CHAPTER XIII. ARMY APPOINTMENTS. INTERNAL AFFAIRS. PROSECU CHAPTER JUST before the close of the session of Congress, the XIII. president had nominated, and the Senate had unani 1798. mously confirmed Washington as lieutenant general and commander-in-chief of all the armies raised and to be raised for the service of the United States. Washington's letter of acceptance, which Adams hastened to July 17. lay before the Senate reassembled for executive purposes the day after the adjournment of Congress, evinced on the part of that great man a thorough sympathy with the administration and the Federalists. After expressing a wish that the president's choice had fallen on some one "less declined in years and better qualified to encounter the usual vicissitudes of war," and referring to his extreme reluctance to quit a retirement which he had hoped might be final, again to enter "upon the boundless field of public action, incessant trouble and high responsibility," "it was impossible for me," the letter adds, "to remain ignorant of or indifferent to recent transactions. The conduct of the Directory of France toward our country; their insidious hostilities to its government; their various practices to withdraw the affections of the people from it; the evident tendency of their arts, and those of their agents, to countenance and in ARMY APPOINTMENTS. 241 XIII. vigorate opposition; their disregard of solemn treaties CHAPTER and the law of nations; their war upon our defenceless commerce; their treatment of our minister of peace, and 1798. their demands amounting to tribute; could not fail to June 12. excite in me sentiments corresponding with those which my countrymen have so generally expressed in their affectionate addresses to you. Believe me, sir, no one can more cordially approve of the wise and prudent measures of your administration. They ought to inspire universal confidence, and will, no doubt, combined with the state of things, call from Congress such laws and means as will enable you to meet the full force and extent of the crisis. Satisfied that you have sincerely wished and endeavored to avert war, and exhausted to the last drop the cup of conciliation, we can with pure hearts appeal to Heaven for the justice of our cause, and may confidently trust the final result to that kind Providence which has hitherto, and so often, signally favored the people of these United States." Washington's acceptance was on the express condition that he should not be called into active service till the army was in a situation to require his presence, unless urgency of circumstances should sooner make it necessary. Under the late act for the increase of the army, Hamilton, Charles C. Pinckney, still detained in France by his daughter's ill health, and Knox were nominated and confirmed as major generals, Hamilton being also appointed inspector general. William North, late a senator from New York, was appointed adjutant general, with the rank of brigadier. The president had first nominated his son-in-law, William S. Smith; but his character was suffering under his recent failure for a large amount, under circumstances not very reputable, ard the Senate refused to confirm the appointment; yet, at a CHAPTER subsequent period, they allowed his nomination as a col. XIII. onel to pass. Brooks of Massachusetts, Dayton, the late 1798. speaker, and William Washington, a distant relative of the ex-president, distinguished during Greene's Southern campaigns as a cavalry officer, and who had settled in South Carolina, were appointed brigadiers. Nominations were also made of general officers of the provisional army, Henry Lee and Hand as major generals, and Ebenezer Huntington, of Connecticut, Antony White, of New Jersey, who had served as major general of the New Jersey militia called out to suppress the Whisky Insurrection, William R. Davie, of North Carolina, and Governor Sevier, of Tennessee, as brigadier generals. It was with respect to these nominations, and espe cially as to the relative rank to be assigned to Hamilton and Knox, that the first symptoms appeared of want of cordiality between Adams and his cabinet. Washington, during his presidential term, appears to have exercised the appointing power, even in very important cases -such, for instance, as the nomination of Rutledge as chief justice-without any previous consultation with his cabinet. In his case, unanimous choice of the people as he was, this had been submitted to without murmuring. But the cabinet officers did not feel the same deference for Adams. He had, in fact, been elected as a party candidate, and they were inclined to think that all appointments ought to be made with their consent. Though, in the selection of the envoys to France, Adams had partially yielded to their remonstrances, he was, however, the last man in the world to resign a tittle of what he deemed the rightful prerogative of his office. At the same time that his position, compared with that of Washington, furnished special reasons why he should listen to advice (whether he took it or not), the charac WASHINGTON AND ADAMS. 243 XIII. ter of his mind and the jealous irritability of his temper CHAPTER alike disqualified him to play the part of a serious and attentive listener, placing him, in that respect, in very 1798 disadvantageous comparison with his predecessor. Remarkable as Washington was for the uniform soundness of his judgment, he was by no means distinguished for activity of the conceptive faculties; and perhaps this uniform soundness could not otherwise have existed. He arrived at his conclusions by slow steps; it was, indeed, almost a necessity with him to be furnished, by suggestions from various quarters, with materials on which his judgment might operate. Hence his habit of asking advice a habit not less flattering to those thus called upon than it was convenient to himself. Endowed as Adams was, on the other hand, with a very lively and vigorous imagination, he formed his conclusions almost with the rapidity of intuition, and, having the greatest confidence in his own discernment, he listened to advice rather as a matter of form than of use, and sometimes "with evident marks of impatience a circumstance not very flattering to his counselors. Washington had suggested, when first consulted on the matter, as a condition of his acceptance, that no appointments should be made of general or staff officers without his concurrence; but, from the rapidity with which Adams hurried on the nomination, no such understanding was formally had. Washington was consulted, however, and the appointments above mentioned had been suggested by him, with the intention that the officers should take rank in the order in which they are named. In the Revolutionary army Pinckney had outranked Hamilton, being made a brigadier by brevet just at the close of the war, whereas Hamilton had never ranked aigher than lieutenant colonel. Knox, as major general, CHAPTER had outranked them both. But the army as now organ. XIII. ized had no connection with, or necessary reference to, 1798. the Revolutionary army; and rank was now to be de termined, not by reference to past arrangements, but to present wants. Washington explained the matter in a letter to Knox, who was living at this time in the District of Maine, where he had entered largely into land speculations, having come into possession of a portion of the Waldo patent in right of his wife, and having made other large purchases on his own account. Knox, however, was by no means inclined to acquiesce in the arrangement proposed; and Adams, to whom the promotion of Hamilton was far from agreeable, seemed strongly inclined to support Knox's claim, and to give him the rank of first major general. Nor, in spite of the warm remon strances of the cabinet, was the matter finally settled in Hamilton's favor, without a decided letter from Washington, intimating that he should consider the refusal to give Hamilton the first rank a breach of the understandOct. 13. ing with him, sufficient to justify his own resignation. In consequence of this decision, Knox declined, somewhat haughtily, the command proffered to him. Indeed, the state of his private affairs was such as to demand his entire attention, for about this time he became involved in severe pecuniary embarrassments in consequence of the bad success of his land speculations. In this respect he did not stand alone. Wilson, who had recently died, and who was succeeded on the bench of the Supreme Court by Bushrod Washington, a nephew of the general, had become deeply involved by the same means, and more than once in the last years of his life had been in the hands of the sheriff. Even Robert Morris had been entirely ruined chiefly by speculations in New York lands and Federal city lots. To these failures, caused by unsuc |