, and did not end with awakening sympathy and dislike, or even of governing our foreign relations, but ex- tended to our domestic concerns and dictated our home policy. All of these things tended in the 8 Introduction. same direction and drew a sharp line between the advocates of a strong and of a feeble central gov- ernment. In addition to these causes there was a special development of what may be called the " individu- alism," which is generally found as a prominent feature of that theory of government which looks towards liberalism and democracy. That is, the development of the importance of the individual in relation to the State. Mr. Jefferson v^as a most advanced advocate of this principle. Under his leadership it was gradually advanced, and finding a ready acceptance, especially in the South and West, became one of the greatest forces in the development and permanence of the party he founded. The noble system of English law, which from the time of the first settlements had been firmly established in the colonies, had for some time been marked by a comparative neglect of the individual, a neglect which in its administration had been accentuated to such an extent that at the era of our revolution English jurisprudence seemed much too indifferent to the personal rights of citizens. Property rights were preferred to per- sonal rights, and the most trifling violations of the former were visited with much more speedy and severe punishment than the most serious assaults upon the latter. The libel law was peculiarly op- pressive, and its administration had been a scandal and a shame. The prosecutions under this law for a century before this country achieved its indepen- ; dence, had been enough to discourage the most Introduction. 9 courageous friends of free speech and a free press. "1 From this source Mr. Jefferson drew a wholesome dread of any incroachments upon the freedom of the individual in whatever sphere, and curtailments of it were too recent and too great for it to be regarded as a figment of his brain. It appealed to him very strongly, falling in as it did with his natural habit of thought. Many regarded it as sufficiently guaranteed by the Constitution, but his fear and unrest were never satisfied even by so perfect a continuing guaranty, and he never ceased to watch over it jealously. He showed the first force of his convictions on this subject in the particular enumeration in the Declaration of Independence of the rights of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," again in his insistence upon the addition of a bill of rights to the Con- stitution, and in his watchful care throughout his career. There are many instances in which it behooves us to keep in view the dominant influ- ence of this individualism on Mr. Jefferson's mind. It is not only the key to many of his own acts, but to the problems that afterwards grew out of them when it was attempted to wrest them to a widely different meaning. The natural result of these in- clinations was exhibited in his steady advocacy of a general government of minimum power, a foster- ing of the influence of the States as the natural bulwarks against a strong central power, and his unwearied struggle for what was, indeed, the great end of all his policy, a democracy of the purest and simplest type, possessing all the power capable of be- lo Introduction. ing lodged in its hands and itself exercising as far as possible all the functions of government, itself the master, its office-holders the servants, and dictating and rightly requiring from all the most republican simplicity. Such, in brief outline, were the sentiments of those who regarded the vigorous policy so prompt- ly adopted and put into operation under Washing- ton, with dislike and distrust. The overshadowing influence of the President held many to the warm support of the administration who would otherwise have been in the ranks of the opposition, and a far greater number yielded acquiescence to the same spell. There was, however, a steady growth towards the principles of those opposed to central- ization. But for a long time they lacked both organization and party-name. Of leaders there was no lack. New York offered some brilliant candi- dates for headship ; Massachusetts herself could have supplied an able champion ; but by general consent the position was accorded to Virginia. Not at once, indeed, but gradually. In the House of Representatives, Madison quickly won the first place, but he was then, as ever afterwards, second to Jefferson, and by the time that the third presi- dential election had come, Jefferson was almost without a rival. Had the party been better organ- ized, with a clearer enunciation of principles, they would have made a much better stand even thus early. They lacked cohesion sadly, and hitherto they were without any party-name of general ac- ceptation. The name of Anti-Federalist was too Introduction. 1 1 negative, and to some still smacked of a false po- sition ; the name of Democrat, which was not un- commonly given at the time, was a term of reproach and grew out of the unfortunate conduct of Genet, and the taste of French affairs was then fast grow- ing bitter in all men's mouths. They had already begun to give themselves out as Republicans, and then to join the two names into Democratic-Republi- cans ; but as yet this name had not become fairly fixed upon the party. Such was the general state of affairs when Adams became President, and Jefferson Vice-President. Mr. Jefferson with his unfailing political sagacity had remarked the weaknesses in the great body of men who thought with him, and now began a sys- tematic course directed towards the remedying of those defects. His first impulses towards a coopera- tion with the policy that Mr. Adams might pursue were of brief duration.' Their points of view were hopelessly at variance. The President was an avowed admirer of the British Constitution, he had pronounced views of an aristocratical nature, and he was an uncom- promising friend of strong government. The Vice- President, great as he was, was undeniably sus- picious, and especially so of the northern Federalists. Even he forgot, that while at the Court of St. James Mr. Adams had pursued a most manly and independent course, and that, whatever his theories were, he had proved his patriotism and ' Jefferson's Works, vol. iv., pp. 153, 154 et seq., et. 166. 1 2 Introduction. republicanism in his masterly leadership in the first years of the Continental Congress. The distrust was probably mutual, but the President was the one to whom confidence snd cooperation were due, and instead of that the Vice-President was the leader of the opposition and his rival for the suf- frages of the people. The situation was too much for the administration. The President early gave offence by inauspicious speeches in regard to the re- lation of British and French influences, and kindred matters. The friends of France took especial ex- ception to a remark to the effect that the American and French revolutions possessed not one point in common. Madison and Jefferson criticised this utterance freely in their correspondence, and it be- came the text for a public warning against a man who could hold such an opinion. Meanwhile our relations with France were growing more and more complicated. The performances of Genet pro- duced a great revulsion of feeling on the part of many ardent French sympathizers. And from the time of his coming there was never quite the same feeling that had once prevailed. When Washing- ton left office Adet's commission was suspended, and though he continued in Philadelphia, he was no longer accredited to the government. Charles Cotesworth Pinckney had set out bearing Monroe's recall and his own credentials to St. Denis. When he arrived he was received with much hauteur, and finally informed that the Directory declined to recognize him. All this had transpired in the last days of Washington's administration, but the news Introduction. 1 3 had not reached this country when Adams was in- augurated. The country generally was exasperated by the rejection of Pinckney, and the circumstances of that rejection made the course of France, which for a long time had been directed towards a separa- tion between the executive and a large body of the people, more patent than at any previous time. But Adams declared it to be his desire to heal the dif- ferences if possible, and to do all in his power to prevent the breach from widening. In order to accomplish this he summoned Congress to a special session in May and expressed his intention of nom- inating a commission to be sent to France to en- deavor to bring about an accommodation. This commission as first drawn was to consist of Pinck- ney, Dana, and Marshall, but Dana declined, and Gerry was substituted for him. Gerry and Mar- shall set out promptly and joined Pinckney in Hol- land. Their credentials and instructions were ade- quate to the broadest scope of negotiation and there was great hope that they would be able to effect an accommodation. But at the same time there was a growing distrust of French attitudes, and particu- larly of the increasing power of Buonaparte. Even Mr. Jefferson was doubtful what the times would bring forth. Time slipped away. Negotiation was slow and communication between the countries imperfect. Public interest was fairly on tip-toe. The envoys had reached Paris early in October, and six months had now elapsed. Just at this moment the weight was lifted from the President's heart which had been so sorely stung by insult and 14 Introduction. vituperation. The X. Y. Z. despatches arrived and were made public on the 3d of April, 1798. A tremendous revulsion of feeling was the result. " Millions for defence, not one cent for tribute," became the cry on every hand. Adams was for once almost a popular hero. Federalism was in high feather. A French war seemed imminent, and for the moment would have been received with ac- clamation by all parties. This seemed to be the time to press forward vigorous measures that would undo much past evil and prevent much future an- noyance. The programme embraced three acts. The first a change of the naturalization law ; the second an alien act ; the third a sedition act. The effect of the first was to alter the period of residence necessary to citizenship from five to four- teen years, to require a registration of all white aliens, and to forbid the naturalization of alien enemies. The Alien Act permitted the banishment of aliens under the simple order of the President, and in case of refusal to depart it authorized im- prisonment and deprivation of the right to become a citizen. This was for alien friends, for the act drew this distinction. Alien enemies could be de- tained, banished, imprisoned, all at _ the discretion of the President. This was a most remarkable stretch of authority, but the Sedition Act was far more radical. It originated in the Senate, and must have alarmed not merely the friends of France and the Republican party, but equally all clear-sighted friends of freedom and of calm legis- lation. As introduced, its first section declared Ifitroduction. 1 5 France to be a public enemy, and made the giving of comfort or aid to Frenchmen or France by any one owing allegiance to the United States treason, and punishable with death. The second clause made the concealing or withholding of information concerning the acts made treason by the preceding section misprision of treason, and punishable by fine and imprisonment. The third was directed against combinations and conspiracies to resist the laws and the execution of the laws by officers of the United States. This crime of sedition v/as ! punishable by fine and imprisonment, and the judges were given authority to require securities for future good conduct. The fourth section was di- / reeled against seditious publications. It would have been wonderful had such a meas- ure become a law. It was tremendously sweeping in its provisions ; to pronounce France and her people enemies when not in a state of declared war was unexampled, and to make it a high misde- meanor to use language " tending to justify the hostile conduct of the French government " a great stretch of censorship. The first two sections were stricken out bodily ; not, however, till they had served to create alarm, and to supply a bugbear wherewith to frighten the uneasy, as examples of what the administration party desired and were working to obtain. The last two sections were purged of their more objectionable features, but a residuum remained ample to awake the fiercest in- vectives and the most determined opposition. It now included the two classes of seditious practices 1 6 Introduction. and the publication of seditious libels on the gov- ernment and its officers. Two clauses were added to modify the effect of these provisions. Section three permitted the truth in action for libel to be set up as a defence, contrary to the previous prac- tice, and section four limited the continuance of this act to the period of the current administration, that is, to March 3, 1801. Even before these laws were enacted a feeling of alarm spread everywhere. In the extreme Federal- ist States, no doubt, a feeling of triumph and ex- ultation prevailed, but even in their borders there was no lack of dismay among the minority. The opposition in Congress labored strenuously to prevent their passage, but in vain. Once passed, the country was thrown into a perfect ferment. The different portions of the country were affected according to the dominant political opinion. Where the federalists were strong political feeling bore them headlong into prosecutions under the new powers. In the Republican States a sense of injury and danger went hand in hand, and the question of the hour was how to repel the threatening de- struction. Mr. Jefferson did not fail to see that the great opportunity for his party had come. His keen political sagacity detected in an instant the fatal mistake the administration had made, and he began at once to look about him for the best means to turn his opponents' mistake to his own advantage. Naturally he felt some delicacy in appearing too forward in assailing a government of Introduction. 1 7 which he himself \fras the second in office. Never- theless he lent himself willingly to the task of organizing, in a quiet way, a systematic assault upon these laws of Congress, and at once opened a cor- respondence calculated to elicit the best judgment of his coadjutors and gradually drew out a pro- gramme of action. Virginia was by no means unanimous in repro- bating these laws. She had a large and influential body of Federalists, who were led by bold and able leaders, and, as is not infrequently the case with minorities largely constituted of the wealthy and cultivated, many of the Virginia Federalists were extreme in their convictions and partisanship. But the influence of Jefferson was paramount and the result of Jeffersonian principles soon appeared on every hand. Meetings were held in many of the counties upon their county court days at which were adopted addresses or series of resolutions con- demning or praying for the repeal of these laws. Among these counties were Prince Edward, Goochland, Orange, Augusta, Amelia, Powhattan, Louisa, and Caroline. Except Kentucky it made the greatest show of resistance. New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania sent petitions of appeal to Congress, and the latter, being especially aroused by the plain personal attack contained in these laws upon the popular Gallatin, was very active in doing what was possible to secure the repeal. It is a matter of general regret that so few of Mr. Jefferson's letters written just at this crisis 1 8 Introdtution. appear in his published works. Those that are before us contain more expressions of suspicions of surveillance and inspection on the part of the post- office than of opinions on the situation. His gen- eral views are, however, sufficiently well known. He wholly opposed the course the government was pursuing, but deplored any thought of violent measures, arguing very forcibly in a letter to John Taylor of Carolina, ' that men were prone to differ, parties were inevitable, and the constant rule of either party impossible ; that, therefore to consider secession and separate existence with North Caro- lina alone, as suggested by him, was to flee from the evil without escaping it ; that one might thus continue to divide and subdivide and yet never attain the desired goal. At the same time he recognized the importance, even the imperative necessity, especially for party purposes, of prompt action, and soon came to share the opinion of those who thought that the legislatures should be made the mouth-pieces of their protests. In a less pleasing tone he wrote to S. T. Mason " : " The Alien and Sedition laws are working hard. I fancy that some of the State legislatures will take strong ground on this occasion. For my own part I con- sider those laws as only an experiment on the American mind to see how far it will bear an avowed violation of the Constitution. If this goes down, we shall immediately see attempted another act of Congress declaring that the President shall ' Jefferson's Works (1859), vol. iv., p. 247. ' Ibid., p. 257. Introduction. i g continue in office during life, reserving to another occasion the transfer of the succession to his heirs and the establishment of the Senate for life. At least this may be the aim of the Oliverians, while Monk and the cavaliers (who^re perhaps the strongest) may be playing theiij game for the restoration of his most gracious Majesty, George the Third. That these things are in contemplation I have no doubt ; nor can I be confident of their failure after the dupery of which our countrymen have shown themselves susceptible." This letter was written so late as October i ith, v/hen the fact that some action would be taken in the legislatures of Kentucky and Virginia was generally known. The tone of these remarks, a tone common in Jefferson's letters, is remarkable for the extreme measures he attributes to his opponents, and also for the pessimistic view of popular action. The question is inevitably suggested : Did he really think these things of men, most of whom he had served with, many of whom he had watched from the vantage-ground of a presiding officer, practi- cally without a vote, or the people toward whom he ever practised a wide optimism and showed a confidence honorable alike to himself and them ? Or on the other hand, was this tone assumed for purposes of policy, to urge his followers on to spirited action by painting the picture in the most sombre colors ? Neither alternative can be re- garded . as worthy of a man of such a vigorous mind and such a genius for politics. But it was in Kentucky that the greatest re- 20 Introduction, sistance was evoked. The feeling in that State was, indeed, little short of frenzy, and a singular unanimity was displayed even in the most extreme acts and sentiments. This grew out of no passing passion. It was based upon the most vigorous elements in her character as a people. Kentucky was at this time somewhat apart from the rest of the Union. With the single exception of the newly created State of Tennessee, the only one of the sisterhood west of the mountains, of very recent and rapid growth, she had, to a very large degree, interests peculiar to herself ; her needs were not clearly understood, and sometimes, when under- stood, disregarded by the others. Her complaints, just and unjust, had been many, but hitherto she had not gained the nation's ear. But the time was now ripe for her to assert herself, and as she played the most important part in the little drama that was then hurrying upon the stage, it is important to understand the circumstances which prepared her for her role, and in order that it may be quite plain that it was no mere chance which assigned to her this place, but a manifest destiny long in pre- paring, this point will be presented somewhat at length. CHAPTER II. KENTUCKY'S GROWTH TOWARDS THE RESO- L UTIONS. The first settlement effected in Kentucky only dates from 1774. The whole of her growh up to 1798 was, therefore, embraced in the brief period of twenty-four years. And in addition to this the dark days of the Revolution almost entirely checked emigration from the older States.' Not only were the calls at home all engrossing, but the Indians, under the stimulus of British excitation, were unusually warlike. Thus the first years re- peated the old story of frontier struggle. The little ground won was gained hardly and retained by desperate means. But the war once over, a perfect tide of emigration swept over the mountains. The termination of a great war always throws upon a country a band of restless spirits, to whose ex- istence excitement has become well-nigh a neces- sity. Some escape or some proper application of this spirit is necessary to the peace and well-being of the State. The veterans of the Revolution found ' A few scattered stockades and block-houses were the only semblance of settlement till about the end of the war, and these were more in the nature of hunters', trappers', and traders' posts than the beginnings of actual settlement. 2 2 Kentucky s Growth it in the exploration and colonization of the west. The story of the efforts in the more northerly States in the settlement of the country north of the Ohio has been frequently told. Though the southern emigration to Kentucky and Tennessee has been less ably dealt with, it has even more of interest attaching to it, and is enlivened by inci- dents full of the spirit of romance. In Kentucky, at the close of the war, the foundation had been laid, the country had been thoroughly explored, and the need was mainly of settlers to occupy and possess the land. Virginia encouraged emigration in every way. Her soldiers received large grants, and many occupied them in person. The North Carolinians, who had been so prominent in early days, having given among other eminent names, those of Boone, her typical pioneer, and of Shelby, her first governor, continued to pour in. Maryland, too, sent a large number of settlers. Except from these three States there were very few emigrants to this country, those from the more northerly States being more prominent than numerous. The growth was surprisingly rapid ; in 1790 there were already more than 73,000 inhabitants, which number had grown to 220,955 i'^ 1800 ; a wonderful exhibit for a period of twenty-six years. In 1798 the number of inhabitants must have approximated 200,000. These were collected in several little groups, not scattered broadcast throughout the land. The most important centres were in Fayette County, about Lexington, in Lincoln County, about Dan- ville, and in Jefferson County, about Louisville. Towards the Resolutions. 23 The population still retained the characteristics of a frontier people. Impatient of restraint, they were rash and adventurous. Placing an exalted value upon personal courage but too often accord- ing praise to recklessness rather than to calm, un- pretentious heroism, they exaggerated personal privileges and repelled any breach of them with unnecessary violence. The love of adventure too often degenerated into a mere thirst for excitement, and the spirit of the backswoods hero into the love of horse-races, cock-fights and games of chance. But on the other side of their nature they were frank, manly, and generous, living with an easy and open- handed hospitality that was very attractive and has passed into a proverb. And in all things, in word and act, they were full of nature's own gift of an untrammelled love of liberty, crude and unformed beyond the nomad spirit sometimes, as when it drove the aged Boone to the wilds of Missouri because he could not fiind room to breathe in Kentucky, but rising with the temper of the times to an intelligent and not-to-be-denied demand of political indepen- dence. Whatever trespassed on it was jealously regarded. Where any thing, in whatever domain, has acquired a special sensitiveness, its guardians do not have to look long ot seek far for an injury. And so it was that within ten years from the first settlement the cry was raised that injustice was being done by Virginia to her District beyond the mountains, that her laws were oppressive to its people and that their personal liberty was curtailed. It was not a groundless cry in some respects. But 24 Kentucky's Growth Virginia was always a cherishing mother to Ken- tucky. The complications did not grow out of con- scious neglect and still less out of deliberate oppres- sion. But the difficulties of communication were very great, the wave of immigration had overpassed the mountains and a great uninhabited interval was thus left to make intercourse slow and difficult, and as yet the road was exceedingly dangerous ; while to delays and casualties growing out of bad roads and mountain passes, the uncertainties of travel through a country invested by roving bands of hostile savages had to be added. Virginia natur- ally sometimes lost sight of the peculiar needs of a part of the State so cut off, so badly represented, and so distinct in its needs, in her legislation. Thus little by little complaints arose affecting all branches of the government, judiciary, legislative, and execu- tive, and at last these complaints grew to a demand for complete independence. The first issue actually raised grew out of military affairs. Kentucky was singularly situated in respect to the Indians. Her territory was almost entirely without permanent settlements. It was a common hunting-ground, abounding in game, and attracting the various tribes from the bordering States to frequent expeditions. Naturally enough collisions were of constant occurrence, and it was almost as much a battle as a hunting-ground, justifying the Indian name which signifies " the dark and bloody ground." This circumstance made it easier to plant the first settlements, since they were made on unoccupied ground, but it made their maintenance Towards the Resolutions. 