CHAPTER XVII.
The government of the United States reached, March 4, 1811, the lowest point of its long decline. President Madison had remained so passive before domestic faction, while so active in foreign affairs, that the functions of government promised to end in confusion. Besides the greater failures of the last session, more than one personal slight had been inflicted on the President. He obtained the confirmation of Joel Barlow as Armstrong’s successor at Paris, by a vote of twenty-one to eleven in the Senate; but when he nominated Alexander Wolcott of Connecticut to succeed Justice Cushing on the Supreme Bench, he met a sharp rebuff. The selection was far from brilliant, but New England offered no great choice among Republicans suited to the bench. Sullivan was dead; Levi Lincoln declined the office; Barnabas Bidwell, detected in a petty defalcation, had absconded to Canada; Joseph Story, still a young man, only thirty-one years of age, was obnoxious to many Republicans on account of his hostility to the embargo, and particularly to Jefferson, who took personal interest in this appointment.[279] The President could think of no one who brought stronger recommendations than Wolcott, and accordingly sent his name to the Senate. A few days afterward John Randolph wrote to his friend Nicholson,[280]—
“The Senate have rejected the nomination of Alexander Wolcott to the bench of the Supreme Court, twenty-four to nine. The President is said to have felt great mortification at this result. The truth seems to be that he is President de jure only. Who exercises the office de facto I know not, but it seems agreed on all hands that ‘there is something behind the throne greater than the throne itself.’”
February 21 the President nominated J. Q. Adams, then absent as minister at St. Petersburg, to the same place, and the Senate unanimously confirmed the appointment. The rejection of Wolcott had no meaning further than showing the opinion held by the Republican party of their President’s judgment.
“Our Cabinet presents a novel spectacle in the world;” continued Randolph. “Divided against itself, and the most deadly animosity raging between its principal members,—what can come of it but confusion, mischief, and ruin? Macon is quite out of heart.”
Gallatin was also out of heart. The conduct of Duane and his “Aurora” put additional venom into the wounds made by the session. Commonly some foundation of truth or probability lay beneath political attacks; some show of evidence or some responsible voucher was alleged if not produced, and the charges against public men, to be accepted, were shaped to suit the known character and habits of the victims; but this was not the case with Duane’s assertions of Gallatin’s wealth, speculations, embezzlements, and secret intrigues. Duane assumed the truth of his own inventions, and although few persons might be so credulous as to believe him, many were so far influenced as to draw aside and leave Gallatin and the Smiths to fight out their battles as they liked. This withdrawal of active support chiefly weakened the Administration. President Madison had no hold over his friends so long as he refused to declare whom he regarded as friends. He lost not only the Smiths, but also Gallatin, by standing aloof.
“Things as they are cannot go on much longer,” wrote Randolph, February 17. “The Adminstration are now in fact aground at the pitch of high tide, and a spring tide too. Nothing then remains but to lighten the ship, which a dead calm has hitherto kept from going to pieces. If the cabal succeed in their present projects, and I see nothing but promptitude and decision that can prevent it, the nation is undone.”
This judgment was so far true that none but persons hostile to all central government could look toward the future without alarm; for if the system continued in the future to lose energy as in the ten years past, the time was not far distant when the country must revert to the old Confederation, or to ties equally weak. Such a result was the outcome of Randolph’s principles, and he should have welcomed it; but Randolph was a creature of emotions; with feminine faults he had feminine instincts and insight, which made him often shrink from results of his own acts. At this crisis he showed more political judgment than could be expected from wiser men. Though a Republican of the narrowest Virginia creed, he would take part with none of the factions that racked the government. He opposed vehemently not only the legislative assertion that the French Decrees were withdrawn, but also the legislative violence that overthrew the constitution of the House by means of the previous question. If Randolph was wrong on either of these points, he was at least wrong in company with history itself. He favored his old policy of peace, economy, and a decentralized government, and lost his temper with his colleague Eppes, to the verge of a duel; but for this course he was little to be blamed, since the policy was that of his party, and the contest was not of his making. He gave to Gallatin all the support he had to give. Though more deeply committed than any regular party man to the Constitutional doctrines of narrow construction, he voted with the friends of the Bank. “Randolph’s opinion on the bill to renew the charter of the United States Bank is, I believe, unknown to every person except himself,” wrote Macon, February 20,[281]—although Macon, himself opposed to the Bank, was Randolph’s intimate friend. Disgusted with the factiousness of others, Randolph became almost statesmanlike, and for a brief moment showed how valuable he might have been had his balance equalled his intelligence.
