THE
SECOND ADMINISTRATION
OF
JAMES MADISON
1813–1817

HISTORY
OF THE
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
DURING THE SECOND ADMINISTRATION OF
JAMES MADISON

By HENRY ADAMS

Vol. III.

NEW YORK:
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS.
1921

Copyright, 1890
By Charles Scribner’s Sons.

Copyright, 1918
By Charles Francis Adams and Horace D. Chapin.

CONTENTS OF VOL. III.

HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES.

CHAPTER I.

During the spring and summer of 1814 the task of diplomacy was less hopeful than that of arms. Brown and Izard with extreme difficulty defended the frontier; but Gallatin and Bayard could find no starting-point for negotiation. Allowed by Castlereagh’s courtesy to visit England, they crossed the Channel in April, and established themselves in London. There Gallatin remained until June 21, waiting for the British government to act, and striving with tact, caution, and persistency to bring both governments on common ground; but the attempt was hopeless. England was beside herself with the intoxication of European success.

Although the English newspapers expressed a false idea of the general will, and were even at cross purposes with the Ministry in American matters, their tone was in some respects an indifferent barometer for measuring the elation or depression of the public temper, and exercised some influence, rather apparent than real, on the momentary attitudes of government. Had Castlereagh and his colleagues been really controlled by the press, no American peace could have been made. Whatever spirit of friendship for America might exist was necessarily silent, and only extravagant enmity found expression either in the press or in society.

Perhaps because ministers were believed to wish for peace with the United States, the London “Times,” which was not a ministerial journal, made itself conspicuous in demanding war. The “Times” had not previously shown a vindictive spirit, but it represented the Wellesley and Canning interest, which could discover no better course than that of being more English than England, and more patriotic than the Government. The “Times” was always ably written and well edited, but its language toward the United States showed too strong a connection with that of the Federalists, from whose public and private expressions the press of England formed its estimate of American character.

The “Times” indulged to excess in the pleasure of its antipathy. Next to Napoleon, the chief victim of English hatred was Madison. For so mild a man Madison possessed a remarkable faculty of exciting invective. The English press surpassed the American Federalists in their allusions to him, and the “Times” was second to no English newspaper in the energy of its vituperation. “The lunatic ravings of the philosophic statesman of Washington” were in its political category of a piece with “his spaniel-like fawning on the Emperor of Russia.[1]... The most abject of the tools of the deposed tyrant; ... doubtless he expected to be named Prince of the Potomack or Grand Duke of Virginia.”[2] The “Sun” somewhat less abusively spoke of “that contemptible wretch Madison, and his gang;”[3] but the “Times” habitually called him liar and impostor.

“Having disposed of all our enemies in Europe,” the “Times” in the middle of April turned its attention to the United States. “Let us have no cant of moderation,” was its starting-point. “There is no public feeling in the country stronger than that of indignation against the Americans; ... conduct so base, so loathsome, so hateful.... As we urged the principle, No peace with Bonaparte! so we must maintain the doctrine of, No peace with James Madison!”[4] To this rule the “Times” steadily adhered with a degree of ill-temper not easily to be described, and with practical objects freely expressed. “Mr. Madison’s dirty, swindling manœuvres in respect to Louisiana and the Floridas remain to be punished,” it declared April 27; and May 17 it pursued the idea: “He must fall a victim to the just vengeance of the Federalists. Let us persevere. Let us unmask the impostor.... Who cares about the impudence which they call a doctrine?... We shall demand indemnity.... We shall insist on security for Canada.... We shall inquire a little into the American title to Louisiana; and we shall not permit the base attack on Florida to go unpunished.” May 18 it declared that Madison had put himself on record as a liar in the cause of his Corsican master. “He has lived an impostor, and he deserves to meet the fate of a traitor. That fate now stares him in the face.” May 24 the “Times” resumed the topic: “They are struck to the heart with terror for their impending punishment; and oh may no false liberality, no mistaken lenity, no weak and cowardly policy, interpose to save them from the blow! Strike! chastise the savages, for such they are!... With Madison and his perjured set no treaty can be made, for no oath can bind them.” When British commissioners were at last announced as ready to depart for Ghent to negotiate for peace with the United States, June 2, the “Times” gave them instructions: “Our demands may be couched in a single word,—Submission!”

The “Morning Post,” a newspaper then carrying higher authority than the “Times,” used language if possible more abusive, and even discovered, Jan. 18, 1814, “a new trait in the character of the American government. Enjoying the reputation of being the most unprincipled and the most contemptible on the face of the earth, they were already known to be impervious to any noble sentiment; but it is only of late that we find them insensible of the shame of defeat, destitute even of the brutish quality of being beaten into a sense of their unworthiness and their incapacity.” Of Madison the “Morning Post” held the lowest opinion. He was “a despot in disguise; a miniature imitation” and miserable tool of Bonaparte, who wrote his Annual Message; a senseless betrayer of his country.[5]

The “Times” and “Morning Post” were independent newspapers, and spoke only for themselves; but the “Courier” was supposed to draw inspiration from the Government, and commonly received the first knowledge of ministers’ intentions. In temper the “Courier” seemed obliged to vie with its less favored rivals. The President’s Annual Message of 1813 resembled in its opinion “all the productions of that vain and vulgar Cabinet;” it was “a compound of canting and hypocrisy, of exaggeration and falsehood, of coarseness without strength, of assertions without proof, of the meanest prejudices, and of the most malignant passions; of undisguised hatred of Great Britain, and of ill-concealed partiality and servility toward France.”[6] “We know of no man for whom we feel greater contempt than for Mr. Madison,” said the “Courier” of May 24. These illustrations of what the “Courier” called “exaggeration and falsehood, of coarseness without strength, of assertions without proof, of the meanest prejudices, and of the most malignant passions” were probably in some degree a form as used by the “Courier,” which would at a hint from the Ministry adopt a different tone; but announcements of official acts and intentions were more serious, and claimed more careful attention.

Immediately after the capitulation of Paris, March 31, the Ministry turned its attention to the United States, and the “Courier” announced, April 15, that twenty thousand men were to go from the Garonne to America. Mr. Madison, the “Courier” added, had “made a pretty kettle of fish of it.” Twenty thousand men were about two thirds of Wellington’s English force, and their arrival in America would, as every Englishman believed, insure the success of the campaign. Not until these troops were embarked would the Ministry begin to negotiate; but in the middle of May the military measures were complete, and then the “Courier” began to prepare the public mind for terms of peace.

These terms were the same as those announced by the “Times,” except that the “Courier” did not object to treating with Madison. The United States were to be interdicted the fisheries; Spain was to be supported in recovering Louisiana; the right of impressment must be expressly conceded,—anything short of this would be unwise and a disappointment. “There are points which must be conceded by America before we can put an end to the contest.”[7] Such language offered no apparent hope of peace; yet whatever hope existed lay in Castlereagh, who inspired it. Extravagant as the demands were, they fell short of the common expectation. The “Courier” admitted the propriety of negotiation; it insisted neither on Madison’s retirement nor on a division of the Union, and it refrained from asserting the whole British demand, or making it an ultimatum.

The chief pressure on the Ministry came from Canada, and could not be ignored. The Canadian government returned to its old complaint that Canadian interests had been ignorantly and wantonly sacrificed by the treaty of 1783, and that the opportunity to correct the wrong should not be lost. The Canadian official “Gazette” insisted that the United States should be required to surrender the northern part of the State of New York, and that both banks of the St. Lawrence should be Canadian property.[8] A line from Plattsburg to Sackett’s Harbor would satisfy this necessity; but to secure Canadian interests, the British government should further insist on acquiring the east bank of the Niagara River, and on a guaranty of the Indian Territory from Sandusky to Kaskaskias, with the withdrawal of American military posts in the Northwest. A pamphlet was published in May to explain the subject for the use of the British negotiators, and the required territorial cessions were marked on a map.[9] The control of the Lakes, the Ohio River as the Indian boundary, and the restitution of Louisiana were the chief sacrifices wished from the United States. The cession of a part of Maine was rather assumed than claimed, and the fisheries were to be treated as wholly English. A memorial from Newfoundland, dated Nov. 8, 1813,[10] pointed out the advantages which the war had already brought to British trade and fisheries by the exclusion of American competition, to the result of doubling the number of men employed on the Labrador shores; and the memorialists added,—

“They cannot too often urge the important policy ... of wholly excluding foreigners from sharing again in the advantages of a fishery from which a large proportion of our best national defence will be derived.”

British confidence was at its highest point when the Emperor of Russia and the King of Prussia visited London, June 7, and received an enthusiastic welcome. Gallatin obtained an interview with the Czar, June 17, and hoped that Russian influence might moderate British demands; but the Czar could give him no encouragement.[11] Gallatin wrote home an often-quoted despatch, dated June 13, warning the President that fifteen or twenty thousand men were on their way to America, and that the United States could expect no assistance from Europe.

“I have also the most perfect conviction,” Gallatin continued, “that under the existing unpropitious circumstances of the world, America cannot by a continuance of the war compel Great Britain to yield any of the maritime points in dispute, and particularly to agree to any satisfactory arrangement on the subject of impressment; and that the most favorable terms of peace that can be expected are the status ante bellum.”

Even these terms, Gallatin added, depended on American success in withstanding the shock of the campaign. He did not say that at the time he wrote, the status ante bellum would be scouted by public opinion in England as favorable to the United States; but his estimate of the situation was more nearly exact than though he had consulted only the apparent passions of the British press.

“Lord Castlereagh,” wrote Gallatin to Clay,[12] “is, according to the best information I can collect, the best disposed man in the Cabinet.” Yet Castlereagh did not venture at that stage to show a disposition for peace. He delayed the negotiation, perhaps wisely, six weeks after the American negotiators had assembled at Ghent; and his instructions[13] to the British commissioners, dated July 28, reflected the demands of the press. They offered, not the status ante bellum, but the uti possidetis, as the starting-point of negotiation. “The state of possession must be considered as the territorial arrangement which would revive upon a peace, except so far as the same may be modified by any new treaty.” The state of possession, in view of the orders that had then been given, or were to be given, for the invasion of the United States, was likely to cost the Americans half of Maine, between the Penobscot and the Passamaquoddy; Plattsburg, and the northern part of New York, Vermont, and New Hampshire; Fort Niagara, Mackinaw, and possibly New Orleans and Mobile. Besides this concession of the uti possidetis, or military occupation at the date of peace, the Americans were required at the outset to admit as a sine qua non, or condition precedent to any negotiation, that England’s Indian allies, the tribes of the Northwestern Territory, should be included in the pacification, and that a definite boundary should be assigned to them under a mutual guaranty of both Powers. Eastport, or Moose Island, and the fishing privileges were to be regarded as British. With these instructions of July 28, the British commissioners, early in August, started for Ghent.

Between Castlereagh’s ideas and those of Madison no relation existed. Gallatin and his colleagues at Ghent were provided with two sets of instructions. The first set had been written in 1813, for the expected negotiation at Petersburg. The second set was written in January, 1814, and was brought to Europe by Clay. Neither authorized the American commissioners to discuss such conditions as Castlereagh proposed. The President gave his negotiators authority to deal with questions of maritime law; but even there they were allowed to exercise no discretion on the chief issue in dispute. Monroe’s latest letter, dated January 28, was emphatic. “On impressment, as to the right of the United States to be exempted from it, I have nothing to add,” said the secretary;[14] “the sentiments of the President have undergone no change on that important subject. This degrading practice must cease; our flag must protect the crew, or the United States cannot consider themselves an independent nation.” The President would consent to exclude all British seamen, except those already naturalized, from American vessels, and to stipulate the surrender of British deserters; but the express abandonment of impressment was a sine qua non of treaty. “If this encroachment of Great Britain is not provided against,” said Monroe, “the United States have appealed to arms in vain. If your efforts to accomplish it should fail, all further negotiations will cease, and you will return home without delay.”

On territorial questions the two governments were equally wide apart. So far from authorizing a cession of territorial rights, Monroe instructed the American commissioners, both at St. Petersburg and at Ghent, “to bring to view the advantage to both countries which is promised by a transfer of the upper parts and even the whole of Canada to the United States.”[15] The instructions of January 1 and January 28, 1814, reiterated the reasoning which should decide England voluntarily to cede Canada. “Experience has shown that Great Britain cannot participate in the dominion and navigation of the Lakes without incurring the danger of an early renewal of the war.”[16]

These instructions were subsequently omitted from the published documents, probably because the Ghent commissioners decided not to act upon them;[17] but when the American negotiators met their British antagonists at Ghent, each party was under orders to exclude the other, if possible, from the Lakes, and the same divergence of opinion in regard to the results of two years’ war extended over the whole field of negotiation. The British were ordered to begin by a sine qua non in regard to the Indians, which the Americans had no authority to consider. The Americans were ordered to impose a sine qua non in regard to impressments, which the British were forbidden to concede. The British were obliged to claim the basis of possession; the Americans were not even authorized to admit the status existing before the war. The Americans were required to negotiate about blockades, contraband and maritime rights of neutrals; the British could not admit such subjects into dispute. The British regarded their concessions of fishing-rights as terminated by the war; the Americans could not entertain the idea.

The diplomacy that should produce a treaty from such discordant material must show no ordinary excellence; yet even from that point of view the prospect was not encouraging. The British government made a peculiar choice of negotiators. The chief British commissioner, Lord Gambier, was unknown in diplomacy, or indeed in foreign affairs. A writer in the London “Morning Chronicle” of August 9 expressed the general surprise that Government could make no better selection for the chief of its commission than Lord Gambier, “who was a post-captain in 1794, and happened to fight the ‘Defence’ decently in Lord Howe’s action; who slumbered for some time as a Junior Lord of the Admiralty; who sung psalms, said prayers, and assisted in the burning of Copenhagen, for which he was made a lord.”

Gambier showed no greater fitness for his difficult task than was to be expected from his training; and the second member of the commission, Henry Goulburn, could not supply Gambler’s deficiencies. Goulburn was Under-Secretary of State to Lord Bathurst; he was a very young man, but a typical under-secretary, combining some of Francis James Jackson’s temper with the fixed opinions of the elder Rose, and he had as little idea of diplomacy as was to be expected from an Under-Secretary of State for the colonies. The third and last member was William Adams, Doctor of Civil Law, whose professional knowledge was doubtless supposed to be valuable to the commission, but who was an unknown man, and remained one.

Experience had not convinced the British government that in dealing with the United States it required the best ability it could command. The mistake made by Lord Shelburne in 1783 was repeated by Lord Castlereagh in 1814. The miscalculation of relative ability which led the Foreign Office to assume that Gambier, Goulburn, and William Adams were competent to deal with Gallatin, J. Q. Adams, J. A. Bayard, Clay, and Russell was not reasonable. Probably the whole British public service, including Lords and Commons, could not at that day have produced four men competent to meet Gallatin, J. Q. Adams, Bayard, and Clay on the ground of American interests; and when Castlereagh opposed to them Gambier, Goulburn, and Dr. Adams, he sacrificed whatever advantage diplomacy offered; for in diplomacy as in generalship, the individual commanded success.

The only serious difficulty in the American commission was its excess of strength. By a natural reaction against the attempt to abolish diplomatic offices, the United States government sent into diplomacy its most vigorous men. Under favorable conditions, four minds and wills of so decided a character could not easily work together; but in the Ghent commission an additional difficulty was created by the unfortunate interference of the Senate. Originally Gallatin, as was due to his age, services, and ability, had been the head of the St. Petersburg commission; but the Senate refused to confirm the appointment. The President at last removed Gallatin from the Treasury, and renominated him as a member of the Ghent commission after the other members had been nominated and confirmed. The Senate then gave its approval,—thus making Gallatin the last member of the commission instead of the first, and placing J. Q. Adams above them all.

Gallatin was peculiarly fitted to moderate a discordant body like the negotiators, while Adams was by temperament little suited to the post of moderator, and by circumstances ill-qualified to appear as a proper representative of the commission in the eyes of its other members. Unless Gallatin were one of the loftiest characters and most loyal natures ever seen in American politics, Adams’s chance of success in controlling the board was not within reasonable hope. Gallatin was six years the senior, and represented the President, with the authority of close and continuous personal friendship. The board, including Adams himself, instinctively bowed to Gallatin’s authority; but they were deferential to no one else, least of all to their nominal head. Bayard, whose age was the same as that of Adams, was still in name a Federalist; and although his party trusted him little more than it trusted Adams or William Pinkney, who had avowedly become Republicans, he was not the more disposed to follow Adams’s leadership. Clay, though ten years their junior, was the most difficult of all to control; and Jonathan Russell, though a New Englander, preferred Clay’s social charm, and perhaps also his political prospects, to the somewhat repellent temper and more than doubtful popularity of Adams.

