CHAPTER X.
While Dallas struggled with Congress to obtain the means of establishing a currency in order to pay the army, Monroe carried on a similar struggle in order to obtain an army to pay. On this point, as on the financial issue, Virginian ideas did not accord with the wishes of Government. The prejudice against a regular army was stimulated by the evident impossibility of raising or supporting it. Once more Jefferson expressed the common feeling of his Virginia neighbors.[374]
“We must prepare for interminable war,” he wrote to Monroe, October 16. “To this end we should put our house in order by providing men and money to an indefinite extent. The former may be done by classing our militia, and assigning each class to the description of duties for which it is fit. It is nonsense to talk of regulars. They are not to be had among a people so easy and happy at home as ours. We might as well rely on calling down an army of angels from heaven.”
As Jefferson lost the habits of power and became once more a Virginia planter, he reverted to the opinions and prejudices of his earlier life and of the society in which he lived. As Monroe grew accustomed to the exercise and the necessities of power, he threw aside Virginian ideas and accepted the responsibilities of government. On the same day when Jefferson wrote to Monroe that it was nonsense to talk of regulars, Monroe wrote to Congress that it was nonsense to talk of militia. The divergence between Monroe and Jefferson was even greater than between Dallas and Eppes.
“It may be stated with confidence,” wrote Monroe to Congress,[375] “that at least three times the force in militia has been employed at our principal cities, along the coast and on the frontier, in marching to and returning thence, that would have been necessary in regular troops; and that the expense attending it has been more than proportionately augmented from the difficulty if not the impossibility of preserving the same degree of system in the militia as in the regular service.”
In Monroe’s opinion a regular force was an object “of the highest importance.” He told the Senate committee that the army, which was only thirty-four thousand strong on the first of October, should be raised to its legal limit of sixty-two thousand, and that another permanent army of forty thousand men should be raised for strictly defensive service. In the face of Jefferson’s warning that he might as well call down an army of angels from heaven, Monroe called for one hundred thousand regular troops, when no exertions had hitherto availed to keep thirty thousand effectives on the rolls.
The mere expression of such a demand carried with it the train of consequences which the people chiefly dreaded. One hundred thousand troops could be raised only by draft. Monroe affirmed the power as well as the need of drafting. “Congress have a right by the Constitution,” he said, “to raise regular armies, and no restraint is imposed on the exercise of it.... It would be absurd to suppose that Congress could not carry this power into effect otherwise than by accepting the voluntary service of individuals.” Absurd as it was, such had been the general impression, and Monroe was believed to have been one of the most emphatic in maintaining it. “Ask him,” suggested Randolph, “what he would have done, while governor of Virginia and preparing to resist Federal usurpation, had such an attempt been made by Mr. Adams and his ministers, especially in 1800. He can give the answer.” Doubtless the silence of the Constitution in respect to conscription was conclusive to some minds in favor of the power; but the people preferred the contrary view, the more because militia service seemed to give more pay for less risk.
The chance of carrying such a measure through Congress was not great, yet Monroe recommended it as his first plan for raising men. He proposed to enroll the free male population between eighteen and forty-five years of age into classes of one hundred, each to furnish four men and to keep their places supplied.[376] The second plan varied from the first only in the classification, not in the absence of compulsion. The militia were to be divided into three sections according to age, with the obligation to serve, when required, for a term of two years. A third plan suggested the exemption from militia service of every five militia-men who could provide one man for the war. If none of these schemes should be approved by Congress, additional bounties must be given under the actual system. Of the four plans, the secretary preferred the first.
The Senate committee immediately summoned Monroe to an interview. They wished an explanation of the failure in the recruiting service, and were told by Monroe that the failure was chiefly due to the competition of the detached militia for substitutes.[377] The military committee of the House then joined with the military committee of the Senate in sounding the members of both bodies in order to ascertain the most rigorous measure that could be passed. According to the report of Troup of Georgia, chairman of the House committee,[378] they “found that no efficacious measure, calculated certainly and promptly to fill the regular army, could be effectually resorted to. Measures were matured and proposed by the [House] committee, but were not pressed on the House, from the solemn conviction that there was no disposition in the Legislature to act finally on the subject.”
