CHAPTER American vessels on the flimsiest pretenses, even within XVIIL American waters. The president, indeed, was nomiu1806. ally authorized to keep in actual service as many public

armed vessels as he might deem necessary; but the total number of seamen to be employed was limited to nine hundred and twenty-five-not enough to man three frigates, of which two were required for the Mediterranean service.

The Federal members had remarked, with some indignation, that, however grudging Congress might be of grants for the protection of commerce and shipping, all the large sums required for the benefit of the inland frontier, to carry out the treaties made the preceding summer with the Indians, were readily voted. To these were added several appropriations for internal improvements, the sum of $30,000 being appropriated out of the treasury (but chargeable ultimately upon the two per cent. fund, under the compact with Ohio, of proceeds of the public lands) toward laying out a road over the Alleghany Mountains, from Cumberland in the State of Maryland, to the Ohio River-commencement of the famous Cumberland Road. The president was also authorized to expend $6,600 in opening a road from Athens, on the frontier of Georgia, toward New Orleans; also the sum of $6000 upon another road from Cincinnati to the Mississippi, opposite St. Louis, through the territory just ceded by the Indians. A like sum was also appropriated towards re-opening the old road through the Chickasaw country from Nashville to Natchez.

The renewed African slave trade of South Carolina being carried on with great vigor, the question of a tax on slaves imported was again revived by Sloan. After some very angry debate, in which the blame of the traffic was bandied about between South Carolina, by which

XVIII.

the importation was allowed, and Rhode Island, accused CHAPTER of furnishing ships for the business, a bill, in spite of all the efforts of the ultra slaveholders, was ordered to 1806. be brought in by a decided majority. But the subject was finally allowed to go over to the next session, when it would be competent for Congress to provide for the final cessation of the traffic.

General Eaton, returning from the Mediterranean, had arrived at Hampton Roads about the commencement of the session of Congress. He was received with many compliments at Richmond, on his way to Washington, and was honored there, in conjunction with Decatur, with a complimentary dinner, at which was present, among other guests, the famous General Moreau, lately exiled from France. The peace with Tripoli was generally ascribed to Eaton's enterprise and gallantry in get ting up the attack upon Derne. The opinion, indeed, was entertained by many, that had he been duly sup ported, a much more favorable peace might have been obtained. Eaton freely expressed, especially when heated with wine, his disgust at what he called the "pusillanimous conduct and sly policy" of the administration; and the consequence was, that a resolution, early brought forward to honor him with a gold medal, was vehemently opposed, postponed, and finally lost. The Legislature of Massachusetts, in which state Eaton's family resided, presented him with ten thousand acres of wild land in the District of Maine; and he succeeded, though not without some difficulty and obstructions, in bringing his accounts with the United States to a settlement. The whole cost of the Derne expedition was about $40,000. Congress also voted $2400 for the temporary relief of the unfortunate Hamet, who had been landed at Syracuse by the American fleet, and who sent thence an indignant

CHAPTER Complaint at the bad faith with which he had been treatXVIII. ed, his agreement with Eaton not having been carried 1806. out, and he himself having been left at Syracuse with a family of thirty persons, totally destitute of means of support.

The Tunisian embassador, who had arrived about the same time with Eaton, had been received with much ceremony. He was entertained at the public expense, insisting, in fact, upon having the best house in Washington; and he visited, at the same expense, the prin cipal cities. One advantage, at least, Jefferson derived from his presence; for just at the close of the session of Congress, under pretense of some inadmissible demands said to have been made by him, which might perhaps end in war, Congress was prevailed upon to continue the Mediterranean duties; and thus the whole scheme of the administration, as originally suggested by Bidwell in secret session, was carried out.

These sittings with closed doors, of which there had been several during the session, did not fail greatly to pique the public curiosity. The Federal prints triumphantly reminded the Democrats of the clamor which they had been accustomed to raise about secrecy in public transactions; and they asserted, not without grounds, that, ever since Jefferson's accession to office, a mystery had enshrouded the foreign relations of the country such as never had existed during the two preceding adminis trations. The secret gradually leaked out, and finally the journal of the secret session was directed to be pub lished, though without any removal of the injunction of secrecy upon the members. Randolph complained that the published journal was garbled; and from his statement of the confidential communications to him by Madison and Gallatin, first made in one of the sittings with

XVII.

closed doors toward the end of the session, the idea CHAPTER sprang up that the two millions voted in secret session was wanted as a bribe to France, thereby to induce her 1806. to compel Spain to come to a reasonable arrangement as to the boundaries of Louisiana. Such a counterpart to Monroe's old scheme of hiring France to compel Spain and Great Britain to do us justice, found at once very ready credence with the Federalists; and what served to confirm this belief was the carrying through of Logan's bill, rejected by the last Congress, for prohibiting all intercourse with Dessalines and his empire of Hayti -a law, however, which it was easier to enact than to enforce. Turreau and Talleyrand, with very little ceremony, had threatened war if such an act were not passed. Jackson and some other of the Southern members were inclined to put its passage on the ground of the general duty of discountenancing negro insurrection.

Jefferson's views of the state of foreign affairs, of the proceedings of Congress, and of the defection of Randolph, are apparent from letters written during the session. He assured Duane, of the Aurora, that the point of difference with Randolph was, that the administration were not disposed to join in league with Britain under any belief that she is fighting for the liberties of mankind, and to enter into war with Spain, and, consequently with France," an artful appeal to Duane's strong anti-British antipathies-which feeling, indeed, joined to a panic terror of the power of France, seemed to form the key-stone of Jefferson's foreign policy. The battle of Trafalgar, by its destruction of the French marine, had completely disabled Bonaparte from any military or naval enterprises, so far as America was concerned. But, dazzled by the overthrow of Austria at Austerlitz, soon followed by the dissolution of the German Empire, and

CHAPTER by the battle of Jena and the dismemberment of Prussia, XVIII. Jefferson and his cabinet continued to look to France 1806. with a fear quite disproportioned to any power she had

left of doing us injury, and with a sympathy, too, notwithstanding her lapse from republican principles, which common hostility to Great Britain continued to inspire.

Yet though recent events had contributed to enflame his hostility to Great Britain, Jefferson's preference of negotiation to force was by no means confined to the April 19. case of Spain. An earnest seemed to be given that a sincere negotiation was intended with the British also by the nomination and appointment, just at the close of the session, of William Pinkney, of Maryland, as joint commissioner with Monroe for that purpose. Pinkney had first risen to notice by his earnest advocacy of Jay's treaty, under which he had been subsequently appointed one of the commissioners for the adjudication of American claims against the British, in which capacity he had resided for several years at London. Since his return he had confined himself to the practice of his pro fession, and in that capacity had risen to the head of the Maryland bar. It was to strengthen the hands of these negotiators that the prospective restrictions on importations from England had been enacted.

But though the administration had succeeded in carrying all their measures through Congress, their weakness April 13. in that body was sensibly felt. "I wish sincerely," so

Jefferson wrote to Wilson C. Nicholas, "you were back in the Senate, and that you would take the necessary measures to get yourself there. Perhaps, as a prelimi nary, you should go to our Legislature. Giles's absence has been a most serious misfortune. A majority of the Senate means well. But Tracy and Bayard are too dexterous for them, and have very much influenced their