CHAPTER VI.
The prosperity that followed the Peace of Ghent suffered no check during the year 1816, or during the remainder of Madison’s term. The exports of domestic produce, officially valued at $45,000,000 for the year ending Sept. 30, 1815, were valued at nearly $65,000,000 for the following year, and exceeded $68,000,000 for 1817. The Southern States still supplied two thirds of the exported produce. Cotton to the amount of $24,000,000, tobacco valued at nearly $13,000,000, and rice at $3,500,000, contributed more than forty of the sixty-five millions of domestic exports in 1816. The tables[138] showed that while South Carolina, Georgia, and Louisiana gained with unparalleled rapidity, New England lost ground, and New York only maintained its uniform movement. While the domestic exports of Georgia and Louisiana trebled in value, those of New York increased from eight to fourteen millions.
Notwithstanding the great importations from Europe which under ordinary conditions would have counterbalanced the exports, the exchanges soon turned in favor of the United States. Before the close of 1816 specie in considerable quantities began to flow into the country. Canada, being nearest, felt the drain first, and suffered much inconvenience from it; but during the summer of 1816 and 1817 Europe also shipped much specie to America. Every ship brought some amount, until the export began to affect the Bank of England, which at last found its bullion diminishing with alarming rapidity. The returns showed a drain beginning in July or August, 1817, when the Bank of England held £11,668,000, until August, 1819, when the supply was reduced to £3,595,000; and in the interval a commercial crisis, with a general destruction of credit, occurred. The reaction could not fail in the end to affect America as it affected England, but the first result was stimulating beyond all previous experience. In England the drain of specie embarrassed government in returning to specie payments. In the United States the influx of specie made the return easy, if not necessary.
The recovery of internal exchanges kept pace with the influx of specie. At Boston, July 27, 1816, United States six-per-cent bonds were quoted at eighty-five, and Treasury notes at ninety-four to ninety-four and one-half; at New York six-per-cents stood at ninety, and Treasury notes at par; in Philadelphia six-per-cents were worth ninety-eight, and Treasury notes one hundred and seven; in Baltimore six-per-cents were selling at one hundred and two, and Treasury notes at one hundred and twelve. During the next five months the recovery was steady and rapid. The banks of New York, September 26, began to cash their one-dollar notes, thus relieving the community from the annoyance of fractional currency. October 26 the six-per-cents stood at ninety-two in Boston, at ninety-three and one-half in New York, at ninety-eight in Philadelphia, and at one hundred and one and one-half in Baltimore. November 28 they sold at ninety-six in Boston; November 30 they sold at ninety-six and one-quarter in New York, at one hundred and one and one-half in Philadelphia, and at one hundred and five in Baltimore. January 1, 1817, the Treasury resumed payments at Boston in Boston money, and no further discredit attached to government securities.
The banks of the Middle States were less disposed than the government to hasten the return of specie payments. In order to do so, they were obliged to contract their circulation and discounts to an extent that would have been unendurable in any time but one of great prosperity; and only the threats of Dallas overcame their reluctance, even under most favorable conditions. Both Dallas and the President were irritated by their slowness.[139] July 22, 1816, the Secretary of the Treasury issued a circular warning them that, at whatever cost, the Treasury must carry into effect the order of Congress to collect the revenue, after Feb. 20, 1817, only in specie or its equivalent. “The banks in the States to the South,” he said,[140] “and to the west of Maryland, are ready and willing, it is believed, to co-operate in the same measure. The objection, or the obstacle to the measure, principally rests with the banks of the Middle States.” Dallas invited them to assist the Treasury in resuming specie payments with the least possible delay; and accordingly the banks of the Middle States held a convention at Philadelphia, August 6, to consider their course.
