The federal marshal, however, contended that he had no right to seize Talbot’s property. This posed the interesting question as to whether Talbot could possess a property interest in a stolen French vessel. Marshall obtained an order from the federal district court directing Talbot to return the vessel and then asked Talbot to return the ship voluntarily. The captain grudgingly obliged.50 It would not be the last time Marshall tangled with Talbot.
Problems with Spain were further exacerbated by the activities of William Bowles, an adventurer who tried to instigate a revolt of Muscogee Nation (Creek) Indians in Florida against Spain. Bowles raised a small army in the Bahamas to attack Florida. He succeeded in capturing a Spanish fort on the Gulf Coast in West Florida and stirring up the Muscogee against Spanish authorities. This violated Pinckney’s Treaty with Spain, which promised to maintain peace with the Indian nations and respect Spanish territory.51 Spain’s ambassador suspected that the British were supporting Bowles to undercut Spain. Lord Grenville, the British foreign secretary, reassured Marshall that Britain had nothing to do with Bowles. Marshall sent Colonel Benjamin Hawkins, the General Superintendent of Indians, to “restrain the Mischief makers” and suppress Bowles’ army.52
At the same time, the United States complained that Spain had interfered with U.S. vessels. As France’s ally in the war against Britain, Spain permitted Spanish privateers to capture U.S. vessels and bring them into Spanish ports to be libeled as prizes of war. Spanish privateers often used violence against unarmed merchant seamen.53 This, too, violated Pinckney’s Treaty, which required each party to respect the other’s vessels.54 The issue reached a head when two U.S. vessels, the Nancy and the Franklin, were captured by the Bonaparte, a Spanish privateer, at the Bay of Campeche off the east coast of Mexico. Since the Bonaparte was partly owned by Spanish officers, Spain could not deny responsibility.
In early September 1800, Marshall instructed the U.S. ambassador to Madrid, David Humphreys, to protest Spain’s complicity in the seizure of U.S. vessels captured by Spanish and French privateers. The letter closely mirrored the argument that Marshall penned to Ambassador King in London protesting British interference with U.S. ships. Marshall warned that “[t]he aggressions committed by the subjects of His Catholic Majesty” against U.S. vessels “are totally incompatible with real peace.”55 Marshall insisted that Spain had a legal duty not merely to prevent its own privateers but also to prevent French privateers from attacking U.S. ships.56 Marshall accused Spain of violating international law by permitting French courts of admiralty to condemn U.S. ships in Spanish territory. The United States would retaliate against Florida and Louisiana if Spain did not end this practice.57
Marshall instructed Ambassador Humphreys to speak plainly but with assurances of America’s “amicable temper” and insist on assurances that Spain would cease equipping privateers and condemning U.S. vessels in Spanish ports. In addition, Marshall demanded that Spain restore captured vessels or pay full compensation to the American owners.58 Marshall’s tough stance toward Spain combined with the success of the peace mission in Paris ultimately resolved both crises without resort to war.
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IN ADDITION TO CONFLICTS with Britain, France, and Spain, the other threat that the United States faced during Marshall’s nine months in office was the risk of war posed by the Barbary pirates. The Barbary—or Berber—Coast was named for the indigenous people of North Africa who lived in what is now known as the Maghreb. Almost the entire southern coast of the Mediterranean—from Morocco east across Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya—was governed by Berber monarchs that included the bey of Tunis and the pasha of Algiers.59 Since at least the sixteenth century, the Barbary pirates roamed the Mediterranean at will, plundering European ships and capturing crews. The popular notion of outlaw Barbary pirates is misleading. The so-called Barbary pirates were agents sent to collect tribute for their monarchs from ships passing through the Mediterranean, which they claimed as their territory. In one sense, the Barbary pirates were overzealous customs agents sailing lightning-fast corsairs, but their aggression and brutality threatened commerce throughout southern Europe. They not only seized ships and cargo but they also often imprisoned, enslaved, ransomed, or murdered Americans and Europeans. By the 1790s, the problem was becoming a serious obstacle to the expansion of U.S. trade. Algiers alone captured at least eleven U.S. ships and more than a hundred sailors in a single year.60
Congress approved the creation of a navy in part to defend U.S. vessels from Barbary corsairs, but the demand for protecting U.S. ships from French and British attacks took priority. Unable to provide enough protection for all U.S. commerce worldwide, President Washington chose to take a more pragmatic approach that followed the practice of the European powers. Since the late seventeenth century, Britain, Holland, France, and Venice found it more expedient to pay tribute to the Barbary States than to fight them.
