With the view of shortening the conflict and ameliorating the condition of those engaged in it as much as possible, previous and subsequent to the declaration of war, they sought to place the financial department of the nation in a situation to meet the demands that would be made upon it in case of that event. In pursuance of this view, the secretary of the treasury, Mr. Gallatin, whose reputation for financiering stood high, was selected to devise and report a system that should accomplish the desired object. The public disappointment was excessive when his report appeared, which, instead of exhibiting any new feature in finance—instead of deriving revenue from the vast, existing and appropriate national sources—proposed to obtain it in the old obnoxious ways from excise, stamp duties, &c. Although deeply regretting that amore efficient plan was not provided, still, with a spirit that seemed resolved to turn to the best possible account the propositions of the secretary, they commenced levying taxes according to his plan. To this end Mr. Cheves, chairman of the committee of ways and means, diligently employed himself in preparing bills, whose object was the raising of revenue. After their completion and presentation, a discovery was made that well nigh proved fatal to this. It was ascertained through the efforts of Mr. Smiley, an intimate friend of the secretary of the treasury, that both he and the president were opposed to levying taxes at the time of the declaration of war, declaring ‘that the people would not take both war and taxes together.’
The non-concurrence of the executive in their financial scheme, was a source of bitter though unavailing regret to Mr. Clay and his coadjutors. It was, to be sure, defective, but had not this insuperable obstacle been interposed in the way of its being carried out, the treasury would have been to a considerable extent replenished with funds; the early want of which was a serious detriment felt during the whole war. To the influence of Mr. Gallatin, in a great measure, doubtless, the opposition of Mr. Madison to the conjunction of the two measures was owing. He was very susceptible of influence, especially from those in whom he reposed confidence, such as he did in the secretary. The same kind of influence, inducing him to procrastinate a declaration of war, Mr. Clay found him laboring under, when, as one of a deputation, he was sent to wait on and urge him to delay no longer, telling him that farther argument was useless, that the ultima thule of talking had been reached, and that the time for prompt and vigorous action had arrived. To illustrate the difference between speaking and writing, and acting, he repeated to Mr. Madison an anecdote of two Kentucky judges. ‘One talked incessantly from the bench. He reasoned every body to death. He would deliver an opinion, and first try to convince the party that agreed with him, and then the opposite party. The consequence was that business lagged, the docket accumulated, litigants complained, and the community were dissatisfied. He was succeeded by a judge who never gave any reasons for his opinion, but decided the case simply for the plaintiff or defendant. His decisions were rarely reversed by the appellate court, the docket melted away, litigants were no longer exposed to ruinous delay, and the community were contented.’ This humorous sally of Mr. Clay occasioned the president much mirth, who replied by relating an anecdote which occurred to him, of a French judge, who, said he, after hearing the arguments of the parties, put their papers in opposite scales, and decided the case according to the preponderance of weight.
Attempts on the part of the United States to prevent hostilities, did not cease until war had been declared, and even then a dispositionwas manifested to put a speedy termination to them, for in one week after this event, Mr. Jonathan Russell, our chargé d’affaires at the court of St. James, received instructions to agree to an armistice as a preliminary to a treaty, provided the British government should repeal her orders in council, and discontinue the impressment of our seamen, and afterwards without insisting upon any particular agreement. All our pacific efforts, however, were fruitless, our proposals refused with disdain, and accompanied with language of reproach and insult, even conveying the idea that the conduct of the United States was pusillanimous. She refused to treat with us at all, unless as preliminary we would recall our letters of marque and reprisal, and cease all hostile acts towards British property and British subjects. Such degrading conditions could never be submitted to by the United States, although the federal party were willing and even clamorous to comply with them. The virtue and patriotism of the people, however, preponderated over all the vile attempts at causing the nation to accept the disgraceful terms dictated by her haughty foe, to procure the repose she desired. The middle of September found us still endeavoring to procure an adjustment of our difficulties amicably. The proposals of Mr. Russell, though of the most liberal nature, were treated contemptuously, and at an interview on the seventeenth of September, lord Castlereagh expressed great astonishment that American commissioners should still continue to indulge the expectation that the right of impressment should ever be relinquished, and even had the arrogance to say that ‘our friends in congress had been so confident in that mistake, that they had ascribed the failure of such an arrangement solely to the misconduct of the American government.’ The demands of the British in insolence seemed to have no limits; asking if the ‘United States would deliver up the native British seamen who might be naturalized in America.’ ‘If,’ said lord Castlereagh, ‘the American government was so anxious to get rid of the war, it would have an opportunity of doing so, on learning the revocation of the orders in council.’
