CHAPTER VIII.
Under these circumstances President Madison was to meet Congress; but bad as his situation was in foreign affairs, his real troubles lay not abroad but at home. France never counted with him as more than an instrument to act on England. Erskine and Canning, by their united efforts, had so mismanaged English affairs that Madison derived from their mismanagement all the strength he possessed. The mission of Jackson to Washington retrieved a situation that offered no other advantage.
Jackson lost no occasion to give the President popularity. Comprehending at last that his high tone had only helped his opponent to carry out a predetermined course, Jackson lost self-confidence without gaining tact. At first he sustained himself by faith in Canning; but within a short time he heard with alarm the news from England that Canning was no longer in office or in credit. For a few days after the rupture he had a right to hope that the quarrel would not be pressed to a scandal; but November 13, the “National Intelligencer” published an official statement which embarrassed Jackson to the last point of endurance.
“I came prepared to treat with a regular government,” he wrote to his brother,[118] “and have had to do with a mob, and mob leaders. That I did not show an equal facility with Erskine to be duped by them has been my great crime.”
That Jackson should be angry was natural, and if he was abusive, he received an ample equivalent in abuse; but his merits as a diplomatist were supposed to be his courage and his truth, and these he could not afford to compromise. He had neither said nor done more than stood in his express orders. Canning’s instructions charged Madison with fraud:
“The American government cannot have believed that such an arrangement as Mr. Erskine consented to accept was conformable to his instructions.... They cannot by possibility have believed that without any new motive, and without any apparent change in the dispositions of the enemy, the British government could have been disposed at once and unconditionally to give up the system on which they had been acting.”
This ground Jackson had been ordered to take in any “preliminary discussion” which might “in all probability” arise before he could enter on the details of his negotiation. In obedience to these instructions, and well within their limits, Jackson had gone as near as he dared to telling the President that he alone was to blame for the disavowal of Erskine, because Erskine’s instructions “were at the time in substance made known” to him. In subsequently affirming that he made no insinuation which he could not substantiate, Jackson still kept to what he believed the truth; and he reiterated in private what he insinuated officially, that Erskine had been “duped” by the American government. November 16 he wrote officially to the Foreign Office that without the slightest doubt the President had full and entire knowledge of Erskine’s instruction No. 2.[119] These views were consistent and not unreasonable, but no man could suppose them to be complimentary to President Madison; yet November 13 Jackson caused his secretary, Oakeley, to send in his name an official note to the Secretary of State, complaining of the rupture and rehearsing the charges, with the conclusion that “in stating these facts, and in adhering to them, as his duty imperiously enjoined him to do, Mr. Jackson could not imagine that offence would be taken at it by the American government, as most certainly none could be intended on his part.”[120] He then addressed the same counter-statement as a circular to the various British consuls in the United States, and caused it to be printed in the newspapers,[121]—thus making an appeal to the people against their own Government, not unlike the more famous appeal which the French Minister Genet made in 1793 against President Washington.
In extremely bad temper Jackson quitted the capital. His wife wrote to her friends in joy at the prospect of shortening her stay in a country which could offer her only the tribute of ignorant admiration; but even she showed a degree of bitterness in her pleasure, and her comments on American society had more value than many official documents in explaining the attitude of England toward the United States:—
“Francis, being accustomed to treat with the civilized courts and governments of Europe, and not with savage Democrats, half of them sold to France, has not succeeded in his negotiation.”[122]
At Washington she had seen few ladies besides Mrs. Madison, “une bonne, grosse femme, de la classe bourgeoise, ... sans distinction,” and also, to do her justice, “sans prétensions;” who did the British minister’s wife the honor to copy her toilettes. Immediately after the rupture Mrs. Jackson went to Baltimore, where she was received with enthusiasm by society; but Baltimore satisfied her little better than Washington: “Between ourselves their cuisine is detestable; coarse table-linen, no claret, champagne and madeira indifferent.” Only as the relative refinement of New York and Boston was reached, with the flattery lavished upon the British minister by the Federalist society of the commercial cities, did Mrs. Jackson and her husband in some degree recover their composure and their sense of admitted superiority.