Washington agreed to pay ransom for the release of American prisoners and signed treaties with the Barbary States agreeing to pay more than one million dollars annually in today’s money for protection. Payments were made in cash and military supplies and personal gifts to the ruling dynasties. Washington signed a treaty with the bey of Tripoli in 1796, which, in addition to promising to pay tribute to the bey, also guaranteed religious tolerance by the United States. President Washington reassured the bey that “the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion, as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Musselmen.”61 The founding fathers were clear that commerce, not Christianity, guided our foreign policy.
During the Adams administration, the incidence of attacks on U.S. commerce escalated, and many in Congress demanded military action against the Barbary States. Once again, Marshall opposed military action for practical reasons. He recognized that the payment of tribute saved the United States millions in military spending. Perhaps he also understood that from the perspective of the Barbary States it was no less reasonable to charge Americans for the privilege of navigating their waters than it was for the United States to impose tariffs.
Just days after Marshall arrived at the State Department, he received a communication concerning the Barbary pirates from the president’s son, John Quincy Adams, who was then ambassador to Prussia. John Quincy forwarded a proposal from the Swedish foreign minister that would establish a joint naval force in the Mediterranean for the neutral states of Denmark, Sweden, and the United States. The force would police the sea to protect commerce from the Barbary corsairs. John Quincy strongly endorsed the proposal, but Marshall saw at once that it would be “a hazard, to which our infant Navy ought not perhaps be exposed.”62
Ironically, though Marshall rose to prominence by refusing to pay a bribe to Talleyrand, he now felt compelled to honor the commitments of Washington and Adams. Marshall estimated that the tribute paid to the Barbary States cost about $288,886 annually (more than $5.5 million today). But Marshall’s one concern was that the government should properly account for all funds expended on the ruling families of the Barbary States. The beys of Tunis or Algeria would frequently request payment in the form of some specific items that were often difficult to obtain or value. Marshall thought it was improper to provide personal gifts and preferred to pay cash.63 Nevertheless, Marshall thought it was more prudent to comply with the demands of the Berber monarchs than risk another naval war. As a result, the secretary of state spent countless hours arranging the purchase of certain jewels or yards of fabric for various monarchs. It seemed an absurd drain on his time while he was managing the entire federal government, but he viewed it as the “the less evil.”64
Jefferson later proved the wisdom of Marshall’s pragmatic approach to dealing with the threat posed by the Barbary corsairs. As president, Jefferson, who had rejected traditional Christianity himself, considered Islam uncivilized. Unlike the European powers that had agreed to pay wha
t he regarded as blackmail to these pirates, Jefferson refused to pay tribute. Tripoli responded by cutting down a flagpole at the American consulate and declaring war. The Tripolitan War stretched from 1801 to 1805 at an enormous cost. Jefferson escalated the conflict to the point that it crippled the U.S. Navy, and in the end, he accomplished nothing. Jefferson’s approach to “civilizing” the Berbers included bombarding the capital city of Tripoli. After a series of disastrous naval adventures, Jefferson finally acceded to the Berber demands for tribute and paid ransom for the return of American soldiers held captive. In the end, Jefferson’s rigid adherence to “principle” cost the United States much more in lives and treasure than the payment of tribute ever had, and the result was that the United States was required to increase its payments to the Barbary States in the future.65