It was sufficiently obvious now that nothing remained but to prosecute the war as vigorously as possible. Our arms, in several cases, had been unsuccessful. The circumstances of the delivery of Detroit into the hands of the enemy by general Hull, were such as to render it certain that treason had some agency in it. These disasters tended to dampen the ardor of some, and to render more confident and blustering demagogues and federalists, who went about croaking like birds of ill omen, doing all in their power to infuse a spirit inimical to the course then pursuing, and bring opprobrium on the administration party. They continually referred to those partial failures as the sure prognostics that the whole country would fall an easy prey to the enemy. But these reverses weresubsequently in a measure repaired, by the successful and gallant achievements of a body of western volunteers, led on by general Harrison, over the British and their allies, the barbarous savages. Our brilliant victories on the sea were such as to kindle up the expiring energies in the hearts of the despairing, and to nerve to nobler deeds the intrepid. They evinced what could be accomplished by determination and valor combined. The British frigate Guerriere had been captured by captain Hull, commander of the frigate Constitution; commodore Rodgers had rendered most signal service to our commercial interests; all which tended to impart a fresh impulse to our army and navy.
During the interval between the adjournment and re-assembling of congress, Mr. Clay watched the progress of the war with the most intense interest. This was the all-absorbing subject of his soul, engaging its every faculty and principle; and the efforts which he made to secure its successful termination were as strenuous as they were unremitted. In public assemblies, in private circles, it was the theme on which he dwelt continually, and around which he twined the richest wreaths of his oratorical and colloquial skill. He always had a weapon ready to prostrate the opposition of the federalist and demagogue, however speciously presented. The grounds of encouragement to proceed, and the prospect of ultimate success, were so clearly elucidated by him, that the timid gathered confidence, and the bold redoubled their energies. Hope and courage were his constant companions, from which fear and cowardice fled away. These spread their animating influences far and wide, and like a beacon light lit up the whole land. Had Mr. Clay been engaged in a personal enterprize in which he had embarked his all, where fortune, fame, reputation, and life itself were at issue, he could not have manifested greater solicitude for the result, or put forth more gigantic efforts to render it favorable, than he did in relation to the war of the nation. If patriotism, undoubted and unadulterated, be not deducible from his agency in originating, prosecuting and consummating the war, on what page of the world’s annals is it chronicled? The history of the Grecian and Roman republics furnish many instances of exalted, self-sacrificing patriotism—of those who under its influence met death as joyfully as they would have met a friend. Inspired by this principle we hear one of their bards exclaim,
‘Dulce est pro patria mori.’
It is sweet to die for one’s country
But the lofty action of Mr. Clay in connection with this his country’s crisis, his prompt response to her cry for aid, his unwavering attachment to her cause, and his ardent devotion to her interests, present an example of patriotic love and zeal, which may be placed by the side of similar ones on the records of thosenations, without the slightest fear of disparagement,—indeed as justifying the belief that if she had required a similar sacrifice, the victim would not have been wanting.
Mr. Clay advocated war, not as an experimental measure, not for the purpose of furnishing him an opportunity of gratifying his ambitious private projects, as his enemies desired it to be believed, but as the dernier resort, as that only which could raise from her prostrate condition his country, and restore her to that rank to which she was entitled as an independent nation. The result proved the correctness of his prediction, while it exposed the falsity of that pronouncing the measure as certain to eventuate in her ruin.