Yet the issue was made at a moment of extreme anxiety and almost despair. In October, 1814, the result of the war was believed to depend on the establishment of an efficient draft. The price of United States six-per-cents showed better than any other evidence the opinion of the public; but the military situation, known to all the world, warranted deep depression. Sir George Prevost, about to be succeeded by an efficient commander,—Sir George Murray,—was then at Kingston organizing a campaign against Sackett’s Harbor, with an army of twenty thousand regular troops and a fleet that controlled the Lake. Another great force, military and naval, was known to be on its way to New Orleans; and the defences of New Orleans were no stronger than those of Washington. One half the province of Maine, from Eastport to Castine, was already in British possession.
To leave no doubt of England’s intentions, despatches from Ghent, communicating the conditions on which the British government offered peace, arrived from the American commissioners and were sent, October 10, to Congress. These conditions assumed rights of conquest. The British negotiators demanded four territorial or proprietary concessions, and all were vital to the integrity of the Union. First, the whole Indian Territory of the Northwest, including about one third of the State of Ohio, two thirds of Indiana, and nearly the entire region from which the States of Illinois, Wisconsin, and Michigan were afterward created, was to be set aside forever as Indian country under British guaranty. Second, the United States were to be excluded from military or naval contact with the Lakes. Third, they had forfeited their rights in the fisheries. Fourth, they were to cede a portion of Maine to strengthen Canada.
These demands, following the unparalleled insult of burning Washington, foreshadowed a war carried to extremities, and military preparations such as the Union had no means ready to repel. Monroe’s recommendations rested on the conviction that the nation must resort to extreme measures. Dallas’s financial plan could not have been suggested except as a desperate resource. Congress understood as well as the Executive the impending peril, and stood in even more fear of it.
Under these circumstances, when Troup’s committee refused to act, Giles reported, on behalf of the Senate committee, two military measures. The first, for filling the regular army, proposed to extend the age of enlistment from twenty-one to eighteen years; to double the land-bounty; and to exempt from militia duty every militia-man who should furnish a recruit for the regular service.
The second measure, reported the same day, November 5, purported to authorize the raising an army of eighty thousand militia-men by draft, to serve for two years within the limits of their own or an adjoining State.[379] The provisions of this measure were ill-conceived, ill-digested, and unlikely to answer their purpose. The moment the debate began, the bill was attacked so vigorously as to destroy whatever credit it might have otherwise possessed.
Of all the supporters of the war, Senator Varnum of Massachusetts was one of the steadiest. He was also the highest authority in the Senate on matters pertaining to the militia. When Giles’s bill came under discussion November 16, Varnum began the debate by a speech vehemently hostile to the proposed legislation. He first objected that although the bill purported to call for an army of eighty thousand men, “yet in some of the subsequent sections of it we find that instead of realizing the pleasing prospect of seeing an ample force in the field, the force is to be reduced to an indefinite amount,—which contradiction in terms, inconsistency in principle, and uncertainty in effect, cannot fail to produce mortification and chagrin in every breast.” Varnum objected to drafting men from the militia for two years’ service because the principle of nine months’ service was already established by the common law. If the nation wanted a regular force, why not make it a part of the regular army without a system of drafting militia “unnecessary, unequal, and unjust?” The machinery of classification and draft was “wholly impracticable.” The limit of service to adjoining States abandoned the objects for which the Union existed. The proffered bounties would ruin the recruiting service for the regular army; the proffered exemptions and reductions in term of duty left no permanency to the service. The bill inflicted no penalties and charged no officers with the duty of making the draft. “I consider the whole system as resolving into a recommendation upon the patriotism of the States and Territories and upon the patriotism of the classes.”
The justice of Varnum’s criticism could not fairly be questioned. The bill authorized the President “to issue his orders to such officers of the militia as he may think proper,” and left the classification and draft in the hands of these militia officers. Every drafted man who had performed any tour of duty in the militia since the beginning of the war was entitled to deduct a corresponding term from his two years of service; and obviously the demand created for substitutes would stop recruiting for the regular army.
Hardly had Varnum sat down when Senator Daggett of Connecticut spoke.
“The bill,” said the Connecticut senator, “is incapable of being executed, as well as unconstitutional and unjust. It proceeds entirely upon the idea that the State governments will lend their aid to carry it into effect. If they refuse, it becomes inoperative. Now, sir, will the Executives, who believe it a violation of the Constitution, assist in its execution? I tell you they will not.”