This convention, on discussing the possibility of resumption, agreed that the banks needed more time than the government was disposed to allow. Credit had been necessarily expanded by the unusual scale of commerce and enterprise. So sudden and violent a contraction as was required for specie payments could not fail to distress the public, and might cause great suffering. Yet in some degree the new United States Bank could relieve this pressure; and therefore the resumption should not be attempted by the State banks until the National Bank should be fairly opened and ready to begin its discounts. The State banks in convention foresaw, or imagined, that the United States Bank could not begin operations so early as Feb. 20, 1817, and they declined to risk resumption without its aid. Acting on this impression, they met Dallas’s urgency by a formal recommendation that their banks should begin to pay specie, not on the 20th of February, but on the first Monday of July, 1817.
This decision, though unsatisfactory to Dallas and the President, could not be considered unreasonable. Credit was expanded beyond the limit of safety, and the government was largely responsible for the expansion. Many of the State banks were probably unsound from the first, and needed careful management. Between 1810 and 1830, on a total capital of one hundred and forty millions, the bank failures amounted to thirty millions, or more than one fifth of the whole.[141] In Pennsylvania the country banks reduced their issues from $4,756,000 in November, 1816, to $1,318,000 in November, 1819. The latter moment was one of extreme depression, but the former was probably not that of the greatest expansion. When the banks of the Middle States held their convention, Aug. 6, 1816, contraction had already begun, and steadily continued, while specie flowed into the country to supply a foundation for bank paper. Under such circumstances the banks asked no extravagant favor in recommending that eleven months, instead of seven, should be allowed for resumption.
Dallas was not disposed to concede this favor. Having at last the necessary machinery for controlling the State banks, he used it with the same vigor that marked all his acts. No sooner had the convention announced its unwillingness to co-operate with the Treasury in executing the order of Congress, than Dallas issued instructions, August 16,[142] hastening the preparations for opening the National Bank as early as Jan. 1, 1817. Soon afterward, September 12, he renewed his notice that the notes of suspended banks would be rejected by the Treasury after Feb. 20, 1817.
The Bank subscription was filled in August, a deficit of three million dollars being taken by Stephen Girard in a single mass.[143] In October the board of directors was chosen by the shareholders, and in November the directors met and elected as President the former Secretary of the Navy, William Jones. One of their first acts was much debated, and was strongly opposed in the board of directors by J. J. Astor. They sent John Sergeant, of Philadelphia, abroad with authority to purchase some millions of bullion; and his mission was calculated to impress on the public the conviction that specie payments were to be resumed as soon as the Bank could open its doors.
Hurried by Dallas, the Bank actually began its operations in January, 1817, and under the double pressure from the Treasury the State banks had no choice but to yield. Another meeting was held at Philadelphia, February 1, consisting of delegates from the banks of New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Richmond. The convention entered into a compact with the Secretary of the Treasury to resume payments, on certain conditions, at the day fixed by Congress. The compact was carried into effect February 20, a few days before the close of Madison’s Presidency. Its success was magical. In New York, at ten o’clock on the morning of February 20, specie was at two and one half per cent premium. The banks opened their doors, and in half an hour all was once more regular and normal.
Thus the worst financial evil of the war was removed within two years after the proclamation of peace. A debt of about one hundred and thirty millions remained; but the people which only twenty years before had shrunk with fear and disgust from a debt of eighty millions, gave scarcely a thought in 1816 to their funded obligations. The difference between the two periods was not so much economical as political. Population and wealth had increased, but the experience of the people had advanced more rapidly than their numbers or capital. In measuring the political movement shrewd judges might easily err, for the elections of 1816 showed little apparent change in parties; but in truth parties had outgrown their principles, and in politics, as in finance, the close of Madison’s Administration obliterated old distinctions.
