Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919). New York. 1906.
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| than anything we have seen in the country for many years past. Neither party at this time was truly national or truly American. To their honor be it said, however, many of the New York Democrats refused to go with the extreme Jeffersonians, as regards the embargo and subsequent matters. Moreover, the Federalists, in their turn, with the exception of a minority led by Gouverneur Morris, refused to take any part in the secessionist movements of their party friends in New England, during the War of 1812. After this war the Federalists gradually disappeared; while their opponents split into a perfect tangle of factions, whose innumerable fights and squabbles it is nearly impossible and entirely unnecessary to relate in intelligible form. During all this period the political bitterness was intense, as the scurrility of the newspapers bore witness. One of its most curious manifestations was in connection with the chartering of banks. These were then chartered by special acts of the legislature; and it was almost absolutely impossible for a bank of which the officers and stockholders belonged to one party to get a charter from a legislature controlled by the other. Aaron Burr once accomplished the feat, before the Federalist overthrow in 1800, by taking advantage of the cry in New York for better water. He prepared a bill chartering a company to introduce water into the city, and tacked on an |