“I do not think I state my position too strongly when I say that not a man in this House deemed the embargo intended chiefly as a measure of coercion on Great Britain; that it was to be made permanent at all hazards until it had effected that object, and that nothing else effectual was to be done for the support of our maritime rights. If any individual was influenced by such motives, certainly they were not those of a majority of this House. Now, sir, on my conscience, I do believe that these were the motives and intentions of the Administration when they recommended the embargo to the adoption of this House.”
So far as concerned President Jefferson this charge was true; but every one knew that Jefferson habitually threw responsibility on Congress, and after the scandal made by John Randolph in the Spanish affair of 1805, the House alone was to blame if it incurred consequences which were evident on the face of its measures. Quincy next asserted a worse and more mischievous charge:—
“Not only that embargo was resorted to as a means of coercion, but from the first it was never intended by the Administration to do anything else effectual for the support of our maritime rights. Sir, I am sick—sick to loathing—of this eternal clamor of ‘war, war, war!’ which has been kept up almost incessantly on this floor, now for more than two years. Sir, if I can help it, the old women of this country shall not be frightened in this way any longer. I have been a long time a close observer of what has been done and said by the majority of this House, and for one I am satisfied that no insult, however gross, offered to us by either France or Great Britain, could force this majority into the declaration of war. To use a strong but common expression, it could not be kicked into such a declaration by either nation.”[363]
Insults are pointless unless they have a foundation of truth or probability. The Parliament of Great Britain would have laughed at such a taunt; Napoleon would not have understood what it meant; but Congress drew a deep breath of dismay, for every member knew that openly and secretly, in public and in private, the single decisive argument against war had been and still was—fear. After four years of outrage such as would have made the blood of an Englishman or a Frenchman turn to fire in his veins, not an American could be found, between Canada and Texas, who avowed the wish to fight. Quincy’s speech produced a momentary outbreak of passion; hot retorts were made; the chamber rang with epithets of abuse; but still no one professed to want war. The House twisted and turned like a martyr on his bed of steel, but its torture was of painful doubt, not of passion.
So far as mere words affected the public mind, Josiah Quincy’s taunt, not less than the sarcasms of Canning and the arrogance of Napoleon, stung Americans beyond endurance. In one sense Quincy did good service to his country; his statesmanship, if not refined, was effective; his argument, if somewhat brutal, was strong; and within four-and-twenty hours the House met it in the only way that could preserve the dignity of Congress and the Administration, by passing the bill for an extra session with eighty votes against twenty-six. This result was reached January 20, and seemed to prove that the Government had overcome its difficulties and mastered the situation; but nothing was further from the truth. Quincy knew what was passing behind the scenes. The Administration, so far from gaining strength, barely showed steadiness. At the moment when New England flung herself, with every sign of desperate rage, across the path of Government, faction within the Republican party struck Madison a severe blow before he had time for defence.
The first sign of Republican revolt appeared in unexpected favors lavished on the maltreated navy. Sixteen Republican senators combined with the Federalists to pass through the Senate a bill which ordered every armed vessel of the government, including gunboats, to be employed at once in active service. Gallatin saw in this measure only an intrigue of the Smiths and an attack upon the Treasury which would cost six million dollars without possible advantage to the public; but in fact the bill proved something more than an intrigue, for it showed the violence of New England reaction against the long starvation of the navy. Futile as was the scheme of manning gunboats in order to waste money which should have been spent on construction or magazines, New England was ready to join the Smiths or any other faction in any vote, however unreasonable, which promised employment for the seamen. Jefferson’s system had shown its character most clearly in distrust and discouragement of the navy; and no one could wonder if the first sign of waning in his authority appeared in that department, or if Madison’s first difficulties occurred in the weakest part of the old statesmanship.
Gallatin was taken by surprise, for the bill passed the Senate without serious opposition; but when it reached the House, January 10, the Treasury, through George W. Campbell, tried to strike out the clause which obliged the government to fit out and man all the vessels in the service without regard to the purpose of their employment. A number of Republican members, largely from New England, combining with the Federalists, defeated Campbell by a close vote of sixty-four to fifty-nine. In alarm at a measure which, before war was decided, threatened to take from the Treasury and throw into the ocean all the money reserved to support the first year of hostilities, Gallatin exerted himself to stop it. January 11, David R. Williams and the old Republicans came to his rescue with a motion to recommit, but they were again beaten by fifty-nine to fifty-eight. The next day John Montgomery of Maryland changed sides. By a vote of sixty-nine to fifty-three the bill was recommitted; January 13 the House in committee struck out the mandatory clause by fifty-three votes against forty-two; and January 16 the House accepted the amendment by sixty-eight votes against fifty-five. These divisions showed a considerable number of Republicans still acting with the Federalists; and in this respect the Senate was even less manageable than the House. Only after an obstinate struggle did the Senate give way so far that at last Congress agreed upon ordering four frigates to be fitted out, and as many gunboats as the public service might in the President’s judgment require.
The reasons given by the Senate for persisting in its plan were proof that something remained untold; for they showed the hand and influence of the Smiths, rather than the interests of Madison’s coming Administration. David R. Williams, who was a member of the Conference Committee, reported to the House that the managers for the Senate gave three reasons for insisting on their bill:—
“The first of them was that they wanted a pledge from this House that it was willing to come forward and defend the nation; another was that these [frigates] were necessary to defend the gunboats in their operations; and a third, that men could not be got to enlist for the service of the gunboats, and that to remedy this evil they might be enlisted to man the frigates, and afterwards transferred.”[364]
A Navy Department which used its frigates to defend gunboats and decoy seamen was hardly fit to be trusted with unlimited credit on the Treasury. Gallatin lost his temper at finding his authority threatened with overthrow by an influence which he knew to be incompetent, and believed to be selfish and corrupt. Irritated by the vote of January 10, the Secretary of the Treasury studied the division-list to learn whence came the hostile influence which formed what he called[365] “the navy coalition of 1809, by whom were sacrificed forty Republican members, nine Republican States, the Republican cause itself, and the people of the United States, to a system of favoritism, extravagance, parade, and folly.” He found the central point in the “Smith faction, or ruling party,” of which he declared Wilson Cary Nicholas to be file-leader in the House, with six votes. With these acted six New York followers of Vice-President Clinton, and five “scared Yankees.” The others were merely misled Republicans or Federalists.