CHAPTER VI.
The war fever of 1811 swept far and wide over the country, but even at its height seemed somewhat intermittent and imaginary. A passion that needed to be nursed for five years before it acquired strength to break into act, could not seem genuine to men who did not share it. A nation which had submitted to robbery and violence in 1805, in 1807, in 1809, could not readily lash itself into rage in 1811 when it had no new grievance to allege; nor could the public feel earnest in maintaining national honor, for every one admitted that the nation had sacrificed its honor, and must fight to regain it. Yet what honor was to be hoped from a war which required continued submission to one robber as the price of resistance to another? President Madison submitted to Napoleon in order to resist England; the New England Federalists preferred submitting to England in order to resist Napoleon; but not one American expected the United States to uphold their national rights against the world.
Politicians of the old school looked coldly on the war spirit. Nations like individuals, when driven to choose between desperate courses, might at times be compelled to take the chances of destruction, often destroying themselves, or suffering irreparable harm. Yet the opponents of war could argue that Americans were not placed between desperate alternatives. They had persevered hitherto, in spite of their leaders, in the policy of peace; had suffered much injury and acute mortification, but had won Louisiana and West Florida, had given democracy all it asked, and had remained in reasonable harmony with the liberal movement of the world. They were reaping the fruit of their patient and obstinate husbandry; for Russia and Sweden were about to fight their battles without reward. Napoleon offered them favors more or less real, and even England could not long resist the pressure of her interests. Jefferson’s policy had wrought all the evil it could cause,—perhaps it had cost the highest price the nation could pay; but after the nation had suffered the evil and paid the price, it had a right to the profit. With more force than in 1798, the old Republicans pleaded that if they should throw aside their principles and plunge into hostilities with England, they would not only sacrifice the results of six years’ humiliation, but would throw the United States athwart the liberal movement of Europe, destroy the hopes of pure government at home, and with more eagerness than they had shown for the past ten years in stripping government of its power, must devote themselves to the task of rebuilding a sovereignty as terrible in peace as in war.
The moment for fighting, conservatives argued, had come in 1807, had passed in 1809; and henceforward good policy called only for perseverance in the course that had been so persistently preferred. Not merely old Republicans, but an actual majority of the people probably held these opinions; yet the youthful energy of the nation, which had at last come to its strength under the shelter of Jefferson’s peaceful rule, cried out against the cowardice of further submission, and insisted on fighting if only to restore its own self-respect.
The course of Massachusetts had much to do with changing the current of opinion. Hitherto this State had barred the way to a British war. Although the Republican party in Massachusetts several times elected their candidate for governor by majorities more or less decisive, they failed to gain full control of the State legislature before 1811. In 1810 they elected Elbridge Gerry and a majority of the representatives, but they still lacked one vote to give them control of the Senate. In April, 1811, Gerry succeeded once more, defeating Christopher Gore, the Federalist candidate, by a majority of three thousand votes; while the House, which consisted of some six hundred and fifty members, chose a Republican speaker by a majority of thirty-one. For the first time the Republicans controlled also a majority, though only of one vote, in the State Senate. This success, gained in spite of the unpopular Non-importation Act, gave extraordinary confidence to the Government, and left the Federalists powerless. Timothy Pickering lost his seat in the United States Senate, and Speaker Varnum received it. The Republicans hastened to introduce, and to carry through the Massachusetts legislature, measures that threatened to upturn the foundation of Federalist society. Other measures still more radical were expected. Jefferson’s hopes of reforming Massachusetts were almost fulfilled; but the success which gave reality to them removed the last obstacle to war with England.
As the autumn advanced, the Republican newspapers broke into a general cry for war. The British minister’s refusal to withdraw the Orders in Council, the return of Pinkney from London, the affair of the “Little Belt,” the notorious relations between the northwestern Indians and the British traders,—all served to increase the ill-temper of a public trying to lash itself into an act it feared. Even the battle at Tippecanoe, although evidently contrary to British interest, was charged to British influence. As though England had not already given cause for a score of wars, the press invented new grievances; and became as eager to denounce imaginary crimes as to correct flagrant and chronic wrongs.
