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In this way many new offices were created and more than twenty-three new appointments-presumably for life-placed in Adams's hands. He promoted many of the district judges to these new places, and was thereby enabled to appoint to the old places thus vacated many Federalist members of Congress who were constitutionally ineligible to the new offices as a member of Congress cannot be appointed to any office created by an Act passed while he is in Congress. One of the last appointments of Adams deserves to be noted. Ellsworth resigned the Chief Justiceship on account of his advanced age; and Adams nominated to the vacant post John Marshall of Virginia, at the moment acting as Secretary of State. For thirty-five years he remained at the head of the Supreme Court, imposing his ideas on the new Associate Justices, as one after another they appeared. During these years John Marshall laid down the broad construction theory of the Constitution first propounded by Hamilton. In truth, however, Jefferson once in power forgot many of his former theories, and exercised whatever authority he wished, with slight regard to the Constitution, as for instance in the case of the Louisiana Purchase.

The "Midnight appointments."

Adams's departure from political life was a most unfitting close to a great career. According to a tradition, preserved in Jefferson's family, at midnight on March 3rd, 1801, Levi Lincoln, of Massachusetts, Jefferson's proposed Attorney-General, with the new President's watch in his hand, entered the office of the Secretary of State and ordered Marshall to stop countersigning commissions. At daybreak the next morning, Adams began his last journey from the seat of government to his home at Quincy, Massachusetts, without waiting to see his successful rival inaugurated into office. Looking backward, it seems clear that Adams's failure in his party was due to the fact that he was in He seems to have become conscious of this

the wrong party.

v.]

The End of Adams's Career.

159

later on. During their last years Adams and Jefferson became friends once more. On July 4th, 1826, on the fiftieth anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence, these two men, the one the author, the other the defender of that great declaration, died. The last words that fell from Adams's lips were "Thomas Jefferson still lives."

CHAPTER VI.

SUPREMACY OF THE JEFFERSONIAN REPUBLICANS.

American ideals, 1800.

1801-1809.

THE first administration of Thomas Jefferson (1801-1805) marked the close of a revolution as important and as far-reaching in its consequences to the American people as the movement of 1776-83, which one ordinarily associates with the phrase "the American Revolution." A better usage would include both movements in this term. In 1776, the colonists freed themselves from the bonds which had hitherto bound together the several groups that used the English tongue. In 1800, the American people broke away from its own past and entered upon the work of the Nineteenth Century with that spirit of modern liberalism which one might well call the Nineteenth Century spirit. In this, they stood almost alone. Nowhere else were the ideas which have made this century memorable in the history of the human race so well developed and so openly recognized. It is true that the French at one time had seemed about to take the lead in the march of progress. But France was now under the rule of a military despot. In America, on the other hand, the ardour of the earlier revolution, chastened and confined within more reasonable limits, again asserted itself. The Federalist party was conservative-ultra-conservative. It clung hopelessly and despondently to the eighteenth century

CHAP. VI.]

The American People in 1800.

161

ideas of law and order in society and government.

1800.

It was

defeated in 1800, not because it was Federalist, but because it held to the ideals of a bygone age. The American voters, strong in their faith in humanity and in human progress, would no longer consent to place the government of a free people in the hands of those who believed in government by a minority. It will be well to stop a moment and observe the condition of the American people at the beginning of the century. The area of the United States was then about 849,145 square miles, the same as in 1783. The total Statistics of population was given in the census of 1800 Population, at five million three hundred thousand. This may be compared with four millions in 1790 and one million six hundred thousand in 1760. The American people was still mainly engaged in agriculture. This can be easily understood from a slight analysis of the population. If we take the line of five thousand as determining whether the inhabitants of a town should be classed as a rural or urban population, we find that in 1800 there were only eleven towns containing five thousand inhabitants or over.1 Five of these towns, Philadelphia, New York, Baltimore, Boston, and Charleston, each contained over twenty thousand inhabitants. The total urban population was

1 The population of these eleven towns is thus recorded in the Second Census:

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two hundred and forty thousand or about five per cent. of the whole.

Analysis of the population.

The population of the United States was distributed by sections somewhat as follows: New England contained, in round numbers, one million two hundred thousand, the Middle States one million four hundred thousand, and the Southern States two million two hundred thousand. The population of the States north of Mason and Dixon's line was nearly two million seven hundred thousand, or, excluding slaves, one hundred thousand less. Subtracting the slave population from the total population of the Southern States, we find that the white population of that section was one million three hundred thousand, or only just half that of the North. A study of these figures in detail will show more clearly the great differences already existing between the two sections. The South, with a total population of over two millions, contained only two large towns, Baltimore and Charleston, and a total urban population of sixty-seven thousand. The North, with a total population of over two millions and a half, contained two cities of over sixty thousand inhabitants each, and a total urban population of over one hundred and seventy thousand. One or two comparisons will be of interest as showing the extent to which slavery was even then exercising its influence. Taking Pennsylvania and Virginia, we find that Pennsylvania with a population of about six hundred thousand possessed a city of seventy thousand inhabitants. On the other hand, Virginia, whose boundaries for a long distance marched with those of Pennsylvania, contained no town of over seven thousand, and had an urban population of only twelve thousand four hundred and three in a total population of nearly nine hundred thousand. In Pennsylvania there were no slaves, in Virginia there were three hundred and fifty thousand slaves. This contrast between two States lying almost side by side is most interesting and forms

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