Such a provision for filling the ranks could not be called excessive. Even if the whole bounty were added to the pay, and the soldier were to serve but twelve months, he would receive only twenty dollars a month and his land-certificate. If he served his whole term of five years, he received little more than twelve dollars a month. The inducement was not great in such a community as the United States. The chance that such a measure would fill the ranks was small; yet the measure seemed extravagant to a party that had formerly pledged itself against mercenary armies.
If the bill showed the timidity of the Republicans, it called out worse qualities in the Federalists. The speeches of the opposition were for the most part general in their criticisms and denunciations, and deserved little attention; but that of Daniel Webster was doubly interesting, because Webster was not only the ablest but among the most cautious of his party. His speech[475] suggested much of the famous eloquence of his later oratory, but dwelt on ideas to which his later life was opposed, and followed lines of argument surprising in a statesman of his great intellectual powers. His chief theme was the duty of government to wage only a defensive war, except on the ocean. “Give up your futile projects of invasion. Extinguish the fires that blaze on your inland frontiers.” He wished the government to use its forces only to repel invasion.
“The enemy, as we have seen, can make no permanent stand in any populous part of the country. Its citizens will drive back his forces to the line; but at that line where defence ceases and invasion begins, they stop. They do not pass it because they do not choose to pass it. Offering no serious obstacle to their actual power, it rises like a Chinese wall against their sentiments and their feelings.”
This advice, which echoed a Federalist idea reasonable or excusable in 1812, was out of place in January, 1814. The battles of Leipzig and Vittoria had settled the question of offensive and defensive in Canada. The offensive had passed into British hands, and a successful defence was all that the United States could hope. The interests of New England as well as of New York and of the whole Union required that the defensive campaign should, if possible, be fought on Canadian soil rather than at Plattsburg, Washington, or New Orleans; and even the most extreme Federalist could scarcely be believed blind to an idea so obvious.
Moderate as the bill was, fifty-eight members voted against it, while ninety-seven voted in its favor. In the Senate the bill passed without a division, and received, January 27, the President’s approval. Meanwhile the Senate passed bills for converting the twelve-months regiments into regiments enlisted for the war, as well as for raising three rifle regiments for the same term, and any number of volunteers that in the President’s opinion the public service required, offering to all recruits for these corps the same inducements as to the regular regiments. These bills produced another and a longer debate, but were passed without serious opposition. No further addition was made to the regular army, and no other effort to obtain recruits.
Thus organized, the army consisted of forty-six regiments of infantry enlisted for five years,—four rifle regiments; an artillery corps and a regiment of light artillery; a regiment of dragoons; the engineer corps, the rangers, and sea-fencibles,—an aggregate of 62,773 men authorized by law, an increase of only five thousand men over that of the previous year.
The appropriations for the military establishment amounted to nearly twenty-five million dollars, the Federalists alone voting against them. The naval appropriations amounted to seven millions, and were voted without opposition. The Secretary of the Navy discouraged the building of more cruisers, owing to want of timber and seamen; but Congress showed more than ordinary sagacity by appropriating half a million dollars for the construction of floating batteries with steam-power.
Such provision for the coming campaign offered little evidence of increasing energy to make head against the vastly increased military and naval power of England; but the financial outlook was much worse than the military, and Congress dared not face it. The acting Secretary of the Treasury, William Jones, sent his annual report to the House January 8, and so far as his balance-sheet went, no difficulties were apparent. He had disbursed thirty million dollars during the past fiscal year, and needed nearly forty millions for the current year. These sums were not excessive when compared with the wealth of the country or its exertions at other periods of national danger. Half a century afterward the people of the Southern States, not much more numerous than the people of the Union in 1812, and with a far larger proportion of slaves, supported during four years the burden of an army numbering nearly five hundred thousand men. For the same period the Northern people, not much exceeding twenty millions in number, lent their government more than five hundred million dollars a year. The efforts of 1864, proportioned to the population, were nearly ten times as great as those of 1814, when Secretary Jones looked with well-founded alarm at the prospect of borrowing thirty millions for the year, and of maintaining an army which could scarcely be expected to number forty thousand rank-and-file.
The United States, with a proper currency and untouched resources, should have found no serious difficulty in borrowing thirty or even fifty millions a year in 1814; but they were in reality on the verge of bankruptcy, although the national resources were probably ample. The amount of private capital available for loans was uncertain, and the amount of circulating medium was equally doubtful. Timothy Pitkin of Connecticut, perhaps the best authority in Congress, thought that the paid bank capital of the United States did not much exceed sixty millions,[476] and that the notes of these banks in circulation did not reach thirty millions. His estimate of paid bank capital was probably liberal, but his estimate of the circulation was eight or ten millions too small. Had the Treasury been able to count on the use of these resources, they might have answered all necessary purposes; but between the mistakes of the government and the divisions of the people, the Treasury was left with no sound resources whatever.
The first and fatal blow to the Treasury was the loss of the Bank of the United States, which left the government without financial machinery or a sound bank-note circulation. The next blow, almost equally severe, was the loss of the Massachusetts and Connecticut banks, which were the strongest in the Union. Whether the responsibility for the loss rested on the Executive, Congress, or the two States might be a subject for dispute; but whoever was responsible, the effect was ruinous. The New England banks were financial agents of the enemy. The bank capital of Massachusetts including Maine was about twelve and a quarter million dollars; that of Connecticut exceeded three millions. The whole bank capital of New England reached eighteen millions,[477] or nearly one third of the paid bank capital of the whole country, if Pitkin’s estimate was correct. That nearly one third of the national resources should be withdrawn from the aid of government was serious enough; but in reality the loss was much greater, for New England held a still larger proportion of the specie on which the bank circulation of other States depended.