The matter of impressments then began to receive the attention which had never yet been given it. Hitherto neither Government nor people had thought necessary to make a casus belli of impressments. Orders in Council and other measures of Great Britain which affected American property had been treated as matters of vital consequence; but as late as the close of 1811, neither the President, the Secretary of State, nor Congress had yet insisted that the person of an American citizen was as sacred as his property. Impressments occurred daily. No one knew how many native-born Americans had been taken by force from the protection of the American flag; but whether the number was small or great, neither Republican nor Federalist had ventured to say that the country must at all hazards protect them, or that whatever rules of blockade or contraband the belligerents might adopt against property, they must at least keep their hands off the persons of peaceable Americans whether afloat or ashore. President Madison had repeated, until the world laughed in his face, that Napoleon no longer enforced his decrees, and that therefore if England did not withdraw her blockade, war would result; but he had never suggested that America would fight for her sailors. When he and his supporters in earnest took up the grievances of the seamen, they seemed to do so as an afterthought, to make out a cause of war against England, after finding the public unwilling to accept the cause at first suggested. However unjust the suspicion might be, so much truth existed in this Federalist view of Madison’s course as warranted the belief that if England in July, 1811, had yielded to the demand for commercial freedom, the Government would have become deaf to the outcry of the imprisoned seamen. Only by slow degrees, and in the doubtful form of a political manœuvre, did this, the worst of all American grievances, take its proper place at the head of the causes for war.
Winter drew near, finding the public restless, irritable, more than half afraid of its own boldness, but outspoken at last. British frigates once more blockaded New York, seizing ships and impressing men without mercy, while the British prize-courts, after a moment’s hesitation, declared that the French Decrees were not repealed, and that American vessels sailing to France were good prize. Under these irritations the temper of the American press became rapidly worse, until war was declared to be imminent, and the conquest of Canada became the favorite topic of newspaper discussion.
Yet the true intentions of the President and his Cabinet were as uncertain as those of the Twelfth Congress, which had not yet met. A very large part of the public could not believe war to be possible, and the Government itself shared so far in the doubt as to wait for Congress to give the impulse so often refused. When the President and his Cabinet met in Washington to prepare for the session of Congress called for November 4, a month earlier than usual, neither the Cabinet nor the congressmen felt a certainty of the future; and so little did the outside world believe in war, that Madison, Monroe, and Gallatin were supposed to be aiming at a diplomatic rather than at a military victory. In truth they had no well-defined plan. The process by which a scattered democracy decided its own will, in a matter so serious as a great and perhaps fatal war, was new to the world; bystanders were surprised and amused at the simplicity with which the people disputed plans of war and peace, giving many months of warning and exact information to the enemy, while they showed no sign of leadership, discipline, or union, or even a consciousness that such qualities were needed. Men like Josiah Quincy, Rufus King, John Randolph, and even Madison and Gallatin, seeing that the people themselves, like the machine of government they had invented, were incompetent to the work of war, waited with varied emotions, but equally believing or fearing that at last a fatal crisis was at hand.
Monroe was far from easy; but he had accepted, as was his wont, the nearest dominating will, and he drifted without an effort, although his old friends had already parted company with him. Though obliged to support the President in holding that Napoleon’s decrees were withdrawn so that they had ceased to violate the neutral commerce of the United States, he showed that he did so, not so much because he thought it the truth, as because England gave him no choice. To Serurier, the French minister, Monroe made little concealment of his real wishes; and when Serurier first called at the Department after Monroe’s return from Virginia, he heard nothing that greatly pleased him.
“I found the Secretary of State,” wrote Serurier, October 23,[122] “nearly in the same state of mind in which I left him at his departure for Virginia. He told me at the outset that although the information received by the President during the last two months had added to his hopes, it had not yet completed his conviction on the decrees; that he could not believe them entirely repealed so long as there remained in our ports a single vessel captured by our privateers since November.... He pretended that very recent advices from Naples announced an order sent lately from Paris to sell the American prizes, and this news had been very disagreeable to the Executive, and had thrown it into new uncertainties.... He returned again to our customs-tariff, and the indispensability of its reduction.”
