He was once tempted to concede that we might apply a year's revenue to a navy, but that year he never designated. Perhaps, if he could have foreseen the unceremonious way in which a few English frigates have of late years dealt with China, or the facility with which they have compelled her to pay millions for a drug alike pernicious to character and health, or the report of the treaty and tribute dictated from the walls of Pekin,—or could he have foreseen the progress of Lord Cochrane's frigates up the Potomac, regardless of his gunboats,—could he have foreshadowed the conflagration of the Capitol and the exit of the Cabinet,—he would perhaps have attached more importance to a navy and found less to admire in the policy of China, and doubtless his immediate successor would not have aimed a side-blow at our army and navy, as he did, in suggesting "that the fifteenth century was the unhappy epoch of military establishments in the time of peace."
But our country, under Jefferson and Madison, for twelve years adopted the blind policy of China. The navy was suffered to decay. In 1807 but one frigate and five sloops-of-war were in commission. The Federal party, however, although in a weak minority, did not tamely submit to the unhappy policy of Southern statesmen; and individuals even of the dominant party opposed it. Among these, the late Justice Story, who in 1807 represented the County of Essex in Congress, made an effort for the revival of the navy. But it was objected, on the part of the Administration, that such a force would be impotent against Great Britain. Williams, subsequently Governor of South Carolina, insisted, that, if we built ships, they would all fall into the hands of the British; and the capture of the Danish fleet at Copenhagen was instanced,—the fall of Genoa, Venice, and Carthage, notwithstanding their navies, being also cited. Story, with almost a prescience of the future, urged in its favor,—"I was born among the hardy sons of the ocean, and I cannot doubt their courage or their skill; if Great Britain ever gets possession of our present little navy, it will be at the expense of the best blood of the country, and after a struggle which will call for more of her strength than she has ever found necessary for a European enemy." To which Williams replied,—"If our rights are only so to be saved, I would abandon the ocean." And in December, 1807, the ocean was abandoned.
No additions were made to the navy during the period of the embargo or non-intercourse, nor was a new ship sent to sea until after the peace; and at the commencement of the war, in June, 1812, the country had neither navy, fortifications, nor disciplined troops. The relics of the Federal navy then consisted of five frigates and seven sloops and brigs in commission, and three frigates under repair,—a feeble force, indeed, with which to meet the Mistress of the Seas, but which demonstrated by its achievements what fifty or a hundred sail might have accomplished.
In 1812, Quincy, in the House, and Lloyd, in the Senate, both from Massachusetts, advocated a navy, and Clay and Davies, of the West, raised their voices in its support; but their efforts were unavailing.
James Lloyd, who combined the intelligent merchant with the statesman, thus addressed the Senate:—"To make an impression on England, we must have a navy. Give us thirty swift-sailing, well-appointed frigates. In line-of-battle ships and fleet engagements, skill and experience would decide the victory. We are not ripe for them; but bolt together a British and American frigate side by side, and though we should lose sometimes, we should win as often. Give us this little fleet. Place your Navy Department under an able and spirited administration; cashier every officer who strikes his flag; and you will soon have a good account of your navy. This may be thought a hard tenure of service; but, hard or easy, I will engage in five weeks, yes, in five days, to officer this fleet from New England alone. Give us this little fleet, and in a quarter of the time in which you would operate upon her in any other way, we would bring Great Britain to terms. To terms, not to your feet. No, Sir! Great Britain is at this moment the most colossal power the world ever saw. It is true she has an enormous national debt. Her daily expenditure would in six short weeks wipe off all we owe. But will these millstones sink her? will they subject her to the power of France? No, Sir! let the bubble burst to-morrow,—destroy the fragile basis on which her public credit stands,—sponge out her national debt,—and, dreadful as would be the process, she would rise with renewed vigor from the fall, and present to her enemy a more imposing, irresistible front than ever. No, Sir! Great Britain cannot be subjected by France. The genius of her institutions, the genuine game-cock, bulldog spirit of her people, will lift her head above the waves. From this belief I acknowledge I derive a satisfaction. In New England our blood is unmixed. We are the direct descendants of Englishmen. We are natives of the soil. In the Legislature, now in session, of the once