“It was soon found to be improper, at a period of so much danger and urgency, to keep that Department in the hands of a temporary occupant; it ought to be filled by the person who would have to form the plan of the campaign in every quarter, and be responsible for it. It being indispensable to fill it with a prominent character, and the question remaining undecided relative to the command of the army, more persons thinking a change urgent, and the opinion of the President in regard to me being the same, General Armstrong was put in the Department of War. Had it been decided to continue the command of the army under General Dearborn, and the question been with me, ‘Would I take the Department of War, the President and other friends wishing it?’ I would not have hesitated a moment in complying; but it never assumed that form.”
If Monroe was more jealous of one man than of another, his antipathies centred upon John Armstrong, the late American minister at Paris. As has been already shown, Monroe came into the State Department expecting rivalry with Armstrong; but he had no occasion to begin active measures of hostility. Armstrong’s opinions of Madison and Monroe were known to be the same as those of other New Yorkers; if he came to the support of the Administration he came not in order to please the Virginians, but to rescue the government from what he thought Virginian incompetence or narrowness; and that Armstrong would shut the door of military glory in the face of the Secretary of State was as certain as that the Secretary of State would, sooner or later, revenge the insult by ejecting Armstrong from the Cabinet if he could.
No one denied that Monroe had reason for fearing Armstrong, whose abilities were undoubted and whose scruples were few. Since his return from Paris, Armstrong had been known as a discontented Republican, grumbling without reserve at the manner in which public affairs were conducted; yet this was no more than many other Northern Republicans had done, and Armstrong behaved better than most. On the declaration of war he avoided the mistakes of the Clintons, and acted with Governor Tompkins and Ambrose Spencer in support of the Administration. July 6, 1812, to the surprise and anger of the Clinton Republicans, Armstrong accepted the commission of brigadier-general, and was placed in command of New York city and its defences. His knowledge of the theory and practice of war was considerable, and his influence as a politician was likely to be great. In the chronic chaos of New York politics, Armstrong stood between De Witt Clinton, who wished to win the Presidency by intrigue, and Governor Daniel D. Tompkins, who hoped to become President by regular party promotion. Ambrose Spencer, who liked neither Clinton nor Tompkins, preferred Armstrong as the candidate of New York. The influence of Spencer in the contest with De Witt Clinton became for the moment absolute; and the necessity of securing re-election as governor, in April, 1813, drove Tompkins himself to support Spencer in urging Armstrong’s appointment as Secretary of War, although he knew that the appointment of Armstrong to the Cabinet opened to him the door to the Presidency.[374]
In spite of Armstrong’s services, abilities, and experience, something in his character always created distrust. He had every advantage of education, social and political connection, ability and self-confidence; he was only fifty-four years old, which was also the age of Monroe; but he suffered from the reputation of indolence and intrigue. So strong was the prejudice against him that he obtained only eighteen votes against fifteen in the Senate on his confirmation; and while the two senators from Virginia did not vote at all, the two from Kentucky voted in the negative. Under such circumstances, nothing but military success of the first order could secure a fair field for Monroe’s rival.
The nomination of Armstrong to be Secretary of War was made Jan. 8, 1813, and was accompanied by that of William Jones of Pennsylvania to succeed Paul Hamilton as Secretary of the Navy.
The resignation of Paul Hamilton was supposed to be made at the President’s request, for reasons not given to the public. His successor, William Jones, long a prominent Republican, a member of Congress at the beginning of Jefferson’s administration, had been offered the Navy Department in 1801, when that Department was offered to almost every leading Republican before falling into the hands of Robert Smith. Jones then declined the task, and soon retired from Congress to follow his private business as a ship-owner in Philadelphia. His appointment in 1812 was probably as good as the party could supply. He was confirmed by the Senate without opposition; but he had little to do with the movement of politics or with matters apart from business.
These changes left no one except Gallatin who belonged to the Cabinet of President Jefferson. Attorney-General Rodney had resigned his position a year before, in natural displeasure because the President nominated Gabriel Duval, the Comptroller of the Treasury, to the vacant seat of Justice Chase on the Supreme Bench, thus passing over the Attorney-General in a manner which could be regarded only as a slight. The President, Dec. 10, 1811, nominated William Pinkney, the late minister at London, to succeed Rodney. The influence and activity of the Attorney-General in the Cabinet were at that time less than they subsequently became; and Pinkney, like Rodney, and like William Wirt afterward, had little responsibility beyond the few cases in which the United States were a party before the Courts.
With this reorganization of the Cabinet Madison’s first term of Presidency drew toward a close. Only Congress required his attention, and as some compensation for the cares of war, the cares of Congress diminished. After the general election of Nov. 8, 1812, serious opposition or even faction in Congress became impossible. Madison had no reason to fear anything that could happen in the Legislature, provided he had no difficulties with his Cabinet.
President Madison’s Annual Message of Nov. 4, 1812, was an interesting paper. Gliding gently over the disasters of the Northern campaign; dilating on British iniquity in using Indians for allies; commenting on the conduct of Massachusetts and Connecticut with disfavor, because it led to the result that the United States were “not one nation for the purpose most of all requiring it;” praising Rodgers and Hull for the results of their skill and bravery,—the Message next touched upon the diplomatic outlook and the future objects of the war in a paragraph which needed and received much study:—
“Anxious to abridge the evils from which a state of war cannot be exempt, I lost no time, after it was declared, in conveying to the British government the terms on which its progress might be arrested without awaiting the delays of a formal and final pacification; and our chargé d’affaires at London was at the same time authorized to agree to an armistice founded upon them. These terms required that the Orders in Council should be repealed as they affected the United States, without a revival of blockades violating acknowledged rules; and that there should be an immediate discharge of American seamen from British ships, and a stop to impressment from American ships, with an understanding that an exclusion of the seamen of each nation from the ships of the other should be stipulated; and that the armistice should be improved into a definite and comprehensive adjustment of depending controversies. Although a repeal of the orders susceptible of explanations meeting the views of this Government had taken place before this pacific advance was communicated to that of Great Britain, the advance [made by us] was declined [by the British government] from an avowed repugnance to a suspension of the practice of impressments during the armistice, and without any intimation that the arrangement proposed with respect to seamen would be accepted. Whether the subsequent communications from this Government, affording an occasion for reconsidering the subject on the part of Great Britain, will be viewed in a more favorable light remains to be known. It would be unwise to relax our measures in any respect on a presumption of such a result.”