Personal rivalry and jealousies counted for much in such a group; but these were not the only obstacles to Adams’s influence. By a misfortune commonly reserved for men of the strongest wills, he represented no one but himself and a powerless minority. His State repudiated and, in a manner, ostracized him. Massachusetts gave him no support, even in defending her own rights; by every means in her power she deprived him of influence, and loaded him with the burden of her own unpopularity. Adams represented a community not only hostile to the war, but avowedly laboring to produce peace by means opposed to those employed at Ghent. If the Ghent commission should succeed in making a treaty, it could do so only by some sacrifice of Massachusetts which would ruin Adams at home. If the Ghent commission should fail, Adams must be equally ruined by any peace produced through the treasonable intrigues or overt rebellion of his State.

Such a head to a commission so constituted needed all the force of character which Adams had, and some qualities he did not possess, in order to retain enough influence to shape any project into a treaty that he could consent to sign; while Gallatin’s singular tact and nobility of character were never more likely to fail than in the effort to make allowance for the difficulties of his chief’s position. Had Castlereagh improved the opportunity by sending to Ghent one competent diplomatist, or even a well-informed and intelligent man of business, like Alexander Baring, he might probably have succeeded in isolating Adams, and in negotiating with the other four commissioners a treaty sacrificing Massachusetts.

The five American commissioners were ready to negotiate in June; but Castlereagh, for obvious reasons, wished delay, and deferred action until August, doubtless intending to prevent the signature of a treaty on the basis of uti possidetis until after September, when Sherbrooke and Prevost should have occupied the territory intended to be held. In May and June no one in England, unless it were Cobbett, entertained more than a passing doubt of British success on land and water; least of all did the three British commissioners expect to yield British demands. They came to impose terms, or to break negotiation. They were not sent to yield any point in dispute, or to seek a cessation of arms.

At one o’clock on the afternoon of August 8, the first conference took place in the Hotel des Pays Bas at Ghent. After the usual civilities and forms had passed, Goulburn took the lead, and presented the points which he and his colleagues were authorized to discuss,—(1) Impressment and allegiance; (2) the Indians and their boundary, a sine qua non; (3) the Canadian boundary; (4) the privilege of landing and drying fish within British jurisdiction. Goulburn declared that it was not intended to contest the right of the United States to the fisheries, by which he probably meant the deep-sea fisheries; and he was understood to disavow the intention of acquiring territory by the revision of the Canada boundary; but he urged an immediate answer upon the question whether the Americans were instructed on the point made a sine qua non by the British government.

The Americans, seeing as yet only a small part of the British demands, were not so much surprised at Goulburn’s points as unable to answer them. The next day they replied in conference that they had no authority to admit either Indian boundary or fisheries into question, being without instructions on these points; and in their turn presented subjects of discussion,—Blockades and Indemnities; but professed themselves willing to discuss everything.

In the conversation following this reply, the British commissioners, with some apparent unwillingness, avowed the intention of erecting the Indian Territory into a barrier between the British possessions and the United States; and the American commissioners declined even to retire for consultation on the possibility of agreeing to such an article. The British commissioners then proposed to suspend conferences until they could receive further instructions, and their wish was followed. Both parties sent despatches to their Governments.

Lord Castlereagh was prompt. As soon as was reasonably possible he sent more precise instructions. Dated August 14,[18] these supplementary instructions gave to those of July 28 a distinct outline. They proposed the Indian boundary fixed by the Treaty of Greenville for the permanent barrier between British and American dominion, beyond which neither government should acquire land. They claimed also a “rectification” of the Canadian frontier, and the cession of Fort Niagara and Sackett’s Harbor, besides a permanent prohibition on the United States from keeping either naval forces or land fortifications on the Lakes. Beyond these demands the British commissioners were not for the present to go, nor were they to ask for a direct cession of territory for Canada “with any view to an acquisition of territory as such, but for the purpose of securing her possessions and preventing future disputes;”[19] yet a small cession of land in Maine was necessary for a road from Halifax to Quebec, and an arrangement of the Northwestern boundary was required to coincide with the free navigation of the Mississippi.

As soon as the new instructions reached Ghent the British commissioners summoned the Americans to another conference, August 19; and Goulburn, reading from Castlereagh’s despatch, gave to the Americans a clear version of its contents.[20] When he had finished, Gallatin asked what was to be done with the American citizens—perhaps one hundred thousand in number—already settled beyond the Greenville line, in Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Michigan? Goulburn and Dr. Adams replied that these people must shift for themselves. They added also that Moose Island and Eastport belonged to Great Britain as indisputably as the county of Northamptonshire, and were not a subject for discussion; but they would not then make a sine qua non of the proposition regarding the Lakes. The conference ended, leaving the Americans convinced that their answer to these demands would close the negotiation. Clay alone, whose knowledge of the Western game of brag stood him in good stead, insisted that the British would recede.[21]

The British commissioners the next day, August 20, sent an official note containing their demands, and the Americans before sending their reply forwarded the note to America, with despatches dated August 19 and 20, announcing that they intended to return “a unanimous and decided negative.”[22] They then undertook the task of drawing up their reply. Upon Adams as head of the commission fell the duty of drafting formal papers,—a duty which, without common consent, no other member could assume. His draft met with little mercy, and the five gentlemen sat until eleven o’clock of August 24, “sifting, erasing, patching, and amending until we were all wearied, though none of us was yet satiated with amendment.” At the moment when they gave final shape to the note which they believed would render peace impossible, the army of General Ross was setting fire to the Capitol at Washington, and President Madison was seeking safety in the Virginia woods.

Only to persons acquainted with the difficulties of its composition did the American note of August 24 show signs of its diverse origin.[23] In dignified temper, with reasoning creditable to its authors and decisive on its issues, it assured the British negotiators that any such arrangement as they required for the Indians was contrary to precedent in public law, was not founded on reciprocity, and was unnecessary for its professed object in regard to the Indians. The other demands were equally inadmissible:—

“They are founded neither on reciprocity, nor on any of the usual bases of negotiation, neither on that of uti possidetis nor of status ante bellum. They are above all dishonorable to the United States in demanding from them to abandon territory and a portion of their citizens; to admit a foreign interference in their domestic concerns, and to cease to exercise their natural rights on their own shores and in their own waters. A treaty concluded on such terms would be but an armistice.”

The negotiators were ready to terminate the war, both parties restoring whatever territory might have been taken, and reserving their rights over their respective seamen; but such demands as were made by the British government could not be admitted even for reference.

The American reply was sent to the British commissioners August 25, “and will bring the negotiation,” remarked J. Q. Adams, “very shortly to a close.”[24] The American commissioners prepared to quit Ghent and return to their several posts, while the British commissioners waited for instructions from London. Even Gallatin, who had clung to the hope that he could effect an arrangement, abandoned the idea, and believing that the British government had adopted a system of conquest, prepared for an immediate return to America.[25] Goulburn also notified his Government that the negotiation was not likely to continue, and reported some confidential warnings from Bayard that such conditions of peace would not only insure war, but would sacrifice the Federalist party. “It has not made the least impression upon me or upon my colleagues,” reported Goulburn to Bathurst.[26]

At that point the negotiation remained stationary for two months, kept alive by Liverpool, Castlereagh, and Bathurst, while they waited for the result of their American campaign. The despatch of August 20 crossed the Atlantic, and was communicated to Congress October 10, together with all other papers connected with the negotiation; but not until October 25 did the American commissioners write again to their Government.

CHAPTER II.

The British note of August 19 and the American rejoinder of August 24, brought about a situation where Lord Castlereagh’s influence could make itself felt. Castlereagh had signed the British instructions of July 28 and August 14,[27] and himself brought the latter to Ghent, where he passed August 19, before going to Paris on his way to the Congress at Vienna. He was at Ghent when Goulburn and his colleagues held their conference and wrote their note of August 19;[28] and he could not be supposed ignorant of their language or acts. Yet when he received at Paris letters from Goulburn, dated August 24 and 26,[29] he expressed annoyance that the American commissioners should have been allowed to place England in the attitude of continuing the war for purposes of conquest, and still more that the British commissioners should be willing to accept that issue and break off negotiation upon it. In a letter to Lord Bathurst, who took charge of the negotiation in his absence, Castlereagh suggested ideas altogether different from those till then advanced in England.[30]

“The substance of the question is,” said Castlereagh, “Are we prepared to continue the war for territorial arrangements? And if not, is this the best time to make our peace, saving all our rights, and claiming the fisheries, which they do not appear to question? In which case the territorial questions might be reserved for ulterior discussion. Or is it desirable to take the chance of the campaign, and then to be governed by circumstances?... If we thought an immediate peace desirable, as they are ready to waive all the abstract questions, perhaps they might be prepared to sign a provisional article of Indian peace as distinct from limits, and relinquish their pretensions to the islands in Passamaquoddy Bay, and possibly to admit minor adjustments of frontier, including a right of communication from Quebec to Halifax across their territory. But while I state this, I feel the difficulty of so much letting down the question under present circumstances.”

At the same time Castlereagh wrote to Goulburn, directing him to wait at Ghent for new instructions from London.[31] Lord Liverpool shared his disapproval of the manner in which the British commissioners had managed the case, and replied to Castlereagh, September 2, that the Cabinet had already acted in the sense he wished:[32]—

“Our commissioners had certainly taken a very erroneous view of our policy. If the negotiation had been allowed to break off upon the two notes already presented, or upon such an answer as they were disposed to return, I am satisfied that the war would have become quite popular in America.”

The idea that the war might become popular in America was founded chiefly on the impossibility of an Englishman’s conceiving the contrary; but in truth the Ministry most feared that the war might become unpopular in England.

“It is very material to throw the rupture of the negotiation, if it is to take place, upon the Americans,” wrote Liverpool, the same day, to the Duke of Wellington;[33] “and not to allow them to say that we have brought forward points as ultimata which were only brought forward for discussion, and at the desire of the American commissioners themselves. The American note is a most impudent one, and, as to all its reasoning, capable of an irresistible answer.”

New instructions were accordingly approved in Cabinet.[34] Drawn by Bathurst, and dated September 1, they contained what Liverpool considered an “irresistible answer” to the American note of August 24; but their force of logic was weakened by the admission that the previous British demands, though certainly stated as a sine qua non, were in reality not to be regarded as such. In private this retreat was covered by the pretext that it was intended only to keep the negotiation alive until better terms could be exacted.

“We cannot expect that the negotiation will proceed at present,” continued Liverpool’s letter to Castlereagh; “but I think it not unlikely, after our note has been delivered in, that the American commissioners will propose to refer the subject to their Government. In that case the negotiation may be adjourned till the answer is received, and we shall know the result of the campaign before it can be resumed. If our commander does his duty, I am persuaded we shall have acquired by our arms every point on the Canadian frontier which we ought to insist on keeping.”

Lord Gambier and his colleagues communicated their new instructions to the American negotiators in a long note dated September 4, and were answered by a still longer note dated September 9, which was also sent to London, and considered in Cabinet. Bathurst felt no anxiety about the negotiation in its actual stage. Goulburn wrote to him that “as long as we answer their notes, I believe that they will be ready to give us replies,” and urged only that Sir George Prevost should hasten his reluctant movements in Canada.[35] Bathurst wrote more instructions, dated September 16, directing his commissioners to abandon the demands for Indian territory and exclusive control of the Lakes, and to ask only that the Indians should be included in the peace.[36] The British commissioners sent their note with these concessions to the Americans September 19; and then for the first time the Americans began to suspect the possibility of serious negotiation. For six weeks they had dealt only with the question whether they should negotiate at all.

The demand that the Indians should be included in the treaty was one that under favorable circumstances the Americans would have rejected; but none of them seriously thought of rejecting it as their affairs then stood. When the American commissioners discussed the subject among themselves, September 20, Adams proposed to break off the negotiation on that issue; but Gallatin good-naturedly overruled him, and Adams would not himself, on cool reflection, have ventured to take such responsibility. Indeed, he suggested an article for an Indian amnesty, practically accepting the British demand.[37] He also yielded to Gallatin the ungrateful task of drafting the answers to the British notes; and thus Gallatin became in effect the head of the commission.

All Gallatin’s abilities were needed to fill the place. In his entire public life he had never been required to manage so unruly a set of men. The British commissioners were trying, and especially Goulburn was aggressive in temper and domineering in tone; but with them Gallatin had little trouble. Adams and Clay were persons of a different type, as far removed from British heaviness as they were from the Virginian ease of temper which marked the Cabinet of Jefferson, or the incompetence which characterized that of Madison. Gallatin was obliged to exert all his faculties to control his colleagues; but whenever he succeeded, he enjoyed the satisfaction of feeling that he had colleagues worth controlling. They were bent on combat, if not with the British, at all events with each other; and Gallatin was partly amused and partly annoyed by the unnecessary energy of their attitude.

The first divergence occurred in framing the reply to the British note of September 19, which while yielding essentials made a series of complaints against the United States,—and among the rest reproached them for their attempt to conquer Canada, and their actual seizure of Florida. Adams, who knew little about the secrets of Jefferson’s and Madison’s Administrations, insisted on resenting the British charges, and especially on justifying the United States government in its attacks upon Florida. Bayard protested that he could not support such a view, because he had himself publicly in Congress denounced the Government on the subject of Florida; and Gallatin was almost equally committed, for, as he frankly said, he had opposed in Cabinet for a whole year what had been done in Florida before he could succeed in stopping it.[38] Clay said nothing, but he had strong reasons for wishing that the British negotiators should not be challenged to quote his notorious speeches on the conquest of Canada. Adams produced Monroe’s instructions, and in the end compelled his colleagues to yield. His mistake in pressing such an issue was obvious to every one but himself, and would have been evident to him had he not been blinded by irritation at the British note. His colleagues retaliated by summarily rejecting as cant his argument that moral and religious duty required the Americans to take and settle the land of the Indians.[39]

After much discussion their note was completed and sent, September 26, to the British commissioners,[40] who forwarded it as usual to London, with a letter from Goulburn of the same date, written in the worst possible temper, and charging the American commissioners with making a variety of false and fraudulent statements.[41] While the British Cabinet detained it longer than usual for consideration, the Americans at Ghent felt their position grow weaker day by day.

Nothing warranted a serious hope of peace. Goulburn and his colleagues showed no thought of yielding acceptable conditions. The London “Courier” of September 29 announced what might be taken for a semi-official expression of the Ministry:—

“Peace they [the Americans] may make, but it must be on condition that America has not a foot of land on the waters of the St. Lawrence, ... no settlement on the Lakes, ... no renewal of the treaties of 1783 and 1794; ... and they must explicitly abandon their newfangled principles of the law of nations.”

Liverpool, writing to Castlereagh September 23,[42] said that in his opinion the Cabinet had “now gone to the utmost justifiable point in concession, and if they [the Americans] are so unreasonable as to reject our proposals, we have nothing to do but to fight it out. The military accounts from America are on the whole satisfactory.” The news of the cruel humiliation at Bladensburg and the burning of Washington arrived at Ghent October 1, and caused British and Americans alike to expect a long series of British triumphs, especially on Lake Champlain, where they knew the British force to be overwhelming.

Goulburn exerted himself to produce a rupture. His letter of September 26 to Bathurst treated the American offer of an Indian amnesty as a rejection of the British ultimatum. Again Lord Bathurst set him right by sending him, October 5, the draft of a reciprocal article replacing the Indians in their situation before the war; and the British commissioners in a note dated October 8, 1814, communicated this article once more as an ultimatum.[43] Harrison’s treaty of July 22 with the Wyandots, Delawares, Shawanees, and other tribes, binding them to take up arms against the British, had then arrived, and this news lessened the interest of both parties in the Indian question. None of the American negotiators were prepared to break off negotiations on that point at such a time, and Clay was so earnest to settle the matter that he took from Gallatin and Adams the task of writing the necessary acceptance of the British ultimatum. Gallatin and Clay decided to receive the British article as according entirely with the American offer of amnesty, and the note was so written.[44]

With this cordial admission of the British ultimatum the Americans coupled an intimation that the time had come when an exchange of general projects for the proposed treaty should be made. More than two months of discussion had then resulted only in eliminating the Indians from the dispute, and in agreeing to maintain silence in regard to the Lakes. Another great difficulty which had been insuperable was voluntarily removed by President Madison and his Cabinet, who after long and obstinate resistance at last authorized the commissioners, by instructions dated June 27, to omit impressment from the treaty. Considering the frequent positive declarations of the United States government, besides the rejection of Monroe’s treaty in 1807 and of Admiral Warren’s and Sir George Prevost’s armistice of 1812 for want of an explicit concession on that point, Monroe’s letter of June 27 was only to be excused as an act of common-sense or of necessity. The President preferred to represent it as an act of common-sense, warranted by the peace in Europe, which promised to offer no further occasion for the claim or the denial of the British right. On the same principle the subject of blockades was withdrawn from discussion; and these concessions, balanced by the British withdrawal from the Indian ultimatum and the Lake armaments, relieved the American commissioners of all their insuperable difficulties.