2 5 much more difficult, because the roving war- parties had not been in any wise dispossessed or reduced in numbers, and made their periodical returns as of old. The only difference, appa- rently, was that instead of tribe slaughtering tribe in their predatory incursions they all now fell upon the white man. It was an anomalous state of affairs, and it is probable that the Virginia authorities did not fully comprehend the situation. A somewhat analogous experience had fallen to the lot of the settlers in the region west of the mountains at the head-waters of the New, Holston, and other rivers, known collectively as " the West- ern Waters," which became the counties of Wash- ington, Fincastle, Bottetourt, and so forth, during the war period, who were the victims of frequent raids from the Cherokee towns just within the depths of the wilderness. But the Indians were then under the manipulation of British and Tory agents, and at other times rarely proved the ag- gressors. Here the Indians made dash after dash and harried the settlers sadly. The only remedy was to be found in retaliation, and the arrangement of the militia under Virginia's laws made this most difficult. The governors disapproved of it, and the federal war department made more than one com- plaint of these expeditions as stirring up trouble and violating treaties. The Kentuckians were in the grasp of a necessity that knew no law, and Colonel Benjamin Logan invited a number of militia officers to an informal conference at Dan- ville in the summer of 1784. Those present de- 26 Kentucky s Growth cided to call a convention in December to discuss the military situation. This convention was of the opinion that Virginia ought to be asked to grant a separation, as otherwise the good of the western counties would be prejudiced ; but fearing a lack of authority, the question was referred to another convention to meet in May, 1785. This convention also found it expedient to refer the situation to an- other, called to meet almost immediately, in August. A request for autonomy was formally made to Vir- ginia and addreses were made to the people setting forth the necessity of separation. During the course of these events a strong party had sprung up, so bent on separation as to be willing to go to the greatest lengths in order to obtain it. The talk even thus early was needlessly violent, and pointed to more vigorous measures than the necessity of the case seems to have demanded. To men of this stamp the news that Virginia, by an act passed in January, 1786, had acceded to the request for a separation was almost a disappointment. This act authorizing the people to erect themselves into a State is gen- erally known as the first enabling act. Its full text was not received until some time after the rumor of its passage had arrived. When it was known, cer- tain conditions contained therein came as a relief to the extreme party. They were simple and proper, but some of them were very unpopular. The principal conditions required, first, the adop- tion of a proper constitution, a participation in the debt of the old State, a recognition of old land- grants, and equal treatment to Virginia land- Towards the Resolutions. 2 7 owners, and that the consent of the Federal Con- gress be obtained before June i, 1787, to receive the new State into the Federation ; and then the separation was to be made perfect upon a day to be named subsequent to September i, 1787. The delay necessitated by the last clause was eminently unsatisfactory to the impatient. They chafed under it, but the temper of the people showed itself as fully en rapport with the Virginia programme, and the situation was quietly accepted. Misunder- standings, however, arose, and Virginia in October of the same year passed another act delaying the separation till January i, 1789, and fixing July 4, 1788, as the date prior to which Congress should consent to receive the new State into the Federa- tion. This was very much more unpopular than the former act, but was complied with at the time by quietly recognizing it as final. Meanwhile the military affairs were growing less important, and the two meetings held in Danville, in 1787, the one in May and the other in September, brought another question into prominence. As the country grew the difficulties that were felt in trans- actions beyond the mountains were greatly increased by the advent of commerce. Transportation of large quantities of goods was both expensive and difficult. And the products of the State were all agricultural, and the imports were all the necessaries of life, except their food. The imports would come to them, but at a high price ; their exports, on the other hand, could with difficulty find a market at any price. At such a time it was only natural that 28 Kentucky's Growth the great system of rivers pouring their waters to the Gulf should be pointed to as the natural avenue of their trade. But Spain owned all the western bank of the Mississippi, and the eastern bank to 31° of north latitude, and guarded with jealous care the traffic on the great western highway. There was good reason to believe that the western possessions of the Federation had a right of use, but this was denied, and Spain had the power to enforce her claims. The sense of the importance of this outlet to Kentucky commerce grew rapidly, and was studi- ously fostered by those over hasty in their desire for independence, and it was not long till this question became the most important one before the people. The man who was to be the chief promoter of this idea in all its phases, and through it to become a most conspicuous- ^gure in the history of the United States, now first appears upon the scene in Kentucky. This man was General James Wilkinson. He was possessed of that precocious genius so com- mon to extraordinary times. He was a captain in the Continental army at eighteen, had several oppor- tunities of distinguishing himself, was an aide-de- camp to General Gates at Saratoga, and finally left the army as Brevet Brigadier-General. He came to Kentucky in 1784 as agent of a Philadelphia trading company, and opened a store in Lexington, it being the third dry-goods store in Kentucky. He was short of stature, but slender in build, elegant in manners, easy in his address, and, although already in the most straightened circumstances, dispensed a free- handed hospitality that gained him many friends. Towards the Resolutions. 29 As time went on he proved himself able, enterprising, and indomitable, and when the opportunity, which was now near at hand, offered, he discovered an eloquence of that declamatory and florid kind which was then so popular. This was the one thing need- ful to give him great political influence, and it for a long time floated him on the highest tide of popu- larity, despite reflections on his truth and probity which became constantly more and more wide- spread. He was an early convert to the necessity of the Mississippi trade to the well-being of Kentucky, and came into the field of politics to press this single question. Kentucky meanwhile overtured Virginia to address Congress on the subject, and in compliance therewith the Virginia delegates were instructed to urge the importance of the free navigation of the Mississippi on Congress. The convention called to meet in July, 1787, promised to be most important, and it was expected that the contest of the two parties would be very sharp. Wilkinson, who seems to have been pe- culiarly obnoxious to his opponents and the fomentor of all discord, suddenly disappeared. The time for the convention came on and still he did not appear. The convention opened and went on with its deliberations in a quiet and unanimity that had been hitherto unknown, and finally ad- journed without a single ripple having broken the smooth surface of their debates. Meantime specu- lation was rife as to what had become of Wilkinson. Various reports were current for a time, but it came to be very generally understood that he had 30 Kentucky s Growth gone to make trial of the Spaniards on the lower Mississippi. It was quite true. Wishing to en- force his plans by an object lesson, he collected a valuable cargo, and dropped down the river. His success was greater than he dared hope for. Elated, he returned in great state, in a " chariot " drawn by four horses and accompanied by a retinue of slaves. Here, indeed, was a transforma- tion. He had departed a bankrupt trader, be re- turned like a merchant prince. Nor was it all empty show, a display on the borrowed money of too trusting friends, as it had been more than hinted that his previous little show had been. He displayed with a flourish of trumpets a commercial treaty with the Spanish authorities at New Orleans, conferring on him the right to export thither all the " productions " of Kentucky free of duty, and offering, on behalf of the Spanish government, nine dollars and fifty cents per hundredweight for tobacco, which had hitherto been sold at two dollars. Here, indeed, was a solid triumph, one that scarcely any one would refuse to share. Despite the glitter of the gold and the jingle of the dollars there was no lack of men to ask the meaning of this transaction, and why it was that while the representatives of Spain in one place re- fused on any conditions to open the Mississippi to trade, in another place others, on behalf of that country, entered into private treaty for the benefit of a single State. The charge was easily suggested and instantly made, that Wilkinson had been bribed by the Spanish government to favor the cause of Towards the Resolutions. 3 1 separation, not only from Virginia but also from the Federation, and he was now nothing less than the paid agent of a foreign power. There is undoubtedly a mystery in this whole affair which renders it impossible to speak with absolute decision on some points. Whatever may have been Wilkinson's designs, and however inti- mate the connection between him and such men as Brown, Sebastian, Innis, and others, they at this time played into each other's hands, and the trend of all their action was towards unlicensed separa- tion from Virginia, with a very suspicious savor of complete severance of all existing ties. Brown was delegate in Congress at this time, and hardly gave a fair impression to his constituents as to the sentiments of that body. He let it be understood that there was strong opposition to receiving Ken- tucky as a new State, especially if Vermont or Maine could not be brought in at the same time ; that Congress was responsible for the proposition in Jay's proposed Spanish treaty, surrendering the navigation of the Mississippi for twenty years ; and furthermore, that Congress, and the East especially, did not care a rush for Kentucky or the river trade. This was bad enough, for in a negative way it left a wrong impression. Nevertheless, this much might have resulted from a bias growing out of prejudices. But he further had a private interview with Don Gardoqui, the Spanish ambassador, and embodied the results of that consultation in the following statement, which was enclosed in a letter to Kentucky : 2,2 Kentucky's Growth "In a conversation I had with Don Gardoqui, the Spanish minister, relative to the Mississippi, he stated that, if the people of Kentucky would erect themselves into an independent State, and appoint a proper person to negotiate with him, he had authority for that purpose, and would enter into an arrangement with them for the exportation of their produce to New Orleans on terms of mutual advantage." ' John Brown also wrote to George Muter, Chief- Justice of Kentucky, a letter setting forth the same views, and adding the thought that it was not to be thought likely that Kentucky would hesi- tate any longer to separate herself from Virginia by the shortest if the illegal way ; and he also says plainly that the idea of Don Gardoqui looked to a separation, and, indeed, was conditioned upon a separation from the United States. Affairs were in this posture when the question of ratification of the Constitution of the United States was finally settled. Each of the seven counties which then composed the district of Kentucky sent two delegates to the Virginia convention. The men who held the extreme views on the subject of independence were very popular, more so than the measures they advocated, when the two could be separated, and they held nearly all the prominent offices, and now formed a great majority of the delegates. On the question of ratification they voted three for and el-even against, Jefferson County casting its whole vote for the Constitution, led by the distinguished Robert Breckinridge ; ' Marshall, vol. i., p. 302. Towards the Resolutions. 33 the other vote was that of Humphrey Marshall, of Fayette, afterwards the Federalist Senator, and the historian of his State. Virginia was the tenth State to adopt the Constitution. Congress hearing of this, which occurred on June 26, 1788, refused on July 3d, the latest possible date, to act on Kentucky's application to be received into the Federation, and relegated the whole matter to the new system which alone it concerned. John Brown left for Kentucky in disgust, and the feeling in that State assumed a more radical aspect. The failure of Congress to take the requisite action, together with further complications between Virginia and Kentucky, now necessitated an eighth convention in order to determine this question. It met in Danville in July, 1789. The contest in Fay- ette was again sharp, but this time the tables were turned, and Wilkinson by the weight of his per- sonal popularity, was elected alone of his party. The other four members were from his opponents, and headed by Colonel Marshall.' Wilkinson read an essay on the Mississippi navigation and its importance to Kentucky, and then said there was another present who could more properly lay the matter before the convention than he could. Thereupon John Brown rose, said briefly that he was assured that if unanimous, Spain was ready to grant almost any terms, and sat down. A motion was made to refer the question of separation without ' The father of Chief-Justice Marshall and uncle of Hum- phrey Marshall, a dear friend of Washington, and the leading spirit among the elder p'ederalists. 34 Kentucky's Growth the antecedent consent of Virginia to the people, and this motion was carried, but by the exertions of Colonel Crockett reconsidered, and the conven- tion ended by agreeing to all that Virginia now de- manded ; and as a result Kentucky passed quietly into the Union in June, 1792. The universal satisfaction which followed the admission into the Union proved sufficiently that the great mass of the people really wanted that con- summation. Other things, indeed, they desired, but this first and most and the others in connection with it. Eight years had elapsed since the question of separation was first brought into public notice. These years had been marked by unceasing agita- tion. Nine conventions had been held for this single purpose, involving frequent elections and public canvasses. Other elections in the natural course of events had occurred, and the election of delegates to the Virginia convention had brought another special discussion before the people. The whole concatenation naturally produced an un- healthy state of mind. Extreme measures had been again and again warmly advocated, visionary schemes fostered and encouraged, addresses and overtures to every branch of government frequent- ly resorted to, so that agitation had come to be almost the normal state of political thought. This was almost universal. Besides this the leaders of the more radical separatists had acquired a violent style of oratory, and a passion for discussion that could not be readily put away, especially when the darling problem of the navigation of the Missis- Towards the Resolutions. 35 sippi was yet unsolved. It was not too much to say that they never would be content till this was se- cured. Kentucky was plainly the most anti-federal ' of States. Her vote had been eleven to three against ratification, and this affords a clue to her I instant opposition to the administration when taken in connection with the Mississippi question. These things combined to make her throw herself into the arms of the French party, and when France planned, through Genet, an expedition against Louisiana, her abandonment to that cause was complete. A Demo- cratic club of American origin, manly and straight- forward in its tone, had long been in existence at Danville. Now a number of Democratic societies on the French model began to spring up. Several were formed in 1793, among them one in Lexing- ton, which proceeded to resolve that " the right of the people on the waters of the Missisippi to its' navigation is undoubted, and ought to be peremp- j torily demanded of Spain by the United States Government." Genet's four agents appeared just at this time and began to prepare for an expedition to the southwest. General George Rogers Clark, whose sun was fast setting in an old age of dissipa- tion, received a commission as " Major-General in the Armies of France, and Commander-in-Chief of the revolutionary legions on the Mississippi." There was much talk, but apparently very little action, the commissioners being more given to braggadocio than v/arlike deeds. Washington no sooner heard of this proposed expedition than he communicated to the government at Frankfort a 36 Kentucky s Growth very full account of the relations then subsisting between this country and Spain, pointing out the efforts being made to secure the use of the river, and the present prospects of success, and closing with an injunction to be on the watch. Says Mr. Randolph : ' " Let this communication then be re- ceived, sir, as a warning against the danger to which these unauthorized schemes of war may expose the United States, and particularly the State of Ken- tucky. Let not unfounded suspicions of a tardi- ness in government prompt individuals to rash efforts in which they cannot be countenanced ; which may thwart any favorable advances to their cause ; and which, by seizing the direction of the military force, must be repressed by law, or they will terminate in anarchy. Under whatever auspi- ces of a foreign agent these commotions were at first raised, the present Minister Plenipotentiary of the French Republic has publicly disavowed and recalled the commissions which have been granted." This letter bore date March 29, 1794. It did not have much effect in quieting the State. Extreme views were expressed in the Democratic Society at Lexington in the middle of May, and a public meeting was called on May 24th, at which the most violent and inflammatory resolutions were passed. The only step taken was the sending of a large part of the letter above mentioned to Mr. John Breck- inridge, the president of the society, to advise him ' Letter and enclosure of copy to John Breckinridge, Pres't Lexington Democratic Society, from Isaac Shelby, Gov'r Kentucky. — Breckinridge Papers. Towards the Resohitions. 37 of the condition of the negotiation, and the atti- tude of the administration toward the West. About this time John Edwards, one of the first Senators, was called up before this society, and in a long series of questions was catechized as to what the Senate had done, especially in secret session, what secret oaths were required of Senators, if any, and what part he had played in the secret drama. Edwards answered in a dignified and manly way, and the society got little satisfaction. In the autumn Washington not being satisfied with the way things were going forward again communi- cated with Governor Shelby. The action of the general government was throughout dignified but firm, while the governor, asserted that if any man had a right to leave the State any number had the same right ; that the State recognized the right of its citizens to bear arms, and could not set up an inquisition to inquire into the intent for which they bore arms ; in short, that the government desired him to arrest respectable citizens on the suspicion of an intent, which was unthinkable. The French schemes gradually fell through, and a return was had to the old channel of a treaty with Spain. In July, 1795, Governor Carondelet sent one Thomas Power to see what could be done. A letter was sent to Judge Sebastian of the court of appeals of the State, who had belonged to the old coterie of Spanish inclinations. It was shown to others, and General Wilkinson who was on the northern frontier was again communicated with. It is unnecessary to attempt to unravel the tortuous 38 Kentucky's Growth maze of these Spanish negotiations. Jhat they existed and that they were renewed in 1797 cannot be denied, although the exact part played by the different actors is as yet uncertain. Whatever may have been the wishes of a few a period was put to any general inclination to such a course by the treaty with Spain in the autumn of 179S, which opened the Mississippi and gave a place of deposit at New Orleans. So great was the reaction caused by the excesses of Genet that the FederaHsts were able to elect Humphrey Marshall to the Senate, and this treaty carried it still further. The great mass of the people had always felt themselves a part of the United States and hesitated to think of any proposition looking towards sepa- ration. They received this as earnest of a desire to legislate for their good, equally with that of the older States, and, though the devotion to the administration was short-lived, and though they seriously opposed -the excise, still cherished an at- tachment to France, and blazed out against the Alien and Sedition laws, the seeds of entire loyalty had been so well sown, that when the election of Jefferson proclaimed the triumph of the extreme Democratic school, they gave an adherence to the Union that has been sincere and enthusiastic to this day. More space has perhaps been given to this ac- count of the growth of public opinion in Kentucky than was necessary. And yet it is very important that it should be kept well in mind, in order to clearly understand the nature of the movement resulting Towards the Resohitions. 39 from the odious acts of 1798. A single further example, while it may be regarded as extreme, will yet throw some additional light on a type of po- litical opinion which was not uncommon. In early ^ times in Indiana a political libel suit was tried in the Franklin Circuit Court. The principal allega- tion was that the defendant had called the plaintiff an old Federalist. The issue was made up on this as an agreed statement of facts, and proof was taken as to whether the offence constituted a libel. The chief witness was an old man named Herndon, who had moved to Indiana from Kentucky. He swore that he considered it libelous to call a man a Federalist ; that he would shoot a man who called him either a horse thief or a Federalist ; that he would rather be called any thing under heaven than a Federalist ; and regarded a thousand dol- lars as the least measure of damages ; that he con- sidered the term as equivalent to Tory, or enemy of his country, and from the earliest days of Kentucky such he believed to have been the common accep- tation of the term. Other witnesses coroborated this testimony and the jury found a verdict to the effect that " to call a man a Federalist was libelous," and fixed the damages at one thousand dollars.' . Such an occurrence seems impossible in days of calm retrospect, but the bitter invectives and un- founded statements that filled the harangues of the time were well calculated to distort the judgment and fill the minds of men with erroneous and totally false ideas. ' " Early Indiana Trials," etc., by O. H. Smith, Senator in Congress, etc., p. 120. 40 Kentucky s Growth. Such was the temper of the people and the times in Kentucky when the news was slowly brought to them of the progress of events at the seat of gov- ernment. It does not require any very acute stu- dent of history to see how the people and the times interacted on each other, nor how fully in accord they were just at this time. The stubble was dry ; with the first breath of flame it was ready to spring into full blaze. It was one great conflagration from the moment that it was known that the Alien and Seditions acts were likely to pass the houses and become laws. It is easy to understand the profound impression made in Kentucky by the Alien and Sedition laws, when the feeling in other and less radically Demo- cratic States is remembered and their past history considered. The very frame of society seemed to be shaken. The sentiment was unanimous that these measures were transgressions of the limits fixed by the Constitution and aimed at the subver- sion of the very foundations of liberty. All the old machinery was at once put in motion, and county after county passed resolutions condemning these laws. Public dinners were held at which I toasts were drunk in honor of France, of the two (j great opponents of these laws, Livingston of New \ York and Gallatin of Pennsylvania, to" whom John Nicholas of Virginia was sometimes added, of the Vice-President, " the bulwark of liberty," and also to the right to the navigation of the Mississippi, to the inviolability of the Constitution, etc., the Presi- dent in all cases being conspicuous by the absence Towards the Resolutions. 41 of any mention of his name. A spirit of opposition was born of the instant, and the advocacy of resist- ance steadily increased. The means and methods of that resistance alone formed subject of debate. The resolutions passed at a meeting of the citizens of the influential county of Clark will give an idea of the opinions expressed in all. They were the first of the series and passed so early as July 24th. First. Resolved, That every officer of the Fed- eral government, whether legislative, executive, or judicial, is the servant of the people, and is amena- ble and accountable to them : That being so, it be- comes the people to watch over their conduct with vigilance and to censure and remove them as they may judge expedient : That the more elevated the office and the more important the duties connected with it may be, the more .important is a scrutiny and examination into the conduct of the officer ; And that to repose a blind and implicit reliance in the conduct of any such officer or servant is doing injustice to ourselves. Second. Resolved, That war with France is im- politic, and must be ruinous to America in her present situation. Third. Resolved, That we will, at the hazard of our lives and fortunes, support the Union, the in- dependence, the Constitution, and the liberty of the United States. Fourth. Resolved, That an alliance with Great Britain would be dangerous and impolitic ; that should defensive exertions be found necessary, we would rather support the burthen of them alone than embark our interests and happiness with that corrupt and tottering monarchy. Fifth. Resolved, That the powers given to the President to raise armies when he may judge neces- 42 Kentucky s Growth sary — without restriction as to number — and to borrow money to support them, without limitation as to the sum to be borrowed or the quantum of interest to be given on the loan, are dangerous and unconstitutional. Sixth. Resolved, That the Alien bill is unconsti- tutional, impolitic, unjust, and disgraceful to the American character. Seventh. Resolved, That the privilege of printing and publishing our sentiments on all public ques- tions is inestimable, and that it is unequivocally acknowledged and secured to us by the Constitu- tion of the United States ; that all the laws made to impair or destroy it are void, and that we will exercise and assert our just right in opposition to any law that may be passed to deprive us of it. Eighth. Resolved, That the bill which is said to be now before Congress, defining the crime of trea- son and sedition and prescribing the punishments therefor, as it has been presented to the public, is the most abominable that was ever attempted to be imposed upon a nation of free men. Ninth. Resolved, That there is a sufficient rea- son to believe, and we do believe, that our liberties are in danger ; and we pledge ourselves to each other and to our country that we will defend them against all unconstitutional attacks that may be made upon them. Tenth. Resolved, That the foregoing resolutions be transmitted to our representative in Congress by the chairman, certified by the secretary, and that he be requested to present them to each branch of the Legislature and to the President, and that they also be published in the Kentucky Gazette. Jacob Fishback, Ch. Attest : R. Higgins, Sec. In Fayette County no sooner was the news of the passage of the acts known than a spontaneous Towards the Resolutions. 