CHAPTER V.

SEAT OF THE NATIONAL GOVERNMENT-PRESIDENT JEFFERSON, HIS POLICY AND HIS CABINET-CONDITION OF THE GOVERNMENT—AFFAIRS ABROAD-DIFFICULTIES WITH THE BARBARY POWERS

OUR NAVY-WAR WITH THE BARBARY POWERS-GROWTH OF THE REPUBLIC—PURCHASE OF LOUISIANA-EXPEDITION TO THE PACIFIC OCEAN ACROSS THE CONTINENT-BURR'S SCHEMES-BLENNERHASSETT-GENERAL JACKSON-BURR'S TRIAL FOR TREASON-A POWERFUL OPPOSITION-UNPATRIOTIC MOVEMENTS TROUBLES WITH SPAIN AMICABLY SETTLED.

N the summer and autumn of the year 1800, the seat of the national government was transferred from Philadelphia to the embryo city of Washington, on the banks of the Potomac and at the verge of a Maryland forest. "Woods," wrote Mrs. Adams (the wife of the President) in November," are all you see from Baltimore until you reach the city, which is only so in name. Here and there is a small cot, without a glass window, interspersed among the forests, through which you travel miles without seeing a human being." Only the north wing of the capital was then finished, and the President's house was only completed externally. Mrs. Adams wrote of that as being “upon a grand and superb scale, requiring about thirty servants to attend and keep the apartments in proper order, and perform the ordinary business of the house and stables." "If they will put me up some bells," she wrote, "for there is not one hung through the whole house, and promises are all you can obtain-and let me have wood enough to keep fires, I design to be pleased. I could content myself almost anywhere for three months; but, surrounded with forests, can you believe that wood is not to be had, because people cannot be found to cut and cart it! Briesler entered into a contract with a man to supply him with wood; a small part—a few cords only—has he been able to get. Most of that was expended to dry the walls of the house before we came in, and yesterday the man told him it was impossible to procure it to be cut and carted. He has had recourse to coals, but we cannot get grates made and set. We have, indeed, come into a new country."

The City of Washington was laid out on a magnificent scale, in 1791, with broad avenues bearing the names of the several States of the Union radiating from the hill on which the Capitol was built, with streets intersect

CHAP. V.

THE NATIONAL CAPITOL.

1173

ing them in such a peculiar way, that they have ever been a puzzle to strangers. The corner-stone of the Capitol was laid by Washington, in April, 1793, with masonic ceremonies. Only the two wings were first built, and these were not completed until 1808.

The site for the city was a dreary one.

At the time when the govern

ment was first seated there, only a path, leading through an alder swamp

on the line of the present Penn

sylvania Avenue, was the way of communication between the President's house and the Capitol. For awhile the executive and legislative officers of the government were compelled to suffer many privations there. Oliver Wolcott wrote to a friend in the fall of 1800: “There is one good tavern about forty rods from the Capitol, and several houses are built or erecting; but I don't see how the members of Congress can possibly secure lodgings unless they will consent to live like scholars in a college or monks in a monastery, crowded ten or twenty in one house. The only resource for such as wish to live comfortably will be found in Georgetown, three miles distant, over as bad a road in winter as the clay grounds near Hartford. There are, in fact, but few houses in any one place, and most of them small, miserable huts, which present an awful contrast to the public buildings. The people are poor, and, as far as I can judge, they live like fishes, by eating each other. You may look in

Bobbelts

JEFFERSON'S PERSONAL APpearance.

any direction over an extent of ground nearly as large as the City of New York, without seeing a fence or any object except brick-kilns and temporary huts for laborers. There is no industry, society, or business."

Mr. Jefferson began his administration on the 4th of March, 1801, under favorable auspices. He was then in the fifty-eighth year of his age—a tall, bony man, with grizzled sandy hair, and rather sloven in dress. He affected

republican simplicity in all things, and sometimes carried this notion to extremes. Senator William Plummer, writing in 1802, said: "The next day after my arrival I visited the President, accompanied by some Democratic members. In a few moments after our arrival a tall, high-boned man came into the room. He was dressed, or rather undressed, in an old brown coat, red waistcoat, old corduroy small clothes much soiled, woolen hose, and slippers without heels. I thought him a servant, when General Varnum surprised me by announcing it was the President.”

Mr. Jefferson indicated his policy, as follows, in a letter to Nathaniel Macon: "I. Levees are done away with. 2. The first communication to the next Congress will be, like all subsequent ones, by message, to which no answer will be expected. 3. The diplomatic establishment in Europe will be reduced to three ministers. 4. The compensation of collectors depends on you [Congress], and not on me. 5. The army is undergoing a chaste reformation. 6. The navy will be reduced to the legal establishment by the last of this month [May, 1801]. 7. Agencies in every department will be revised. 8. We shall push you to the uttermost in economizing. 9. A very early recommendation has been given to the Postmaster-General to employ no printer, foreigner, or Revolutionary Tory in any of his offices." Mr. Jefferson appointed James Madison Secretary of State; Henry Dearborn, Secretary of War; and Levi Lincoln, Attorney-General. He retained Mr. Adams's Secretaries of the Treasury and Navy, until the following autumn, when Albert Gallatin, a naturalized foreigner, was appointed to the firstnamed office, and Robert Smith, to the second. The President early resolved to reward his political friends, when he came to "revise" the "agencies in every department." Three days after his inauguration, he wrote to Colonel Monroe: "I have firmly refused to follow the counsels of those who have desired the giving of offices to some of the Federalist leaders in order to reconcile. I have given, and will give, only to Republicans, under existing circumstances." The doctrine, ever since acted upon, that "to the victor belongs the spoils," was then practically promulgated from the fountain-head of government patronage; and with a Cabinet wholly Democratic when Congress met in December, 1800, and with the minor offices filled with his political friends, Mr. Jefferson began his Presidential career of eight years' duration. In his inaugural address, he had said: "Every difference of opinion is not a difference of principle. We have called by different names brethren of the same principle. We are all Federalists—we are all Republicans." Vigor and enlightened views marked his course; and even his political opponents were compelled to confess his forecast and sound judgment in regard to the national policy.