The British commissioners were not so easily rescued from their untenable positions. The American note of October 13, sent as usual to London, was answered by Bathurst October 18 and 20,[45] in instructions revealing the true British terms more completely than had yet been ventured. Bathurst at length came to the cardinal point of the negotiation. As the American commissioners had said in their note of August 24, the British government must choose between the two ordinary bases of treaties of peace,—the state before the war, or status ante bellum; and the state of possession, or uti possidetis. Until the middle of October, 1814, the uti possidetis, as a basis of negotiation, included whatever country might have been occupied by Sir George Prevost in his September campaign. Bathurst from the first intended to insist on the state of possession, but had not thought proper to avow it. His instructions of October 18 and 20 directed the British commissioners to come to the point, and to claim the basis of uti possidetis from the American negotiators:—

“On their admitting this to be the basis on which they are ready to negotiate, but not before they have admitted it, you will proceed to state the mutual accommodations which may be entered into in conformity with this basis. The British occupy Fort Michillimackinaw, Fort Niagara, and all the country east of the Penobscot. On the other hand the forces of the United States occupy Fort Erie and Fort Amherstburg [Malden]. On the government of the United States consenting to restore these two forts, Great Britain is ready to restore the forts of Castine and Machias, retaining Fort Niagara and Fort Michillimackinaw.”

Thus the British demand, which had till then been intended to include half of Maine and the whole south bank of the St. Lawrence River from Plattsburg to Sackett’s Harbor, suddenly fell to a demand for Moose Island, a right of way across the northern angle of Maine, Fort Niagara with five miles circuit, and the Island of Mackinaw. The reason for the new spirit of moderation was not far to seek. On the afternoon of October 17, while the British Cabinet was still deliberating on the basis of uti possidetis, news reached London that the British invasion of northern New York, from which so much had been expected, had totally failed, and that Prevost’s large army had precipitately retreated into Canada. The London “Times” of October 19 was frank in its expressions of disappointment:—

“This is a lamentable event to the civilized world.... The subversion of that system of fraud and malignity which constitutes the whole policy of the Jeffersonian school ... was an event to which we should have bent and yet must bend all our energies. The present American government must be displaced, or it will sooner or later plant its poisoned dagger in the heart of the parent State.”

The failure of the attempt on Baltimore and Drummond’s bloody repulse at Fort Erie became known at the same time, and coming together at a critical moment threw confusion into the Ministry and their agents in the press and the diplomatic service throughout Europe. The “Courier” of October 25 declared that “peace with America is neither practicable nor desirable till we have wiped away this late disaster;” but the “Morning Chronicle” of October 21–24 openly intimated that the game of war was at an end. October 31, the Paris correspondent of the London “Times” told of the cheers that rose from the crowds in the Palais Royal gardens at each recital of the Plattsburg defeat; and October 21 Goulburn wrote from Ghent to Bathurst,[46]—

“The news from America is very far from satisfactory. Even our brilliant success at Baltimore, as it did not terminate in the capture of the town, will be considered by the Americans as a victory and not as an escape.... If it were not for the want of fuel in Boston, I should be quite in despair.”

In truth the blockade was the single advantage held by England; and even in that advantage the Americans had a share as long as their cruisers surrounded the British Islands.

Liverpool wrote to Castlereagh, October 21,[47] commenting severely on Prevost’s failure, and finding consolation only in the thought that the Americans showed themselves even less patriotic than he had supposed them to be:—

“The capture and destruction of Washington has not united the Americans: quite the contrary. We have gained more credit with them by saving private property than we have lost by the destruction of their public works and buildings. Madison clings to office, and I am strongly inclined to think that the best thing for us is that he should remain there.”

Castlereagh at Vienna found himself unable to make the full influence of England felt, so long as such mortifying disasters by land and sea proved her inability to deal with an enemy she persisted in calling contemptible.

On the American commissioners the news came, October 21, with the effect of a reprieve from execution. Gallatin was deeply moved; Adams could not believe the magnitude of the success; but as far as regarded their joint action, the overthrow of England’s scheme produced no change. Their tone had always been high, and they saw no advantage to be gained by altering it. The British commissioners sent to them, October 21, the substance of the new instructions, offering the basis of uti possidetis, subject to modifications for mutual convenience.[48] The Americans by common consent, October 23, declined to treat on that basis, or on any other than the mutual restoration of territory.[49] They thought that the British government was still playing with them, when in truth Lord Bathurst had yielded the chief part of the original British demand, and had come to what the whole British empire regarded as essentials,—the right of way to Quebec, and the exclusion of American fishermen from British shores and waters.

The American note of October 24, bluntly rejecting the basis of uti possidetis, created a feeling akin to consternation in the British Cabinet. At first, ministers assumed that the war must go on, and deliberated only on the point to be preferred for a rupture. “We still think it desirable to gain a little more time before the negotiation is brought to a close,” wrote Liverpool to the Duke of Wellington,[50] October 28; and on the same day he wrote to Castlereagh at Vienna to warn him that the American war “will probably now be of some duration,” and treating of its embarrassments without disguise.[51] The Czar’s conduct at Vienna had annoyed and alarmed all the great Powers, and the American war gave him a decisive advantage over England; but even without the Russian complication, the prospect for ministers was not cheering.

“Looking to a continuance of the American war, our financial state is far from satisfactory,” wrote Lord Liverpool; “... the American war will not cost us less than £10,000,000, in addition to our peace establishment and other expenses. We must expect, therefore, to hear it said that the property tax is continued for the purpose of securing a better frontier for Canada.”

A week passed without bringing encouragement to the British Cabinet. On the contrary the Ministry learned that a vigorous prosecution of hostilities would cost much more than ten million pounds, and when Liverpool next wrote to Castlereagh, November 2,[52] although he could still see “little prospect for our negotiations at Ghent ending in peace,” he added that “the continuance of the American war will entail upon us a prodigious expense, much more than we had any idea of.” A Cabinet meeting was to be held the next day, November 3, to review the whole course of policy as to America.

Throughout the American difficulties, from first to last, the most striking quality shown by the British government was the want of intelligence which caused the war, and marked the conduct of both the war and the negotiations. If the foreign relations of every government were marked by the same character, politics could be no more than rivalry in the race to blunder; but in October, 1814, another quality almost equally striking became evident. The weakness of British councils was as remarkable as their want of intelligence. The government of England had exasperated the Americans to an animosity that could not forget or forgive, and every dictate of self-interest required that it should carry out its policy to the end. Even domestic politics in Parliament might have been more easily managed by drawing public criticism to America, while in no event could taxes be reduced to satisfy the public demand.[53] Another year of war was the consistent and natural course for ministers to prefer.

So the Cabinet evidently thought; but instead of making a decision, the Cabinet council of November 3 resorted to the expedient of shifting responsibility upon the Duke of Wellington. The Duke was then Ambassador at Paris. His life had been threatened by angry officers of Napoleon, who could not forgive his victories at Vittoria and Toulouse. For his own security he might be sent to Canada, and if he went, he should go with full powers to close the war as he pleased.

The next day, November 4, Liverpool wrote to Wellington, explaining the wishes of the Cabinet, and inviting him to take the entire command in Canada, in order to bring the war to an honorable conclusion.[54] Wellington replied November 9,—and his words were the more interesting because, after inviting and receiving so decided an opinion from so high an authority, the Government could not easily reject it. Wellington began by reviewing the military situation, and closed by expressing his opinion on the diplomatic contest:[55]—

“I have already told you and Lord Bathurst that I feel no objection to going to America, though I don’t promise to myself much success there. I believe there are troops enough there for the defence of Canada forever, and even for the accomplishment of any reasonable offensive plan that could be formed from the Canadian frontier. I am quite sure that all the American armies of which I have ever read would not beat out of a field of battle the troops that went from Bordeaux last summer, if common precautions and care were taken of them. That which appears to me to be wanting in America is not a general, or a general officer and troops, but a naval superiority on the Lakes.”

These views did not altogether accord with those of Americans, who could not see that the British generals made use of the Lakes even when controlling them, but who saw the troops of Wellington retire from one field of battle after another,—at Plattsburg, Baltimore, and New Orleans,—while taking more than common precautions. Wellington’s military comments showed little interest in American affairs, and evidently he saw nothing to be gained by going to Canada. His diplomatic ideas betrayed the same bias:—

“In regard to your present negotiations, I confess that I think you have no right, from the state of the war, to demand any concession of territory from America.... You have not been able to carry it into the enemy’s territory, notwithstanding your military success and now undoubted military superiority, and have not even cleared your own territory on the point of attack. You cannot on any principle of equality in negotiation claim a cession of territory excepting in exchange for other advantages which you have in your power.... Then if this reasoning be true, why stipulate for the uti possidetis? You can get no territory; indeed, the state of your military operations, however creditable, does not entitle you to demand any.”

After such an opinion from the first military authority of England, the British Ministry had no choice but to abandon its claim for territory. Wellington’s letter reached London about November 13, and was duly considered in the Cabinet. Liverpool wrote to Castlereagh, November 18, that the Ministry had made its decision; the claim for territory was to be abandoned. For this retreat he alleged various excuses,—such as the unsatisfactory state of the negotiations at Vienna, and the alarming condition of France; the finances, the depression of rents, and the temper of Parliament.[56] Such reasoning would have counted for nothing in the previous month of May, but six months wrought a change in public feeling. The war had lost public favor. Even the colonial and shipping interests and the navy were weary of it, while the army had little to expect from it but hard service and no increase of credit. Every Englishman who came in contact with Americans seemed to suffer. Broke, the only victor by sea, was a lifelong invalid; and Brock and Ross, the only victors on land, had paid for their success with their lives. Incessant disappointment made the war an unpleasant thought with Englishmen. The burning of Washington was an exploit of which they could not boast. The rate of marine insurance was a daily and intolerable annoyance. So rapidly did the war decline in favor, that in the first half of December it was declared to be decidedly unpopular by one of the most judicious English liberals, Francis Horner; although Horner held that the Americans, as the dispute then stood, were the aggressors.[57] The tone of the press showed the same popular tendency, for while the “Times” grumbled loudly over the Canada campaign, the “Morning Chronicle” no longer concealed its hostility to the war, and ventured to sneer at it, talking of “the entire defeat and destruction of the last British fleet but one; for it has become necessary to particularize them now.”[58]

While the Cabinet still waited, the first instalment of Ghent correspondence to August 20, published in America October 10, returned to England November 18, and received no flattering attention. “We cannot compliment our negotiators,” remarked the “Morning Chronicle;” and the “Times” was still less pleased. “The British government has been tricked into bringing forward demands which it had not the power to enforce.... Why treat at all with Mr. Madison?” In Parliament, November 19, the liberal opposition attacked the Government for setting up novel pretensions. Ministers needed no more urging, and Bathurst thenceforward could not be charged with waste of time.

During this interval of more than three weeks the negotiators at Ghent were left to follow their own devices. In order to provide the Americans with occupation, the British commissioners sent them a note dated October 31 calling for a counter-project, since the basis of uti possidetis was refused.[59] This note, with all the others since August 20, was sent by the Americans to Washington on the same day, October 31; and then Gallatin and Adams began the task of drafting the formal project of a treaty. Immediately the internal discords of the commission broke into earnest dispute. A struggle began between the East and the West over the fisheries and the Mississippi.

The treaty of 1783 coupled the American right of fishing in British waters and curing fish on British shores with the British right of navigating the Mississippi River. For that arrangement the elder Adams was responsible. The fisheries were a Massachusetts interest. At Paris in 1783 John Adams, in season and out of season, with his colleagues and with the British negotiators, insisted, with the intensity of conviction, that the fishing rights which the New England people held while subjects of the British crown were theirs by no grant or treaty, but as a natural right, which could not be extinguished by war; and that where British subjects had a right to fish, whether on coasts or shores, in bays, inlets, creeks, or harbors, Americans had the same right, to be exercised wherever and whenever they pleased. John Adams’s persistence secured the article of the definitive treaty, which, without expressly admitting a natural right, coupled the in-shore fisheries and the navigation of the Mississippi with the recognition of independence. In 1814 as in 1783 John Adams clung to his trophies, and his son would have waged indefinite war rather than break his father’s heart by sacrificing what he had won; but at Ghent the son stood in isolation which the father in the worst times had never known. Massachusetts left him to struggle alone for a principle that needed not only argument but force to make it victorious. Governor Strong did not even write to him as he did to Pickering, that Massachusetts would give an equivalent in territory for the fisheries. As far as the State could influence the result, the fisheries were to be lost by default.

Had Adams encountered only British opposition he might have overborne it as his father had done; but since 1783 the West had become a political power, and Louisiana had been brought into the Union. If the fisheries were recognized as an indefeasible right by the treaty of 1783, the British liberty of navigating the Mississippi was another indefeasible right, which must revive with peace. The Western people naturally objected to such a proposition. Neither they nor the Canadians could be blamed for unwillingness to impose a mischievous servitude forever upon their shores, and Clay believed his popularity to depend on preventing an express recognition of the British right to navigate the Mississippi. Either Clay or Adams was sure to refuse signing any treaty which expressly sacrificed the local interests of either.

In this delicate situation only the authority and skill of Gallatin saved the treaty. At the outset of the discussion, October 30, Gallatin quietly took the lead from Adams’s hands, and assumed the championship of the fisheries by proposing to renew both privileges, making the one an equivalent for the other. Clay resisted obstinately, while Gallatin gently and patiently overbore him. When Gallatin’s proposal was put to the vote November 5, Clay and Russell alone opposed it,—and the support then given by Russell to Clay was never forgotten by Adams. Clay still refusing to sign the offer, Gallatin continued his pressure, until at last, November 10, Clay consented to insert, not in the project of treaty, but in the note which accompanied it, a paragraph declaring that the commissioners were not authorized to bring into discussion any of the rights hitherto enjoyed in the fisheries; “From their nature, and from the peculiar character of the treaty of 1783 by which they were recognized, no further stipulation has been deemed necessary by the Government of the United States to entitle them to the full enjoyment of all of them.”

Clay signed the note,[60] though unwillingly; and it was sent, November 10, with the treaty project, to the British commissioners, who forwarded it to London, where it arrived at the time when the British Cabinet had at last decided on peace. Bathurst sent his reply in due course; and Goulburn’s disgust was great to find that instead of breaking negotiation on the point of the fisheries as he wished,[61] he was required once more to give way. “You know that I was never much inclined to give way to the Americans,” he wrote, November 25.[62] “I am still less inclined to do so after the statement of our demands with which the negotiation opened, and which has in every point of view proved most unfortunate.”

The British reply, dated November 26,[63] took no notice of the American reservation as to the fisheries, but inserted in the project the old right of navigating the Mississippi. Both Bathurst and Goulburn thought that their silence, after the American declaration, practically conceded the American right to the fisheries, though Gambier and Dr. Adams thought differently.[64] In either case the British note of November 26, though satisfactory to Adams, was far from agreeable to Clay, who was obliged to endanger the peace in order to save the Mississippi. Adams strongly inclined to take the British project precisely as it was offered,[65] but Gallatin overruled him, and Clay would certainly have refused to sign. In discussing the subject, November 28, Gallatin proposed to accept the article on the navigation of the Mississippi if the British would add a provision recognizing the fishing rights. Clay lost his temper, and intimated something more than willingness to let Massachusetts pay for the pleasure of peace;[66] but during the whole day of November 28, and with the same patience November 29, Gallatin continued urging Clay and restraining Adams, until at last on the third day he brought the matter to the point he wished.

The result of this long struggle saved not indeed the fisheries, but the peace. Clay made no further protest when, in conference with the British commissioners December 1, the Americans offered to renew both the disputed rights.[67] Their proposal was sent to London, and was answered by Bathurst December 6, in a letter offering to set aside for future negotiation the terms under which the old fishing liberty and the navigation of the Mississippi should be continued for fair equivalents.[68] The British commissioners communicated this suggestion in conference December 10, and threw new dissension among the Americans.

The British offer to reserve both disputed rights for future negotiation implied that both rights were forfeited, or subject to forfeit, by war,—an admission which Adams could not make, but which the other commissioners could not reject. At that point Adams found himself alone. Even Gallatin admitted that the claim to the natural right of catching and curing fish on British shores was untenable, and could never be supported. Adams’s difficulties were the greater because the question of peace and war was reduced to two points,—the fisheries and Moose Island,—both interesting to Massachusetts alone. Yet the Americans were unwilling to yield without another struggle, and decided still to resist the British claim as inconsistent with the admitted basis of the status ante bellum.

The struggle with the British commissioners then became warm. A long conference, December 12, brought no conclusion. The treaty of 1783 could neither be followed nor ignored, and perplexed the Englishmen as much as the Americans. During December 13 and December 14, Adams continued to press his colleagues to assert the natural right to the fisheries, and to insist on the permanent character of the treaty of 1783; but Gallatin would not consent to make that point an ultimatum. All the commissioners except Adams resigned themselves to the sacrifice of the fisheries; but Gallatin decided to make one more effort before abandoning the struggle, and with that object drew up a note rejecting the British stipulation because it implied the abandonment of a right, but offering either to be silent as to both the fisheries and the Mississippi, or to admit a general reference to further negotiation of all subjects in dispute, so expressed as to imply no abandonment of right.