Neither party admitted the abandonment of its dogmas. The New York election in the spring of 1816 showed no considerable change in votes. In 1810 Governor Tompkins was elected by ten thousand majority; even in the dark days of 1813 he had a majority of thirty-six hundred; in 1816, notwithstanding his popularity and the success of his war administration, his majority was less than seven thousand. In Massachusetts John Brooks, who succeeded Governor Strong as candidate of the Federalist party, received forty-nine thousand five hundred votes, while Samuel Dexter received forty-seven thousand four hundred. Six years before, in 1810, the Republican candidate, Elbridge Gerry, had received more than forty-six thousand five hundred, and Governor Strong had polled only forty-four thousand. Apparently the Republicans had lost ground in Massachusetts since 1810. In Connecticut, where the election turned on church issues, the result was somewhat different. The Anglican church, a small body but rich and influential, strongly Federalist in politics and conservative in character, joined the Democrats to overthrow the reign of the Congregational clergy. Oliver Wolcott, a Federalist who supported the war, was their candidate; and the combination nearly carried the State. Wolcott received about ten thousand two hundred votes; his Federalist opponent was elected by eleven thousand three hundred and seventy votes. The Federalists also carried Rhode Island, once a strongly Democratic State, and seemed socially as well as politically to be little affected by their many mistakes and misfortunes.
Yet every one felt that real distinctions of party no longer existed. The Anglicans of Connecticut, the Unitarians of Boston, the Universalists and Baptists, looked chiefly to the overthrow of the established New England church; and the Democrats of New York, like the Republicans of Virginia and North Carolina, labored for a system of internal improvements and for increased energy in national government. Parties, no longer held together by discipline, were liable at any moment to fall into confusion; and, as frequently happened in such stages of public opinion, they were extraordinarily affected by influences seemingly trivial. In 1816 the relaxation of party spirit resulted in a phenomenon never before witnessed. The whole community rose against its own representatives, and showed evident pleasure in condemning them. The occasion for this outbreak of popular temper was the Compensation Bill; but the instinct that could alone account for the public pleasure in punishing public men, could not be explained by a cause so trifling as that Act.
At the next session of Congress, Calhoun, lapsing in the middle of a speech into his usual meditative speculation, remarked, as though he were perplexed to account for his own theory, that in his belief the House of Representatives was not a favorite with the American people.[144] Had he expressed the opinion that freedom of thought or speech was not a favorite with the American people, he would have said nothing more surprising. If the House was not a favorite, what part of the government was popular, and what could be hoped for representative government itself? Of all the machinery created by the Constitution, the House alone directly reflected and represented the people; and if the people disliked it, they disliked themselves.
The people best knew whether Calhoun was right. Certainly the House, owing in part to its size, its frequent elections and changes, its lack of responsibility and of social unity, was the least steady and least efficient branch of government. Readers who have followed the history here closed, have been surprised at the frequency with which the word imbecility has risen in their minds in reading the proceedings of the House. So strong was the same impression at the time, that in the year 1814, at the close of the war, every earnest patriot in the Union, and many men who were neither earnest nor patriotic, were actively reproaching the House for its final failure, at an apparent crisis of the national existence, to call out or organize any considerable part of the national energies. The people in truth, however jealous of power, would have liked in imagination, though they would not bear in practice, to be represented by something nobler, wiser, and purer than their own average honor, wisdom, and purity. They could not make an ideal of weakness, ignorance, or vice, even their own; and as they required in their religion the idea of an infinitely wise and powerful deity, they revolted in their politics from whatever struck them as sordid or selfish. The House reflected their own weaknesses; and the Compensation Act seemed to them an expression of their own least agreeable traits. They rebelled against a petty appropriation of money, after enduring for years a constant succession of worse offences.
“Who would have believed,” asked John Randolph,[145] six months afterward,—“who would have believed,” he repeated, “that the people of the United States would have borne all the privations and losses of the late war, and of the measures that led to it; that they would have quietly regarded a national debt, swelled to an amount unknown,—to an amount greater than the whole expense of our seven years’ war; that they would have seen the election of President taken out of their hands [by the caucus]; that they would have borne with abuse and peculation through every department of the government,—and that the great Leviathan, which slept under all these grievances, should be roused into action by the Fifteen-Hundred-Dollar Law?”