Randolph had long since ceased to hold direct relations with Gallatin, but neither then nor ever afterward did he doubt that Gallatin was the only capable character in the Government, and that he must be supported. “The cabal,” whose influence excited disgust in his mind as it did in that of Macon, ought to be put down, and Randolph said plainly to Gallatin’s friends that the President must be compelled to do it.[282] This dreaded cabal drew life only from the President himself; in any other sense it was a creature of the imagination. So little did Randolph and Macon know about it that they called its members “the invisibles,” and puzzled themselves to account for the influence it appeared to exert. In truth, the cabal had no strength that warranted the alarm it roused. Samuel Smith’s abilities have shown themselves in the story. Few men of the time stand more definitely imaged than he in speeches, letters, intrigues, and ambitions, for the exactest measurement; but measured in whatever way he pleased, he was rather mischievous than alarming. His brother Robert, whom he had made Secretary of State, was a mere instrument. Giles possessed more ability, but could never become the leader of a party, or win the confidence of the public. Vice-President Clinton and his friends were an independent faction, ready to coalesce with the Smiths and Giles for any personal objects; but they had little more capacity than the Marylanders. Michael Leib and Duane of the “Aurora” were more useful as intriguers, because they had less to lose; but they were also more dangerous to their friends. Seven or eight Federalist senators also could be depended upon as allies for all ordinary purposes of faction. Yet in such a combination no solidarity existed; no common head, no plan, no object held its members together. The persons engaged in this petty and vexatious war on the Administration could not invent a scheme of common action, or provide a capable leader, or act in unison on any two measures. As Randolph justly said:[283]
“I am satisfied that Mr. Gallatin, by a timely resistance to their schemes, might have defeated them and rendered the whole cabal as impotent as Nature would seem to have intended them to be; for in point of ability (capacity for intrigue excepted), they are utterly contemptible and insignificant.”
Randolph had ruined himself by impetuosity; his only idea of resistance implied violence. Gallatin never used the knife except when every other means had been tried; but when he did so, his act was proof that no other outlet could be opened by the clearest head and the most patient temper of his time. For two years he had waited, while the problem he placed before Madison and Jefferson in 1809 became more perplexed and less soluble with every month; but when the Eleventh Congress expired, he reached the same conclusion with Randolph, that promptitude and decision could alone save Madison. Acting on this belief, he wrote a letter of resignation.[284]
“It appears to me,” he told the President, “that not only capacity and talents in the Administration, but also a perfect heartfelt cordiality among its members, are essentially necessary to command the public confidence, and to produce the requisite union of views and action between the several branches of government. In at least one of these points your present Administration is defective; and the effects, already sensibly felt, become every day more extensive and fatal. New subdivisions and personal factions, equally hostile to yourself and the general welfare, daily acquire additional strength. Measures of vital importance have been and are defeated; every operation, even of the most simple and ordinary nature, is prevented or impeded; the embarrassments of government, great as from foreign causes they already are, are unnecessarily increased; public confidence in the public councils and in the Executive is impaired,—and every day seems to increase every one of these evils. Such a state of things cannot last; a radical and speedy remedy has become absolutely necessary.”
