The question was now between the enforcement of the Embargo Act and war. To take off the embargo seemed a declaration of weakness. To add to it a non-importation clause was the only alternative. In November, 1808, Mr. Gallatin prepared for George W. Campbell, chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations of the House, the declaration known as Campbell's report, which recited, in clear, compact form, the injuries done to the United States by Great Britain, and closed with resolutions to the effect that the United States could not submit to the edicts of Great Britain and France, and with a recommendation of non-intercourse and for placing of the country in a state of defense. After long debate the resolutions were adopted by large majorities, and the policy of resistance was finally determined upon—resistance, not war. Thus the United States resorted, as the colonies had resorted in 1774, to a policy of non-importation. But the condition of the States was not that of the colonies. Then all the colonies were commercial, and the entire population was on the seaboard; the prohibition fell with equal weight upon all. Now there were large interior communities whom restrictions upon commerce would rather benefit than injure. Yet neither the Sons of Liberty nor the non-importation associations had been able to enforce their voluntary agreements either before or after the Congress of 1774. If this were to be the mode of resistance, stringent measures must be adopted to make it effective. Mr. Gallatin accordingly called upon Congress for the necessary powers. They at once responded with the Enforcement Act, which Mr. Gallatin proceeded to apply with characteristic administrative vigor, and summoned Jefferson to authorize the collectors of revenue to call the military force of the United States to support them in the exercise of their restrictive authority. There was to be no evasion under the systems which Hamilton devised and Gallatin knew so well how to administer.
His annual report made to Congress on December 10 had clearly set forth the situation, and, without recommending war, had pointed out how it might be carried on. Macon wrote of him on December 4 to their mutual friend, Joseph H. Nicholson, “Gallatin is decidedly for war.” After his report was sent in the situation became still more perplexing. Rumors came of an intention to call a convention of the five New England States, with New York, if possible, to take ground against the embargo. As these indications of dissatisfaction became manifest, and the contingency of the employment of force at home presented itself, Gallatin made a careful balance of the advantages and inconveniences of embargo, non-intercourse, and letters of marque. This paper, dated February, 1809, and entitled, “Notes on the Political Situation,” no doubt served as a brief for consultation with Madison upon his inaugural message, it being then understood that Gallatin was to be secretary of state. As he states one of the advantages of letters of marque to be “a greater chance of unity at home,” this measure he probably preferred. The Senate had already, on January 4, passed a bill ordering out the entire naval force of the country, and on the 10th the House adopted the same bill by a vote of 64 to 59. Mr. Gallatin opposed this action strenuously. On February 2 the House voted by a large majority to remove the embargo on March 4. Non-intercourse with Great Britain and France and trade everywhere else were now the conditions. This significant expression of the feeling of Congress no doubt determined Mr. Gallatin to suggest letters of marque. Whether he pressed them upon Mr. Madison or not is uncertain. Meanwhile Mr. Gallatin suffered the odium of opposition to the will of Congress, and Mr. Madison's power was broken before he took his seat. A few Republican senators inaugurated an opposition to their chief after the fashion of modern days, and Mr. Madison was given to understand that Mr. Gallatin would not be confirmed if nominated as secretary of state. Mr. Madison yielded to this dictation, and from that day forward was, as he deserved to be, perplexed and harassed by a petty oligarchy. Mr. John Quincy Adams, in a note on this affair, says that, “had Mr. Gallatin been appointed secretary of state, it is highly probable war with Great Britain would not have taken place.” But it is improbable that any step in foreign intercourse was taken without Mr. Gallatin's knowledge and approbation. Such are the traditions of the triumvirate.
The first term of Madison's administration was not eventful. There was discord in the cabinet. In the Senate the “invisibles,” as the faction which supported Robert Smith, the secretary of state, was aptly termed, rejected Madison's nominations and opposed Gallatin's financial policy as their interests or whims prompted. Randolph said of Madison at this time, that he was “President de jure only.” Besides this domestic strife, the cabinet was engaged in futile efforts to resist the gradually tightening cordon of British aggression. Erskine's amateur negotiations, quickly disavowed by the British government, and the short and impertinent mission of Jackson, who succeeded him and was dismissed from the United States, well served Canning's policy of delay. Madison, whose prejudices were as strongly with Englishmen and English ways as those of Jefferson were with the men and manners of France, averse to war and withheld also by Gallatin's persistent objections, negotiated and procrastinated until there was little left to argue about. In December, 1809, Macon made an effort to pass a stringent navigation act to meet the British Orders in Council and the French decrees. The bill passed the House but was emasculated in the Senate, the Republican cabal voting with the Federalists to strike out the effective clauses. The act interdicting commercial intercourse with Great Britain and France expired in May, 1810, and was not revived. A new act was passed, which was a virtual surrender of every point in dispute. Resistance was abandoned, and our ships and seamen were left to the mercy of both belligerents.