43 assemblage gathered in Lexington. Henry Clay- was a young man of twenty-one at the time, newly come from Virginia, almost unknown, and hitherto unheard. The crowd hustled him into a wagon and told him to tell them the state of affairs. It was a splendid opportunity for a born orator, and he ably improved it. His own opinions and those of the crowd closely coincided. Youth gave bold- ness to his words if it detracted from his judgment. So, throwing himself without reserve into his sub- ject, he denounced the hated laws with bold invec- tives, to the eminent satisfaction of his hearers and his own repute. The field wherein this youthful champion first flexed his blade was too important to be left even to such an one. The two most able members of the bar, George Nicholas and John Breckinridge, came to the front at once. A meeting was held and resolutions were passed of the same general tenor with those which emanated from other counties. But George Nicholas was not content with this. After playing a most im- portant part in the Virginia convention which rati- fied the Constitution, this able barrister moved to Lexington and early became prominent both in politics and at the bar. He was a brother of John Nicholas, member of Congress from Virginia, who ably combated these very laws and was prominent in securing their repeal. Another brother was Colonel Wilson Carey Nicholas, the intimate friend of Jef- ferson, senator and governor of Virginia, one of the ablest of the younger generation of Virginia States- men ; and a third, Judge Philip Narbonne Nicholas, 44 Kentucky s Growth of Richmond, Virginia ; while a sister was the wife of Edmund Randolph. Their father was Robert Carter Nicholas, the last Royal and first State Treas- urer of Virginia, and a grandson of old Robert Carter, popularly known as " King " Carter, who owned sixty-three thousand acres in the valley of Virginia, and was president of the council, lieuten- ant-governor, and acting governor of the province in the good old days of the colony. He thus com- bined the factors needful in the States of Kentucky and Virginia, namely, democratic sentiments com- bined with great family influence and distinguished descent. It seems a strange mixture, but it was the one that gave the greatest influence. Nicholas had now retired from active politics, but was still in full practice at the bar, and was a professor in the law department of Transylvania University. He used his private influence freely, and published a card entitled The Political Creed of George Nicholas, in the Kentucky Gazette for August i, 1798. It is as follows : " In vindication of my right as a free citizen of the United States to, and as an exercise of, the in- valuable privilege of speaking and publishing my sentiments of the official conduct of those who have been appointed to administer the government of the United States, and which is in itself so ines- timable that the want of it must render all other earthly things of no value : I do solemnly declare that I do verily believe that the majority of the Legislature of the United States who voted for the act entitled ' An act in addition to the act for the punishment of certain crimes against the United Towards the Resolutions. 45 States,' have violated that clause in the Constitu- tion of the United States which declares that ' Con- gress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to as- semble and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.' " And I do further solemnly declare that I do verily believe, if the President of the United States hath approved the said act, and if any of the judges have by any official transaction endeavored to enforce it, that they have also violated that part of the Constitution." This was followed up by " a letter to a friend in Virginia," which he caused to be printed and very widely circulated, giving a clear expression to his views. Here the active part taken by Nicholas ceased. An error has crept into many of the ablest histories of the United States, to the effect that he introduced the Resolutions into the Ken- tucky House of Representatives in November, 1798, but he was not a member of that body, and the error is one of comparatively recent origin. On the 2 2d of August, a writer who signed himself Philo-Agis, and who voted against the otherwise unanimous resolutions of Clark County, discussed the situation in a letter to the Kentucky Gazette. He explains that his opposition to the action taken in Clark did not arise out of any friendship for the principles enunciated in the Alien and Sedition laws, but out of a hesitancy to adopt the measures proposed by the Resolutions. He then proceeded to express his opinion of the proper course to be 46 Kentucky's Growth pursued, to this effect : " My plan is this : let the legislature of Kentucky be immediately convened by the governor, let them pass resolutions praying for a repeal of every obnoxious and unconstitutional act of Congress." This plan rapidly grew in popu- larity in the main. Not, however, in the call of a special session, though that was widely favored at first, but all eyes by common consent were directed towards the autumn session of the legislature as the proper place for action on these laws. Meanwhile, county after county fell into line with its resolutions, all of them closely alike in tone, most of them in form. A common formula was apparently used, and the greatest unanimity was everywhere appar- ent. Very bitter feeling was engendered in the State as the autumn slipped away, by letters written by over-zealous Federalists in Kentucky to eastern friends, and published by them. Some of these letters were gross misrepresentations, and when they were copied into Kentucky papers the indignation that was stirred up was such that it would have gone hardly with the writers if they had been discovered. Some of the eastern papers also gave garbled ac- counts of the proceedings which came to them as general news. Thus Peter Porcupine gave the fol- lowing account of the meeting at Lexington which adopted the Resolutions. It was published on the 2ist of September, and is an excellent specimen of its class. It will be noticed that it confuses the Clark and Fayette meetings, designating the former by all the references and locating it at Lexington. " At Lexington (Kentucky) a mob assembled on Towards the Resolutions. 47 the 24th of July, with a fellow of the nameof Fish- back at their head ; they got pen, ink, and paper, and to work they went, drawing up resolves to the number of ten, amongst which is the following one, which, for sentiment as well as orthography, is un- _equalled even in the annals of American Democracy. I " ' Resolvd, that thar es sufishunt resen to \ beleev, and wee doe beleev, that our leebeerte es in \ daingur, and wee plege ourselves too echeother, and j too ouer countery, that wee will defende um agenst awl unconstetushonal ataks that mey bee mede upon urn.' " It must have been a very credulous people who could be at all imposed on by such feeble efforts as constitute the class to which this belonged, but party spirit ran equally strong in both directions. George Nicholas had achieved for himself so honorable a reputation that he v/as big game to these scribblers, and was given that meed of scurility which was at that time the penalty of prominence,. In order that the best results might be reaped from the existing agitation, and that Kentucky Re- publicanism might make its protest in the most effective manner, it was necessary that some cham- pion should be fixed on to marshal the forces and lead in the assault. Eminently qualified as George Nicholas was for such a task, he was now in the decline of life, out of office, and, perhaps, person- ally averse to so arduous an undertaking. The desired leader was found in a young and ardent friend of Nicholas, who, after a number of years of separation, had, by his recent removal to Kentucky, reknit and strengthened the old ties, and probably 48 Kentucky s Growth. through Nicholas' influence succeeded him as At- torney-General. This was John Breckinridge. The connection of Mr. Breckinridge with the Kentucky Resolutions, and all the circumstances connected with them, is so intimate, and he has failed so en- tirely to secure the recognition which was his due from those who came after him, that his life and labors will be recounted here somewhat at length. CHAPTER III. JOBN BRECKINRIDGE, THE MOVER OF THE RE SOL UTIONS. John Breckinridge was sprung from a sturdy Scotch-Irish stock. His ancestry, in the earliest days to which they can be traced, lived in Ayrshire, and are found sharing the sentiments for which their friends and neighbors became famous. They were early converted to Protestantism, and became staunch Calvini^s and Covenanters in due course. The wars of the Puritan revolution brought little good to their county or themselves, and between king and commons, Papists and Protestants, Pres- byterians and Independents, and a hundred fac- tional bitternesses, they were sorely crushed and harried. But there was even a worse fate in store for them. The seemingly tireless struggle of years wore itself out, and sank to rest beneath the firm hand of Cromwell, and for a brief space there was a lull in the storm, but when Charles the Second, " that young man that was the late king's son," as Crom- well called him, found himself firmly seated on his throne, he woke once more the old issues. Fear- ing his .vengeance, the heads of the Breckinridge family, together with many others who had played 49 50 John Breckinridge a prominent part in the wars of the Covenant, for- sook their homes and fled to the Highlands. The Breckinridges found a safe retreat in Breadalbane, and though they only remained there a short time, with grateful hearts they remembered those v/ho had befriended them in adversity, and the name of their highland refuge, commemorated for genera- tions in the names of new seats beyond the sea, still sounds like an echo of home to a Breckinridge's ear. When quiet had once more succeeded to ad- versity, the hunted refugees crossed over into North Ireland, and, under the rule of William and Anne, regained their former prosperity to a very great degree. It was probably owing to the en- forced wanderings of these years, which had bred a spirit of unrest, that in 1728 a new emigration began. There is no complete record of those of this family who came to America. A family tradi- tion is to the effect that three brothers came over together with their families, but although this can- not now be certainly ascertained, it is probable that a number of the family came together. Of these was Alexander Breckinridge, and with him came his wife and a numerous family. He fol- lowed the track his countrymen were marking broadly out, westward through Pennsylvania, filling the great central valley, thence trending southward into Virginia, and spreading out in the frontier settlements. He made a brief stay in central Pennsylvania, and then removed to Augusta County, Virginia, and settled upon a tract of land, upon a part of which now stands the town of TTie Mover of the Resolutions. 5 1 Staunton. Augusta was then the frontier county, stretching away with as yet undefined limits, the hazy claims of France and North Carolina being too indefinite to give it any certain boundaries. Here the father of John Breckinridge, Robert Breckinridge, grew to manhood and succeeded to his father's farm. He became a prominent man in his community, being King's Lieutenant of his county, and Colonel of the county levies. He mar- ried first a Miss Pogue, who bore him two sons, Alexander and Robert Breckinridge, and, after her early death, Lettice Preston, the daughter of John and Elizabeth Patton Preston. The Prestons were also from North Ireland, and a family of most marked individuality. The foundation, however, was English, and not Scotch. The family came originally out of Lancashire or the western ridings of York- shire, in both of which locations there were strong and kindred stocks of the name ; and the extraor- dinary resemblance preserved to the present day, both to the Yorkshire and Lancashire branches and the American offshoot, seems to show that the Norfolk family of Prestons is a scion from the same stock. Two of these Prestons crossed over into Ireland with the army of King William the Third, and served about Londonderry, where one of them married and made his home. From him John Preston was descended. John Breckinridge, the second child of this mar- riage, was born on the second day of December, 1760. His early childhood was passed on the old estate, but while he was still a child his father re- 52 yohn Breckinridge, moved farther west and settled near Fincastle, in what is now Botetourt County, where he soon after died in 177 1. His elder sons had grown to manhood, but he left a wife and five young chil- dren, four of whom were sons, upon the very con- fines of civilization, and at the beginning of a period of war and deprivation. The Virginia frontier suf- fered severely throughout the Revolution, being constantly vexed by Tories at home, the inroads of the savages stirred up by British and Tory agents, and the scarcity of all the comforts of life, and it was not till the victory of King's Mountain hurled back the tide of invasion refluent to the sea and quelled the restless Tories in their midst, that any res- pite came to the harassed population along the west- ern lines. During these years John Breckinridge, although only the second son of his mother, as- sumed the chief part in bearing the burden of the family. His character was early developed under the pressure of circumstances, and he cared for the family property, scoured the country as a surveyor, and occupied every leisure moment with eager and well-directed studies ; and the autumn of 1778 found him prepared to enter college. He accord- ingly set out over the mountains and through the wil- derness to the capital town of Williamsburgh, and entered himself at the good old college of William and Mary. Here he continued for two years, tak- ing every advantage of his opportunities, and con- tinuing his surveying in the western wilds in the vacations. He was about to set out from home for his third year at college when he was elected to The Mover of the Resolutions. 53 represent his county in the House of Delegates. This was in the autumn of 1780, when he was only nineteen years of age. He had made no canvass, and was in no true sense a candidate. His election was the result of one of those silent movements when men are brought, under the pressure of events, to select those who can best represent them, with- out regard to the much-pressed claims of office- seekers. No one could have been more surprised at his election than was John Breckinridge himself, but he cheerfully undertook the task imposed upon him, and set out for Williamsburgh. The House of Delegates, however, set aside the election on account of his youth, feeling, no doubt, that the choice was both unprecedented and out of place in a time so full of danger and demanding the most far-sighted counsels. But the hardy frontiersmen had not made their choice without being convinced of its wisdom, and promptly reelected Mr. Breck- inridge. The house again set the election aside, and again the electors cast their ballots as before, and this time the election was acquiesced in, and the young student left his academic pursuits in the one part of the town, and took his seat in the coun- cil hall at the other. The youngest in any body of men is apt to be the object of kindly interest to the older members, especially if he unites to ability and manliness, modesty and deference. Throughout the contest over his seat young Breckinridge had shown the qualities which raised him to eminence in after days, and as soon as he took his seat his quiet, un- 54 John Breckinridge, assuming ways made him a friend of every one. These circumstances early made him a man of no small mark in the distinguished body of which he was a member, and those about him soon came to understand the spell which had caused the hardy mountaineers to press him upon them by the war- rant of three elections. Thus happily he entered upon his political career, and his constituents con- tinued their support, until, in 1785, he left their district and removed to Albemarle County. Dur- ing these years he was often prominent in the House of Delegates. His name appears upon many important committees, and he took a favor- ing part in the legislation of those years, directed towards the development of that part of the State which afterwards became the State of Kentucky. In the intervals of legislative labors he devoted himself to the study of law, and being admitted to the bar in 1785, he resigned his seat at the con- clusion of the session of that year and began his practice in the courts of Charlottesville. In the same year he married Miss Mary Hopkins Cabell, a woman of most brilliant and original mind, and of honorable descent. The Cabells were an old West of England family, living about Frome in Somersetshire. In the old church of St. Nicholas in that town, a memorial window of the Cabell family dating from early Tudor times is yet to be seen, and the elder branch of the family occupying to this day its ancient seats in the neigh- boring counties, still owns and claims its American kindred. The Mover of the Resolutio7is, 55 Charlottesville was near the home of Jefferson, and here, immediately upon the return of that emi- nent statesman from the court of St. Denis, began the friendship between these two men which was to have such a controlling influence on Mr. Breckin- ridge's life. Mr. Jefferson writing of his first visit, to Joseph Cabell Breckinridge, twenty-five years after its occurrence, says : " Our acquaintance arose soon after my return from Europe. He was so kind as to favor me with a visit, and during its short con- tinuance I had opportunity sufficient to discover the large scope of his mind the stores of informa- tion laid up in it, and the moral direction given to both." ' Here too he formed intimate friend- ships with Monroe, John Marshall, the Nicholases, and others who were fast rising at the bar and in politics. The influence of these early ties may be traced throughout his too brief career. In his pro- fession he quickly revealed talents of a high order. Arduous and assiduous in his labors, with a well- trained and logical mind, and a vigorous and manly eloquence, less florid, indeed, than the style then so popular in Virginia, but too earnest and forceful not to command respect, — he rapidly rose to dis- tinction, even challenging, on an important occa- sion, comparison with Patrick Henry, then in the zenith of his fame. However great he was as an orator and an advocate, and however much he may have achieved in this department of his profession, it was rather in its higher walks that he most de- sired to succeed, and for a mastery of legal princi- ' Jefferson to J. C. Breckinridge, June I2, 1815. 56 yohn Breckinridge, pies and the exercise of a vigorous logical faculty his reputation grew steadily throughout his life. One of the earliest, as it was the highest possible, testimonials to his success was given by John Mar- shall, who when he was called to the bench of his native State turned over to Mr. Breckinridge his unfinished business. Mr. Breckinridge had been practising law a lit- tle more than five years when Mr. Jefferson, at that time Secretary of State under Washington, embraced an opportunity to show his confidence in him in a public manner. Kentucky was in an uncertain temper, and the vacant office of attorney needed a capable man to fill it. The President was casting about for such a man, and finally appointed Mr. Breckinridge. Jefferson wrote to him enclosing the commission and urged him to accept it. He said that the President wished it and had heard him spoken of by others than himself in high terms. Such pressure was too flattering to be easily resisted, but this man was of too noble a nature to yield unwisely to honors even when thrust upon him, and he declined the office, while in later years he accepted the somewhat sim- ilar post of Attorney-General of Kentucky when called to it under less outward pressure but with greater promise of usefulness. Soon after this he again turned his attention to politics and was chosen to represent the district composed of the counties of Albemarle, Amherst, Fluvanna, Goochland, Louisa, Spottsylvania, Or- ange, and Culpeper, in the third Congress which The Mover of the Resolutions. 57 assembled in the Autumn of 1793. For a moment it seemed as if he was once more to take his place by the side of the comrades of his early political life, and become a member of that little coterie of eminent Republicans and statesmen, who so ably represented this part of Virginia in the highest posts of State and nation. But the promise was cut short by the demands of his private affairs. In the interval between his election and the assembling of Congress his plans underwent a complete meta- morphosis, and he resigned the seat he had never occupied and set out for Kentucky. He went at once to Lexington, the county-seat of Fayette County, the capital of the State, and the largest and most important town west of Pitts- burg. Two of his brothers and his only sister had already removed to the neighborhood of Lex- ington, and his half-brother Robert Breckinridge, who was at this time a member of the House of Representatives, spent a large part of the year there in attendance on the meetings ef that body. There too was George Nicholas, his friend of many years' standing, now the leader of the Kentucky bar and high in political influence. Besides these there were many others both friends and relatives in and about the flourishing little town. Although he proposed to devote himself mainly to the practice of his profession, he purchased a large tract of land containing about twenty-five hundred acres, lying to the north of the town, about six miles distant. The place received the name of " Cabell's Dale," in honor of his wife, and a law office was built 58 John Breckinridge, and his practice carried on both there and in Lex- ington. His practice and reputation grew rapidly, and he soon found himself among the foremost members of the bar and a leader in politics. He had been in Kentucky only a few months when he was made president of the Democratic Society of Lexington, which in that day was esteemed a very high honor ; and in the legislature which convened late in 1794 he received the Anti-Federalist or Republican vote for the United States Senate. This election coming as it did in the. height of the reaction towards Fed- eralism brought about by the indiscretions of the agents of the French Directory, was practically un- contested, and the vote given to Mr. Breckinridge was merely complimentary ; but it was certainly a high testimony to the esteem in which he was already held in his adopted State, and as the sequel showed, it was an earnest of future support and triumph. The Federalists dropped Edwards, who had been so sharply catechized 4)y the Democratic Society at Lexington, and elected Humphrey Marshall. Mr. Breckinridge no doubt owed the honors so early accorded him very largely to the influence of his brother, General Robert Breckinridge. Al- though only half-brothers, the greatest confidence and affection always existed between them The elder brother, together with his own brother, Alex- ander Breckinridge, had served with courage and distinction in the Virginia line during the Revolu- tion as a company officer ; taken prisoner, they lay for many months in a prison ship in Charleston The Mover of the Resolutions. 59 harbor, and did not obtain their release until the close of the war. Soon after this they plunged into the Western wilderness as surveyors, and finally settled in Jefferson County, Kentucky, near the site of Louisville. Here they soon became prominent. Alexander Breckinridge was elected to the Kentucky convention of 1787, and then moved away. Robert Breckinridge became an officer in the active and efficient militia, which un- der the inefficient policy of Virginia, bore the whole burden of protecting the frontier from In- dian forays, and rose steadily till he became a gen- eral officer. He began his political career in the Virginia House of Delegates, where he represented his county. His next service was in the Virginia Constitutional Convention, where he manfully stood for ratification despite the strong anti-federal senti- ments of the district of Kentucky. His colleague from Jefferson County also voted for ratification, as did Humphrey Marshall, of Fayette, the remain- ing eleven votes being cast against it. His action though unpopular at the time, won him reputation in the future and insured his election to the con- vention which draughted the first constitution of his State and to the first legislature. Upon the assembling of that legislature he was chosen speaker of the house, which post he held by re- peated reelections until he retired from politics at the end of his fourth session. He was thus at the summit of his influence when his brother came to Kentucky, and he left no stone unturned to aid him and further his advancement. 6o yohn Breckinridge, Although John Breckinridge was thus, from the very beginning of his residence in Kentucky, con- nected with poHtics, it was not until December, 1795, that he held office, and the interval was full of activity in the prosecution of his profession. His practice was soon very large, both in civil and criminal law, but he turned his attention particu- larly to real-estate law. This was at once the most important and the most lucrative law business. The colony of Virginia under the crown had con- tained many large and unoccupied grants beyond the mountains. The State of Virginia early began to make others, and after the war immense tracts were given to the soldiery. These grants were made on worthless or mere paper surveys to a large extent, and late comers, finding this to be the case, and that it left many " gores " and corners unconveyed, even while the neighboring lands were covered by several conveyances, obtained " blanquet " grants covering immense tracts, for the purpose of obtaining the unconveyed portions. In addition to the complications naturally incident to such a state of things, further vexations had arisen out of the conflicting claims of Virginia and Kentucky. Virginia, in the acts enabling Ken- tucky to erect herself into a State, had always con- ditioned it upon the recognition of her land grants and the protection of the holders of those lands who remained in the mother State. Bickerings arose on this score, as was natural, from the vexa- tious questions that sprang up. Mr. Breckinridge bent his energies to thrid the mazes of this tangle. The Mover of the Resolutions. 