From this avowal Madison’s difficulties could be understood and his course foreseen. Very slow to move, he was certain at last to quarrel with the senatorial faction that annoyed him. He could not but protect Gallatin, and dismiss Smith. At the end of the vista, however far the distance, stood the inevitable figure of Monroe. Scarcely another man in public life could fill precisely the gap, and none except Armstrong could give strength to the President by joining him. Perhaps Littleton Tazewell, another distinguished Virginian of the same school, would have answered the President’s purpose as well as Monroe; but probably Tazewell would have declined to accept a seat in the Cabinet of a President whose election he had opposed.[125] Madison decided to take the first step. He had reason to think that Monroe repeated his course, at least to the extent of wishing reconciliation. He authorized Jefferson to act as mediator; and the Ex-President, who spared no effort for harmony, hastened to tell Monroe that the government of Louisiana was still at his disposal.[126] Monroe declined the office as being beneath his previous positions, but said that he would have accepted the first place in Madison’s Cabinet, and was sincere in his desire for the success of the Administration; he even pledged his support, and intimated that he had lost favor with John Randolph owing to, his exertions for Madison. When Jefferson reported the result of this interview, the President replied:[127] “The state of Colonel Monroe’s mind is very nearly what I had supposed; his willingness to have taken a seat in the Cabinet is what I had not supposed.” Considering the state of Monroe’s mind in 1808, Madison might be excused for failing to see that Monroe would accept the State Department in February, 1809. Indeed, the suddenness of the change would have startled Monroe’s best friends; and even in December, 1809, he would have fared ill had his remarks to Jefferson been brought to John Randolph’s ears.
Monroe’s adhesion having been thus attested, Madison made no immediate use of the recruit, but held him in reserve until events should make action necessary. Perhaps this delay was one of Madison’s constitutional mistakes, and possibly a prompt removal of Robert Smith might have saved some of the worst disasters that befell the Government; but in truth Madison’s embarrassments rose from causes that only time could cure, and were inherent in American society itself. A less competent administrative system seldom drifted, by reason of its incompetence, into war with a superior enemy. No department of the government was fit for its necessary work.
Of the State Department, its chief, and its long series of mortifying disasters, enough has been said. In November, 1809, it stood helpless in the face of intolerable insults from all the European belligerents. Neither the diplomatic nor the consular system was better than a makeshift, and precisely where the Government felt most need of ministers,—at Copenhagen, Stockholm, Berlin, and St. Petersburg,—it had no diplomatic and but few consular agents, even these often of foreign allegiance.
The Treasury, hitherto the only successful Executive department, showed signs of impending collapse, not to be avoided without sacrifices and efforts which no one was willing to make. The accounts for the year ending September 30 showed that while the receipts had amounted to $9,300,000, the actual expenses had exceeded $10,600,000. The deficit of $1,300,000, as well as reimbursements of debt to the amount of $6,730,000, had been made good from the balance in the Treasury. The new fiscal year began with a balance of only $5,000,000; so that without a considerable curtailment of expenses, a loan or increased taxation, or both, could not be avoided. Increased taxation was the terror of parties. Curtailment of expense could be effected only on the principle that as the government did nothing well, it might as well do nothing. Any intelligent expenditure, no matter how large or how small, would have returned a thousand-fold interest to the country, whatever had been the financial cost; but the waste of money on gunboats and useless cruisers, or upon an army so badly organized and commanded as to be a hindrance in war, was an expense that might perhaps be curtailed, though only by admitting political incapacity.
Naturally Gallatin threatened to resign. Even by submitting to the Smiths, Duanes, Gileses, and Leibs, and allowing them to cut off the sources or waste the supplies of public revenue until the government became an habitual beggar, he could promise himself no advantage. Never had the chance of finding an end to the public embarrassments seemed so remote. The position in which the government stood could not be maintained, but could be abandoned only by creating still greater difficulties. Intended merely as a makeshift, the Non-intercourse Act of March 1, 1809, had already proved more mischievous to America than to the countries it purported to punish. While the three great commercial nations—France, England, and the United States—were forcing trade into strange channels or trying to dam its course, trade took care of itself in defiance of war and prohibitions. As one coast after another was closed or opened to commerce, countries whose names could hardly be found on the map—Papenburg, Kniphausen, Tönningen—became famous as neutrals, and their flags covered the sea, because England and France found them convenient for purposes of illegitimate trade. The United States had also their Papenburg. Amelia Island and the St. Mary’s River, which divided Florida from Georgia, half Spanish and half American waters, became the scene of a trade that New York envied. While the shore was strewn with American cotton and other produce waiting shipment in foreign vessels, scores of British ships were discharging merchandise to be smuggled into the United States, or were taking on board heavy freights of cotton or naval stores on American account. To the United States this manner of trading caused twofold loss. Not only were the goods charged with a double voyage and all the costly incidents of a smuggling business, and not only did the American ship-owner lose the freight on this American merchandise, both outward and inward, but the United States government collected no duties on the British goods smuggled from Amelia Island, Bermuda, and Halifax. The Non-intercourse Act prohibited French and British merchandise; but in disregard of the prohibition such goods were freely sold in every shop. Erskine’s arrangement, short as it was, brought in a fresh and large supply; custom-house oaths were cheap; custom-house officials did not inquire closely whether cloth was made in England, France, Holland, or Germany, or whether rum, sugar, and coffee came from St. Kitt’s or St. Bart’s. Some sorts of English goods, such as low-priced woollens, were necessities; and the most patriotic citizen could hardly pay so much respect to the laws of his country as to dispense with their use by his family, whatever he did on his own account. Finally, a law which in the eyes of a community was not respectable was not respected. The community had no other defence against bad legislation; and in a democracy the spirit of personal freedom deserved cultivation to the full as much as that of respect for bad law. The Non-intercourse Act was not only a bad law,—the result of admitted legislative imbecility,—but it had few or no defenders even among those who obeyed it.
