The plight of the American land forces, the splendid and unrivaled victories of the American Navy, apparently concerned Marshall not at all. His eyes were turned toward Europe; his ears strained to catch the sounds from foreign battle-fields.
"I look with anxious solicitude—with mingled hope & fear," he continues, "to the great events which are taking place in the north of Germany. It appears probable that a great battle will be fought on or near the Elbe & never had the world more at stake than will probably depend on that battle.
"Your opinions had led me to hope that there was some prospect for a particular peace for ourselves. My own judgement, could I trust it, would tell me that peace or war will be determined by the events in Europe."[138]
Tim Pickering
The "great battle" which Marshall foresaw had been fought nearly eight weeks before his letter was written. Napoleon had been crushingly defeated at Leipzig in October, 1813, and the British, Prussian, and other armies which Great Britain had combined against him, were already invading France. When, later, the news of this arrived in America, it was hailed by the Federalists with extravagant rejoicings.[139]
Secession, if the war were continued, now became the purpose of the more determined Federalist leaders. It was hopeless to keep up the struggle, they said. The Administration had precipitated hostilities without reason or right, without conscience or sense.[140] The people never had favored this wretched conflict; and now the tyrannical Government, failing to secure volunteers, had resorted to conscription—an "infamous" expedient resorted to in brutal violation of the Constitution.[141] So came the Hartford Convention which the cool wisdom of George Cabot saved from proclaiming secession.[142]
Of the two pretenses for war against Great Britain, the Federalists alleged that one had been removed even before we declared war, and that only the false and shallow excuse of British impressment of American seamen remained. Madison and Monroe recognized this as the one great remaining issue, and an Administration pamphlet was published asserting the reason and justice of the American position. This position was that men of every country have a natural right to remove to another land and there become citizens or subjects, entitled to the protection of the government of the nation of their adoption. The British principle, on the contrary, was that British subjects could never thus expatriate themselves, and that, if they did so, the British Government could seize them wherever found, and by force compel them to serve the Empire in any manner the Government chose to direct.
Monroe's brother-in-law, George Hay, still the United States Attorney for the District of Virginia, was selected to write the exposition of the American view. It seems probable that his manuscript was carefully revised by Madison and Monroe, and perhaps by Jefferson.[143] Certainly Hay stated with singular precision the views of the great Republican triumvirate. The pamphlet was entitled "A Treatise on Expatriation." He began: "I hold in utter reprobation the idea that a man is bound by an obligation, permanent and unalterable, to the government of a country which he has abandoned and his allegiance to which he has solemnly adjured."[144]