objected to it on grounds that were elevated and patriotic. Looking into the future with wise but only mortal forecast, he dreaded so vast an increase to the territory out of which many slave-States could be made. His son relates, that, during the happiest years of the Era of Good Feeling under Monroe, he would say, "You and I may not live to see the day; but, before that boy is off the stage, he will see this country torn in pieces by the fierce passions that are now sleeping." Both father and son lived to " see the day;" and the father, in 1864, his ninety-second year and his last, must have clearly seen that slavery, which vitiated all our politics, spoiled every measure, and injured every man, was an evanescent thing. Slavery passed, but Louisiana remains. "If slavery is not wrong," Mr. Lincoln said, in that homely, vivid way of his, "nothing is wrong." It was so wrong, that, while it lasted, nothing in America could be quite right, except war upon it.

One consideration embarrassed the president amid the relief and triumph of this peaceful solution of a problem so alarming. He, a strict constructionist, had done an act unauthorized by the Constitution. He owned and justified it thus: "The Constitution has made no provision for our holding foreign territory, still less for incorporating foreign nations into our Union. The executive, in seizing the fugitive occurrence which so much advances the good of their country, have done an act beyond the Constitution. The legislature, in casting behind them metaphysical subtleties, and risking themselves like faithful servants, must ratify and pay for it, and throw themselves on their country for doing for them unauthorized, what we know they would have done for themselves had they been in a situation to do it. It is the case of a guardian, investing the money of his ward in purchasing an important adjacent territory; and saying to him when of age, I did this for your good; I pretend to no right to bind you; you may disavow me, and I must get out of the scrape as I can; I thought it my duty to risk myself for you. But we shall not be disavowed by the nation; and their act of indemnity will confirm and not weaken the Constitution, by more strongly marking out its lines." He proposed that the case should be met by an additional article to the Constitution. It is to be regretted that this was not done; for, let us travel as far away as we will from the strict Jeffersonian rule, to strict construction we must come back at last, if it takes a century of heroic struggle to reach it.

It was like Jefferson, when he had won Louisiana, to think first of offering the governorship to Lafayette. It had to remain a thought only. Upon re-considering the situation, he deemed it best not to gratify a sentiment by an act which might be construed as a reflection upon the seller. Andrew Jackson, who was then getting tired of serving as judge of the Supreme Court of Tennessee, was strongly urged for the place; and because he had been urged, and because he would have liked the appointment, he refrained from calling upon the president when he was in Washington in April, 1804. So I gathered in Nashville from a yellow and musty letter of the learned judge, which was, perhaps, the worst-spelled and most ungrammatical letter a judge of a supreme court ever wrote. He said, that, if he should call upon the president, it would be regarded as "the act of a courteor;" and, therefore, he "traviled on, enjoying his own feelings." He confessed, too, that the governor of Louisiana ought to be acquainted with the French language. People can forgive bad spelling when it expresses sentiments so honorable; and happy the president when the expectants of office behave in so considerate a manner.

CHAPTER LXV.

DOWNFALL OF AARON BURR.

Not long after Jefferson had entered into possession of Louisiana, rumors reached him that Aaron Burr, for many years his political ally, and recently his associate in the government, was rousing the western country to wrest the province from the United States, and annex it to some vaguely imagined empire of Mexico. Burr's scheme need not detain us here. It is only as a curious illustration of the party ferocity of that time that I recall attention to it for a moment. In recent times we have had nothing resembling the blind, malignant fury of party passion which raged in the breasts of men, otherwise reasonable, during the decline of the Federalists. As that party grew smaller, it seemed as if the whole sum of bitterness which had been diffused in the brimming cup of 1800, remained in the lees and dregs at the bottom of the vessel. Jefferson did not exaggerate when, on sending his nephew to school at Philadelphia, during the second term of his presidency, he told him that the more furious Federalists were little more sane than the patients of Bedlam, who needed medical more than moral counsel.