The note was signed and sent December 14,[69] and the Americans waited another week for the answer. Successful as they had been in driving their British antagonists from one position after another, they were not satisfied. Adams still feared that he might not be able to sign, and Clay was little better pleased. “He said we should make a damned bad treaty, and he did not know whether he would sign it or not.”[70] Whatever Adams thought of the treaty, his respect for at least two of his colleagues was expressed in terms of praise rarely used by him. Writing to his wife, September 27,[71] Adams said: “Mr. Gallatin keeps and increases his influence over us all. It would have been an irreparable loss if our country had been deprived of the benefit of his talents in this negotiation.” At the moment of final suspense he wrote again, December 16:—

“Of the five members of the American mission, the Chevalier [Bayard] has the most perfect control of his temper, the most deliberate coolness; and it is the more meritorious because it is real self-command. His feelings are as quick and his spirits as high as those of any one among us, but he certainly has them more under government. I can scarcely express to you how much both he and Mr. Gallatin have risen in my esteem since we have been here living together. Gallatin has not quite so constant a supremacy over his own emotions; yet he seldom yields to an ebullition of temper, and recovers from it immediately. He has a faculty, when discussion grows too warm, of turning off its edge by a joke, which I envy him more than all his other talents; and he has in his character one of the most extraordinary combinations of stubbornness and of flexibility that I ever met with in man. His greatest fault I think to be an ingenuity sometimes trenching upon ingenuousness.”

Gallatin’s opinion of Adams was not so enthusiastic as Adams’s admiration for him. He thought Adams’s chief fault to be that he lacked judgment “to a deplorable degree.”[72] Of Clay, whether in his merits or his faults, only one opinion was possible. Clay’s character belonged to the simple Southern or Virginia type, somewhat affected, but not rendered more complex, by Western influence,—and transparent beyond need of description or criticism.

The extraordinary patience and judgment of Gallatin, aided by the steady support of Bayard, carried all the American points without sacrificing either Adams or Clay, and with no quarrel of serious importance on any side. When Lord Bathurst received the American note of December 14, he replied December 19, yielding the last advantage he possessed:[73] “The Prince Regent regrets to find that there does not appear any prospect of being able to arrive at such an arrangement with regard to the fisheries as would have the effect of coming to a full and satisfactory explanation on that subject;” but since this was the case, the disputed article might be altogether omitted.

Thus the treaty became simply a cessation of hostilities, leaving every claim on either side open for future settlement. The formality of signature was completed December 24, and closed an era of American history. In substance, the treaty sacrificed much on both sides for peace. The Americans lost their claims for British spoliations, and were obliged to admit question of their right to Eastport and their fisheries in British waters; the British failed to establish their principles of impressment and blockade, and admitted question of their right to navigate the Mississippi and trade with the Indians. Perhaps at the moment the Americans were the chief losers; but they gained their greatest triumph in referring all their disputes to be settled by time, the final negotiator, whose decision they could safely trust.

CHAPTER III.

England received the Treaty of Ghent with feelings of mixed anger and satisfaction. The “Morning Chronicle” seemed surprised at the extreme interest which the news excited. As early as November 24, when ministers made their decision to concede the American terms, the “Morning Chronicle” announced that “a most extraordinary sensation was produced yesterday” by news from Ghent, and by reports that ministers had abandoned their ground. When the treaty arrived, December 26, the same Whig newspaper, the next morning, while asserting that ministers had “humbled themselves in the dust and thereby brought discredit on the country,” heartily approved what they had done; and added that “the city was in a complete state of hurricane during the whole of yesterday, but the storm did not attain its utmost height until toward the evening.... Purchases were made to the extent of many hundred thousand pounds.” The importance of the United States to England was made more apparent by the act of peace than by the pressure of war. “At Birmingham,” said the “Courier,” “an immense assemblage witnessed the arrival of the mail, and immediately took the horses out, and drew the mail to the post-office with the loudest acclamations,”—acclamations over a treaty universally regarded as discreditable.

The “Times” admitted the general joy, and denied only that it was universal. If the “Times” in any degree represented public opinion, the popular satisfaction at the peace was an extraordinary political symptom, for in its opinion the Government had accepted terms such as “might have been expected from an indulgent and liberal conqueror.... We have retired from the combat,” it said, December 30, “with the stripes yet bleeding on our back,—with the recent defeats at Plattsburg and on Lake Champlain unavenged.” During several succeeding weeks the “Times” continued its extravagant complaints, which served only to give the Americans a new idea of the triumph they had won.

In truth, no one familiar with English opinion during the past ten years attempted to deny that the government of England must admit one or the other of two conclusions,—either it had ruinously mismanaged its American policy before the war, or it had disgraced itself by the peace. The “Morning Chronicle,” while approving the treaty, declared that the Tories were on this point at odds with their own leaders:[74] “Their attachment to the ministers, though strong, cannot reconcile them to this one step, though surely if they would look back with an impartial eye on the imbecility and error with which their idols conducted the war, they must acknowledge their prudence in putting an end to it. One of them very honestly said, two days ago, that if they had not put an end to the war, the war would have put an end to their Ministry.” Whatever doubts existed about the temper of England before that time, no one doubted after the peace of Ghent that war with the United States was an unpopular measure with the British people.

Nevertheless the “Times” and the Tories continued their complaints until March 9, when two simultaneous pieces of news silenced criticism of the American treaty. The severe defeat at New Orleans became known at the moment when Napoleon, having quitted Elba, began his triumphal return to Paris. These news, coming in the midst of Corn Riots, silenced further discussion of American relations, and left ministers free to redeem at Waterloo the failures they had experienced in America.

In the United States news of peace was slow to arrive. The British sloop-of-war “Favorite” bore the despatches, and was still at sea when the month of February began. The commissioners from Massachusetts and Connecticut, bearing the demands of the Hartford Convention, started for Washington. Every one was intent on the situation of New Orleans, where a disaster was feared. Congress seemed to have abandoned the attempt to provide means of defence, although it began another effort to create a bank on Dallas’s plan. A large number of the most intelligent citizens believed that two announcements would soon be made,—one, that New Orleans was lost; the other, that the negotiation at Ghent had ended in rupture. Under this double shock, the collapse of the national government seemed to its enemies inevitable.

In this moment of suspense, the first news arrived from New Orleans. To the extreme relief of the Government and the Republican majority in Congress, they learned, February 4, that the British invasion was defeated and New Orleans saved. The victory was welcomed by illuminations, votes of thanks, and rejoicings greater than had followed the more important success at Plattsburg, or the more brilliant battles at Niagara; for the success won at New Orleans relieved the Government from a load of anxiety, and postponed a crisis supposed to be immediately at hand. Half the influence of the Hartford Convention was destroyed by it; and the commissioners, who were starting for the capital, had reason to expect a reception less favorable by far than they would have met had the British been announced as masters of Louisiana. Yet the immediate effect of the news was not to lend new vigor to Congress, but rather to increase its inertness, and to encourage its dependence on militia, Treasury notes, and good fortune.

A week afterward, on the afternoon of Saturday, February 11, the British sloop-of-war “Favorite” sailed up New York harbor, and the city quickly heard rumors of peace. At eight o’clock that evening the American special messenger landed, bringing the official documents intrusted to his care; and when the news could no longer be doubted, the city burst into an uproar of joy. The messenger was slow in reaching Washington, where he arrived only on the evening of Tuesday, February 13, and delivered his despatches to the Secretary of State.

Had the treaty been less satisfactory than it was, the President would have hesitated long before advising its rejection, and the Senate could hardly have gained courage to reject it. In spite of rumors from London and significant speculations on the London Exchange, known in America in the middle of January, no one had seriously counted on a satisfactory peace, as was proved by the steady depression of government credit and of the prices of American staples. The reaction after the arrival of the news was natural, and so violent that few persons stopped to scrutinize the terms. Contrary to Clay’s forebodings, the treaty, mere armistice though it seemed to be, was probably the most popular treaty ever negotiated by the United States. The President sent it to the Senate February 15; and the next day, without suggestion of amendment, and apparently without a criticism, unless from Federalists, the Senate unanimously confirmed it, thirty-five senators uniting in approval.

Yet the treaty was not what the Government had expected in declaring the war, or such as it had a right to demand. The Republicans admitted it in private, and the Federalists proclaimed it in the press. Senator Gore wrote to Governor Strong:[75] “The treaty must be deemed disgraceful to the Government who made the war and the peace, and will be so adjudged by all, after the first effusions of joy at relief have subsided.” Opinions differed widely on the question where the disgrace belonged,—whether to the Government who made the war, or to the people who refused to support it; but no one pretended that the terms of peace, as far as they were expressed in the treaty, were so good as those repeatedly offered by England more than two years before. Yet the treaty was universally welcomed, and not a thought of continued war found expression.

In New England the peace was received with extravagant delight. While the government messenger who carried the official news to Washington made no haste, a special messenger started from New York at ten o’clock Saturday night, immediately on the landing of the government messenger, and in thirty-two hours arrived in Boston. Probably the distance had rarely been travelled in less time, for the Boston “Centinel” announced the expense to be two hundred and twenty-five dollars; and such an outlay was seldom made for rapidity of travel or news. As the messenger passed from town to town he announced the tidings to the delighted people.[76] Reaching the “Centinel” office, at Boston, early Monday morning, he delivered his bulletin, and a few minutes after it was published all the bells were set ringing; schools and shops were closed, and a general holiday taken; flags were hoisted, the British with the American; the militia paraded, and in the evening the city was illuminated. Yet the terms of peace were wholly unknown, and the people of Massachusetts had every reason to fear that their interests were sacrificed for the safety of the Union. Their rejoicing over the peace was as unreasoning as their hatred of the war.

Only along the Canadian frontier where the farmers had for three years made large profits by supplying both armies, the peace was received without rejoicing.[77] South of New York, although less public delight was expressed, the relief was probably greater than in New England. Virginia had suffered most, and had felt the blockade with peculiar severity. A few weeks before the treaty was signed, Jefferson wrote:[78]—

“By the total annihilation in value of the produce which was to give me sustenance and independence, I shall be like Tantalus,—up to the shoulders in water, yet dying with thirst. We can make indeed enough to eat, drink, and clothe ourselves, but nothing for our salt, iron, groceries, and taxes which must be paid in money. For what can we raise for the market? Wheat?—we only give it to our horses, as we have been doing ever since harvest. Tobacco?—it is not worth the pipe it is smoked in.”

While all Virginia planters were in this situation February 13, they awoke February 14 to find flour worth ten dollars a barrel, and groceries fallen fifty per cent. They were once more rich beyond their wants.

So violent and sudden a change in values had never been known in the United States. The New York market saw fortunes disappear and other fortunes created in the utterance of a single word. All imported articles dropped to low prices. Sugar which sold Saturday at twenty-six dollars a hundred-weight, sold Monday at twelve dollars and a half. Tea sank from two dollars and a quarter to one dollar a pound; tin fell from eighty to twenty-five dollars a box; cotton fabrics declined about fifty per cent. On the other hand flour, cotton, and the other chief staples of American produce rose in the same proportion. Nominally flour was worth seven and a half dollars on Saturday, though no large amounts could have been sold; on Monday the price was ten dollars, and all the wheat in the country was soon sold at that rate.

Owing to the derangement of currency, these prices expressed no precise specie value. The effect of the peace on the currency was for a moment to restore an apparent equilibrium. In New York the specie premium of twenty-two per cent was imagined for a time to have vanished. In truth, United States six-per-cents rose in New York from seventy-six to eighty-eight in paper; Treasury-notes from ninety-two to ninety-eight. In Philadelphia, on Saturday, six-per-cents sold at seventy-five; on Monday, at ninety-three. The paper depreciation remained about twenty per cent in New York, about twenty-four per cent in Philadelphia, and about thirty per cent in Baltimore. The true value of six-per-cents was about sixty-eight; of Treasury notes about seventy-eight, after the announcement of peace.

As rapidly as possible the blockade was raised, and ships were hurried to sea with the harvests of three seasons for cargo; but some weeks still passed before all the operations of war were closed. The news of peace reached the British squadron below Mobile in time to prevent further advance on that place; but on the ocean a long time elapsed before fighting wholly ceased.

Some of the worst disasters as well as the greatest triumphs of the war occurred after the treaty of peace had been signed. The battle of New Orleans was followed by the loss of Fort Bowyer. At about the same time a British force occupied Cumberland Island on the southern edge of the Georgia coast, and January 13 attacked the fort at the entrance of the St. Mary’s, and having captured it without loss, ascended the river the next day to the town of St. Mary’s, which they seized, together with its merchandise and valuable ships in the river. Cockburn established his headquarters on Cumberland Island January 22, and threw the whole State of Georgia into agitation, while he waited the arrival of a brigade with which an attack was to be made on Savannah.

The worst disaster of the naval war occurred January 15, when the frigate “President”—one of the three American forty-fours, under Stephen Decatur, the favorite ocean hero of the American service—suffered defeat and capture within fifty miles of Sandy Hook. No naval battle of the war was more disputed in its merits, although its occurrence in the darkest moments of national depression was almost immediately forgotten in the elation of the peace a few days later.

Secretary Jones retired from the Navy Department Dec. 19, 1814, yielding the direction to B. W. Crowninshield of Massachusetts, but leaving a squadron ready for sea at New York under orders for distant service. The “Peacock” and “Hornet,” commanded by Warrington and Biddle, were to sail with a store-ship on a long cruise in Indian waters, where they were expected to ravage British shipping from the Cape of Good Hope to the China seas. With them Decatur was to go in the “President,” and at the beginning of the new year he waited only an opportunity to slip to sea past the blockading squadron. January 14 a strong westerly wind drove the British fleet out of sight. The “President” set sail, but in crossing the bar at night grounded, and continued for an hour or more to strike heavily, until the tide and strong wind forced her across. Decatur then ran along the Long Island coast some fifty miles, when he changed his course to the southeast, hoping that he had evaded the blockading squadron. This course was precisely that which Captain Hayes, commanding the squadron, expected;[79] and an hour before daylight the four British ships, standing to the northward and eastward, sighted the “President,” standing to the southward and eastward, not more than two miles on the weather-bow of the “Majestic,”—the fifty-six-gun razee commanded by Captain Hayes.

The British ships promptly made chase. Captain Hayes’s squadron, besides the “Majestic,” consisted of the “Endymion,” a fifty-gun frigate, with the “Pomone” and “Tenedos,” frigates like the “Guerriere,” “Macedonian,” and “Java,” armed with eighteen-pound guns. Only from the “Endymion” had Decatur much to fear, for the “Majestic” was slow and the other ships were weak; but the “Endymion” was a fast sailer, and especially adapted to meet the American frigates. The “Endymion,” according to British authority, was about one hundred and fifty-nine feet in length on the lower deck, and nearly forty-three feet in extreme breadth; the “President,” on the same authority, was about one hundred and seventy-three feet in length, and forty-four feet in breadth. The “Endymion” carried twenty-six long twenty-four-pounders on the main deck; the “President” carried thirty. The “Endymion” mounted twenty-two thirty-two pound carronades on the spar deck; the “President” mounted twenty. The “Endymion” had also a long brass eighteen-pounder as a bow-chaser; the “President” a long twenty-four-pounder as a bow-chaser, and another as a stern-chaser. The “Endymion” was short-handed after her losses in action with the “Prince de Neufchatel,” and carried only three hundred and forty-six men; the “President” carried four hundred and fifty. The “Endymion” was the weaker ship, probably in the proportion of four to five; but for her immediate purpose she possessed a decisive advantage in superior speed, especially in light winds.

At two o’clock in the afternoon, the “Endymion” had gained so much on the “President” as to begin exchanging shots between the stern and bow-chasers.[80] Soon after five o’clock, as the wind fell, the “Endymion” crept up on the “President’s” starboard quarter, and “commenced close action.”[81] After bearing the enemy’s fire for half an hour without reply, Decatur was obliged to alter his course and accept battle, or suffer himself to be crippled.[82] The battle lasted two hours and a half, until eight o’clock, when firing ceased; but at half-past nine, according to the “Pomone’s” log, the “Endymion” fired two guns, which the “President” returned with one.[83] According to Decatur’s account the “Endymion” lay for half an hour under his stern, without firing, while the “President” was trying to escape. In truth the “Endymion” had no need to fire; she was busy bending new sails, while Decatur’s ship, according to his official report, was crippled, and in the want of wind could not escape.

In a letter written by Decatur to his wife immediately after the battle, he gave an account of what followed, as he understood it.[84]

“The ‘Endymion,’” he began, ... “was the leading ship of the enemy. She got close under my quarters and was cutting my rigging without my being able to bring a gun to bear upon her. To suffer this was making my capture certain, and that too without injury to the enemy. I therefore bore up for the ‘Endymion’ and engaged her for two hours, when we silenced and beat her off. At this time the rest of the ships had got within two miles of us. We made all the sail we could from them, but it was in vain. In three hours the ‘Pomone’ and ‘Tenedos’ were alongside, and the ‘Majestic’ and ‘Endymion’ close to us. All that was now left for me to do was to receive the fire of the nearest ship and surrender.”