Only with difficulty could members persuade themselves that the public anger was real. They could not at first conceive that the people should be seriously angry because Congress had thought proper to pay its members a sum not in itself extravagant or adequate to their services. Not until the members returned to their homes did they appreciate the force of public feeling; but they soon felt themselves helpless to resist it. Richard M. Johnson and Henry Clay, the two most popular men in Kentucky, found their entire constituency attacking them. “When I went home,” said Clay,[146] “I do not recollect to have met with one solitary individual of any description of party who was not opposed to the Act,—who did not, on some ground or other, think it an improper and unjust law.” Benjamin Hardin,[147] another of the Kentucky victims, said: “If a man came into the county court to be appointed a constable or surveyor of the road, he entered his solemn protest against the Compensation Law. If a petty demagogue wanted to get into the legislature, he must post up, or put in the newspapers, his protest against it.”
“There was at first a violent excitement,” said Philip P. Barbour of Virginia;[148] “gentlemen might call it, if they pleased, a storm. But that storm, even when its fury abated, subsided into a fixed and settled discontent at the measure; it met the disapprobation and excited the discontent of the grave, the reflecting, and the deliberate; and such he believed to be the case with an immense majority of the American people.”
Grand juries denounced it in Vermont and Georgia; the State legislature denounced it in Massachusetts; town-meetings protested against it; county conventions sat upon it; all classes and parties united in condemning it, and the brunt of this sweeping popular reproval fell upon the House of Representatives. Close as the House stood to the people, its want of popularity was evident,—as Calhoun, with his usual insight, bore witness. The House had as a body few friends and no protection against popular tempests. The first to suffer, it was always the last to escape. One after another the weaker members gave way, and either declined re-election or were not re-elected. The chiefs succeeded for the most part by personal popularity in maintaining their hold on their districts, although several leading members lost their seats.
Even against so feeble and factious a body as the Thirteenth Congress, such condemnation would have seemed exceptional; but the peculiarity that made this popular reproof singular and suggestive was the popular admission that the Fourteenth Congress, for ability, energy, and usefulness, never had a superior, and perhaps, since the First Congress, never an equal. Such abilities were uncommon in any legislative body, American or European. Since Federalist times no Congress had felt such a sense of its own strength, and such pride in its own superiority; none had filled so fully the popular ideal of what the people’s representatives should be. That this remarkable body of men should have incurred almost instantly the severest popular rebuke ever visited on a House of Representatives, could not have been mere accident.
The politics of 1816 seemed absorbed in the Compensation Act, and in the union of parties to condemn their representatives. The Senate escaped serious censure; and President Madison, so far from being called to account for errors real or imaginary, seemed to enjoy popularity never before granted to any President at the expiration of his term. The apparent contentment was certainly not due to want of grievances. The internal taxes pressed hard on the people, especially in New England, where the suffering was general and in some places severe; but no popular cry for reduction of taxes disturbed the elections. No portion of the country seemed displeased that a fourth Virginian should be made President by the intrigues of a Congressional caucus. The State legislatures for the most part chose as usual the Presidential electors; and in December the public learned, almost without interest, that James Monroe had received one hundred and eighty-three electoral votes, representing sixteen States, while Rufus King had received thirty-four electoral votes, representing Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Delaware. Daniel D. Tompkins of New York was made Vice-President by the same process. Nothing in the elections, either for President or for Congress, showed that the people were disposed to scrutinize sharply the workings of any part of their government except the House of Representatives.