When he first approached the subject, he found it surrounded by a cloud of gloom, rendered dense and dark by the adverse circumstances of his country, and which was made every day more murky by the unpatriotic attitude of the disaffected, and the insidious efforts of the openly hostile. To dispel this, all his energies were directed, and on the re-assembling of congress, pursuant to adjournment, he was gratified to behold some few glimmerings of light through the sombre mass. This cheering indication, added to the reviving influence imparted to him by his recent immediate contact with the people, fired his soul with an irrepressible fervency, and caused the flame of his patriotic ardor to burn so intensely as to consume all opposing materials. For this flame, plenty of fuel was furnished by those, who evinced, by their deadly hostility, a desire to see the unequal struggle then going on between England and the United States, terminate in favor of the former. In some, this hostility, breaking over all bounds of decency, vented itself in the grossest lampoon. Their endeavors appeared more like the spasmodic efforts of a drowning man, than the skilfully directed attempts of enlightened opposers, as though they were determined, if possible, to accomplish the fulfilment of their predictions, which now, from the recent victorious feats of our arms, seemed quite dubious. Soon after the commencement of the session, the first subject of importance that came before the representatives of the people, was that of increasing the army. Mr. Clay, and those whose views were coincident with his, desired to concentrate the nation’s energies in prosecuting the war to a glorious completion; to do which, fresh and gratifying evidence had been given. To secure this, it was proposed to augment the army by a recruit of twenty thousand men. The committee on military affairs in the house reported a bill for the purpose, which was considered in committee of the whole, and debated at length. From the opposition, this proposition met the most violent assault, and also those who supported it. The warmest opposers were found in the persons of Messrs. Randolph, Pitkin and Quincy. The speech of the latter gentleman is said to have ‘produced disgust on all sidesof the house,’ and for violence and abuse stands unrivalled. Its most scurrilous expressions have been expunged; enough, however, remains to determine its original character. Speaking of the war, he observed, ‘there is nothing in history like this war since the invasion of the bucaneers. The disgrace of our armies is celestial glory compared to the disgrace reflected on our country by this invasion;’ (the proposed invasion of Canada;) ‘yet it is called a war for glory! Glory? Yes, such glory as that of the tiger when he tears the bowels from the lamb, filling the wilderness with its savage roars; the glory of Zenghis Khan, without his greatness; the glory of Bonaparte. Far from me and mine, and far from my country be such glory!’ He stigmatized those in favor of the war as ‘household troops, who lounge for what they can pick up about the government house; who come here, and with their families live and suck upon the breast of the treasury; toad-eaters, who live on eleemosynary, ill-purchased courtesy, upon the palace, swallow great men’s spittle, and get judgeships, and wonder at the fine sights, and fine rooms, and fine company, and most of all, wonder how they themselves got there.’ The state of public feeling in Massachusetts respecting the invasion, he stated by saying, that ‘he had conversed upon the question with men of all ranks and conditions in Massachusetts, with men hanging over the plough and on the spade, judicious, honest, patriotic, sober men, who, if it were requisite, and their sense of moral duty went along with the war, would fly to the standard of their country at the winding of a horn, but who now hear yours with the same indifference they would have heard a jews-harp or a banjo.’ He was particularly severe on those in the house who advised the rigid prosecution of the war, by calling them ‘young politicians, with the pin-feathers yet unshed, the shell still sticking upon them; perfectly unfledged, though they fluttered and cackled on the floor; who favored such extravagant and ignorant opinions of a very proud nation.’ He said, ‘it would ill become a man whose family had been two centuries settled in the state, and whose interests, connections and affections were exclusively American, to shrink from his duty for the yelping of those blood-hound mongrels who were kept in pay to hunt down all who opposed the court; a pack of mangy hounds of recent importation; their backs still sore with the stripes of European castigation, and their necks marked with the check collar.’