Mississippi territory lying east of the great river; its southern boundary upon the Spanish Floridas being left in dispute under the cession of Louisiana.* Georgia, it appears, had made a compact with the United States, in 1802, by which all her claims to territory lying west of her present boundary were yielded upon stated considerations, so that the General Government took full jurisdiction. Erecting accordingly this Mississippi territory, which was set off so as to include all that region within the old limits of the Union south of Tennessee and west of Georgia, in which the States of Alabama and Mississippi were afterwards established, the General Government became involved in some of Georgia's tangles of private title. One of these related to Yazoo lands corruptly ceded, in 1795, by the legislature of Georgia to certain speculators, under an act declared null and void by the legislature of 1796. Assignees of these speculators claimed, as innocent parties, the benefit of Georgia's original cession; the chief interest being represented by a New England company which pressed Congress for a settlement. As the best means of extricating Georgia's honor the commissioners who investigated the subject, Madison, Gallatin, and Lincoln, of the cabinet, recommended a reservation of five million acres for claimants by way of compromise. But this arrangement hung fire for many years; the Yazoo claims came up in one session after another, opposed by Georgia members and others; none more vehement than John Randolph, who made this the theme for numerous philippics upon New England and members of the cabinet. The House beheld the administration leader on his Jan.-Feb. feet this winter, not only censuring the judgment of 1805. the three disinterested commissioners, but abusing groundlessly, and without stint, Granger, the Postmaster-General, who had some connection with the assignees, as though he had been partner in the original fraud. In furtherance of a wise policy which time and experience slowly unfolded, 1 amely, to discourage these heavy land speculators, and give the pioneer his farm without exacting tribute from him to intervening agencies whose multiplication was a *See Act March 27th, 1804. 1804-5. TERRITORIES AND THE INDIANS. 75 discouragement to agriculture, the plan was adopted in the present Congress, for the first time, of selling public lands by the quarter section; that is, in tracts as small as 160 acres. Fractional sections, after an offer at public sale, might thus be purchased, united or singly, either in the territory north of the Ohio or that south of the State of Tennessee. Besides this provision the reservation of every 16th section for schools was made a permanent feature of our public land system.* The inconvenient credit system, however, was still kept up in the sales of public lands. Aug. 1803. 1804. We may here add that Jefferson's territorial management regarded the Indians with more humane consideration than hitherto, and won their simple faith. Their claims of occupancy were respected, and at the same time extinguished by fair purchase as rapidly as possible, where it was desirable to open the way for Western settlers. In this manner Harrison procured easily a large and fertile reservation from the Kaskaskia tribe, located mainly in what is now the southern portion of Illinois; nearly 2,000,000 acres in the productive neighborhood of Vincennes, from the Fort Wayne Indians; and an extinguishment of the title of the Delawares to an extensive tract fronting on the Ohio and Wabash. In this manner by friendly treaties our territorial possessions north of the Ohio became speedily consolidated from Lake Erie to the Mississippi.† Indian cessions, too, were obtained in the territory south of the Ohio, adjacent to Tennessee and Georgia. Fixing the boundaries of the various Indian tribes, as well as of the great territories themselves, occupied the national attention. It was the President's wish to reclaim these children of nature from the savage state; leading them, if possible, to abandon the chase, devote themselves to civilized pursuits, and settle in fixed habitations. Spinning and weaving might, he thought, be profitably introduced among them, also the tillage of small farms; and thus would they become more disposed to part with the large tracts, which to them had been mere hunting grounds, * See Gallatin's Report, January, 1804; Act March 26th, 1804. † See 2 Holmes's Annals; 5 Hildreth. Ib. besides gradually fitting themselves to become citizens of the United States. "In truth," he wrote in 1803, “the ultimate point of rest and happiness for them is to let our settlements and theirs meet and blend together, to intermix and become one people. Incorporating themselves with us as citizens of the United States, this is what the natural progress of things will, of course, bring on, and it will be better to promote than to retard it." Sentiments so philanthropic were far in advance of his age, and indeed of our own; and though at this time Indians in detached settlements were applying for admission to citizenship with the white man, the long friction of races had generated an antipathy which it was easier to hide than heal; when the weaker brother slips he slides back. Public tradinghouses opened on the frontiers to supply Indians cheaply with necessaries, and supersede private traders were a feature in Jefferson's plan of amelioration, which