o day
without doing any thing, the parties being too much out of temper to
do business together. The eastern members particularly, who, with
Smith from South Carolina, were the principal gamblers in these scenes,
threatened a secession and dissolution. Hamilton was in despair. As I
was going to the President's one day, I met him in the street. He walked
me backwards and forwards before the President's door for half an hour.
He painted pathetically the temper into which the legislature had been
wrought; the disgust of those who were called the creditor States; the
danger of the secession of their members, and the separation of the
States. He observed that the members of the administration ought to act
in concert; that though this question was not of my department, yet a
common duty should make it a common concern; that the President was the
centre on which all administrative questions ultimately rested, and
that all of us should rally around him, and support, with joint efforts,
measures approved by him; and that the question having been lost by
a small majority only, it was probable that an appeal from me to the
judgment and discretion of some of my friends, might effect a change in
the vote, and the machine of government, now suspended, might be again
set into motion. I told him that I was really a stranger to the whole
subject; that not having yet informed myself of the system of finance
adopted, I knew not how far this was a necessary sequence; that
undoubtedly, if its rejection endangered a dissolution of our Union at
this incipient stage, I should deem that the most unfortunate of all
consequences, to avert which all partial and temporary evils should be
yielded. I proposed to him, however, to dine with me the next day, and I
would invite another friend or two, bring them into conference together,
and I thought it impossible that reasonable men, consulting together
coolly, could fail, by some mutual sacrifices of opinion, to form a
compromise which was to save the Union. The discussion took place.
I could take no part in it but an exhortatory one, because I was a
stranger to the circumstances which should govern it. But it was finally
agreed, that whatever importance had been attached to the rejection of
this proposition, the preservation of the Union and of concord among the
States was more important, and that therefore it would be better that
the vote of rejection should be rescinded, to effect which, some members