Nicholas agreed to divide the Resolution so that a test vote might first be taken on the repeal of the embargo; and he then moved to fill the blank with the words, “the first day of June.” The House was thus asked to pledge itself that on June 1 the embargo should cease. On this question the debate began.
David R. Williams was a typical Carolinian. With something of the overbearing temper which marked his class, he had also the independence and the honesty which went far to redeem their failings. He had stood for years, with his friend Macon, proof against the influence of patronage and power; he supported the embargo, and was not ashamed to avow his dread of war; but since his favorite measure was to be thrown aside, he stood by his character, and made an appeal to the House, giving at once to the debate an air of dignity which it never wholly lost:—
“Will you drive us to a repeal of the embargo, and make no resistance? Are you ready to lie down quietly under the impositions laid upon you? You have driven us from the embargo. The excitements in the East render it necessary that we should enforce the embargo with the bayonet or repeal it. I will repeal it,—and I could weep over it more than over a lost child. If you do not resist, you are no longer a nation; you dare not call yourself so; you are the merest vassals conceivable.... I appeal to the minority, who hold the destinies of the nation in their grasp,—for they can enforce embargo without the bayonet,—I beg them, if they will not declare war, that they will do the best they can for their country.”
No one then wondered to see South Carolina almost on her knees before Massachusetts, beseeching her, on her own terms, for her own honor, to do the best she could for the common country; but Massachusetts had no voice to respond. Dryly, in the caustic tone of Connecticut austerity, Samuel Dana replied that the days of ancient chivalry had not yet returned. When Massachusetts at last found a spokesman, she gave her answer through the mouth of Ezekiel Bacon,—a man second to none in respectability, but not one whom, in a moment of supreme crisis, the State would naturally have chosen among all her citizens to pronounce her will. Bacon had carefully collected advice from the men in his State who were most competent to give counsel;[368] but in Massachusetts affairs at Washington were little understood. Bent only on saving the Union by forcing a repeal of the embargo, and hampered by alliance with Federalists and Pennsylvanians, Bacon could not afford to show a sense of national self-respect.
He began by admitting that the discontents in New England made immediate repeal necessary:—
“It surely could not be sound policy, by adhering to this system beyond the measure of absolute necessity, to risk in the hands of any faction which might be disposed to wield it an instrument by which they may endanger the union of our country, and raise themselves to power on the ruins of liberty and the Constitution.”
Such a beginning, offering a reward for threats of disunion, and conceding to traitors what would have been refused to good citizens, was an evil augury; and the rest of Bacon’s speech carried out the promise. As he refused to prolong the embargo, so he refused to vote for war. “In every point of view, the policy of declaring offensive war against any nation four months in advance is to me wholly objectionable.” The conclusion was as feeble as was required by the premises; but only some demon of bad taste could have inspired an orator at such a moment to use the language of Falstaff;—
“We choose not to take measures any more than to give reasons ‘upon compulsion,’ and we will not so take them. We will, however, I trust, defend ourselves against the depredations of both [belligerents]; and if they both or either choose to persevere in the execution of their lawless aggressions, we shall, it is hoped, become more united in our determination and our efforts to vindicate our rights, if they shall continue to be assailed. At any rate, I am for leaving it to the wisdom of the ensuing Congress, which is to meet at an early day, to determine upon that position which the nation shall take in relation to such a state of things as may grow out of the course which I propose.”
Between the Federalists and the Republicans of Massachusetts Congress was left under no illusions. Bacon expressed in these vacillating phrases the true sense of the country. On the evening of February 2, after four days of debate, the committee, by seventy-three votes against forty, rejected Wilson Cary Nicholas’s motion to fix June 1 as the date for removing the embargo; and the next day, by an affirmative vote of seventy, with no negatives, March 4 was fixed as the term.
Immediately after this decisive division John Randolph took the floor. Discord had become his single object in public life. The Federalists at least had a purpose in their seditiousness, and were honest in preferring the British government to their own; the Republicans of all shades, however weak in will or poor in motive, were earnest in their love of country; but Randolph was neither honest nor earnest, neither American nor English nor truly Virginian. Disappointed ambition had turned him into a mere egoist; his habits had already become intemperate, and his health was broken; but he could still charge upon Jefferson all the disasters of the country, and could delight in the overwhelming ruin which had fallen upon his former chief. Randolph’s speech of February 3 was stale and tedious. Except on the single point of raising the embargo he was spiritless; and his only positive idea, borrowed from the Federalists, consisted in a motion that, instead of issuing letters of marque, Government should authorize merchant-vessels to arm and defend themselves from seizure. If the scheme had a meaning, it meant submission to the British Orders, and was suggested by the Federalists for no other object; but in Randolph’s mind such a plan carried no definite consequence.