The “Pomone’s” account of the surrender completed the story:[85]—

“At eleven, being within gunshot of the ‘President’ who was still steering to the eastward under a press of sail, with royal, top-gallant, topmast, and lower studding-sails set, finding how much we outsailed her our studding-sails were taken in, and immediately afterward we luffed to port and fired our starboard broadside. The enemy then also luffed to port, bringing his larboard broadside to bear, which was momentarily expected, as a few minutes previous to our closing her she hoisted a light abaft, which in night actions constitutes the ensign. Our second broadside was fired, and the ‘President’ still luffing up as if intent to lay us on board, we hauled close to port, bracing the yards up, and setting the mainsail; the broadside was again to be fired into his bows, raking, when she hauled down the light, and we hailed demanding if she had surrendered. The reply was in the affirmative, and the firing immediately ceased. The ‘Tenedos,’ who was not more than three miles off, soon afterward came up, and assisted the ‘Pomone’ in securing the prize and removing the prisoners. At three quarters past twelve the ‘Endymion’ came up, and the ‘Majestic’ at three in the morning.”

Between the account given by Decatur and that of the “Pomone’s” log were some discrepancies. In the darkness many mistakes were inevitable; but if each party were taken as the best authority on its own side, the connected story seemed to show that Decatur, after beating off the “Endymion,” made every effort to escape, but was impressed by the conviction that if overtaken by the squadron, nothing was left but to receive the fire of the nearest ship, and surrender. The night was calm, and the “President” made little headway. At eleven o’clock one of the pursuing squadron came up, and fired two broadsides. “Thus situated,” reported Decatur, “with about one fifth of my crew killed and wounded, my ship crippled, and a more than fourfold force opposed to me, without a chance of escape left, I deemed it my duty to surrender.”

The official Court of Inquiry on the loss of the “President” reported, a few months afterward, a warm approval of Decatur’s conduct:[86]—

“We fear that we cannot express in a manner that will do justice to our feelings our admiration of the conduct of Commodore Decatur and his officers and crew.... As well during the chase as through his contest with the enemy [he] evinced great judgment and skill, perfect coolness, the most determined resolution, and heroic courage.”

The high praise thus bestowed was doubtless deserved, since the Court of Inquiry was composed of persons well qualified to judge; but Decatur’s battle with the “Endymion” was far from repeating the success of his triumph over the “Macedonian.” Anxious to escape rather than to fight, Decatur in consequence failed either to escape or resist with effect. The action with the “Endymion” lasted three hours from the time when the British frigate gained the “President’s” quarter. For the first half hour the “President” received the “Endymion’s” broadsides without reply. During the last half hour the firing slackened and became intermittent. Yet for two hours the ships were engaged at close range, a part of the time within half musket-shot, in a calm sea, and in a parallel line of sailing.[87] At all times of the battle, the ships were well within point-blank range,[88] which for long twenty-four-pounders and thirty-two-pound carronades was about two hundred and fifty yards.[89] Decatur had needed but an hour and a half to disable and capture the “Macedonian,” although a heavy swell disturbed his fire, and at no time were the ships within easy range for grape, which was about one hundred and fifty yards. The “Endymion” was a larger and better ship than the “Macedonian,” but the “President” was decidedly less efficient than the “United States.”

According to Captain Hope’s report, the “Endymion” lost eleven men killed and fourteen wounded. The “President” reported twenty-five killed and sixty wounded. Of the two ships the “President” was probably the most severely injured.[90] The masts of both were damaged, and two days afterward both were dismasted in a gale; but while the “President” lost all her masts by the board, the “Endymion” lost only her fore and main masts considerably above deck. On the whole, the injury inflicted by the “President” on the “Endymion” was less than in proportion to her relative strength, or to the length of time occupied in the action. Even on the supposition that the “President’s” fire was directed chiefly against the “Endymion’s” rigging, the injury done was not proportional to the time occupied in doing it. According to the “Pomone’s” log, the “Endymion” was able to rejoin the squadron at quarter before one o’clock in the night. According to the “Endymion’s” log, she repaired damages in an hour, and resumed the chase at nine o’clock.[91]

The British ships were surprised that Decatur should have surrendered to the “Pomone” without firing a shot. Apparently the “Pomone’s” broadside did little injury, and the “Tenedos” was not yet in range when the “Pomone” opened fire. The question of the proper time to surrender was to be judged by professional rules; and if resistance was hopeless, Decatur was doubtless justified in striking when he did; but his apparent readiness to do so hardly accorded with the popular conception of his character.

As usual the sloops were more fortunate than the frigate, and got to sea successfully, January 22, in a gale of wind which enabled them to run the blockade. Their appointed rendezvous was Tristan d’Acunha. There the “Hornet” arrived on the morning of March 23, and before she had time to anchor sighted the British sloop-of-war “Penguin,”—a new brig then cruising in search of the American privateer “Young Wasp.”

Captain Biddle of the “Hornet” instantly made chase, and Captain Dickinson of the “Penguin” bore up and stood for the enemy. According to British authority the vessels differed only by a “trifling disparity of force.”[92] In truth the American was somewhat superior in size, metal, and crew, although not so decisively as in most of the sloop battles. The “Hornet” carried eighteen thirty-two-pound carronades and two long twelve-pounders; the “Penguin” carried sixteen thirty-two-pound carronades, two long guns differently reported as twelve-pounders and six-pounders, and a twelve-pound carronade. The crews were apparently the same in number,—about one hundred and thirty-two men. Captain Dickinson had equipped his vessel especially for the purpose of capturing heavy privateers, and was then looking for the “Young Wasp,”—a vessel decidedly superior to the “Hornet.”[93] Although he had reason to doubt his ability to capture the “Young Wasp,” he did not fear a combat with the “Hornet,” and showed his confidence by brushing up close alongside and firing a gun, while the “Hornet,” all aback, waited for him.

The result was very different from that of Decatur’s two-hour battle with the “Endymion.” In little more than twenty minutes of close action the “Penguin’s” foremast and bowsprit were gone, her captain killed, and thirty-eight men killed or wounded, or more than one fourth the crew. The brig was “a perfect wreck,” according to the British official report, when the senior surviving officer hailed and surrendered.[94] The “Hornet” was not struck in the hull, but was very much cut up in rigging and spars. She had two killed, and nine wounded. “It was evident,” said Captain Biddle’s report, “that our fire was greatly superior both in quickness and effect.”

The “Penguin” was destroyed, and the “Hornet” and “Peacock” continued their cruise until April 27, when they chased for twenty-four hours a strange sail, which proved to be the British seventy-four “Cornwallis.” On discovering the character of the chase Biddle made off to windward, but found that the enemy “sailed remarkably fast and was very weatherly.” At daylight of the 29th, the “Cornwallis” was within gunshot on the “Hornet’s” lee-quarter. Her shot did not take effect, and Biddle, by lightening his ship, drew out of fire; but a few hours later the enemy again came up within three quarters of a mile, in a calm sea, and opened once more. Three shot struck the “Hornet,” but without crippling her. Biddle threw over everything that could be spared, except one long gun; and a fortunate change of wind enabled him a second time to creep out of fire. He escaped; but the loss of his guns, anchors, cables, and boats obliged him to make for San Salvador, where he heard the news of peace.[95]

Captain Warrington in the “Peacock” continued his cruise to the Indian Ocean, and captured four Indiamen. In the Straits of Sunda, June 30, he encountered a small East India Company’s cruiser, whose commander hailed and announced peace. Warrington replied, “directing him at the same time to haul his colors down if it were the case, in token of it,—adding that if he did not, I should fire into him.” The brig refused to strike its colors, and Warrington nearly destroyed her by a broadside.[96] For this violence little excuse could be offered, for the “Nautilus” was not half the “Peacock’s” strength, and could not have escaped. Warrington, like most officers of the American navy, remembered the “Chesapeake” too well.

The cruise of the “President,” “Peacock,” and “Hornet” ended in the loss of the “President,” the disabling of the “Hornet,” and the arrival of the “Peacock” alone at the point intended for their common cruising-ground. No other national vessels were at sea after peace was signed, except the “Constitution,” which late in December sailed from Boston under the command of Captain Charles Stewart,—a Philadelphian of Irish descent, not thirty-nine years old, but since 1806 a captain in the United States service.

Cruising between Gibraltar and Madeira, at about one o’clock on the afternoon of February 20 Captain Stewart discovered two sail ahead, which he chased and overtook at six o’clock. Both were ship-rigged sloops-of-war. The larger of the two was the “Cyane.” Americans preferred to call her a frigate, but that designation, though vague at best, could hardly be applied to such a vessel. The “Cyane” was a frigate-built sloop-of-war, or corvette, like the “Little Belt,” carrying a regular complement of one hundred and eighty-five men. Her length on the lower deck was one hundred and eighteen feet; her breadth was thirty-two feet. She carried thirty-three guns, all carronades except two long-nines or twelves. Her companion, the “Levant,” was also a sloop-of-war of the larger sort, though smaller than the “Cyane.” She mounted twenty-one guns, all carronades except two long nine-pounders. Her regular crew was one hundred and thirty-five men and boys.

Either separately or together the British ships were decidedly unequal to the “Constitution,” which could, by remaining at long range, sink them both without receiving a shot in return. The “Constitution” carried thirty-two long twenty-four-pounders; while the two sloops could reply to these guns only by four long nine-pounders. The “Constitution” carried four hundred and fifty men; the two sloops at the time of the encounter carried three hundred and thirty-six seamen, marines, and officers.[97] The “Constitution” was built of great strength; the two sloops had only the frames of their class. The utmost that the British captains could hope was that one of the two vessels might escape by the sacrifice of the other.

Instead of escaping, the senior officer, Captain George Douglass of the “Levant,” resolved to engage the frigate, “in the hopes, by disabling her, to prevent her intercepting two valuable convoys that sailed from Gibraltar about the same time as the ‘Levant’ and ‘Cyane.’”[98] Captain Douglass knew his relative strength, for he had heard that the American frigate was on his course.[99] Yet he seriously expected to disable her, and made a courageous attempt to do so.

The two ships, close together, tried first for the weather-gauge, but the “Constitution” outsailed them also on that point. They then bore up in hope of delaying the engagement till night, but the “Constitution” overhauled them too rapidly for the success of that plan. They then stood on the starboard tack, the “Cyane” astern, the “Levant” a half-cable length ahead, while the “Constitution” came up to windward and opened fire. Commodore Stewart’s report described the result:[100]—

“At five minutes past six ranged up on the starboard side of the sternmost ship [the ‘Cyane’], about three hundred yards distant, and commenced the action by broadsides,—both ships returning our fire with great spirit for about fifteen minutes. Then the fire of the enemy beginning to slacken, and the great column of smoke collected under our lee, induced us to cease our fire to ascertain their positions and conditions. In about three minutes the smoke clearing away, we found ourselves abreast of the headmost ship [the ‘Levant’], the sternmost ship luffing up for our larboard quarter.”

Three hundred yards was a long range for carronades, especially in British sloops whose marksmanship was indifferent at best. According to the British court-martial on the officers of the “Cyane” and “Levant,” their carronades had little effect.[101] If Stewart managed his ship as his duty required, the two sloops until that moment should have been allowed to make little effective return of the “Constitution’s” broadside of sixteen twenty-four-pounders except by two nine-pounders. They were in the position of the “Essex” at Valparaiso. The “Cyane” naturally luffed up, in order to bring her carronades to bear, but she was already cut to pieces, and made the matter worse by closing.

“We poured a broadside into the headmost ship,” continued the American account, “and then braced aback our main and mizzen topsails and backed astern under cover of the smoke abreast the sternmost ship, when the action was continued with spirit and considerable effect until thirty-five minutes past six, when the enemy’s fire again slackened.”

The “Levant,” after receiving two stern-raking fires, bore up at forty minutes past six and began to repair damages two miles to leeward. The “Cyane,” having become unmanageable, struck at ten minutes before seven. The most remarkable incident of the battle occurred after the “Cyane” struck, when the “Constitution” went after the “Levant” which was in sight to leeward. The little “Levant,” instead of running away, stood directly for the huge American frigate, more than three times her size, and ranging close alongside fired a broadside into her as the two ships passed on opposite tacks. Although the sloop received the “Constitution’s” broadside in return, she was only captured at last after an hour’s chase, at ten o’clock, much cut up in spars and rigging, but still sea-worthy, and with seven men killed and sixteen wounded, or only one casualty to six of her crew.

In truth, the injury inflicted by the “Constitution’s” fire was not so great as might have been expected. The “Cyane” lost twelve killed and twenty-six wounded, if the American report was correct. Neither ship was dismasted or in a sinking condition. Both arrived safely, March 10, at Porto Praya. On the other hand, the “Constitution” was struck eleven times in the hull, and lost three men killed and twelve wounded, three of the latter mortally. She suffered more than in her battle with the “Guerriere,”—a result creditable to the British ships, considering that in each case the “Constitution” could choose her own range.

Stewart took his prizes to the Cape de Verde Islands. At noon, March 11, while lying in port at Porto Praya, three British frigates appeared off the harbor, and Stewart instantly stood to sea, passing the enemy’s squadron to windward within gunshot. The three frigates made chase, and at one o’clock, as the “Cyane” was dropping astern, Stewart signalled to her to tack ship, and either escape, if not pursued, or return to Porto Praya. The squadron paid no attention to the “Cyane,” but followed the “Constitution” and “Levant.” At three o’clock, the “Levant” falling behind, Stewart signalled her also to tack. Immediately the whole British squadron abandoned pursuit of the “Constitution” and followed the “Levant” to Porto Praya, where they seized her under the guns of the Portuguese batteries. Meanwhile the “Constitution” and “Cyane” escaped, and reached the United States without further accident. The extraordinary blunders of the British squadron were never satisfactorily explained.

These combats and cruises, with the last ravages of the privateers, closed the war on the ocean as it had long ceased on land; and meanwhile the people of the United States had turned their energies to undertakings of a wholly different character.

CHAPTER IV.

The long, exciting, and splendid panorama of revolution and war, which for twenty-five years absorbed the world’s attention and dwarfed all other interests, vanished more quickly in America than in Europe, and left fewer elements of disturbance. The transformation scene of a pantomime was hardly more sudden or complete than the change that came over the United States at the announcement of peace. In a single day, almost in a single instant, the public turned from interests and passions that had supplied its thought for a generation, and took up a class of ideas that had been unknown or but vaguely defined before.

At Washington the effect of the news was so extraordinary as to shake faith in the seriousness of party politics. Although the peace affected in no way party doctrine or social distinctions, a new epoch for the Union began from the evening of February 13, when the messenger from Ghent arrived with the treaty. No one stopped to ask why a government, which was discredited and falling to pieces at one moment, should appear as a successful and even a glorious national representative a moment afterward. Politicians dismissed the war from their thoughts, as they dismissed the treaty, with the single phrase: “Not an inch ceded or lost!”[102] The commissioners from Massachusetts and Connecticut who appeared at Washington with the recommendations of the Hartford Convention, returned home as quietly as possible, pursued by the gibes of the press. The war was no more popular then than it had been before, as the subsequent elections proved; but the danger was passed, and passion instantly subsided.

Only by slow degrees the country learned to appreciate the extraordinary feat which had been performed, not so much by the people as by a relatively small number of individuals. Had a village rustic, with one hand tied behind his back, challenged the champion of the prize-ring, and in three or four rounds obliged him to draw the stakes, the result would have been little more surprising than the result of the American campaign of 1814. The most intelligent and best educated part of society both in the United States and in Great Britain could not believe it, and the true causes of British defeat remained a subject of conjecture and angry dispute. The enemies of the war admitted only that peace had saved Madison; but this single concession, which included many far-reaching consequences, was granted instantly, and from that moment the national government triumphed over all its immediate dangers.

While the Senate unanimously ratified the treaty February 16, the House set to work with much more alacrity than was its habit to dispose of the business before it. Haste was necessary. Barely fourteen days remained before the Thirteenth Congress should expire, and in that interval some system of peace legislation must be adopted. The struggle over the proposed Bank charter was still raging, for the Senate had passed another bill of incorporation February 11, over which the House was occupied the whole day of February 13 in a sharp and close contest. The first effect of the peace was to stop this struggle. By a majority of one vote, seventy-four to seventy-three, February 17, the House laid the subject aside.

Three days afterward, February 20, the President sent to Congress a Message transmitting the treaty with its ratifications, and congratulating the country on the close of a war “waged with the success which is the natural result of the wisdom of the legislative councils, of the patriotism of the people, of the public spirit of the militia, and of the valor of the military and naval forces of the country.” After recommending to Congress the interests of the soldiers and sailors, the Message passed to the reduction of expenditures, which required immediate attention:

“There are, however,” continued Madison, “important considerations which forbid a sudden and general revocation of the measures that have been produced by the war. Experience has taught us that neither the pacific dispositions of the American people, nor the pacific character of their political institutions, can altogether exempt them from that strife which appears, beyond the ordinary lot of nations, to be incident to the actual period of the world; and the same faithful monitor demonstrates that a certain degree of preparation for war is not only indispensable to avert disasters in the onset, but affords also the best security for the continuance of peace.”

