Once more Langdon Cheves took the lead. January 17, after the House voted on the Volunteer Bill, Cheves as chairman of the Naval Committee asked an appropriation to build twelve seventy-fours and twenty frigates at a cost of seven and a half million dollars.
“I know,” he began, “how many and how strong are the prejudices, how numerous and how deeply laid are the errors which I have to encounter in the discussion of this question,—errors and prejudices the more formidable as they come recommended by the virtues and shielded by the estimable motives of those who indulge them. I have been told that this subject is unpopular, and it has been not indistinctly hinted that those who become the zealous advocates of the bill will not advance by their exertions the personal estimation in which they may be held by their political associates.”
In few words Cheves avowed that while he preferred to act with the Republican party, he was in truth independent, and he warned his friends that on the subject of a navy they must in the end either conquer their prejudices or quit office.
After this preamble, Cheves struck once more at the foundations of his party. His argument, as a matter of expediency, was convincing; for every American ship-of-war, even when blockaded in port, would oblige the British to employ three ships of equal or greater size to relieve each other in blockading and watching it. The blockading service of the American station was peculiarly severe. England had no port nearer than Halifax for equipments or repairs; in general all her equipments must be made in Europe, and for only three months’ service; in winter she must for months at a time abandon the blockade, and leave the coast free. No method could be devised by which, with so small risk and so little waste of money and life, the resources of England could be so rapidly drained as by the construction of heavy war-vessels. Once at sea, an American seventy-four had nothing to fear except a squadron; and even when dismantled in port, she required the attention of a hostile fleet.
The House had submitted with slowly rising ill-temper to each successive demand of the war it would have preferred to avoid; but this last requirement threw it into open revolt. Cheves found himself for a time almost alone. Even Richard M. Johnson, always ardent for war, became mournful with prophecies of the evils that Cheves was about to bring upon the country. “I will refer to Tyre and Sidon, Crete and Rhodes, to Athens and to Carthage.” Plunder, piracy, perpetual war, followed the creation of every navy known to history. Armies might be temporary, but navies were permanent, and even more dangerous to freedom. “Navies have been and always will be engines of power, employed in projects of ambition and war.”
These were the old and respected Republican doctrines, still dear to a large majority of the party. William Lowndes came to the support of his colleague, and ridiculed Johnson’s lessons from ancient history; Henry Clay protested against the unreasonable prejudice which refused naval assistance, and which left New York and the commerce of the Mississippi at the mercy of single British ships; but when the committee of the whole House came to a vote, Cheves found a majority opposed to him on every motion for the building additional ships of any sort whatever. The House continued the debate for several days, but ended, January 27, by refusing to build frigates. The division was close. Fifty-nine members voted for the frigates; sixty-two voted against them. While Cheves, Lowndes, Calhoun, Troup, Porter, and the Federalists voted for the ships, Ezekiel Bacon, Grundy, R. M. Johnson, D. R. Williams, and the friends of the Administration in general voted against them.
By the middle of February, Congress reached a point of disorganization that threatened disaster. The most ardent urged immediate war, while not a practical step had yet been taken toward fighting. Such was the chaos that Peter B. Porter, who had himself reported the Army and Volunteer bills, asked for a committee to raise another provisional army of twenty thousand men, for the reason that the two armies already provided were useless,—the regular force, because it could not be put into the field within the year; the volunteers, because they could not lawfully be used for offensive war. “What force have we given the President?” asked Porter. “We have made a parade in passing laws to raise twenty-five thousand regular troops, and fifty thousand volunteers; but in truth and in fact we have not given him a single man.” The House refused to follow Porter’s advice; but as usual the war Republicans were obliged to coalesce with the Federalists in order to maintain themselves against these Executive reproaches. What Porter said was mainly true. With the exception of the peace establishment consisting of nominally ten thousand men, and the vessels of war actually afloat, the President had not yet been given means of defending the coasts and frontiers from hostile forces which, in the case of the northwestern Indians, were already actually attacking them.
In the midst of this general discouragement, February 17, Ezekiel Bacon brought in fourteen Resolutions embodying a scheme for raising money. Gallatin’s measures were expected to be harsh, but those proposed by Bacon seemed more severe than had been expected. The customs duties were to be doubled; twenty cents a bushel were laid on salt, fifty cents a gallon on the capacity of stills; licenses and stamps in proportion; and a direct tax of three million dollars was to be apportioned among the States. A loan bill for eleven millions at six per cent was easily passed, but all the force of the war feeling could not overcome the antipathy to taxation. The Resolution for doubling the customs duties met little resistance; but February 28 the House refused, by sixty to fifty-seven, to impose a duty on imported salt, and for the moment this vote threatened to ruin the whole scheme. The House adjourned for reflection; and on the following Monday a member from Virginia moved to reconsider the vote. “It now seems,” he said, “that if the article of salt is excluded, the whole system of taxation will be endangered. We are told in conversation, since the vote on the salt tax, that the system which has been presented by the Committee of Ways and Means is a system of compromise and concession, and that it must be taken altogether, the bad with the good; that if we pay the salt tax, the eastern and the western country will suffer peculiarly by an increase of the impost, and by the land tax.” In short, he thought it better to take the whole draught even if it were hemlock.
This view of the case did not find easy acceptance. Nelson of Virginia exhorted the majority not under any circumstances to accept the impost on salt; and Wright of Maryland, a man best known for his extravagances, took the occasion to express against Gallatin the anger which the friends of the Smiths, Giles, and Duane had stored. Gallatin, he said, was trying to fix the odium of these taxes on Congress in order to disgust the people and chill the war spirit; he was treading in the muddy footsteps of his official predecessors, in attempting to strap around the necks of the people this odious system of taxation, for which the Federalists had been condemned and dismissed from power. The salt tax would destroy the present as it had destroyed the old Administration; the true course was to lay taxes directly on property. Probably most of the Republican members sympathized in private with the feelings of Wright, but Gallatin had at last gained the advantage of position; the House voted to reconsider, and by a majority of sixty-six to fifty-four accepted the duty of twenty cents on imported salt.
The salt duty distressed the South, and in revenge many Southerners wished to impose a tax of twenty-five cents a gallon on whiskey, which would be felt chiefly in the West; but this was no part of the Treasury scheme. Grundy and R. M. Johnson succeeded in defeating the motion; and after deciding this contest, the House found no difficulty in adopting all the other Resolutions. March 4 the committee was instructed to report by bill; Bacon sent the Resolutions to the Treasury, and the secretary waited for events. Every one admitted that while war was still uncertain, the financial policy undecided, and a Presidential election approaching, only the prospect of immediate bankruptcy would outweigh the dangers of oppressive taxation.