Gallatin’s resignation obliged the President to act. How long he might still have waited had Gallatin taken no step, only those can say who best understand the peculiarities of his temper; but in any case he could hardly have much longer postponed a crisis. Not only were his ablest supporters, like Crawford, as impatient as Randolph of the situation, but his own personal grievances were becoming intolerable. He could acquiesce with patience while Gallatin and the Treasury were sacrificed; but he could not bear to be crossed in his foreign policy, or to be opposed on his sensitive point,—the system of commercial restrictions. Gallatin probably liked the non-intercourse as little as it was liked by the Smiths; but he did not, as a Cabinet minister, intrigue against the President’s policy, while Robert and Samuel Smith did little else.
When Gallatin, probably March 5, sent, or brought, his resignation to the White House, Madison declined to accept it, and at once authorized Gallatin to sound James Monroe on the offer of the State Department. Gallatin sent for Richard Brent, Giles’s colleague in the Senate, who wrote to Monroe March 7. Brent’s letter, followed by others, opened another act in the political drama, for it made Monroe Secretary of State and President of the United States, and prolonged the Virginia dynasty for eight years; but in order to reach this result, Monroe himself had to thread more than one dark and dangerous passage, which would have wrecked the fortunes of any man not born to carry a charmed political life.
Monroe’s return to the paths of promotion had been steady and even rapid. In 1808 he was the rival candidate for the Presidency, on the ground that he leaned toward reconciliation with England, while Madison leaned toward France. Without wholly abandoning this attitude, Monroe was invited to become the Republican governor of Virginia; and when attacked for his want of sympathy with Madison, he made explanations, both public and private, which so much irritated his old friend John Randolph as to draw from him a letter, Jan. 14, 1811,[285] telling Monroe of reports industriously circulated, “that in order to promote your election to the chief magistracy of this Commonwealth, you have descended to unbecoming compliances with the members of the Assembly, not excepting your bitterest personal enemies; that you have volunteered explanations to them of the differences heretofore subsisting between yourself and the Administration which amount to a dereliction of the ground which you took after your return from England, and even of your warmest personal friends.” The charge was never answered to Randolph’s satisfaction.[286] Monroe could not publicly avow that he had made a succession of mistakes, partly under Randolph’s influence, which he wished to correct and forget; but on this tacit understanding he was elected governor of Virginia, and for the rest of his life became to John Randolph an object of little esteem considering the confidence and admiration he had so long inspired.
More than most men, Randolph could claim the merits of his own defects. If he was morbidly proud and sensitive, he was at least quick to understand when he had lost a friend. Of him Monroe rid himself without trouble; but Monroe labored under the misfortune that his other oldest and best friends were of the same political stamp. Chief among these, the Mentor of Virginia politics, was John Taylor of Caroline,—a man whose high character, consistent opinions, and considerable abilities made him a valuable ally. Another was Littleton Walker Tazewell. To them, after the rupture with Randolph, Monroe wrote, excusing his course in becoming the Republican candidate for governor, and reasserting in sufficiently strong terms his want of confidence in President Madison:[287]—
“I fear, if the system of policy which has been so long persevered in, after so many proofs of its dangerous tendency, is still adhered to, that a crisis will arise the dangers of which will require all the virtue, firmness, and talents of our country to avert. And that it will be persevered in seems too probable while the present men remain in power.... And if the blame of improvident and injudicious measures is ever to attach to them among the people, it must be by leaving to the authors of those measures the entire responsibility belonging to them.”
Within six weeks after this letter had been written, Monroe was asked to join the men in power, and to share the blame of those “improvident and injudicious measures,” the responsibility for which ought, as he conceived, to be left entirely to their authors. He wrote at once to Colonel Taylor for advice; and the reply threw much light on the personal and public motives supposed to guide the new Secretary of State. Colonel Taylor advised Monroe to accept the President’s invitation, for several reasons.[288] Assuming that Monroe was to succeed Madison as the next Republican candidate for the Presidency, he took for granted that Monroe was to follow the lines of his old opinions, and to correct Madison’s leanings toward France.
“Our foreign relations,” continued Taylor, “seem to be drawing to a crisis, and you ought to be in the public eye when it happens, for your own sake, independently of the services you can render your country. It is probable that this crisis will occur on a full discovery that France will not do our commerce any substantial good without an equivalent which would amount to its destruction. So soon as this discovery is made, the Government, in all its departments, will alter its policy, and your occupancy of a conspicuous station will shed upon you the glory of its having come round to your opinion.”
