To this speech John Randolph replied in his usual keen and desultory style; but Randolph’s arguments had lost historical interest, for the question was not so much whether war should be made, as upon what new ground the United States should stand. The Federalists, conscious of the change, held their peace. The Republicans, laboring to convince not their opponents but themselves, argued day after day that cause for war existed, as though they doubted their own assertion; but no sooner did they reach delicate ground than they became confused. Many of the speakers avoided argument, and resorted to declamation. The best representative of this class was R. M. Johnson of Kentucky, who, after five years of national submission to both European belligerents, declared that a sixth year would prove fatal: “We must now oppose the further encroachments of Great Britain by war, or formally annul the Declaration of Independence.” On this doubtful foundation he imagined visionary conquests. “I should not wish to extend the boundary of the United States by war if Great Britain would leave us to the quiet enjoyment of independence; but considering her deadly and implacable enmity, and her continued hostilities, I shall never die contented until I see her expulsion from North America, and her territories incorporated with the United States.” Probably these appeals carried weight with the Western people; but even earnest supporters of war might doubt whether men of sense could be conciliated or persuaded by such oratory, or by descriptions of Harrison’s troops at Tippecanoe, “in the silent watches of the night, relieved from the fatigues of valor, and slumbering under the perfidious promises of the savages, who were infuriated and made drunk by British traders,” and so massacred unawares.
Among the Republican speakers was J. C. Calhoun, who had lately taken his seat as a member for South Carolina. Of all the new men, Calhoun was the youngest. He had not yet reached his thirtieth birthday, and his experience in life was slight even for his years; but his speech of December 12 much excelled that of Grundy in merit, showing more clearness of statement, and fairly meeting each successive point that had been made by Randolph. Little could be added to what Calhoun said, and no objection could be justly made against it, except that as an expression of principles it had no place in the past history of the Republican party.
“Sir,” exclaimed Calhoun, “I know of but one principle to make a nation great, to produce in this country not the form but the real spirit of union; and that is to protect every citizen in the lawful pursuit of his business.... Protection and patriotism are reciprocal. This is the road that all great nations have trod.”
Of the tenets held by the Virginia school, none had been more often or more earnestly taught than that the United States ought not to be made a great nation by pursuing the road that all great nations had trod. Had Calhoun held such language in 1798, he would have been branded as a monocrat by Jefferson, and would not long have represented a Republican district; but so great was the revolution in 1811 that Calhoun, thinking little of his party and much of the nation, hardly condescended to treat with decent respect the “calculating avarice” which, though he alluded to its authors only in vague words, had been the pride of his party.
“It is only fit for shops and counting-houses,” he said, “and ought not to disgrace the seat of sovereignty by its squalid and vile appearance. Whenever it touches sovereign power, the nation is ruined. It is too shortsighted to defend itself. It is an unpromising spirit, always ready to yield a part to save the balance. It is too timid to have in itself the laws of self-preservation. It is never safe but under the shield of honor.”
Not without reason did Stanford of North Carolina retort that he very well recollected to have heard precisely the same doctrines in a strain of declamation at least equally handsome, upon the same subject, and from the same State; but the time was in 1799, and the speaker was the Federalist leader of the House,—Robert Goodloe Harper.
Troup of Georgia presently followed with a criticism that seemed more sensible than any yet made. He was ready to vote, but he begged for some discretion in debate. He threatened to call for the previous question if idle verbiage and empty vociferations were to take the place of energetic conduct. “Of what avail is argument, of what avail is eloquence, to convince, to persuade—whom? Ourselves? The people? Sir, if the people are to be reasoned into a war now, it is too soon, much too soon, to begin it; if their representatives here are to be led into it by the flowers of rhetoric, it is too soon, much too soon, to begin it.” The House, he said, had chosen to debate in public a subject which should have been discussed with closed doors, to announce that its measures were intended as measures of offensive hostilities, that its army was to attack Canada; and what was all this but a declaration of war, contrary to all warlike custom,—a magnanimous notice to the enemy when, where, and how the blow would fall? Troup protested against this novel strategy, and pointed out the folly of attacking Canada if England were given such liberal notice to reinforce it; but sensible as the warning was, the debate, which was meant to affect public opinion both in America and in England rather than to prepare for hostilities, went on as before. Even Macon insisted on the wisdom of talking, and pledged himself to support war in order to maintain “the right to export our native produce;” while old William Findley, who had sat in almost every Congress since 1790, voted for the Resolutions on the unrepublican principle that the best means to prevent war was to prepare for it. No concealment was affected of conquests to be made in the Canadas. “Ever since the report of the Committee on Foreign Relations came into the House,” said Randolph on the last day of the debate, “we have heard but one word,—like the whippoorwill, but one monotonous tone,—Canada, Canada, Canada!”
Stanford of North Carolina made one of the peculiar speeches in which he delighted, but which had ceased to irritate his party, even though he went so far as to aver that the Federalists in 1798 had more cause for war with France than existed in 1811 with England, and though he declared the Sedition Law of 1798 to be no more direct an attack on free discussion than was the “previous question” of 1810. He showed little mercy to Grundy and Calhoun, and he proved to the delight of the Federalists the inconsistency of his party; while Randolph, in another speech, redoubled his bitter comments on the changes of political faith which left no one but Stanford and himself true to the principles for which they had taken office. They talked to deaf ears. The Republican party no longer cared for principles. Under the beneficent pressure of England, the theories of Virginia were, for the time, laid aside.
The Resolutions proposed by the Committee on Foreign Relations were adopted, December 16, by what was in effect a unanimous vote. Only twenty-two members recorded their names against the increase of the regular army, and only fifteen voted against fitting out the navy. A still stronger proof of political revolution was the vote of ninety-seven to twenty-two in favor of the Resolution which authorized merchant vessels to arm. This measure had the effect of a declaration of war. In former years it had been always rejected as improper, because it created a private war, taking from the Government and giving to private citizens the control over war and peace; but December 19 the House adopted this last and decisive measure, and while many Republicans would not vote at all, and even Lowndes and Macon voted against it, Josiah Quincy, Timothy Pitkin, and most of the extreme Federalists recorded their votes in its favor.
Meanwhile the Senate had acted. In the want of reports, no record remains of what passed in debate before December 17; but the Journal shows that William B. Giles was made chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations, with Crawford and five other senators as his associates; and that Giles reported December 9 a bill for raising, not ten thousand regular troops, as the President recommended, but ten regiments of infantry, two of artillery, and one of cavalry,—in all twenty-five thousand men for five years, in addition to an existing army nominally ten thousand strong. Each regiment was to number two thousand men, and whether its ranks were filled or not, required a full complement of officers. Rumor reported, and Giles admitted, that his bill was not an Administration measure, but on the contrary annoyed the Administration, which had asked for all the regular force it could raise or organize within a year. The public, though unwilling to side with Giles against the President, could not but admit that the conquest of Canada by ten thousand men was uncertain, even with the assistance of volunteers and militia, while the entire scheme of war would become a subject of ridicule if Congress avowed the intention of vanquishing all the forces of Great Britain with only ten thousand raw troops.