An event that deeply moved the whole country was the killing of Hamilton by Burr in a duel (1804). Burr was afterwards charged with an intention to form a new government on the south-western borders of the United States. He was tried for treason (1807), and not convicted, although many have believed him to be guilty.
CAUSES OF THE WAR OF 18l2-15.—The great European wars brought the United States into serious difficulties, principally in regard to questions relating to commerce. Attempts were made by the European nations to establish blockades by mere enactment, without actual and sufficient occupation of the ports which were declared to be closed. The tendency of the British Orders in council, and of Napoleon's Berlin and Milan Decrees (p. 528), was "to grind to pieces the few remaining neutral powers." These were in effect cut off from trade with both Continental and English ports by the ordinances of one or the other of the two belligerents, the penalty being the confiscation of the vessels employed in such traffic. Such were the restrictions upon neutrals, that a great number of American ships were seized and confiscated by English and French cruisers. In addition to these grievances, the Leander, a British ship, exercised the pretended right of impressment by firing on an American trading-sloop (1806); and in like manner another British vessel, the Leopard, fired on the frigate Chesapeake, which was not prepared for resistance, and took four men from its crew (June 22, 1807). In retaliation, Jefferson ordered all British ships of war to leave the coast of the United States. Then followed the Embargo, embracing a succession of enactments of Congress, which forbade American vessels to leave the harbors of the United States for Europe, and forbade European vessels to land cargoes in American ports. The result of this measure was to smite American commerce with an utter paralysis. The ships rotted at the wharves. The unpopularity of the Embargo, especially in the Eastern commercial States, was such that in Jefferson's second term it was repealed. It was followed (1809) by the Non-Intercourse Act, prohibiting commerce with France and England. The British Orders in Council were then, in a measure, relaxed, as was the practical enforcement against our vessels of the Berlin Decree. In 1812, the French rescinded their obnoxious decrees; and the English immediately took the same step, but not soon enough to prevent a war with the United States.
EVENTS OF THE WAR IN 1812 AND 1813.-James Madison, a wise and moderate statesman of the Republican party, became president in 1809. He was personally averse to engaging in war with Great Britain; but the exasperation of a large part of the country, and the pressure of the younger leaders of his party,—Calhoun, Clay, and Lowndes,—moved him to a reluctant consent. The war, which was declared in 1812, was bitterly opposed in the New-England States, where the strength of the Federalists chiefly lay. By them the real motive of it was considered to be partiality for France. The treasury was nearly empty; there were but few ships of war, and only a small land force of about ten thousand men, made up in part of raw recruits. Before this time, the North-western Indians, under Tecumseh, whom the British were suspected of inciting to war, had been defeated at Tippecanoe (1811), by William Henry Harrison, governor of Indiana. The war with England opened inauspiciously with the surrender of Detroit by Gen. William Hull to Gen. Brock (Aug. 16, 1812), and an unsuccessful attempt to invade Canada at Queenstown. On the sea, however, the Americans had successes which filled them with pride and exultation. Captain Isaac Hull, of the frigate è_Constitution_, captured the British frigate Guerrière, and brought his prisoners to Boston. Decatur, captain of the United States, brought the Macedonian as a prize into the harbor of New York. The Constitution destroyed the Java; but the Chesapeake, whose captain was killed, surrendered to the Shannon. Privateers were fitted out, which captured several hundreds of British ships and several thousands of prisoners. In 1813 Perry defeated the English fleet on Lake Erie. His victory gave the Americans the command of Lake Erie and Lake Michigan. Harrison defeated the British and Indians,—who had been driven to abandon Michigan,—near the River Thames in Canada. Except on the Lakes the navy was successful only in single ship actions. The Americans had taken possession of Mobile, which they as well as the Spanish claimed; but the Creek Indians were incited by the Spaniards to engage in hostilities. Forces from Tennessee, under Andrew Jackson, and troops from Georgia and Mississippi, fought the Creeks with success.
THE WAR IN 1814-15.—In 1814 a third attempt of the Americans under Gen. Brown, to invade Canada, produced no decisive result. There was hard fighting. The British were routed at Chippewa; and they were repulsed at Lundy's Lane, opposite Niagara Falls, by Lieut. (afterwards General) Winfield Scott. Napoleon had now been defeated; and the English sent twelve thousand troops, who had served under Wellington in Spain, to Canada, to invade the United States from the north, while another army was to make an invasion by way of New Orleans. A fleet under Admiral Cockburn sailed up the Potomac, and burned the Capitol and other public buildings at Washington (Aug. 24, 1814). An attack was made on Baltimore by a British fleet, but was bravely repelled. The defeat of the British fleet near Plattsburg, on Lake Champlain, by Commodore Macdonough (Sept. 11, 1814), resulted in the retreat of the British army, which was besieging that place, to Canada. New Orleans was defended by General Jackson. The British under Pakenham and Gibbs attacked his works, but were defeated and withdrew (Jan. 8, 1815). The town was protected from the approach of the English fleet by the fort. Before the battle, peace had been concluded, but the news had not reached this country.
