When Jefferson at last found himself at Monticello, having resigned his office as Secretary of State, he declared and believed that he had done with politics forever. To various correspondents he wrote as follows: “I think that I shall never take another newspaper of any sort. I find my mind totally absorbed in my rural occupations.... No circumstances, my dear sir, will ever more tempt me to engage in anything public.... I would not give up my retirement for the empire of the universe.”

When Madison wrote in 1795, soliciting him to accept the Republican nomination for the presidency, Mr. Jefferson replied: “The little spice of ambition which I had in my younger days has long since evaporated, and I set still less store by a posthumous than present fame. The question [pg 99]is forever closed with me.” Nevertheless, within a few months Mr. Jefferson accepted the nomination, chiefly, it is probable, because, with his usual sagacity, he foresaw that the Republican candidate would be defeated as President, but elected as Vice-President. It must be remembered that at that time the candidate receiving the next to the highest number of electoral votes was declared to be Vice-President; so that there was always a probability that the presidential candidate of the party defeated would be chosen to the second office.

There were several reasons why Jefferson would have been glad to receive the office of Vice-President. It involved no disagreeable responsibility; it called for no great expenditure of money in the way of entertainments; it carried a good salary; it required only a few months’ residence at Washington. “Mr. Jefferson often told me,” remarks Mr. Bacon, “that the office of Vice-President was far preferable to that of President.”

Mr. Jefferson therefore became the Republican nominee for President, and, as he doubt[pg 100]less expected, was elected Vice-President, the vote standing as follows: Adams, 71; Jefferson, 68; Pinckney, 59; Burr, 30.

It is significant of Mr. Jefferson’s high standing in the country that many people believed that he would not deign to accept the office of Vice-President; and Madison wrote advising him to come to Washington on the 4th of March, and take the oath of office, in order that this belief might be dispelled. Jefferson accordingly did so, bringing with him the bones of a mastodon, lately discovered, and a little manuscript book written in his law-student days, marked “Parliamentary Pocket-Book.” This was the basis of that careful and elaborate “Manual of Parliamentary Practice” which Jefferson left as his legacy to the Senate.

Upon receiving news of the election Jefferson had written to Madison: “If Mr. Adams can be induced to administer the government on its true principles, and to relinquish his bias to an English Constitution, it is to be considered whether it would not be, on the whole, for the public good to come to [pg 101]a good understanding with him as to his future elections. He is perhaps the only sure barrier against Hamilton’s getting in.”

Mr. Adams, indeed, at the outset of his administration, was inclined to be confidential with Mr. Jefferson; but soon, by one of those sudden turns not infrequent with him, he took a different course, and thenceforth treated the Vice-President with nothing more than bare civility.

It was a time, indeed, when cordial relations between Federalist and Republican were almost impossible. In a letter written at this period to Mr. Edward Rutledge, Jefferson said: “You and I have formerly seen warm debates, and high political passions. But gentlemen of different politics would then speak to each other, and separate the business of the Senate from that of society. It is not so now. Men who have been intimate all their lives cross the street to avoid meeting, and turn their heads another way, lest they should be obliged to touch their hats.”

These party feelings were intensified in the year 1798 by what is known as the X Y Z [pg 102]business. Mr. Adams had sent three commissioners to Paris to negotiate a treaty. Talleyrand, the French Minister for Foreign Affairs, held aloof from them; but they were informed by certain mysterious agents that a treaty could be had on three conditions, (1) that the President should apologize for certain expressions in his recent message to Congress; (2) that the United States should loan a large sum of money to the French government; (3) that a douceur of $25,000 should be given to Talleyrand’s agents.