Serurier exerted himself to infuse what he called proper spirit into the secretary’s temper, complaining that England was actually engaged in making war on American commerce with France while enjoying all the advantages of American trade,—
“A very dangerous situation for an alliance, I added, where all the advantage is for your enemies, and all the loss is for your friends. Mr. Monroe agreed to all this; but he pretended that this false position could be viewed only as a transition to a more decided state of things; that the present situation was equally burdensome and intolerable to the citizens, and little suited to the dignity of the Government; that it was necessary to wait for despatches from Mr. Barlow. Then he fell back once more on his theme,—that whenever they should be perfectly satisfied on the side of France, and also of the Emperor’s friendship, they would certainly adopt very energetic measures toward England.... ‘We shall not go backward,’ said Mr. Monroe to me; ‘we shall be inflexible about the repeal of the Orders in Council. But in order to go further, to bring us to great resolutions, the Emperor must aid us; private and public interest must make the same demand. The President does indeed hold the rudder of the Ship of State; he guides, but it is public opinion which makes the vessel move. On France depends the winning of public opinion; and we wish for it, as you can well conceive that in our position we should.’”
Serurier knew no more than this, which was no more than all the world could see. The British minister was not so well informed. After an exchange of notes with Monroe, which left matters where they were, Foster learned from Monroe, October 30, that the Government was waiting for Barlow’s despatches, and if these should prove unsatisfactory, some restriction of French commerce would be imposed by way of retaliation on the restrictions imposed by Napoleon.[123] Foster hoped for a turn in affairs favorable to himself, and tried to bring it about, not only by suggesting to Lord Wellesley the wisdom of concessions from England, but also by offering a frank and fair reparation for the “Chesapeake” outrage. He wrote, November 1, to the Secretary of State renewing the formal disavowal of Berkeley’s unauthorized act, and offering to restore the men to the vessel from which they had been taken, with compensation to themselves and families. Somewhat coldly Monroe accepted the offer. The two surviving seamen were in due time brought from their prison at Halifax and restored to the deck of the “Chesapeake” in Boston harbor; the redress was made as complete as such tardy justice could ever be, but the time had passed when it could atone for the wrong.
Both Foster and Serurier felt that the people were further advanced than the Government in hostility to England, and that this was especially true in the matter of impressments; but no one, even at the White House, knew certainly what to expect from the new Congress assembling at Washington Nov. 4, 1811. That this body differed greatly from any previous Congress was clear, if only because it contained some seventy new members; but another difference, less easily measured, was more serious. The active leaders were young men. Henry Clay of Kentucky, William Lowndes, John Caldwell Calhoun, David R. Williams, Langdon Cheves of South Carolina, Felix Grundy of Tennessee, Peter Buell Porter of New York, Richard Mentor Johnson of Kentucky, had none of them reached his fortieth year; while Madison and his Cabinet belonged to a different generation. None of the new leaders could remember the colonial epoch, or had taken a share in public life except under the Constitution of 1789, or had been old enough to feel and understand the lessons taught by opposition to the Federalist rule. They knew the Federalists only as a faction, more or less given to treasonable talk, controlling some thirty or forty votes in the House, and proclaiming with tedious iteration opinions no one cared to hear. The young war Republicans, as they were called, felt only contempt for such a party; while, as their acts showed, they were filled with no respect for the technicalities of their Executive head, and regarded Gallatin with distrust. Of statesmanship, in the old sense, they took little thought. Bent on war with England, they were willing to face debt and probable bankruptcy on the chance of creating a nation, of conquering Canada, and carrying the American flag to Mobile and Key West.
After ten years devoted to weakening national energies, such freshness of youth and recklessness of fear had wonderful popular charm. The reaction from Jefferson’s system threatened to be more violent than its adoption. Experience seemed to show that a period of about twelve years measured the beat of the pendulum. After the Declaration of Independence, twelve years had been needed to create an efficient Constitution; another twelve years of energy brought a reaction against the government then created; a third period of twelve years was ending in a sweep toward still greater energy; and already a child could calculate the result of a few more such returns.
Had the majority of the House been in a gentler mood, its choice for Speaker should have fallen on Macon, once more a sound party man prepared to support war; but Macon was set aside. Bibb of Georgia, a candidate of the minority, received only thirty-eight voices, while seventy-five were given for Henry Clay. Clay was barely thirty-four years of age, and was a new member of the House; but he was the boldest and most active leader of the war Republicans. He immediately organized the committees for war. That on Foreign Relations, the most immediately important, was put into the hands of Porter, Calhoun, and Grundy. Military affairs were placed in charge of David R. Williams. Langdon Cheves became chairman of the Naval Committee. Ezekiel Bacon and Cheves stood at the head of the Ways and Means.
