At this juncture a new political force {209} appeared. By 1811 the old-time Republican leaders, trained in the school of Jeffersonian ideals, were practically bankrupt. Faction paralyzed government, and Congress seemed, by its timid attitude, to justify the taunt of Quincy of Massachusetts that the Republican party could not be kicked into a war. But there appeared on the stage a new sort of Republican. In the western counties of the older States and in the new territories beyond the mountains, the frontier element, once of small account in the country and wholly disregarded under the Federalists, was multiplying, forming communities and governments, where the pioneer habits had created a democracy that was distinctly pugnacious. Years of danger from Indians, of rivalry with white neighbours over land titles, of struggle with the wilderness, had produced a half-lawless and wholly self-assertive type of man, as democratic as Jefferson himself, but with a perfect willingness to fight and with a great respect for fighters. To these men, the tameness with which the United States had submitted to insults and plundering was growing to be unendurable. Plain masculine anger began to obscure other considerations.
These Western men, moreover, had a special cause for indignation with England, {210} which was ignored by the sea-coast communities, in the close connection which they firmly believed to exist between the British administration of upper Canada and the north-western Indians. In the years after 1809, the Indian question again began to assume a dangerous form. Settlers were coming close to the treaty lines, and, to satisfy their demands for the bottom lands along the Wabash River, Governor Harrison of Indiana Territory made an extensive series of land purchases from the small tribes on the coveted territory.
But there now appeared two remarkable Indians, Tecumseh and his brother, the Prophet, of the Shawnee tribe, who saw in the occupation of the red men's hunting lands and the inroads of frontier corn whiskey the death of all their race. These leaders began to hold their own tribe together against the purchase of whiskey or the sale of lands; then, with wider vision, they tried to organize an alliance of all the north-western Indians to prevent further white advance. They even went so far as to visit the south-western Indians, Creeks and Cherokees, to induce them to join in the grand league. The very statesmanship involved in this vast scheme rendered it dangerous in the eyes of all Westerners, who were firmly convinced that the backing of {211} this plan came from the British posts in Canada. There was, in reality, a good understanding between the Canadian officers and the Shawnee chiefs. In 1811 hostilities broke out at Tippecanoe, where Governor Harrison had a sharp battle with the Shawnees; but Tecumseh exerted himself to restore peaceful relations, although the frontier was in great excitement.
From the States of Kentucky, Ohio, and Tennessee, and from the inner counties of the southern States there came to the first session of the Eleventh Congress, in December, 1811, a group of young politicians—Henry Clay, John Calhoun, Langdon Cheves, Felix Grundy—who felt that the time for talk was at an end. Unless England immediately revoked its decrees, ceased impressing seamen, and refrained from instigating Indian plots there must be war. Assuming control of the House, with Clay in the Speaker's chair, they transformed the Republican party and the policy of the country. They pushed through measures for raising troops, arming ships, and borrowing money. Congress rang with fiery speeches, as month after month went by and the Perceval Ministry obstinately refused to stir from its commercial policy.
Yet the feeling of the English public was already undergoing a change. By 1812 the {212} pretence that the Orders in Council were maintained for the purpose of starving out France was growing transparent when thousands of licences, granted freely to British vessels, permitted a vast fleet to carry on the supposedly forbidden trade. Although Perceval and Canning still insisted in Parliament that the Orders were retaliatory, the fact was patent that their only serious effect was to cause the loss of the American trade and the American market. At the threat of war, the exporters of England, suffering severely from glutted markets, began a vigorous agitation against Perceval's policy and bombarded the Ministry, through Henry Brougham, with petitions, memorials, and motions which put the Tories on the defensive. Speakers like Alexander Baring held up the system of Orders in Council as riddled with corruption, and only the personal authority of Perceval and Castlereagh kept the majority firm. At the height of this contest, Perceval was assassinated, on May 11, 1812; and it was not until June 8 that hope of a new coalition was abandoned, and the Tory Cabinet was definitely reorganized under Lord Liverpool. Almost the first act of that Ministry was to bow before the storm of petitions, criticisms, and complaints, and to announce on June 16 that they had decided to suspend the Orders. {213} Thus the very contingency upon which Jefferson and Madison had counted came to pass. The British government, at the instance of the importing and manufacturing classes, yielded to the pressure of American commercial restrictions. It was true that the danger of war weighed far more, apparently, than the Non-intercourse Act; but had there been an Atlantic cable, or even a steam transit, at that time, or had the Liverpool Ministry been formed a little earlier, the years 1807-1812 might have passed into history as a triumphant vindication of Jefferson's theories.
But it was too late. Madison, seeing, apparently, that his plans were a failure, fell in with the new majority, and after deliberate preparation sent a message to Congress in June, 1812, which was practically an invitation to declare war. In spite of the bitter opposition of all Federalists and many eastern Republicans, Congress, by the votes of the southern and western members, adopted a declaration of war on June 18, committing the United States to a contest with the greatest naval power in the world on the grounds of the Orders in Council, the impressment of seamen, and the intrigues with the north-western Indians. At the moment when Napoleon, invading Russia, began his last stroke for universal empire, the United {214} States entered the game as his virtual ally. This was something the Federalists could not forgive. They returned to their homes, execrating the war as waged in behalf of the arch-enemy of God and man, as the result of a pettifogging bit of trickery on the part of Napoleon. They denounced the ambitions of Clay and the Westerners, who predicted an easy conquest of Canada, as merely an expression of a pirate's desire to plunder England of its colonies, and they announced their purpose to do nothing to assist the unrighteous conflict. In their anger at Madison, they were even willing to vote for De Witt Clinton of New York, who ran for President in 1812 as an Independent Republican; and the coalition carried the electoral vote of every State north of Maryland except Pennsylvania and Vermont.
When the news of the repeal of the Orders in Council crossed the Atlantic, some efforts were made by the governor-general of Canada to arrange an armistice, hoping to prevent hostilities. But Madison does not seem to have seriously considered abandoning the war, even though the original cause had been removed. Feeling the irresistible pressure of the southern and western Democrats behind him, he announced that the contest must go on until England should {215} abandon the practice of impressment. So the last hope of peace disappeared.
The war thus begun need never have taken place, had the Tory Ministries of Portland or Perceval cared to avert it. The United States only lashed itself into a war-like mood after repeated efforts to secure concessions, and after years of submission to British rough handling. During all this time, either Madison or Jefferson would gladly have accepted any sort of compromise which did not shut American vessels wholly out from some form of independent trade. But the enmity of the British shipowners and naval leaders and the traditional British commercial policy joined with contempt for the spiritless nation to prevent any such action until the fitting time had gone by.