Incredible as the folly of a political party was apt to be, the folly of the Federalists in taking up Jackson’s quarrel passed the limits of understanding. After waiting to receive their tone from England, the Federalist newspapers turned on their own path and raised the cry that Madison had deceived Erskine, and had knowingly entered into an arrangement which England could not carry out. The same newspapers which in April agreed with John Randolph that Canning had obtained through Erskine all he had ever asked or had a right to expect, averred in October that Erskine surrendered everything and got nothing in return. No political majority, still less a minority, could survive a somersault so violent as this; and the Federalists found that all their late recruits, and many friends hitherto stanch, deserted them in the autumn elections. Throughout the country the Administration was encouraged by great changes in the popular vote, even before the rupture with Jackson. With confidence, Madison might expect the more important spring elections to sweep opposition from his path. Although a whole year, and in some cases eighteen months, must pass before a new Congress could be chosen, the people were already near the war point.
Vermont chose a Republican governor and a legislature Republican in both branches. In Rhode Island, Connecticut, and New Jersey the Administration recovered more than the ground lost by the embargo. In Maryland the feud between Samuel Smith and his opponents was ended by a Republican majority so large that nothing could prevent Smith’s return to the Senate, although every one knew that he would carry on a system of personal opposition, if he dared, and that a moderate Federalist would be less dangerous to the Administration. In the general return of deserters to the ranks, the party would not be too strict in its punishments; and the President set the example by clemency to the worst offender, except John Randolph, of all the trusted lieutenants in the party service. He held out a hand to Monroe.
Madison’s reasons for winning Monroe were strong. The more he had to do with Robert Smith, the more intolerable became the incubus of Smith’s incompetence. He had been obliged to take the negotiations with Erskine and Jackson wholly on his own shoulders. The papers drafted by Smith were, as Madison declared,[123] brought from the Department of State in a condition “almost always so crude and inadequate that I was, in the more important cases, generally obliged to write them anew myself, under the disadvantage sometimes of retaining through delicacy some mixture of his draft.” Smith had not even the virtue of dullness. He could not be silent, but talked openly, and criticised freely the measures of Government, especially those of commercial restriction.
Complicated with this incessant annoyance was Gallatin’s feud. The combination of the Smiths with Giles, Leib, and Duane’s “Aurora” against Gallatin had its counterpart in the Clintonian faction which made Madison its target; and whenever these two forces acted together, they made, with the Federalists, a majority of the Senate. Gallatin saw the necessity of breaking down this combination of intrigue which had already done incalculable harm by forcing Robert Smith into the State Department. He foresaw the effects of its influence in weakening the Treasury in order to expel himself. On a visit to Monticello in August he spoke plainly to Jefferson and Madison, and pointed out the probability that he should be forced to resign. Jefferson reflected six weeks on this communication, and then wrote entreating him to stand firm.[124] November 8, the day of the rupture with Jackson, Gallatin answered Jefferson’s appeal in a long and outspoken letter evidently meant for communication to Madison:—
“It has seemed to me from various circumstances that those who thought they had injured were disposed to destroy, and that they were sufficiently skillful and formidable to effect their object. As I may not, however, perhaps, see their actions with an unprejudiced eye, nothing but irresistible evidence both of the intention and success will make me yield to that consideration.... I do not ask that in the present situation of our foreign relations the debt be reduced, but only that it shall not be increased so long as we are not at war. I do not pretend to step out of my own sphere and to control the internal management of other departments; but it seems to me that as Secretary of the Treasury I may ask, that, while peace continues, the aggregate of the expenditure of those departments be kept within bounds such as will preserve the equilibrium between the national revenue and expenditure without recurrence to loans. I cannot consent to act the part of a mere financier, to become a contriver of taxes, a dealer of loans, a seeker of resources for the purpose of supporting useless baubles, of increasing the number of idle and dissipated members of the community, of fattening contractors, pursers, and agents, and of introducing in all its ramifications that system of patronage, corruption, and rottenness which you so justly execrate.”