"Be a listener only," he continued. "Keep within yourself, and endeavor to establish with yourself the habit of silence, especially on politics. In the fevered state of our country no good can ever result from any attempt to set one of these fiery zealots to rights, either in fact or principle. They are determined as to the facts they will believe, and the opinions on which they will act. therefore, as you would by an angry bull: it is not sense to dispute the road with such an animal. You will be more exposed than others to have these animals shaking their horns at you because of the relation in which you stand to me. Full of political venom, and willing to see me and to hate me as a chief in the

Get by them, for a man of

antagonist party, your presence will be to them what the vomit-grass is to the sick dog, a nostrum for producing ejaculation. Look upon them exactly with that eye, and pity them as objects to whom you can administer only occasional ease."

Persons familiar with the politics of that period will recognize the truth of this picture. Jefferson might well place it among the first objects of his administration to allay the fury of a party spirit; for at that time the bloody code of the duellist was still despotic in political circles, and political estrangements were only too apt to result in tragedies that desolated families and appalled society. Duels more groundless, and, I may say, more devilish, than some which took place in the United States during the first few years of the present century, have seldom occurred out of Ireland. Consider, for example, the incredible ferocity of the duel between De Witt Clinton and John Swartwout in 1802, when Swartwout, after the fifth exchange of shots, and while the surgeon was extracting from his leg the second ball, stood firmly at his post, and demanded a written apology or another fire.

Less known, but perhaps more remarkable, was the duel which occurred on the same spot between the eldest son of Alexander Hamilton and George Eacker. I have often thought, that, among the many reasons which induced Alexander Hamilton to submit to the barbarous custom of duelling, was the very fact, that his own son had recently done so, and in circumstances similar to those of his own fatal encounter. For although the quarrel between Philip Hamilton and his antagonist appeared to originate in a common theatre brawl, yet, in reality, such was not the case: the two young men belonged to opposite political parties, and their dispute originated in hostile political feeling.

On Friday evening, November 21, 1801, a play was performed in the only theatre then existing in the city of New York. In one of the stage boxes, with a party of friends, sat Mr. George I. Eacker, a young lawyer of some note in the town, a member of the Republican party, then in the first year of its possession of the national government. He was twenty-seven years of age. On the Fourth of July preceding he had delivered the oration at the Democratic celebration of the day, in the course of which he had probably spoken of the Federal magnates with the freedom usual on such occasions at that period. Mr. Eacker was a perfectly respectable

and honorable gentleman; certainly he was entitled to be treated with respect in public by his juniors. In the course of the evening, he heard loud conversation behind him, accompanied with derisive laughter; and, upon looking round, he observed that it came from two well-known young men, Philip Hamilton and a Mr. Price. It was evident to Mr. Eacker that these young gentlemen were talking about him, and laughing at him. Philip Hamilton, at this time, was twenty years of age, a recent graduate from Columbia College, and just entering upon the study of the law. Price, the son of a respectable gentleman of the city, was somewhat noted for his dissolute habits and roystering ways.

Mr. Eacker at first took no notice of their behavior. At the end of the play, while the audience were waiting for the after-piece to begin, the two merry young blades crowded into the box occupied by Eacker and his friends, where they at once began to make sarcastic remarks upon the Fourth of July oration before alluded to, and it was but too evident that their observations were intended to be heard by the person who was the subject of them. Eacker's patience giving way, he rose from his seat for the purpose, as he said, of remonstrating with the young men. As he stepped into the lobby, and at a moment when his back was turned toward his assailants, he exclaimed, speaking to himself,

"It is too abominable to be publicly insulted by a set of d-d rascals."

Both men instantly asked, "Whom do you call d-d rascals?" Mr. Eacker, wishing to avoid a disturbance in so public a place, said to the two young scapegraces,

"I live at No. 50, Wall Street, where I am always to be found." "Your place of residence," said young Hamilton, "has nothing to do with it."

Upon which the young men rushed at one another, or, at least, they appeared to be about to do so, when one of their friends got between them, and compelled them to keep the peace. Eacker urged his assailants to make less noise, and proposed that they should go to a certain tavern near by, where they could discuss the matter more conveniently. To the tavern they went; and on the way they continued to converse in a hostile tone. When they reached the tavern, both the young men insisted upon Mr. Eacker's naming the individual to whom he had applied the word rascal.