The Second War with England, Vol. 2 of 2

by Joel Tyler Headley

Sept. 19.

During the agitation and excitement preceding the bombardment of Fort McHenry, and the battles of Champlain and Plattsburg, the members of Congress were slowly gathering to the ruined Capital, and two days after Brown's gallant sortie from Fort Erie, assembled in the Patent Office, the only public building left standing by the enemy.

Notwithstanding the glorious victories that had marked the summer campaign, a gloom rested on Congress. The Government, indeed, presented a melancholy spectacle, sitting amid the ashes of the Capital, while the fact could not be disguised that the Commissioners at Ghent gave no hope of peace. The war seemed far as ever from a termination, while England, released from the drains on her troops, navy and treasury, by the Continental war, was evidently making preparations for grander and more terrible exhibitions of her power. Her forces were gathering and her fleets accumulating upon our coast for the avowed purpose of demolishing our seaports, burning up our shipping, destroying our cities, and carrying a wide-spread desolation along our shores. To meet the expenses required to resist these attacks, a vast accession of funds was necessary, and yet the Treasury was worse than empty. The effort to borrow, in August, the paltry sum of six millions, a part of the $25,000,000 voted, had proved unsuccessful, not half the amount being taken and that at less than 80 per cent. In May previous over nine millions and a half had been obtained at from 85 to 88 per cent, and yet while victories were illustrating our arms, not $3,000,000 would now be taken, and the offers for that all below 80 per cent.

As the Treasury accounts stood at the close of the second quarter of the year 1814, Mr. Campbell, the Secretary, estimated that nearly twenty-five millions of dollars would be necessary to meet the expenditures of the remaining two quarters. The public revenue during that time would be nearly five millions, which the two loans and four millions of Treasury notes would swell to a little over thirteen millions, leaving about eleven millions to be obtained by some process or other. A foreign loan of six millions was recommended.

Added to this the currency was thoroughly deranged. New banks had set a vast amount of paper afloat, while the specie was all drained off to pay for British goods, which surreptitiously got into the country. The banks of the District of Columbia suspended payment with the British invasion, and the panic spreading northward, there commenced a run upon the banks which in turn stopped payment, until out of New England, a large bank could scarcely be found that had not suspended.

The expense of maintaining such a vast army of militia as was kept on foot, called for enormous disbursements, and many saw national bankruptcy in the future should the war continue.

The burning of Washington furnished the President, in his message, an excellent occasion for making an appeal to the people. He was not constrained to fall back on the justice of the war, and persuade the nation that the invasion of Canada was both right and politic. The war had become defensive—men must now fight, not for maritime rights, not march to distant and questionable ground, but standing on their own hearth-stones, strike for their firesides and their homes. The Indian barbarities at the west, which inflamed to such a pitch of rage the Kentuckians, had been repeated by a civilized nation, and in speaking of them and the enemy, the President said: "He has avowed his purpose of trampling on the usages of civilized warfare, and given earnest of it in the plunder and wanton destruction of private property. *** His barbarous policy has not even spared those monuments of the arts and models of taste with which our country had enriched and embellished its infant metropolis. From such an adversary, hostility in its greatest force and worst forms may be looked for. The American people will face it with the undaunted spirit, which in our Revolutionary struggle, defeated his unrighteous projects. His threats and barbarities instead of dismay, will kindle in every bosom an indignation not to be extinguished but in the disaster and expulsion of such cruel invaders."

The ardor and indignation of the people were easily roused, but these did not bring what just then was most needed, money.

Sept.

Campbell having resigned his place as Secretary of the Treasury, immediately after sending in his report, Alexander Dallas was appointed in his place, who brought forward a scheme for relieving the Government. Eppes, from the Committee of Ways and Means, also offered a project. He proposed to lay new taxes to the amount of eleven and a half millions, and make a new issue of Treasury Notes, redeemable after six months. Dallas agreed with him in the amount of taxes, but recommended also the creation of a National Bank with a capital of fifty millions, five of it in specie and the residue in government stock. This would regulate the currency by furnishing a circulating medium, and constitute a basis on which loans could be obtained.