The avowal that experience had shown the error of the principle adopted by the nation in 1801 was not confined to President Madison. Monroe spoke even more plainly. In a letter to the military committee, February 24, Monroe urged that an army of twenty thousand men should be retained on the peace establishment. Each soldier of the rank-and-file was supposed to cost in peace about two hundred dollars a year, and Monroe’s proposal involved an annual expense of more than five million dollars.

As far as concerned Madison and Monroe the repudiation of old Republican principles seemed complete; but the people had moved less rapidly than their leaders. Had Congress, while debating the subject February 25, known that Napoleon was then quitting Elba to seize once more the control of France, and to rouse another European convulsion with all its possible perils to neutrals, the President’s views might have been adopted without serious dispute; but in the absence of evident danger, an army of twenty thousand men seemed unnecessary. The finances warranted no such extravagance. Dallas wrote to Eppes, the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, a letter[103] dated February 20, sketching a temporary financial scheme for the coming year. He proposed to fund at seven per cent the outstanding Treasury notes, amounting to $18,637,000; and even after thus sweeping the field clear of pressing claims, he still required the extravagant war-taxes in order to meet expenses, and depended on a further issue of Treasury notes, or a loan, to support the peace establishments of the army and navy. The state of the currency was desperate, and the revenue for the year 1815 was estimated at $18,200,000 in the notes of State banks,—a sum little in excess of the estimated civil necessities.

The military committee of the House showed no sympathy with the new principles urged upon Congress by the Executive. Troup of Georgia reported a bill, February 22, fixing the peace establishment at ten thousand men, with two major-generals and four brigadiers. In submitting this proposal, Troup urged the House, February 25, to accept the reduction to ten thousand as the lowest possible standard, requiring only the expense of two and a half millions; but no sooner did he take his seat than Desha of Kentucky moved to substitute “six” for “ten,” and a vigorous debate followed, ending in the adoption of Desha’s amendment in committee by a majority of nineteen votes. The war leaders were greatly annoyed by this new triumph of the peace party. As a matter of principle, the vote on Desha’s amendment affirmed Jefferson’s pacific system and condemned the Federalist heresies of Madison and Monroe. The war leaders could not acquiesce in such a decision, and rallying for another effort, February 27, they remonstrated hotly. Forsyth of Georgia was particularly emphatic in defining the issue:[104]—

“He had hoped that the spirit of calculation falsely styled economy, whose contracted view was fixed upon present expense, and was incapable of enlarging it to permanent and eventual advantage, had been laid forever by the powerful exorcisms of reason and experience. It would seem however that it had been only lulled by the presence of a more powerful demon. Since the potent spell of necessity had been broken, the troubled spirit of petty calculation was again awakened to vex the counsels and destroy the best hopes of the country.”

For three years the friends of strong government, under the pressure of war, had been able to drive Congress more or less in their own direction; but at the announcement of peace their power was greatly lessened, and their unwilling associates were no longer disposed to follow their lead or to tolerate their assumptions of superiority. Desha retaliated in the tone of 1798:—

“Do they suppose that the House do not understand the subject; or do they suppose that by this great flow of eloquence they can make the substantial part of the House change the opinions in so short a time? When I speak of the substantial part of the House, I mean those who think much and speak but little; who make common-sense their guide, and not theoretical or visionary projects.... Some gentlemen advocate ten thousand and others twenty thousand of a standing army. The policy is easy to be seen through. The advocates of a perpetual system of taxation discover that if they cannot retain a considerable standing army, they will have no good plea for riveting the present taxes on the people.”

In the process of national growth, public opinion had advanced since 1801 several stages in its development; but the speeches of Forsyth, Calhoun, and Lowndes on one side, like that of Desha on the other, left still in doubt the amount of change. While Forsyth admitted that he had under-estimated the strength of the economical spirit, Desha certainly over-estimated the force of the men “who think much and speak but little.” With Federalist assistance, Desha’s friends passed the bill for an army of six thousand men by a vote of seventy-five to sixty-five; but the Senate, by a more decided vote of eighteen to ten, substituted “fifteen” for “six.” With this amendment the bill was returned to the House March 2, which by an almost unanimous vote refused to concur. The bill was sent to a conference committee, which reported the original plan of ten thousand men; and in the last hours of the session, March 3, the House yielded. By a vote of seventy to thirty-eight the peace establishment was fixed at ten thousand men.

The movement of public opinion was more evident in regard to the navy. Instead of repeating the experiments of 1801, Congress maintained the whole war establishment, and appropriated four million dollars chiefly for the support of frigates and ships-of-the-line. The vessels on the Lakes were dismantled and laid up; the gunboats, by an Act approved February 27, were ordered to be sold; but the sum of two hundred thousand dollars was appropriated for the annual purchase of ship-timber during the next three years, and the whole navy thenceforward consisted of cruisers, which were to be kept as far as possible in active service. As the first task of the new ships, an Act, approved March 3, authorized hostilities against the Dey of Algiers, who had indulged in the plunder of American commerce.

These hasty arrangements for the two services, coupled with an equally hasty financial makeshift, completed the career of the Thirteenth Congress, which expired March 4, as little admired or regretted as the least popular of its predecessors. Not upon Congress but upon the Executive Departments fell the burden of peace as of war, and on the Executive the new situation brought many embarrassments.

The first and most delicate task of the Government was the reduction of the army. No one could greatly blame Monroe for shrinking from the invidious duty of dismissing two thirds of the small force which had sustained so well and with so little support the character of the country; but the haste which he showed in leaving the War Department suggested also how keenly he must have suffered under its burdens. His name was sent to the Senate, February 27, as Secretary of State; no Secretary of War was nominated, but Dallas, with the courage that marked his character, undertook to manage the War Department as well as the Treasury until the necessary arrangements for the new army should be made.

April 8 Dallas wrote to six generals,—Brown, Jackson, Scott, Gaines, Macomb, and Ripley,—requesting their attendance at Washington to report a plan for the new army. Jackson and Gaines were unable to attend. The rest of the board reported a scheme dividing the country into two military districts, north and south; and into nine departments, five in the northern, four in the southern division,—allotting to each the troops needed for its service. May 17 the new arrangements were announced. Brown was ordered to command the northern district, with Ripley and Macomb as brigadiers. Jackson took the southern district, with Scott and Gaines as brigadiers. Eight regiments of infantry, one of riflemen, and one of light artillery were retained, together with the corps of artillery and engineers. As far as possible, all the officers whose names became famous for a generation received rank and reward.

No such operation was necessary for the navy, where no reduction was required. In the civil service, Madison enjoyed the satisfaction of rewarding the friends who had stood by him in his trials. February 27 he sent to the Senate, with the nomination of Monroe as Secretary of State, the name of J. Q. Adams as Minister to England. At the same time Bayard was appointed to St. Petersburg, and Gallatin to Paris. The nomination of Bayard proved to be an empty compliment, for he arrived, August 1, in the Delaware River, in the last stages of illness, and was carried ashore the next day only to die.

These appointments were well received and readily confirmed by the Senate; but Madison carried favoritism too far for the Senate’s approval when, March 1, he nominated Major-General Dearborn to be Secretary of War. Dearborn had few or no enemies, but the distinction thus shown him roused such strong remonstrance that Madison hastened to recall the nomination, and substituted Crawford in Dearborn’s place. The Senate had already rejected Dearborn, but consented to erase the record from their journal,[105] and Crawford became Secretary of War.

Thus the government in all its branches glided into the new conditions, hampered only by the confusion of the currency, which could not be overcome. The people were even more quick than the government to adapt themselves to peace. In New Orleans alone a few weeks of alarm were caused by extraordinary acts of arbitrary power on the part of General Jackson during the interval before the peace became officially known; but public order was not seriously disturbed, and the civil authority was restored March 13. Elsewhere the country scarcely stopped to notice the cost or the consequences of the war.

In truth the cost was moderate. Measured by loss of life in battle, it was less than that reported in many single battles fought by Napoleon. An army which never exceeded thirty thousand effectives, or placed more than four thousand regular rank-and-file in a single action, could not sacrifice many lives. According to the received estimates the number of men killed in battle on land did not much exceed fifteen hundred, including militia, while the total of killed and wounded little exceeded five thousand.[106] Sickness was more fatal than wounds, but a population of eight millions felt camp-diseases hardly more than its periodical malarial fevers.

The precise financial cost of the war, measured only by increase of debt, was equally moderate. During three years,—from February, 1812, until February, 1815,—the government sold six per cent bonds at various rates of discount, to the amount of fifty million dollars, and this sum was the limit of its loans, except for a few bank discounts of Treasury notes not exceeding a million in all. By forcing Treasury notes on its creditors the Treasury obtained the use of twenty millions more. After the peace it issued bonds and new Treasury notes, which raised the aggregate amount of war debt, as far as could be ascertained, to about eighty million five hundred thousand dollars, which was the war-addition to the old nominal capital of debt, and increased the total indebtedness to one hundred and twenty-seven millions at the close of the year 1815.[107]

The debt had exceeded eighty millions twenty years before, and in the interval the country had greatly increased its resources. The war debt was a trifling load, and would not have been felt except for the confusion of the currency and the unnecessary taxation imposed at the last moments of the war. That the currency and the war taxes were severe trials was not to be denied, but of other trials the people had little to complain.

Considering the dangers to which the United States were exposed, they escaped with surprising impunity. The shores of Chesapeake Bay and of Georgia were plundered; but the British government paid for the slaves carried away, and no town of importance except Washington was occupied by an enemy. Contrary to the usual experience of war, the richest parts of the country suffered least. Only the Niagara frontier was systematically ravaged. When the blockade of the coast was raised, every seaboard city was able instantly to resume its commercial habits without having greatly suffered from the interruption. The harvests of two seasons were ready for immediate export, and the markets of Europe were waiting to receive them. Every man found occupation, and capital instantly returned to its old channels. From the moment of peace the exports of domestic produce began to exceed five million dollars a month, while four millions was the highest average for any previous twelvemonth, and the average for the seven years of embargo and blockade since 1807 fell much short of two and a half millions. The returns of commerce and navigation showed that during the seven months from March 1 to October 1, 1815, domestic produce valued at forty-six million dollars was exported, and American shipping to the amount of eight hundred and fifty-four thousand tons was employed in the business of export.[108]

The ease and rapidity of this revolution not only caused the war to be quickly forgotten, but also silenced political passions. For the first time in their history as a nation, the people of the United States ceased to disturb themselves about politics or patronage. Every political principle was still open to dispute, and was disputed; but prosperity put an end to faction. No evidence could be given to prove that the number or weight of persons who held the opinions commonly known as Federalist, diminished either then or afterward. Massachusetts showed no regret for the attitude she had taken. At the April election, six weeks after the proclamation of peace, although Samuel Dexter was the Republican candidate, the State still gave to Governor Strong a majority of about seven thousand in a total vote of ninety-five thousand. The Federalists reasonably regarded this vote as an express approval of the Hartford Convention and its proposed measures, and asked what would have been their majority had peace not intervened to save the Government from odium. They believed not only that their popular support would have been greater, but that it would also have shown a temper beyond control; yet the Federalist majority in April was no longer hostile to the Government.

The other elections bore the same general character. Even in New York the popular reaction seemed rather against the war than in its favor. New York city in April returned Federalist members to the State legislature, causing a tie in the Assembly, each party controlling sixty-three votes.[109] In Virginia the peace produced no change so decided as to warrant a belief that the war had become popular. In April John Randolph defeated Eppes and recovered control of his district. The State which had chosen sixteen Republicans and seven opposition congressmen in 1813, elected in 1815 seventeen Republicans and six opposition members. The stability of parties was the more remarkable in New York and Virginia, because those States were first to feel the effects of renewed prosperity.

After the excitement of peace was past, as the summer drew toward a close, economical interests dwarfed the old political distinctions and gave a new character to parties. A flood of wealth poured into the Union at a steady rate of six or seven million dollars a month, and the distribution of so large a sum could not fail to show interesting results. The returns soon proved that the larger portion belonged to the Southern States. Cotton, at a valuation of twenty cents a pound, brought seventeen and a half millions to the planters; tobacco brought eight and a quarter millions; rice produced nearly two million eight hundred thousand dollars. Of fifty millions received from abroad in payment for domestic produce within seven or eight months after the peace, the slave States probably took nearly two thirds, though the white population of the States south of the Potomac was less than half the white population of the Union. The stimulus thus given to the slave system was violent, and was most plainly shown in the cotton States, where at least twenty million dollars were distributed in the year 1815 among a white population hardly exceeding half a million in all, while the larger portion fell to the share of a few slave-owners.[110]

Had the Northern States shared equally in the effects of this stimulus, the situation would have remained relatively as before; but the prosperity of the North was only moderate. The chief export of the Northern States was wheat and Indian corn. Even of these staples, Maryland and Virginia furnished a share; yet the total value of the wheat and corn exported from the Union was but eight million three hundred and fifty thousand dollars, while that of tobacco alone was eight and a quarter millions. While flour sold at nine or ten dollars a barrel, and Napoleon’s armies were vying with the Russians and Austrians in creating an artificial demand, the Middle States made a fair profit from their crops, although much less than was made by the tobacco and cotton planters; but New England produced little for export, and there the peace brought only ruin.

Ordinarily shipping was the source of New England’s profits. For twenty-five years the wars in Europe had given to New England shipping advantages which ceased with the return of peace. At first the change of condition was not felt, for every ship was promptly employed; but the reappearance of foreign vessels in American harbors showed that competition must soon begin, and that the old rates of profit were at an end.

Had this been all, Massachusetts could have borne it; but the shipping on the whole suffered least among New England interests. The new manufactures, in which large amounts of capital had been invested, were ruined by the peace. If the United States poured domestic produce valued at fifty million dollars into the markets of Great Britain, Great Britain and her dependencies poured in return not less than forty million dollars’ worth of imports into the United States, and inundated the Union with manufactured goods which were sold at any sacrifice to relieve the British markets. Although the imported manufactures paid duties of twenty-five per cent or more, they were sold at rates that made American competition impossible.

The cotton manufacturers of Rhode Island, in a memorial to Congress, dated October 20, 1815, declared that their one hundred and forty manufactories, operating one hundred and thirty thousand spindles, could no longer be worked with profit, and were threatened with speedy destruction.[111] New England could foresee with some degree of certainty the ultimate loss of the great amount of capital invested in these undertakings; but whether such fears for the future were just or not, the loss of present profits was not a matter of speculation, but of instant and evident notoriety. Before the close of the year 1815 little profit was left to the new industries. The cotton manufacture, chiefly a New England interest, was supposed to employ a capital of forty million dollars, and to expend about fifteen millions a year in wages.[112] The woollen manufacture, largely in Connecticut, was believed to employ a capital of twelve million dollars.[113] Most of the large factories for these staples were altogether stopped.

From every quarter the peace brought distress upon New England. During the war most of the richer prizes had been sent to New England ports, and the sale of their cargoes brought money and buyers into the country; but this monopoly ceased at the same moment with the monopoly of manufactures. The lumber trade was almost the last surviving interest of considerable value, but in November Parliament imposed duties on American lumber which nearly destroyed the New England trade. The fisheries alone seemed to remain as a permanent resource.

The effect of these changes from prosperity to adversity was shown in the usual forms. Emigration became active. Thousands of native New Englanders transferred themselves to the valley of the Mohawk and Western New York. All the cities of the coast had suffered a check from the war; but while New York and Philadelphia began to recover their lost ground, Boston was slow to feel the impulse. The financial reason could be partly seen in the bank returns of Massachusetts. In January, 1814, the Massachusetts banks held about $7,300,000 in specie.[114] In January and February, 1815, when peace was declared, the same banks probably held still more specie, as the causes which led to the influx were not removed. In June, about three months later, they held only $3,464,000 in specie, and the drain steadily continued, until in June, 1816, the specie in their vaults was reduced to $1,260,000, while their discounts were not increased and their circulation was diminished.[115]

The state of the currency and the policy pursued by the Treasury added to the burden carried by New England. There alone the banks maintained specie payments. In the autumn of 1815, while the notes of the Boston banks were equivalent to gold, Treasury notes were at eleven per cent discount in Boston; New York bank-notes were at eleven and a half per cent discount; Philadelphia at sixteen; Baltimore at seventeen and eighteen; and United States six-percent bonds sold at eighty-six. In New England the Government exacted payments either in Treasury notes or in the notes of local banks equivalent to specie. Elsewhere it accepted the notes of local banks at a rate of depreciation much greater than that of Treasury notes. This injustice in exacting taxes was doubled by an equivalent injustice in paying debts. In New England the Treasury compelled creditors to take payment in whatever medium it had at hand, or to go unpaid. Elsewhere the Treasury paid its debts in the currency it received for its taxes.