disappointed in after years. An advantage, however, which he perceived, was that of making Indians debtors to the government, and thereby promoting their cessions. Ultimately these Indians would be pushed across the Mississippi unless they coalesced with the American people. The dramatic feature of this closing session was the impeachment trial of Judge Chase. Upon its issue seemed to many to hang the last hope of the national judiciary, if not of the nation. Eight articles the House had framed as the basis of their indictment at the previous session, one relating to the Fries trial, five to that of Callender, one to his behavior before a Delaware grand jury, and the last to the political harangue at Baltimore. Full preparations had been made in the Senate chamber for so grave a spectacle. The benches assigned to members of the Senate, the triers of the case, were covered with crimson. To accommodate the ladies, who at Jan. 2, 1805. * Jefferson's Works, February 18th, 1803. See Annals of Congress, March 27th, 1804. 1805. IMPEACHMENT TRIAL OF CHASE. 77 tended in great numbers, a new gallery was specially fitted up, and separate boxes besides, for those of the court circle. So great were the throngs, however, to which the Maryland neighbors of the accused contributed, that special places could not be exclusively reserved. Judge Chase took his seat in the centre of the Senate chamber in front of the presiding officer; a massive brown-faced* old man, venerable in appearance, suffering from the gout so badly that he withdrew from the public gaze during the last days of the trial. Able counsel were employed on his behalf; Charles Lee, the late Attorney-General, Luther Martin, Hopkinson and Harper, the last of whom, at one time the most brilliant Federalist debater in the House, had lately removed from South Carolina to Maryland, and now practiced at the Baltimore bar. The House managers were John Randolph, Nicholson of Maryland, and Rodney, the successor of Bayard in the House, a trio of no mean abilities, and the last especially, an able advocate; but in legal equipment, such as an impeachment trial with its novel points severely tests, decidedly overmatched by their opponents. In permitting so passionate, eccentric, and withal superficial a man as Randolph to put himself forward for leading counsel, the prosecution. made its chief blunder. He caused the managers' replication to be offensively worded, misrecited authorities, and conducted the case with little regard for the decorum and gravity of such a tribunal. His closing speech, to prepare which he required special delays, betrayed haste and insufficient study of the law and facts. It was incoherent, illogical, full of declamatory clap-trap, such as one employs upon the stump; its delivery accompanied by strange twistings of the face and body, sobs, tears and groans, with pauses for recollection, and continual complaints of having lost his notes.† The personal appearance of the accused, and his past record, * The "bacon face of old Chase," was a coarse expression used by inimical newspapers in pointing one of the anecdotes related of him in the Sedition days. † See John Quincy Adams's Memoirs, from which this description is chiefly derived; Annals of Congress; 5 Hildreth. that of a revolutionary veteran who had grown gray in his country's service, moved the audience to compassion, and aided in his favor the talents of his present defenders. The procedure for counting the electoral votes, which took place with open galleries, interrupted this trial; and an administration shown so secure of the general confidence inclined to magnanimity. The "Book of Kings," Jefferson used to discuss in his correspondence; but of the "Book of Judges," at this page we are left to conjecture. Offended by Chase's political rant from the bench, perhaps he thought it sufficient discipline to have him for once arraigned at the bar. Be this as it may, the Senate on the final vote acquitted Chase of every charge, excepting those under articles four and eight, namely, of partisanship and rudeness at the Callender trial, and making a political harangue before the Baltimore grand jury. Only a small majority condemned, and no article received the twothirds essential to sustaining a vote of impeachment.* Randolph's influence as a legislative leader passed its cul minating point this winter. Immediately upon the March. discharge of Chase, whom he styled "an acquitted felon," he moved in the House an amendment to the Constitution, so as to make United States judges removable by the President on the joint address of Congress; Nicholson seeking likewise to render Senators liable to recall by the State legislatures. But the House was not in a mood for agitating such reforms, and all that Randolph's spiteful lead could effect was to prevent Chase's witness fees from being at once allowed.† About the time of Chase's acquittal, a far more sweeping and vindictive impeachment of judges came to grief in Pennsylvania. In the spring of 1804, three of the four judges of the Supreme Court of that State, Shippen, Yates, and Smith, had been arraigned by the popular branch of the Assembly for the arbitrary imprisonment, as alleged, of a party to a pending newspaper suit. When Brackenridge, the fourth judge, who was absent at the time of the commitment, protested, * Ib. † Annals of Congress. The next Congress made the appropriation needful which now failed. |