Every member of the Senate who heard these words knew that they were meant to express the will of the convention which was to meet at Hartford within a month. The sentiment thus avowed was supported by another New England senator, whose State was not a party to the Convention. Jeremiah Mason of New Hampshire was second to no one in legal ability or in personal authority, and when he followed Daggett in the debate, he spoke with full knowledge of the effect his words would have on the action of the Hartford Convention and of the State executives.
“In my opinion,” he said, “this system of military conscription thus recommended by the Secretary of War is not only inconsistent with the provisions and spirit of the Constitution, but also with all the principles of civil liberty. In atrocity it exceeds that adopted by the late Emperor of France for the subjugation of Europe.... Such a measure cannot, it ought not to be submitted to. If it could in no other way be averted, I not only believe, but I hope, it would be resisted.”
Mason pointed to the alternative,—which Massachusetts was then adopting, as the necessary consequence of refusing power to the government,—that the States must resume the powers of sovereignty:
“Should the national defence be abandoned by the general government, I trust the people, if still retaining a good portion of their resources, may rally under their State governments against foreign invasion, and rely with confidence on their own courage and virtue.”
At that time the State of Massachusetts was occupied for one hundred miles of its sea-coast by a British force, avowedly for purposes of permanent conquest; and the State legislature, October 18, refused to make an inquiry, or to consider any measure for regaining possession of its territory, or to co-operate with the national government for the purpose,[380] but voted to raise an army of ten thousand men. The object of this State army was suggested by Christopher Gore, the Federalist senator from Massachusetts who followed Mason in the debate. In personal and political influence Gore stood hardly second to Mason, and his opinions were likely to carry the utmost weight with the convention at Hartford. With this idea necessarily in his mind, Gore told the Senate,—
“This [bill] is the first step on the odious ground of conscription,—a plan, sir, which never will and never ought to be submitted to by this country while it retains one idea of civil freedom; a plan, sir, which if attempted will be resisted by many States, and at every hazard. In my judgment, sir, it should be resisted by all who have any regard to public liberty or the rights of the several States.”
These denunciations were not confined to New England. Senator Goldsborough of Maryland, also a Federalist, affirmed that the sentiment of abhorrence for military duty was almost universal:—
“Sir, you dare not—at least I hope you dare not—attempt a conscription to fill the ranks of your regular army. When the plan of the Secretary of War made its appearance, it was gratifying to find that it met with the abhorrence of almost every man in the nation; and the merit of the bill before you, if such a measure can be supposed to have merit at all, is that it is little else, as regards the militia, than a servile imitation of the secretary’s plan.”
Nevertheless, when Goldsborough took his seat the Senate passed the Militia Bill by a vote of nineteen to twelve,—Anderson of Tennessee and Varnum of Massachusetts joining the Federalists in opposition. The Regular Army Bill, which was in effect a bill to sacrifice the regular army, passed November 11, without a division. Both measures then went to the House and were committed, November 12, to the Committee of the Whole.
Ordinarily such a measure would have been referred to the Military Committee, but in this instance the Military Committee would have nothing to do with the Senate bill. Troup, the chairman, began the debate by denouncing it.[381] The measure, he said, was inadequate to its object. “It proposed to give you a militia force when you wanted, not a militia, but a regular force.... You have a deficiency of twentyodd thousand to supply. How will you supply it? Assuredly the [Regular Army] bill from the Senate will not supply it. No, sir, the recruiting system has failed.” On the nature of the force necessary for the next campaign Troup expressed his own opinion and that of his committee, as well as that of the Executive, in language as strong as he could use at such a time and place. “If, after what has happened, I could for a moment believe there could be any doubt or hesitation on this point, I would consider everything as lost; then indeed there would be an end of hope and of confidence.” Yet on precisely this point Congress showed most doubt. Nothing could induce it to accept Troup’s view of the necessity for providing a regular army. “The bill from the Senate,” remonstrated Troup, “instead of proposing this, proposes to authorize the President to call upon the States for eighty thousand raw militia; and this is to be our reliance for the successful prosecution of the war! Take my word for it, sir, that if you do rely upon it (the military power of the enemy remaining undivided) defeat, disaster, and disgrace, must follow.”