Dallas admitted the wrong, but made no serious attempt to correct it. So complicated was the currency that the Treasury was obliged to keep four accounts with each of its ninety-four banks of deposit,—(1) in the currency of the bank itself; (2) in special deposits of other bank currency; (3) in special deposits of Treasury notes bearing interest; (4) in small Treasury notes not bearing interest. In New England, and also in the cities of New York and Philadelphia, for some months after the peace the taxes were paid in Treasury notes. So little local currency was collected at these chief centres of business that the Treasury did not attempt to discharge its warrants there in currency. As the Treasury notes gradually appreciated in value above the local bank-notes of the Middle States, tax-payers ceased to make payments in them, and paid in their local bank-notes. Little by little the accumulation of local currency in the Treasury deposits at Philadelphia and New York increased, until the Treasury was able to draw on them in payment of its warrants; but even at those points this degree of credit was not attained in 1815, and in New England the Treasury still made no payments except in Treasury notes, or the notes of distant banks at a discount still greater than that of Treasury notes. This exceptional severity toward New England was admitted by Dallas, and excused only for the reason that if he were just to New England he must be severe to the rest of the country. Every holder of a Treasury warrant would have demanded payment at the place where the local medium was of the highest value, which was Boston; and as the Treasury could not pay specie at Boston without exacting specie elsewhere, Dallas paid no attention to Constitutional scruples or legal objections, but arbitrarily excluded Boston from the number of points where warrants were paid in local currency.[116]

The people of Boston criticised, with much severity and with apparent justice, Dallas’s management of the finances, which seemed to require some explanation not furnished in his reports. By an Act approved March 3, Congress authorized a loan of $18,452,800 to absorb the outstanding Treasury notes. At that time, under the momentary reaction of peace excitement, Treasury notes were supposed to be worth about ninety-four cents in the dollar, and Dallas expected to convert them nearly dollar for dollar into six-per-cent bonds. His proposals were issued March 10, inviting bids for twelve millions, and requiring only “that the terms of the proposals should bear some relation to the actual fair price of stock in the market of Philadelphia or New York.” When the bids were received, Dallas rejected them all, because in his opinion they were below the market rates. “In point of fact,” he afterward said, “no direct offer was made to subscribe at a higher rate than eighty-nine per cent, while some of the offers were made at a rate even lower than seventy-five per cent.” Although the old six-per-cents were then selling at eighty-nine, eighty-eight, and eighty-seven in Boston and New York, Dallas held that “the real condition of the public credit” required him to insist upon ninety-five as the value of the new stock.

After failing to obtain ninety-five or even ninety as the price of his bonds, Dallas resorted to expedients best described in his own words. As he could not fund the Treasury notes at the rate he wished, he abandoned the attempt, and used the loan only to supply the local wants of the Treasury:—

“The objects of the loan being to absorb a portion of the Treasury-note debt, and to acquire a sufficiency of local currency for local purposes, the price of the stock at the Treasury was of course independent of the daily up-and-down prices of the various stock markets in the Union, and could only be affected by the progress toward the attainment of those objects. Thus while the wants of the Treasury were insufficiently supplied, offers to subscribe were freely accepted, and the parties were sometimes authorized and invited to increase the amount of their offers; but where the local funds had so accumulated as to approach the probable amount of the local demands, the price of the stock was raised at the Treasury, and when the accumulation was deemed adequate to the whole amount of the local demands the loan was closed.”[117]

Governments which insisted upon borrowing at rates higher than the money market allowed, could do so only by helping to debase the currency. Dallas’s course offered encouragement to the suspended banks alone. The schedule of his loans proved that he paid a premium to insolvency. Of all places where he most needed “a sufficiency of local currency for local purposes,” Boston stood first; but he borrowed in Boston less than one hundred thousand dollars, and this only in Treasury notes. Next to Boston stood New York; but in New York Dallas borrowed only $658,000, also in Treasury notes. In Philadelphia he obtained more than three millions, and took $1,845,000 in the depreciated local currency. In Baltimore he took nearly two millions in local currency; and in the bank paper of the District of Columbia, which was the most depreciated of all, he accepted $2,282,000 in local currency.[118] Thus the loan which he had asked Congress to authorize for the purpose of absorbing the excess of Treasury notes, brought into the Treasury only about three millions in these securities, while it relieved the banks of Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington of six millions of their depreciated paper, worth about eighty cents in the dollar, and provided nothing to redeem the government’s overdue bills at Boston and New York.

Had Dallas pursued a different course and funded all the overdue Treasury notes at the market rate, he might not have relieved New England, but he would have placed the government in a position to deal effectually with the suspended banks elsewhere. The immediate result of his refusal to redeem the dishonored Treasury notes was to depress their market value, and to discredit the government. Treasury notes fell to eighty-eight and eighty-seven, while the six-per-cents fell as low as eighty-one. In Washington, Baltimore, and Philadelphia Dallas obtained enough local currency to meet local obligations, and doubtless saved to the government a small percentage by thus trafficking in its own discredit; but in gaining this advantage he offered encouragement to the over-issues of the suspended banks, and he helped to embarrass the solvent banks in the chief commercial centres as well as those in New England.[119]

At the close of the year 1815 the general effect of the peace was already well defined. The Southern States were in the full enjoyment of extraordinary prosperity. The Middle States were also prosperous and actively engaged in opening new sources of wealth. Only the Eastern States suffered under depression; but there it was so severe as to warrant a doubt whether New England could recover from the shock. The new epoch of American history began by the sudden decline of Massachusetts to the lowest point of relative prosperity and influence she had ever known, and by an equally sudden stimulus to the South and West. So discredited was Massachusetts that she scarcely ventured to complain, for every complaint uttered by her press was answered by the ironical advice that she should call another Hartford Convention.

CHAPTER V.

Between 1801 and 1815, great changes in the American people struck the most superficial observer. The Rights of Man occupied public thoughts less, and the price of cotton more, in the later than in the earlier time. Although in 1815 Europe was suffering under a violent reaction against free government, Americans showed little interest and no alarm, compared with their emotions of twenty years before. Napoleon resumed his empire, and was overthrown at Waterloo, without causing the people of the United States to express a sign of concern in his fate; and France was occupied by foreign armies without rousing among Americans a fear of England. Foreign affairs seemed reduced to the question whether England would consent to negotiate a treaty of commerce.

After excluding most of the American demands, Lord Castlereagh consented to a commercial convention abolishing discriminating duties, and admitting American commerce with the East Indies. This treaty, signed July 3, seemed to satisfy American demands, and the British Ministry showed no wish to challenge new disputes. With France, the disturbed condition of government permitted no diplomatic arrangement. The only foreign country that required serious attention was Algiers; and Decatur, with a strong squadron of the new American cruisers, speedily compelled the Dey to sign a treaty more favorable to the United States than he had yet signed with any other nation. Tunis and Tripoli showed a similar disposition, and Decatur returned home in the autumn, having settled to his satisfaction all the matters intrusted to his care.

Under such circumstances, without an anxiety in regard to foreign or domestic affairs, President Madison sent his Annual Message to Congress December 5, 1815. It told a pleasant story of successful administration and of rapidly growing income; but its chief historical interest lay in the lines of future party politics that Madison more or less unconsciously sketched. The Message proved, or seemed to prove, that Madison’s views and wishes lay in the direction of strong government. He advised “liberal provision” for defence; more military academies; an improved and enlarged navy; effectual protection to manufactures; new national roads and canals; a national university; and such an organization of the militia as would place it promptly and effectually under control of the national government. Madison seemed to take his stand, beyond further possibility of change, on the system of President Washington.

Dallas’s report echoed the tone of Alexander Hamilton. Very long, chiefly historical, and interesting beyond the common, this Treasury Report of 1815 recommended a scale of annual expenditure exceeding twenty-seven millions, in place of the old scale of ten millions. The expenditure was to be but a part of the system. A protective tariff of customs duties was assumed to be intended by Congress, and a national bank was urged as the only efficient means by which the government could recover control over the currency.

Although the President was less emphatic than the secretary in holding a national bank to be the only cure for the disorders of the currency, he was prepared to go a step further by issuing government paper as a national currency, and suggested that alternative in his Message. A national bank or a national currency was an equally energetic exercise of supreme central powers not expressly granted by the Constitution and much disputed by theorists. Dallas’s objection to the national currency did not relate to its inefficiency, but to the practical difficulty of issuing paper and keeping it in issue. Either course of action implied a recurrence to the principles of President Washington. The Executive proposed to start afresh in 1816 from its point of departure in 1790.

The Fourteenth Congress was well disposed to support the attempt. Under the stress of war the people had selected as their representatives the ablest and most vigorous men of their generation. The war leaders were mostly returned,—Calhoun, Clay, Lowndes, Richard M. Johnson, Peter B. Porter, and John Forsyth,—while the old peace party was strongly represented by Timothy Pickering, Daniel Webster, John Randolph, Grosvenor of New York, and Stanford of North Carolina; but perhaps the most distinguished member of all was William Pinkney of Maryland. A swarm of younger men, far above the average, reinforced both sides of the House. Philip P. Barbour sat again for Virginia. John McLean sat again for Ohio. Henry St. George Tucker came for the first time into the House. Joseph Hopkinson, Samuel D. Ingham, and John Sergeant raised the character of the Pennsylvania delegation; and Samuel Smith, at last ejected from the Senate by a Federalist legislature in Maryland, reappeared in the House for the first time since 1803.

The Senate was also improved. The disappearance of Leib and Samuel Smith was made more suggestive by the resignation of Giles. David Stone of North Carolina, another independent much given to opposition at critical moments, also resigned; and another of the same class, Joseph Anderson of Tennessee, who had been a member of the Senate since 1797, retired to become First Comptroller of the Treasury. These retirements removed the chief abettors of faction, and changed the character of the Senate until it seemed to belong to a different epoch. Jonathan Roberts still sat in the place of Leib. Armistead Mason took the seat of Giles, and with James Barbour gave Madison for the first time the full support of Virginia. Macon took the place of David Stone. George W. Campbell took the place of Joseph Anderson. Robert G. Harper, the old champion of Federalism, succeeded Samuel Smith from Maryland. The Senate scarcely recognized itself as the same body that since 1808 had so persistently thwarted and fretted the President.

In the arrangement of new party divisions the Fourteenth Congress, unlike its recent predecessors, consciously aimed to take a decided share. The House seemed for the first time in many years to pride itself on intellectual superiority. William Pinkney, Calhoun, Lowndes, Clay, Daniel Webster, John Randolph, and their associates were not men who bowed to authority, even of the people, but rather looked on the task of government as a function of superior intellect. They proposed to correct what they considered mistaken popular tendencies. Each expressed his ideas with sufficient clearness in the form natural to him. Calhoun generalized before descending to particulars.[120]

“In the policy of nations,” reasoned Calhoun, “there are two extremes: one extreme, in which justice and moderation may sink in feebleness; another, in which that lofty spirit which ought to animate all nations, particularly free ones, may mount up to military violence. These extremes ought to be equally avoided; but of the two, I consider the first far the most dangerous.... I consider the extreme of weakness not only the most dangerous of itself, but as that extreme to which the people of this country are peculiarly liable.”

Clay, aiming at the same objects, dwelt chiefly on foreign dangers as the motive of the strong government he wished to establish. “That man must be blind to the indications of the future,” he declared,[121] “who cannot see that we are destined to have war after war with Great Britain, until, if one of the two nations be not crushed, all grounds of collision shall have ceased between us.” He wished to create a government that should control the destinies of both American continents by a display of armed force. “He confessed with infinite regret that he saw a supineness throughout the country which left him almost without hope that what he believed the correct policy would be pursued,” toward aiding the Spanish colonies against their mother country. Both Calhoun and Clay admitted that they wished to govern in a sense not approved by an apparent majority of the nation; and the sympathies of the House were openly or secretly with them.

Of the contrary sentiment, John Randolph was the champion. Although his early career had ended in the most conspicuous failure yet known in American politics, he returned to the House, with intelligence morbidly sharpened, to begin a second epoch of his life with powers and materials that gave him the position of equal among men like Calhoun, Pinkney, and Webster. Randolph held a decisive advantage in wishing only to obstruct. He had no legislation to propose, and his political philosophy suited that extreme “to which,” according to Calhoun, “the people of this country are peculiarly liable.” Early in the session Randolph showed that he understood even better than Calhoun and Clay the division between himself and them. “If the warning voice of Patrick Henry,” he said in the debate of January 31, 1816,[122] “had not apprised me long ago, the events of this day would have taught me that this Constitution does not comprise one people, but that there are two distinct characters in the people of this nation.” In every growing people two or more distinct characters were likely to rise, else the people would not grow; but the primal character, which Randolph meant to represent, enjoyed the political advantage of passive resistance to impulse from every direction.

In reply to Calhoun, Randolph defined the issue with his usual skill of words:[123]—

“As the gentleman from South Carolina has presented the question to the House, they and the nation cannot have the slightest difficulty in deciding whether they will give up the States or not; whether they will, in fact, make this an elective monarchy. The question is whether or not we are willing to become one great consolidated nation; or whether we have still respect enough for those old, respectable institutions to regard their integrity and preservation as a part of our policy.”

Randolph’s eccentricities, which amounted to insanity, prevented him from exercising in the House the influence to which his experience and abilities entitled him, but did not prevent him from reflecting the opinions of a large part of the nation, particularly in the South. Between these two impulses the Fourteenth Congress was to choose a path, subject to the future judgment of their constituents.

The Executive urged them on. Dallas began by sending to Calhoun, the chairman of the Committee on Currency, a plan for a national bank with a capital of thirty-five millions and power to increase it to fifty millions; with twenty-five directors, five of whom were to be appointed by the government to represent its share in the bank stock, of which the government was to subscribe one fifth.[124]

In another report, dated Feb. 12, 1816, Dallas recommended a protective tariff and sketched its details. Upon cotton fabrics he proposed a duty of thirty-three and one half per cent on their value; on woollens, twenty-eight per cent; on linen, hemp, and silk, twenty per cent; on paper, leather, etc., thirty-five per cent; on earthenware, glassware, etc., thirty per cent; on bar-iron, seventy-five cents per hundred weight; on rolled iron, a dollar and a half; and on unenumerated articles, fifteen per cent. These duties were avowedly protective, intended to serve as the foundation of a system, and to perpetuate the policy to which the Government stood pledged by its legislation for the last six years. In connection with a proposed reduction of internal taxes, the Bank and the Tariff covered the financial field.

The House first grappled with the subject of revenue. The Committee of Ways and Means, through William Lowndes, reported, Jan. 9, 1816, a scheme embodied in twelve Resolutions intended to serve as the guide to definite legislation. Lowndes assumed a net annual revenue of $25,369,000; and to obtain this sum he proposed to shift the burden of about seven million dollars from internal taxation to the customs, by an addition of forty-two per cent to the rates of permanent duty.[125] The direct tax was to be retained to the amount of three million dollars, and an annual fund of $13,500,000 was to be set aside for the interest and principal of the national debt.

Hardly had the debate begun when Randolph, January 16, dragged the question of a protective system into the prominence it was thenceforward to maintain. Two years of repose had singularly improved his skill in the choice of language and in the instigation of class against class.

“The manufacturer,” said he,[126] “is the citizen of no place or any place; the agriculturist has his property, his lands, his all, his household Gods to defend,—and like that meek drudge the ox, who does the labor and ploughs the ground, then for his reward takes the refuse of the farm-yard, the blighted blades and the mouldy straw, and the mildewed shocks of corn for his support.... Alert, vigilant, enterprising, and active, the manufacturing interest are collected in masses, and ready to associate at a moment’s warning for any purpose of general interest to their body. Do but ring the fire-bell, and you can assemble all the manufacturing interest of Philadelphia in fifteen minutes. Nay, for the matter of that they are always assembled; they are always on the Rialto, and Shylock and Antonio meet there every day as friends, and compare notes, and possess in trick and intelligence what, in the goodness of God to them, the others can never possess.”

Randolph’s political sagacity was nowhere better shown than in replying, Jan. 31, 1816, to a speech of Calhoun: “On whom do your impost duties bear?” he asked.[127] “Upon whom bears the duty on coarse woollens and linens and blankets, upon salt, and all the necessaries of life? On poor men, and on slaveholders.” With a perception abnormally keen, Randolph fixed on the tariff and the slaveholders as the necessary combination to oppose the nationalizing efforts of Calhoun and Clay.

No leader of note supported Randolph. He stood alone, or with only the support of Stanford, as far as concerned debate; but he led nearly half the House. Upon Benjamin Hardin’s motion, February 3, to repeal the direct tax immediately and altogether, a motion which struck at the root of Dallas’s scheme, the House decided by eighty-one votes against seventy-three to sustain the secretary. On the passage of the bill to continue the direct tax of three million dollars for one year, the minority lacked but a change of three votes to defeat it. The bill passed, March 4, by a vote of sixty-seven to sixty-three.

