Four months of continuous session had passed, and spring was opening, when the Legislature reached this point. The result of the winter’s labor showed that the young vigor of this remarkable Congress had succeeded only in a small part of the work required to give Jefferson’s peaceful system a military shape. Although the nominal regular army had been raised from ten thousand to thirty-five thousand men, the Act of Congress which ordered these men to be enlisted could not show where they were to be found; and meanwhile the sudden strain broke down the War Department. Rumor pointed at Secretary Eustis as incompetent, and the chances were great that any secretary, though sufficiently good for peace, would prove unequal to the task of creating an army without men or material to draw from. Whether the secretary was competent or not, his situation exposed him to ridicule. He had hitherto discharged the duties of Secretary of War, of Quartermaster-General, Commissary-General, Indian Commissioner, Commissioner of Pensions, and Commissioner of Public Lands; and although Congress promised to create a quartermaster’s department, and had the bill already in hand, the task of organizing this department, as well as all the other new machinery of war, fell on the secretary and eight clerks, not one of whom had been twelve months in office. Any respectable counting-house would have allowed some distribution of authority and power of expansion; but the secretary could neither admit a partner nor had he the right to employ assistance. Adapted by Jefferson, in 1801, to a peace establishment of three or four regiments, the Department required reorganization throughout, or Congress would be likely to find the operations of war brought to a quick end.
Had Congress undertaken to wage war on the ocean, the same difficulty would have been felt in the navy; but this danger was evaded by the refusal to attempt naval operations. At all times the Republicans had avowed their willingness to part with the five frigates, and these were perhaps to be sent to sea with no great hope in the majority for their success; but the Navy Department was required to make no other exertion. Secretary Hamilton, like Secretary Eustis, was supposed to be unequal to his post; but his immediate burden amounted only to fitting out three frigates in addition to those in actual service, and the expenditure of two hundred thousand dollars annually for three years toward the purchase of ship-timber.
To meet the expenses thus incurred for military purposes, in the absence of taxes which, if imposed, could not be made immediately productive, Congress authorized a loan of eleven million dollars at six per cent, redeemable in twelve years.
An army of thirty-five thousand regulars which could not be raised within a year, if at all, and of fifty thousand volunteers who were at liberty to refuse service beyond the frontier, promised no rapid or extensive conquests. A navy of half-a-dozen frigates and a few smaller craft could not be expected to keep the ports open, much less to carry the war across the ocean. Privateers must be the chief means of annoyance, not so much to British pride or power as to British commerce, and this kind of warfare was popular because it cost the government nothing; but even the privateers were at a great disadvantage if the ports were to be closed to their prizes by hostile squadrons. Such means of offence were so evidently insufficient that many sensible persons could not believe in the threatened war; but these were only the most conspicuous weaknesses. Armies required equipment, and the United States depended on Europe, chiefly on England, for their most necessary supplies. The soldier in Canada was likely to need blankets; but no blankets were to be had, and the Non-importation Act prevented them from coming into the market, whatever price might be offered.
Not only was the machinery of government unsuited to energetic use, but the Government itself was not in earnest. Hardly one third of the members of Congress believed war to be their best policy. Almost another third were Federalists, who wished to overthrow the Administration; the rest were honest and perhaps shrewd men, brought up in the school of Virginia and Pennsylvania politics, who saw more clearly the evils that war must bring than the good it might cause, and who dreaded the reaction upon their constituents. They could not understand the need of carrying into every detail a revolution in their favorite system of government. Clay and Calhoun, Cheves and Lowndes asked them to do in a single session what required half a century or more of time and experience,—to create a new government, and invest it with the attributes of old-world sovereignty under pretext of the war power. The older Republicans had no liking for such statesmanship, and would gladly have set the young Southerners in their right place.
By force of will and intellect the group of war members held their own, and dragged Congress forward in spite of itself; but the movement was slow and the waste of energy exhausting. Perhaps they failed to carry their points more often than they succeeded. Energetic as their efforts were, after four months of struggle they had settled nothing, and found themselves in March no further advanced than in November. War should already have been declared; but Congress was still trying to avoid it.
Federalists had much to do with causing the confusion of Republicans. Their conduct could seldom be explained on rational grounds, but in January, 1812, they seemed to lose reason. Their behavior, contradicting their own principles, embarrassed their friends still more than it confused their enemies. The British minister wrote to his Government constant complaints of the dangerous course his Federalist allies were pursuing.
“The Federal leaders,” Foster wrote Dec. 11, 1811,[130] “make no scruple of telling me that they mean to give their votes for war, although they will remain silent in the debates; they add that it will be a short war of six or nine months. To my observations on the strange and dangerous nature of such a policy, they shrug their shoulders, telling me that they see no end to restrictions and non-importation laws but in war; that war will turn out the Administration, and then they will have their own way, and make a solid peace with Great Britain.”
To this policy Federalist leaders adhered. As the weeks passed, Foster’s situation grew more difficult. Disgusted equally by the obstinacy of his Government and by the vacillations of Congress, he found his worst annoyances in the intrigues of his friends. Toward the close of the year he wrote:[131]—
“The situation that I find myself thus unexpectedly placed in is, I must confess, exceedingly embarrassing. I am aware that H. R. H. the Prince Regent wishes to avoid a rupture with this country, and yet I see that the efforts of a party, hitherto the most adverse to a war with Great Britain, are united with those of another, which till now has been supposed the most considerable in point of numbers, for the purpose of bringing it on; while Government, although wishing for delay, are yet so weak and little to be depended on that it is to be feared if the two Houses were to decide on hostilities, they would not have resolution enough to oppose the measure.”