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IN NINE MONTHS as secretary of state, Marshall completed the construction of Washington City in time for the arrival of the president and the Congress in November. He managed the federal government in the absence of President Adams, and he successfully navigated negotiations with France, Spain, Britain, and the Barbary States. Untold American lives and treasure were spared, and the nation was kept secure. While Republicans and Federalists dueled over their ideological absolutes, Marshall’s patient pragmatism and tactical restraint carried the day.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
THE NEW ORDER OF THINGS
Abigail Adams could hardly contain her fury. She had no patience for the vicious lies directed at her husband. She was “disgusted with the world, and the chief of its inhabitants do not appear worth the trouble and pains they cost to save them from destruction.”1 The Republicans had showered her husband with calumnies while he was president. The Republican libelist James Callender had charged Adams with every manner of corruption and called him “twice a traitor.” All this “abuse and scandal,” Abigail regretted, was “enough to ruin and corrupt the minds and morals of the best people in the world.”2
Even worse, and far more damaging, were the attacks launched by Hamilton. Adams blamed Hamilton for splintering the Federalists and thought he was the “greatest intriguant in the world—a man devoid of every moral principle.”3 In a letter written and published as a pamphlet addressed to Federalist leaders in New York, Hamilton feverishly and foolishly savaged Adams. Hamilton’s letter was a desperate last-gasp effort to replace Adams with Pinckney, and it proved fatal to both the president’s reelection and Hamilton’s future. In it, Hamilton betrayed private communications between the president and members of the cabinet and described the “disgusting egotism, the distempered jealousy and the ungovernable indiscretion of Mr. Adams’ temper.”4 The Republican press got hold of Hamilton’s letter and republished it widely. Abigail could dismiss Hamilton as “the little cock sparrow general,” but the damage was done.5 The Federalist Party was now at war with itself.
President Adams rode up to the President’s House on Pennsylvania Avenue on November 1, 1800. He traveled alone by carriage. Abigail made the long trek from Quincy on her own so she could stop off in New York to see their son Charles, who was estranged from his father. Charles, a troubled young man, was dying from alcoholism.6 The President’s House was still under construction, and the lawn was rutted and muddy. There was no one to welcome the president except for a few workers and some city commissioners who happened to be inspecting progress on the building on a Saturday afternoon. The workmen set up a temporary office for the president next to his bedroom on the second floor. They had not yet gotten around to hanging doors, and the rooms were sparsely furnished. Throughout the mansion, the walls were bare except for a lonely portrait of Washington soberly surveying the scene.
Marshall was called to meet with Adams as his first visitor.7 It was a dispiriting sight: the aging president alone in his cold, unfinished mansion, estranged from his party, anxiously awaiting the outcome of the upcoming election in the shadowy gloom of an autumnal day.
Abigail arrived in Washington City unprepared for the provincial character of the capital. There was nothing but woods from Baltimore to the city, “which is only so in name.” Georgetown, she sniffed, was “the very dirtiest hole I ever saw,” and the surrounding countryside was “wild.” She found the President’s House barely habitable—cold, damp, and woefully understaffed. There were no water closets—only a privy out back. The grand East Room, still unpainted, was suitable only to hang laundry.8 Her one consolation was knowing that she probably would not have to reside there for long.