THE HARTFORD CONVENTION.—The antagonism to the war in the New England States found expression in the call of a convention at Hartford, where their delegates met (Dec. 15, 1814). These States complained, that while their commerce and fisheries were ruined, there was no protection afforded to their sea-coast. Stonington in Connecticut had been bombarded, and Castine in Maine had been captured. They denied, also, that the General Government had the power over the State militia which it claimed. For these and other grievances, they sought for a remedy "not repugnant to their obligations as members of the Union." They declared that measures of the General Government which are palpable violations of the Constitution are void, and that the States injuriously affected might severally protect their citizens from the operation of them, by such means as the several States should judge it wise to adopt; but they disavowed the right or intent to break up the Union. The effect of the convention was to bring great popular discredit on the Federalists, and to seal their doom as a distinct party.
TREATY OF PEACE: ALGIERS.—In the Treaty of Ghent (Dec. 24, 1814), provisions were made for defining boundaries as settled by previous treaties, and an engagement was made on both sides to suppress the slave-trade; but no mention was made of maritime rights and the impressment of seamen. This last practice was, however, discontinued, although it was never renounced. The war left the disputes that caused it just where they were. Many then and since have regarded it as really undertaken by the dominant party in the United States, in order to help one of the belligerents in the great struggle then going forward between England and France. Whether this view be just, or not, it is certain that the war imparted to Americans the consciousness of power and nationality. The connection between America and Great Britain was broken off at the Revolution, because, as Turgot once said, colonies are like fruits which only stay on the tree until they are ripe. But the conflict was not over at the conclusion of the Peace of 1783. Bancroft has called the war of 1812-15 "the second war of independence." Nothing lent it this character so much as the naval victories won by the United States, which gave them a standing among the nations. In 1815 a squadron under Decatur was sent to Algiers, and the Barbary States were compelled to give up by treaties all their demands.
CHAPTER VII. LITERATURE, ART, AND SCIENCE (1789-1815).
NEW SPIRIT IN LITERATURE.—In the latter part of the eighteenth and the early part of the nineteenth centuries, literature broke away from the artificial rules and the one-sided intellectual tone of the "classical" school,—that school which had prevailed through the influence of the French writers of the age of Louis XIV. The new era was marked by more spontaneity, and a return to nature, and by a more free rein given to imagination and feeling. "Romanticism," a general designation of the results of this new movement as contrasted with the "classical" period, sometimes ran out into extravagances of sentiment, and an exaggerated relish for the mediaeval spirit.
WRITERS IN ITALY AND IN FRANCE.—In Italy, there were few writers of distinction. Monti (1754-1828) was a poet full of harmony and elegance, a follower, but with unequal steps, of Alfieri. Another of the same school is the patriotic poet, Ugo Foscolo (1778-1827), a master of his native tongue. The poems of Pindemonte (1753-1828) are graceful and pathetic. Leopardi (1798-1837) mingles sublimity with pathos. Of the Italian historians of this period, Botta (1766-1837), who published a history of the American Revolution, and histories of Italy, is a clear writer, with a talent for vivid description. In France, Chateaubriand (1768-1848), who figured both in political life and as a prolific and brilliant author, by his Genius of Christianity and many other productions gained great celebrity,—more, however, by charms of style and sentiment, than by weight of matter. Madame de Staël (1766-1817) was the daughter of Necker. Between her and Napoleon there was a mutual hostility. She wrote Corinne, Delphine,—"in which she idealizes herself,"—a work on Germany, and various other productions. She was versatile, vigorous in thought, and humane in her temper and spirit. In philosophy, a believing and spiritual school, in opposition to materialism, was founded by Maine de Biran (1766-1824), Royer-Collard (1763-1846), and Benjamin Constant. De Maistre (1754-1821) wrote ably on the side of authority and of the Catholic Church.
ENGLISH POETRY.—Literature in England, especially in the department of poetry, casting off the trammels of the classical school, in which Dryden and Pope were foremost, entered on a new and splendid era. Whether it dwelt on external nature or human passions and experiences, it appealed to sensibility. It was no more exclusively, or in the main, an address to the understanding. Cowper (1731-1800) set the example of genuine naturalness, and of interest in nature and in every-day life. Robert Burns, a Scottish peasant (1759-1796), by his wonderful union of tenderness, passion, and humor, with poetic fancy and simplicity of diction, was more than the poet of a single nation. Wordsworth (1770-1850) blended in his poems a delight in rural and mountain scenery, with a deep vein of pensive thought and sentiment. If he wrote dull pages, even the severest critics allow that in The Excursion there are most beautiful "oases in the desert;" while in such poems as the Ode on the Power of Sound, the Intimations of Immortality from the Recollections of Childhood, and Laodamia, there are passages not excelled since Milton. A more sustained fervor of feeling and imagination belonged to Byron (1788-1824), who, notwithstanding his morbid egotism and offenses against morality, combined passion with beauty, and was never dull. Walter Scott (1771-1832) exhibited in his narrative poems the spirit of the romantic school, with none of its sentimentality or extravagance. Coleridge (1772-1834), the author of Christabel and The Ancient Mariner, was a highly original poet, as well as a philosopher. Southey (1774-1843), with less genius, was a man of letters, prolific both in verse and in prose. Shelley and Keats had a much higher gift of imagination. Campbell, Rogers, and Moore are names of distinction, although less illustrious than those of Wordsworth and Coleridge, Scott and Byron. Walter Savage Landor (1775-1864), a poet and the author of Imaginary Conversations, and other prose writings, was master of a style of extraordinary power and purity.