The letter arrived July 19. Wilkinson dared not again disobey, although he might be right in thinking that the risks of removal were greater than those of remaining. Every resource of the army and navy was put at Wilkinson’s command, and every man at Terre aux Boeufs was eager to escape; yet week after week passed without movement. The orders which arrived July 19 were not made public till the end of August, and only September 14 was the camp evacuated. The effective force was then about six hundred men in charge of nine hundred invalids. The strength of all had been reduced, until they were unequal to the fatigues of travel. Only one hundred and twenty-seven men died at Terre aux Boeufs between June 10 and September 14; but two hundred and fifty died on their way up the river, before October 31, and altogether seven hundred and sixty-four, out of two thousand soldiers sent to New Orleans, died within their first year of service. The total loss by death and desertion was nine hundred and thirty-one.
Wilkinson himself was attacked by fever in passing New Orleans, September 19, and on proceeding to Natchez soon received a summons to Washington to answer for his conduct. Brigadier-General Wade Hampton succeeded him in command of what troops were still alive at New Orleans. The misfortune was compensated only by the advantage of affording one more chance to relieve the army and the government of a general who brought nothing but disaster.
With the four departments of Executive government in this state of helplessness, President Madison met Congress, the least efficient body of all.
CHAPTER IX.
The President’s Annual Message, read November 29 before Congress, threw no light on the situation. If Madison’s fame as a statesman rested on what he wrote as President, he would be thought not only among the weakest of Executives, but also among the dullest of men, whose liveliest sally of feeling exhausted itself in an epithet, and whose keenest sympathy centred in the tobacco crop; but no statesman suffered more than Madison from the constraints of official dress. The Message of 1809 hinted that England had no right to disavow her minister’s engagement, and that Jackson’s instructions as well as his conduct betrayed a settled intent to prevent an understanding; but these complaints led to no corrective measures. The President professed himself still willing to listen with ready attention to communications from the British government through any new channel, and he seemed to fall back on Jefferson’s “painful alternatives” of the year before, rather than on any settled plan of his own:—
“In the state which has been presented of our affairs with the parties to a disastrous and protracted war, carried on in a mode equally injurious and unjust to the United States as a neutral nation, the wisdom of the national Legislature will be again summoned to the important decision on the alternatives before them. That these will be met in a spirit worthy of the councils of a nation conscious both of its rectitude and of its rights, and careful as well of its honor as of its peace, I have an entire confidence. And that the result will be stamped by a unanimity becoming the occasion, and be supported by every portion of our citizens with a patriotism enlightened and invigorated by experience, ought as little to be doubted.”
Such political formulas, conventional as a Chinese compliment, probably had value, since they were current in every government known to man; but that President Madison felt entire confidence in the spirit of the Eleventh Congress could not be wholly believed. John Randolph best described Madison’s paper in a letter to Judge Nicholson, a few days afterward:[139]
“I have glanced over the President’s Message, and to say the truth it is more to my taste than Jefferson’s productions on the same occasions. There is some cant to be sure; but politicians, priests, and even judges, saving your honor’s presence, must cant, ‘more or less.’”
Probably the colorless character of the Message was intended to disarm criticism, and to prevent Randolph and the Federalists from rousing again the passions of 1808; but sooner or later some policy must be adopted, and although the Message suggested no opinion as to the proper course, it warned Congress that the crisis was at hand: “The insecurity of our commerce and the consequent diminution of the public revenue will probably produce a deficiency in the receipts of the ensuing year.” The moment when a Republican administration should begin to borrow money for ordinary expenses in time of peace would mark a revolution in the public mind.
Upon Gallatin, as usual, the brunt of unpopular responsibility fell. His annual Report, sent to the House December 8, announced that a loan, probably of four million dollars, would be required for the service of 1810; that the Non-intercourse Law, as it stood, was “inefficient and altogether inapplicable to existing circumstances;” and finally that “either the system of restriction, partially abandoned, must be reinstated in all its parts, and with all the provisions necessary for its strict and complete execution, or all the restrictions, so far at least as they affect the commerce and navigation of citizens of the United States, ought to be removed.” This subject, said Gallatin, required immediate attention; but in regard to the wider question of war or peace he contented himself with a reference to his two preceding reports.