CHAP. V.

INSOLENCE OF THE DEY OF ALGIERS.

1175

The machinery of the government was now adjusted to an easy-working condition. The treasury was never so fuli nor the revenue so abundant ; and Jefferson was enabled to signalize his accession to office by the repeal of the Excise Law and other obnoxious acts. There were omens of peace abroad, and these promised calmness and prosperity at home. Bonaparte had, in the space of about ten years, as First Consul, brought nearly all Europe trembling at his feet. The old thrones shook in his presence, and when he whispered peace, the nations listened eagerly. The geographical lines of dominions, on the map of Europe, had been changed by his conquests. Only England now remained an armed opponent of the Corsican ruler of France, for by treaties and otherwise, he had conciliated the others; and because of her mischievous doctrines, practically enforced, concerning the freedom of neutrals, the Armed Neutrality of 1780 was revived. Bonaparte threatened her island domain with invasion, and the tramp of a conquering army on the soil of her East India possessions; England arose in her might and defied Europe, and her ships continued to be seen

"Riding without a rival on the sea."

The insolence of the North African pirates now became unbearable, and the United States resolved to cease paying tribute to the Barbary Powers. Captain Bainbridge had been sent, in 1800, in the frigate George Washington, to pay the usual tribute to the Dey of Algiers, and had been treated with cruel insolence by that ruler. After performing the errand courteously, and when he was about to leave, the Dey commanded Bainbridge to carry an Algerian ambassador to the Court of the Sultan at Constantinople. Bainbridge politely refused compliance, when the haughty governor said: "You pay me tribute, by which you become my slave, and therefore I have a right to order you as I think proper." Bainbridge could not sail out of the harbor of Algiers without the permission of the vigilant guns of the castle, and was compelled to yield. He bore the swarthy ambassador to the Golden Horn, when the Sultan saw our starry-flag for the first time. He had never heard of the United States of America. His own flag was garnished with a crescent, and he considered it a favorable omen for a flag bearing the stars of heaven to enter the waters of the seat of the Moslem Empire.

Bainbridge was granted a firman to protect him from further insolence from the Barbary rulers, and he used it efficiently. When he returned to Algiers, he was ordered by the Dey to go on another errand to Constantinople, when the captain peremptorily refused. The African, enraged, sprang from his seat, and threatening Bainbridge with personal injury, ordered his attendants to seize him. Bainbridge quietly produced the fir

{

man, when the lion became like a lamb. The Dey obsequiously offered the man whom he had just regarded as his slave, his friendship and service. Bainbridge, assuming the air of a dictator, demanded the instant release of the French consul and fifty or sixty of his own countrymen, whom the Dey had imprisoned, and they were borne away in the Washington in triumph. Then he wrote to the Secretary of the Navy: "I hope I shall never again be sent to Algiers with tribute, unless I am authorized to deliver it from the mouth of our cannon."

When news of these proceedings reached the United States, it excited much indignation. The navy, the strong right-arm of the government, which had enabled commerce, under its protection, to sell to foreign nations during the difficulties with France, the surplus products of our republic to the amount of $200,000,000, and to import sufficient to yield a revenue to the government of more than $23,000,000, was then paralyzed by the exercise of unwise economy on the part of the government, which had authorized the sale of all the naval vessels excepting thirteen frigates. Yet these were decreed sufficient to meet the immediate demands for the protection of American commerce in the Mediterranean Sea.

In the spring of 1801, President Jefferson, in anticipation of trouble with the Barbary powers, ordered Commodore Dale to go with a squadron, composed of the frigates President, Philadelphia, Essex and Enterprise, to cruise off the North African coasts. Dale reached Gibraltar on the first of July, and found that Tripoli had lately declared war against the United States, and its corsairs were out upon the sea. His presence effectually restrained the pirates, and made them quite circumspect. The next year a larger squadron, composed of the frigates Chesapeake, Constitution, New York, John Adams, Adams, and Enterprise, commanded by Commodore Richard V. Morris, were sent to the same waters, one after another, from February to September. The harbor of Tripoli was blockaded in May, and not long afterward the Chesapeake, Lieutenant Chauncey acting-captain, had a severe fight with a flotilla of Tripolitan gun-boats. These, as well as some cavalry on shore, were severely handled by this frigate. Finally, in 1803, the whole squadron appeared off the coasts of the Barbary powers, and effectually protected American commerce from the corsairs, for awhile. But Morris's cruise was not regarded as an efficient one. A court of inquiry decided that he had not "discovered due diligence and activity in annoying the enemy," and the President dismissed him from the service, without trial.

In August, 1803, Commodore Preble, in command of a squadron, sailed for the Mediterranean in the frigate Constitution. After settling some difficulties with the Emperor of Morocco, whose corsairs were on the sea, he