This double set-back from men so inferior as Dearborn and Harrison irritated Monroe, who could not command in the North on account of Dearborn, or in the West without a contest with Harrison and Winchester. Evidently, if he was to take any military position, he must command in chief.
This idea became fixed not only in Monroe’s mind, but also in that of the public, particularly among Monroe’s personal following. The man who stood closest in his confidence and whose advice weighed most with him in personal matters was his son-in-law, George Hay. September 22 Hay wrote to him from Richmond,[370]—
“It is rumored here that you are to be appointed lieutenant-general. Such an appointment would give, I believe, universal satisfaction.... This is indeed a critical moment. Some great effort must be made. Unless something important is done, Mr. Madison may be elected again, but he will not be able to get along. But Mr. Madison ought not to exact any further sacrifices from you. If you go into the army you ought to go with the supreme power in your hand. I would not organize an army for Dearborn or anybody else. Mr. Madison ought not to expect it, and if he did I would flatly and directly reject the proposal. Everybody is looking forward to an event of this kind, and I do not believe that any man calculates that you are to go in a subordinate character. The truth is that Dearborn is laughed at, not by Federalists but by zealous Republicans. I do not give on this subject a reluctant, hesitating opinion. I am clear that if you go into the army (about which I say nothing), you should go as the commander-in-chief.”
Monroe also felt no doubt that if he went to the field at all he must go in chief command; but he hesitated. As compared with Madison’s major-generals, Monroe was young, being only fifty-four years old; in the Revolutionary War he had risen to the rank of captain, and had seen as much service as made him the military equal of Dearborn or Pinckney, but he felt no such special fitness for carrying out a campaign as for planning and superintending it. Probably he could reconcile the two careers only by some expedient, such as by taking the War Department, and as Secretary of War accompanying the general in command; or by accepting the post of lieutenant-general, and from headquarters advising the Secretary of War as to the conduct of the campaign. The former course seemed to Monroe to imply serious Constitutional difficulties, and he inclined to the latter.
Secretary Eustis waited until Dearborn returned from Lake Champlain to Albany, Smyth failed at Niagara, and Harrison became stationary in Ohio, then, December 3, sent his resignation to the President. Instantly informed of this event, and having reason to suppose that the place would be offered to him, Monroe called his friends to a consultation,[371] the result of which was narrated in a letter written to Jefferson six months afterward:[372]—
“I stated [to the President] that if it was thought necessary to remove me from my present station in the idea that I had some military experience, and a change in the command of the troops was resolved on, I would prefer it to the Department of War in the persuasion that I might be more useful. In the Department of War a man might form a plan of a campaign and write judicious letters on military operations; but still these were nothing but essays,—everything would depend on the execution. I thought that with the army I should have better control over operations and events, and might even aid, so far as I could give aid at all, the person in the Department of War. I offered to repair instantly to the Northern army, to use my best efforts to form it, to promote the recruiting business in the Eastern States, to conciliate the people to the views of the Government, and unite them so far as it might be possible in the war. The President was of opinion that if I quitted my present station, I ought to take the command of the army. It being necessary to place some one immediately in the Department of War to supply the vacancy made by Mr. Eustis’s retreat, the President requested me to take it pro tempore, leaving the ultimate decision on the other question open to further consideration. I did so.”
Monroe, with only the model of Washington before his eyes, felt aggrieved that the Clintons and Armstrongs of the North thought him greedy of power; but the curious destiny which had already more than once made a sport of Monroe’s career promised at last to throw the weight of a continent upon his shoulders. Secretary of State, acting Secretary of War, general-in-chief by a double guarantee, and President thereafter, what more could the witches promise on the blasted heath of politics that could tempt ambition? Neither Cromwell nor Napoleon had, at any single moment, laid a broader claim upon the favors of Fortune.
Monroe grasped too much, and the prizes which would have destroyed him slipped through his fingers. The story that he was to be general-in-chief as well as Secretary of War, exaggerated by jealousy, roused a storm of protest. Even the patient Gallatin interposed there, and gave the President to understand that if Monroe were transferred to the army, he should himself claim the vacant Department of State; and Madison admitted the justice of the claim, although the difficulty of filling the Treasury created a new obstacle to the scheme. A greater difficulty arose from sectional jealousies. The loss of New York to the Republican party, due chiefly to dislike of Virginia and to Monroe’s previous promotion, was too recent and serious to allow further experiments. The Republican leaders in New York—Governor Tompkins, Judge Spencer, and their connections—felt their hopes depend on checking the open display of Virginia favoritism. Finally, the Federalists made a scandal of the subject. January 5, Josiah Quincy, in a speech which for literary quality was one of the best ever delivered in the House, after giving a keen if not an exact, account of the “Cabinet, little less than despotic, composed, to all efficient purposes, of two Virginians and a foreigner, which had for twelve years ruled the nation,” rose to a climax by averring that all the new Cabinet projects—the loan of twenty millions, an army of fifty-five thousand regulars, the scheme of mock negotiation—had no other object than to satiate the ambition of a single man:—
“The army for the conquest of Canada will be raised,—to be commanded by whom? This is the critical question. The answer is in every man’s mouth. By a member of the American Cabinet; by one of the three; by one of that trio who at this moment constitute in fact, and who efficiently have always constituted, the whole Cabinet. And the man who is thus intended for the command of the greatest army this New World ever contained,—an army nearly twice as great as was at any time the regular army of our Revolution,—I say the man who is intended for this great trust is the individual who is notoriously the selected candidate for the next Presidency.”
In face of these difficulties, Madison could not carry out his scheme. His only object in pushing Monroe forward was to strengthen himself by using what he supposed to be Monroe’s popularity; but from the moment it appeared that Monroe, in the War Department or at the head of the Northern army, would be a source of weakness rather than of strength, Madison had no motive to persist; so that Monroe, failing to take a decided step, suddenly found himself—he hardly knew how—in the awkward attitude of a disappointed Cromwell. His rival first withdrew the War Department from his hands. He described to Jefferson[373] the way in which he lost this vantage ground:—