Mr. Gallatin's entire energies were bent upon strengthening the Treasury and opposing reckless expenditures. His most grievous disappointment, however, was in the refusal of Congress to renew the charter of the Bank of the United States. He used every possible effort to save this institution, which, in the condition of the country, was indispensable to a sound currency and the maintenance of specie payment. But with the dead weight of Mr. Madison's silence, if not indifference, the struggle was unequal and the bank fell. The course of Mr. Madison can hardly be excused. Political history records few examples of a more cruel desertion of a cabinet minister by his chief. Mr. Gallatin felt it deeply and tendered his resignation. The administration was going to pieces by sheer incapacity. The leaders took alarm and the cabinet was reconstructed, Monroe being called to the Department of State. But the enemies of Mr. Gallatin still clung to his skirts, determined to drag him to the dust. Duane attacked him in the most dangerous manner. Probably no man in America has ever been abused, vilified, maligned with such deliberate persistency as was Gallatin in the “Aurora” from the beginning of 1811 until the cabinet crisis, when Mr. Madison was compelled to choose between Smith and himself. Day after day leaders were devoted to personal assault upon him and to indirect insinuations of his superiority to Madison, by which the artful editor sought to arouse the jealousy of the President. The “Atlas at the side of the President,” the “Great Treasury Law Giver,” the “First Lord of the Treasury,” the “Dagon of the Philistines,” were favorite epithets. He was charged by turns with betraying cabinet secrets to Randolph, with amateur negotiation with Erskine, and with subserviency to British gold in the support of the Bank of the United States. Here is an instance of Duane's style: “We can say with perfect conviction that, if Mr. Madison suffer this man to lord it over him, Mr. Gallatin will drag him down, for no honest man in the country can support an administration of which he is a member with consistency or a pure conscience.” It was charged upon Gallatin that his friends considered him as the real, while Madison was the nominal, president. More than this, he was accused of embezzlement and enormous speculations in the public lands. Gallatin's party pride must have been strong indeed to have induced him to stay an hour in an administration which granted its favors to the author of such assaults upon one of its chosen leaders.
Jefferson wrote to Mr. Wirt in May following, that, because of the bank, endeavors were made to drive from the administration (of Mr. Madison) the ablest man, except the President, who ever was in it, and to beat down the President himself because he was unwilling to part with such a counselor.
Monroe was appointed secretary of state in Smith's place in April, 1811. Other changes followed in the cabinet, but brought little relief to Mr. Gallatin. Financial affairs now occupied his entire attention; on the one hand was a diminishing treasury; on the other an expenditure reckless in itself and beyond the demands of the administration. Without the sympathy of either the Senate or House, Mr. Gallatin's position became daily more irksome, until at last he abandoned all attempt to control the drift of party policy, took the war party at their word, and sent in to the House a war budget.
Unfortunately for the country, the Republican party knew neither how to prepare for war, nor how to keep the peace. Mr. Madison had none of the qualifications of a war President; neither executive ability, decision of character, nor yet that more important faculty, knowledge of men. In his attachment to Mr. Madison and in loyalty to what remained of the once proud triumvirate of talent and power, Mr. Gallatin supplied the deficiencies of his fellows as best he could, until an offer of mediation between the United States and Great Britain on the part of the emperor of Russia presented an opportunity for honorable withdrawal and service in another and perhaps more congenial field. In March, 1813, the Russian minister, in a note to the secretary of state, tendered this offer. Mr. Gallatin had completed his financial arrangements for the year, and requested Mr. Madison to send him abroad on this mission. Unwilling to take the risk of new appointments, the President acceded to this proposal, and gave him leave of absence from his post in the Treasury. Mr. Gallatin did not anticipate a long absence, and felt, as he said to his old friend Badollet, that he could nowhere be more usefully employed than in this negotiation. Certainly he could have no regret in leaving a cabinet which had so little regard to his own feelings and so little political decency as to confer the appointment of adjutant-general in the United States army on his malignant assailant, William Duane of the “Aurora.”
Mr. Gallatin's mission, followed by the resignation of his post in the cabinet, finally dissolved the political triumvirate, but not the personal friendship of the men. Numerous attempts were made to alienate both Jefferson and Madison from Gallatin while he held the portfolio of the Treasury, but one and all they signally and ignominiously failed. For Mr. Jefferson Mr. Gallatin had a regard near akin to reverence. A portrait of the venerable sage was always on his study table. When about setting out for France in 1816 he tendered his services to his old chief and wrote to him that 'in every country and in all times he should never cease to feel gratitude, respect, and attachment for him.' Jefferson fully reciprocated this regard. From Monticello he wrote to Gallatin in 1823: “A visit from you to this place would indeed be a day of jubilee, but your age and distance forbid the hope. Be this as it will, I shall love you forever, and rejoice in your rejoicings and sympathize in your ails. God bless and have you ever in His holy keeping.” Nor does Mr. Gallatin seem to have allowed any feeling of disappointment or dissatisfaction at Mr. Madison's weakness to disturb their kindly relations. Their letters close with the reciprocal assurance of affection as well as of esteem.