Page:The Supreme Court in United States History vol 1.djvu/221

Rh cuit Court Act) is as good to the party as an election/* a Washington correspondent of the Aurora had writ- ten; and General Harry Lee had said that "it is the only resource which the Government would have to secure strength, since the standing army could not be retained/' Regarding this measure, therefore, as a mere partisan move, Jefferson and his party leaders were determined ui>on its*repeal as soon as the new Con- gress should convene. Within ten days after his in- auguration, Jefferson wrote that the principal Federa- lists "have retreated into the Judiciary as a stronghold, the tenure of which renders it difficult to dislodge them." Within three weeks after his inauguration, he wrote that while the Supreme Court was "so decidedly Fed- eral and irremovable", the new Circuit Judges would remain in office only until the recent statute could be repealed; and later, he wrote that such action was necessary, since "the Federalists have retired into the Judiciary as a stronghold . . . and from that battery all the works of republicanism are to be beaten down and erased." And Jefferson's views were echoed by William B. Giles, who wrote that the Federalists "saw their doom approaching" and selected the Judiciary Department "in which they could entrench themselves. . . . The Judiciary has been filled with men who had manifested the most indecorous zeal in favor of the principles of the Federal party." Others of his party associates warmly supported his intended course. "It is generally expected," wrote Elbridge Gerry to Jefferson as early as May, 1801, "that among the first acts of the next Congress will be a repeal of the ex- traordinary judicial bill, the design of which was too palpable to elude common observation." ^ "What con-

^ Aurora, Feb. 88, 1801 ; speech of Giles, 7th Cong., 1st Sess., 581, 590; Jefferson. IX, letters to Joel Bariow, Blarch 14, 1801, and to Giles, Biaidi 28, 1801 ; WriUnge