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tlements existed. A Territorial Assembly was to be allowed whenever a majority of the freeholders should de1800. sire it. St. Vincent's, otherwise known as Vincennes, was fixed upon as the capital. The appointment of governor was given to Harrison, who had both family and personal claims to it. His father had been a signer of the Declaration of Independence, and afterward governor of Virginia; while he had been himself first a lieutenant in the army and an aid-de-camp to Wayne dur ing his campaign against the Indians, then secretary of the Northwestern Territory, and finally delegate of that territory to Congress.

May 10.

The immediate privilege of a Territorial Assembly was also extended to the Territory of Mississippi, where great dissatisfaction had arisen with the administration of Governor Sargent. By the same act, the commissioners for adjusting with Georgia her claims to that territory, were vested with full powers to arrange the whole matter; with the restriction, however, that no money was to be paid. to Georgia except out of the proceeds of the lands.

Another act, designed to meet such cases as Blount's, 10. had already passed, subjecting to fine and imprisonment any attempt, on behalf of any foreign power, to tamper with any of the Indian tribes, or the soliciting them to break the laws, infract the treaties, or disturb the peace of the United States.

The repeal of the Sedition Law, at least of that part of it relating to seditious libels, was early proposed by Macon in a committee of the whole, to which several petitions on that subject had been referred. Several of the Southern Federalists, and Marshall among the num ber, had admitted the impolicy of the law, and, as a means of securing their election, had pledged themselves to vote for its repeal. Macon relied on their assistance,

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but he was effectually counterworked by Bayard, who CHAPTER offered a resolution for the repeal of the section relating to libels, "the offenses therein provided for to remain pun- 1800. ishable at common law," but the truth to be a defense. Jan. 23 A division being called for, that part of the resolution going for repeal was carried fifty to forty-eight. The other part was also carried fifty-one to forty-seven, Gray of Virginia, and Nott of South Carolina, who had voted for the first clause, voting also for this. Tending, in the shape in which it had been adopted, to establish the doctrine of common law offenses against the United States

-a doctrine far more alarming than the Sedition Law, which, by its own limitation, would expire in a year,— the bulk of the Federalists were now assisted in voting down the resolution by the whole opposition. The vote stood eighty-seven to eleven, those in the minority being mostly Southern Federalists, who thus redeemed their pledge of voting for repeal.

The matter of the surrender of Thomas Nash, or Jon- Feb. 5. athan Robbins, as he had chosen to call himself, was brought before the House by a motion of Livingston's to call upon the president for the papers in the case. These papers were accordingly sent; whereupon Living- Feb. 20 ston offered resolutions charging the president with a dangerous interference in that affair, with the rights and duties of the judiciary. These resolutions were vehemently supported by Livingston, Nicholas, and Gallatin, to whom Bayard, Harper, Otis, and Dana replied. The debate was closed by a most conclusive argument by Marshall, which settled the principle, not for this case only, but for the future practice of the government. The Committee of the Whole, to whom the subject had March 10 been referred, was discharged from its further consideration by the decisive vote of sixty-two to thirty-five.

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CHAPTER Such was the method resolved upon to get rid of this inflammable question as quietly as possible, it not being 1800. considered politic to press a vote upon a counter-resolution of approval offered by Bayard.

The only proceedings of the Senate at this session which excited much public attention were those connected with an alleged breach of their privileges by Duane of the Aurora. A bill had been introduced by Ross, prescribing the mode of deciding disputed elections of president and vice-president, of which the principal feature was the appointment by ballot of a joint committee of both houses, with power to decide absolutely on the validity of any objections to any of the electoral votes. Feb. 19. In reference to this bill Duane had stated in the Aurora, and that in very abusive terms, that it was got up by a secret caucus of Federal senators, who controlled all the proceedings of that body, with the design to deprive Pennsylvania of her vote at the ensuing presidential elećtion; and how the bill might have had that operation will March 20. presently appear. The Senate, upon the report of a committee of privileges, to whom this publication had been referred, resolved that it contained "assertions and pretended information respecting the Senate and their proceedings" "false, defamatory, scandalous, and malicious, tending to defame the Senate, and to bring them into contempt and disrepute, and to excite against them the hatred of the good people of the United States, and that the said publication was a high breach of the privileges March 24. of the Senate." Having appeared at the bar in obedience to a summons, Duane asked permission to be as sisted by counsel, which was granted with the limitation that they should be heard only as to such questions of fact as might arise, or in excuse or extenuation of his March 26. offense. But instead of appearing at the time appointed,

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Duane sent copies of a correspondence between himself CHAPTER and his intended counsel, Dallas and Thomas Cooper, the latter of whom we shall soon find defending a libel 1800. case of his own. In somewhat insolent terms toward the Senate, these two lawyers had declined to act, since they were not to be allowed to dispute the constitutionality of the proceeding; to which Duane himself added, that, being deprived, under the restrictions which the Senate had seen fit to adopt, of all professional assist ance, he thought himself "bound by the most sacred duties to decline any further voluntary attendance upon that body, and to leave them to pursue such measures in this case as in their wisdom they may deem meet"-the word wisdom being, by way of sneer, underscored. The Senate retorted by voting Duane guilty of a contempt March 27. in refusing to appear, and a warrant, signed by his friend the vice-president, was issued, directing the sergeant-atarms to arrest him, and to hold him in custody till further orders. He evaded an arrest, and meanwhile two or three petitions were got up by his friends in Philadelphia, praying the Senate to reconsider their recent votes ; but instead of doing so, they adopted a resolution on the May 14 last day of the session requesting the president to instruct the proper law officers to commence a prosecution against Duane for a libel on the Senate.

The bill out of which these proceedings grew was greatly modified in the House by depriving the proposed joint committee of the right of final decision, and otherwise; and, in the end, it was lost by disagreement between the two houses.

The dissatisfaction which the president had given to a portion of the Federal party, first by the proposal of a new embassy to France, and next by persisting in sending the envoys, had continued to grow and increase dur

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1800.

May 12

CHAPTER ing the session. Though there was now for the first time since the divisions of party became marked, a decided Federal majority in both houses, yet, as Jefferson exultingly wrote, they had not been able to carry a single strong measure in the Lower House. Not only was there a faltering,in Congress, but out of doors a visible abatement also appeared of the zeal and ardor lately evinced in support of the administration. All this was ascribed by the more ardent Federalists to the conduct of Adams, who was said to have thrown cold water on the public feeling by the renewal of negotiations with France, and in thus playing into the hands of the opposition, to have seriously damaged, if not ruined, the Federal party. Nothing could be more unreasonable or unjust than these complaints. Those who had seen in a war with France the prospect of the complete prostration of Jefferson and his party, were disposed, in their disappointment, quite to lay out of account that ebb of zeal which always takes place after every sudden excitement, an ebb which the appointment of the new mission to France tended rather, perhaps, to delay and to lessen than to hasten or augment. The moderation of the new Southern Federal members had not been infused into them by Adams. did but indicate the highest pitch to which the feeling of resistance to French aggressions had risen in the South-a disposition to repel insults, but still to avoid war by all tolerable means; and undoubtedly this was the disposition, also, of the great body of the Federal party throughout the Union, however a few might have thought and felt otherwise.

It

But, whatever opinion might be formed of the policy of Adams, his course of proceeding had made one thing evident. He could not be depended upon as the instrument of a party As president, he was determined to exercise