November 5 the President’s Message was read, and its account of the situation seemed to offer hardly the chance of peace. England, it said, had refused the “reasonable step” of repealing its Orders in return for the extinction of the French Decrees; while the new British minister had made “an indispensable condition of the repeal of the British Orders, that commerce should be restored to a footing that would admit the productions and manufactures of Great Britain, when owned by neutrals, into markets shut against them by her enemies,—the United States being given to understand that in the mean time a continuation of their Non-importation Act would lead to measures of retaliation.” Instead of repealing the orders, the British government, “at a moment when least to have been expected,” put them into more rigorous execution; “indemnity and redress for other wrongs have continued to be withheld; and our coasts and the mouths of our harbors have again witnessed scenes not less derogatory to the dearest of our national rights than vexatious to the regular course of our trade.” In some respects Madison’s statement of grievances sounded almost needlessly quarrelsome; yet even in this list of causes which were to warrant a declaration of war, the President did not expressly mention impressments, in comparison with which his other grievances sank, in the afterthought, to insignificance.
Of France, also, the President spoke in language far from friendly. Although the decrees were revoked, “no proof is yet given,” he said, “of an intention to repair the other wrongs done to the United States, and particularly to restore the great amount of American property seized and condemned under edicts ... founded in such unjust principles that the reparation ought to have been prompt and ample.” In addition to this, the United States had much reason to be dissatisfied with “the rigorous and unexpected restrictions” imposed on their trade with France, which if continued would lead to retaliation. Not a word did the Message contain of friendly or even civil regard for the French government.
Then followed the sentences which could be read only in the sense of an invitation to war:—
“I must now add that the period has arrived which claims from the legislative guardians of the national rights a system of more ample provisions for maintaining them. Notwithstanding the scrupulous justice, the protracted moderation, and the multiplied efforts on the part of the United States to substitute for the accumulating dangers to the peace of the two countries all the mutual advantages of re-established friendship and confidence, we have seen that the British Cabinet perseveres not only in withholding a remedy for other wrongs so long and so loudly calling for it, but in the execution, brought home to the threshold of our territory, of measures which, under existing circumstances, have the character as well as the effect of war on our lawful commerce. With this evidence of hostile inflexibility in trampling on rights which no independent nation can relinquish, Congress will feel the duty of putting the United States into an armor and an attitude demanded by the crisis, and corresponding with the national spirit and expectations.”
The report of Secretary Gallatin, sent to the House November 22, bore also a warlike character. For the past year Gallatin told a cheerful story. In spite of the non-importation, the receipts from customs and other revenue exceeded $13,500,000, while the current expenses had not reached $8,000,000. If war should be declared, the secretary asked only for an increase of fifty per cent in the duties, in order to make sure of a fixed revenue of nine million dollars; and should this increase of duty be insufficient for the purpose, the deficiency could be supplied without difficulty by a further increase of duties, by a restoration of the impost on salt, and by “a proper selection of moderate internal taxes.” With a revenue of nine million dollars secured, the Treasury could rely on loans to defray extraordinary expenses, and a few years of peace would supply the means of discharging the debt incurred.
If this was different finance from that which Gallatin had taught in other days, and by which he had risen to popularity and power, it was at least as simple as all that Gallatin did; but the simplicity of his methods, which was their chief professional merit, caused also their chief reproach. History showed the financial charlatan to be popular, not so much because he was dishonest as because he gratified an instinct for gambling as deep as the instinct of selfishness; and a common notion of a financier was that of a man whose merit lay in the discovery of new sources of wealth, or in inventing means of borrowing without repayment. Gallatin professed to do neither. He did not recommend the issue of paper money; he saw no secret hoards buried in the unsold public lands; he would listen to no tricks or devices for raising money. If money was needed he would borrow it, and would pay whatever it was worth; but he would not suggest that any device could relieve the public from taxing itself to pay whatever the public chose to spend.
“The ability and will of the United States faithfully to perform their engagements are universally known; and the terms of loans will in no shape whatever be affected by want of confidence in either. They must, however, depend not only upon the state of public credit, and on the ability to lend, but also on the existing demand for capital required for other objects. Whatever this may be, the money wanted by the public must be purchased at its market price.... The most simple and direct is also the cheapest and safest mode.”
