Baltimore, Randolph dragged into the indictment his conduct on the bench during the trials of Fries and of Callender, and certain errors in law which he was alleged to have committed. The effect of these latter items was to range all the bench on the side of Chase, for if a mere mistake in judgment was a proper ground of impeachment, no judge was safe in his tenure. Justice Chase secured some of the best legal talent in the country to conduct his defense; and the trial assumed from the outset a spectacular character from the personalities involved.

The managers of the impeachment were far from consistent in their conception of the nature of impeachable offenses. Randolph, Campbell, and Giles held that an impeachment was "a kind of inquest into the conduct of an officer merely as it regards his office," rather than a criminal prosecution. A judge, in short, might be removed for a mistake in the administration of the law. Nicholson rejected this theory, contending that impeachment was essentially a criminal prosecution which aimed at not only the removal but also the punishment of the offender. Yet the managers had not specified any offense which could be called a "high crime" or "misdemeanor" within the meaning of the Constitution. The counsel for Justice Chase, on the other hand, held consistently to the position that a judge might not be impeached or removed from office for anything short of an indictable offense, an offense in dictable under the known law of the land.

From the first, the legal counsel for the accused

were more than a match for the managers. Randolph's erratic course culminated in an impassioned but incoherent speech which closed the argument for the prosecution and left the outcome hardly in doubt. Not one of the articles of impeachment received the two-thirds majority which was necessary to convict. The eighth article, which touched upon the real provocation for the trial, the harangue at Baltimore, received the highest vote; but nearly one fourth of the Republican Senators refused to sustain the managers. The acquittal of Chase was, therefore, a judgment against Randolph. He never recovered his lost prestige as the leader of his party in the House. Jefferson coull accept Randolph's downfall with equanimity, but not the failure of the impeachment. Years afterward he wrote bitterly that impeachment was "an impracticable thing, a mere scarecrow." From this time on, said he, the judges held office without any sense of responsibility, led "by a crafty chief-judge who sophisticates the law to his mind by the turn of his own reasoning."

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

Although the general histories contain much that is important for an understanding of the administrations of Jefferson, the authority par excellence is Henry Adams, History of the United States of America (9 vols., 1889-91). Chapters I-VI of the first volume contain an excellent description of American society about 1800; but for the details of social and economic life the reader will turn to McMaster. A briefer account of the Jeffersonian régime may be found in Channing, The Jeffersonian System, 1801–1811 (in The American Nation, vol. 12, 1906). Henry Adams has also contributed two biographies to this period: Life of Albert Gallatin (1878), and John Randolph (1882). The Federalist point of view

is admirably presented in S. E. Morison, The Life and Letters of Harrison Gray Otis (2 vols., 1913). The larger biographies of Jefferson are: H. S. Randall, Life of Thomas Jefferson (3 vols., 1858), commonly referred to as the standard biography, though exceedingly partisan; G. Tucker, Life of Thomas Jefferson (2 vols., 1837); and James Parton, Life of Thomas Jefferson (1874).

CHAPTER VIII

THE PURCHASE OF THE PROVINCE OF

LOUISIANA

Not a war cloud was in the sky when Jefferson took the oath of office. The European calm, to be sure, proved to be only a lull in the tempest of war which was to rage fifteen years longer; but no mar could have cast the horoscope of Europe in that age of storm and stress. The times seemed auspicious for the Republican program of retrenchment and economy. Jefferson was so sanguine of continued peace that he would have been glad to lay up all seven of the frigates which then constituted the navy in the eastern branck of the Potomac, where “ they would be under the immediate eye of the department, and would require but one set of plunderers to take care of them." Peace was his passion, he frankly avowed. He would have been glad to banish all the paraphernalia of war. Yet within three months the United States was at war with an insignificant Medi. terranean power and menaced by France from an unexpected quarter.

Early in the spring of 1801, the Pasha of Tripoli, one of the Barbary powers which for years had preyed upon the commerce of the Mediterranean, declared war upon the United States by cutting down the flagstaff at the residence of the American consul. European states had purchased immunity for their com

merce by paying tribute to these rapacious pirates; and the United States had followed the custom. The Pasha of Tripoli, however, was dissatisfied with the American tribute, a paltry eighty-three thousand dollars, and demanded more. The other Barbary powers threatened to make common cause with him. Anticipating trouble, Jefferson had sent a small squadron to the Mediterranean even before the dramatic act of the Pasha at the American consulate ; and hostilities began on August 1 with the capture of a corsair by the schooner Enterprise. There with Jefferson's dreams of a navy for coast defense only vanished in thin air.

Contrary to all expectations, the Tripolitan War dragged on for four years, causing the peace-loving Administration no end of embarrassment. So far from reducing expenditures, Gallatin was obliged to devise new ways and means for an ever-increasing naval force. An additional duty of two and one half per cent was laid on all imports which paid an ad valorem duty, and the proceeds were kept as a separate treasury account. The Administration was sensitive to the charge that it was guilty of the very crime which it had accused the Federalists of committing -"taxing the industry of our fellow citizens to accumulate treasure for war." With superior wisdom and a higher sense of popular responsibility, the Republicans, so the argument ran, were establishing a "Mediterranean Fund," so that the people might know in detail just what was collected and spent for war purposes.

Tales of individual daring go far to relieve the