These insulting proposals were indignantly rejected by the commissioners, and being reported in this country, they aroused a storm of popular indignation. Preparations for war were made forthwith. General Washington, though in failing health, was appointed commander-in-chief,—the real command being expected to devolve upon Hamilton, who was named second; men and supplies were voted; letters of marque were issued, and war actually prevailed upon the high seas. The situation redounded greatly to the advantage of the Federalists, for they were always as [pg 103]eager to go to war with France as they were reluctant to go to war with England. The newly appointed officers were drawn almost, if not quite, without exception from the Federalist party, and Hamilton seemed to be on the verge of that military career which he had long hoped for. He trusted, as his most intimate friend, Gouverneur Morris, said after his death, “that in the changes and chances of time we would be involved in some war which might strengthen our union and nerve our executive.” So late as 1802, Hamilton wrote to Morris, “there must be a systematic and persevering endeavor to establish the future of a great empire on foundations much firmer than have yet been devised.” At this very time he was negotiating with Miranda and with the British government, his design being to use against Mexico the army raised in expectation of a war with France.

Hamilton was not the man to overturn the government out of personal ambition, nor even in order to set up a monarchy in place of a republic. But he had convinced himself that the republic must some day fall [pg 104]of its own weight. He was always anticipating a “crisis,” and this word is repeated over and over again in his correspondence. It even occurs in the crucial sentence of that pathetic document which he wrote on the eve of his fatal duel. When the “crisis” came, Hamilton meant to be on hand; and, if possible, at the head of an army.

However, the X Y Z affair ended peacefully. The warlike spirit shown by the people of the United States had a wholesome effect upon the French government; and at their suggestion new envoys were sent over by the President, by whom a treaty was negotiated. This wise and patriotic act upon the part of Mr. Adams was a benefit to his country, but it aroused the bitter anger of the Federalists and ruined his position in that party.

But what was Mr. Jefferson’s attitude during this business? He was not for war, and he contended that a distinction should be made between the acts of Talleyrand and his agents, and the real disposition of the French people. He wrote as follows: “Inexperienced in such manoeuvres, the people [pg 105]did not permit themselves even to suspect that the turpitude of private swindlers might mingle itself unobserved, and give its own hue to the communications of the French government, of whose participation there was neither proof nor probability.” And again: “But as I view a peace between France and England the ensuing winter to be certain, I have thought it would have been better for us to have contrived to bear from France through the present summer what we have been bearing both from her and from England these four years, and still continue to bear from England, and to have required indemnification in the hour of peace, when, I firmly believe, it would have been yielded by both.”

But this is bad political philosophy. A nation cannot obtain justice by submitting to wrongs or insults even for a time. Jefferson himself had written long before: “I think it is our interest to punish the first insult, because an insult unpunished is the parent of many others.” It is possible that he was misled at this juncture by his liking [pg 106]for France, and by his dislike of the Federalists and of their British proclivities. It is true that the bribe demanded by Talleyrand’s agents might be considered, to use Mr. Jefferson’s words, as “the turpitude of private swindlers;” but the demand for a loan and for a retraction could be regarded only as national acts, being acts of the French government, although the bulk of the French people might repudiate them.

Whether Jefferson was right or wrong in the position which he took, he maintained it with superb self-confidence and aplomb. For the moment, the Federalists had everything their own way. They carried the election. Hamilton’s oft-anticipated “crisis” seemed to have arrived at last. But Jefferson coolly waited till the storm should blow over. “Our countrymen,” he wrote to a friend, “are essentially Republicans. They retain unadulterated the principles of ’76, and those who are conscious of no change in themselves have nothing to fear in the long run.”

And so it proved. The ascendency of the Federalists was soon destroyed, and de[pg 107]stroyed forever, by the political crimes and follies which they committed; and especially by the alien and sedition laws. The reader need hardly be reminded that the alien law gave the President authority to banish from the country “all such aliens as he should judge dangerous to the peace and safety of the United States,”—a despotic power which no king of England ever possessed. The sedition act made it a crime, punishable by fine and imprisonment, to speak or write anything “false, scandalous, and malicious,” with intent to excite against either House of Congress or against the President, “the hatred of the good people of the United States.” It can readily be seen what gross oppression was possible under this elastic law, interpreted by judges who, to a man, were members of the Federal party. Matthew Lyon, of Vermont, ventured to read aloud at a political meeting a letter which he had received expressing astonishment that the President’s recent address to the House of Representatives had not been answered by “an order to send him to a mad-house.” For this Mr. [pg 108]Lyon was fined $1,000, and imprisoned in a veritable dungeon.