6 1 and with distinguished success. All but the most acute minds found themselves hopelessly at fault before they had progressed far, and the few who succeeded were consequently rewarded by a large practice. Mr. Breckinridge's reputation in this department penetrated to the Virginia capital, and he was asked to take charge of the claims of that State. But the retainer reached him just after he had accepted from Governor Shelby the post of Attorney-General of Kentucky, and he was forced to decline the flattering offer. The election of a governor to succeed Governor Shelby took place on the 17th day of May, 1796. Under the old first constitution, then in force, this was by electors, after the manner of the Federal Constitution. There were properly fifty-seven members of the electoral college, but only fifty- three voted on the day appointed by law. The vote stood: For Benjamin Logan, 21 ; for James Garrard, 17 ; for Thomas Todd, 14 ; for John Brown, i. The electors proceeded to another bal- lot, assuming that there was no election and that a majority vote was necessary to a choice. Todd and Brown were summarily dropped, and Garrard receiving a majority was declared elected. Ben- jamin Logan appealed to Mr. Breckinridge, as Attorney-General, for his construction of the con- stitution upon the point. He declined to answer as Attorney-General, thinking it beyond the scope of his office, but prepared for him an able and elaborate opinion as a lawyer, which was published in the Lexington, Kentucky, Gazette for May 28th, 62 yohn Breckinridge, and led to a sharp controversy. Mr. Breckinridge thought that the electors had plainly exceeded their powers ; that under the constitution Logan was elected, and that even if Logan was not elected that Garrard was certainly not elected, as the article of the constitution having been modelled on the national Constitution the same procedure would be properly applicable if any, although the Ken- tucky article omitted the provision for a reference to the house except in case of a tie, seeming to imply a plurality election. Logan appealed to the senate, by the law made arbiter of gubernatorial contests, but after a sharp fight the senate dodged the matter by- declaring the law which gave them jurisdiction unconstitutional, and Logan's case went by default. But Mr. Breckinridge's argument was never refuted. Governor Garrard was installed on the ist of June, 1796, and in December of that year Mr. Breckinridge resigned his office. During his in- cumbency one thing had been brought home to him with great force. The Kentucky Criminal Code then in use prescribed the death penalty in no less than one hundred and sixty cases, extend- ing it to some of the most trivial offences. The other penalties it prescribed were equally severe. To his broad and humane mind such a code was barbarous and a blot upon the State ; but his judg- ment condemned it even more, on the ground that its very severity was an effectual barrier to its application, since juries shrank from convicting criminals where the punishment was so dispropor- The Mover of the Resolulions. 63 tionate to the offence. A vacancy occurring in the legislative representation from his county he was elected to fill out the term with the avowed purpose of carrying through a thorough revision of the code. He took his seat in December, 1797, and at once addressed himself to this self-imposed task. The hill embodying the desired reforms was passed in the following February, and the death penalty was abolished for all offences with the single exception of murder in the first degree, and a code efficient and yet humane was secured. Thus began the year 1798, a year destined to be of the greatest influence upon his rising fortunes, and filled to overflowing with ceaseless and untiring labors. It was not till past mid-summer that the great questions of the year arose. The first note of resistance to the alien and sedition laws called him to the front, when, side by side with George Nicholas, he began the work of refuting their doc- trines, breaking their force, and securing their re- peal. Active as was his great friend, the leading part was by general consent conceded to Mr. Breckinridge, and with untiring industry and broad statesmanship he gained the best opinion of the leading men in Virginia and Kentucky as to the wisest course to pursue, and introduced the re- sults of his labors into the House of Representatives in the form of the famous Resolutions of 1798. These resolutions meeting with universal applause throughout the State, greatly increased his popu- larity in his own State and with the Republican statesmen throughout the country. His future 64 yohn Breckinridge, preferment now seemed secure, and thenceforth his rise was rapid. He strenuously opposed the means used to bring about the second constitu- tional convention of 1799, but when that conven- tion became a settled fact, he accepted a place in it, and was so active that it has been said that the constitution then produced was more the work of his hand than of any other man's. He was elected to the legislatures of 1799 and 1800, and by both of them he was chosen Speaker. In the former he further distinguished himself by the resolutions of 1799, and in the latter the promise of six years be- fore was fulfilled, and he was elected to the Senate of the United States, to succeed his old competitor, Humphrey Marshall. He was now just forty years of age, and had been in politics twenty years, dur- ing which time he had surely and steadily risen in the eyes of the people with an almost unbroken career of success. Mr. Breckinridge took his seat in the Senate upon the inauguration of his old chief, Mr. Jeffer- son, in March, 1801. He had set out from Ken- tucky taking his whole family with him, but was advised in Virginia to leave them with his relatives in that State, as the much-talked-of " Federal town " of Washington had very ill accommodation to offer the great throng of people crowding thither. He followed this advice, and upon arriving in the town, if it can be dignified with such a name, found it difficult to obtain even a lodging for himself. The new President and the new Congress were alike Republican, the Senate for the first time, and The Mover of the Resolutions. 65 the era of Republican simplicity, which the Presi- dent introduced by riding horseback to his inaugu- ration and on dismounting tying his democratic steed to the fence, was continued by a close atten- tion to business. The "midnight appointments" first fell under the President's hand, and in close connection therewith a bill to repeal the judiciary act of the last session was to be introduced. The reconstitution of the houses consequent upon the new administration and the formation of the Cabi- net left the now dominant party without leaders, and the President's influence was such that whom- soever he should select would be regarded as the leaders of the administration in the two branches of the Congress. Although Mr. Breckinridge now made his first appearance in national affairs, he was intrusted by Mr. Jefferson with the business of introducing the bill to repeal the judiciary act. This extra- ordinary exhibition of confidence and esteem placed Mr. Breckinridge in the front rank of statesmen, and he so well justified the trust by his conduct of this matter, and in his subsequent career in the Senate, that his comrades readily acquiesced in the estimate of the President. The repeal of the judiciary act having been carried through, Mr. Breckinridge was not called upon to act in any matter of first-class importance until the Louisiana purchase came up. As a Kentuckian he naturally was prompt to second a measure which secured finally and completely the darling object of his State. In every way he lent his aid and 66 John Breckinridge, advice to bring the matter to a happy issue. None of the doubts and difificulties that for a time stood in the way of the President affected him. The Mississippi traffic was essential, it was then be- lieved, to the life and development of the States beyond the mountains, and so long as the mouth of that river was in the hands of a foreign power, there was no certainty that the river would remain open. And far-sighted statesmen, even in that early day, had begun to catch some glimpse of the growth of the West through the vistas of the future, and thought that the western bank of the great river ought to be secured at any price. When the pur- chase had been pushed through on the responsi- bility of the President, he became very anxious to know how Congress and the people would regard his action. Congress was summoned to meet early in the autumn. In the meantime he wrote to Mr. Breckinridge, urging him to do what he could towards the desired end, and particularly to impress upon the western members, who could be relied on to support the administration, the necessity of being on hand promptly at the beginning of the session. Mr. Jefferson was very doubtful whether he had any warrant in the Constitution for the step he had taken. After his usual manner in such a dilemma he wrote to a number of his confreres and asked their advice. He finally came to the conclusion that an amendment to the Constitution was neces- sary to make the acquisition of territory good, and expressed a desire to throw himself upon the tender The Mover of the Resolutions. 67 mercies of posterity to justify what he believed to have been a breach, at least of the letter, of the law. Accordingly he sent draughts of an amendment, somewhat differently worded in the several cases, to a number of gentlemen, among whom was Mr. Breck- inridge,' asking their opinion of it. Mr. Breckin- ridge was not to be brought to the view of his leader, and declined to introduce the bill authoriz- ing the submission of such an amendment to the people. After a good deal of doubt and hesitancy on one side, and great firmness and decision on the other, the matter was finally dropped. No amend- ment was offered, and the acquisition of Louisiana passed into a great precedent. Had Mr. Jefferson prevailed and Mr. Breckinridge been overruled, the barrier to the annexation of Texas, and the purchase of the Floridas and Alaska might well have become insuperable. When Congress assembled, the first question after the Senate had ratified the treaty, was to decide what steps were necessary to assert the ownership of Louisiana. Mr. Jefferson came to the conclusion that the warrant of Congress was prerequisite to any occupation of the newly-acquired territory, and Mr. Gallatin, acting for him, wrote to Mr. Breckin- ridge : " I send in the shape of a bill the substance of which [what ?] the President seems to think necessary in order to authorize him to occupy and temporarily govern Louisiana. Will you consult with your friends and decide whether authority be necessary, and if so what form should be given it." ' Vide letters of Jefferson to Levi Lincoln and Madison. 68 yohn Breckinridge, Upon this point there was no diiference of opinion, and the authority was given to the President in an act passed early in the session. The energy, activity and decision which Mr. Breckinridge displayed in this connection, raised him in the estimation even of those with whom he had long been on intimate terms, and when the next election drew near he was mentioned very promi- nently for the Republican nomination for the Vice- Presidency. He never lacked warm and staunch friends, and, as soon as his name was mentioned, they came forward and pressed his claims with convincing effect. Mr. Jefferson, with an honora- ble desire to bind all sections firmly to his growing party, was very unwilling that the candidates for the two principal offices in the country should come from the States of Virginia and Kentucky, so recently one and still closely knit together. It did not need his eminent foresight to see that jealousy would be called forth by such action, and that such jealousy would at once be almost certainly fatal to the party, and not without some foundation. His friends were quick to urge Mr. Breckinridge to forbid that his name should be used, and the distinguished Allan McGruder wrote on Mr. Jef- ferson's behalf and laid the matter plainly before him. Mr. Breckinridge, who lost no opportunity of proving his love and loyalty towards his great leader, readily listened to these considerations and did not permit his name to be presented to the caucus which made the nominations. Neverthe- less, quite a number of votes were cast for him. The Mover of the Resolutions. 69 Levi Lincoln resigned the position of Attorney- General at the close of Jefferson's first term, and Smith of Maryland, then Secretary of the Navy, was appointed to succeed him, in order that Jacob Crowninshield might be given the Navy Depart- ment ; but the latter preferred to represent Massa- chusetts in the House of Representatives and Smith was shifted back to his old post and the Attorney- Generalship was again left vacant, whereupon the President wrote to Mr. Breckinridge, under date of August 1805 : " The office of Attorney-General for the United States being not yet permanently filled, I have an opportunity of proposing it for your acceptance. Both its duties and its emoluments are too well known to you to render it necessary for me to particularize them. I shall with the greater pleasure learn that you accede to my wishes in availing the public of your services, as your geographical position will enable you to bring into our counsels a knowledge of the Western interests and circumstances, for which we are often at a loss and sometimes fail in our desire to promote them. Hoping that in your patriotism, and perhaps in other circumstances, you will find motives suffi- cient to induce you to become a part of our admin- istration, I will pray you, as soon as you shall have been able to form a decision, to be so good as to communicate it to me." Despite the kindly urgency of this letter, Mr. Breckinridge held back. His present position was congenial and he was assured of a continuance in it, and although it could not but be a pleasure to be associated with such men "JO yohn Breckinridge, as formed the Cabinet, he yet seriously doubted if it was not better to continue in the Senate. It was not until some further pressure had been brought to bear upon him that, in December, 1805, he accepted the Attorney-Generalship. His brief life was now nearly spent. A single year in the Cabinet completed his career, and after a painful and protracted illness he died at his home at Cabell's Dale, on the 14th day of December, 1806, aged forty-six years and twelve days. His death caused deep and widespread regret ; for he had, during his brief experience of national politics, achieved a wide and growing fame, and had identi- fied himself so closely with the heads of his party, that the eyes of many already turned to him as to one who was some day to attain even the chiefest places. No better instance of this feeling can be quoted, nor can the permanence of the impression have a better illustration than Albert Gallatin's declaration made many years afterwards in a letter to a friend. Said he : " During the twelve years I was in the Treasury I was anxiously looking for some man that could fill my place there and in the general direction of the national concerns ; for one, indeed, that could replace Mr. Jefferson, Mr. Madi- son, and myself. Breckinridge, of Kentucky, only appeared and died ; the eccentricities of John Randolph soon destroyed his influence." In personal appearance Mr. Breckinridge was tall and striking. He was over six feet in height, of a spare and muscular build, showing in the grace and strength of his figure the effects of the training The Mover of the Resolutions. 7 1 he received in the wilderness in his youth. His hair was a rich chestnut-brown, inclining towards auburn, and his eyes of that peculiar shade of brown that is frequently found with such hair, and variously described as hazel, reddish-brown, or chestnut. His address was always easy and digni- fied, with a touch of gravity, which, in conjunction with his habitual reserve, seemed sometimes to deepen into sternness. But this was only appar- ently true, for his thoughtful exterior covered, but could not long conceal, the humane and gentle heart that governed his every action. He was one of those few men whom every one seems to love, and to whose name when upon the lips of his friends or kinsmen the adjective " beloved " seemed to belong of right. The terms in which his friends wrote to him, the expressions of delight at his ex- pected return, of pain at his departure, would seem to be more appropriate to the letters of a lover to his mistress than to the correspondence between men schooled in the adversity of that period. John Nicholas, for instance, writes to him just after his return to Kentucky from a visit to Virginia, that the pain of parting had been greater than he could bear ; that though he had urged him to come to visit him, the joy of that meeting had been sv/al- lowed up in the later sorrow, and that he was con- strained to pray him to come no more to Virginia unless it was to remain. This is not a solitary in- stance, but one out of many, and the writers were not men to affect a sentiment which they did not feel, but rather that type which, though slow 72 yohn Breckinridge, to melt into feeling, when once they yield to the dictates of their hearts, surprise by the depth, even while they charm by the genuineness, of their emo- tion. His wife, who by her sprightly and ready wit and sparkling conversation had in his lifetime been such a contrast to him, at his death was pros- trated by her grief, and by excess of weeping com- pletely destroyed her eyesight, which had not been strong before, and in a life prolonged more than fifty years she cherished in darkness the memory of him who had been in life the very "light of her eyes," and was at length laid to sleep in the grave where his dust had lain for half a century. Many years ago a eulogy was pronounced upon John Breckinridge, which, though pitched in too oratorical a key to be quoted at length in this place, contains a passage descriptive oC his personal character which is at once too vigorous and too eloquent to be passed over. It is as follows : " Of the private life of this man, I have heard a character still more remarkable. Simple in his manners, grave and lofty in his' carriage, self-denied in his personal habits, and a stranger to the common wants and infirmities of man, no efforts were too great, no labors too immense, no vigils too protracted, no dangers too imminent, no difficulties too insurmountable for his great, concentrated, indomitable energies. And yet this firm and earn- est spirit, and this vigor almost austere, were tem- pered by a gentleness towards those he loved, so tender that the devotion of his friends knew no bounds ; and directed by a frankness and generos- ity towards all men, so striking and absolute, that even those he could not trust trusted him." The Mover of the Resolutions. 73 One of his sons, Robert Jefferson Breckinridge, who, at his death, was a child of six years old, has left it on record that when he had grown to man- hood he sought to learn from the old men who knew him well, something of the father that he could, by the utmost stretch of his memory, but just recall, and that in speaking of him their eyes would fill with tears. Such was the man upon whom the chief part in the adoption of the Kentucky Resolu- tions devolved. In all respects he was worthy of the places he was called to occupy, and the measures he advocated, and even higher praise may be contained in the further dictum, which is no less true, that he never held an office nor advocated a measure which was not worthy of him. His claims to be remembered for what he was and did are great and just, and he is, moreover, worthy of remembrance as the founder of a family which, for achievement, force of intellect, and per- sistence is comparable to the best of American stocks. His sons, Joseph Cabell Breckinridge, John Breckinridge, Robert Jefferson Breckinridge, and William Lewis Breckinridge, were all men of mark either in politics or the Church ; his grandson, John Cabell Breckinridge, holds a memorable place in American history ; while a number of others of his descendants on the bench, at the bar, in Congress, in the ministry, and the army, preserve and perpet- uate the ability and fame of the name, which was honorable when he received it, and to which he and his brothers gave a permanent lustre. CHAPTER IV. THE RESOLUTIONS. The Kentucky legislature assembled on the 7th day of November, 1798. As soon as an organiza- tion had been effected, the governor, James Gar- rard, appeared in person and made the opening address, according to the custom of that day. He called attention to the various questions that de- manded legislation, and finally, after a rhum^ of the political situation and the prominent position occupied therein by the late legislation in Congress, especially as to aliens and sedition, he concluded with the following recommendation : " Permit me then to suggest to you the expedi- ency of your declaring fully, in behalf of yourselves and of the respectable people whom you represent, your firm attachment to the Federal Constitution, and your determination to support the general gov- ernment in every measure which is authorized by the commission under which it acts, whilst at the same time, by entering your protest against all unconstitutional laws and impolitic proceedings — tempering the bold firmness of freemen with that moderation which indicates a love of tranquillity, — ■ you will raise high the character of your country in 74 The Resolutions. 75 the esteem of those whose good opinion you should be solicitous of acquiring, and convince the friends of liberty and of man that whatever may be the fate of their cause in other countries, Kentucky, remote from the contaminating influence of European politics, is steady to the principles of pure republi- canism, and will ever be the asylum of her perse- cuted votaries.'" A committee of three was appointed to consider this address and report a reply back to the House. Mr. John Breckinridge, of Fayette County, was one of this committee, and be proceeded at once to give notice that he would, on " to-morrow, move the House to go into a committee of the whole on the state of the commonwealth on that part of the gov- ernor's address which relates to certain unconstitu- tional laws passed at the late session of Congress, and that he would then move certain resolutions on that subject." ' In accordance with this notice, the House re- solved itself into a committee of the whole on the 8th, with Mr. Caldwell in the chair, and a con- catenation of resolutions were introduced by Mr. Breckinridge as follows : I. Resolved, That the several states composing the United States of America, are not united on the principle of unlimited submission to their General Government ; but that by compact under the style ' The (Frankfort, Kentucky,) Palladium, November 13, 1798. This passage, alike remarkable as being a single sen- tence and for the number of its subordinate clauses, its punctuation, and its diction, is a fair sample of the whole address. '' Idem. 76 The Resolutions. and title of a Constitution for the United States and of amendments thereto, they constituted a General Government for special purposes, delegated to that Government certain definite powers, reserving each state to itself, the residuary mass of right to their own self Government ; and that whensoever the General Government assumes undelegated powers,, its acts are unauthoritativej void, and _of_n^ force : Thaf to this compact each state acceded as a state, and is an integral party, its co-states forming as to itself, the other party : That the Government created by this compact was not made the exclusive or final judge of the extent of the powers delegated to itself ; since that would have made its discretion, and not the constitution, the measure of its powers ; but that as in all other cases of compact among p,arties havinglio~cbmmon Judge, each party has art equal nghtlo judge for itself, as well of infractions as of the mode and measure of redress. IT.Hesolved, That the Constitution of the United States having delegated to Congress a power to punish treason, counterfeiting the securities and current coin of the United States, piracies and felonies committed on the High Seas, and offences against the )av/s of nations, and no other crimes whatever, and it being true as a general principle, and one of the amendments to the Constitution hav- ing also declared, " that the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor pro- hibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people," therefore also the same act of Congress, passed on the 14th day of The Resolutions. 77 July, 1798, and entitled " An act in addition to the act entitled an act for the punishment of certain crimes against the United States ; " as also the act passed by them on the 27th day of June, 1798, en- titled " An act to punish frauds committed on the Bank of the United States " (and all other their acts v/hich assume to create, define, or punish crimes other than those enumerated in the constitution) are altogether void and of no force, and that the power to create, define, and punish such other crimes is reserved, and of right appertains solely and exclusively to the respective states, each within its own Territory. III. Resolved, That it is true as a general principle, and is also expressly declared by one of the amend- ments to the Constitution, that " the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively or to the people ; " and that no power over the freedom of religion, freedom of speech, or freedom of the press, being delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited j^-^sy it to the states, all lawful powers respecting the ;i ^same did of right remain, and were reserved to the i tstates, or to the people : That thus was manifested • itheir determination to retain to themselves the right vpf judging how far the licentiousness of speech and of the press may be abridged without lessening their useful freedom, and how far those abuses which cannot be separated from their use, should be toler- ated rather than the use be destroyed ; and thus also they guarded against all abridgment by the 78 The Resolutions. United States of the freedom of religious opinions and exercises, and retained to themselves the right of protecting the same, as this state by a Law passed on the general demand of its Citizens, had already protected them from all human restraint or inter- ference : And that in addition to this general principle and express declaration, another and more special provision has been made by one of the amendments to the Constitution which expressly declares, that " Congress shall make no law respect- ing an Establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press," thereby guarding in the same sentence, and under the same words, the free- dom of religion, of speech, and of the press, inso- much, that whatever violates either, throws down the sanctuary which covers the others, and that libels, falsehoods, and defamation, equally with heresy and false religion, are withheld from the cognizance of federal tribunals. That therefore the act of the Congress of the United States passed on the 14th day of July, 1798, entitled " An act in addition to the act for the punishment of certain crimes against the United States," which does abridge the freedom of the press, is not law, but is altogether void and of no effect. IV. Resolved, That alien friends are under the jurisdiction and protection of the laws of the state wherein they are ; that no power over them has been delegated to the United States, nor prohibited to the individual states distinct from their power over citizens ; and it being true as a general princi- The Resolutions. 