From this avowal Madison’s difficulties could be understood and his course foreseen. Very slow to move, he was certain at last to quarrel with the senatorial faction that annoyed him. He could not but protect Gallatin, and dismiss Smith. At the end of the vista, however far the distance, stood the inevitable figure of Monroe. Scarcely another man in public life could fill precisely the gap, and none except Armstrong could give strength to the President by joining him. Perhaps Littleton Tazewell, another distinguished Virginian of the same school, would have answered the President’s purpose as well as Monroe; but probably Tazewell would have declined to accept a seat in the Cabinet of a President whose election he had opposed.[125] Madison decided to take the first step. He had reason to think that Monroe repeated his course, at least to the extent of wishing reconciliation. He authorized Jefferson to act as mediator; and the Ex-President, who spared no effort for harmony, hastened to tell Monroe that the government of Louisiana was still at his disposal.[126] Monroe declined the office as being beneath his previous positions, but said that he would have accepted the first place in Madison’s Cabinet, and was sincere in his desire for the success of the Administration; he even pledged his support, and intimated that he had lost favor with John Randolph owing to, his exertions for Madison. When Jefferson reported the result of this interview, the President replied:[127] “The state of Colonel Monroe’s mind is very nearly what I had supposed; his willingness to have taken a seat in the Cabinet is what I had not supposed.” Considering the state of Monroe’s mind in 1808, Madison might be excused for failing to see that Monroe would accept the State Department in February, 1809. Indeed, the suddenness of the change would have startled Monroe’s best friends; and even in December, 1809, he would have fared ill had his remarks to Jefferson been brought to John Randolph’s ears.
Monroe’s adhesion having been thus attested, Madison made no immediate use of the recruit, but held him in reserve until events should make action necessary. Perhaps this delay was one of Madison’s constitutional mistakes, and possibly a prompt removal of Robert Smith might have saved some of the worst disasters that befell the Government; but in truth Madison’s embarrassments rose from causes that only time could cure, and were inherent in American society itself. A less competent administrative system seldom drifted, by reason of its incompetence, into war with a superior enemy. No department of the government was fit for its necessary work.
Of the State Department, its chief, and its long series of mortifying disasters, enough has been said. In November, 1809, it stood helpless in the face of intolerable insults from all the European belligerents. Neither the diplomatic nor the consular system was better than a makeshift, and precisely where the Government felt most need of ministers,—at Copenhagen, Stockholm, Berlin, and St. Petersburg,—it had no diplomatic and but few consular agents, even these often of foreign allegiance.
The Treasury, hitherto the only successful Executive department, showed signs of impending collapse, not to be avoided without sacrifices and efforts which no one was willing to make. The accounts for the year ending September 30 showed that while the receipts had amounted to $9,300,000, the actual expenses had exceeded $10,600,000. The deficit of $1,300,000, as well as reimbursements of debt to the amount of $6,730,000, had been made good from the balance in the Treasury. The new fiscal year began with a balance of only $5,000,000; so that without a considerable curtailment of expenses, a loan or increased taxation, or both, could not be avoided. Increased taxation was the terror of parties. Curtailment of expense could be effected only on the principle that as the government did nothing well, it might as well do nothing. Any intelligent expenditure, no matter how large or how small, would have returned a thousand-fold interest to the country, whatever had been the financial cost; but the waste of money on gunboats and useless cruisers, or upon an army so badly organized and commanded as to be a hindrance in war, was an expense that might perhaps be curtailed, though only by admitting political incapacity.
