2 binding the minority; being consequently clothed with a moral sanction, they gave these confabulations an equitable basis and almost a legal authority. In this way there grew up at an early stage, at the very seat of Congress, an extra-constitutional institution which prejudged and anticipated its acts. It was now about to reach out still further and lay hold of a matter which was entirely beyond the competence of Congress. It appears that this was done at the instigation of Hamilton, who, being anxious to push Adams on one side and to prevent the election of Jefferson, wanted to get the electoral manoeuvre which he had hit upon for this purpose 1 sanctioned by a formal decision of the members of the party in Congress. The latter took the decision, nominated in consequence the candidates for the Presidency and the VicePresidency of the Union, and agreed to try and get them accepted by the Electors. This nomination became the precedent for a practice which completely destroyed the whole scheme of the provisions of the Constitution for the election of the President. The electoral device adopted by the Federalist caucus became known through a private letter from one of its members to his constituents; the Caucus took care not to give it out in its own name, it wrapped all its proceedings in profound secrecy. And when a journalist of the opposition, the famous W. Duane, denounced them in his paper Aurora, published at Philadelphia, and attacked the actual practice of the caucuses, the "Jacobinical conclave," he was called before the bar of the Senate for his "false, defamatory, scandalous, and malicious" assertions, and barely managed to escape from the formal proceedings which had been taken 3 1 According to the mode of voting then in force, the Electors voted for two persons as President and Vice-President, without specifying which of the two they chose for President and which for Vice-President; the one who obtained the greatest number of votes became President. Hamilton's plan consisted in associating a second popular candidate (Pinckney) with Adams and in recommending the Electors, in order not to scatter their votes, to give both candidates an equal number of votes, in the hope that Adams, being one or two votes short, would be beaten by his colleague. 2 Cf. Hamilton's letter to T. Sedgwick, of May 4, 1800 (The Works of Alexander Hamilton, ed. by J. C. Hamilton, N. Y. 1856, Vol. VI, 436). & Memoirs of the Administration of Washington and John Adams, by Geo. Gibbs, N. Y. 1846, Vol. II, p. 347; The Life and Correspondence of Rufus King, N. Y. 1896, Vol. III, pp. 238, 240. against him. In the anti-Federalist press of Boston a violent protest was also made against "the arrogance of a number of Congress to assemble as an electioneering caucus to control the citizens in their constitutional rights."1 But this did not prevent the Republicans themselves, the anti-Federalist members of Congress, from holding a caucus, also secret, for the nomination of candidates to the two highest executive offices of the Union; they had only to concern themselves with the Vice-Presidency, however, since Jefferson's candidature for the first of these posts was a foregone conclusion. It seems that Madison, the future President of the United States, took the leading part in this caucus.3 At the next presidential election, in 1804, the Congressional Caucus reappeared, but on this occasion it no longer observed secrecy. The Republican members of Congress met publicly and settled the candidatures with all the formalities of deliberative assemblies, as if they were acting in pursuance of their mandate. The Federalists, who were almost annihilated as a party since Jefferson's victory, in 1801, gave up holding caucuses altogether. Henceforth there met only a Republican Congressional Caucus, which appeared on the scene every four years at the approach of the presidential election To strengthen its action in the country it provided itself (in 1812) with a special organ in the form of a corresponding committee, in which each State was represented by a member, and which saw that the decisions of the Caucus were respected. Sometimes the State caucuses intervened in the nomination of candidates for the presidency of the Republic; they proposed names, but in any event the Congressional Caucus always had the last word. Thus in 1808, with two powerful competitors 1 The author of this attack, signed "Old South" (the pseudonym of Benjamin Austin, a well-known Republican writer), gives us on this occasion a good specimen of the style of the times. Addressing a Federalist writer who has given the news of the Federalist caucus, he reproaches him in these terms: "What! Decius! are you daring enough to arrest the votes of Americans by telling them that their servants in Congress have already decided the choice? Are you so abandoned as to stab the Constitution to its vitals by checking the free exercise of the people in their suffrage? If you are thus desperate..." etc. (quoted in Niles' Weekly Register, Baltimore, XXVI, 178). 2 Niles, XXVII, 66. 3 Cf. Annals of Congress, sitting of the Senate, 18th March, 1824, speech by Smith of Maryland. for the succession to Jefferson, Madison and Monroe, both put forward in the influential Caucus of Virginia, the Congressional Caucus pronounced for Madison, while taking the formal precaution to declare that the persons present made this recommendation in their "private capacity of citizens." Several members of Congress, who did not want to have Madison, appealed to the country, protesting not only against the regularity of the procedure of the Caucus, but against the institution of the Caucus itself. The Caucus none the less won the day, the whole party in the country accepted its decision, and Madison was elected. The same thing took place in 1812 in spite of an attempted split in the State of New York, the Legislature of which officially brought forward its illustrious statesman, De Witt Clinton, against Madison, who was seeking re-election. In vain did the Legislature of New York, in a manifesto issued for the occasion, try to stir up local jealousies, by protesting against the habitual choice for the presidency of citizens of the State of Virginia, against the perpetuation of the "Virginia dynasty"; in vain did it appeal to democratic susceptibilities by denouncing