The Life of John Marshall (Volume 2 of 4). Beveridge Albert Jeremiah

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СКАЧАТЬ Even "Φ.Β.Κ." was declared to be "an infringement of the natural rights of society." A college fraternity was destructive of the spirit of equality in American colleges.74 "Lèse-républicanisme" was the term applied to good manners and politeness.75

      Such were the surface and harmless evidences of the effect of the French Revolution on the great mass of American opinion. But a serious and practical result developed. Starting with the mother organization at Philadelphia, secret societies sprang up all over the Union in imitation of the Jacobin Clubs of France. Each society had its corresponding committee; and thus these organizations were welded into an unbroken chain. Their avowed purpose was to cherish the principles of human freedom and to spread the doctrine of true republicanism. But they soon became practical political agencies; and then, like their French prototype, the sowers of disorder and the instigators of insurrection.76

      The practical activities of these organizations aroused, at last, the open wrath of Washington. They "are spreading mischief far and wide," he wrote;77 and he declared to Randolph that "if these self-created societies cannot be discountenanced, they will destroy the government of this country."78

      Conservative apprehensions were thus voiced by George Cabot: "We have seen … the … representatives of the people butchered, and a band of relentless murderers ruling in their stead with rods of iron. Will not this, or something like it, be the wretched fate of our country?.. Is not this hostility and distrust [to just opinions and right sentiments] chiefly produced by the slanders and falsehoods which the anarchists incessantly inculcate?"79

      Young men like John Quincy Adams of Massachusetts and John Marshall of Virginia thought that "the rabble that followed on the heels of Jack Cade could not have devised greater absurdities than" the French Revolution had inspired in America;80 but they were greatly outnumbered by those for whom Jefferson spoke when he said that "I feel that the permanence of our own [Government] leans" on the success of the French Revolution.81

      The American democratic societies, like their French originals, declared that theirs was the voice of "the people," and popular clamor justified the claim.82 Everybody who dissented from the edicts of the clubs was denounced as a public robber or monarchist. "What a continual yelping and barking are our Swindlers, Aristocrats, Refugees, and British Agents making at the Constitutional Societies" which were "like a noble mastiff … with … impotent and noisy puppies at his heels," cried the indignant editor of the "Independent Chronicle" of Boston,83 to whom the democratic societies were "guardians of liberty."

      While these organizations strengthened radical opinion and fashioned American sympathizers of the French Revolution into disciplined ranks, they also solidified the conservative elements of the United States. Most viciously did the latter hate these "Jacobin Clubs," the principles they advocated, and their interference with public affairs. "They were born in sin, the impure offspring of Genêt," wrote Fisher Ames.

      "They are the few against the many; the sons of darkness (for their meetings are secret) against those of the light; and above all, it is a town cabal, attempting to rule the country."84 This testy New Englander thus expressed the extreme conservative feeling against the "insanity which is epidemic":85 "This French mania," said Ames, "is the bane of our politics, the mortal poison that makes our peace so sickly."86 "They have, like toads, sucked poison from the earth. They thirst for vengeance."87 "The spirit of mischief is as active as the element of fire and as destructive."88 Ames describes the activities of the Boston Society and the aversion of the "better classes" for it: "The club is despised here by men of right heads," he writes. "But … they [the members of the Club] poison every spring; they whisper lies to every gale; they are everywhere, always acting like Old Nick and his imps… They will be as busy as Macbeth's witches at the election."89

      In Virginia the French Revolution and the American "Jacobins" helped to effect that change in Patrick Henry's political sentiments which his increasing wealth had begun. "If my Country," wrote Henry to Washington, "is destined in my day to encounter the horrors of anarchy, every power of mind or body which I possess will be exerted in support of the government under which I live."90 As to France itself, Henry predicted that "anarchy will be succeeded by despotism" and Bonaparte, "Caesar-like, subvert the liberties of his country."91

      Marshall was as much opposed to the democratic societies as was Washington, or Cabot, or Ames, but he was calmer in his opposition, although vitriolic enough. When writing even ten years later, after time had restored perspective and cooled feeling, Marshall says that these "pernicious societies"92 were "the resolute champions of all the encroachments attempted by the agents of the French republic on the government of the United States, and the steady defamers of the views and measures of the American executive."93 He thus describes their decline: —

      "The colossean power of the [French] clubs, which had been abused to an excess that gives to faithful history the appearance of fiction, fell with that of their favourite member, and they sunk into long merited disgrace. The means by which their political influence had been maintained were wrested from them; and, in a short time, their meetings were prohibited. Not more certain is it that the boldest streams must disappear, if the fountains which fed them be emptied, than was the dissolution of the democratic societies of America, when the Jacobin clubs were denounced by France. As if their destinies depended on the same thread, the political death of the former was the unerring signal for that of the latter."94

      Such was the effect of the French Revolution on American thought at the critical period of our new Government's first trials. To measure justly the speech and conduct of men during the years we are now to review, this influence must always be borne in mind. It was woven into every great issue that arose in the United States. Generally speaking, the debtor classes and the poorer people were partisans of French revolutionary principles; and the creditor classes, the mercantile and financial interests, were the enemies of what they called "Jacobin philosophy." In a broad sense, those who opposed taxes, levied to support a strong National Government, sympathized with the French Revolution and believed in its ideas; those who advocated taxes for that purpose, abhorred that convulsion and feared its doctrines.

      Those who had disliked government before the Constitution was established and who now hated National control, heard in the preachings of the French revolutionary theorists the voice of their hearts; while those who believed that government is essential to society and absolutely indispensable to the building of the American Nation, heard in the language and saw in the deeds of the French Revolution the forces that would wreck the foundations of the state even while they were but being laid and, in the end, dissolve society itself. Thus were the ideas of Nationality and localism in America brought into sharper conflict by the mob and guillotine in France.

      All the passion for irresponsible liberty which the French Revolution increased in America, as well as all the resentment aroused by the financial measures and foreign policy of the "Federal Administrations," were combined in the opposition to and attacks upon a strong National Government. Thus provincialism in the form of States' Rights was given a СКАЧАТЬ