Although the President was less emphatic than the secretary in holding a national bank to be the only cure for the disorders of the currency, he was prepared to go a step further by issuing government paper as a national currency, and suggested that alternative in his Message. A national bank or a national currency was an equally energetic exercise of supreme central powers not expressly granted by the Constitution and much disputed by theorists. Dallas’s objection to the national currency did not relate to its inefficiency, but to the practical difficulty of issuing paper and keeping it in issue. Either course of action implied a recurrence to the principles of President Washington. The Executive proposed to start afresh in 1816 from its point of departure in 1790.
The Fourteenth Congress was well disposed to support the attempt. Under the stress of war the people had selected as their representatives the ablest and most vigorous men of their generation. The war leaders were mostly returned,—Calhoun, Clay, Lowndes, Richard M. Johnson, Peter B. Porter, and John Forsyth,—while the old peace party was strongly represented by Timothy Pickering, Daniel Webster, John Randolph, Grosvenor of New York, and Stanford of North Carolina; but perhaps the most distinguished member of all was William Pinkney of Maryland. A swarm of younger men, far above the average, reinforced both sides of the House. Philip P. Barbour sat again for Virginia. John McLean sat again for Ohio. Henry St. George Tucker came for the first time into the House. Joseph Hopkinson, Samuel D. Ingham, and John Sergeant raised the character of the Pennsylvania delegation; and Samuel Smith, at last ejected from the Senate by a Federalist legislature in Maryland, reappeared in the House for the first time since 1803.
The Senate was also improved. The disappearance of Leib and Samuel Smith was made more suggestive by the resignation of Giles. David Stone of North Carolina, another independent much given to opposition at critical moments, also resigned; and another of the same class, Joseph Anderson of Tennessee, who had been a member of the Senate since 1797, retired to become First Comptroller of the Treasury. These retirements removed the chief abettors of faction, and changed the character of the Senate until it seemed to belong to a different epoch. Jonathan Roberts still sat in the place of Leib. Armistead Mason took the seat of Giles, and with James Barbour gave Madison for the first time the full support of Virginia. Macon took the place of David Stone. George W. Campbell took the place of Joseph Anderson. Robert G. Harper, the old champion of Federalism, succeeded Samuel Smith from Maryland. The Senate scarcely recognized itself as the same body that since 1808 had so persistently thwarted and fretted the President.
In the arrangement of new party divisions the Fourteenth Congress, unlike its recent predecessors, consciously aimed to take a decided share. The House seemed for the first time in many years to pride itself on intellectual superiority. William Pinkney, Calhoun, Lowndes, Clay, Daniel Webster, John Randolph, and their associates were not men who bowed to authority, even of the people, but rather looked on the task of government as a function of superior intellect. They proposed to correct what they considered mistaken popular tendencies. Each expressed his ideas with sufficient clearness in the form natural to him. Calhoun generalized before descending to particulars.[120]
“In the policy of nations,” reasoned Calhoun, “there are two extremes: one extreme, in which justice and moderation may sink in feebleness; another, in which that lofty spirit which ought to animate all nations, particularly free ones, may mount up to military violence. These extremes ought to be equally avoided; but of the two, I consider the first far the most dangerous.... I consider the extreme of weakness not only the most dangerous of itself, but as that extreme to which the people of this country are peculiarly liable.”
Clay, aiming at the same objects, dwelt chiefly on foreign dangers as the motive of the strong government he wished to establish. “That man must be blind to the indications of the future,” he declared,[121] “who cannot see that we are destined to have war after war with Great Britain, until, if one of the two nations be not crushed, all grounds of collision shall have ceased between us.” He wished to create a government that should control the destinies of both American continents by a display of armed force. “He confessed with infinite regret that he saw a supineness throughout the country which left him almost without hope that what he believed the correct policy would be pursued,” toward aiding the Spanish colonies against their mother country. Both Calhoun and Clay admitted that they wished to govern in a sense not approved by an apparent majority of the nation; and the sympathies of the House were openly or secretly with them.
Of the contrary sentiment, John Randolph was the champion. Although his early career had ended in the most conspicuous failure yet known in American politics, he returned to the House, with intelligence morbidly sharpened, to begin a second epoch of his life with powers and materials that gave him the position of equal among men like Calhoun, Pinkney, and Webster. Randolph held a decisive advantage in wishing only to obstruct. He had no legislation to propose, and his political philosophy suited that extreme “to which,” according to Calhoun, “the people of this country are peculiarly liable.” Early in the session Randolph showed that he understood even better than Calhoun and Clay the division between himself and them. “If the warning voice of Patrick Henry,” he said in the debate of January 31, 1816,[122] “had not apprised me long ago, the events of this day would have taught me that this Constitution does not comprise one people, but that there are two distinct characters in the people of this nation.” In every growing people two or more distinct characters were likely to rise, else the people would not grow; but the primal character, which Randolph meant to represent, enjoyed the political advantage of passive resistance to impulse from every direction.
In reply to Calhoun, Randolph defined the issue with his usual skill of words:[123]—
“As the gentleman from South Carolina has presented the question to the House, they and the nation cannot have the slightest difficulty in deciding whether they will give up the States or not; whether they will, in fact, make this an elective monarchy. The question is whether or not we are willing to become one great consolidated nation; or whether we have still respect enough for those old, respectable institutions to regard their integrity and preservation as a part of our policy.”
Randolph’s eccentricities, which amounted to insanity, prevented him from exercising in the House the influence to which his experience and abilities entitled him, but did not prevent him from reflecting the opinions of a large part of the nation, particularly in the South. Between these two impulses the Fourteenth Congress was to choose a path, subject to the future judgment of their constituents.