79 pie, and one of the amendments to the Constitution having also declared, that " the powers not dele- gated to the United States by the Constitution nor prohibited by it to the states are reserved to the states respectively or to the people," the act of the Congress of the United States passed on the 22d day of June, 1798, entitled "An act concerning aliens," which assumes power over alien friends not delegated by the Constitution, is not law, but is al- together void and of no force. V. Resolved, That in addition to the general prin- ciple as well as the express declaration, that powers not delegated are reserved, another and more spe- cial provision inserted in the Constitution from abundant caution has declared, " that the migration or importation of such persons as any of the states now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the year 1808." That this Commonwealth does admit the migration of alien friends described as the subject of the said act concerning aliens ; that a provision against prohibiting their migration, is a provision against all acts equivalent thereto, or it would be nugatory ; that to remove them when migrated is equivalent to a prohibition of their migration, and is therefore contrary to the said provision of the Constitution, and void. VI. Resolved, That the imprisonment of a person under the protection of the laws of this Common- wealth on his failure to obey the simple order of the President to depart out of the United States, as is undertaken by the said act entitled " An act con- 8o The Resolutions. cerning Aliens," is contrary to the Constitution, one amendment to which has provided, that " no person shall be deprived of liberty without due process of law," and that another having provided " that in all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a public trial by an impartial jury, to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation, to be confronted with the witnesses against him, to have compulsory process for obtain- ing witnesses in his favor, and to have the assist- ance of counsel for his defence," the same act un- dertaking to authorize the President to remove a person out of the United States who is under the protection of the law, on his own suspicion, with- out accusation, without jury, without public trial, without confrontation of the witnesses against him, without having witnesses in his favor, without de- fence, without counsel, is contrary to these provi- sions also of the Constitution, is therefore not law but utterly void and of no force. - That transferring the power of judging any per- son who is under the protection of the laws, from the Courts to the President of the United States, as is undertaken by the same act concerning Aliens, is against the article of the Constitution which pro- vides, that "the judicial power of the United States shall be vested in courts, the Judges of which shall hold their offices during good behavior," and that the said act is void for that reason also ; and it is further to be noted that this transfer of Judiciary power is to that magistrate of the General Govern- ment who already possesses all the Executive, The Resolutions. 8 1 and a (qualified] negative in all the Legislative powers. ~ VII. Resolved, That the construction applied by the General Government (as is evinced by sundry of their proceedings) to those parts of the Constitution of the United States which delegate to Congress a power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises ; to pay the debts, and provide for the com- mon defence, and general welfare of the United States, and to make all laws which shall be neces- sary and proper for carrying into execution the powers vested by the Constitution in the Govern- ment of the United States, or any department thereof, goes to the destruction of all the limits prescribed to their power by the Constitution — That w ;■ 0. Kentucky Resolutions of I'/ g8. 141 however, it appears in Jefferson's printed works as to " Nicholas, Esq." How this error arose has never been explained. It can only be conjectured that by some accident the editor had omitted the caption, and undertook to supply it when the manuscript itself was not at hand. To one who was acquainted with the intimate connection of the Nicholases with the affairs of Kentucky in '98 and '99, and who had in close juxtaposition to this letter a number of letters to W. C. Nicholas on the general subject,' the inference that " your father " was George Nicholas, and that this letter had been addressed to one of his sons might have appeared little less than certain. Unless very con- versant with the history of the movement against the alien and sedition laws, he would not at once call to mind the name of Breckinridge ; for John Breckinridge had been dead many years, and his once famous name was almost forgotten. The facts in the case show beyond a shadow of a doubt that the letter was addressed to J. Cabell Breckinridge, and, although this was at one time a matter of some doubt, Mr. Jefferson's papers so credit it. Therefore the " Nicholas, Esq." caption must have sprung from pure conjecture." Though, like many other things founded on fancy and not on fact, the editor's conclusion was wrong, that did not prevent its gaining credence, even Mr. Madison being misled by it in later ' See the order of these letters in Jefferson's published works. " The Nation, May 5, 1887, article by Miss Sarah Nicholas Randolph : " New Light on the Resolutions of 1798." 142 The Authorship of the years. But the most remarkable fact connected with this error is that some of the descendants of George Nicholas, being themselves persuaded by the apparent evidence offered by Mr. Jeffer- son's printed works, claimed for him the part that was really played by Mr. Breckinridge, in the face of the most convincing proof to the con- trary. For it must be remembered that, however much the true state of the case was lost sight of elsewhere, and whatever errors crept into the most reliable histories, in Kentucky it never ceased to be known and remembered that Mr. Breckinridge was the chief mover in this matter. There is no ques- tion that the Nicholases were perfectly honest in all that they said and wrote, nor is there any doubt that so long as he lived George Nicholas shared the inmost counsels of the actors in this little drama. But they seem to have acted under a mistaken zeal for what they fancied were the rights of their great and long-deceased kinsman, and upon convictions which, though sincere, were not according to knowledge. It was first claimed that the " Nicholas " letter was written to Samuel Smith Nicholas, one of the sons of George Nicholas. This claim was made in an obituary notice of Samuel S. Nicholas, in the Cincinnati Comtnoner^ towards the end of 1869. In January, 1870, Judge Richard Hawes, the husband of the youngest daughter of George Nicholas, in a lengthy communication to the same journal," denied that ' The Cincinnati Commoner, December, 1869. ^Ibid., January, 1870. I am indebted to Col. R. T. Durrett for a MS. copy of this letter, as I have been unable to find a file of this journal. Kentucky Resolutions of 17 g8. 1 43 statement, and gave what was then the theory of the Nicholas family upon this point. He asserted that Nelson Nicholas, an elder brother of Samuel S. Nicholas, had been educated by his uncle, Wilson Carey Nicholas ; and that while he was an inmate of his uncle's house, he had heard from him that Jefferson had drawn the great Resolutions ; and that as executor of his father, George Nicholas, he had come into possession of a letter from Mr. Jefferson to his father, enclosing the Resolutions and asking that, as he was not a member of the Kentucky legislature, he would entrust them to some reliable member for presentation to that body. Judge Hawes claimed further that to Nelson Nicholas had been written the " Nicholas " letter, and that he (Judge Hawes) had himself seen it. The letters were said to have been lost. The statement that the Nicholas papers contained a letter from Jefferson to George Nicholas, asking him to get some trustworthy member of the legislature to introduce a series of Resolutions enclosed, was also made by Judge Hawes as early as 1833, in a letter to the editors of The National Intelligencer, of Washington, D. C.' These claims are exceedingly difficult to deal with. No one can impeach the honesty with which they were made. But the letters have utterly per- ished, and the remaining evidence appears to dis- credit the claims, and to suggest that there must be some mistake in Judge Hawes' account. ' This letter is now in the possession of Pres. James C. Welling, of Columbian University, Washington, D. C, to whom I am indebted for a copy. 144 The Authorship of the The letters of Mr. Breckinridge and Mr. Jeffer- son, and the whole chain of events connected with them, the motives and the allusions in them, are all so entirely supported by contemporaneous history, that they seem to put the matter on a sound basis. Judge Hawes' letter, on the other hand, is wanting in accuracy, both on important matters and in details. Nelson Nicholas may have had a copy of the letter to Mr. Breckinridge, which, as it bore on its face no evidence of the person to whom it was addressed, and the address on the back would not unnaturally be omitted, might well have been mis- leading. If Mr. Jefferson's editor committed this error. Judge Hawes would have far greater excuse for repeating it. The existence of the other letter seems to be even more clearly refuted by the facts hereafter to be detailed. It must ever be regretted that any cause of controversy should have arisen between the descendants of men who loved each other so well, and in life knew no difference of senti- ment ; and the misapprehensions which have given rise to the dispute and controversy over these matters, were most unfortunate. Thus Mr. Jefferson's letter, which it was so con- fidently believed would forever vindicate Mr. Breckinridge's title to the authorship of the Resolu- tions of 1798, led incidentally to a controversy which did much towards taking from him the entire credit, both as author and advocate. The state- ments in this letter in regard to the draughting of the resolutions, moreover, seemed to deny what Mr. Breckinridge's friends had always claimed for Kentucky Resolutions of i^qS. 145 him — namely, that he was the author of the resolu- tions, and these statements were received by them with great bitterness of spirit, and they maintained, and still maintain, that upon a full investigation of all the facts, it is true, notwithstanding Mr. Jeffer- son's declarations, that he was the responsible au- thor. The Nicholases, too, have taken issue with the statements of this letter, claiming that it does not do justice to Colonel Wilson Carey Nicholas' part in the movement. Hence a controversy has arisen, compared to which that occasioned by the error of the editor of Mr. Jefferson's works was as nothing. Almost every fact stated by Mr. Jeffer- son in the letter has been questioned, and almost every position controverted. Mr. Breckinridge's friends have assailed Mr. Jefferson's claim that he wrote the resolutions ; the Nicholases have gone further, and have argued ' that Jefferson's own letters indicate that the matter was brought to his notice, that the project was formed and the plans perfected, by Colonel Nicholas, who only sought the advice and approval of the Vice-President, and have denied that the alleged " conference " ever occurred, upon the ground of certain inferences from their correspondence at the time. There are undoubted lapses of memory in this letter, such as the giving of the date of the letter replied to as Dec. 19th, instead of Nov. 19th, and the anticipation of Mr. Madison's election to the Virginia legislature by a ' The Nation, May 5 and June 2, 1887. " New Light on the Resolutions of 1798." Miss Randolph, and reply by E. D. Warfield. 146 The Authorship of the year ; and these are referred to and dwelt upon as evidences of the feebleness of Mr. Jefferson's mem- ory at the time of writing it. The facts, so far as known, however, do not make a very clear case, either for the one side or the other ; but, as they are in themselves interesting and important, they will be set forth in outline before any attempt to state a conclusion is made. Upon the adjournment of Congress in mid-sum- mer, 1798, the Vice-President returned to Monti- cello. Mr. Breckinridge, after taking an active part in directing the outcries against the odious acts of Congress late in July and early in August, set out isoon after on a visit to his old home in Virginia. (The record of his doings, as recorded in his letters that have been preserved, is lamentably small. It is certainly known that he saw John Nicholas and Wilson Carey Nicholas ; that he saw Jefferson, with whom he had been on such intimate terms, is hardly open to question, since he was at Charlottesville when Mr. Jefferson was at Monticello. It is not until October that the letters now extant begin to substitute solid facts for the misty forms of the realms of conjecture. The first letter is from Jef- ferson to W. C. Nicholas, and in it he says : " I entirely approve of the confidence you have reposed in Mr. Breckinridge, as he possesses mine entirely. I had imagined it better these resolutions should have originated with North Carolina, but perhaps the late changes in their representation may indi- cate some doubt whether they would have passed. In that case it is better they should come from Kentucky Resolutions of I ^g8. lA^"] Kentucky. I understand you intend soon to go as far as Mr. Madison's. You know I have no secrets for him. I wish him, therefore, to be consulted as to these resolutions." The next letter, from W. C. Nicholas to John Breckinridge, bearing date five days later, October lo, 1798, communicates the contents of the foregoing letter, and also some fur- ther matter derived from Jefferson in another letter or a personal conference. Says Colonel Nicholas : " I have had a letter from our friend. He approves what I have done. He says you possess his confi- dence entirely — that he thinks the business had better commence in your State. He regrets that he missed the visit that you and your brother in- tended him, though he is sensible of the delicacy and motives of the omission. He suggests nothing further upon the subject ; indeed, I think that every thing is said that can be in the paper that you have. I shall be impatient to hear from you." The third letter is from Caleb Wallace, a member of the Kentucky legislature, and written from Lex- ington, Ky., under date of November sth, to John Breckinridge, at Frankfort, whither he had thus early gone to prepare for the coming campaign. It is evident that the letter to which it is an answer could not have been written later than the early part of October." After congratulating him on his return to Kentucky, Mr. Wallace goes on to say : ^ " The letter which you sent me from Botetourt ' The Nation, May 5, 1787- 2 The Nation, June 2, 1887. s The Breckinridge papers, MS. 148 The Authorship of the lay in one of my neighbor's houses two or three weeks, so that I did not receive it until a few days ago ; so that I have not had time to pay attention to the request made in your letter ; indeed, I do not think myself capable of draughting any thing of so great importance. I think that the main points to which the legislature ought to attend are the Alien and the Sedition laws, and the laws respecting raising regulars and volunteers — all of which are certainly unconstitutional in the most dangerous instances ; the first affecting the trial by jury, the second the freedom of the press — the two great palladiums of liberty. But I think the last is the most highly dangerous, because if in the present instances the Executive does not abuse the powers with which Congress has invested him, it will be- come a popular precedent for giving the same powers on some future occasion. I feel great anxiety that the conduct of our legislature should be firm, spirited, and constitutional." From these letters it appears that the little group mentioned in Mr. Jefferson's letter — himself, Col. W. C. Nicholas, John Breckinridge, and Mr. Madi- son, were all more or less intimately connected with the plan for introducing a protest against the alien and sedition laws into the Kentucky legislature. It further appears that Mr. Jefferson had at first desired to have the protest come from North Caro- lina, but had been overruled in this in favor of Kentucky ; and on Oct. 5 th concedes to the power that overruled him, whatever it was, its wisdom, since the autumnal election returns evidenced a Kentucky Resolutions of 11 g8. 149 change of opinion in North Carolina, which ren- dered it doubtful if the resolutions could be gotten through that legislature. The " entire confidence " in regard to the matter under discussion, moreover, points to an intimate knowledge of each other's views, — to a knowledge, so intimate, indeed, that it could scarcely have sprung from any thing less that a full discussion face to face ; while the allusion to a prevented visit of Mr. Breckinridge's, which at first sight might seem to indicate that he had not seen Mr. Jefferson at all, on reflection seems rather to indicate that " the delicacy and motives for its omission " were nothing else than an adoption of Mr. Jefferson's well known caution, and an un- willingness to appear so frequently at Monticello, lest when he should bring forward the resolutions in November, men should at once recall his fre- quent visits and connect the Vice-President with the anti-administration action of Kentucky. The visit omitted, too, could only have been of the most formal kind, for, as has already been mentioned, James Breckinridge, the brother of John Breckin- ridge alluded to, was a strong Federalist, and was destined soon after to lead the opposition to the Virginia Resolutions. All of these facts and circumstances point so strongly towards a consultation of at least Jefferson, Nicholas, and Breckinridge on the subject of resolu- tions protesting against the laws of the late Con- gress, that Mr. Jefferson's testimony that such a consultation took place is powerfully corroborated. The cause of the original abandonment of North / 150 The Authorship of the Carolina in favor of Kentucky as the first tourney- field cannot be so well explained, moreover, by any Other hypothesis than that after it had taken form Mr. Breckinridge appeared fresh from ardent Ken- tucky mass-meetings, full of the idea of a legislative protest, and eager to try his youthful prowess in his own State in a cause so enthusiastically popular ; and that he carried his point, and won for Ken- tucky the privilege of opening the first great ques- tion of constitutional construction. It is very hard to see how all this evidence of a consultation is to be set aside in favor of any other theory. It has been sharply assailed, and the evi- dence for it keenly criticised. A very ingenious theory advanced by Miss Sarah Nicholas Ran- dolph,' a descendant of both Col. Nicholas and Mr. Jefferson, suggests that no such meeting ever took place, but that this supposed meeting was the out- growth in Mr. Jefferson's failing memory of the reminiscences of the meeting which he proposed in his letters of August," 1799, to Colonel Nicholas that they should hold, together with Mr. Madison, with regard to the appropriate action for Kentucky to take in the ensuing autumn session of its legisla- ture. This meeting did not take place, owing to Colonel Nicholas' early departure for Kentucky to settle the affairs of George Nicholas, then recently dead. This theory is far too tenuous. No memory once robust can be thought thus to have confused a supposed and a proposed meeting, when on the former hung the deepest things of statecraft. And ' The Nation, May 5, 1887. ^ Jefferson's Works, vol. iv. Kentucky Resolutions of lygS. 151 Mr. Jefferson's memory was robust, in the main, till the end. But even more true is it that, however men may forget the details of any event, the ante- cedents, the attendant circumstances, the order of events, and the words that were spoken, they hold fast to the event itself. And this consulta- tion was important in itself, and of ever growing importance in its results. The logic of events, no less than the logic of thought, is against this theory, and the laws of evidence, also, allow to Mr. Jefferson's direct evidence on the actual happening of the conference a weight that only a highly probable chain of circumstantial evidence could overcome. Mr. Jefferson says that Nicholas and Breckin- ridge pressed him to sketch resolutions to be intro- duced into the Kentucky legislature, and that he " drew and delivered " them to Mr. Breckinridge. What, then, were the resolutions thus drawn ? Were they the ones introduced by Mr. Breckin- ridge and passed by the legislature of Kentucky ? The unnegatived inference is, of course, that they were, but there is reason to believe that they were not. After Mr. Jefferson's death no copy of the Ken- tucky Resolutions as passed was found among his papers, which, in view of the extraordinary care he gave to the preservation of important papers, is quite remarkable. But there was found a draught of certain resolutions in some respects very like the Kentucky Resolutions, and in others very dissimilar. "Two copies of these resolutions are preserved 152 The Authorship of the among the manuscripts [of Mr. Jefferson], both in his own handwriting. One is a rough draught, and the other very neatly and carefully prepared." ' These resolutions have generally been spoken of as the " Jefferson draught," in contradistinction to the Kentucky Resolutions actually adopted, and in order that the two forms may be compared, these resolutions are here reproduced in a foot-note.' It will be observed that this draught differs from the true Kentucky Resolutions ° in a number of ' Jefferson's Works. Edition 1856, p. 464, vol. ix. Note by editor. ' See page 75, ante. ' The Jefferson Resolutions. 1st. Jiesolved, That the several States composing the United States of America are not united on the principle of the un- limited submission to the General Government ; but that by a compact under the style and title of a Constitution for the United States, and of amendments thereto, they constituted a General Government for special purposes, delegated to that Government certain definite powers, reserving, each State to itself, the residuary mass of right to their own self-government, and that whensoever the General Government assumes undele- gated powers its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force ; that to this compact each State acceded as a State, and is an in- tegral party, its co-States forming as to itself the other party ; that the Government created by this compact was not made the exclusive or final judge of Ihe extent of the powers dele- gated to itself ; since that would have made its discretion, and not the Constitution, the measure of its powers ; but that, as in all other cases of compact among! powers' having no common judge, each party has an equal right to judge for itself, as well of infractions as of the mode and measure of re- dress. 2d. Resolved, That the Constitution of the United States having delegated to Congress a power to punish treason, counterfeiting the securities and current coin of the United States, piracies and felonies committed on the high seas, and offences against the laws of nations, and no other crimes what- sover, and it being true as a general principle, and one of the amendments of the Constitution having also declared, that "the powers not delegated to the United States by the Con- stitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to Kentucky Resolutions of I ygS. 153 minor points in the first seven resolutions, only one or two of these alterations being of any material significance, but in the eighth and ninth resolutions the States respectively, or the people " ; therefore the act of Congress, passed on the 14th July, 1798, and entitled "An act in addition to the act entitled an act for the punishment of certain crimes against the United States " ; as also the act passed by them on the — day of June, 1798, entitled " An act to punish frauds committed on the Bank of the United States," (and all other their acts which assume to create, define, or punish crimes other than those so enumerated in the Constitution,) are altogether void and of no force, and that the power to create, define, and punish such other crimes is reserved, and of right appertains solely and exclusively to the respective States, each within its own territory. 3d. Resolved, That it is true as a general principle and is also expressly declared, by one of the amendments to the Constitution, that the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, were reserved to the States respectively, or to the people ; and that no power over the freedom of religion, freedom of speech, or freedom of the press being delegated to the United States, by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, all lawful powqrs respecting the same did of right remain, and were reserved to the States or the people ; that thus was manifested their determination to retain themselves the right of judging how far the licentiousness of speech and of the press may be abridged without lessening their useful freedom, and how far those abuses which cannot be separated from their use should be tolerated, rather than the use be de- stroyed ; and thus also they guarded against all abridgment by the United States of the freedom of religious opinions and exercises, and retained to themselves the right of protecting the same ; as this State, by law passed on the general demand of its citizens, had already protected them from all human restraints or interference, and that in addition to this general principle and express declaration, another and more special provision has been made by one of the amendments to the Constitution, v/hich expressly declares that " Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or pro- hibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech or of the press ; " thereby guarding in the same sen- tence and under the same words the freedom of religion, of speech, and of the press ; insomuch that whatever violates either, throws down the sanctuary which covers the others, 154 The A tdhorship of the there is the most radical difference. The eighth in the Jefferson draught is long and declamatory, while the ninth is a short directory clause, providing that and that libels, falsehood, and defamation, equally with heresy and false religion, are withheld from the cognizance of federal tribunals, that therefore the act of Congress of the United States, passed on the 14th day of July, 1798, entitled "An act in addition to an act entitled an act for the punishment of certain crimes against the United States," which does abridge the freedom of the press, is not law, but is altogether void and of no force. 4th. Resolved, That alien friends are under the jurisdiction and protection of the laws of the State wherein they are ; that no power over them has been delegated to the United States ; nor prohibited to the individual States, distinct from their power over citizens ; and it being true as a general principle, and one of the amendments to the Constitution having also declared, that " the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are re- served to the States respectively, or to the people," the act of the Congress of the United Stares, passed on the — day of July, 1798, entitled "An act concerning aliens," which as- sumes powers over alien friends not delegated by the Consti- tution, is not law, but is altogether void and of no force. 