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current expenses, independent of the public debt, and CHAPTER taking the existing revenue at $6,200,000, to enable the treasury to meet all the demands upon it as they 1797. became due, including the temporary loans and the installments of the foreign debt, there would be needed, during the next three years, the annual additional sum of $1,229,000. This amount he proposed to raise by a direct tax upon lands, houses, and slaves, upon which subject very elaborate calculations were submitted. As to this tax, there was a good deal of maneuvering. The commercial representatives were generally in favor of it, on the ground that commerce was sufficiently burdened already, the average rate of duties amounting to sixteen per cent. on the whole amount of imports. A revenue exclusively from duties on imports was, they argued, too uncertain and fluctuating, and too much at the mercy of foreign interference. The bulk of the House were little disposed to lay a tax likely to be so unpopular as a direct one on land; yet the opposition were inclined to force the Federalists to adopt it for that very reason; or, if they took the responsibility of defeating it, to oblige them to assume, at the same time, the responsibility of leaving the wants of the government unprovided for. After a very long debate in Committee of the Whole, resolutions were carried in favor of a direct tax; but in the end the bill failed, and, as a substitute for it, there were levied, on Wolcott's suggestion, additional duties of half a cent per pound on brown sugar, two cents per pound on bohea tea, one cent per gallon on molasses, and upon velvets and velveteens, muslins, and other white cotton goods, an additional two and a half per cent. ad valorem, thus raising the duties on these articles to the following rates: brown sugar, two cents; bohea tea, twelve cents; molasses, four cents; velvets

CHAPTER and cotton goods, twelve and a half per cent. ad valo

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1797.

rem.

The favorite scheme of the opposition was, instead of increasing the revenue, to diminish the expenditure. They labored very hard, though without success, to reduce the army from four to three regiments, and to stop the equipment of the three frigates. Advantage was taken of the death of Wayne to abolish the major generalship, the command of the army thus devolving on Wilkinson, the brigadier general. A bill was also passed to disband the two companies of dragoons; but upon this bill the president placed his veto, as he considered the dragoons essential to the efficiency of the service on the frontiers. This state of things was not very favorable to the increase of salaries which the president had recommended. A bill passed the Senate adding $5000 to the president's salary, $2000 to that of the vice-president, with an increase of about a third in the salaries of the executive officers, and in the pay of members of Congress. But this bill failed in the House; and the only increase actually made was in the salary of the Attorney General, raised to $2000, and in the pay of some of the revenue officers. The appropriations for the service of the current year amounted to about $2,500,000, including $14,000, in addition to the proceeds of the sale of the old furniture, for refitting the president's house; $280,259 for the balance due on the Algerine treaty, with $96,246 in addition, for two years' tribute under it; $50,000 for expenses in prosecuting appeals in British prize courts; and $145,550 for militia service in former years on the Southern frontier.

The result of the presidential election not only evinced the close balance of parties, but served also to show their sectional distribution, such as had prevailed ever since

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the first organization of the government, and against the CHAPTER dangerous consequences of which Washington's warning voice had been raised in his Farewell Address.

1797.

The whole number of electoral votes was one hundred and thirty-eight, making seventy necessary to a choice. Adams received seventy-one, including all those east of Pennsylvania, the three votes of Delaware, seven in Maryland (one of the electors of that state voting for Adams and Jefferson), and one from each of the states of Pennsylvania, Virginia, and North Carolina. Jefferson received sixty-nine votes-four in Maryland, those of Pennsylvania, Virginia, and North Carolina, except one in each state, and the entire vote of South Carolina, Georgia, Kentucky, and Tennessee. Though Pinckney gained eight votes upon Adams in South Carolina and one in Pennsylvania, yet he lost eighteen in New England, and three more in Maryland, withheld from him lest he might be chosen over Adams's head. His votes amounted to fifty-nine. Burr received thirty votesthirteen in Pennsylvania, three in Virginia, six in North Carolina, and the entire vote of Kentucky and Tennessee. Forty-eight votes were scattered among various candidates, of which Samuel Adams received fifteen, Ellsworth eleven, George Clinton seven, and Jay five. The votes having been opened and declared in presence Feb. 8. of the two houses, the vice-president, after a short pause, rose and proclaimed John Adams and Thomas Jefferson president and vice-president of the United States for four years from the fourth of March ensuing, to which announcement he added the following characteristic invocation: "And may the Sovereign of the universe, the ordainer of civil government on earth for the preservation of liberty, peace, and justice among men, enable them both to discharge the duties of those offices

CHAPTER with conscientious diligence, punctuality, and perseverance !"

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1797.

Jan. 19.

Feb. 27.

The serious objections which existed to the mode then in force of choosing president and vice-president-two persons being voted for by each elector, without any designation of the particular office for which either was intended-had been made abundantly evident during the late election. A resolution for amending the Constitution in this particular, so as to allow the electors to designate the candidates for either office, was brought forward by Smith of South Carolina. But it required further and more complete experience of the evil to stimulate action. for its removal.

Somewhat earlier in the session, the president had caused to be laid before Congress Pickering's dispatch, forwarded to Pinckney at Paris, in reply to Adet's recent complaints. To this was added a large collection of supplementary papers, containing the greater part of the correspondence of the government with Fauchet and Adet. It appeared from these documents, which were ordered to be printed, that Adet had seriously urged, among his other complaints, that the Americans had made a treaty with Algiers without waiting for French intervention; that the French flag presented to Congress by the Directory had been hidden away among the archives, instead of being suspended in the hall of the House of Representatives; and that the American government allowed to be published certain Almanacs or Registers, in which the minister from Great Britain was placed before those of France and Spain, which latter country had recently become the ally of France.

Toward the close of the session, a report from the Secretary of State made a full exhibit of the wrongs inflicted by the French on American commerce. Besides

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particular instances of hardship and suffering, it appeared CHAPTER that Skipwith, who had been appointed consul general on Monroe's recommendation, had presented to the French 1797. government no less than a hundred and seventy claims, many of them for provisions furnished, a large part of which had been examined and allowed; also, claims for a hundred and three vessels embargoed at Bordeaux, and for which indemnity had been promised, though in neither case had any thing been paid. To these were to be added enormous depredations then going on in the West Indies. Victor Hughes, still in command at Guadaloupe, had issued three decrees of his own, one declaring all vessels with contraband articles on board good prizes, no matter whither bound; a second confiscating the cargoes of all neutral vessels bound to or from British ports; and a third subjecting to like seizure all vessels bound to any Dutch or French settlements in the possession of the British, or cleared out for the West Indies generally. The same policy had been adopted by the agents of the Directory on the coast of St. Domingo. In their correspondence with their own governments, they frankly acknowledged that, having no other resources, their administration, during the last three months. of the year just expired, had been wholly supported, and private individuals enriched, by the captures made by eighty-seven privateers employed in cruising against American commerce.

Not only were American vessels captured; their crews were often treated with great indignity, and even cruelty. Bitter complaints were made of Barney, then in the West Indies with his two frigates. He was accused of treating with contemptuous indifference and neglect his fellow-citizens brought in as prisoners by the French privateers, and even of having shown his contempt for

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