The House refused to support Troup or the President. Calhoun was first to yield to the general unwillingness, and declared himself disposed to accept the Senate bill as a matter of policy. Richard M. Johnson, though sympathizing with Troup, still preferred to accept the bill as the only alternative to nothing: “If it was rejected, they would have no dependence for defence but on six months’ militia.”[382] On the other hand, Thomas K. Harris of Tennessee protested that if the British government had it in their power to control the deliberations of Congress, they could not devise the adoption of a measure of a military character better calculated to serve their purposes. The people, he said, were in his part of the country prepared to make every sacrifice, and expected Congress, after the news from Ghent, to do its share; but Congress was about to adopt a measure of all others the best calculated to prolong the war.[383]
While the friends of the government spoke in terms of open discouragement and almost despair of the strongest military measure which Congress would consent to consider, the Federalists made no concealment of their wishes and intentions. Daniel Webster used similar arguments to those of his friend Jeremiah Mason in the Senate, affirming that the same principle which authorized the enlistment of apprentices would equally authorize the freeing of slaves,[384] and echoing pathetic threats of disunion.[385] Other Federalists made no professions of sadness over the approaching dissolution of government. Artemas Ward of Massachusetts spoke December 14, the day before the Hartford Convention was to meet, and announced the course which events were to take:[386]—
“That the Treasury is empty I admit; that the ranks of the regular army are thin I believe to be true; and that our country must be defended in all events, I not only admit but affirm. But, sir, if all the parts of the United States are defended, of course the whole will be defended. If every State in the Union, with such aid as she can obtain from her neighbors, defends herself, our whole country will be defended. In my mind the resources of the States will be applied with more economy and with greater effect in defence of the country under the State governments than under the government of the United States.”
Such avowals of the intent to throw aside Constitutional duties were not limited to members from New England. Morris S. Miller of New York made a vehement speech on the failure of national defence, and declared the inevitable result to be “that the States must and will take care of themselves; and they will preserve the resources of the States for the defence of the States.”[387] He also declared that conscription would be resisted, and echoed the well-remembered declamation of Edward Livingston against the Alien Bill in 1798, when the Republican orator prayed to God that the States would never acquiesce in obedience to the law.
“This House,” replied Duvall of Kentucky, “has heard discord and rebellion encouraged and avowed from more than one quarter.” Indeed, from fully one fourth of its members the House heard little else. Under the shadow of the Hartford Convention the Federalist members talked with entire frankness. “This great fabric seems nodding and tottering to its fall,” said Z. R. Shipherd of New York, December 9;[388] “and Heaven only knows how long before the mighty ruin will take place.” J. O. Moseley of Connecticut “meant no improper menace” by predicting to the House, “if they were determined to prosecute the war by a recourse to such measures as are provided in the present bill, that they would have no occasion for future committees of investigation into the causes of the failure of their arms.”[389] The latest committee of investigation had recently made a long report on the capture of Washington, carefully abstaining from expressing opinions of its own, or imputing blame to any one, and Moseley’s remark involved a double sneer. None of these utterances were resented. Richard Stockton of New Jersey was allowed unanswered to denounce in measured terms the mild Militia Bill then under debate, from which the committee had already struck the term of two years’ service by substituting one year; and Stockton concluded his fine-drawn arguments by equally studied menace:[390]—
“This bill also attacks the right and sovereignty of the State governments. Congress is about to usurp their undoubted rights,—to take from them their militia. By this bill we proclaim that we will have their men, as many as we please, when and where and for as long a time as we see fit, and for any service we see proper. Do gentlemen of the majority seriously believe that the people and the State governments will submit to this claim? Do they believe that all the States of this Union will submit to this usurpation? Have you attended to the solemn and almost unanimous declaration of the legislature of Connecticut? Have you examined the cloud arising in the East? Do you perceive that it is black, alarming, portentous?”
The Resolution of the Connecticut legislature to which Stockton referred was adopted in October, and authorized the governor in case of the passage of the Militia Bill to convoke the General Assembly forthwith, to consider measures “to secure and preserve the rights and liberties of the people of this State, and the freedom, sovereignty, and independence of the same.”[391] Stockton’s speech was made December 10, and “the cloud arising in the East,” as he figured the Hartford Convention, was to take form December 15. The Republican speakers almost as earnestly used the full influence of these national fears to rouse the energies of the House. They neither denied nor disguised the helplessness of government. All admitted dread of approaching disaster. Perhaps C. J. Ingersoll was the only member who declared that the war had been successful, and that Americans need no longer blush to be Americans; but Ingersoll disliked the Militia Bill as cordially as it was disliked by Troup or Varnum, and voted for it only because “something must be done.”[392]
“When our army,” said Samuel Hopkins of Kentucky, in closing the debate, “is composed of a mere handful of men, and our treasury empty so that it cannot provide for this gallant handful; when an enemy, powerful and active, is beating against our shores like the strong wave of the ocean; when everything is at stake,—... surely such is not the moment for parsimonious feelings in raising taxes, or for forced constructions to defeat the means for raising men.”
Notwithstanding every effort of the war-leaders, the opposition steadily won control over the House. Daniel Webster during his entire lifetime remembered with satisfaction that he shared with Eppes the credit of overthrowing what he called Monroe’s conscription.[393] December 10, at Eppes’s motion, the House voted by a majority of sixty-two to fifty-seven to reduce the term of service from two years to one.[394] A motion made by Daniel Webster to reduce the term to six months was lost by only one voice, the vote standing seventy-eight to seventy-nine.[395] The bill passed at last, December 14, by a vote of eighty-four to seventy-two, in a House where the true war majority was forty-six. When the Senate insisted on its provision of two years’ service, Troup, in conference committee, compromised on eighteen months. Then the House, December 27, by a vote of seventy-three to sixty-four, rejected the report of its conference committee. The next day, December 28, in the Senate, Rufus King made an unpremeditated motion for indefinite postponement. Some members were absent; no debate occurred. The question was immediately put, and carried by a vote of fourteen to thirteen.[396] The effect of this action was to destroy the bill.
With this failure the attempt to supply an army was abandoned, and Congress left the government to conduct the war in 1815, as in 1814, with thirty thousand regular troops and six months’ militia. Monroe’s effort to fill the ranks of the army ended in doubling the land-bounty; in authorizing the enlistment of minors, who had till then been enlisted without authorization; and in exempting from militia duty such persons as should furnish a recruit for the regular army.[397] The prospect was remote that such inducements could do more than repair the waste of the actual force; but the government was unable to pay a larger number even if the force could be raised, and Monroe was obliged to prepare for the next campaign with such slight means of defence as remained to him. The last effort to induce the House to consider a serious method of raising troops was made February 6, and was referred to the Committee of the Whole, with a tacit understanding that the ordinary process of recruiting was not to be disturbed.[398] According to the returns in the adjutant-general’s office, the whole number of men—non-commissioned officers, privates, musicians, and artificers, present or absent, sick or well—in the regular army Feb. 16, 1815, was thirty-two thousand one hundred and sixty. During the previous two months it had remained stationary, the returns of December, 1814, reporting thirty-two thousand three hundred and sixty men. Nothing showed a possibility of greatly increasing the force by the means prescribed by Congress.
The navy requiring little new legislation, readily obtained the little it asked. Almost the first Act of the session, approved Nov. 15, 1814, authorized the purchasing or building of twenty sixteen-gun sloops-of-war. Another Act of Feb. 7, 1815, created a Board of Commissioners for the navy to discharge all the ministerial duties of the secretary, under his superintendence.
This legislation, with the various tax-bills, comprised all that was accomplished by Congress between the months of September and February toward a vigorous prosecution of the war. For the navy the prospect of success in the coming year was sufficiently fair, and privateering promised to be more active than ever; but the army was threatened with many perils. The most serious of all dangers to the military service of the Union was supposed by Federalists to be the establishment of armies by the separate States. The attempt to establish such an army by Massachusetts in time of peace had been one of the causes which led to the Constitution of 1789;[399] and at the close of 1814, when Massachusetts voted to raise an army of ten thousand men, the significance of the step was more clearly evident than in the time of the Confederation.
