Jefferson and his Colleagues, A Chronicle of the Virginia | Page 9

general
government to foreign concerns only and let our affairs be disentangled
from those of all other nations, except as to commerce. And our
commerce is so valuable to other nations that they will be glad to
purchase it, when they know that all we ask is justice. Why, then,
should we not reduce our general government to a very simple
organization and a very unexpensive one--a few plain duties to be
performed by a few servants?
It was precisely the matter of selecting these few servants which
worried the President during his first months in office, for the federal
offices were held by Federalists almost to a man. He hoped that he
would have to make only a few removals any other course would
expose him to the charge of inconsistency after his complacent
statement that there was no fundamental difference between
Republicans and Federalists. But his followers thought otherwise; they
wanted the spoils of victory and they meant to have them. Slowly and
reluctantly Jefferson yielded to pressure, justifying himself as he did so
by the reflection that a due participation in office was a matter of right.
And how, pray, could due participation be obtained, if there were no
removals? Deaths were regrettably few; and resignations could hardly
be expected. Once removals were decided upon, Jefferson drifted
helplessly upon the tide. For a moment, it is true, he wrote hopefully
about establishing an equilibrium and then returning "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?" That
blessed expectation was never realized. By the end of his second term,
a Federalist in office was as rare as a Republican under Adams.

The removal of the Collector of the Port at New Haven and the
appointment of an octogenarian whose chief qualification was his
Republicanism brought to a head all the bitter animosity of Federalist
New England. The hostility to Jefferson in this region was no ordinary
political opposition, as he knew full well, for it was compounded of
many ingredients. In New England there was a greater social solidarity
than existed anywhere else in the Union. Descended from English stock,
imbued with common religious and political traditions, and bound
together by the ties of a common ecclesiastical polity, the people of this
section had, as Jefferson expressed it, "a sort of family pride." Here all
the forces of education, property, religion, and respectability were
united in the maintenance of the established order against the assaults
of democracy. New England Federalism was not so much a body of
political doctrine as a state of mind. Abhorrence of the forces liberated
by the French Revolution was the dominating emotion. To the
Federalist leaders democracy seemed an aberration of the human mind,
which was bound everywhere to produce infidelity, looseness of morals,
and political chaos. In the words of their Jeremiah, Fisher Ames,
"Democracy is a troubled spirit, fated never to rest, and whose dreams,
if it sleeps, present only visions of hell." So thinking and feeling, they
had witnessed the triumph of Jefferson with genuine alarm, for
Jefferson they held to be no better than a Jacobin, bent upon subverting
the social order and saturated with all the heterodox notions of Voltaire
and Thomas Paine.
The appointment of the aged Samuel Bishop as Collector of New
Haven was evidence enough to the Federalist mind, which fed upon
suspicion, that Jefferson intended to reward his son, Abraham Bishop,
for political services. The younger Bishop was a stench in their nostrils,
for at a recent celebration of the Republican victory he had shocked the
good people of Connecticut by characterizing Jefferson as "the
illustrious chief who, once insulted, now presides over the Union," and
comparing him with the Saviour of the world, "who, once insulted, now
presides over the universe." And this had not been his first
transgression: he was known as an active and intemperate rebel against
the standing order. No wonder that Theodore Dwight voiced the alarm
of all New England Federalists in an oration at New Haven, in which
he declared that according to the doctrines of Jacobinism "the greatest

villain in the community is the fittest person to make and execute the
laws." "We have now," said he, "reached the consummation of
democratic blessedness. We have a country governed by blockheads
and knaves." Here was an opposition which, if persisted in, might
menace the integrity of the Union.
Scarcely less vexatious was the business of appointments in New York
where three factions in the Republican party struggled for the control of
the patronage. Which should the President support? Gallatin, whose
father-in-law was prominent in the politics of the State, was inclined to
favor Burr and his followers; but the President