Colonel Taylor gave no thought to the opposite possibility that Monroe might come round to the opinion of the Government; yet his argument seemed to place Monroe in a position where, if he could not convert Madison, he would have no choice but to let Madison convert him.
“This offer to you is an indication of a disposition in Mr. Madison to relieve himself of the burden [of certain persons and measures]; and if you suffer yourself to lose the benefit of this disposition, another will gain it to your inestimable injury. Suppose this other should be a competitor for the Presidency, will it not be a decisive advantage over you? General Armstrong is probably taking measures for this object.... One consideration of great weight is that the public think you an honest man. If this opinion is true, the acceptance seems to be a duty toward relieving it from the suspicion that there are too many avaricious or ambitious intriguers of apparent influence in the government. I suppose the President and Gallatin (whom I know) to be wholly guided by what they think to be the public good; and should you happen to concur with them, it will abate much of the jealousy (though I hope it will never be smothered) with which Executive designs are viewed; and to moderate it, under the perilous situation of the country, is in my view desirable.”
The country reached a perilous pass when John Taylor of Caroline made plans to strengthen the Executive; but he could not have calculated on Monroe’s readiness to follow this course so far as it ended in leading him. Taylor’s advice threw Monroe into the full current of Executive influence. Alliance with Madison and Gallatin, rupture with France, antagonism to the Smiths and Clintons, jealousy of Armstrong, and defiance of Duane were sound policy, and united honesty with self-interest; but their success depended on elements that Taylor could not measure.
That Monroe shared these views, that they were in fact the common stock of his personal party, might be seen not only in his previous letters, but even more in his reply to Senator Brent,[289] written March 18.
“You intimate,” said Monroe to Brent, “that the situation of the country is such as to leave me no alternative. I am aware that our public affairs are far from being in a tranquil and secure state. I may add that there is much reason to fear that a crisis is approaching of a very dangerous tendency,—one which menaces the overthrow of the whole Republican party. Is the Administration impressed with this sentiment, and prepared to act on it? Are things in such a state as to allow the Administration to take the whole subject into consideration, and to provide for the safety of the country and of free government by such measures as circumstances may require, and a comprehensive view of them suggest? Or are we pledged by what is already done to remain spectators of the interior movement, in the expectation of some change abroad as the ground on which we are to act? I have no doubt, from my knowledge of the President and Mr. Gallatin,—with the former of whom I have been long and intimately connected in friendship, and for both of whom, in great and leading points of character, I have the highest consideration and respect,—that if I came into the Government the utmost cordiality would subsist between us, and that any opinions which I might entertain and express respecting our public affairs would receive, so far as circumstances would permit, all the attention to which they might be entitled; but if our course is fixed, and the destiny of our country dependent on arrangements already made, I do not perceive how it would be possible for me to render any service at this time in the general government.”
If the President’s proclamation of Nov. 2, 1810, and the Act of Congress passed March 2, 1811, three weeks before Monroe wrote this letter, had not fixed the course and destiny of the country, instructions to Pinkney and Jonathan Russell—on which those two agents had already acted, and which would be the first papers to be read by Monroe as Secretary of State—seemed certainly to fix beyond recall the course about which Monroe inquired. Even a man more liberal than Madison in professions might have hesitated to say that the future secretary was free to break with France, or to enter on other arrangements with England than those already imposed. Monroe’s letter implied disapproval of the course hitherto taken, and a wish, if possible, to change it. Madison was well acquainted not only with Monroe’s opinions on foreign affairs, but also with those of Monroe’s friends, who held that the course taken by the President ought to be reversed; and with this knowledge of all the circumstances Madison replied[290] to Monroe’s inquiry:—
“With the mutual knowledge of our respective views of the foreign as well as domestic interests of our country, I see no serious obstacle on either side to an association of our labors in promoting them. In the general policy of avoiding war by a strict and fair neutrality toward the belligerents, and of settling amicably our differences with both,—or with either, as leading to a settlement with the other,—or, that failing, as putting us on better ground against him, there is and has been an entire concurrence among the most enlightened who have shared in the public councils since the year 1800.... In favor of a cordial accommodation with Great Britain there has certainly never ceased to be a prevailing disposition in the Executive councils since I became connected with them. In the terms of accommodation with that as with other Powers, differences of opinion must be looked for, even among those most agreed on the same general views. These differences, however, lie fairly within the compass of free consultation and mutual concession as subordinate to the unity belonging to the Executive department. I will add that I perceive not any commitments, even in the case of the abortive adjustment with that Power, that could necessarily embarrass deliberations on a renewal of negotiations.”