As the winter approached when Madison was to meet Congress for the last time, the sixteen years of his official service, which had been filled with excitement and violence, were ending in political stagnation. Party divisions had so nearly disappeared that nothing prevented the President elect from selecting as the head of his Cabinet the son of the last Federalist President, who had been the object of more violent attack from the Republican party than had been directed against any other Federalist. Old Republicans, like Macon and John Randolph, were at loss to know whether James Monroe or J. Q. Adams had departed farthest from their original starting-points. At times they charged one, at times the other, with desertion of principle; but on the whole their acts tended to betray a conviction that J. Q. Adams was still a Federalist in essentials, while Monroe had ceased to be an old Republican. In the political situation of 1817, if Jefferson and his contemporaries were right in their estimates, Federalist views of government were tending to prevail over the views of the Jeffersonian party.
With this tendency, the national prosperity and the state of the Treasury had much to do. Dallas carried out his purpose, and in October quitted the Treasury. In retiring, he left with the President a sketch of the condition of the finances such as no previous secretary had been so fortunate as to present. For the year ending Sept. 30, 1816, the receipts amounted to $47,670,000.[149] From the customs, which Dallas had estimated at $21,000,000, duties to the amount of $36,000,000 were received. A surplus of more than $20,000,000 was likely to accumulate in the Treasury before the close of the year.
Old ideas of economy and strict restraints on expenditure could not long maintain themselves in the presence of such an income; but besides the temptation to expand the sphere of government in expenditures, other influences were at work to establish Federalist principles in the system itself. Dallas remained in office chiefly in order to organize the Bank, and to render certain the resumption of specie payments. When he retired, in October, 1816, both objects were practically attained. His administration of the Treasury had then lasted two years. He found the government bankrupt; he left it with a surplus of twenty millions for the year. His measures not only relieved the country from financial disorders equalled only by those of the Revolutionary War, but also fixed the financial system in a firm groove for twenty years. He failed only in his attempt to obtain from Congress a larger degree of protection for domestic industries. Had his scheme of protection been adopted, possibly the violence of subsequent changes in revenue and legislation might have been moderated, and certainly the result could have been no more mischievous than it was.
Dallas retired to private life by his own wish, and the public three months afterward heard with surprise and regret the news of his sudden death. Like most of the men who rendered decisive services during the war, he received no public reward commensurate with his deserts. He fared better than Armstrong, who created the army; but even Gallatin, who shaped the diplomatic result, was content to retire into the comparative obscurity of the mission to Paris; while Perry and Macdonough, whose personal qualities had decided the fortunes of two campaigns and won the military basis on which peace could be negotiated, received no more reward than fell to the lot of third-rate men. In the case of Dallas and Gallatin, the apparent neglect was their own choice. Gallatin might have returned to the Treasury, but declined it; and the President transferred W. H. Crawford from the War Department to the charge of the finances, while Clay was offered the War Department in succession to Crawford.
These arrangements affected Madison but little. He had no longer an object to gain from the disposal of patronage, and he sought to smooth the path of his successor rather than to benefit himself. Few Presidents ever quitted office under circumstances so agreeable as those which surrounded Madison. During the last two years of his Administration almost every month brought some difficulty to an end, or accomplished some long-desired result. The restoration of the finances was perhaps his greatest source of satisfaction; but the steadiness with which the whole country, except New England, recovered prosperity and contentment afforded him a wider and more constant pleasure. The ravages of war left few traces. Even at Washington the new public buildings were pressed forward so rapidly that the effects of fire were no longer seen. The Capitol began to rise from its ruins. The new halls of Congress promised to do honor to Madison’s judgment. Benjamin Latrobe was the architect in charge; and his Representative Chamber, without reproducing that which Jefferson had helped to design, was dignified and worthy of its object. The old sandstone columns were replaced by another material. On the shore of the Potomac, near Leesburg, Latrobe noticed a conglomerate rock, containing rounded pebbles of various sizes and colors, and capable of being worked in large masses. His love of novelty led him to employ this conglomerate as an ornamental stone for the columns of the Hall of Representatives; and the effect was not without elegance.
Several years were still to pass before Congress occupied its permanent quarters, and Madison did not return to the White House; but the traces of national disaster disappeared in the process of reconstruction before he quitted the Presidency.
