The Republicans made no attempt to defend themselves from such criticisms. Among the small number who refused to follow Calhoun was Macon, who sat in his seat during the debate writing to his friend Judge Nicholson.
“Those who voted the embargo so very lately,” he said,[470] “and those or him who recommended it must, I think, feel a little sore under Webster’s rubs.... I have not for a long time seen the Feds look in so good humor. They have all a smile on their countenances, and look at each other as if they were the men which had brought this great and good work about.... The Republicans have not the most pleasing countenances. Those who support the bill do not look gay or very much delighted with their majority, and those who expect to be in the minority have a melancholy gloom over their faces.”
That the system of commercial restrictions had failed was admitted, but the failure carried no conviction of error to its friends. Physical force had also apparently failed. The Southern Republicans had no choice but to adopt strong measures, giving to the government powers which in their opinion they had no constitutional right to confer; but they remained unshaken in their opinions.
“I confess to you,” wrote Macon, “that the parties seem by their acts to be approaching each other, and I fear that tough times is a strong argument with many of us to stretch the Constitution; and the difference between expediency and constitutionality becomes every day less. Notwithstanding this, I do not despair of the republic, because my dependence has always been on the people; and their influence was felt in laying the embargo, and probably that of the Executive in repealing it.”
No one understood or represented so well as Macon the instincts and ideas of the Southern people at that time, and he never represented them more truly than in the matter of the embargo. Virginia and the Carolinas were with him at heart. Macon’s hopes for the republic depended on his confidence in the people; and that confidence in its turn depended on his belief that the people were still true to a dogma which the Government had abandoned as impracticable. The belief was well founded, as the course of events proved. The House, April 7, by a vote of one hundred and fifteen to thirty-seven, passed the bill repealing the Embargo and Non-importation Acts; the Senate also passed it, April 12, by a vote of twenty-six to four; the President, April 14, approved it; and from that day the restrictive system, which had been the cardinal point of Jefferson’s and Madison’s statesmanship, seemed to vanish from the public mind and the party politics of the country. Yet so deeply riveted was the idea of its efficacy among the Southern people, that at the next great crisis of their history they staked their lives and fortunes on the same belief of their necessity to Europe which had led them into the experiment of coercing Napoleon and Canning by commercial deprivations; and their second experiment had results still more striking than those which attended their first.
The explanation of this curious popular trait certainly lay in the nature of Southern society; but the experience was common to the whole Union. When the restrictive system was abandoned of necessity in April, 1814, it had brought the country to the verge of dissolution. The Government could neither make war nor peace; the public seemed indifferent or hostile; and the same traits which characterized the restrictive system continued to paralyze the efforts of Congress to adopt more energetic methods.
“I will yet hope we may have no more war,” wrote Mrs. Madison to Mrs. Gallatin Jan. 7, 1814.[471] “If we do, alas! alas! we are not making ready as we ought to do. Congress trifle away the most precious of their days,—days that ought to be devoted to the defence of their divided country.”
Mrs. Madison doubtless echoed the language she heard used at the White House; yet the leaders of Congress were neither triflers nor idlers, and they did all that public opinion permitted. Within a week after Mrs. Madison’s complaint, the military committee of the House reported a bill for encouraging enlistments. Viewed as a means of embodying the whole military strength of the republic to resist the whole military strength of Great Britain, about to be released from service in Europe, Troup’s bill[472] was not an efficient measure; but it terrified Congress.
During the campaign of 1813, as the story has shown, the Government never succeeded in placing more than ten or eleven thousand effective rank-and-file in the field in a single body. About as many more were in garrison, and the sick-list was always large. Armstrong reported to the Ways and Means Committee that the aggregate strength of the army in February, 1813, was 18,945; in June, 27,609; in December, 34,325; and Jan. 17, 1814, it was 33,822.[473] Discouraging as this report was, it concealed the worst part of the situation. In truth, the abstract furnished by the adjutant-general’s office gave the number of regular troops in service for January, 1814, not as 33,822, but as 23,614; and to the return a note was appended, explaining that “although the numerical force in January, 1814, was 23,614, the actual strength of the army at that time was less than half that number, arising from the expiration of the term of service of the troops raised in 1809 and enlisted for five years, and of the twelve and eighteen-months men enlisted in 1812–1813.”[474] The establishment consisted of 58,254 men authorized by law; but the legal establishment was not half filled. The European news showed that England would soon be able to reinforce her army in Canada and take the offensive. Instead of sixty thousand men, Armstrong needed twice that number for a moderately safe defence, since every part of the sea-coast stood at the enemy’s mercy, and no adequate defence was possible which did not include an offensive return somewhere on the Canadian frontier. Needing more than one hundred thousand,—authorized by law to enlist sixty thousand,—he could depend on less than thirty thousand men. Yet so far from attempting to increase the establishment, Armstrong hoped only to fill the ranks.
Troup’s bill aimed at that object, purporting to be “A Bill making further provision for filling of the ranks of the regular army.” No system of draft was suggested. Troup’s committee proposed to treble the bounty rather than raise the pay,—a system which might be economical in a long war; but if the war should last only one year, the soldier must gain four fifths of his bounty without return. Troup first suggested one hundred dollars as bounty, which Congress raised to one hundred and twenty-four dollars, together with three hundred and twenty acres of land as already fixed. The pay of privates remained at ten dollars. Twenty-four dollars of the bounty was to be paid only on the soldier’s discharge. Recruiting-agents were to receive eight dollars for each recruit.