From these letters, the attitude of Monroe in entering Madison’s Cabinet may be understood. Committed to the doctrine that Madison had leaned toward France, and that this bias should be corrected, Monroe and his personal party looked on Madison’s offer of the State Department as the pledge of a change in policy which should have a rupture with France for its immediate object, and the Presidency for its ultimate reward. Madison, on his side, understanding this scheme saw no objection to it, and was unconscious of having committed the government to any position that could necessarily embarrass Monroe. Monroe’s acceptance of this situation was as natural as his refusal would have been surprising, for no man who wanted office, and who saw the Presidency in his grasp, could be required to show rigorous consistency. Madison’s attitude was somewhat different; and his assurance, in March, 1811, that he saw no commitment which could necessarily embarrass Monroe in renewing negotiations with England, showed not only that Madison, notwithstanding Robert Smith’s assertions to Turreau, still counted on no war with England, but felt no suspicion that his measures within little more than a twelvemonth would lead him to a recommendation of war. The policy of commercial restrictions still satisfied his mind.
Madison was not alone in this ignorance. Monroe himself, still less conscious than Madison of a war spirit, expected to reach the Presidency by conciliating England. Even Robert Smith, to the surprise of the world, posed as the victim of his hostility to France, and hoped to become the centre of a combination of Smiths, Clintons, Federalists, and Duane Pennsylvanians, who charged that Madison was less friendly to England than he might have been. The President suffered much annoyance from the Smiths because he could not disprove their assertions or demonstrate his good-will for Great Britain.
As soon as Madison learned through Senator Brent that Monroe made no serious difficulty in accepting the State Department, he sent for Robert Smith. A faithful account of the conversations that followed would add vivacity to the story, for Madison seemed at times to enjoy commenting not only on the acts of his opponents, but also on their motives; while Robert Smith, being easily disconcerted and slow in defence or attack, offered a tempting mark for arrows of temper. The first interview took place March 23,[291] and Madison made a long memorandum of what passed.
“I proceeded to state to him,” recorded Madison,[292] “that it had long been felt and had at length become notorious that the administration of the Executive department labored under a want of the harmony and unity which were equally necessary to its energy and its success; that I did not refer to the evil as infecting our Cabinet consultations, where there had always been an apparent cordiality and even a sufficient concurrence of opinion, but as showing itself in language and conduct out of doors, counteracting what had been understood within to be the course of the Administration and the interest of the public; that truth obliged me to add that this practice, as brought to my view, was exclusively chargeable on him; and that he had not only counteracted what had been the result of consultations apparently approved by himself, but had included myself in representations calculated to diminish confidence in the administration committed to me.”
Robert Smith protested, in his somewhat incoherent way, against the truth of this charge; and the President, roused by resistance, spoke with more preciseness, instancing Smith’s conduct in regard to Macon’s bills in 1810, as evidence of the secretary’s bad faith.
“With respect to his motives for dissatisfaction, I acknowledged that I had been, for the reasons given by him, much puzzled to divine any natural ones, without looking deeper into human nature than I was willing to do; ... that whatever talents he might possess, he did not, as he must have found by experience, possess those adapted to his station; ... that the business of the Department had not been conducted in the systematic and punctual manner that was necessary, particularly in the foreign correspondence, and that I had become daily more dissatisfied with it.”