Naturally Gallatin threatened to resign. Even by submitting to the Smiths, Duanes, Gileses, and Leibs, and allowing them to cut off the sources or waste the supplies of public revenue until the government became an habitual beggar, he could promise himself no advantage. Never had the chance of finding an end to the public embarrassments seemed so remote. The position in which the government stood could not be maintained, but could be abandoned only by creating still greater difficulties. Intended merely as a makeshift, the Non-intercourse Act of March 1, 1809, had already proved more mischievous to America than to the countries it purported to punish. While the three great commercial nations—France, England, and the United States—were forcing trade into strange channels or trying to dam its course, trade took care of itself in defiance of war and prohibitions. As one coast after another was closed or opened to commerce, countries whose names could hardly be found on the map—Papenburg, Kniphausen, Tönningen—became famous as neutrals, and their flags covered the sea, because England and France found them convenient for purposes of illegitimate trade. The United States had also their Papenburg. Amelia Island and the St. Mary’s River, which divided Florida from Georgia, half Spanish and half American waters, became the scene of a trade that New York envied. While the shore was strewn with American cotton and other produce waiting shipment in foreign vessels, scores of British ships were discharging merchandise to be smuggled into the United States, or were taking on board heavy freights of cotton or naval stores on American account. To the United States this manner of trading caused twofold loss. Not only were the goods charged with a double voyage and all the costly incidents of a smuggling business, and not only did the American ship-owner lose the freight on this American merchandise, both outward and inward, but the United States government collected no duties on the British goods smuggled from Amelia Island, Bermuda, and Halifax. The Non-intercourse Act prohibited French and British merchandise; but in disregard of the prohibition such goods were freely sold in every shop. Erskine’s arrangement, short as it was, brought in a fresh and large supply; custom-house oaths were cheap; custom-house officials did not inquire closely whether cloth was made in England, France, Holland, or Germany, or whether rum, sugar, and coffee came from St. Kitt’s or St. Bart’s. Some sorts of English goods, such as low-priced woollens, were necessities; and the most patriotic citizen could hardly pay so much respect to the laws of his country as to dispense with their use by his family, whatever he did on his own account. Finally, a law which in the eyes of a community was not respectable was not respected. The community had no other defence against bad legislation; and in a democracy the spirit of personal freedom deserved cultivation to the full as much as that of respect for bad law. The Non-intercourse Act was not only a bad law,—the result of admitted legislative imbecility,—but it had few or no defenders even among those who obeyed it.
Ingenuity could hardly have invented a system less advantageous for the government and people who maintained it. The government lost its revenue, the shipping lost much of its freight, the people paid double prices on imports and received half-prices for their produce; industry was checked, speculation and fraud were stimulated, while certain portions of the country were grievously wronged. Especially in the Southern States all articles produced for exchange were depressed to the lowest possible value, while all articles imported for consumption were raised to extravagant rates. Elisha Potter, a Congressman from Rhode Island, complained with reason that the system made the rich more rich and the poor more poor.[128] In a crowded or in a highly organized society such a system would probably have created a revolution; but America had not yet reached such a stage of growth or decay, and the worst effect of her legislation was to impoverish the government which adopted and the class of planters who chiefly sustained it.
Gallatin best knew how much the Non-intercourse Act or any other system of commercial restriction weakened the Treasury. He knew that neither the President nor Congress offered the germ of a better plan. He faced an indefinite future of weakness and waste, with a prospect of war at the end; but this was not the worst. His enemies who were disposed to destroy, were skilful enough to invent the means of destruction. They might deprive him of the United States Bank, his only efficient ally; they might reject every plan, and let the Treasury slowly sink into ruin; they might force the country into a war for no other object than to gratify their personal jealousies. Gallatin believed them capable of all this, and Madison seemed to share the belief. The Treasury which had till that time sustained the Republican party through all its troubles, stood on the verge of disaster.
From the military and naval departments nothing had ever been expected; but their condition was worse than their own chiefs understood. The machinery of both broke down as Madison took control. The navy consisted of a few cruisers and a large force of gunboats. Neither were of immediate use; but a considerable proportion of both were in active service, if service could be called active which chiefly consisted in lying in harbor or fitting for harbor defence when no enemy was expected. No sooner had Paul Hamilton succeeded Robert Smith at the navy department than the new secretary became aware that his predecessor had wasted a very large sum of money.[129] Hamilton made no concealment of his opinion that gunboats were expensive beyond relation to their value.[130] He intimated that the life of gunboats hardly exceeded one year, and that their value depended on the correct answer to the inquiry whether war was a defensive or aggressive operation. This hint that gunboats could do no harm to their enemies seemed to gain force from the suggestion that they had yet to prove their uses for their friends; but if Jefferson’s gunboat system should prove to be a failure, nothing would be left of the navy except a few frigates and sloops which could hardly keep the sea in the event of war with England. The navy was a sink of money.
