The great and
trying question, however, was lost in the House of Representatives.
So high were the feuds excited by this subject, that on its rejection
business was suspended. Congress met and adjourned from day to 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.
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