Worsted in square fighting, squadron to squadron, and vessel to vessel, the enemy—not having the fear of this History before their eyes, and finding it easier to harass unarmed merchantmen and to pillage unprotected coasts—ravaged the Chesapeake, burned the Capitol at Washington,—whose corner-stone had been laid by the great American himself in 1793,—and laid in ashes the President’s house. Unfortunately, the Washington Monument was not yet begun; and thus by its escape made the destruction as unpardonable by taste as it was by the code of nations. Baltimore pluck defended Baltimore beauty from attacks by land and water; but the dry goods and shipping of Alexandria were bravely captured and taken prisoners. Weary of the marine parades before New York, Newport, and Stonington, at the North, and Mobile, at the South, a descent upon the city of New Orleans was finally planned by the British military commander, with fifteen thousand hardy and well-seasoned veterans, led by Sir E. Pakenham. To two thousand of them it was a sudden descent to Avernus. Their shades, on every recurring 8th of January, have since been vexed by the sad rites of oratory, poured out on every American stump and platform. Cotton for the first time was here invested with belligerent rights, from its use by General Jackson and his six thousand troops as breastworks. It has ever since been roundly employed by American ladies in the same way against their ardent admirers. The result in the latter case, however, has usually been, not to repel but to heighten the vivacity of the attack; and, unlike that at New Orleans, to procure the surrender of the party with the cotton-works.
The battle of New Orleans was fought in ignorance of the treaty of peace between the United States and Great Britain, signed twenty-five days previously, December 14, 1814, at Ghent,—an agreement which, like frequent make-ups of other quarrels, was wholly silent upon the questions which had caused the long and harassing contention.
On these questions the United States were left at sea.
The war had cost thirty thousand lives and over $100,000,000; but we gained flags, fame, self-confidence, a fine crop of candidates, and subjects for speeches. Through the annealing flames we came out blue steel.
During the December descent on New Orleans, delegates from five of the New England States took Hartford and used it to pass some resolutions against the mode in which, as they asserted, those States had been left out in the cold, bare and unprotected by the government. Many conventions have been since held at the same place and gathered up denunciations with characteristic American fervor; but this one has got somehow astride of history, and ridden it without bridle or stirrups.
In 1816 the second national bank was chartered, with a capital of $35,000,000, lifting the country from suspension to specie payments. Mr. Calhoun, its projector and the supporter of a high tariff, lived to denounce both. Mr. Clay and Mr. Webster, his triangulating rivals, also survived to balance with changing faces the changed front of their Presidential competitor. The strong heats of party, in all times and countries, bring out characters and lines invisible before.
In December, 1816, Indiana, the nineteenth State, came to Washington bearing in her hands a-maize-ing reasons for her admission.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE ERA OF GOOD-WILL; OR, MONROE’S NESTING.
1817–1825.
Why Byron did not write sometimes.—Application.—Rainbow after the Shower.—The Happy Family.—An Inlaid Cabinet.—Virginia’s Dower Rights in the Presidency.—Five New States.—The Three M’s.—Proof from the Census of 1820 that Chicago had not started.—The Missouri Compromise.—A Good Bridle until used.—Florida bought in 1819.—What we got over the Bargain.—The Florida Keys.—The Dry Tortugas thrown in.—The Dews fortunately left.—A Cracked Cup in the Family Cupboard.—The Monroe Doctrine.
“Why do you not write now?” inquired a friend of Byron in one of the fitful pauses of his galloping author life.