Ingenuity could hardly have invented a system less advantageous for the government and people who maintained it. The government lost its revenue, the shipping lost much of its freight, the people paid double prices on imports and received half-prices for their produce; industry was checked, speculation and fraud were stimulated, while certain portions of the country were grievously wronged. Especially in the Southern States all articles produced for exchange were depressed to the lowest possible value, while all articles imported for consumption were raised to extravagant rates. Elisha Potter, a Congressman from Rhode Island, complained with reason that the system made the rich more rich and the poor more poor.[128] In a crowded or in a highly organized society such a system would probably have created a revolution; but America had not yet reached such a stage of growth or decay, and the worst effect of her legislation was to impoverish the government which adopted and the class of planters who chiefly sustained it.
Gallatin best knew how much the Non-intercourse Act or any other system of commercial restriction weakened the Treasury. He knew that neither the President nor Congress offered the germ of a better plan. He faced an indefinite future of weakness and waste, with a prospect of war at the end; but this was not the worst. His enemies who were disposed to destroy, were skilful enough to invent the means of destruction. They might deprive him of the United States Bank, his only efficient ally; they might reject every plan, and let the Treasury slowly sink into ruin; they might force the country into a war for no other object than to gratify their personal jealousies. Gallatin believed them capable of all this, and Madison seemed to share the belief. The Treasury which had till that time sustained the Republican party through all its troubles, stood on the verge of disaster.
From the military and naval departments nothing had ever been expected; but their condition was worse than their own chiefs understood. The machinery of both broke down as Madison took control. The navy consisted of a few cruisers and a large force of gunboats. Neither were of immediate use; but a considerable proportion of both were in active service, if service could be called active which chiefly consisted in lying in harbor or fitting for harbor defence when no enemy was expected. No sooner had Paul Hamilton succeeded Robert Smith at the navy department than the new secretary became aware that his predecessor had wasted a very large sum of money.[129] Hamilton made no concealment of his opinion that gunboats were expensive beyond relation to their value.[130] He intimated that the life of gunboats hardly exceeded one year, and that their value depended on the correct answer to the inquiry whether war was a defensive or aggressive operation. This hint that gunboats could do no harm to their enemies seemed to gain force from the suggestion that they had yet to prove their uses for their friends; but if Jefferson’s gunboat system should prove to be a failure, nothing would be left of the navy except a few frigates and sloops which could hardly keep the sea in the event of war with England. The navy was a sink of money.
The army was something worse. At least the navy contained as good officers and seamen as the world could show, and no cruisers of their class were likely to be more efficient than the frigates commanded by Rodgers, Bainbridge, and Decatur, provided they could escape a more numerous enemy; but the army was worthless throughout, and its deficiency in equipment was a trifling evil compared with the effects of political influence on its organization. The first attempt to raise the army to efficiency ended in scandalous failure within a few months. Among a thousand obstacles to any satisfactory reform in the military service, the most conspicuous if not the most fatal was General Wilkinson, whom President Jefferson could not and would not sacrifice, but whose character and temper divided the army into two hostile camps. Wade Hampton, the next general officer in rank, regarded Wilkinson with extreme contempt, and most of the younger officers who were not partisans of Jefferson shared Hampton’s prejudice; but July 4, 1808, a military court of inquiry formally acquitted Wilkinson of being a Spanish pensioner. President Jefferson had already saved him from court-martial on account of his relations with Burr, and Secretary Dearborn restored him to command over an army whose interests required an officer of other qualities.
When Madison and Gallatin in December, 1808, looked to a declaration of war, their first anxiety concerned New Orleans and West Florida. December 2, 1808, Secretary Dearborn gave Wilkinson, then at Washington, orders to direct the new levies of troops toward New Orleans, and to be ready to take command there in person as soon as practicable. In pursuance of these orders, two thousand raw soldiers were directed upon New Orleans from different quarters, and in the midst of war preparations, Jan. 24, 1809, Wilkinson himself embarked from Baltimore.[131] Stopping at Annapolis, Norfolk, and Charleston, he passed six weeks on the Atlantic coast. After the overthrow of the war policy and the close of the session he sailed March 12 from Charleston, and in his mysterious way stopped at Havana and then at Pensacola, “under a special mission from the Executive of the United States.” April 19 he re-entered New Orleans, the scene of his exploits three years before; and he returned as a victor, triumphant over Daniel Clark and the Burr conspirators, as well as over Governor Claiborne, Wade Hampton, and all ill-wishers in the subordinate ranks of the army, of whom Captain Winfield Scott was one.