The same argument of impartiality served to justify immediate action on Cadore’s offer as on Erskine’s, without waiting for its execution. That one admitted mistake excused its own repetition in a worse form was a plea not usually advanced by servants, either public or private; but in truth Erskine’s pledge was distinct and unconditional, while Cadore’s depended on the Emperor’s satisfaction with a preliminary act. Had Erskine made his arrangement conditional on Canning’s approval of the President’s measures, Madison would certainly have waited for that approval before acting under the law; and after the disastrous results of precipitancy in 1809, when no one questioned Erskine’s good faith, wisdom called for more caution rather than less in acting, in 1810, on an offer or a pledge from a man in whom no one felt any confidence at all.
In truth, Madison’s course in both cases was due not to logic, but to impatience. As Barlow admitted: “We know it had been the aim of our government for two or three years to divide the belligerents by inducing one or the other of them to revoke its edicts, so that the example would lead to a revocation by the other, or our contest be limited to a single one.” Madison gave the same reason in a letter of October 19 to Jefferson:[257] “We hope from the step the advantage at least of having but one contest on our hands at a time.” He was mistaken, and no one expressed himself afterward in language more bitter than he used against Napoleon for conduct that deceived only those who lent themselves to deception.
October 31, Robert Smith sent for Turreau and gave him notice of the decision reached by the President and Cabinet:[258]—
“The Executive,” said Robert Smith, “is determined not to suffer England longer to trammel the commerce of the United States, and he hopes to be sustained by Congress. If, then, England does not renounce her system of paper-blockades and the other vexations resulting from it, no arrangement with that Power is to be expected; and consequently you will see, in two days, the President’s proclamation appear, founded on the provisions of the law requiring the non-intercourse to be enforced against either nation which should fail to revoke its edicts after the other belligerent had done so.... Although we have received nothing directly from Mr. Armstrong on this subject, which is doubtless very extraordinary, we consider as sufficient for the Government’s purposes the communication he made to Mr. Pinkney, which the latter has transmitted to us.”
The next day Robert Smith made some further interesting remarks.[259] “The Executive thinks,” he said, “that the measures he shall take in case England continues to restrict our communications with Europe will lead necessarily to war,” because of the terms of the non-intercourse. “We have with us a majority of Congress, which has much to retrieve, and has been accused of weakness by all parties.”
On leaving Smith, Turreau went to see Gallatin, “whose opinion in the Cabinet is rarely favorable to us.”
“Mr. Gallatin (by the way long since on bad terms with Mr. Smith) told me that he believed in war; that England could not suffer the execution of measures so prejudicial to her, and especially in the actual circumstances could not renounce the prerogatives of her maritime supremacy and of her commercial ascendency.”
Both Smith and Gallatin evidently expected that war was to result, not from the further action of the United States, but from the resentment and retaliation of England. They regarded the non-intercourse as a measure of compulsion which would require England either to resent it or to yield.
Having decided to accept Cadore’s letter as proof that an actual repeal of the French Decrees, within the meaning of the Act of Congress, had taken place November 1, the President issued, November 2, his proclamation declaring that “it has been officially made known to this Government that the said edicts of France have been so revoked as that they ceased, on the said first day of the present month, to violate the neutral commerce of the United States;” and simultaneously Gallatin issued a circular to the collectors of customs, announcing that commercial intercourse with Great Britain would cease Feb. 2, 1811.
By this means Madison succeeded in reverting to his methods of peaceful coercion. As concerned England, he could be blamed only on the ground that his methods were admittedly inadequate, as Gallatin, only a year before, had officially complained. Toward England the United States had stood for five years in a position which warranted them in adopting any measure of reprisal. The people of America alone had a right to object that when Madison began his attack on England by proclaiming the French Decrees to be revoked, he made himself a party to Napoleon’s fraud, and could scarcely blame the Federalists for replying that neither in honor nor in patriotism were they bound to abet him in such a scheme.