"I shall really be chagrined," he wrote from Monticello in April,2 "if the water in the Eastern Branch will not admit our laying up the whole seven there in time of peace, because they would be under the immediate eye of the department, and would require but one set of plunderers to take care of them. As to what is to be done when everything shall be disposed of according to law, it shall be the subject of conversation when I return. It oppresses me by night and by day, for I do not see my way out of the difficulty. It is the department I understand the least, and therefore need a person whose complete competence will justify the most entire confidence and resignation."
Robert Smith was certainly not such a person as Jefferson described, and his appointment, however suitable in other respects, was not likely to attainb the object which Jefferson had at heart.
Hardly was the Navy Department thus bestowed, and the new Cabinet, toward the middle of July, completely organized for the work that was still to be defined, when another annoyance distracted the President's attention from the main objects of his policy. The government had been, for eight years, in the hands of Federalist partisans. If, as Jefferson declared in his Inaugural Address, "we are all Republicans, we are all Federalists;" if differences of opinion were not differences of principle; if he seriously wished all Americans to "restore to social intercourse that harmony and affection without which liberty and even life itself are but dreary things,"—he could afford to make few removals for party reasons. On the other hand, if, as he privately declared and as was commonly believed, the actual office-holders were monarchists at heart, and could not be trusted to carry the new Republican principles into practice, the public welfare required great changes. For the first time in national experience, the use of patronage needed some definite regulation.
The most skilful politician must have failed in the attempt to explain that a revolution had been made which ought to satisfy every one, by methods which no one had an excuse for opposing. Jefferson was embarrassed, not so much by the patronage, as by the apparent inconsistency between his professions and his acts concerning it. At first he hoped to make few removals, and these only for misconduct or other sufficient cause. "Of the thousands of officers in the United States," he wrote to Dr. Rush,3 "a very few individuals only, probably not twenty, will be removed; and these only for doing what they ought not to have done." As these removals began, the outcry of the Federalists grew loud, until the President thought himself obliged to defend his course. The occasion was furnished by the State of Connecticut, where the necessity for a change in office-holders was proved by the temper of the office-holding class. "The spirit in that State," wrote Madison, 4 July 10, "is so perverse that it must be rectified by a peculiar mixture of energy and delicacy." The spirit of which Madison complained was illustrated, only three days before, by an oration delivered July 7, at New Haven, by Theodore Dwight. The government, said Dwight, which had been established under the auspices of Washington was the sport of popular commotion, adrift without helm or compass in a turbid and boisterous ocean.
"The great object of Jacobinism, both in its political and moral revolution, is to destroy every trace of civilization in the world, and to force mankind back into a savage state. . . . That is, in plain English, the greatest villain in the community is the fittest person to make and execute the laws. Graduated by this scale, there can be no doubt that Jacobins have the highest qualifications for rulers. . . . We have now reached the consummation of democratic blessedness. We have a country governed by blockheads and knaves; the ties of marriage with all its felicities are severed and destroyed; our wives and daughters are thrown into the stews; our children are cast into the world from the breast and forgotten; filial piety is extinguished, and our surnames, the only mark of distinction among families, are abolished. Can the imagination paint anything more dreadful on this side hell?"
In the fervor of his representation, Dwight painted what he believed was to happen as though it had actually come to pass. He and his friends, at least, felt no doubt of it. Madison could hardly be blamed for thinking this spirit perverse; and the President was as little to be censured for wishing to rectify it. Elizur Goodrich, a person who was quite in the same way of thinking, was Collector of New Haven. Jefferson removed him, and appointed an old man named Bishop, whose son had made himself conspicuous by zealous republicanism in a community where zeal in such a cause was accounted a social crime. A keen remonstrance was drawn up, signed by New Haven merchants, and sent to the President. Couched, as Madison said, "in the strongest terms that decorum would tolerate," this vigorous paper was in effect a challenge, for it called on the President to proclaim whether he meant to stand by the conciliatory professions of his Inaugural Address, or on his private convictions; and Jefferson was not slow to accept the challenge, in order to withdraw himself from an embarrassing position which was rapidly rousing discontent among his friends. He wrote a reply to the New Haven remonstrants, in which, without going so far as to assert that to the victors belonged the spoils, he contented himself with claiming that to the victors belonged half the spoils. Without abandoning his claim to establish harmony, he appealed to the necessity under which he was placed by the duty of doing justice to his friends.
"If a due participation of office," he said,5 "is a matter of right, how are vacancies to be obtained? Those by death are few; by resignation, none. Can any other mode than that of removal be proposed? This is a painful office, but it is made my duty, and I meet it as such."
The Federalists found much material for ridicule in these expressions, which were certainly open to criticism; but the chief objection was that they admitted an unwilling surrender to the demands of office-seekers.
"It would have been to me a circumstance of great relief had I found a moderate participation of office in the hands of the majority. I would gladly have left to time and accident to raise them to their just share. But their total exclusion calls for prompter corrections. I shall correct the procedure, but that done, disdain to follow it, shall return with joy to that state of things when the only questions concerning a candidate shall be: Is he honest? Is he capable? Is he faithful to the Constitution?"
With a degree of deference to his critics which was perhaps unnecessary, and was certainly unfortunate, Jefferson characterized the officials who were to be first removed. "I proceed in the operation," he said, "with deliberation and inquiry, that it may injure the best men least, and effect the purposes of justice and public utility with the least private distress; that it may be thrown, as much as possible, on delinquency, on oppression, on intolerance, on ante-Revolutionary adherence to our enemies." Language so mild soothed and conciliated hundreds of voters who were glad to meet Jefferson's advances, but at the cost of increasing the anger felt by the great mass of Federalists for professions which they believed to be deceptive. For this result Jefferson was probably prepared, but he could hardly have intended that his letter should, by a common accident of politics, serve to create ill-feeling in his own party.
Rules which might suit New England conveyed quite another impression elsewhere. While Jefferson professed tenderness to New England in order to undermine a Federalist majority, nothing of the sort was needed in other States of the Union. New York and Pennsylvania had grown used to the abuse of political patronage, and no sooner had the Republicans wrested these two States from Federalist hands than they rooted out all vestige of Federalist influence. Governor McKean, in Pennsylvania, was arbitrary enough; but when George Clinton, elected Governor of New York in the spring of 1801, came into power, the State government showed no disposition to imitate Jefferson's delicacy or his professions. August 8, 1801, a few weeks after the New Haven letter was written, Governor Clinton called a meeting of the Council which, under the Constitution of New York, had charge of the State patronage. Young De Witt Clinton and his friend Ambrose Spencer controlled this Council, and they were not persons who affected scruple in matters of political self-interest. They swept the Federalists out of every office even down