5th. Resolved, That, in addition to the general principle, as well as the express declaration, that powers not delegated are reserved, another and more special provision, inserted in the Constitution from abundant caution, has declared that " the migration or importation of such persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the year 1808 ; " that this commonwealth does admit the emigration of alien friends, de- scribed as the subjects of the said act concerning aliens ; that a provision against prohibiting their migration, is a provision against all acts equivalent thereto, as it would be nugatory ; that, to remove them when emigrated, is equivalent to a pro- hibition of their migration ; and is, therefore, contrary to the said provision of the Constitution and void. 6th. Resolved, That the imprisonment of a person under the protection of the laws of this commonwealth, on his fail- ure to obey the simple order of the President to depart out of the United States, as is undertaken by the said act, entitled " An act concerning aliens," is contrary to the Constitution, one amendment of which has provided that " no person shall be deprived of liberty without due process of law ; " and that, Kentucky Resolutions of lygS. 155 a committee created by the eighth should hold certain communications and report at the next session of the legislature ; while the eighth in the another having provided that, " in all criminal prosecutions the accused shall enjoy the right to x public trial by an im- partial jury, to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation, to be confronted with the witnesses against him, to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have assistance of counsel for his defence," the same act, undertaking to authorize the President of the United States to remove a person of the United States who is under the protection of the law, on his own suspicion, without accusation, without jury, without public trial, without confrontation pf the witnesses against him, without hearing witnesses in his favor, without defence, without counsel, is contrary to these provisions, also, of the Constitution ; is, therefore, not law, but utterly void and of no force ; that, transferring the power of judging any person, who is under the protection of the law, from the courts to the President of the United States, as is undertaken by the same act concerning aliens, is against the article of the Constitution which pro- vides that " the judicial power of the United States shall be vested in courts, the judges of which shall hold their offices under good behavior " ; and that the said act is void for that reason also ; and it is further to be noted that, this transfer of judiciary power is to that magistrate of the General Govern- ment who already possesses all the executive, and a negative, on all the legislative, powers. 7th. Resolved, That the construction applied by the Gen- eral Government (as is evidenced by sundry of their proceed- ings) to those parts of the Constitution of the United States, which delegate to Congress a power ' ' To lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises, to pay the debts and pro- vide for the common defence and general welfare of the United States, and to make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the powers vested by the Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any department or offices thereof," goes to the destruction of all the limits prescribed to their power by the Constitution ; that words meant by that instrument to be subsidiary only to the execution of limited powers, ought not to be so construed as themselves to give unlimited powers, nor a part to be so taken as to destroy the whole residue of that instrument ; that the proceedings of the General Government under color of these articles, will be a fit and necessary subject of rcvisal 1 5 6 TJie A iithorsh ip cf the Kentucky Resolutions is a directory clause totally unlike the ninth of the other paper, and the ninth is the eighth of the other much reduced and greatly shorn of its declamation and verbiage. and correction, at a time of greater tranquillity, while those specified in the preceding resolutions call for immediate re- dress. 8th. Resolved, That a Committee of Conference and Cor- respondence be appointed, who shall have in charge to com- municate the preceding resolutions to the legislature of the several States ; to assure them that this commonwealth con- tinues in the same esteem for their friendship and union which it has manifested from that moment at which a common danger first suggested a common union ; that it considers union, for specified national purposes, and particularly for, those specified in their late federal compact, to be friendly to the peace, happiness, and prosperity of all the States ; that, faithful to that compact, according to the plain intent and., meaning in which it was understood and acceded to by the several parties, it is sincerely anxious for its preservation ; that it does also believe that to take from the States all the powers of self-government and transfer them to a general and consolidated government, without regard to the special _ delegations and reservations solemnly agreed to in that com- pact, is not for the peace, happiness, or prosperity of these States ; and that, therefore, this commonwealth is determined, as it doubts not its co-States are, to submit to undelegated, ^ and consequently unlimited powers in no man or body of men, on earth ; that in cases of an abuse of the delegated powers, the members of the General Government being chosen by the people, a change by the people would be the constitutional remedy ; but where powers are assumed which have not been delegated, a nullification of the act is the right remedy ; that every State has a natural right in cases not within the compact (casus non fcsderis), to nullify of their own authority all assumptions of power by others within their limits ; that without this right they would be under the dominion, absolute and unlimited, of whatsoever might exer- cise this right of judgment for them ; that, nevertheless this commonwealth, from motives of regard and respect for its co- States, has wished to communicate with them on the subject ; that with them alone it is proper to communicate, they alone being parties to the compact, and solely authorized to judge in the last resort of the powers exercised under it, Congress being not a party, but merely the creature of the compact. Kentucky Resolutions of lygS. 157 The chief significance of these changes lies in alteration in the directory clause. The Jeffer- L draught's ninth resolution is an ordinary direc- y clause pointing out in v/hat manner the com- subject, as to its assumption of power, to the final judg- it of those by whom, and for whose use, itself and its rers were all created and modified ; that, if the act before ;ified should stand, these conclusions would flow from n, that the General Government may place any act they ' ik proper on the list of crimes, and punish it themselves, ;ther enumerated or not enumerated by the Constitution ognizable by them ; that they may transfer its cognizance he President, or any other person, who may himself be accuser, counsel, judge, and jury, whose suspicions may :he evidence, his order the sentence, his officer the execu- er, and his breast the sole record of the transactions ; : a very numerous and valuable description of the inhabi- :s of these States being, by this precedent, reduced as out- s to the absolute dominion of one man, and the barrier of Constitution thus swept away for us all, no rampart now ains against the passions, and the power of a majority in igress to protect from a like exportation, or other more vous punishment, the minority of the same body, the slatures, judges, governors, and counsellors of the ;es, nor their other peaceable inhabitants, who ■ venture to reclaim the constitutional rights and rties of the States and people, or who for other ;es, good or bad, may be obnoxious to the views, marked by the suspicion of the President or be ight dangerous to his or their elections, or other interests, lie or personal ; that the friendless alien has indeed been cted as the safest subject of a first experiment, but the en will soon follow ; rather, has already followed ; for ? ady has a sedition act marked him as its prey ; that these successive acts of the 'same character, unless arrested at threshold, necessarily drive these States into revolution and id, and will furnish new calumnies against republican gov- nents, and new pretexts for those who wish it to be believed man cannot be governed but by a rod of iron ; that it Id be a dangerous delusion were a confidence in the men ur choice to silence our fears for the safety of our rights ; confidence is everywhere the parent of despotism. Free ;rnment is founded in jealousy, and not in confidence ; it alousy, and not confidence, which prescribes limited con- tions, to bind down those whom v/e are obliged to trust 158 The Authorship of the mittee appointed in the preceding resolution should proceed. The Kentucky Resolutions moving up the short resolution to the eighth place make it merely an order for the transmission of the Resolu- tions to the Congressmen of the State, with instruc- tions to press for a repeal of the " obnoxious acts," while in the ninth, instead of appointing a special committee, they authorize the governor to communi- cate the Resolutions to the other legislatures. In view of the fact that there was serious doubt among the Virginia statesmen whether the power to act in the premises was embraced in the ordinary powers with power ; that our Constitution has accordingly fixed the limits to which, and no further, our confidence may go. And let the honest advocate of confidence read the Alien and Sedi- tion acts, and say if the Constitution has not been wise in fix- ing limits to the government it created, and whether we should be wise in destroying those limits. Let him say what the government is, if it be not a tyranny, which the men of our choice have conferred on our President, and the President of our choice has assented to and accepted, over the friendly strangers to whom the mild spirit of our country and its laws had pledged hospitality and protection ; that the men of our choice have more respected the bare suspicions of the Presi- dent, than the solid rights of innocence, the claims of justifi- cation, the sacred force of truth, and the forms and substance of law and justice ; in questions of power, then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mis- chief by the chains of the Constitution ; that this common- wealth does, therefore, call on its co-States for an expression of their sentiments on the acts concerning aliens, and for the punishment of certain crimes hereinbefore specified ; plainly declaring whether these acts are, or are not, authorized by the Federal compact. And it doubts not that their sense will be so enounced as to prove their attachment unaltered to limited government, whether general or particular ; and that the rights and liber- ties of their co-States will be exposed to no dangers by re- ' maining embarked in a common bottom with their own ; that they will concur with this commonwealth in considering the said acts as so palpably against the Constitntion as to amount Kentucky Resolutions of ijgS. 159 if the State, or was extraordinary, and to be re- ;arded only as lodged in a "sovereign convention," uch as originally adopted the Constitution, or ould be somehow found in a somewhat ill-defined liddle ground, such as the Jefferson draught seems 3 have been intended to occupy, this change be. omes somewhat important. Mr. Madison had very rave doubts upon this subject, and freely expressed liem. Mr. Breckinridge, however, had no such , oubts, but was decided in his belief that the regu- j ir constituted authorities of the State were ade- I uate to the emergency. Hence a change of this ) an undisguised declaration that that compact is not meant ) be the measure of the powers of the General Government ; ut that it will proceed in the exercise over these States of all owers whatsoever ; that they will view this as seizing the ghts of the States, and consolidating them in the hands of le general government, with a power assumed to bind the. tates (not merely in the cases made federal \casus fcederis\, at in all cases whatsoever), by laws made, not with their jnsent, but by others against their consent ; that this would s to surrender the form of government we have chosen, and ) live under one deriving its powers from its own will and - ot from our authority ; and that the co-States recurring to leir natural right, in cases not made federal, will concur in ' sclaring these acts void and of no force, and will each take "V .easures of its own for providing that neither these acts, nor / ly others of the general government, not plainly and inten-/ onally authorized by the Constitution, shall be exercised] ithin their respective territories. gth. Resolved, That the said committee be authorized 1 communicate, by writing or personal conferences, at any mes or places whatever, with any person or persons who ay be appointed by any one or more of the co-States to cor- spond or confer with them ; and that they lay their pro- iedings before the next session of assembly. Richmond, March 21, 1832. I have carefully compared this copy with the MSS. of these solutions in the handwriting of Thomas Jefferson, and find a correct and full copy. Th. Jefferson Randolph. i6o The Authorship of the kind under these circumstances might well have had some deeper significance than a mere ordering . of the resolutions ; for if it was intended that this clause should be a mere direction for effectuating the provisions of the instrument, it was properly the last resolution ; but if the draughtsman intended to assert a principle and embody a point of politi- cal doctrine in it, then the logical sequence de- manded that it should precede the declamatory clause, which thereupon became the final resolve both logically and locally. Mr. Madison saw this, and adopted the former order, and declared his ob- jection to the latter. More notable, perhaps, but really less significant, is the omission out of the long declamatory resolution of the clauses in which the word " nullification " occurred. If in dropping these clauses any actual change of meaning had thereby been effected this would have been a most momentous alteration ; but as will be shown in the next chapter, though thereby verbally omitted, every expression necessary to convey any idea at that day included in the word nullification had al- ready been introduced into the paper by equivalent words and phrases. Two questions naturally suggest themselves ; for what purpose, and by whom, were the changes made ? In the first place, there is no known rea- son which could have dictated these changes, unless the preference on the part of Mr. Breckinridge for action by the ordinary State authorities, instead of an extraordinary committee, be such a reason. If made by him, they showed a freedom on his part, Kentucky Resolutions of I'jgS. 1 6 1 which, coupled with his very late request to Caleb Wallace to " draw something," referred to in the letter quoted above ' from Wallace to Breckin- ridge, would seem to indicate a very independent attitude on the part of that gentleman towards the resolutions as first drawn. To advance, then, to the question of who made the alterations, while it must be freely admitted that there is no direct evidence to be procured, the circumstantial evidence would seem to indicate that having consulted with the Virginia party-leaders Mr. Breckinridge brought back to Kentucky the Jefferson draught, and after further consideration, perhaps, after further con- sultation, for it has already been seen that he was on the field at Frankfort some time before the legis- lature met, he modified and re-ordered the resolu- tions according to his own best judgment, and in that form presented them to the House of Repre- sentatives. If this view be correct, and Mr. Breckinridge, after diligent preparation and after procuring vari- ous opinions from leading Republicans on the ac- tion to be taken, finally made use of a draught drawn probably by Mr. Jefferson, after consultation with Col. Nicholas and himself, as the basis of the resolutions introduced by him into the Kentucky legislature of 1798, his part would have been so dominant and so independent, that it would have been no exaggeration of his part for him to claim, or to acquiesce in the^ claims made so constantly for him, that he was the author of the resolves. Such ' Ante, page 147. 1 62 77^1? Authorship of the claims would have rested on a solid basis, and would not in any wise have run counter to that high sense of honor which he so rightly valued, and for which he was so deeply respected. This would be doubly true, if, having received aid from Mr. Jeffer- son only among others, and that under a strict in- junction of secrecy, he had not disclosed the comparatively minor part played by Mr. Jefferson in the affair. On the other hand, it is somewhat hard to reconcile the idea advanced by Mr. Jeffer- son's letter with the known character of Mr. Breck- inridge. Such a one might well have consented to bear the odium and abuse that came from the majority of the States for his chief, but it is difficult to believe that he could have sat in silence under the praise of his own State and of his comrades in the Republican ranks, and the adulation that was not uncommon elsewhere, when Jefferson became the beloved leader of a large part of the country. It is well to remark in this connection his inde- pendence of Mr. Jefferson, illustrated in his letter concerning the action of the following year. There he relates with the simplest and most straightfor- ward manner his intention of disregarding the advice, conveyed through Colonel Wilson Carey Nicholas, to reassert the principles enunciated in the Resolutions of '98 ; and he goes on to say that, moved not by this advice, but by a fear lest ; silence might be misconstrued into a change of sentiment, the legislature had finally decided to take action. This is thoroughly in accordance v/ith his natural attitude, an even more decided Kentucky Resolutions of I'jgS. 163 exhibition of which he gave during his service in the United States Senate, when he resisted the President's desire — a desire which his correspond- ence shows haunted Mr. Jefferson's mind for a long time, and which he very freely and anxiously spoke of — to have an amendment to the Constitu- tion sanctioning the acquisition of Louisiana intro- duced into Congress. The controversy over the authorship of these resolutions owed its great interest less to its histori- cal than to its political bearings. The relation to the nullification movement, and the efforts of the party of nullification to fix the authorship on Mr. Jefferson, in its motives and results falls more properly in the next chapter. It is proper at this place, however, to point out this fact, and that the sharpness and continuance of the controversy was largely due to the desire to make the nullification of history a part of the Jeffersonian policy of de- mocracy in the United States. The problem has lost much of this, to a certain extent, adventitious interest, but as a historical problem it is yet among the most attractive to the student of American his- tory. The evidence is probably now all in ; the conclusion from that evidence alone remains to be made. As to that, men will differ, though it will, perhaps, not be far wrong if made in somewhat the following form : John Breckinridge was the responsible author of the Kentucky Resolutions of 1798. He formed the design. of submitting such a series of resolutions to the Kentucky legislature, and sought and received 164 The Authorship of the assistance in the preparation of a suitable draught from various persons, but especially from Thomas Jefferson, who had independently conceived a simi- lar design with regard to North Carolina, and prob- ably also Virginia. At a conference at Monticello, Mr. Breckinridge, Mr. Jefferson, and Colonel Nicholas outlined the policy to be pursued, and Mr. Jefferson, at the request of his companions, embodied it in a draught, which passed into Mr. Breckinridge's hands. This draught he made the basis of the paper he offered in the legislature, but he subjected it to a searching revision, in the course of which it was altered and modified in important respects, and to a very marked extent. All this was done upon his sole responsibility, and the document was offered as his, and, after a few verbal amend- ments, passed under his sponsorship. The senti- ments expressed were the common property of the whole party, similar utterances having proceeded from many informal assemblies, and the general course pursued was generally recommended in both Virginia and Kentucky ; but the execution of the plan in all its parts was in Mr. Breckinridge's hands, and though he used a draught largely composed by Mr. Jefferson, he used it as a private document, suggestive rather than final, and made alterations in it of so radical a nature as to show that he did not regard himself as a mere conduit, by which Mr. Jefferson was to have access to the Kentucky legislature, and that it did not occur to him that Mr. Jefferson so regarded him. In short, he was the master workman. Mr. Breckinridge was not Kentucky Resolutions of I "J g8. i65 then, the absolute, sole author of the Resolutions as a paper. Nor, on the other hand, was Mr. Jeffer- son. Nor, in the same sense, is the sculptor who moulds the clay, and puts the finishing touches on the marble, the sole maker of the statue : nevertheless, the marble-cutters who follow his directions are little more than mechanical appli- ances for reaching the artist's end. The design, and the finishing and perfecting, are more im- portant than the technical skill that is so essen- tial to success. Mr. Jefferson was the greatest master of his day in framing a state paper, and it does not detract from Mr. Breckinridge's judgment that, having formed the plan of the campaign of 1798 in Kentucky, he sought this great craftsman's aid, and used his splendid powers in reaching his goal. And it speaks great things for his indepen- dence and self-confidence, that, having such a piece of work, he used such freedom in changing it to suit his own views and the observed wants of Kentucky. VII. THE DOCTRINES AND EFFECTS OF THE RESOL UTIONS. The Kentucky Resolutions of 1798 were of the / nature of a political manifesto, and as such incurred ; a danger which frequently attaches to such fulmina- tions. They did not contemplate immediate action, and so wanted that restraint which the very nature of the case imposes upon all declarations which are intended to be acted on at once, or to be- come a rule of conduct. While they were meant • to express the sentiments of the Kentucky people, they were also intended to invite cooperation and gauge the political feeling throughout the country. These circumstances did not invite a calm and equable statement of an exact and well-defined policy, nor a strict limitation of every expression to the measure of action for which the declar- ants were prepared. On the contrary every cir- cumstance seems to show that they were tempted to go very far in bold declarations which they trusted they might never have to redeem in deeds. /Thus their platform, for it was very like a party 1 platform, naturally tended to present a maximum policy, and to declare a willingness to go to the 166 The Resolutions. 167 greatest length to which they could possibly be driven. In adopting this line of action the desired result was probably attained, — for it isjiqt jjossible to believe that they then expected to have to resort to the "extreme measures threatened ; but they left a dangerous inheritance to posterity. For, as the first great party utterance, it was only natural that these resolutions should become an authoritative formula of party faith ; and being generalizations open, in many points, to widely different construc- tions, so soon as profession began to turn into prac- tice they provoked dissensions, and like all radical professions of faith, dissensions produced parties ready to go any length and give any proof of their orthodoxy, however extreme. The extreme party under a document itself setting forth a maximum policy would needs be a thing to contemplate with anxiety. The resolutions were intended to be first of all a protest against what was regarded by their authors as "encroachments upon the rights of the States. Proceeding from this point, they affected to deter- mine the relations of the States to the national Union, and then to declare what procedure was proper in the premises. But in doing this, it was found necessary to say something more than the same body would have said in laying down the relations of the State to individuals within its bounds, and prescribing the penalties for violat- ing those relations. It did not speak with judicial finality, nor with the calm force of authority, but, its end and aim being agitation, the Kentucky 1 68 The Doctrines and legislature spoke rhetorically, declaring in height- ened metaphors the facts that would have stirred up few to listen if couched in simple language ; and in proposing the remedies for the past and the preventives for the future, it launched into bold invective and grave menace. The sister States still heard with cold hearts, and the same kind of utterance was indulged in the following year in the "solemn protest " of the resolutions of 1799. They did not put their words into action, but waited. The tide was already upon the turn ; in 1801, Mr. Jefferson became President, Mr. Mad- ison Secretary of State, Mr. Breckinridge Senator in Congress, and, with a Democratic adminstra- tion and Congress, there was no need of further act or declaration. They sat down in peace and power and, pointing to the declarations of 1798, pronounced them the true repository of the prin- ciples of their party, and left it to a younger gen- eration to try what could be made of them in actual practice. It would doubtless have been far hap- pier for the country if they could have been tried and tested at once by practical experiments, as the principles of the Federalists were triumphantly proved in the first years of our national life. But they were to be handed down only as the rally- ing cry in the gathering for a great and notable triumph. The victory of Jeffersonian Democracy in 1800 was complete and final, and the new century wit- nessed a change of regime of the most radical character. In very many respects there has been Effects of the Resolutions. 