So little cordiality was felt for President Madison by his party that only the want of a strong rival reconciled a majority to the choice; but although Clay, Crawford, and Calhoun accepted the necessity, the State of New York flatly rebelled. At Albany, when the news arrived that the Washington caucus had named Madison for the Presidency, the Republican members of the State legislature called for May 29 a caucus of their own. Their whole number was ninety-five; of these, all but four attended, and eighty-seven voted that it was expedient to name a candidate for the Presidency. Ninety members then voted to support DeWitt Clinton against Madison, and Clinton formally accepted the nomination. This unusual unanimity among the New York Republicans raised the movement somewhat above the level of ordinary New York politics, and pointed to a growing jealousy of Virginia, which threatened to end in revival of the old alliance between New York and New England. Even in quiet times this prospect would have been alarming; in face of war, it threatened to be fatal.
During the entire month of May Congress passed, with only one exception, no Act for war purposes. While the absent members attended to their private affairs, Government waited for the last despatches from abroad. The sloop-of-war “Hornet,” after long delay, arrived at New York, May 19, and three days afterward the despatches reached Washington. Once more, but for the last time, the town roused itself to learn what hope of peace they contained.
As far as concerned Great Britain, the news would at any previous time have checked hostile action, for it showed that the British government had taken alarm, and that for the first time a real change of policy was possible; but this news came from unofficial sources, and could not be laid before Congress. Officially, the British government still stoutly maintained that it could not yield. Lord Wellesley had given place to Lord Castlereagh. In a very long despatch,[168] dated April 10, the new Foreign Minister pleaded earnestly that England could not submit herself to the mercy of France. The argument of Lord Castlereagh rested on an official report made by the Duc de Bassano to the Emperor, March 10, in which Napoleon reasserted his rules regarding neutrals in language quite as strong as that of his decrees, and reasserted the validity of those decrees, without exception, in regard to every neutral that did not recognize their provisions. Certainly, no proof could be imagined competent to show the continued existence of the decrees if Bassano’s report failed to do so; and Castlereagh, with some reason, relied on this evidence to convince not so much the American government as the American people that a deception had been practised, and that England could not act as America required without submitting to Napoleon’s principles as well as to his arms.
Embarrassing as this despatch was to President Madison, it was not all, or the worst; but Serurier himself described the other annoyance in terms as lively as his feelings:[169]—
“The ‘Hornet’ has at last arrived. On the rumor of this news, the avenues of the State Department were thronged by a crowd of members of both Houses of Congress, as well as by strangers and citizens, impatient to know what this long-expected vessel had brought. Soon it was learned that the ‘Hornet’ had brought nothing favorable, and that Mr. Barlow had as yet concluded nothing with your Excellency. On this news, the furious declamations of the Federalists, of the commercial interests, and of the numerous friends of England were redoubled; the Republicans, deceived in their hopes, joined in the outcry, and for three days nothing was heard but a general cry for war against France and England at once.... I met Mr. Monroe at the Speaker’s house; he came to me with an air of affliction and discouragement; addressed me with his old reproach that decidedly we abandoned the Administration, and that he did not know henceforward how they could extricate themselves from the difficult position into which their confidence in our friendship had drawn them.”
Serurier had no reason for uneasiness on his own account. The President and his party could not go backward in their path; yet no enemy could have devised a worse issue than that on which the President had placed the intended war with England. Every Act of Congress and every official expression of Madison’s policy had been founded on the withdrawal of the French Decrees as they affected American commerce. This withdrawal could no longer be maintained, and Madison merely shook confidence in his own good faith by asserting it; yet he could do nothing else. “It is understood,” he wrote to Jefferson at this crisis,[170] “that the Berlin and Milan Decrees are not in force against the United States, and no contravention of them can be established against her. On the contrary, positive cases rebut the allegation.” Yet he said that “the business has become more than ever puzzling;” he was withheld only by political and military expediency from favoring war with France. He wrote to Joel Barlow,[171] after full knowledge of Napoleon’s conduct, that “in the event of a pacification with Great Britain the full tide of indignation with which the public mind here is boiling will be directed against France, if not obviated by a due reparation of her wrongs; war will be called for by the nation almost unâ voce.”
A position so inconsistent with itself could not be understood by the people. Every one knew that if the decrees were not avowedly enforced in France against the United States, they were relaxed only because Madison had submitted to their previous enforcement, and had, in Napoleon’s opinion, recognized their legality. The Republican press, which supported Madison most energetically, made no concealment of its active sympathies with Napoleon, even in Spain. What wonder if large numbers of good citizens who believed Napoleon to be anti-Christ should be disposed to resist, even to the verge of treason, the attempt to use their lives and fortunes in a service they regarded with horror!
CHAPTER XI.
Castlereagh’s long note of April 10, communicated by Foster to the American government, contained a paragraph defining the British doctrine of retaliation:—
“What Great Britain always avowed was her readiness to rescind her orders as soon as France rescinded, absolutely and unconditionally, her decrees. She never engaged to repeal those orders as affecting America alone, leaving them in force against other States, upon condition that France would except, singly and especially, America from the operation of her decrees. She could not do so without the grossest injustice to her allies, as well as all other neutral nations; much less could she do so upon the supposition that the special exception in favor of America was to be expressly granted by France, as it has been hitherto tacitly accepted by America, upon conditions utterly subversive of the most important and indisputable maritime rights of the British empire.”