The Conqueror

XIX

The im­me­di­ate con­se­quences of Hamil­ton's Re­port were a rise of fifty per cent in the se­cu­ri­ties of the bankrupt Con­fed­er­ation, and a bit­ter war­fare in Congress. All were agreed up­on the pro­pri­ety of pay­ing the for­eign loan, but the bat­tle raged about ev­ery oth­er point in turn. One of the lega­cies of the old Congress was the prin­ci­ple of re­pu­di­at­ing what it was not con­ve­nient to re­deem, and the politi­cians of the coun­try had in­sen­si­bly fall­en in­to the habit of as­sum­ing that they should start clear with the new gov­ern­ment, and rel­egate the do­mes­tic debt to the lim­bo which held so many oth­er re­sources best for­got­ten. They were far from ad­mit­ting the full mea­sure of their in­her­itance, how­ev­er, and opened the bat­tle with a loud de­nounce­ment of the greedy spec­ula­tor who had de­fraud­ed the im­pov­er­ished sol­dier, to whose needs they had been in­dif­fer­ent hith­er­to. Most of this feel­ing con­cen­trat­ed in the op­po­si­tion, but many Fed­er­al­ists were so di­vid­ed up­on the ques­tion of dis­crim­ina­tion that for a time the oth­er great ques­tions con­tained in the Re­port fell back. Feel­ing be­came so bit­ter that those who sup­port­ed the as­signees were ac­cused of spec­ula­tion, and per­son­al­ities were hot and blis­ter­ing. Many of the strongest men, how­ev­er, ranged with Hamil­ton, and were in sight of vic­to­ry, when Madi­son, who had hoped to see the ques­tion set­tle it­self in favour of the orig­inal hold­ers with­out his open sup­port, came out with a dou­ble bomb; the first symp­tom of his op­po­si­tion to the Fed­er­al par­ty, and an un­con­sti­tu­tion­al propo­si­tion that the hold­ers by as­sign­ment should re­ceive the high­est mar­ket-​price yet reached by the cer­tifi­cates, by which they would reap no in­con­sid­er­able prof­it, and that the bal­ance of the sum due, pos­si­bly more than one-​half, should be dis­tribut­ed among the orig­inal hold­ers. For a time the rep­uta­tion for state­man­ship which Madi­son had won was cloud­ed, for his ad­mis­sion of the claims of the as­signees nul­li­fied any ar­gu­ment he could ad­vance in favour of the orig­inal hold­ers. But he had his lim­ita­tions. There was noth­ing of the busi­ness man in his com­po­si­tion. One of the most no­table and use­ful at­tributes of Hamil­ton's ver­sa­tile brain was ex­clud­ed from his, be­yond its com­pre­hen­sion. His propo­si­tion was re­ject­ed by thir­ty-​six votes to thir­teen.

Then the hos­tile camps faced each oth­er on the ques­tions of the do­mes­tic debt and as­sump­tion. In re­gard to the for­mer, com­mon de­cen­cy fi­nal­ly pre­vailed, but the oth­er threat­ened to dis­rupt the Union, for the East­ern States threw out more than one hint of se­ces­sion did the mea­sure fail. Madi­son, with­out fur­ther sub­terfuge, came forth at the head of his State as the lead­er of the an­ti-​as­sump­tion­ists. He of­fered no ex­pla­na­tion to his for­mer chief and none was de­mand­ed. For a time Hamil­ton was bit­ter­ly dis­gust­ed and wound­ed. He shrugged his shoul­ders, fi­nal­ly, and ac­cept­ed his new en­emy with phi­los­ophy, though by no means with ami­abil­ity and for­give­ness; but he had seen too much of the self­ish­ness and mean­ness of hu­man na­ture to re­main pained or as­ton­ished at any de­fec­tion.

When June came, how­ev­er, he was deeply un­easy. On March 29th the res­olu­tions pro­vid­ing for the for­eign debt and for pay­ing in full the prin­ci­pal of the do­mes­tic debt to the present hold­ers passed with­out a di­vi­sion. So did the res­olu­tion in favour of pay­ing the ar­rears of in­ter­est in like man­ner with the prin­ci­pal of the do­mes­tic debt. But the res­olu­tion in favour of as­sump­tion was recom­mit­ted. The next day the friends of as­sump­tion had the oth­er res­olu­tions al­so recom­mit­ted, and the fu­ri­ous bat­tle raged again. Fi­nal­ly, on June 2d, a bill was passed by the House, which left the ques­tion of as­sump­tion to be set­tled by a fu­ture test of strength.

The an­ti-​as­sump­tion­ists were tri­umphant, for they be­lieved the idea would gain in un­pop­ular­ity. But they reck­oned with­out Hamil­ton.