This dissension over the simple matter of admitting a State to the Union was a temporary check to the national feeling engendered by the War of 1812. The spectre of sectionalism was disclosed at the banquet table. Jefferson compared it to an alarm-bell in the night, when writing from Monticello to John Adams. "The Missouri question," replied the retired statesman of Braintree, "I hope, will follow the other waves under the ship and do no harm." Yet he appreciated the dangers of sectionalism under unscrupulous leaders. "I am Cassandra enough to dream," he added, "that another Hamilton, another Burr, might rend this mighty fabric in twain … and a few more choice spirits of the same stamp might produce as many nations in North America as there are in Europe." The third ex-President, Madison, deplored the "angry and unfortunate discussion" about Missouri. "Should a state of parties arise," he said, "founded on geographical boundaries and other physical and permanent distinctions which happen to coincide with them, what is to control those great repulsive masses from awful shocks against each other?" Time alone was needed to bring a sad answer to the inquiry.
CHAPTER XIX
ANNOUNCEMENT OF NATIONAL INDIVIDUALITY
The rebirth of nationalism, which followed the War of 1812 in the New World, was likely sooner or later to come into conflict with the rebirth of monarchy, which followed the Napoleonic wars in the Old World. The restoration of the European monarchs had been witnessed by the American people with a mingling of indignation and despair. Daily the conviction grew that free government must find a home in America if it survived. American self-government and a free people were arrayed in popular thought against European monarchy and nobility. Commenting on the accumulated wealth of the British nobility, an American editor said: "Thanks be to Heaven! we have probably not one man in the United States whose settled income is equal to a half of the least of these. But in lieu of such great estates, we have a pleasing contrast to offer in the vast majority we possess of persons who earn or receive from $1,000 to $1,500 a year, and who are the bone and sinew of our country and the natural republicans of every clime." American newspapers lost no opportunity of ridiculing European royalty. The cost of maintaining the nobility was dwelt upon as a burden on the people. The attempt of George IV. to divorce his Queen furnished a text for many republican sermons. The coronation of the King in his "holy" and "sacred" vestments was declared to be ridiculous. "We plain republicans," said one writer, "cannot understand how there could be anything more like sacrilege in stealing that mantle than in stealing a sheep."
The Church was prominent in all phases of the restoration of legitimacy in Europe—a connection incomprehensible in America, where Church and State had been completely severed in the course of the political revolution. Disestablishment by statute in Virginia had been followed by similar action in all States where the Established Church held. Local constitutions as formed by the States guaranteed not toleration, but absolute religious freedom. The first amendment to the Constitution of the United States made this freedom national. The Ordinance for the North-west Territory extended it to States yet unborn. Washington, as President, gave assurance of non-interference in the replies which he framed to addresses from the leading sects. Indeed, it is difficult to imagine how a State church could have been maintained in the rapid shifting of the Chief Executive. President Washington was an Episcopalian, President Adams a Congregationalist, and President Jefferson a free-thinker, or Unitarian of later times. So thoroughly had Church and State been divorced in America that some suspicion was aroused over a manifesto signed at St. Petersburg, on "the day of the birth of our Saviour," 1816, by the monarchs of Austria, Russia, and Prussia. It announced that "in conformity with the words of the Holy Scripture, which commands all men to regard one another as brethren," the three agreed to lend each other assistance, aid, and support, and to govern their subjects in "a spirit of fraternity for the protection of religion, peace and justice." The exhortation of these monarchs to their people to fortify themselves in the principles of the Saviour, no less than the confession that they themselves ruled only by a delegation of power from Christ, was regarded by the Protestant Americans as religious cant. The power behind the throne was more likely force of arms. The provision that other nations professing these principles should be "received with as much readiness as affection in this holy alliance" was regarded as a bid and possible conspiracy for the extension of legitimacy not alone to Europe, but to the colonial holdings as well.
The United States, although sneering at the legitimacy of European monarchs and disappointed in seeing their high hopes in the French Revolution brought to such a defeat, had no vital interest in any restoration save within the Spanish colonies in America, which had revolted under Napoleonic interference. British Canada had made no attempt at revolution and France had no possessions on the American Continent. The United States had watched eagerly and sympathetically the spread of revolutionary principles from colony to colony in the Spanish-American possessions, and the resulting institution of self-government. Orators vied with each other in picturing the spread of freedom in the New World. Statesmen drew up constitutions for the new republics. Clay was given a vote of thanks by the Mexican Congress for his sentiments expressed for their welfare. Ministers had been sent to them as rapidly as they showed ability to govern themselves and to maintain a stable government. Should all this good work be undone and the hands turned backward on the dial of liberty by conspiring European monarchs? Should legitimacy cast its blight again on the New World as it had already done on the Old? Should the Holy Alliance be allowed to extend its monarchical compulsion to the Spanish-American republics under the sacred garb of religion?
Speculation was rife in both British and American newspapers concerning the objects of this holy league, or Holy Alliance, as it began to be called. To some it smacked of Inquisition days. To others it suggested a crusade on all republican principles. In the House of Commons Castlereagh explained that it contemplated no hostility to States outside the Church and that it was couched in the mildest spirit of Christian toleration. He confessed that it was drawn up in an unusual manner, but that it nevertheless gave no grounds whatever for entertaining the slightest jealousy.
England had assisted in the restoration of monarchy. Would Protestant England join the Holy Alliance? Would the Alliance turn its attention to the Spanish-American republics after it had carried out its evident determination to replace Ferdinand on the Spanish throne? These were questions asked by the people of the United States. If Europe was to become the champion of monarchy and legitimacy, why should not America become the guardian of freedom and republicanism? Undoubtedly the tendency of Russia to creep quietly down the Pacific coast from her north-west possessions contributed to the conviction that the offices of the Holy Alliance could be called into service in that quarter also if necessary. It is just as true that the struggle for autonomy which the Greeks were instituting attracted sympathy in America and added to the conviction that a world struggle was imminent between monarchy and republicanism.
That destiny had marked the United States for an unparalleled career had been a common saying since the days of Patrick Henry. But that isolation from European entanglements was necessary to fulfil it was equally appreciated. Washington had expressed this conviction in his farewell address. Jefferson had been goaded into the wish that an ocean of fire separated the two hemispheres. Madison in 1811, fearing that Great Britain intended interfering in Florida affairs, questioned whether the United States should not announce that it could not see, "without serious inquietude," neighbouring territory pass from Spain to any other foreign power. "The provinces belonging to this hemisphere are our neighbors," said President Monroe in a special message to Congress in 1822. "The foothold which the nations of Europe had in either America is slipping from under them," wrote ex-President Jefferson to Monroe, "so that we shall soon be rid of their neighborhood." "The American continents are no longer subjects for any new European colonial establishments," said Secretary of State John Quincy Adams to the Russian Minister, in discussing the proper limits of Russian America on the north-west coast. The United States representative to England was authorised by Adams to announce the fact that the American continents would be no longer subject to European colonisation. Occupied by civilised, independent nations, they would be accessible to Europeans and to each other on that footing alone.
The United States "should therefore have a system of her own separate and apart from that of Europe," replied Jefferson to President Monroe, who had consulted him in the autumn of 1823 concerning the various topics to be treated in his annual message to Congress. "While the last is laboring to become the domicile of despotism, our endeavor should surely be to make our hemisphere that of freedom." He agreed upon the advisability of some public notice. "Its object is to introduce and establish the American system of keeping out of our land all foreign powers, of never permitting those of Europe to intermeddle with the affairs of our nation." Since such a stand might bring war, he advised Monroe to present the matter to Congress at the coming session in the shape of a declaration of principles.