Surrounded by these pleasant conditions, Madison saw Congress assemble for the last time to listen to his requests. The Message which he sent to the legislature December 3 showed the extinction of party issues, and suggested no action that seemed likely to revive party disputes in any new form. The President expressed regret at the depression in shipping and manufactures, the branches of industry unfavorably affected by the peace. He suggested that Congress should consider especially the need of laws counteracting the exclusive navigation system of Great Britain. He recommended once more the time-worn subjects of the Militia and a National University. He asked for legislation against the Slave Trade, and urged a re-modification of the Judiciary. He requested Congress to create a new Executive department for Home or Interior Affairs, and to place the Attorney-General’s office on the footing of a department. He gave a flattering account of the finances; and his Message closed with a panegyric on the people and their government, for seeking “by appeals to reason, and by its liberal examples, to infuse into the law which governs the civilized world a spirit which may diminish the frequency or circumscribe the calamities of war, and meliorate the social and beneficent relations of peace: a government, in a word, whose conduct, within and without, may bespeak the most noble of all ambitions,—that of promoting peace on earth and good-will to man.”
For the moment, Congressmen were too much interested in their own quarrel to sympathize strongly with panegyrics on the people or their government. The members of the House returned to Washington mortified, angry, and defiant, disgusted alike with the public and with the public service. No sooner were the standing committees announced, December 4, than Richard M. Johnson moved for a special committee on the repeal of the Compensation Law, and supported his motion in an unusually elaborate speech, filled with argument, complaint, and irritation. The committee was appointed,—Johnson at its head; William Findley of Pennsylvania, second; Daniel Webster, third, with four other members. After twelve days’ consideration, December 18, the committee presented a report, written by Webster, defending the Act, but recommending a return to the per diem system, in deference to the popular wish. The scale of the new allowance was left for Congress to determine.
Until this personal quarrel was discussed, no other business received attention. The debate—postponed till Jan. 14, 1817, to save the dignity of the House—lasted, to the exclusion of other business, until January 23. As an exhibition of personal and corporate character, it was entertaining; but it contained little of permanent interest or value. Calhoun, always above his subject, spoke with much force against yielding to popular outcry. “This House,” he said, “is the foundation of the fabric of our liberty. So happy is its constitution, that in all instances of a general nature its duty and its interests are inseparable. If he understood correctly the structure of our government, the prevailing principle is not so much a balance of power, as a well-connected chain of responsibility. That responsibility commenced here, and this House is the centre of its operation.” The idea that the people had “resolved the government into its original elements, and resumed to themselves their primitive power of legislation,” was inconsistent with the idea that responsibility commenced and centred in the House. “Are we bound in all cases to do what is popular?” asked Calhoun. Could the House shift responsibility from itself to the people without destroying the foundation of the entire fabric?
Like most of Calhoun’s speculations, this question could receive its answer only in some distant future. The Compensation Law lowered permanently the self-respect of the House, which had already declined from the formation of the government. “Of that House,” said Richard Henry Wilde of Georgia,[150] “he feared it might be said in the words of Claudian: ‘A fronte recedant imperii.’ Yes, sir, they were receding,—they had receded from the front of empire. That House, formerly the favorite of the American nation, the first and most important branch of the government, the immediate image of the people, had been losing, and continued to lose,—certainly by no fault of theirs, but by the working of causes not for him to develop,—that rank and power in the government originally belonging to them, and which others at their expense had been secretly acquiring.” Yet the House, while repealing the law, refused to admit itself in the wrong. The law was repealed only so far as it applied to subsequent Congresses. Leaving its successors to fix whatever compensation they thought proper for their services, the Fourteenth Congress adhered to its own scale, and took the money it was expected to refund.
Having disposed of this personal affair, the House turned to serious business, and completed its remarkable career by enacting several measures of far-reaching importance.