These unconstitutional and un-American laws were vigorously opposed by Jefferson and Madison. In October, 1798, Jefferson wrote: “For my own part I consider those laws as merely 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 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.”

Jefferson also prepared the famous Kentucky resolutions, which were adopted by the legislature of that State,—the authorship, however, being kept secret till Jefferson avowed it, twenty years later. These much-discussed resolutions have been said to have originated the doctrine of nullification, and to contain that principle of secession upon which the South acted in 1861. [pg 109]They may be summed up roughly as follows: The source of all political power is in the people. The people have, by the compact known as the Constitution, granted certain specified powers to the federal government; all other powers, if not granted to the several state governments, are retained by the people. The alien and sedition laws assume the exercise by the federal government of powers not granted to it by the Constitution. They are therefore void.

Thus far there can be no question that Jefferson’s argument was sound, and its soundness would not be denied, even at the present day. But the question then arose: what next? May the laws be disregarded and disobeyed by the States or by individuals, or must they be obeyed until some competent authority has pronounced them void? and if so, what is that authority? We understand now that the Supreme Court has sole authority to decide upon the constitutionality of the acts of Congress. It was so held, for the first time, in the year 1803, in the case of Marbury v. Madison, by Chief [pg 110]Justice Marshall and his associates; and that decision, though resisted at the time, has long been accepted by the country as a whole. But this case did not arise until several years after the Kentucky Resolutions were written. Moreover, Marshall was an extreme Federalist, and his view was by no means the commonly accepted view. Jefferson scouted it. He protested all his life against the assumption that the Supreme Court, a body of men appointed for life, and thus removed from all control by the people, should have the enormous power of construing the Constitution and of passing upon the validity of national laws. In a letter written in 1804, he said: “You seem to think it devolved on the judges to decide the validity of the sedition law. But nothing in the Constitution has given them a right to decide for the executive more than the executive to decide for them. But the opinion which gives to the judges the right to decide what laws are constitutional and what not—not only for themselves in their own sphere of action, but for the legislature [pg 111]and executive also in their spheres—would make the judiciary a despotic branch.”3

In the Kentucky resolutions, Jefferson argued, first, that the Constitution was a compact between the States; secondly, that no person or body had been appointed by the Constitution as a common judge in respect to questions arising under the Constitution between any one State and Congress, or between the people and Congress; and thirdly, “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 redress.” It was open to him to take this view, because it had not yet been decided that the Supreme Court was the “common judge” appointed by the Constitution; and the Constitution itself [pg 112]was not explicit upon the point. Moreover, the laws in question had not been passed upon by the Supreme Court,—they expired by limitation before that stage was reached.

It must be admitted, then, that the Kentucky resolutions do contain the principles of nullification. But at the time when they were written, nullification was a permissible doctrine, because it was not certainly excluded by the Constitution. In 1803, as we have seen, the Constitution was interpreted by the Supreme Court as excluding this doctrine; and that decision having been reaffirmed repeatedly, and having been acquiesced in by the nation for fifty years, may fairly be said to have become by the year 1861 the law of the land.

Jefferson, however, by no means intended to push matters to their logical conclusion. His resolutions were intended for moral effect, as he explained in the following letter to Madison:—

“I think we should distinctly affirm all the important principles they contain, so as to hold to that ground in future, and leave [pg 113]the matter in such a train that we may not be committed absolutely to push the matter to extremities, and yet may be free to push as far as events will render prudent.”

As to the charge that the Kentucky Resolutions imply the doctrine of secession, as well as that of nullification, it has no basis. The two doctrines do not stand or fall together. There is nothing in the resolutions which implies the right of secession. Jefferson, like most Americans of his day, contemplated with indifference the possibility of an ultimate separation of the region beyond the Mississippi from the United States. But nobody placed a higher value than he did on what he described “as our union, the last anchor of our hope, and that alone which is to prevent this heavenly country from becoming an arena of gladiators.”