After thus embarrassing the President in organizing his service the Senate rose, leaving Madison in peace until May 22, when the Eleventh Congress was to meet in special session. The outlook was more discouraging than at the beginning of any previous Administration. President Jefferson had strained his authority to breaking, and the sudden reaction threw society as well as government into disorder. The factiousness at Washington reflected only in a mild form the worse factiousness elsewhere. The Legislature of Massachusetts, having issued its Address to the People, adjourned; and a few days afterward the people, by an election which called out more than ninety thousand votes, dismissed their Republican governor, and by a majority of two or three thousand chose Christopher Gore in his place. The new Legislature was more decidedly Federalist than the old one. New Hampshire effected the same revolution. Rhode Island followed. In New York the Federalists carried the Legislature, as they did also in Maryland.
Even in Pennsylvania, although nothing shook the fixed political character of the State, the epidemic of faction broke out. While the legislatures of Massachusetts and Connecticut declared Acts of Congress unconstitutional, and refused aid to execute them, the legislature of Pennsylvania authorized Governor Snyder to resist by armed force a mandate of the Supreme Court; and when the United States marshal attempted to serve process on the person of certain respondents at the suit of Gideon Olmstead, he found himself stopped by State militia acting under orders.
In a country where popular temper had easier means of concentrating its violence, government might have been paralyzed by these proofs of low esteem; but America had not by far reached such a stage, and dark as the prospect was both within and without, Madison could safely disregard dangers on which most rulers had habitually to count. His difficulties were only an inheritance from the old Administration, and began to disappear as quickly as they had risen. At a word from the President the State of Pennsylvania recovered its natural common-sense, and with some little sacrifice of dignity gave way. The popular successes won by the Federalists were hardly more serious than the momentary folly of Pennsylvania. As yet, the Union stood in no danger. The Federalists gained many votes; but these were the votes of moderate men who would desert their new companions on the first sign of a treasonable act, and their presence tended to make the party cautious rather than rash. John Henry, the secret agent of Sir James Craig, reported with truth to the governor-general that the Federalist leaders at Boston found disunion a very delicate topic, and that “an unpopular war ... can alone produce a sudden separation of any section of this country from the common head.”[10] In public, the most violent Federalists curbed their tongues whenever the Union was discussed, and instead of threatening to dissolve it, contented themselves by charging the blame on the Southern States in case it should fall to pieces. Success sobered them; the repeal of the embargo seemed so great a triumph that they were almost tempted into good humor.
On the people of New England other motives more directly selfish began to have effect. The chief sources of their wealth were shipping and manufactures. The embargo destroyed the value of the shipping after it had been diminished by the belligerent edicts; the repeal of the embargo restored the value. The Federalist newspapers tried to prove that this was not the case, and that the Non-intercourse Act, which prohibited commerce with England, France, or their dependencies, was as ruinous as embargo itself; but the shipping soon showed that Gottenburg, Riga, Lisbon, and the Spanish ports in America were markets almost as convenient as London or Havre for the sale of American produce. The Yankee ship-owner received freights to Europe by circuitous routes, on the accumulations of two years in grain, cotton, tobacco, and timber, of the whole United States, besides the freights of an extended coast-trade. Massachusetts owned more than a third of the American registered tonnage, and the returns for 1809 and 1810 proved that her profits were great. The registered tonnage of Massachusetts employed in foreign trade was 213,000 tons in 1800, and rose to 310,000 tons in 1807 before the embargo; in 1809 it rose again to 324,000; in 1810 it made another leap to 352,000 tons. The coasting trade employed in 1807 about 90,000 tons of Massachusetts shipping which was much increased by the embargo, and again reduced by its repeal; but in 1809 and 1810 this enrolled shipping still stood far above the prosperous level of 1807, and averaged 110,000 tons for the two years.[11]
Such rapid and general improvement in shipping proved that New England had better employment than political factiousness to occupy the thoughts of her citizens; but large as the profits on freights might be, they hardly equalled the profits on manufactures. In truth, the manufactories of New England were created by the embargo, which obliged the whole nation to consume their products or to go without. The first American cotton mills, begun as early as 1787, met with so little success that when the embargo was imposed in 1807, only fifteen mills with about eight thousand spindles were in operation, producing some three hundred thousand pounds of yarn a year. These eight thousand spindles, representing a capital of half a million dollars, were chiefly in or near Rhode Island.
