"The Americans asserted their independence," said the Edinburgh Review, "upon principles which they derived from us. They are descended from our loins, they retain our usages and manners, they read our books, they have copied our freedom, they rival our courage, and yet they are less popular and esteemed among us than the base and bigoted Portuguese and the ferocious and ignorant Russians."
When an English statesman suggested that his Government would do well to cultivate the new Republic for the sake of trade if for no higher motive, Lord Brougham ridiculed the proposition of paying heed to "a people whose armies are as yet at the plough, or making awkward attempts at the loom, whose assembled navies could not lay siege to an English sloop of war." These sneers, although containing a large proportion of truth, exasperated the young nation beyond control. The provincialism of the day writhed under any suggestion that the New World was not the rival of the Old in every intellectual particular. A broader spirit would have confessed that time is required for the development of genius and the surroundings which conduce to a high development of intellectual and artistic life. Two decades later, Lowell satirised this American tendency in the Fable for Critics by saying that while the Old World has produced barely eight poets, the New World begets a whole crop each year.
"Why, there's scarcely a huddle of log-huts and shanties,
That has not brought forth its own Miltons and Dantes;
I myself know ten Byrons, one Coleridge, three Shelleys,
Two Raphaels, six Titians, (I think) one Apelles,
Leonardos and Rubenses plenty as lichens,
One (but that one is plenty) American Dickens,
A whole flock of Lambs, any number of Tennysons,—
In short, if a man has the luck to have any sons,
He may feel pretty certain that one out of twain
Will be some very great person over again."
These extravagant claims incited fresh attacks. One British writer insisted that Federal America had done nothing either to extend, diversify, or embellish the sphere of human knowledge, and could produce nothing to bring her intellectual efforts into any sort of comparison with those of Europe. "Noah Webster, we are afraid," said he, "still occupies the first place in criticism, Timothy Dwight and Joel Barlow in poetry, and Mr. Justice Marshall in history." Another pronounced the celebrated Philosophic Hall in Philadelphia a "meeting house" for the society, where its transactions were "scooped together" in the "genuine dialect of tradesmen." Not only the published papers of the Philosophic Society were held up to ridicule, but also John Quincy Adams's Letters from Silesia, Marshall's Life of Washington, Barlow's Columbiad, Dwight's poetry, and Lewis and Clark's history of their expedition.
"But why should the Americans write books," asked the Edinburgh Review, "when a six weeks' passage brings them in their own tongue our sense, science, and genius in bales and hogsheads. Prairies, steamboats, grist-mills are their natural objects for centuries to come."
The crudity of American life and manners had been sarcastically described by Ashe, Fearon, Davis, and other European travellers. American writers countered these attacks by comparing the treatment of the slaves in America with the condition of British paupers and East Indians. Charges of negro kidnapping were contrasted with child-stealing in England; our gouging the eyes in fisticuffs with their prize-fighting; the harshness of our slave code with their criminal laws; and the condition of our free clergy with the circumscribed established clergymen. A dispute arose between writers of the two countries over the responsibility of England for American slavery by having fostered it in the American colonies.
This war of words, which continued even after the close of hostilities with England, went so far as to involve discussions whether Godfrey or Hadley had invented the quadrant; whether Hulls or Fulton was the father of the steamboat; whether steamboats were first used in England or America; and whether Fulton should have offered his invention of the submarine torpedo to France as well as to England. One may easily say at the present time that the national spirit should have risen superior to such trivialities; but the national spirit was taking a most provincial cast. Originality was claimed for everything; inheritance counted as nothing.
A maritime war is peculiarly a commercial war in that it affects trade and consequently becomes a sectional war, since all portions of the land are not equally affected. The War of 1812 was a sectional war which arrayed the former friends of consolidated government against the Administration, and consequently made the former enemies of consolidation its most devoted supporters. The early attitude of the various sections toward the war, with due allowance for party allegiance, may be studied in the vote of the two houses of Congress on the measure entitled "An act declaring war between Great Britain and her dependencies and the United States and their Territories," which passed the House on June 4th, and the Senate on June 17, 1812.
VOTE OF CONGRESS DECLARING THE WAR OF 1812
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| | |
| HOUSE | SENATE |
STATES |_______________|_______________|
| For | Against | For | Against |
_____________________|_____|_________|_____|_________|
Vermont…………..| 3 | 1 | 1 | 0 |
New Hampshire……..| 3 | 2 | 1 | 1 |
Massachusetts……..| 6 | 8 | 1 | 1 |
Rhode Island………| 0 | 2 | 0 | 2 |
Connecticut……….| 0 | 7 | 0 | 2 |
New York………….| 3 | 11 | 1 | 1 |
New Jersey………..| 2 | 4 | 1 | 1 |
Pennsylvania………| 16 | 2 | 2 | 0 |
Delaware………….| 0 | 1 | 0 | 2 |
Maryland………….| 6 | 3 | 1 | 1 |
Virginia………….| 14 | 5 | 2 | 0 |
North Carolina…….| 6 | 3 | 2 | 0 |
South Carolina…….| 8 | 0 | 2 | 0 |
Georgia…………..| 3 | 0 | 2 | 0 |
Kentucky………….| 5 | 0 | 2 | 0 |
Tennessee…………| 3 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
Ohio……………..| 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
______________________________________________________
The unanimity of the inland and non-commercial States, with the exception of the party vote of the Ohio Senators, is manifest. They were secure from the ravages of maritime war. Massachusetts showed a stronger war sentiment than New York, although the course of the Administration in these States during the war reversed this condition. The Massachusetts House of Representatives had passed resolutions against the proposed war. The New York opposition represented the commercial interests. Fifty-eight business men of New York City, headed by John Jacob Astor, protested against a war. Among these were sixteen Republicans. The opposition in Rhode Island and Connecticut, which assumed such a serious aspect during the war, is clearly indicated in this vote. Regarding the sections as North and South, a distinction most unfortunately emphasised during the progress of the war, the popularity of the war in the South may be seen by a table: