Not without difficulty could one understand from this statement precisely what prevented the restoration of peace. England had never refused to discharge American seamen on sufficient evidence of wrongful impressment. According to the Message, the President asked only “an immediate discharge of American seamen from British ships, and a stop to impressment from American ships.” The demand of this point seemed to imply that England had made or would probably make satisfactory concessions on all others. The Message therefore narrowed the cause of war to the requirement of a formal suspension of impressments from American ships, though not of American citizens on shore, pending negotiations, and to be made permanent by treaty. The demand was proper, and its only fault was to fall short of full satisfaction; but considered in its effect upon the politics of the moment the attitude was new, unsupported by a precedent, unwarranted by any previous decision or declaration of President or Congress, and open to the Federalist charge that Madison sought only an excuse for continuing to stake the national existence on the chance of success in his alliance with Bonaparte. The rest of the Message helped to strengthen the impression that a policy of permanent war was to be fixed upon the country; for it recommended higher pay for recruits and volunteers, an increase in the number of general officers, a reorganization of the general staff of the army, and an increase of the navy. The impression was not weakened by the President’s silence in regard to the financial wants of the government, which left to the Secretary of the Treasury the unpleasant duty of announcing that the enormous sum of twenty million dollars must be borrowed for the coming year. Every one knew that such a demand was equivalent to admitting the prospect of immediate bankruptcy.
“I think a loan to that amount to be altogether unattainable,” Gallatin told Madison in private.[375] “From banks we can expect little or nothing, as they have already lent nearly to the full extent of their faculties. All that I could obtain this year from individual subscriptions does not exceed three million two hundred thousand dollars.”
The President refrained from presenting this demand to Congress, and not until after the election was the financial situation made known; but then Gallatin’s report, sent to the House December 5, estimated the military expenses at seventeen millions, the naval at nearly five millions, and the civil at fifteen hundred thousand, besides interest on the public debt to the amount of three million three hundred thousand, and reimbursements of loans, treasury notes, etc., reaching five million two hundred thousand more,—in all, thirty-one million nine hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars. This estimate omitted every expenditure not already authorized by law, such as the proposed increase of army and navy.
To meet these obligations, amounting probably to thirty-three million dollars, Gallatin counted on a revenue of eleven million five hundred thousand dollars from imports, and half a million from the sale of lands,—making twelve millions in all; leaving a sum of at least twenty millions to be borrowed, with an increase of debt to the amount of fifteen millions.
The state of war brought the advantage of compelling the Legislature to act or perish; and although Congress had seldom if ever been so unanimously dissatisfied, it was never so docile. For the first time Madison could recommend a measure with some certainty that Congress would listen, and with some confidence that it would act. Faction began to find its limits, and an Executive order had no longer to excuse itself; while Congress, on its side, with shut eyes, broke through the barriers hitherto set to its powers, and roamed almost at will beyond the limits which the Republican party assigned to the Constitution.
CHAPTER XX.
Hardly had Henry Clay seated himself again in the Speaker’s chair and appointed the select committee on military affairs, when the process of reorganizing the government on a new and energetic footing began. November 19, David R. Williams, chairman of the military committee, reported a bill raising the soldiers’ pay to eight dollars a month, and exempting them from arrest for debt. At any previous moment in national history such a bill would have aroused paroxysms of alarm, but the Republicans of 1812 were obliged to accept it without a protest, and with grave doubts whether it would prove effective; while the Federalists tried only to strike out the clause which allowed minors above eighteen years of age to enlist without the consent of their parents, guardians, or masters. On this subject Josiah Quincy made a vehement speech, which ruffled the temper of David R. Williams. Quincy was defeated in the House; but the Senate by a vote of twenty-six to four saved the rights of parents, guardians, and masters, without reducing the age of enlistments. The bill became law December 12, and was quickly followed by another bill raising the bounty and organizing the recruiting service.
Before this matter was finished, the naval committee reported a bill for increasing the navy; and the two Houses vied with one another in their enthusiasm for this recently unpopular branch of the public service. Here and there an old Republican protested that he could not in conscience violate every fixed idea of his political existence by voting for a large naval establishment; but when the House was asked to appropriate money for four ships-of-the-line and six forty-four-gun frigates, although the Federalists were much divided as to the wisdom of building seventy-fours, and debated the subject at great length with contradictory votes, the House closed the discussion, December 23, by passing the bill as it stood. In the minority of fifty-six were several warm friends of the navy, who thought Congress needlessly extravagant.
“Frigates and seventy-fours,” wrote Jefferson,[376] “are a sacrifice we must make, heavy as it is, to the prejudices of a part of our citizens.” No one who saw the quickness of this revolution could doubt that whatever evils war might cause, it was a potent force to sweep nations forward on their destined way of development or decline. Madison, Monroe, Gallatin, as well as Jefferson and the whole Republican party accepted a highly paid mercenary army, a fleet of ships-of-the-line, a great national debt at high interest, and a war of conquest in coincidence with the wars of Napoleon, on ground which fifteen years before had been held by them insufficient to warrant resistance to France.
More serious suggestions were offered by the failure of Congress to act its intended part as the controlling branch of government. The founders of the Constitution had not expected the legislative power whose wishes the President was created to carry out, and which was alone responsible for the policy of government, to prove imbecile; yet every one saw that Congress was sinking, or had already sunk, low in efficiency. Before the declaration of war, this condition of the Legislature was concealed by the factiousness which caused it; but the first meeting of Congress during the war disclosed one of the commonplaces of history,—that no merely legislative body could control a single, concentrated Executive, even though it were in hands as little enterprising as those of President Madison. The declaration of war placed Congress in a new position. Although the sessions were unchanged in character, they became suddenly unimportant compared with Executive acts. Congress no longer counteracted directly the Executive will, or refused what the President required; the wishes expressed in his Annual Message were for the first time carried out like orders. On the other hand the country was excited by a reorganization of the Cabinet, and Congress seemed to feel itself superfluous, while the President decided upon the conflicting claims of politicians to act as channels for dispensing his power.