The army was something worse. At least the navy contained as good officers and seamen as the world could show, and no cruisers of their class were likely to be more efficient than the frigates commanded by Rodgers, Bainbridge, and Decatur, provided they could escape a more numerous enemy; but the army was worthless throughout, and its deficiency in equipment was a trifling evil compared with the effects of political influence on its organization. The first attempt to raise the army to efficiency ended in scandalous failure within a few months. Among a thousand obstacles to any satisfactory reform in the military service, the most conspicuous if not the most fatal was General Wilkinson, whom President Jefferson could not and would not sacrifice, but whose character and temper divided the army into two hostile camps. Wade Hampton, the next general officer in rank, regarded Wilkinson with extreme contempt, and most of the younger officers who were not partisans of Jefferson shared Hampton’s prejudice; but July 4, 1808, a military court of inquiry formally acquitted Wilkinson of being a Spanish pensioner. President Jefferson had already saved him from court-martial on account of his relations with Burr, and Secretary Dearborn restored him to command over an army whose interests required an officer of other qualities.
When Madison and Gallatin in December, 1808, looked to a declaration of war, their first anxiety concerned New Orleans and West Florida. December 2, 1808, Secretary Dearborn gave Wilkinson, then at Washington, orders to direct the new levies of troops toward New Orleans, and to be ready to take command there in person as soon as practicable. In pursuance of these orders, two thousand raw soldiers were directed upon New Orleans from different quarters, and in the midst of war preparations, Jan. 24, 1809, Wilkinson himself embarked from Baltimore.[131] Stopping at Annapolis, Norfolk, and Charleston, he passed six weeks on the Atlantic coast. After the overthrow of the war policy and the close of the session he sailed March 12 from Charleston, and in his mysterious way stopped at Havana and then at Pensacola, “under a special mission from the Executive of the United States.” April 19 he re-entered New Orleans, the scene of his exploits three years before; and he returned as a victor, triumphant over Daniel Clark and the Burr conspirators, as well as over Governor Claiborne, Wade Hampton, and all ill-wishers in the subordinate ranks of the army, of whom Captain Winfield Scott was one.
Wilkinson found at New Orleans, in his own words,[132]—
“A body of two thousand undisciplined recruits, men and officers with a few exceptions sunk in indolence and dissipation; without subordination, discipline, or police, and nearly one third of them sick; ... without land or water transport for a single company; medical assistance for two thousand men dependent on two surgeons and two mates, one of the former confined to his bed; a majority of the corps without paymasters; the men deserting by squads; the military agent representing the quartermaster’s department without a cent in his chest, his bills protested, and he on the eve of shutting up his office; a great deficiency of camp equipage; not a haversack in store; the medicine and hospital stores scarcely sufficient for a private practitioner.”
The General decided that, first of all, the troops must be removed from the city and sent into camp; but rains made encampment impossible until the river should fall, and May 12 nothing had been done excepting to notify the Secretary of War that in the course of the following week the General meant to select an encampment which would be so placed as to meet an attack from every hostile quarter.[133] His decision was made known to the Secretary of War in a letter dated May 29:—
“With the general voice of American and Creole in favor of it, I have selected a piece of ground on the left bank of the Mississippi, below this city about four leagues, which I find perfectly dry at this moment, although the surface of the river, restrained by its dykes, is in general three feet above the level of the country. You will put your finger on the spot, at the head of the English turn, just where the road to the settlements on the Terre aux Boeufs leaves the river.”[134]
June 10 the main body of troops moved down the river to the new camp. More than five hundred sick were transported with the rest, suffering chiefly from chronic diarrhœa, bilious or intermittent fevers, and scurvy.