The man must have been easy-tempered who could listen to these comments on conduct, motives, and abilities without sign of offence; but Robert Smith showed no immediate resentment, for when the President closed by offering to send him to St. Petersburg to succeed J. Q. Adams, who was to take Justice Cushing’s place on the Supreme Bench, Smith showed no unwillingness, although he avowed his preference for the other vacancy on the bench soon to be caused by Justice Chase’s death, or for the English mission left vacant by Pinkney’s return. Madison declined to encourage these ambitions, and Smith retired to consider the offer of St. Petersburg. For several days the President supposed the arrangement to be accepted; but meanwhile Robert Smith consulted his friends, who held other views on the subject of his dignity and deserts. When he next saw the President he declined the mission, declaring that acceptance would be only indirect removal from office, the result of “a most shameful intrigue.” After trying in vain the characteristic task of convincing him that he altogether exaggerated his own consequence, Madison accepted his resignation and left him to carry out his threat of appealing to the country. “He took his leave with a cold formality,” concluded Madison, “and I did not see him afterward.”
For ten years Robert Smith had been one of the most powerful influences in politics, trusted with the highest responsibilities and duties, seeming more than any other single Cabinet officer to affect the course of public affairs; when at a breath from the President his official life was snuffed out, his reputation for ability vanished, and the Republican party, which had so long flattered him, suddenly learned to belittle his name. Under the shadow of monarchical or absolute governments such tales of artificial greatness were common, and their moral was worn thin by ages of repetition; but in the democratic United States, and from the bosom of Jefferson’s political family, this experience of Robert Smith was a singular symptom.
Never again did this genial gentleman sun himself in the rays of Executive power, or recover the smallest share of influence. He returned to Baltimore, where he lived thirty years longer without distinguishing himself; but about three months after his retirement from office, in the month of June, 1811, he published an Address to the People, charging President Madison with offences more or less grave, and surprising every one by representing himself as having persistently but vainly opposed Madison’s fixed purpose of making a virtual alliance with France. The evidence of the late Secretary of State, who might reasonably be thought the best informed and most competent judge, confirmed the Federalist and British theory that Madison was under secret pledges to Napoleon. So gravely did it compromise Madison that he caused Joel Barlow to write a semi-official reply in the “National Intelligencer;” and although Barlow wrote in a bad temper, Madison himself wrote privately in a worse.
“You will have noticed in the ‘National Intelligencer,’” he told Jefferson July 8,[293] “that the wicked publication of Mr. Smith is not to escape with impunity. It is impossible, however, that the whole turpitude of his conduct can be understood without disclosures to be made by myself alone, and of course, as he knows, not to be made at all. Without these his infamy is daily fastening upon him, leaving no other consolation than the malignant hope of revenging his own ingratitude and guilt on others.”
Robert Smith hardly deserved such invective. If the taunts of Madison, Barlow, and the Republican press and party at his incompetence were well-founded, the party had only itself to blame for putting such a man in so high a position. If triumphant in nothing else, Smith overthrew both Madison and Barlow by the retort with which he met their sneers, and retaliated the charge of incompetence.
“This advocate,” replied Smith (in the “Baltimore American”) to Barlow (in the Washington “Intelligencer”), “would have us believe that many persons both in and out of Congress thought that Mr. Smith from want of talents and integrity was quite unfit for the Department of State, and that his appointment was the effect of an intrigue. Were there any truth in this remark, it could not fail to convince every person of the utter unfitness of Mr. Madison himself for his office. It in plain English says that from the officious persuasion of a few intriguers he had appointed to the most important and the highest station in the government a person without talents and without integrity; and this person not a stranger, respecting whom he might have been misled, but one who had been his colleague in office during the long term of eight years, and of whose fitness he of course had better means of judging than any other person or persons whatever; nay, more,—to this same person, without talents or integrity, was offered by Mr. Madison not only the mission to Russia, but the important office of the Treasury Department.”