the usurpation by the coterie of the Congressional Caucus of a right belonging to the people.2 Madison was re-elected. In 1816, when the Caucus met again to choose a successor to Madison, Henry Clay brought in a motion declaring the nomination of the President in caucus inexpedient, but his proposal was rejected; a similar resolution introduced by another member shared the same fate. The Caucus adopted the candidature of Monroe, who was Madison's favourite, just as this latter was in a way designated to the Caucus by his predecessor Jefferson. The majority obtained by Monroe was but slight (65 votes to 54), but as soon as the result was announced Clay at once requested the assembly to make Monroe's nomination unanimous. Such was the weight which the decision of the majority of the Caucus had with every member, it was considered binding in honour on him as well as on every adherent of the party in the country who did not care to incur the reproach of political heresy, of apostasy. Under cover of these notions there arose in the American electorate the 1 R. Hildreth, History of the United States, VI, 65. 8 Ibid., X, 59. convention, nay, the dogma, of regular candidatures, adopted in party councils, which alone have the right to court the popular suffrage. Complying with this rule, the Electors, who, according to the Constitution, were to be the unfettered commissioners of the people in the choice of the chief magistrate, and to consult only their judgment and their conscience, simply registered the decision taken at Washington by the Congressional Caucus. The authority of the Congressional Caucus which got its recommendations accepted with this remarkable alacrity and made the "nomination" equivalent to the election, rested on two facts. On the one hand, there was the prestige attaching to the rank of the men who composed the Caucus and to their personal position in the country. They represented in the capital of the Union the same social and political element, and in a still higher degree, which the members of the legislative caucuses represented in the States, that is, the leadership of the natural chiefs, whose authority was still admitted and tacitly acknowledged. The elevation of Jefferson to the Presidency, which it is the fashion to describe as the "political revolution of 1801," was in point of fact only the beginning of a new departure. Far from upsetting the old fabric at once, it installed democratic doctrines in governmental 'theories, but not in the manners of the nation; and a quarter of a century will be needed, with the exceptional aid of events of a 1 Cf. the address of the Legislature of New York already mentioned, Niles, III, 17; Mat. Carey, The Olive Branch, Philad. 1818, chap. 78, on the Congressional Caucus. 2 As is well known, the authors of the Constitution were much concerned about the special precautions to be taken for ensuring the choice of the best men for the chief magistracy and for preserving it from intrigue and corruption. They hesitated to entrust the election to the turbulent and unreflecting masses, but they were not less apprehensive about leaving it to an assembly. Between the direct democracy and oligarchy, they thought they had discovered a middle term in a special body of Electors emanating from the people. The idea was that these men, taken from outside official circles (the members of Congress and office-holders of the United States being made ineligible), scattered throughout the Union and charged with a temporary mission, beginning with the vote and ending with it, would be inaccessible to corrup tion and would obey only the dictates of their conscience and their intelligence, the high standard of which had marked them out for the confidence of their fellow-citizens. Cf. The Federalist (the celebrated commentary on the Constitution written in 1788, by Hamilton, Madison, and Jay), No. LXVIII, from Hamilton's pen. VOL. II-C non-political character, to draw the practical conclusions from these doctrines and theories and make them part of the political habits of the people. The latter still took its orders from the men who impressed it by their superiority and who naturally formed a somewhat exclusive and intimate circle. The members of the Congressional Caucus and the members of the legislative caucuses of the States, or, to use Hamilton's expression, "the leaders of the second class "2 constituted in fact a sort of political family, and the latter spontaneously became the agents of the Congressional Caucus; they were, in the language of a contemporary, "as prefects" to it, set in motion by a simple exchange of private letters. 3 Again, the members of the Caucus represented the force majeure of the interests of the Republican party, which enforced discipline, which compelled obedience to the word of command from whatever quarter it proceeded. Rightly or wrongly, the anti-Federalists believed that the Republic and liberty were in mortal danger, that they were menaced by the Federalists, whose political ideal was the English constitutional monarchy, and who, having no confidence in the people, in its intelligence and its virtue, were bent on an autoritarian "consolidated" government. The denunciations of the alleged monarchical plots laid by the Federalists, which their opponents spread abroad in the time of Washington even, look like silly calumnies in these days, but they obtained credence with the simple minds indoctrinated by the Democrats. The egregious blunders of the Federalists in power, their measures restricting the liberty of the press and individual freedom, brought the popular exasperation against them to a climax. The Federalist party soon succumbed, but the recollection of the dangers, real or imaginary, to which liberty and equality were exposed by it, survived it and for many a long day was a sort of bugbear which the leaders of the victorious party had no scruple about using for the consolidation of their power. To prevent the Federalists from returning to the charge, the 1 Josiah Quincy, in the picture which he has left of Washington society in 1826, remarks that "the glittering generalizations of the Declaration were never meant to be taken seriously. Gentlemen were the natural rulers of America after all" (Figures of the Past, Boston, 1883, p. 264). 2 Works, VI, 444 and passim. 3 Niles, XXVII, 38. |