Secretary Eustis, who in March succeeded Dearborn at the War Department, being an army-surgeon by profession, noticed, before Wilkinson’s arrival at New Orleans, the excessive proportion of troops on the sick-list. Quickly taking alarm, he wrote April 30 directing Wilkinson to disregard Dearborn’s previous instructions, and after leaving a garrison of old troops at New Orleans, to transport the rest up the river to the high ground in the rear of Fort Adams, or Natchez. The orders were peremptory and pressing.[135]
This letter, dated April 30, should have gone, and was believed to have gone, by the post which left Washington May 6, and reached New Orleans May 25; another post followed a week later, and still another arrived June 8, two days before the troops moved to Terre aux Boeufs. According to Wilkinson the letter did not arrive by any of these mails, but came only by the fourth post, which reached New Orleans June 14, after he and his troops were fixed in camp. The cost of a bad character was felt at such moments. No one believed Wilkinson; his reputation for falsehood warranted suspicion that he had suppressed the orders in the belief that he knew best what the troops required. Such insubordination was no new thing on his part. Instead of expressing regret, he wrote to Eustis that even had he received the orders of April 30 in time, he should still “have not sought the position you recommended,” because the labor of ascending the river would have diseased nine tenths of the men, the expense would have exceeded twelve thousand dollars, and the position of Fort Adams was ill-suited for the protection of New Orleans.[136]
On the troops the first effect of their encampment was good; but after the middle of June rains began, generally several showers on the same day, and the camp was deep in mud. The number of sick made proper sanitary care impossible. The police officer’s report of July 12[137] gave a revolting picture of the sanitary conditions: “The whole camp abounds with filth and nastiness of almost every kind.” The sick-list rose to six hundred and sixty in a force of sixteen hundred and eighty-nine non-commissioned officers and men; in August it rose to nine hundred and sixty-three in a total force of fifteen hundred and seventy-four. The camp was a fever hospital, the suffering beyond experience. Food, medicine, shelter, clothing, and care were all wanting either to the sick or to the well:[138]—
“The sick and the well lived in the same tents; they generally subsisted on the same provisions, were equally exposed to the constant and incessant torrents of rain, to the scorching heat of the sun, and during the night to the attacks of numberless mosquitoes. They manifested the pains and sufferings they experienced by shrieks and groans which during the silence of the night were distinctly to be heard from one end of the line to the other. It is my candid belief the mosquitoes produced more mischief than any other cause. In the night the air was filled with them, and not a man was provided with anything like a bar or net. Thus situated, the sufferings of the unfortunate sick can perhaps better be imagined than described.”
Before the army had been a month in camp, the officers petitioned the General for removal. He could not but refuse. He had no means of escape, and to do him justice, he bore with courage the consequences of his own mistake. He did whatever occurred to him to protect his men. Secretary Eustis took the matter less calmly. No sooner did the secretary learn, through Wilkinson’s letters written in May, that he seriously meant to encamp the troops at Terre aux Boeufs, than official orders, admitting no discretion, were despatched as early as June 22 from the Department, directing that the whole force should be instantly embarked for Natchez and Fort Adams.
The letter arrived July 19. Wilkinson dared not again disobey, although he might be right in thinking that the risks of removal were greater than those of remaining. Every resource of the army and navy was put at Wilkinson’s command, and every man at Terre aux Boeufs was eager to escape; yet week after week passed without movement. The orders which arrived July 19 were not made public till the end of August, and only September 14 was the camp evacuated. The effective force was then about six hundred men in charge of nine hundred invalids. The strength of all had been reduced, until they were unequal to the fatigues of travel. Only one hundred and twenty-seven men died at Terre aux Boeufs between June 10 and September 14; but two hundred and fifty died on their way up the river, before October 31, and altogether seven hundred and sixty-four, out of two thousand soldiers sent to New Orleans, died within their first year of service. The total loss by death and desertion was nine hundred and thirty-one.
Wilkinson himself was attacked by fever in passing New Orleans, September 19, and on proceeding to Natchez soon received a summons to Washington to answer for his conduct. Brigadier-General Wade Hampton succeeded him in command of what troops were still alive at New Orleans. The misfortune was compensated only by the advantage of affording one more chance to relieve the army and the government of a general who brought nothing but disaster.
With the four departments of Executive government in this state of helplessness, President Madison met Congress, the least efficient body of all.