powerful and still respectable State of Massachusetts, composed of more than seven hundred members, to my knowledge not a single foreigner holds a seat. As Great Britain wrongs us, I would fight her. Yet I should be worse than a barbarian, did I not rejoice that the sepulchres of our forefathers, which are in that country, shall remain unsacked, and their coffins rest undisturbed, by the unhallowed rapacity of the Goths and Saracens of modern Europe. Let us have these thirty frigates. Powerful as Great Britain is, she could not blockade them; with our hazardous shores and tempestuous northwest gales, from November to March, all the navies in the world could not blockade them. Divide them into six squadrons; place those squadrons in the Northern ports, ready for sea; and at favorable moments we would pounce upon her West India Islands,—repeating the game of De Grasse and D'Estaing in '79 and '80. By the time she was ready to meet us there, we would be round Cape Horn, cutting up her whalemen. Pursued thither, we could skim away to the Indian Seas, and would give an account of her China and India ships very different from that of the French cruisers. Now we would follow her Quebec, and now her Jamaica convoys; sometimes make our appearance in the chops of the Channel, and even sometimes wind north about into the Baltic. It would require a hundred British frigates to watch the movements of these thirty. Such are the means by which I would bring Great Britain to her senses. By harassing her commerce with this fleet, we could make the people ask the Government why they continued to violate our rights; whether it were for her interest to sever the chief tie between her and us, by compelling us to become a manufacturing people (and on this head we could make an exhibition that would astonish both friends and foes); what she was to gain by forcing us prematurely to become a naval power, destined one day or other to dispute with her the sceptre of the ocean? We could, in short, bring the people to ask the Government, For whose benefit is this war? And the moment this is brought about on both sides of the water, the business is finished; you would only have to agree on fair and equal terms of peace."
And Daniel Webster, just entering upon public life, made one of his earliest efforts in Congress for a navy. In his characteristic manner, he urged, in 1814,—"If war must continue, go to the ocean; let it no longer be said, not one ship of force built by your hands since the war yet floats; if you are seriously contending for maritime rights, go to the theatre where alone those rights can be defended. Thither every indication of your future calls you. There the united wishes and exertions of the nation will go with you."
But a Southern Cabinet still clung to the Chinese policy, and the war for maritime rights was confided to a raw militia upon the land, while Hull, Bainbridge, Stewart, Porter, and Barney were performing the very feats which Lloyd had pictured to the Senate. A vote, it is true, was at length passed, to build four ships of the line, six frigates, and six sloops; but none were finished before the close of the war; and it was not until after its conclusion that the Democratic party, so long opposed to Federal measures, and triumphant from their very opposition, after a loss of at least three hundred millions, caused by their abandonment, gave the most conclusive proof of their value by funding the debt, re-establishing the navy, reviving the Military Academy at West Point, fortifying the coast, and making a tariff for revenue with incidental protection. Well might party-strife cease under the veteran Monroe; for Democracy had become Federalized.
The sketch thus given of the rise and progress of our navigation, and of the origin and decline of our navy, affords us a commanding view of the position of our nation when it adopted the Chinese policy and withdrew from the ocean.
Let us now glance for a moment at the state of Europe at the close of 1807. The great struggle of England and France was in progress. Napoleon, by his brilliant exploits, had subdued Italy and Holland, established the Empire, and by the battles of Marengo, Jena, Austerlitz, and Friedland, humbled Austria, overwhelmed Prussia, and conquered a peace with Russia. The Continent, from the Pyrenees to the Vistula, was subject to his sway, and he had closed it against the manufactures of England. This nation, alike victorious on the sea, had nearly annihilated the navy of France, captured the fleet of Denmark, swept the French and Dutch ships from the ocean, and was now seizing the possessions of France and Holland in the Indies. Regardless of neutral rights, she had declared every part of the Continent, from the Pyrenees to the Elbe, in a state of blockade.
To escape impressment, or to obtain higher wages, many of her seamen enlisted in our service. Anxious to reclaim them and to man all her ships, she followed them into American vessels, and impressed American seamen as Englishmen, without the least respect to the rights of a neutral that did not assert by arms the dignity of its flag.