That was the call to battle. The irate Webster sprang to his feet to announce that a little later he would be able to exonerate the Senate, and the fiery Leigh of Virginia protested that “the objection to the appropriation was not because of any distrust of the President,” but because of the unconstitutionality of the amendment: this in delicious disregard of the plain record of the debate. But Preston, who followed, exposed the cloven hoof of the partisan animus. If the French fleet was coming, why had the President kept Congress in the dark? Why had he withdrawn our representatives from Paris? Why had we no representative at the Court of England?—an audacious question in view of the refusal by the Whig Senate to confirm either of two excellent appointments to that post. Why assume that the French fleet came with hostile motives? “It may be that this fleet is coming to protect the commerce of France,” he thought. From this it was an easy step to the reiteration of the Whig apologies for and defense of the action of the French Government.[861]

But the last word in defense of the Senate was reserved for Webster, who rose twenty-four hours before the Special Message reached the Senate and while it was being prepared. It was a laboriously wrought attempt. The amendment to the Fortifications Bill had been offered at the eleventh hour. The President had not requested the additional appropriation in a Message. No department had recommended it. Nothing of which Congress was cognizant had occurred to justify it. The Senate had passed a resolution “reminding” the House of the bill in the closing hours. The conference report had not been passed upon by the House. And “the bill therefore was lost. It was lost in the House of Representatives. It died there, and there its remains are to be found.” Had not the President announced at one o’clock that he would receive no further communications from the Congress? What right had he to interfere with the time Congress should fix for adjournment?[862] And what constitutional right had Congress to make an appropriation when there was no specification of the precise use to be made of the money? And with true Websterian eloquence he closed with mournful meditations on the encroachments of Jackson upon the Constitution, and the prediction that, unless checked, men, then living, would “write the history of this government, from its commencement to its close.”[863]

That the Jacksonians were not impressed with the danger was shown in the brief reply of Cuthbert of Georgia, that the great danger to Rome was not in the kingly name they feared, but “in the patrician class, a moneyed aristocracy, a combination of their political leaders, seeking to establish an aristocratical government, regardless of the welfare of the people.” But the answer to Webster was not to come from a Democrat, but from a Whig—and that, too, a Whig from Massachusetts, who had been defeated for reëlection to the Presidency by Andrew Jackson!

VIII

There had long been an undercurrent of hostility between Daniel Webster and John Quincy Adams. Webster had gladly left the House during the Adams Administration to escape the necessity of defending the President; and the comments on the great orator, running through the famous “Diary” of Adams, are often sarcastic, usually unfriendly, and seldom fulsome. That this spirit of animus alone should have impelled Adams to make his notable reply—a reply which has been strangely ignored by historians—cannot be reconciled with his character as a public man. The fact that Webster had assailed the House of which Adams was a leading member, and the amendment with which Adams had had something to do, may explain the bitterness of his retort. But no one can read the speeches of Adams on the French controversy without being impressed with the robust Americanism of the man, and his utter impatience with a partisan thought in the presence of a foreign adversary.

The opportunity for Adams’s reply came one week after the Webster speech, six days after the President’s Special Message, and when the international crisis seemed most menacing. The “National Intelligencer” had made an attack upon the House of Representatives, along the line of the Webster speech, and Cambreleng, who had been personally assailed, in resenting the article had said that “more than one member of the House, not only on this side, but on both sides, will vindicate the proceedings of the House in relation to the bill.” Immediately afterwards Adams presented his resolution for an investigation, and launched into one of the most bitter, dramatic, and sensational speeches ever heard in the American Congress. He rose in fighting armor. Scarcely had he begun his attack upon the Senate when he was called to order for mentioning that body; whereupon he jauntily observed that he would “transfer the location of the place where these things had happened from the Senate to the office of the ‘National Intelligencer’”—and thus proceeded to the castigation of that journal. In explaining the reasons for the three-million-dollar amendment, he recounted the story of the resolution adopted in the House.

“In all the debates in the ‘National Intelligencer,’” he said, “there is no more trace of such a resolution having passed the House than if it had never existed; no more trace than can be found on the journal of the Senate of what they would do for the defense of the country, or to insist on the execution of the treaty of July. But in the debate in the ‘National Intelligencer,’ I find a prodigious display of eloquence against the constitutionality of the section appropriating $3,000,000 for the defense of the country, because it had not been recommended by the Executive.”

The House was instantly in an uproar, and Adams was again called to order for his reference to the Senate. The old man stood listening calmly to the excited observations of some of his colleagues, and was finally permitted to proceed.

“Observe, sir,” he continued, “the terms, the object, and the conditions of that appropriation. It was to be expended, in whole or in part, under the direction of the President of the United States—the executive head of the Nation, sworn to the faithful execution of the laws; sworn especially, and entrusted with the superintendence of all the defenses of the country against the ravages of a foreign invader; it was to be expended for the military and naval service, including fortifications and ordnance and increase of the navy. These, sir, the natural and appropriate instruments of defense against a foreign foe, were the sole and exclusive objects of the appropriation. Not one dollar of it could have been applied by him to any other purposes without making himself liable to impeachment; not by that House of Representatives, but by us, their successors, fresh from the constituent body, the people; yet before the same Senate for his judges, a majority of whom were surely not of his friends; not one dollar of it could have been expended without giving a public account of it to the representatives of the people and to the Nation. Nor was this all. Thus confined to specific objects, it was to be expended, not unconditionally, but only in the event that it should be rendered necessary for the defense of the country prior to the then next session of Congress—an interval of nine months—during which no other provision could have been made to defend your soil from sudden invasion, or to protect your commerce floating upon every sea from a sweep of a royal ordinance of France.

“And this is the appropriation, following close upon that unanimous vote of 217 members of the House, that the execution of the Treaty of 1831 should be maintained and insisted upon. This is the appropriation so tainted with man-worship, so corrupt, so unconstitutional, that the indignant and patriotic eloquence of the ‘National Intelligencer’ would sooner see a foreign foe battering down the walls of the Capitol than agree to it.”