The first of these measures was a Navigation Act, approved March 1, 1817, imposing on foreign vessels the same restrictions and prohibitions which were imposed by foreign nations on Americans. The second resembled the first in its object, but related only to the importation of plaster of Paris from Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. These two Acts began a struggle against the foreign navigation systems, which ended in their overthrow.
For the present the House postponed the establishment of an Interior Department, and allowed the Attorney-General to remain without an office or a clerk; but it passed an Act, approved March 3, 1817, concentrating in the Treasury the accounting business of government, and appointing four more auditors and one more comptroller for the purpose.
The fourth and most important measure that became law was a Neutrality Act, approved March 3, 1817, which authorized collectors of customs to seize and detain “any vessel manifestly built for warlike purposes, ... when the number of men shipped on board, or other circumstances, shall render it probable that such vessel is intended by the owner” to cruise against the commerce of a friendly State. Nearly fifty years were to pass before the people of the United States learned to realize the full importance of this Act, which laid the foundation for all the subsequent measures taken by the United States and Great Britain for preserving neutrality in their relations with warring countries.[151] The Neutrality Act of 1817 furnished the measure of neutral obligations.
Besides these important laws, the Fourteenth Congress passed another bill, which closed its own activity and that of President Madison. None of the previous measures bore any direct relation to party politics, either past or future; but the bill for internal improvements, which Congress passed and the President vetoed, was an event of no small meaning in party history.
Calhoun moved, December 16, “that a committee be appointed to inquire into the expediency of setting apart ... a permanent fund for internal improvement.” The committee was appointed the same day,—Calhoun, Sheffey of Virginia, Creighton of Ohio, Grosvenor of New York, and Ingham of Pennsylvania. December 23 Calhoun reported a bill[152] setting aside the bonus paid by the Bank, $1,500,000, and the future dividends from Bank stock, “as a fund for constructing roads and canals.” February 4 he introduced his bill by a speech, showing that a system of internal improvements was necessary, and could, in certain instances, be created by the national government alone.
“Let it not be forgotten,” said Calhoun,[153] with the air of sombre forecast which marked his mind and features, “let it be forever kept in mind, that the extent of our republic exposes us to the greatest of all calamities, next to the loss of liberty, and even to that in its consequence,—disunion. We are great, and rapidly—I was about to say fearfully—growing. This is our pride and danger, our weakness and our strength. Little does he deserve to be intrusted with the liberties of this people, who does not raise his mind to these truths. We are under the most imperious obligation to counteract every tendency to disunion.... If ... we permit a low, sordid, selfish, and sectional spirit to take possession of this House, this happy scene will vanish. We will divide, and in its consequences will follow misery and despotism.”
The Constitutional question Calhoun reserved for the future; he thought it scarcely worth discussion, since the good sense of the States might be relied on to prevent practical evils. Nevertheless he discussed it, and drew sufficient authority from the “general welfare” clause, and from the power to “establish” post-roads. Granting that the Constitution was silent, he saw no restraint on Congress:—
“If we are restricted in the use of our money to the enumerated powers, on what principle can the purchase of Louisiana be justified?... If it cannot, then are we compelled either to deny that we had the power to purchase, or to strain some of the enumerated powers to prove our right.”
The debate was interesting. Timothy Pickering, with the accumulated experience of seventy years, suggested that the right to regulate commerce among the several States, as in the case of light-houses and beacons, covered the proposed appropriation. Clay supported the bill with his usual energy, avowing that among his strongest motives was the wish to add this new distinction to the Fourteenth Congress, so harshly judged by the people. The chief Constitutional argument against the measure was made by Philip P. Barbour of Virginia; but other members opposed it on different grounds, and chiefly because as long as the internal taxes were still exacted, internal improvements should not be undertaken.