The selection of presidential electors had already begun. The process varied widely according to state law. In some states, state legislators chose electors without voting. Voting occurred in different states on different days throughout the month, but the actual “election day,” on which the electors cast their ballots, did not occur until December 3. Throughout the month, as reports of the voting in the various states drifted into the capital, the president’s hopes rose and fell. The Republicans swept the House of Representatives, sixty-eight to thirty-eight, and won a narrow majority in the Senate, seventeen to fifteen. Federalists hoped that Pinckney would deliver South Carolina and that Rhode Island would follow the rest of New England.9 But Republicans had a majority in the South Carolina legislature, and they chose electors for Jefferson. Rhode Island remained loyal to the Federalists, as did all of New England. In New Jersey, Maryland, and North Carolina, electors were divided between Federalists and Republicans. The real surprise was New York City, where Federalists had assumed the electors would support Adams but instead narrowly voted for Jefferson. Adams lost New York State by a painfully thin margin of 250 votes, and with it, the election. The Republican who extolled the virtues of the yeoman farmer and decried the vices of cities and finance snared the presidency by a whisker in the urban capital of bankers and merchants.10
President Adams was bitterly disappointed. Fairly or not, Adams blamed Hamilton for his defeat in New York. But he consoled himself that Hamilton had lost more than he had: Hamilton had destroyed his political career and elected the two men he most feared, Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr. “Mr. Hamilton has carried his eggs to a fine market,” Adams quipped.11
Abigail, however, was relieved. “For myself and my family,” Abigail wrote, “I have few regrets.” She knew she would be “happier at Quincy” than struggling to survive in an uncultured and inhospitable southern swamp. In any case, the First Family had no time to grieve over the election returns. In a tragic coincidence, the president received news on the day that the electors cast their ballots that his son Charles was dead from alcoholism.12
On November 7, Marshall brought the president good news: France had agreed to a peace treaty ending the Quasi-War. News of the treaty came too late to affect the outcome of the election, however. The election of 1800 was the first American election in which foreign policy played a major role. The long-running battle over Franco-American relations had bitterly fractured the Federalist Party, and Adams’s policies were prematurely judged as failures. If the treaty had arrived a month sooner, Adams might have won in a landslide. Or if Adams had refused to negotiate with France and declared war as the war hawks demanded, he might have held his party together—but at what cost to the nation? Throughout their time working together, Marshall and Adams insisted on negotiating first. Their success represented the triumph of patience and reason over belligerence. But voters rarely reward patience or reason.
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ON DECEMBER 28, 1800, Vice President Jefferson, as president of the Senate, officially informed Secretary of State Marshall of the returns from the Electoral College.13 Marshall, of course, already knew the tally: President Adams had received sixty-five votes, his nominee for vice president, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, had received sixty-four, and Jefferson and his running mate, Aaron Burr, had each received seventy-three votes. The Federalists had lost the presidency. But who had won it? Burr, who had run for the offi
ce of vice president, refused to say that he would not accept the office of president if it was offered to him.
Under the Constitution, a tie in the electoral vote between Burr and Jefferson meant that the House of Representatives would have to decide which of the Republican candidates would be president. Each of the sixteen states’ congressional delegations had one vote, which would be cast according to the votes of the members of each delegation. The candidate with a majority—at least nine out of sixteen votes—would be elected president, and the candidate having the second greatest number of votes would be elected vice president. The state congressional delegations were closely divided between Federalists and Republicans, and no one could be sure whether the Federalists would vote for Jefferson, Burr, or someone else.
Republicans worried that the uncertainty would create an opportunity for the Federalists to undo the election results. Jefferson warned Madison that the Federalists were determined to prevent his election and would choose either New York Governor John Jay or Secretary of State Marshall as president.14 Rumors that the Federalists would contrive to elect Marshall interim president circulated throughout the South.15 One can only imagine how Jefferson felt contemplating the possibility of his upstart cousin usurping his presidency.
If the Federalists were planning to select Marshall, he had no knowledge of it. Nevertheless, in the aftermath of Adams’s defeat, Marshall emerged as the one man who could hold together the warring factions of the Federalist Party.
Marshall was disappointed with the election outcome, but he avoided intervening in the House vote. He was already tired of Washington and looked forward to returning to his law practice on the day the new president was inaugurated.16 After nine intense months running the government, he missed his family, who had remained in Richmond. Polly wrote him only sporadically, and he fretted over her fragile emotional health. When his son Tom wrote to him without mentioning his mother, Marshall wrote to Polly, “This was a cruel disappointment to me because I cannot flatter myself with respect to you that silence is an evidence of good health.”17
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