The State of Massachusetts might be supposed to act in a spirit of hostility to the Constitution; but no such motive actuated States outside of New England. If they followed the same course, they did so because the national government was believed to be incompetent to the general defence. Of all the States Massachusetts alone possessed considerable resources, and could command both credit and specie; yet the creation of a State army of ten thousand men overburdened her finances, and obliged her to claim her share of the national revenues. No other State could expect to support an army without immediate financial trouble. Yet Governor Tompkins of New York recommended to the legislature in September the establishment of a State army of twenty thousand men,[400] and the legislature passed Acts for the purpose. The legislature of Pennsylvania took a similar measure into consideration. The legislature of Maryland passed an Act for raising five thousand State troops. Virginia decided also to create a State army, with two major-generals. South Carolina passed a law for raising a brigade of State troops, and appointed the officers. Kentucky took measures for raising a State army of ten thousand men.
The national government, unable to create an efficient army of its own, yielded to necessity, and looked already to the State armies as levies to be taken into the national service in case of need. The States, on their side, unable to bear the expense of separate armies, expected to be relieved of the burden by the national government. Yet for the moment the States, however deficient their means might be, seemed better able than the general government not only to raise men but to support them. In January, 1815, the financial resources of the government were exhausted, so that the Treasury could not meet the drafts drawn by Major-General Jackson and the pressing demands of the paymaster at New Orleans. The Secretary of War was obliged to go from bank to bank of Washington and Georgetown asking, as a personal favor, loans of their bank-notes already depreciated about fifty per cent. So desperate, according to Monroe’s account, was the situation that his success depended on adding his own guaranty to that of the government.[401] At no time of his life were Monroe’s means sufficient to supply his private needs, and nothing could express so strongly his sense of national bankruptcy as the assertion that his credit was required to support that of the United States.[402]
The State armies were the natural result of such a situation. Congress could not resist the movement, and passed an Act, approved Jan. 27, 1815, authorizing the President to receive into the national service a certain proportion of the State troops, not exceeding forty thousand men in the aggregate. Little was said in debate on the bearings of the Act, which seemed to concede the demand of Massachusetts that the States should be allowed to raise troops at the expense of the United States. The Hartford Convention had then met, deliberated, and adjourned. Its report had been published, and among its demands was one that “these States might be allowed to assume their own defence.” The Federalists considered the Act of Jan. 27, 1815, as a “full and ample” concession of the demand.[403] Senator Gore wrote to Governor Strong, January 22, while the measure was before the President, commenting on the financial and military expedients of Dallas and Monroe:[404]
“These appear to me the spasms of a dying government.... The bill authorizing the raising of State troops by the States, and at the expense of the United States, according to the plan sent you some time since, has passed both Houses. Thus one part of the recommendation of the Hartford Convention seems to be adopted. The other,—that to authorize the States to receive the taxes,—will probably be more difficult to be attained. The accession to this seems not to accord with Mr. Monroe’s intimation in your letter, or rather in his letter to you. Indeed, if they have fears of the State governments, one can hardly account for this government’s authorizing the States to raise and keep in pay, at the expense of the United States, troops which may be used for purposes hostile to, or not conformable with, the views of the paymaster.”
The accession to the principle of State armies which surprised Gore could be explained only by the government’s consciousness of helplessness. Gore was somewhat careful to express no opinion of the probable consequences, but other Federalists spoke with entire candor. Timothy Pickering expected a division of the Union.[405] Less extreme partisans looked only to a dissolution of government. A year afterward, in the calmer light of peace and union, Joseph Hopkinson, a very distinguished Federalist of Philadelphia, not deluded like the New Englanders by local pride or prejudice, declared publicly in Congress the common conviction of his party on the probable consequences of another year of war:[406]
“The federal government was at the last gasp of existence. But six months longer and it was no more. ... The general government would have dissolved into its original elements; its powers would have returned to the States from which they were derived; and they doubtless would have been fully competent to their defence against any enemy. Does not everybody remember that all the great States, and I believe the small ones too, were preparing for this state of things, and organizing their own means for their own defence?”
Calhoun contradicted Hopkinson and denied his assertions; but on that subject Hopkinson was at least an equal authority. Calhoun knew well his own State, but he knew little of New England; and he had yet to learn, perhaps to his own surprise, how easily a section of the Union could be wrought to treason.