If the final vote was a correct test, Constitutional objections had but little weight with Congress. The bill passed the House, February 8, by the small majority of eighty-six to eighty-four. Of the minority no less than thirty-three were New England Federalists, whose opposition was founded on local and sectional reasons. From the slave States about forty-two votes were given against the bill; but a number of these were Federalist, and others were influenced by peculiar reasons. Two thirds of the Virginians voted against the bill; two thirds of the South Carolinians voted in its favor. Probably not more than twenty-five or thirty members, in the total number of one hundred and seventy, regarded the Constitutional difficulty as fatal to the bill.
In the Senate the bill passed by a vote of twenty to fifteen. Of the minority nine represented New England, and six represented Southern States. Every senator from the Middle States, as well as both senators from Virginia, supported the bill. Both senators from Massachusetts, the Republican Varnum and the Federalist Ashmun, opposed it; while Jeremiah Mason of New Hampshire and Rufus King of New York voted in its favor. The confusion of parties was extreme; but the State-rights school of old Republicans seemed to command not more than five or six votes in thirty-five.
The divisions on this bill seemed to leave no question that Congress by an overwhelming majority regarded the Constitutional point as settled. No one doubted that the Judiciary held the same opinion. The friends of the bill had reason to feel secure in regard to the Constitutional issue if on nothing else, and were the more disappointed when, March 3, President Madison exercised for the last time his official authority by returning the bill with a veto founded on Constitutional objections.
“The power to regulate commerce among the several States,” he said, “cannot include a power to construct roads and canals, and to improve the navigation of water-courses in order to facilitate, improve, and secure such a commerce, without a latitude of construction departing from the ordinary import of the terms, strengthened by the known inconveniences which doubtless led to the grant of this remedial power to Congress. To refer the power in question to the clause ‘to provide for the common defence and general welfare’ would be contrary to the established and consistent rules of interpretation, as rendering the special and careful enumeration of powers which follow the clause nugatory and improper. Such a view of the Constitution would have the effect of giving to Congress a general power of legislation.”
Every one who looked at the Constitution as an instrument or machine to be employed for the first time, must have admitted that Madison was right. Interpreted by no other aid than its own terms and the probable intent of a majority of the Convention which framed and the States which adopted it, the Constitution contained, and perhaps had been intended to contain, no power over internal improvements. The wide difference of opinion which so suddenly appeared between the President and Congress could not have been the result so much of different views of the Constitution, as of conclusions reached since the Constitution was framed. Congress held the bill to be Constitutional, not because it agreed with the strict interpretation of the text, but because it agreed with the interpretation which for sixteen years the Republican party, through Congress and Executive, had imposed upon the text.
On that point Calhoun’s argument left no doubt; and his question—the last of his speculations pregnant with future history—echoed unanswered: “On what principle can the purchase of Louisiana be justified?” Dismissing all other violations or violence offered to the Constitution by President Madison or his predecessors,—such as the Bank, the Embargo, the Enforcement laws, the laws for the government of Orleans Territory, the seizure of West Florida,—Calhoun’s question went to the heart of the issue between President and Congress.
From the Virginia side only one answer was possible. In returning to their early views of resistance to centralization, Madison and Jefferson must have maintained the invalidity of precedents to affect the Constitution. The veto seemed to create a new classification of public acts into such as were Constitutional; such as were unconstitutional, but still valid; and such as were both unconstitutional and invalid. The admitted validity of an act, like the purchase of Louisiana, even though it were acknowledged to be unconstitutional, did not create a precedent which authorized a repetition of a similar act.
Viewed only from a political standpoint, the veto marked the first decided reaction against the centralizing effect of the war. Unfortunately for the old Republican party, whose principles were thus for a second time to be adopted in appearance by a majority of the people, sixteen years had affected national character; and although precedents might not bind Congress or Executive, they marked the movement of society.
The Veto Message of March 3, 1817, was Madison’s Farewell Address. The next day he surrendered to Monroe the powers of government, and soon afterward retired to Virginia, to pass, with his friend Jefferson, the remaining years of a long life, watching the results of his labors.