At the close of 1800 the navy had made great progress; and the Secretary of the Navy, Hon. Benjamin Stoddard of Baltimore, proposed in 1801 an annual appropriation of one million for its increase.
But in 1801 the spirited administration of Adams came to an end. He had favored the payment of the national debt; he had dared to anticipate the future, to impose taxes and provide ships; he had aided the formation of a military academy and advocated a system of coast-defence, and had boldly asserted our national rights against the French Republic; and yet he loved peace so well, that, against the advice and wishes of his party and his cabinet, he sent a minister to France, who made an honorable treaty. Posterity sees little to censure in all these measures, for they evince the courage and forecast of the great Statesman of the Revolution; but they were assailed by his opponents, and aided in effecting his defeat.
Jefferson came into power as the advocate of retrenchment and reform,—captivating terms! Under his administration the military academy was thrown into the shade, the coast-defences were forgotten, most of the new frigates and sloops built by patriotic citizens were sold, the navy reduced to ten frigates, half of which were suffered to decay, the frames of the ships of the line were used for repairs, and the appropriations for the increase of the navy were reduced to the pitiful sum of a quarter of a million, which was applied principally to gunboats. Of these Jefferson built no less than one hundred and seventy, at a cost of $10,500 each,—incurring for the construction and maintenance of this flotilla an expense of nearly three millions, without a particle of benefit to the country.
We would not detract from the services of Jefferson. Posterity will honor him as the Patriot of the Revolution, as the champion of the rights of man; but will it not trace to his policy as a statesman, in the cabinet of Washington, in the opposition to Adams, and in the office of President, the grave errors from which sprang the embargo, non-intercourse, and the second war with England? At the close of his administration in 1809, he claimed credit for having left eighteen millions in the Treasury after payment of twenty-six millions of the debt of the Revolution in less than seven years, and his successor, Madison, in 1812, had over eleven millions in funds and cash in the Treasury after the extinguishment of forty-nine millions of the Revolutionary debt,—the expenses of Government, in the mean time, exclusive of the debt, having averaged from five to seven millions only. But parsimony is not always economy.
The embargo cost the nation at least forty millions; non-intercourse twenty more; the war in three years added one hundred and thirteen millions to the debt, with at least an equal loss by the sacrifice of commerce and heavy drafts by taxes: and if the embargo, non-intercourse, and war can be traced to the loss of the navy, we find a saving of a million per annum in ships dearly purchased by a loss of capital which, at compound interest, would exceed to-day one-third the computed wealth of the nation.
Had the policy of Adams been continued from 1800 to 1808, the annual million, aided by the live-oak and cedar frames, the three millions paid for gun-boats, and the frigates on hand when Jefferson came into power, would have provided or placed upon the stocks ten ships of the line, forty frigates, and ten sloops-of-war. If with the increase of revenue this estimate had been doubled in 1808, the material collected and the ships held back until the latter part of 1812, the country would have been supplied with twenty sail of the line, fifty frigates, and thirty sloops-of-war,—a force which would have employed at least threefold its number of English ships, upon our coast, upon the passage, and in the dock-yards. Impressment, orders in council, paper blockades, would have gone down before such a force of American ships ere one-tenth of it had left our harbors; for England, distressed for men and at war with the Continent, could not have spared the ships required to meet such a navy. The reports of Jefferson and Madison now make it apparent, that, without omitting to pay one instalment of the debt, they could have carried out the policy of Adams and provided a navy the very aspect of which would have commanded the respect and deference of the only foe we had occasion to dread.
This point is most forcibly illustrated by the speeches of Lowndes and Cheves of South Carolina in Congress a few years later, cited by Henry Clay in 1812, in which they very justly say,—"If England should determine to station permanently on our coast a squadron of twelve ships of the line, she would require for this service thirty-six ships of the line, one-third in port repairing, one-third on the passage, and one-third on the station; but that is a force which it has been shown England, with her limited navy, could not spare for the American service." For once, at least, two of the gifted sons of South Carolina sustained the views of Massachusetts. The War of the Revolution and the War of 1812 have both demonstrated that England can maintain no permanent blockade through the winter on our waters, and the largest fleet upon our Atlantic coast during the last war did not exceed twenty sail of armed vessels of all sizes.
Jefferson, in his "Notes on Virginia," in 1785 had expressed his views on our maritime policy in the following terms:—
"You ask me what I think of the expediency of encouraging our States to become commercial. Were I to indulge my own theory, I wish them to practise neither commerce or navigation, but to stand with respect to Europe precisely on the footing of China."
We have seen the commercial policy of Adams illustrated by the creation of a navy; we now see the anti-commercial theory of Jefferson illustrated by its overthrow.