If Gallatin at first underrated the probable revenue for war purposes, he speedily confessed his error and set before Congress inexorably the necessity for new taxes-aye, even for an internal tax, which he had once denounced as loudly as any Republican. For more than a year after the declaration of war, Congress was deaf to pleas for new sources of revenue; and it was not, indeed, until the last year of the war that it voted the taxes which in the long run could alone support the public credit. Meantime, facing a depleted Treasury, Gallatin found himself reduced to a mere "dealer of loans"—a position utterly abhorrent to him. Even his efforts to place the loans which Congress authorized must have failed but for the timely aid of three men whom Quincy would have contemptuously termed foreigners, for all like Gallatin were foreign-born—Astor, Girard, and Parish. Utterly weary of his thankless job, Gallatin seized upon the opportunity afforded by the Russian offer of mediation to leave the Cabinet and perhaps to end the war by a diplomatic stroke. He asked and received an appointment as one of the three American commissioners.
If Madison really believed that the people of the United States would unitedly press onward and defend the flag when once he had thrown it forward, he must have been strangely insensitive to the disaffection in New England. Perhaps, like Jefferson in the days of the embargo, he mistook the spirit of this opposition, thinking that it was largely partisan clamor which could safely be disregarded. What neither of these Virginians appreciated was the peculiar fanatical and sectional character of this Federalist opposition, and the extremes to which it would go. Yet abundant evidence lay before their eyes. Thirty-four Federalist members of the House, nearly all from New England, issued an address to their constituents bitterly arraigning the Administration and deploring the declaration of war; the House of Representatives of Massachusetts, following this example, published another address, denouncing the war as a wanton sacrifice of the best interests of the people and imploring all good citizens to meet in town and county assemblies to protest and to resolve not to volunteer except for a defensive war; and a meeting of citizens of Rockingham County, New Hampshire, adopted a memorial drafted by young Daniel Webster, which hinted that the separation of the States—"an event fraught with incalculable evils"—might sometime occur on just such an occasion as this. Town after town, and county after county, took up the hue and cry, keeping well within the limits of constitutional opposition, it is true, but weakening the arm of the Government just when it should have struck the enemy effective blows.
Nor was the President without enemies in his own political household. The Republicans of New York, always lukewarm in their support of the Virginia Dynasty, were now bent upon preventing his reelection. They found a shrewd and not overscrupulous leader in DeWitt Clinton and an adroit campaign manager in Martin Van Buren. Both belonged to that school of New York politicians of which Burr had been master. Anything to beat Madison was their cry. To this end they were willing to condemn the war-policy, to promise a vigorous prosecution of the war, and even to negotiate for peace. What made this division in the ranks of the Republicans so serious was the willingness of the New England Federalists to make common cause with Clinton. In September a convention of Federalists endorsed his nomination for the Presidency.
Under the weight of accumulating disasters, military and political, it seemed as though Madison must go down in defeat. Every New England State but Vermont cast its electoral votes for Clinton; all the Middle States but Pennsylvania also supported him; and Maryland divided its vote. Only the steadiness of the Southern Republicans and of Pennsylvania saved Madison; a change of twenty electoral votes would have ended the Virginia Dynasty.* Now at least Madison must have realized the poignant truth which the Federalists were never tired of repeating: he had entered upon the war as President of a divided people.
* In the electoral vote Madison received 128; Clinton, 89.
Only a few months' experience was needed to convince the military authorities at Washington that the war must be fought mainly by volunteers. Every military consideration derived from American history warned against this policy, it is true, but neither Congress nor the people would entertain for an instant the thought of conscription. Only with great reluctance and under pressure had Congress voted to increase the regular army and to authorize the President to raise fifty thousand volunteers. The results of this legislation were disappointing, not to say humiliating. The conditions of enlistment were not such as to encourage recruiting; and even when the pay had been increased and the term of service shortened, few able-bodied citizens would respond. If any such desired to serve their country, they enrolled in the State militia which the President had been authorized to call into active service for six months.
In default of a well-disciplined regular army and an adequate volunteer force, the Administration was forced more and more to depend upon such quotas of militia as the States would supply. How precarious was the hold of the national Government upon the State forces, appeared in the first months of the war. When called upon to supply troops to relieve the regulars in the coast defenses, the governors of Massachusetts and Connecticut flatly refused, holding that the commanders of the State militia, and not the President, had the power to decide when exigencies demanded the use of the militia in the service of the United States. In his annual message Madison termed this "a novel and unfortunate exposition" of the Constitution, and he pointed out—what indeed was sufficiently obvious—that if the authority of the United States could be thus frustrated during actual war, "they are not one nation for the purpose most of all requiring it." But what was the President to do? Even if he, James Madison, author of the Virginia Resolutions of 1798, could so forget his political creed as to conceive of coercing a sovereign state, where was the army which would do his bidding? The President was the victim of his own political theory.
These bitter revelations of 1812—the disaffection of New England, the incapacity of two of his secretaries, the disasters of his staff officers on the frontier, the slow recruiting, the defiance of Massachusetts and Connecticut—almost crushed the President. Never physically robust, he succumbed to an insidious intermittent fever in June and was confined to his bed for weeks. So serious was his condition that Mrs. Madison was in despair and scarcely left his side for five long weeks. "Even now," she wrote to Mrs. Gallatin, at the end of July, "I watch over him as I would an infant, so precarious is his convalescence." The rumor spread that he was not likely to survive, and politicians in Washington began to speculate on the succession to the Presidency.
But now and then a ray of hope shot through the gloom pervading the White House and Capitol. The stirring victory of the Constitution over the Guerriere in August, 1812, had almost taken the sting out of Hull's surrender at Detroit, and other victories at sea followed, glorious in the annals of American naval warfare, though without decisive influence on the outcome of the war. Of much greater significance was Perry's victory on Lake Erie in September, 1813, which opened the way to the invasion of Canada. This brilliant combat followed by the Battle of the Thames cheered the President in his slow convalescence. Encouraging, too, were the exploits of American privateers in British waters, but none of these events seemed likely to hasten the end of the war. Great Britain had already declined the Russian offer of mediation.
Last day but one of the year 1813 a British schooner, the Bramble, came into the port of Annapolis bearing an important official letter from Lord Castlereagh to the Secretary of State. With what eager and anxious hands Monroe broke the seal of this letter may be readily imagined. It might contain assurances of a desire for peace; it might indefinitely prolong the war. In truth the letter pointed both ways. Castlereagh had declined to accept the good offices of Russia, but he was prepared to begin direct negotiations for peace. Meantime the war must go on—with the chances favoring British arms, for the Bramble had also brought the alarming news of Napoleon's defeat on the plains of Leipzig. Now for the first time Great Britain could concentrate all her efforts upon the campaign in North America. No wonder the President accepted Castlereagh's offer with alacrity. To the three commissioners sent to Russia, he added Henry Clay and Jonathan Russell and bade them Godspeed while he nerved himself to meet the crucial year of the war.