Page:Henry Adams' History of the United States Vol. 2.djvu/112

1803. and whose devotion to the principles of strict construction was beyond doubt. One of the South Carolina senators was Pierce Butler; one of those from North Carolina was David Stone; Georgia was represented by Abraham Baldwin and James Jackson,—stanch State-rights Republicans all. In the House a small coterie of State-rights Republicans controlled legislation. Speaker Macon was at their head; John Randolph, chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, was their mouthpiece. Joseph H. Nicholson of Maryland, and Cæsar A. Rodney of Delaware, supported Randolph on the committee; while two of President Jefferson’s sons-in-law, Thomas Mann Randolph and John W. Eppes, sat in the Virginia delegation. Both in Senate and House the Southern Republicans of the Virginia school held supremacy; their power was so absolute as to admit no contest; they were at the flood of that tide which had set in three years before. In the Senate they controlled twenty-five votes against nine; in the House, one hundred and two against thirty-nine. Virginia ruled the United States, and the Republicans of 1798 ruled Virginia. The ideal moment of Republican principles had arrived.

This moment was big with the fate of theories. Other debates of more practical importance may have frequently occurred,—for in truth whatever the decision of Congress might have been, it would in no case have affected the result that Louisiana was to enter the Union; and this inevitable result overshadowed