To Vice-President Clinton he wrote,[18] that since the power of declaring war was with the Legislature, the Executive should do nothing necessarily committing them to decide for war in preference to non-intercourse, “which will be preferred by a great many.” Every letter[19] written by the President during the crisis contained some allusion to non-intercourse, which he still called the “peaceable means of repressing injustice, by making it the interest of the aggressor to do what is just, and abstain from future wrong.” As the war fever grew stronger he talked more boldly about hostilities, and became silent about non-intercourse;[20] but the delay in calling Congress was certain to work as he wished, and to prevent a committal to the policy of war.
To no one was this working of Jefferson’s mind more evident than to General Turreau, whose keen eyes made the President uneasy under the sense of being watched and criticised. Turreau, who had left Washington for the summer, hurried back on hearing of the “Chesapeake” disaster. On arriving, he went the same evening to the White House, “where there had been a dinner of twenty covers, composed, they say, of new friends of the Government, to whom Mr. Madison had given a first representation two days before. Indeed, I knew none of the guests except the Ambassador of England and his secretary of legation. The President received me even better than usual, but left me, presently, to follow with the British minister a conversation that my entrance had interrupted.”[21]
Then came a touch of nature which Turreau thought strikingly characteristic. No strong power of imagination is needed to see the White House parlor, on the warm summer night, with Jefferson, as Senator Maclay described him, sitting in a lounging manner on one hip, with his loose, long figure, and his clothes that seemed too small for him, talking, without a break, in his rambling, disjointed way, showing deep excitement under an affectation of coolness, and at every word and look betraying himself to the prying eyes of Talleyrand’s suspicious agent. What Jefferson said, and how he said it, can be told only in Turreau’s version; but perhaps the few words used by the prejudiced Frenchman gave a clearer idea of American politics than could be got from all other sources together:—
“This conversation with the British minister having been brought to an end, Mr. Jefferson came and sat down by my side; and after all the American guests had successively retired, Mr. Erskine, who had held out longest,—in the hope, perhaps, that I should quit the ground,—went away also. The President spoke to me about the ‘Chesapeake’ affair, and said: ‘If the English do not give us the satisfaction we demand, we will take Canada, which wants to enter the Union; and when, together with Canada, we shall have the Floridas, we shall no longer have any difficulties with our neighbors; and it is the only way of preventing them. I expected that the Emperor would return sooner to Paris,—and then this affair of the Floridas would be ended.’ Then, changing the subject, he asked me what were the means to employ in order to be able to defend the American harbors and coasts. I answered that the choice of means depended on local conditions, and that his officers, after an exact reconnoissance, ought to pronounce on the application of suitable means of defence.—‘We have no officers!’—He treated twenty-seven different subjects in a conversation of half an hour; and as he showed, as usual, no sort of distrust, this conversation of fits and starts (à bâtons rompus) makes me infer that the event would embarrass him much,—and Mr. Madison seemed to me to share this embarrassment.... Once for all, whatever may be the disposition of mind here, though every one is lashing himself (se batte les flancs) to take a warlike attitude, I can assure your Highness that the President does not want war, and that Mr. Madison dreads it still more. I am convinced that these two personages will do everything that is possible to avoid it, and that if Congress, which will be called together only when an answer shall have arrived from England, should think itself bound, as organ of public opinion, to determine on war, its intention will be crossed by powerful intrigues, because the actual Administration has nothing to gain and everything to lose by war.”
Turreau was not the only observer who saw beneath the surface of American politics. The young British minister, Erskine, who enlivened his despatches by no such lightness of touch as was usual with his French colleague, wrote to the new Foreign Secretary of England, George Canning, only brief and dry accounts of the situation at Washington, but showed almost a flash of genius in the far-reaching policy he struck out.
“The ferment in the public mind,” he wrote July 21,[22] “has not yet subsided, and I am confirmed in the opinion ... that this country will engage in war rather than submit to their national armed ships being forcibly searched on the high seas.... Should his Majesty think fit to cause an apology to be offered to these States on account of the attack of his Majesty’s ship ‘Leopard’ on the United States frigate ‘Chesapeake,’ it would have the most powerful effect not only on the minds of the people of this country, but would render it impossible for the Congress to bring on a war upon the other points of difference between his Majesty and the United States at present under discussion.”
A single blow, however violent, could not weld a nation. Every one saw that the very violence of temper which made the month of July, 1807, a moment without a parallel in American history since the battle of Lexington, would be followed by a long reaction of doubt and discord. If the President, the Secretary of State, and great numbers of their stanchest friends hesitated to fight when a foreign nation, after robbing their commerce, fired into their ships of war, and slaughtered or carried off their fellow-citizens,—if they preferred “peaceable means of repressing injustice” at the moment when every nerve would naturally have been strung to recklessness with the impulse to strike back,—it was in the highest degree unlikely that they would be more earnest for war when time had deadened the sense of wrong. Neither England, France, nor Spain could fail to see that the moment when aggression ceased to be safe had not yet arrived.
The people were deeply excited, commerce for the moment was paralyzed, no merchant dared send out a ship, and the country resounded with cries of war when the “Revenge” sailed, bearing instructions to Monroe to demand reparation from the British government. These instructions, dated July 6, 1807, were framed in the spirit which seemed to characterize Madison’s diplomatic acts. Specific redress for a specific wrong appeared an easy demand. That the attack on the “Chesapeake” should be disavowed; that the men who had been seized should be restored; that punctilious exactness of form should mark the apology and retribution,—was matter of course; but that this special outrage, which stood on special ground, should be kept apart, and that its atonement should precede the consideration of every other disputed point, was the natural method of dealing with it if either party was serious in wishing for peace. Such a wound, left open to fester and smart, was certain to make war in the end inevitable. Both the President and Madison wanted peace; yet their instructions to Monroe made a settlement of the “Chesapeake” outrage impracticable by binding it to a settlement of the wider dispute as to impressments from merchant vessels.
“As a security for the future,” wrote Madison,[23] “an entire abolition of impressments from vessels under the flag of the United States, if not already arranged, is also to make an indispensable part of the satisfaction.”
Among the many impossibilities which had been required of Monroe during the last four years, this was one of the plainest. The demand was preliminary, in ordinary diplomatic usage, to a declaration of war; and nothing in Jefferson’s Presidency was more surprising than that he should have thought such a policy of accumulating unsettled causes for war consistent with his policy of peace.