The embargo and non-importation Acts went into effect in the last days of 1807. Within less than two years the number of spindles was increased, or arrangements were made for increasing it, from eight thousand to eighty thousand.[12] Nearly four million dollars of capital were invested in mills, and four thousand persons were in their employ, or expected soon to be employed in them. The cotton cost about twenty cents a pound; the yarn sold on an average at about $1.12½ a pound. Besides these mills, which were worked mostly by water but partly by horsepower, the domestic manufacture of cotton and linen supplied a much larger part of the market. Two thirds of the clothing and house-linen used in the United States outside of the cities was made in farm-houses, and nearly every farmer in New England sold some portion of the stock woven every year by the women of his household. Much of this coarse but strong flaxen material, sold at about fifteen or twenty cents a yard by the spinner, was sent to the Southern States.[13]
While the cotton and linen industries of the North became profitable, the manufactures of wool lagged little behind. William Whittemore, who owned the patent for a machine which manufactured wool and cotton cards, reported from Cambridge in Massachusetts, Nov. 24, 1809, that only the want of card-wire prevented him from using all his machines to the full extent of their power.[14] “Since the obstructions to our foreign trade, the manufactures of our country have increased astonishingly,” he wrote. “The demand for wool and cotton cards the present season has been twice as great as it has been any year preceding.” Scarcity of good wool checked the growth of this industry, and the demand soon roused a mania among farmers for improving the breed of sheep. Between one hundred and three hundred per cent of profit attended all these industries, and little or no capital was required.
All the Northern and Eastern States shared in the advantages of this production, for which Virginia with the Western and Southern States paid; but in the whole Union New England fared best. Already the development of small industries had taken place, which, by making a varied aggregate, became the foundation and the security of Yankee wealth. Massachusetts taxed her neighbors on many small articles of daily use. She employed in the single manufacture of hats four thousand persons,—more than were yet engaged in the cotton mills. More than a million and a half of hats were annually made, and three fourths of these were sold beyond the State; between three and four million dollars a year flowed into Massachusetts in exchange for hats alone.[15] At Lynn, in Massachusetts, were made one hundred thousand pairs of women’s shoes every year. The town of Roxbury made eight hundred thousand pounds of soap. Massachusetts supplied the country with cut-iron nails to the value of twelve hundred thousand dollars a year. Connecticut supplied the whole country with tin-ware.
New industries sprang up rapidly on a soil and in a climate where the struggle of life was more severe than elsewhere in the Union, and where already capital existed in quantities that made production easy. One industry stimulated another. Women had much to do with the work, and their quickness and patience of details added largely to the income of New England at the cost of less active communities. Their hands wove most of the cotton and woollen cloths sent in large quantities to the West and South; but they were inventors as well as workmen. In 1801, when English straw-bonnets were in fashion, a girl of Wrentham, not far from Boston, found that she could make for herself a straw-hat as good as the imported one. In a few months every girl in the county of Norfolk made her own straw-bonnet; and soon the South and West paid two hundred thousand dollars a year to the county of Norfolk for straw hats and bonnets.[16]
At no time could such industries have been established without the stimulus of a handsome profit; but when Virginia compelled Massachusetts and the Northern States to accept a monopoly of the American market, the Yankee manufacturer must have expected to get, and actually got, great profits for his cottons and woollens, his hats, shoes, soap, and nails. As though this were not more than enough, Virginia gave the Northern shipowners the whole freight on Southern produce, two thirds of which in one form or another went into the hands of New England shipbuilders, shippers, and merchants. Slowly the specie capital of the Union drifted towards the Banks of Boston and New Haven, until, as the story will show, the steady drain of specie eastward bankrupted the other States and the national government. Never, before or since, was the country so racked to create and support monopolies as in 1808, 1809, and 1810, under Southern rule, and under the system of the President who began his career by declaring that if he could prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretence of protecting them, they must become happy.[17] The navy and army of the United States were employed, and were paid millions of dollars, during these years in order to shut out foreign competition, and compel New England at the cannon’s mouth to accept these enormous bribes.