Gallatin instanced, as an extreme case, the borrowing of forty millions at eight instead of the legal rate of six per cent, which he declared an inconsiderable difference if compared with the effects of other modes of raising money. No one whose judgment deserved respect doubted the correctness of his opinion; but Republican congressmen had for twelve years denounced the Federalist loan of 1798, when five millions had been borrowed at eight per cent, and they hardly dared face their constituents when their own Secretary of the Treasury talked of borrowing forty millions at the same exorbitant rate. Gently as Gallatin hinted at “a proper selection of moderate internal taxes,” they remembered that these internal taxes had broken the Federalist party to pieces. They were angry with Gallatin for not providing other means for the war than loans and taxes, and they regarded him as not unwilling to check and chill the military ardor of the nation.
The President’s Message, as far as it regarded foreign affairs, was referred in the House, November 11, to a select committee, the chairman of which was Peter B. Porter, with Calhoun and Grundy to support his well-known opinions. Although the nature of their report could hardly be doubted, no one seemed confident that it would be taken seriously. Macon wrote privately, November 21, to his old friend Joseph Nicholson, that he was still ignorant of the leaders’ intentions:[124]—
“At this place we are nearly all too wise or too mysterious to form hasty conclusions; it is, however, probable that there are not more than five or six opinions among us, varying from open war to repealing the present restrictive system. I have had but little communication with the knowing ones, and have in some degree guessed at the number of different opinions. I am almost certain that no plan is yet adopted by the leaders in the House.”
Within a week Macon found that a plan was made, but it seemed to come wholly from the White House. The Secretary of War appeared before the Committee of Foreign Relations and explained what the President wanted;[125] at the same time Secretary Monroe communicated to the French minister the nature of the Executive plan.[126]
“Mr. Monroe added;” wrote Serurier, November 28, “... that the situation of affairs should leave me no doubt as to his Excellency’s [the President’s] disposition; that the Government had lost every illusion as to the repeal of the Orders in Council, and was decided in adopting measures of rigor; that we might be assured it would not retreat; that ten thousand regulars were to be raised and placed at the disposition of the Executive, with a great number of volunteers; that the posts would be put in a state of defence, the navy increased, and merchants authorized to arm for the protection of their commerce; that this measure, now that our decrees were withdrawn, could strike at England alone; that the Administration in taking this resolution had perfectly seen where it led; that evidently this situation would not last three months, and would inevitably lead to a decision for which the country was prepared; that the Committee of Foreign Relations in the House of Representatives would report within a few days, and he had no doubt that these measures would pass by a great majority.”
A few days later Serurier had conversations with Monroe and Madison on the subject of the Spanish American colonies, whose independence they agreed to assist not only by moral but also by material aid. The French minister closed his despatch by adding that Congress was at the moment listening to the report of the Committee of Foreign Relations. “Mr. Monroe repeated to me that he considered war as pretty nearly decided.”
If the British minister knew less exactly what was happening behind the scenes, he still knew enough to alarm him. He reported that the Government was actively organizing its party in Congress; that different sets of members met every evening in caucus, and were instilled with the ideas of the Administration;[127] but that while the members of the Government were to all appearance still undecided themselves, it would be rash for other persons to express a decided opinion. A few days after writing in this doubtful sense, Foster was electrified by an outburst of temper from Monroe, who told him that the Government would send no new minister to England, and that it “had reason to believe Great Britain really wished for war with the United States.”[128] Monroe added that he felt some difficulty in talking openly about the views of the Government, as some of his disclosures might be regarded as menaces. The President, though less warm than the Secretary, talked not less decidedly:
“He owned to me that the situation of America was very embarrassing; that anything was better than remaining in such a state; and though he very strongly asserted the impossibility of America receding from the grounds she had taken, ... said that he would ask no sacrifice of principle in Great Britain, and would have no objection to some conventional arrangement between the two countries if it should be judged necessary in the event of the Orders in Council being withdrawn. This was, however, an indispensable preliminary, for he must consider the French Decrees as revoked so far as Great Britain had a right to expect America should require their revocation.”
Although Foster became more nervous from day to day, and showed strong symptoms of a wish that the Orders in Council might be modified or withdrawn, neither he nor the President informed the British government that any other cause of war existed, or that the United States meant to insist on further concessions. In secret, diplomacy flattered itself that war would still be avoided; but it reckoned without taking into account the temper of Congress.