169 no return to the old order of things, and probably can never be. The old Federalist party had many fine old-fashioned notions which were a good deal tinged with aristocratic memories of the colonial days, and which were forwarded by the natural nobility of Washington and the taste for show that amounted to a foible in Adams. Indeed, although the country generally was feeling after the " demo- cratic simplicity " which Jefferson introduced, it was a new thing, and they did not know exactly how it was to be attained, without sacrificing the dignity of the government. The new president broke the spell when he rode to the Congress- house and tied his horse to the fence and went in. Thenceforth it was the essence, not the sem- blance, of authority, that was all powerful. The new order of things exercised a great spell over the populace, and the Federal party melted away and left the field more and more to the new party, till in 1816, when Mr. Monroe was chosen to the chief magistracy, there was practically no oppo- sition. It is the experience of many centuries that the royal minister naturally seeks to exalt the preroga- tive of the crown, and the leader of the administra- tion to strengthen the hands of government. None could expect a party in power to be instant, in sea- son and out of season, to curb its own authority. Hence it was that, when Mr. Jefferson and his fol- lowers found the control of affairs in their hands, they grew far less jealous of the " overgrown central gov- ernment " ; and while they in some measure pruned 1 70 The Doctrines and away growths that they were in a sense pledged to remove, they, nevertheless, fostered and grafted in others which hardly harmonized with their policy of the old days of opposition. The task of constitu- tional construction was naturally a difficult one, and ' even under the teaching of the Resolutions of '98 there was room for differences of opinion. No one could set up an exact standard. There were few who dared attempt to exclude certain plain and obvious powers, which were only given to the central govern- ment by implication from the Constitution. The great controversy lay as to where the limit of im- plication was to be set. The same man might well draw his bounds differently at different times, and a party could hardly be expected to observe entire consistency on such a point. Hence it was that the Republican or Democratic party shifted its ground on many occasions. The first testing of the principles of '98 by the 1 Jeffersonians that had any importance, occurred in 1803 in connection with the purchase of Louisiana. That measure was extremely popular, and there was no question that the majority of the people were eager to give their sanction to it. The future of the new West was beginning to dawn on the minds of many men, and the opening of the way to the Gulf and of the great country beyond the Mis- sissippi to be an important object. But the Presi- dent was seriously in doubt if, under the Constitu- tion, there was any power to acquire territory. The unhappy remnant of the noble old Federalist party, torn by internal dissensions, broken by reverses. Effects of the Resolutions. 171 and fast becoming little and narrow — a faction rather than a party — opposed the ratification of the purchase. With his usual caution, Mr. Jefferson sought the opinion of his principal followers. Three letters upon this subject may be read in his published works written to Mr. Madison, Mr. Lin- coln, and Mr. Breckinridge, respectively, in the month of August, 1803. In his letters to Mr. Madison and Mr. Lincoln he proposes an amend- ment to the Constitution, authorizing the acquisition of Louisiana and the prospective addition of Florida also. He again wrote to Mr. Breckinridge on the 13th of August a letter which has never been pub- lished, and it was probably in this letter that he enclosed a draught in its simplest form of what he thought necessary to be proposed to Congress at the next session. It is as follows : Resolved, By the Senate and House of Representa- tives of the United States, both Houses concurring, that the following amendment to the Constitution of the United States be proposed to the legislatures of the several States, which, when ratified by three fourths of the said legislatures, shall be valid to all intents and purposes as a part of the said Con- stitution : Louisiana, as ceded by France to the United States, is made part of the United States. We have already seen that the great advocate of the Resolutions of '98 differed from his leader on this subject. He was ready to infer this much, however narrow he thought the bounds of constitu- tional inferences should be drawn. Perhaps the practical party-leader became uppermost in him at 1 72 The Doctrines and this time, and he feared that if his party committed itself to the policy of procuring an amendment, it would lose Louisiana. It required a two-thirds vote to pass such a bill, and the Federalists had a very active remnant still in the field. The result showed that this would have been a real danger. For when the treaty came up for ratification in the Senate, only one Federalist, General Dayton, voted for it. Under whatever pressure or inducement he formed his opinion, Mr. Breckinridge was firm in the conviction that no special authority was necessary in the premises, and though pressed to introduce some measure into the Senate, steadily de- clined and opposed the policy with such success that the project was abandoned, and the President was at last content with an act authorizing him to occupy and temporarily govern the new territory. This is a strange and instructive commentary on the falli- bility of human judgment. These men certainly were in the fullest sympathy five years before, and affected to lay down the limits of motion under just such conditions ; and yet, in the first test, so imperfect was the rule of conduct that, both ad- hering to it, they were found in diametrically oppo- site positions. Is it any wonder that in the hour of fiercest conflict those who equally acknowledged the authority of the Kentucky Resolutions, should have differed no less radically ? But it was not long before an even more singular contrast was to be exhibited to the world, in this connection. The eagerness of the West and South forced Mr. Madison to give his sanction to the Effects of the Resolutions. 173 war of 1812. The measures preceding the war, the non-intercourse act, the embargo, and the war itself, weighed fearfully on commercial New Eng- land. There, too, the last broken remains of Fed- eralism languished in a hopeless, and therefore bitter, opposition. The burden laid upon them at last seemed greater than they could bear, and in 18 14 a convention of delegates from the New Eng- land States met at Hartford, Connecticut, agreeable to the call of the Massachusetts legislature. The committee which recommended the calling of this convention, spoke with much vigor in its report, and declared that, " when the national compact is violated, and the citizens of the State are oppressed by cruel and unauthorized law, this legislature is bound to interpose its power and wrest from the oppressor his victim." ' Twenty-six delegates came together and debated the situation pro and con behind closed doors, very little to their own satisfaction and greatly to the alarm of the country, and especially of the President. The result was a re- port which discouraged precipitation or any imme- diate action, and, while it firmly asserted the right of a State to resist oppression, declared that, in the opinion of the convention, the time for such action had not come. One paragraph, which is character- istic of the whole report, is particularly worth quot- ing. It declares : " In case of deliberate, dangerous, and palpable ' For very full reports of the antecedent legislative action and the proceedings of the Hartford convention, see Niles' Register, 1813-1814. 1 74 The Doctrines and infraction of the Constitution affecting the sover- eignty of the State and liberties of the people, it is not only the right but the duty of such a State to interpose its authority for their protection in the manner best calculated to secure the end." Mr. Madison, at that time President, was har- assed and almost in despair at the dark outlook on every side. In his eyes the Hartford conven- tion was the gathering of a body of arch-conspira- tors. Restless and uneasy, he watched it with armed men, and to his ears these words came like the wicked voice of treason. It may well be in- quired if he remembered that it was he who, sixteen years before, had penned the third resolution of the Virginia series, declaring : "That in case of a deliberate, palpable, and dangerous exercise of powers not granted by the compact, the States who are parties thereto have a right, and are in duty bound, to interpose for arresting the progress of the evil, and for maintain- ing within their respective limits the authorities, rights, and liberties appertaining to them." The one is scarcely more than an echo of the other, and the parallel is heightened by the fact that the sentiment of the seventh resolution, express- ing attachment to the Union, which Mr. Madison so constantly insisted in later life was always to be taken in connection with the third resolution, has its counterpart in the report of this convention. In one material respect the declarations of this convention differed from those of 1798. The measures of redress proposed were very different. In the former case an appeal had been made to the Effects of the Resolutions. 175 ster States, and then to Congress. No sooner was apparent that both of these appeals had failed, lan it was clear that the sentiment of the people as with those making the appeal, and that they were a the eve of a political revolution. Now, however, le States and Congress were plainly against those ho made their plaint, — hopelessly and irredeema- ly so. Their cries had long gone up in vain. Some 3w course was, therefore, requisite. The course iopted consisted in proposing certain amend- lents to the Constitution which, it was fancied, ould secure the rights which were asserted. To lis proposition they sought to give force by a alf-spoken threat of extreme measures. The remarkable thing in the history of this move- lent is not so much the adoption under like press- re of the principles of the Resolutions of 1798 and le use of almost identical language, both in form id substance, but the circumstance that not once I this report is the example or authority of those solutions cited or in any way referred to. To ave thrown themselves openly upon the doctrines I those famous papers Vould have won respectful Mention and perhaps success for them ; for the ad- linistration would not have dared to repudiate lem, even had it wished to. The principle would ave been at once consented to, and the ap- lication alone questioned. But this they would ot do. They preferred to stand on the principles lemselves, or, at least, on the necessity of the case. or is the reason far to seek. It has already been lid that these men were mainly representatives of 1 76 The Doctrines and the old Federalist party. Though that party had outlived its mission, and from being the repository of many noble principles and the champion of many honorable measures, had sunk through too great greed of power into a body of wranglers and obstructionists, it still had some able members who retained a living hold on the principles that had once been its glory, and were bound to its poor skeleton by the splendors of its traditions. The one sentiment that still survived with unimpaired vigor and pervaded the bosom of every member of the faction, was a hatred of the Republican party, of all its leaders and all its measures. It found it- self now professing that party's old principles, but it was unwilling to acknowledge the fountain whence they sprang. Nothing would have drawn them to such a profession. The Republicans also were somewhat backward in seeing the resemblance. They, at least, saw nothing unconstitutional in the laws now complained of, nor could they discover any analogy between 1798 and 1814. Thus a par- tisan spirit blinded the eyes of both parties, and while the one shrank from drawing a precedent from the promulgations of the other, that other looked with unmasked condemnation on the reas- sertion in almost identical language of their great fundamental party platform. There was a happier issue out of their troubles near at hand than the New England Federalists dared even to hope for. The American Commission- ers obtained far better terms than the United States had any just cause to expect, and concluded a Effects of the Resolutions. 177 :aty with Great Britain, the provisions of which some important points were quite indefi- ;e ; and these were made to assume a favorable pect from the timely victory at New Orleans, lich closed the war of 181 2, being gained, indeed, ;er the treaty was agreed to. The result was a ry general satisfaction with the administration ; d the hands of government, which had for a time en weighed down by the travail of war, were now ;adily strengthened and raised up. Monroe came :o the presidency with what has been called the ;ra of good feeling," and for a time Jeffersonian ;mocracy was almost the only political creed pub- ly professed. The evil of too unlimited a pros- rity soon showed itself. Many measures were rried through the houses of Congress that would t have been considered by the same party at earlier date at all constitutional. Even Mr. adison had difficulties in applying the doctrines 1798 to practical legislation. He vetoed the sis for internal improvements, but gave his consent the bank ; while others, perhaps equally entitle4 represent the spirit of his party, supported s measures directed towards internal develop-! jnt, but bitterly condemned the United States mk. As the whole power and patronage became Dre and more fixed in the one party, the uncer- nty of its policy steadily increased. Natural idencies towards disruption began to show them- Ives as time passed, and personal difficulties be- een the leaders, especially on the election of John iincy Adams to the Presidency, afforded occasion r the entrance of the wedge of separation. 1 78 The Doctrines and And, indeed, all men cannot be orthodox. The infirmity of human nature is too great for men to hold any faith, religious, political, or of what kind soever, in perfect purity and accord for any great length of time. The party of Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe, might be all or nearly all the people. But, even if that were so, it would be impossible to persuade them of it. They might hold, each man for himself, the old principles pure, but there was yet no consensus of opinion. Some of the sacred flames had died away upon the altars. But every man thought it was his neighbor's and not his own. There was the oracle, spoken plainly in all men's ears in that year of blessed memory, 1798, but none could say for another what high priest should interpret the mystic words. The division of opinion began while the whole country still shared the ven- eration for Mr. Jefferson. And it was some time before any party arose that was willing to cite the example of the Federalists. At first it was an internecine war, and €ach faction looked upon every other as schismatic. The first great strain put upon the doctrines of 1798 in the Democratic party itself, was the first- fruit of the South Carolina form of the doctrine of Nullification, as developed in the tariff controversy of 1829 and the succeeding years. President Jackson, Mr. Calhoun, and Mr. Clay, well repre- sented at that time three phases of political thought ; and yet they all were prepared to stand upon the Kentucky Resolutions. When, in his great debate upon the Foote resolutions, in the Senate of the Effects of the Resolutions. 1 79 nited States, Mr. Hayne planted himself and luth Carolinia Nullification on those resolutions, 2 Whigs and Administration Democrats were t backward in assailing this position. And so the nflict deepened. The tariff question was settled, parently to the discomfiture of the NuUification- s, yet not without concessions to them ; but after came the great slavery issue to try men's souls, this struggle the principles of '98 were the shuttle- ck of parties. Men could not agree upon their al and undeniable meaning ; and, indeed, it must vays be a problem open to doubt, and every solu- n must be full of saving clauses. Some attempt at alysis is however essential to the completeness of s sketch, and if the distinction between theoreti- . and practical politics is kept constantly in mind ne light may be thrown upon the subject. The Kentucky Resolutions enunciate with ad- rable distinctness the theory that the Union is t a National so much as a Federal Union ; that it I pact, and the States alone are parties to that ;t ; " that to this compact each State acceded as Itate, and is an integral party, its co-States form- ; as to itself the other party," and that by this npact they created a general government for ;cial purposes only. The inferences from this idamental position are then pressed very far ; at force is put forth to accentuate the amend- nt which provides that " the powers not dele- ed to the United States by the Constitution, nor ihibited by it to the States, are reserved to the tes respectively, or to the people," and, by in- i8o The Doclrines and ferential arguments, to restrict the exercise of any and all implied powers. It is distinctly declared that there is no common judge between the parties ; but " each party has an equal right to judge for itself as well of infractions as of the mode and measure of redress." The last sentence contains the pith of the prob- lem. What exactly does this mean ? How far is this to be pushed ? If it is to be taken as meaning that upon any grievance, real or fancied, against the general government, or against any individual State, a State has the indefeasible right to proceed to act in a sovereign capacity as it shall see fit, or that instantly upon the assumption of this right to judge it may remain, or cease to be, a member of the federation as it shall elect, then here is the fully- fledged doctrine of States' rights. Each State has the " right to judge " " of infractions," and also " of the mode and measure of redress." This sentence taken alone would seem to give to the Union no firmer tie than that of any league of States for whatever purposes united, and to depend for per- manence solely on the forbearance of the individual States. The spirit of this single sentence is not carried through the whole instrument. The ninth resolu- tion indicates a tendency to depend, not on the will of any one State in such an issue as was then before the country, but upon the determination of the States. The plural may or may not be signifi- cant. Two or three, or a dozen, or a majority of the States, would not alter the case. Any number Effects of the Resolutions. 1 8 1 ss than the constitutional two thirds, and that limber acting in any other wise than under the rescribed course of the Constitution, and by any ;her means than by an amendment, would still ave the State action in the same category. But le eighth section is an appeal for a repeal of the ,ws complained of. Was this section an exercise f self-restraint, expedient but not compulsory ; or as it the means the Resolutions meant to prescribe 5 appropriate ? The two considerations of what as regarded as justifiable and what was regarded 3 expedient would naturally be blended in such a ocument, and this renders any absolute decision' Q one or two points impossible. For example, the tates denied the appeal to them, and the Congress ; le appeal to it. Did the statesman who drew this aper, and those who acted with him, consider that lis closed the matter, and that the protest of the ext year was the only course they could then pursue? •r did they hold that they could have refused to ermit the obnoxious laws to be executed in their tates ? or have regarded the act as a breach of leir compact, and retired from the federation, tid only refrained from doing so out of a spirit of jrbearance, and for the sake of expediency, seeing le political revolution drawing near ? Mr. Breck- iridge's speech does not illumine the subject reatly, although it must be remarked that States, ot a State, still stand for the acting power. An istructive, but not a convincing or deciding side ght, is thrown upon the subject by a comparison f the two draughts. The Jefferson draught con- 1 82 The Doctrines and tained in its eighth resolve two clauses which were omitted by Mr. Breckinridge, both of which carried out the spirit of the first resolution, and specified the power as a right of the individual State in a way quite without parallel in the resolutions as adopted. The first of these is as follows : " That in cases of an abuse of the delegated powers the members of the general government being chosen by the people, a change by the people would be the constitutional remedy ; but where powers are assumed which have not been delegated, a nullification of the act is the right remedy ; that every State has a natural right in cases not within the compact [casus non foederis) to nullify of their own authority all assumptions of power by others within their limits." And the sec- ond is this, " Will each take measures of its own for providing that neither these acts nor any others of the general government not plainly and intention- ally authorized by the Constitution, shall be exer- cised within their respective territories." It is impossible to escape the conclusion that the Jefferson draught, containing these statements in the eighth resolve in connection with the statements of the first resolve, lays down a doctrine that needs only to be acted on by bold and uncompromising men to be all that the advocates of nullification in South Carolina held that it was. Had the Jefferson draught been the one adopted in Kentucky, and had there arisen severe prosecutions under the Sedi- tion law, there is little reason to doubt that under the temper of the time, the whole programme of the opponents of the national government might have Effects of the Resolutions. 183 een attempted at once. The effect then might isily have been final and fatal to the young State, 'he Jefferson draught, so far from sustaining the osition once occupied with regard to it by many 2ffersonians,(who were misled by the error in the Dpy of the Kentucky Resolutions published by illiot in his " Debates," which omits the clause, its co-States being as to itself the other party," out F the first resolution, and by a mistaken notion lat the Breckinridge Resolutions were identical ith the Jefferson draught, and that Jefferson never rote the word nullification,) in fact, goes further lan the Resolutions, as adopted, and specifies more lainly the right of a single State to obstruct ational legislation, than did the Resolutions them- ;lves; reaching this result more completely than did le Resolutions of 1798 and 1799 combine4, for the imous nullification sentence of 1799 retains the lural form of 1798, and is in these words : " That le several' States who»formed that . instrument sing sovereign and independent, have the unques- onable right to judge of its infraction ; and that a unification by those sovereignties of all unauthor- ed acts done under color of that instrument is the ghtful remedy." In fine Mr. Madison has expressed the most larded sentiments. Mr. Breckinridge, abandoning le general terms used by Mr. Madison, still holds somewhat imperfectly defined middle ground, and [r. Jefferson represents the most advanced type of ' This word may, however, be construed to give a disjunctive :ect to the whole. 1 84 The Doctrines and j States' rights found in any of the accepted formulas lof 1798 and 1799. The difference does not consist in the use of the word nullification, or the substitution for it of some equivalent term, for the circumlocu- tions do not alter the meaning, and the " interpose for arresting," and other similar terms employed by Mr. Madison, have the same force as the " nullify " of his coadjutors. The difference, if difference there is, lies in the difference in the parties acting, in the State or the States. Mr. Madison seems to have fairly intended, as he claimed in later life, no action by any number less than a majority of the States. The action, too, is , throughout , State action; the cause in jeopardy, State sovereignty. This is not- able in connection with the fact that in quoting the reservation, " to the States or to the people," of the undelegated powers, no quarrel lies between the nation and the people, but only between the nation and the States. The right of petition, the right of the ballot-box, the right of revolution, was conceded by all. It was not the people who felt attacked, it was the citizens of the States. No effort was, therefore, directed to decide what undelegated powers were reserved to the people and what to the State, and this question is only once remotely touched on, and that by Mr. Madison in a letter, when he expressed a doubt if the people of the State in convention were not the proper party to " interpose " instead of the legislature : in other words, whether the ordinary governmental machin- ery sufficiently represented the people, or if it was not necessary that the protest should proceed from Effects of the Resolutions. 1 8 5 the same sovereign assembly which made the com- pact. None of the draughtsmen regarded the people as capable of acting directly in the premises. They were to act as citizens of the States, and, except by States, no action was possible, the citizen of Ken- tucky holding the same relation to the nation that a Spaniard once held to the alliance of the Holy League. How early these views began to take on the later forms a single example will suffice to show. Tucker in his edition of Blackstone's Commentaries, pub- lished in 1803, in commenting on the United States government, says : " The Federal government, then, appears to be the organ through which the united republics communicate with foreign nations and with each other. Their submission to its opera- tion is voluntary ; its councils, its engagements, its authority are theirs modified and united. Its sov- ereignty is an emanation from theirs ; not a flame in which they have been consumed ; not a vortex in which they have been swallowed up ; each is still a perfect State, — still sovereign, still independent, and still capable, should the occasion require, to resume the exercise of its functions in the most un- limited extent." ' - Thus early was the implied doctrine very dis- tinctly declared, and from this time forth a growth ; of States'-rights principles clustered about the Reso- lutions of 1798. They were not only the founda- tion-stone of the Democracy, but just as the party of nullification and secession was a direct outgrowth 'Vol. I. App., p. 175. 