It is well indeed for our land that we of this generation have at last learned to think nationally, and, no matter in what state we live, to view our whole country with the pride of personal possession.
[CHAPTER XIII.]
THE NORTHERN DISUNION MOVEMENT AMONG THE FEDERALISTS.
It is a painful thing to have to record that the closing act in a great statesman's career not only compares ill with what went before, but is actually to the last degree a discreditable and unworthy performance.
Morris's bitterness and anger against the government grew apace; and finally his hatred for the administration became such, that, to hurt it, he was willing also to do irreparable harm to the nation itself. He violently opposed the various embargo acts, and all the other governmental measures of the decade before the war; and worked himself up to such a pitch, when hostilities began, that, though one of the founders of the Constitution, though formerly one of the chief exponents of the national idea, and though once a main upholder of the Union, he abandoned every patriotic principle and became an ardent advocate of Northern secession.
To any reasoning student of American history it goes without saying that there was very good cause for his anger with the administration. From the time the House of Virginia came into power, until the beginning of Monroe's administration, there was a distinctly anti-New England feeling at Washington, and much of the legislation bore especially heavily on the Northeast. Excepting Jefferson, we have never produced an executive more helpless than Madison, when it came to grappling with real dangers and difficulties. Like his predecessor, he was only fit to be President in a time of profound peace; he was utterly out of place the instant matters grew turbulent, or difficult problems arose to be solved, and he was a ridiculously incompetent leader for a war with Great Britain. He was entirely too timid to have embarked on such a venture of his own accord, and was simply forced into it by the threat of losing his second term. The fiery young Democrats of the South and West, and their brothers of the Middle States, were the authors of the war; they themselves, for all their bluster, were but one shade less incompetent than their nominal chief, when it came to actual work, and were shamefully unable to make their words good by deeds.
The administration thus drifted into a war which it had neither the wisdom to avoid, nor the forethought to prepare for. In view of the fact that the war was their own, it is impossible to condemn sufficiently strongly the incredible folly of the Democrats in having all along refused to build a navy or provide any other adequate means of defense. In accordance with their curiously foolish theories, they persisted in relying on that weakest of all weak reeds, the militia, who promptly ran away every time they faced a foe in the open. This applied to all, whether eastern, western, or southern; the men of the northern states in 1812 and 1813 did as badly as, and no worse than, the Virginians in 1814. Indeed, one of the good results of the war was that it did away forever with all reliance on the old-time militia, the most expensive and inefficient species of soldiery that could be invented. During the first year the monotonous record of humiliations and defeats was only relieved by the splendid victories of the navy which the Federalists had created twelve years previously, and which had been hurt rather than benefited in the intervening time. Gradually, however, the people themselves began to bring out leaders: two, Jackson and Scott, were really good generals, under whom our soldiers became able to face even the English regulars, then the most formidable fighting troops in the world; and it must be remembered that Jackson won his fights absolutely unhelped by the administration. In fact, the government at Washington does not deserve one shred of credit for any of the victories we won, although to it we directly owe the greater number of our defeats.
Granting, however, all that can be said as to the hopeless inefficiency of the administration, both in making ready for and in waging the war, it yet remains true that the war itself was eminently justifiable, and was of the greatest service to the nation. We had been bullied by England and France until we had to fight to preserve our national self-respect; and we very properly singled out our chief aggressor, though it would perhaps have been better still to have acted on the proposition advanced in Congress, and to have declared war on both. Although nominally the peace left things as they had been, practically we gained our point; and we certainly came out of the contest with a greatly increased reputation abroad. In spite of the ludicrous series of failures which began with our first attempt to invade Canada, and culminated at Bladensburg, yet in a succession of contests on the ocean and the lakes, we shattered the charmed shield of British naval invincibility; while on the northern frontier we developed under Scott and Brown an infantry which, unlike any of the armies of continental Europe, was able to meet on equal terms the British infantry in pitched battle in the open; and at New Orleans we did what the best of Napoleon's marshals, backed by the flower of the French soldiers, had been unable to accomplish during five years of warfare in Spain, and inflicted a defeat such as no English army had suffered during a quarter of a century of unbroken warfare. Above all, the contest gave an immense impetus to our national feeling, and freed our politics forever from any dependence on those of a foreign power.