1 86 The Doctrines and {- ! of that party, so were its doctrines developed out of the principles of this formula and based upon it ; but whether logically or illogically deduced there- from, is a question which has torn the minds and hearts of men in vain in the sphere of practical politics. Whatever conclusion may be arrived at upon that point, it is an historical fact beyond con- troversion that the Nullifiers never doubted, nor hesitated to aflEirm that the Kentucky Resolutions contained the germ of all that they professed. In the controversies that have grown out of the difference of opinion upon this and the kindred questions of interpretation, the student must pro- ceed with caution. There are no calm, judicial, declarations, but every judgment is more or less biased by party spirit. It is no place, therefore, for dogmatizing. The only safe course is plainly to set forth the claims of all who speak with evident can- dor, and to endeavor to sift out of the great mass of profitless material some little that will serve to instruct, even if it fails to ultimately determine all doubts. Mr. Madison was the only one of the draughts- men of the Resolutions who survived long enough to leave his testimony upon the question of what was the view actually intended to be expressed. He speaks with conclusiveness so far as his own action is concerned, and although his words cannot carry with them the same weight as regards his co-work- ers, they must be admitted to possess great value in determining what were their ideas. Mr. Madison took an intense interest in the nullification contro- Effects of the Resolutions. 1 8 7 versy of 1830 and the following years, and wrote a mass of comment upon the subject. Much of this is found in his letters written in these years, espe- cially in the very valuable series of letters to N. P. \ Trist, Joseph Cabell, and Edward Everett ; impor- I tant matter is also contained in a communication ! published in the North American Review and in an 1 article on nullification. In these papers he has ex- ' pressed his own views very fully and decidedly, and 1 they are of the greatest value for their interpreta- ' tion of the papers drawn by him in 1798 and 1800. His position is, that he never contemplated any - attempt by a single State to prevent the law of the United States from being put into operation as was beiiig attempted at that time in South Carolina. / That in the first place any resistance was condi- tioned upon an open and palpable violation of the Constitution, that even in such a case the constitu- tional measures open to the citizens were to be exhausted for their relief and then, if the case was one of the extremest nature, the States were justified in physical resistance, and that this resist- ance ought to come from the States, not from a State. However, he admits that the same right may be extended to a single State, to a single county in a State, to a single citizen even, in the last resort ; but at the same time he says that the proper remedies against " usurpations in which the Supreme Court concur " (it will be noted that this is an extreme case), are " constitutional remedies, such as have been found effectual, particularly in the case of the Alien and Sedition laws, and such as 1 88 The Doctrines and in all cases will be effectual, while the responsi- /bility of the general government to its constituents / continues ; remonstrances and instructions ; re- I 1 curring elections and impeachments ; amendment of Constitution, as provided by itself." " Finally, should all the constitutional remedies fail and the usurpations of the general government be- come so intolerable as absolutely to forbid a longer passive obedience and non-resistance, a resort to the original rights of the parties becomes justifia- ble, and redress may be sought by shaking off the yoke, as of right might be done by part of an indi- vidual State in a like case, or even by a single citizen, could he effect it, if deprived of rights ab- solutely essential to his safety and happiness." This of course puts the question on the very differ- ent ground of the inviolable right of revolution, and is based on considerations totally unlike the foundations of the Resolutions of 1798. His exact position in regard to his own deliverances is clearly laid down in a letter to N. P. Trist, of date Febru- ary 15, 1830. " It was certainly not the object of the member (Mr. Madison) who prepared the docu- ments in question to assert, nor does the fair im- port of them, as he believes, assert a right in the parties to the Constitution of the United States individually to annul within themselves acts of the Federal government, or to withdraw from the Union." And, in a letter to the same gentleman of date December, 1831, he further says that the ut- terances of Virginia " do not maintain the right of a single State, as a party to the Constitution, to ar- Effects of the Resolutions. 189 rest the execution of a law of the United States, it seems to have been overlooked, that in every in- stance in those proceedings where the ultimate right of the States to interpose is alluded to, ^k^t. plural terra States has been used, the term State, as a sin- ' gle part, being invariably avoided." ' And in the same letter he denies that the nullification party has any authority in the Virginia Resolutions for their proceedings, and expresses a question as to the fairness of the attempt to foist upon Virginia an intention which she and her people never enter- tained. These are only a few of the many in- stances of a sentiment that Mr. Madison frequently made public. He openly avowed that he was hos- tile to the nullification doctrine and defended him- self, his own writings, and his great leader from the assertions that they were the fathers of that doc- trine. It must always be remembered, however, that , Mr. Madison was stronger in his "proclivities tow- ards a firm national union than any of those con- ^ cerned in the declarations of 1798. He had origi- nated the plan of the convention at Annapolis, which led to the Philadelphia convention of 1787. In that convention, which drew the Constitution, he had been a friend of a strong Constitution, he had, also, aided in the expositions of the Federalist, pre- served the papers of the great convention for pos- terity, urgently advocated adoption in Virginia, and only under Mr. Jefferson's lead slowly drifted from his moorings and became a leading Republican. ' The italics are Mr. Madison's. 1 90 The Doctrines and The sense of nationality deepened again as years passed and made the country really one, and he loved it with the tender love of a father. It must also be borne in mind that Mr. Madison had not gone to the same length in 1798 as either Mr. Jeffer- son or Mr. Breckinridge, nor so far in 1800 as Mr. Breckinridge in 1799. Nevertheless he was in the very inmost councils of the party, and knew, as few men could know, just what were the opinions of his comrades. His assertions, therefore, deserved great weight, and received it. The Virginia and / the Kentucky legislatures joined in denying the / doctrine of nullification, and in reprobating the at- ' tempt of the South Carolinians to fasten it upon the emissions of those bodies in 1798 and 1799. Hence it was under the leadership of no less a person than Madison that the faction of the Demo- cratic party which denied that their great corner- stone contained the heresy imputed to it, entered the lists, and with such avowals from Mr. Madison as they received, it cannot be claimed that they 3,'cted inconsistently. The suspicion is easily sug- ' gested, that in the one case the Virginia Jeffer- ; sonians were actuated by a personal interest that ' in the other was wanting, and that they acted, therefore, in both cases alike, not out of principle, but from the standpoint of selfish advantage. This may be true and yet throw a false light on their j action. Partisanship, when not the child of i prejudice, traces its pedigree at no far remove to self-interest. It is not at all uncommon in practical politics to find men professing earnest devotion to Effects of the Resolutions. 191 the precedents of a former generation, a devotion usually inherited, while their own situation is con- stantly driving them to limit and curtail those pre- cedents, sometimes to so great an extent as to rob them of all living force. From these considerations it is evident that the Virginia and Kentucky Jeffersonian Democrats who were so active in condemning nullification in 1829 and 1830 might have clung to the Resolutions of 1798 under the lead of Mr. Madison with perfect consistency ; nor is it inconceivable that while in a perfectly candid spirit they regarded the crisis of 1798 and 1861 as demanding the most extreme measures, and, under this view, regarded the ma- chinery put in motion as justifiable, they, never- theless, did not consider the necessities and ur- gency of the situation in the period of the tariff contest as so extreme, or as warranting the action taken by South Carolina. There was probably from the beginning an ele- ment in the South which was quite ready whenever occasion arose to support the most advanced doc- trine of disunion. Doubtless this tendency was common to men throughout the Union whose nat- ural inclinations led them to be impatient of re- straint and suspicious of a strong government. That this tendency was more pronounced in the South, was probably due only to local and transitory causes. The opposition to the tariff in South Caro- lina aroused the more excitable portions of the citi- zens to resistance" of a kind that can hardly be re- garded now as appropriate or commensurate to the 192 The Doctrines and grievance. Not at all abashed by the cold recep- tion which their views met with from those from whom they expected sympathy, they persisted in directing local authorities to prevent the revenue officers from performing their duty, and for a time actually seemed on the point of nullifying a law of the general government, a course which nothing but the personality of Andrew Jackson prevented their carrying out. Nor were the leaders of this movement slow in putting themselves on what they believed to be a firm foundation. Promptly and without hesitancy they declared that they stood upon the principles of 1798, and that the resolu- tions of that year contained ample warrant for their conduct. That this was by no means unfamiliar to many Democrats, as a not impossible stretch of the doctrine, appears from the readiness with which it was acquiesced in by a large number outside of South Carolina, and the eagerness of others to dis- prove it by arguments often painfully subtle, and by their very refinement showing that it was not in their view to be treated as merely a quixotic claim. There was, and is, room for doubt whether a complete subscription to all the declarations of the Resolutions of 1798 would not in the last analysis force many to the position occupied by the NuUifi- ers in the tariff conflict, if the mind coniined itself solely to the theoretical study of the instruments themselves. And it is hard to see how the element of bad faith can be introduced into their position so far as their interpretation of the doctrines of the resolutions is concerned. Effects of the Resolutions. 193 Practically the nullification measures collapsed at the time, but convinced against their will, the South Carolinians retained their theories, and cultivated and disseminated them. A much more serious con- flict was even then looming up in the future. The institution of slavery soon gathered to itself all the teachings of the Nullifiers upon the tariff measures, and the slow revolving years crystallized the half- formed and partially accepted teachings of 1830 into a system. The whole South, jealous of its " peculiar institution," gradually became more or less permeated with the most extreme construction of the Resolutions of '98, and South Carolina once more took the initiative in 186 1. In both instances it was claimed that the teaching was plain upon the complete and inalienable sovereignty of the indi- vidual States, upon the right of a single State, or of any number, more or less than a majority, indiffer- ently, to nullify a law of the central government, and if upon sufficient pressure, to secede. It may sound like an extreme statement, but as a part of the creed in these cases was that, in case of infrac- tions the individual State was to be " the judge of the infraction as well as of the mode and measure of redress," the final truth is that the teaching ex- tended to declaring that the individual State was at liberty whenever and upon whatever pretext it saw fit to prevent the execution of national laws within its limits or to take itself out of the pact. For all of this it is claimed that the authority was to be found in the Resolutions of 1798. Nor can it be denied that this claim was made with all can- 1 94 The Doctrines and dor and with the highest confidence. It was in the teeth of the assertion of Madison and those who shared his views, but as it claimed to stand less on the official relation of its interpreters than on the logic of the case, it claims a right to be considered, and it did not fail in making itself heard and felt. The two branches of the Democratic party were equally persistent, and split more and more widely as the irrepressible conflict drew nearer and yet more near. Between the two schools there was a gradation through almost every possible shade of opinion. The arbitrament of the sword, perhaps justly regarded as the court of last resort in all questions of practical politics, has apparently de- termined the extension of the more advanced theory of States' right. But it would be a mistake to think that those convinced against their will are not in a large degree of the same opinion still on the theoretical point. There is no lack of support at the present time rendered to the orthodoxy of both interpretations of the Resolutions, and the difference is not likely ever to be practically reconciled. So brief a sketch as that attempted in this chap- ter cannot fail to be hopelessly inadequate to the task it undertakes. The tangled, threads of the subject can only be traced by minute and detailed study of a complex and stormy period, and the most painstaking investigator often finds himself at fault, or is bafiled by the fierce party spirit which has thrown many a difficulty in the way of a final and triumphant solution of all the questions that are involved. Nevertheless, there are a few Effects of the Resolutions. 195 principal threads which may be followed with some certainty, and the clue which they afford is rea- sonably reliable. It has only been attempted here to follow up such lines, and the results, while not complete and exhaustive, at the same time, it is be- lieved, are not misleading. In conclusion it is sufiScient to call attention to the fact that the Kentucky Resolutions have been one of the most potent factors in American history. Their influence has been deep and far-reaching, bearing ample testimony to the eminent statecraft 1 of which they are the repository. They embody \ no fleeting party platform, but are the basal princi- ples of one great political school, which will prob- ably continue so long as we remain a nation. Their importance therefore is not to be lightly estimated. For occupying the great place they do in our history, every question connected with them be- comes of high interest to the statesman and the political and social philosopher, as well as the his- torian. And one definite hope may well be ex- pressed, that hereafter, as the conflict of parties grows less intense over the principles of '98, a juster spirit may pervade the comment and criti- cism upon them, that those who deserve to be honored for their acts in connection with the action of that memorable year may receive their meed of praise with a more equal hand, and that the really important place in the Constitutional History of the United States which the Kentucky Resolutions occupy, may receive the honest recognition of all, without prejudice from partisan influences. \ INDEX. Adams, John, conduct in French complications, 11-13 ; his taste for show, 169 Adams, John Quincy, 177 Adet, Pierre Auguste, French envoy, 12 Alien and sedition laws, provisions of, 14 ; working of, 17 ; Jefferson on, 18 ; reception in Kentucky, 20 etseq. ; alone assailed in Virginia Resolutions of 1798, 107 ; made po- litical issue in 1800, 108 ; no prosecutions under, in Ken- tucky, no ; their effect in Kentucky and Virginia, no Alien clause in the Constitution, abused in the Kentucky Resolutions, 106 Amendment to Constitution proposed by Jefferson to embody principles of resolutions of 1798, 131 ; to receive Louisi- ana, 171 Anti-Federalism, difference of meaning before and after the adoption of the Constitution, 4 ; merges into Republican- ism, 1 1 ; disuse of term, 109 Breckinridge, Alexander, founder of family in America, 50, 51 Breckinridge, Alexander, Jr., officer in the Revolution, 58 ; member constitutional convention in Kentucky, 59 Breckinridge, James, connection with Virginia Resolutions, 1798, 100 ; political weight, 104-129, 130, 149 Breckinridge, Jas. D., 99, note Breckinridge, John, leads Kentucky opposition to the alien and sedition laws, 36-48 ; ancestry, 49 ; birth, 51 ; youth, 52 : elected to the House of Delegates, 53 ; called to the bar, 54 ; appointed attorney for the district of Kentucky, 56 ; elected to Congress, 56 ; removes to Kentucky, 57 ; president of the Democratic Society of Lexington, 58 ; receives Republican vote for U. S. Senator, 58 ; success at the Kentucky bar, 60 ; Attorney-General of Kentucky, 61 ; legal opinion in contested gubernatorial election, 62 ; in the legislature, 63 ; revises the criminal code, 63 ; op- poses the alien and sedition laws, 63 ; offers Kentucky 197 1 98 Index. Resolutions of 1798, 63, 75 ; in the second constitutional convention of Kentucky, 64 ; Speaker of the House of Representatives, 64 ; offers resolutions of 1799. ^4 > elected to the United States Senate, 64, 168 ; leads the administration party in the Senate, 65 ; position as to the annexation of Louisiana, 66 ; pressed for Vice-Presidency, 68 ; Attorney-General, 70 ; his character, 71 ; speech in debate on Kentucky Resolutions in the legislature, 91 et seq.; his attitude in 1799, 123 ; effects of reputed author- ship on his reputation, 134 ; his claims to the credit of authorship, 135 et seq.; letter to, 171 ; position as indi- cated by Resolutions of 1798, 183 Breckinridge, John, 73 Breckinridge, John Cabell, 73 Breckinridge, Joseph Cabell, 55, 73 ; letter to Jefferson, 136 Breckinridge, Colonel Robert, 51 Breckinridge, General Robert, votes for the United States Constitution in the Virginia Convention, 32, 51, 57 ; sketch of, 58 Breckinridge, Robert Jefferson, 73 Breckinridge, W. C. P., vii., 140 Breckinridge, W. L. , 73 Brown, John, 31-33, 6l Cabell family, 54 Cabell, Joseph, letters to, 187 Cabell, Mary Hopkins, 54 Cabell's Dale, 57 Caldwell, R., 75 Calhoun, John C, 178 Carter, Robert, 44 Clark County, Kentucky, resolutions condemning alien and sedition laws, 40, 45 Clark, General George Rogers, 35 Clay, Henry, 178 Connecticut disapproves Resolutions of 1798, 113 Constitutional construction, growth of, 170 Crockett, Col. J., 34 Crowninshield, Jacob, 69 Dana, Francis, 13 Dayton, General Jonathan, only Federalist who voted for treaty ceding Louisiana, 172 Debates, Elliot's, error in text of Resolutions of 1798, 183 Delaware, response to Resolutions of 1798, iii Democrat, original application as a party name, 11 Democratic club of Danville, Ky., 35 Index. 1 99 Democratic-Republican party, origin of name, li ; triumph in 1800, 168 ; different views within, as to doctrines of Reso- lutions of '98, igo et seq. " Democratic simplicity," 169 Democratic societies, formed, 35 ; at Lexington, Ky., 36, 58 Edwards, John, Senator from Kentucky, 37, 58 Elliot's Debates, error in text of Resolutions of 1798, 183 Everett, Edward, letters to, 187 Federalist party, decay of, 109 ; majorities in V. and VI. Congresses, m ; actions in Congress, 117 ; fall of, in Virginia, 130 ; brings about Hartford Convention, 173 Fishback, Jacob, 43, 47 Foote resolutions. The, 178 French troubles, 13, 14, 15 Gallatin, Albert, 67, 70, 116 Gardoqui, Don Diego, 31, 32 Garrard, James, 61, 74, 85, 96 Genet, Edmond C, misconduct of, 11, 35, 98 Gerry, Elbridge, 13 Giles, Wm. B., advocates Virginia Resolutions of 1798, 103 ; introduces bill praying repeal of acts of Congress, 129 Hartford Convention, attitude, 173 ; parallel with Virginia Resolutions of 1798, 174 ; unwillingness to quote Resolu- tions of 1798, 175 Hawes, Judge Richard, 142-4 Hayne, Robert Y., 179 Henry, Patrick, 4, 55, 129, 130 Individualism in politics, 8 Innis, HaiTy, 31 Jackson, Andrew, 178 Jay, John, treaty with Spain, 3 Jefferson County, Va. (Ky.), casts entire vote for Constitution in Virginia Convention, 32 Jefferson Draught, so-called, 151 et seq.; its character, 181, 182 Jefferson, Thomas, attitude towards the Constitution, 4 ; desire for individualism, 8 ; leads movement towards Republi- can party, 10 ; Vice-President, 11, 12 ; probable conceiver of Virginia Resolutions of 1798, 103 ; account of proceed- ings in Congress, 116; popular gifts, 117; account of Republican gains, 118 ; seeks a consultation in 1799, 119 et seq.; opinion of Kentucky Resolutions of 1799, 128 ; 200 Inaex. desire to incorporate the "principles of '98'" in the Constitution, 131 ; suspected connection with Kentucky Resolutions of 1798, 133 ; relations to Resolutions, 143 et seq.j letter to J. Cabell Breckinridge, 135 ; no copy of Kentucky Resolutions found in his papers, 151 ; Presi- dent, 168 ; seeks opinion as to constitutionality of ad- mitting Louisiana, 171 ; advanced position in his draught in 1798, 183-4; also 55, 56, 65, 70, 127, 130, 178 Johnston, Alexander, vii. Kentucky, settlement, 21 ; characteristics of early settlers of, 21 et seq.j struggle for autonomy, 24 et seq.; Congress denies application for admission to Federation, 33 ; ad- mitted to the Union, 34 ; hostility to alien and sedition laws, 20, 38 ; loyalty after 1801, 127 Kentucky legislature, passes Resolutions of 1798, 75 ; of 1799, 123 Kentucky Resolutions. See Resolutions. Lee, Gen. Henry, 103, 129 Lincoln, Levi, 67, 6g, 171 Livingston, Edward, Il5 Logan, Col. Benj., 25, 61, 62 Louisiana, purchase of, 65 etseq.; question of annexation, 171 Madison, James, early political attitude, 4, 5 ; anti-Federalist leader in Congress, 10, 12, 67, 70 ; author of Virginia Resolutions of 1798, 103 ; reasons for using general terms in the resolutions, 105 ; enters House of Delegates, 119 ; draws report of i8oo, 128; misled by " Nicholas" letter, 141 ; Secretary of State, 168 ; letters to, 171 ; position in latter years of life, 172, 177 ; feeling towards Hartford convention, 174 ; guarded expressions in 1798, 183 ; interpretation of Resolutions of 1798, 186 ; letters and comments on Resolutions, 187 Maine, 31 Marshall, Humphrey, 33, 58, 59, 64, 97, 98 Marshall, John, 13, 33 (note), 55, 56, 129 Marshall, Col. Thomas, 33 Maryland, action on Resolutions of 1798, 115 Mason, S. T., 18 Massachusetts, response to Resolutions of 1798, 112 Mercer, James, 103 Mississippi trade, 28 et seq. Monroe, James, 12, 55, 104, 130, 169, 177 Murray, William, leads opposition to Kentucky Resolutions of 1798, 86-88, 91-97 Index. 20 1 Muter, George, 32 Naturalization act, The, 14 New Hampshire, reply to Resolutions of 1798, 113 New Jersey, action as to Resolutions of 1798, 114, 115 New York, action as to Resolutions of 1798, 113 " Nicholas, Esq.," letter, the so-called, 136, note ; 138 Nicholas family. The, 43, 44 ; claims of, as to Kentucky Reso- lutions, (i) as to George Nicholas, 142 et seq.; (2) as to W. C. Nicholas, 145 Nicholas, George, 47, 55, 57, 99, 141 ; activity in opposing alien and sedition acts, 43-45 ; not the mover of the Kentucky Resolutions, 45 ; pamphlets, 118 ; death, 119 ; character, 122 Nicholas, John, 43, 55, 71, 116, 130, 146 Nicholas, Nelson, 143, 144 Nicholas, P. N., 43, 131 Nicholas, S., 5, 142, 143 Nicholas, Wilson C, 43, 119, 120, 133, 141 ; leader in Vir- ginia debates, 1798, 103, 146 ; part in movement of 1798, 147 et seq. Nortli Carolina, attitude in 1798, 114 ; proposed field for action by Republicans in 1798, 146, 148 Nullification, word first used in the "Jefferson draught" of 1798, 183 ; as developed in South Carolina in the tariff controversy, 178 ; fathered on Resolutions of 1798, 179, 186 ; logical development of principles of the " Jefferson draught," 182 Pennsylvania, attitude in 1798 and 1799, 114, 115 Peter Porcupine, 46 " Philo Agis," 45 Pinckney, C. C, 12, 13 Political tendencies in the United States, 2-8 Pope, John, moves amendment to Kentucky Resolutions of 1798, 96 Preston, John, 51 Randolph, Edmund, 36, 44 Randolph, John, 70 Randolph, Miss Sarah Nicholas, contribution to history of Resolutions of 1798, 140, note ; 141, note ; 145, note ; 150 Report of 1800, Madison's, 128 Republican party, early use of term, 17 ; outgrowth of anti- federalism, lOg ; activity from 1798 to 1801, iii ; pa- tient policy, 119 ; high-handed measures, 129 ; feeling towards the Hartford Convention, 176 ; no unity in in- terpreting Resolutions of 1798, 178 202 Index. Resolutions of 1798, the Kentucky, offered in committee, 75 ; text, 75 ; debate on, 87 ; amendments to, 96 ; vote on, 96 ; true text, gg, note ; compared with Virginia Resolu- tions, 105 ; not known to Madison in 1798, 105 ; doc- trines, 105 ; made Republican platform, 108 ; replies to, 111-115 ; adverse reception by other States, 115 ; effect in Congress, 115 ; authorship of, 131 et seq.; Jefferson suspected of connection with, 133 ; John Breckinridge's relations to, 134 ; Breckinridge's claim to authorship first questioned, 135 ; John Taylor's statements concern- ing, 135 ; Richmond Enquirer's statement, 135 ; Cabell Breckinridge's letter to Jefferson concerning, 136 ; Jef- ferson's reply, 138 ; compared with the " Jefferson draught," 152 ; relations to the nullification movement, 163, 182 ; a political manifesto, 166 ; doctrines and effects of. Chap. VII.; principles tested, 170 ; theory of govern- ment, 179 ; analysis of, 180 ; foundation of Democratic party, 185 ; characterized, 195 Resolutions of 1798, the Virginia, offered by John Taylor, 100 ; text of, 100 ; drawn by Madison, 103, 133 ; debate on, 103 ; vote on, 104 ; amended, 104 ; compared with Kentucky Resolutions, 105 ; reason for use of general terms in, 105 ; doctrine of, 106 ; responses to. III— 115 ; parallel between, and the utterances of Hartford Conven- tion, 174 Resolutions of 1799, the Kentucky, suggested by Jefferson, 120 ; idea rejected, 122 ; revived and carried out, 123 ; passed, 123 ; text, 123 ; Breckinridge's letter to Jeffer- son respecting, 123, note ; contains the word "nullifica- tion," 126 ; same tenor as Resolutions of 1798, 127 Resolutions condemning the alien and sedition acts in Vir- ginia, 171 ; in Kentucky, 39, 45, 46 Rhode Island, response to Resolutions of 1798, 113 Schouler, Hon James, vii Sebastian, Benj., 31 Sedition act, see Alien and sedition laws. Shelby, Governor Isaac, 36, note ; 61 Slavery, clause in Constitution concerning, 107, 108 Smith, Robert, 69 State action, alone contemplated in Resolutions of 1798, 184 ; Mr. Madison's views of, 184 Taylor, George Keith, leads the opposition to the Virginia Resolutions of 1798, 103, 104, 129 Taylor, John, 18, 100 ; offers Virginia Resolutions, 100, 133 ; leads debate, 103 ; claims authorship of Kentucky Reso- lutions for Jefferson, 135 Index. 20 ■ Todd, Thomas, 61, 85 Trist, N. P., 187, 188 Tucker, St. George, view of nature of union as based on Resolutions of 1798, 1S5 Vermont, set off against Kentuclcy for admission to the fed- eration, 31 ; response to Resolutions of 1798, 114 Virginia, leads in movement towards Republican party, 10 Virginia Resolutions of 1798. See Resolutions. Wallace, Caleb, gg, note ; 147 Washington, George, 10, 56, I2g, 133, 169 Welling, Prest. James C, 143, note; vii Wilkinson, James, 28-34 X. Y. Z., despatches, the, 14 G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS' PUBLICATIONS. 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