On the tariff the House was more closely divided. The Committee of Ways and Means consisted of seven members. Lowndes was chairman. Three other members were from the South, one of whom, Robertson of Louisiana, wished protection for sugar. Three members were from the North, one of whom, Ingham of Pennsylvania, represented Dallas’s views. The chief question concerned the duty on cottons and woollens. So close was the division that Ingham, to use his own words, was struck dumb with astonishment when the committee, after adopting a duty of fifty-six per cent for the protection of sugar, voted to impose a duty of only twenty per cent on cottons and woollens. “It was, however, too glaringly inconsistent and palpably wrong to be persisted in, and therefore it was that the Committee of Ways and Means, upon reconsideration, substituted the twenty-five per cent which was reported in the bill.”[128]

When the bill came before the House, Clay moved, March 21, to substitute the rate of thirty-three and one third per cent for that of twenty-five per cent on cottons, for the express purpose of testing the sense of the House. Clay and the Northern protectionists held that the committee’s bill did not afford protection enough. The committee, also admitting the propriety of protection, maintained that twenty-five per cent was sufficient. On both sides some temper was shown, and charges of sectionalism were made. By a vote of sixty-eight to sixty-one, the House in committee voted, March 22, to impose a duty of thirty per cent. Daniel Webster then moved to limit this rate to two years, after which the duty should be twenty-five per cent for two years more, when it should be reduced to twenty per cent. Finally the House adopted a duty of twenty-five per cent for three years. Webster also carried, March 27, a motion to reduce the proposed duty on bar-iron from seventy-five to forty-five cents a hundred weight.

All the members of note, except Randolph, professed to favor protection. Calhoun was as decided as Ingham. “He believed the policy of the country required protection to our manufacturing establishments.”[129] The bill was assumed to offer protection enough, and the House disputed only whether the adopted duties were or were not sufficient. The actual free-trade sentiment was shown, April 8, when Randolph made a final motion to postpone, and was beaten by a vote of ninety-five to forty-seven.

The bill promptly passed the Senate, and was approved by the President April 27; but the true issue was undecided. No one could deny that if the duty of twenty-five per cent on cottons and woollens should prove to be insufficient, the House was pledged to increase it. The bill was avowedly protective. In regard to the coarser Indian cottons, it was practically prohibitive, since it valued them all, for tariff purposes, at twenty-five cents a yard,—a rate which on the cheaper fabrics raised the duty above one hundred per cent. Yet when the tariff of 1816 proved to be little protective, in after years it was commonly represented as a revenue and not a protective tariff. In substance, Randolph’s opinions controlled the House.

Dallas was more fortunate in regard to the Bank. Randolph’s hostility to State banks was greater than to the Bank of the United States. Calhoun reported, January 8, the bill to incorporate for twenty years a new National Bank with a capital of thirty-five million dollars, and supported it, February 26, by a speech showing that the Bank was a proper means for attaining the Constitutional object of restoring the money of the country to its true medium. Active opposition came chiefly from the Federalists. Even Samuel Smith seemed to plead rather that the State banks should be gently treated than that the National Bank should be opposed. Randolph, while professing hostility to the new Bank on any and every ground suggested by others, concluded by pledging himself to support any adequate means for reducing the overpowering influence of the State banks. Clay thought himself obliged to leave the Speaker’s chair in order to recant in the most public manner his errors of 1811. Forsyth, one of Calhoun’s ablest allies, went so far in his support of the measure as to assert without reserve that the power to suspend specie payments—a power expressly reserved to the government by Calhoun’s bill—belonged undoubtedly to Congress, an opinion which the House did not share. In the Republican ranks open opposition to the Bank seemed almost silenced; and the member who made himself most conspicuous in hostility to the bill was Daniel Webster,—the last of all in whom such a course was natural.

Webster’s criticism on Calhoun’s Constitutional argument was made in his loftiest manner. The currency, he said, needed no reform, for it was, by the Constitution and the law, gold and silver; nor had Congress the right to make any other medium current. The true remedy was for Congress to interdict the bills of the suspended banks.[130] Had he been content to rest his opposition on that ground alone, Webster could not have been answered, although he might have been regarded as an impracticable politician; but as the bill came toward its passage, and as several Federalists declared in its favor, he pressed his hostility so far, and with so much dogmatism, that several of his own party revolted, and Grosvenor of New York replied sharply that he did not propose to be drilled to vote on whatever any one might choose to call a principle.

In spite of determined opposition from Webster, Pitkin, John Sergeant, and other Federalists, the House passed the bill, March 14, by a vote of eighty to seventy-one. The majority was small, but of the minority not less than thirty-eight were Federalists; and, omitting Randolph and Stanford, only thirty-one Republicans voted against the bill. The House contained one hundred and seventeen Republicans. In the Senate the opposition was almost wholly confined to Federalists, and the bill passed by a majority much larger than that in the House. Twenty-two senators voted in its favor; only twelve voted against it, and of the twelve only four were Republicans. The President approved it April 10; and thus, after five years of financial disorder, the Republican party reverted to the system of Washington, and resumed powers it had found indispensable to government.

The Federalists of New England were in a situation too alarming to bear even the little delay required to organize the Bank. For them a general return to specie payments was the only escape from imminent ruin; and acting on this conviction, Webster moved, April 26, a joint Resolution ordering that all taxes should be collected after Feb. 1, 1817, in some medium equivalent to specie, thus allowing but nine months for the work of resumption. The same day the House passed the Resolution by the decisive majority of seventy-one to thirty-four. The Senate substituted February 20 as the day of resumption, and passed the Resolution April 29, which was approved by the President the next day.

In contrast with the imbecility of many previous Congresses, the vigor of the Fourteenth Congress in thus settling the new scale of government was remarkable; but other measures of importance were not wanting. An Act approved April 29 appropriated one million dollars annually for three years to build ships of war; an Act approved April 19 authorized the people of Indiana to form a State government. A bill, which passed the House but was postponed by the Senate and became law at the next session, provided for the admission of Mississippi. In still another direction the House showed its self-confidence in a manner that caused unusual popular excitement. It undertook to increase the pay of its own members and of senators.

The scale of salary for public officials was low. The President, relatively highly paid, received twenty-five thousand dollars. The Secretaries of State and Treasury received five thousand; those of War and Navy, four thousand; the Attorney-General, three thousand; Chief-Justice Marshall was paid four thousand, and the six associate justices received thirty-five hundred dollars each.

While the Executive and Judiciary were paid regular salaries, Congress stood on a different footing. Legislators had never been paid what was considered an equivalent for their time and services. They were supposed to be unpaid; but such a rule excluded poor men from the public service, and therefore the colonial legislatures adopted a practice, which Congress continued, of allowing what were supposed to be the reasonable expenses of members. The First Congress fixed upon six dollars a day, and six dollars for every twenty miles of estimated journey, as a suitable scale of expense both for senators and representatives;[131] and the same rate had been continued for twenty-five years. No one supposed it sufficient to support a household, but poor men could live upon it. Desha of Kentucky averred that it was a fair allowance for the average representative. According to him, board was twelve or thirteen dollars a week, and the total cost of a session of one hundred and fifty days amounted to five hundred and seventy or eighty dollars; so that the western and southwestern members, with whose habits he was familiar, carried home, with their mileage, about four hundred and fifty dollars in savings.[132]

In the pride of conscious superiority the Fourteenth Congress undertook to change the system; and Richard M. Johnson, probably the most popular member of the House, assumed the risk of popular displeasure. In moving for a committee, March 4, Johnson repudiated the idea of increasing the pay; and his committee, including Webster, Pitkin, Jackson, the President’s brother-in-law, Grosvenor, and McLean of Ohio, reported through him that fifteen hundred dollars a year was the correct equivalent of six dollars a day.

The bill known as the Compensation Bill was reported March 6, and was debated for two days with some animation. Among its supporters John Randolph was prominent, and gave offence to the opponents of the measure by his usual tactics. Most of the friends of the bill stoutly insisted that it did not increase the pay; most of its opponents averred that it more than doubled the amount. Calhoun admitted the increase of pay, and favored it, in order to retain “young men of genius without property” in the public service. The bill was hurried through the House.

“The Compensation Bill,” said Forsyth at the next session,[133] “was the only one of any interest pushed through the Committee of the whole House and ordered to a third reading in a single day. All motions to amend were rejected; for the committee to rise and report progress and ask leave to sit again, met with a similar fate.... The House refused repeated propositions to adjourn, and continued its sittings until the bill was ordered to be engrossed.”

No time was lost. Johnson moved for a committee March 4; the committee reported the bill March 6; the House in committee took it up March 7, and reported it the same day. The House passed it March 8, by a vote of eighty-one to sixty-seven. In the Senate the bill was read for a second time March 12. In the course of the debate one of the New Jersey senators, commenting on the haste shown by the House to pass the bill, added that also “in the Senate postponement, commitment, and amendment are all refused, and it is to be pushed through by main strength with a haste altogether unusual.” The Senate passed it March 14, by a vote of twenty-one to eleven; and it received the President’s signature March 19, barely a fortnight after Johnson’s request for a committee.

At the time when the bill was still under consideration by the President, and the House had just passed the Bank Act, the Republican members of both Houses met to nominate a candidate to succeed Madison as President. Three candidates were in the field,—Daniel D. Tompkins, William H. Crawford, and James Monroe.

The choice was a matter of small consequence, for any candidate of the Republican party was sure of almost unanimous election, and all were respectable men; but Tompkins could expect little support at a time when Congress selected the candidate, for only men well known in the national service were likely to satisfy the standard of Congressmen. The true contest lay between Crawford and Monroe, and was complicated, as far as the candidates themselves understood it, by personal intrigues on both sides. Perhaps Crawford’s strength was the greater, for four fifths of the New York members favored him rather than the Virginian.[134] In cases where no strong feeling fixed results, dexterity in management might overcome a preference between persons; and by some means never explained, the preference of the New York members for Crawford was overcome. One of these members—a competent observer—believed that Martin Van Buren and Peter B. Porter, for reasons of their own, prevented New York from declaring for Crawford when such a declaration would have decided the result.[135] Crawford himself at the last professed to withdraw from the contest,[136] and several of his warm friends did not attend the caucus. On the evening of March 15, one hundred and nineteen senators and representatives appeared in the hall of the House of Representatives in obedience to an anonymous notice addressed to one hundred and forty-three Republican members. Sixty-five, or less than half the Republican representation, voted for Monroe; fifty-four voted for Crawford; and eighty-five then united in nominating Governor Tompkins as Vice-President.

Monroe’s character was well known, and his elevation to the Presidency was a result neither of great popularity nor of exceptional force, but was rather due to the sudden peace which left him the residuum of Madison’s many Cabinets. A long list of resignations alone remained to recall the memory of his associates. Robert Smith, Cæsar Rodney, William Eustis, Paul Hamilton, Gallatin, G. W. Campbell, William Jones, William Pinkney, and John Armstrong had all resigned in succession, leaving Monroe and Dallas in possession of the government when peace was declared. Dallas was not a popular character, whatever were his abilities or services; and no other man occupied high ground. Under such circumstances the strength shown by Crawford was surprising, and proved that Monroe, notwithstanding his advantages, was regarded with no exclusive favor.

In truth Monroe had no party. His original friends were the old Republicans,—John Taylor of Caroline, Littleton Tazewell, John Randolph, and their associates, from whom he had drawn apart. His new friends were chiefly northern Democrats, whose motives for preferring him to Crawford were selfish. In any case an epoch of personal politics could be foreseen, for men like Crawford, Calhoun, and Clay never submitted long to a superior; and for such an epoch Monroe was probably the best choice.

Shortly after the nomination Dallas gave notice to the President that he meant to retire from the Treasury in order to resume his practice at the bar.[137] Madison immediately wrote to Gallatin, April 12, inviting him to resume charge of the Treasury; but Gallatin was weary of domestic politics, and preferred diplomacy. He went as minister to France, while Dallas remained at the Treasury until October, to set the new Bank in motion.

These arrangements closed the first session of the Fourteenth Congress, which adjourned April 30, leaving Madison in unaccustomed peace, harassed by no more enemies or dissensions, to wait the close of his public life.

CHAPTER VI.

The prosperity that followed the Peace of Ghent suffered no check during the year 1816, or during the remainder of Madison’s term. The exports of domestic produce, officially valued at $45,000,000 for the year ending Sept. 30, 1815, were valued at nearly $65,000,000 for the following year, and exceeded $68,000,000 for 1817. The Southern States still supplied two thirds of the exported produce. Cotton to the amount of $24,000,000, tobacco valued at nearly $13,000,000, and rice at $3,500,000, contributed more than forty of the sixty-five millions of domestic exports in 1816. The tables[138] showed that while South Carolina, Georgia, and Louisiana gained with unparalleled rapidity, New England lost ground, and New York only maintained its uniform movement. While the domestic exports of Georgia and Louisiana trebled in value, those of New York increased from eight to fourteen millions.

Notwithstanding the great importations from Europe which under ordinary conditions would have counterbalanced the exports, the exchanges soon turned in favor of the United States. Before the close of 1816 specie in considerable quantities began to flow into the country. Canada, being nearest, felt the drain first, and suffered much inconvenience from it; but during the summer of 1816 and 1817 Europe also shipped much specie to America. Every ship brought some amount, until the export began to affect the Bank of England, which at last found its bullion diminishing with alarming rapidity. The returns showed a drain beginning in July or August, 1817, when the Bank of England held £11,668,000, until August, 1819, when the supply was reduced to £3,595,000; and in the interval a commercial crisis, with a general destruction of credit, occurred. The reaction could not fail in the end to affect America as it affected England, but the first result was stimulating beyond all previous experience. In England the drain of specie embarrassed government in returning to specie payments. In the United States the influx of specie made the return easy, if not necessary.

The recovery of internal exchanges kept pace with the influx of specie. At Boston, July 27, 1816, United States six-per-cent bonds were quoted at eighty-five, and Treasury notes at ninety-four to ninety-four and one-half; at New York six-per-cents stood at ninety, and Treasury notes at par; in Philadelphia six-per-cents were worth ninety-eight, and Treasury notes one hundred and seven; in Baltimore six-per-cents were selling at one hundred and two, and Treasury notes at one hundred and twelve. During the next five months the recovery was steady and rapid. The banks of New York, September 26, began to cash their one-dollar notes, thus relieving the community from the annoyance of fractional currency. October 26 the six-per-cents stood at ninety-two in Boston, at ninety-three and one-half in New York, at ninety-eight in Philadelphia, and at one hundred and one and one-half in Baltimore. November 28 they sold at ninety-six in Boston; November 30 they sold at ninety-six and one-quarter in New York, at one hundred and one and one-half in Philadelphia, and at one hundred and five in Baltimore. January 1, 1817, the Treasury resumed payments at Boston in Boston money, and no further discredit attached to government securities.

The banks of the Middle States were less disposed than the government to hasten the return of specie payments. In order to do so, they were obliged to contract their circulation and discounts to an extent that would have been unendurable in any time but one of great prosperity; and only the threats of Dallas overcame their reluctance, even under most favorable conditions. Both Dallas and the President were irritated by their slowness.[139] July 22, 1816, the Secretary of the Treasury issued a circular warning them that, at whatever cost, the Treasury must carry into effect the order of Congress to collect the revenue, after Feb. 20, 1817, only in specie or its equivalent. “The banks in the States to the South,” he said,[140] “and to the west of Maryland, are ready and willing, it is believed, to co-operate in the same measure. The objection, or the obstacle to the measure, principally rests with the banks of the Middle States.” Dallas invited them to assist the Treasury in resuming specie payments with the least possible delay; and accordingly the banks of the Middle States held a convention at Philadelphia, August 6, to consider their course.

This convention, on discussing the possibility of resumption, agreed that the banks needed more time than the government was disposed to allow. Credit had been necessarily expanded by the unusual scale of commerce and enterprise. So sudden and violent a contraction as was required for specie payments could not fail to distress the public, and might cause great suffering. Yet in some degree the new United States Bank could relieve this pressure; and therefore the resumption should not be attempted by the State banks until the National Bank should be fairly opened and ready to begin its discounts. The State banks in convention foresaw, or imagined, that the United States Bank could not begin operations so early as Feb. 20, 1817, and they declined to risk resumption without its aid. Acting on this impression, they met Dallas’s urgency by a formal recommendation that their banks should begin to pay specie, not on the 20th of February, but on the first Monday of July, 1817.

This decision, though unsatisfactory to Dallas and the President, could not be considered unreasonable. Credit was expanded beyond the limit of safety, and the government was largely responsible for the expansion. Many of the State banks were probably unsound from the first, and needed careful management. Between 1810 and 1830, on a total capital of one hundred and forty millions, the bank failures amounted to thirty millions, or more than one fifth of the whole.[141] In Pennsylvania the country banks reduced their issues from $4,756,000 in November, 1816, to $1,318,000 in November, 1819. The latter moment was one of extreme depression, but the former was probably not that of the greatest expansion. When the banks of the Middle States held their convention, Aug. 6, 1816, contraction had already begun, and steadily continued, while specie flowed into the country to supply a foundation for bank paper. Under such circumstances the banks asked no extravagant favor in recommending that eleven months, instead of seven, should be allowed for resumption.

Dallas was not disposed to concede this favor. Having at last the necessary machinery for controlling the State banks, he used it with the same vigor that marked all his acts. No sooner had the convention announced its unwillingness to co-operate with the Treasury in executing the order of Congress, than Dallas issued instructions, August 16,[142] hastening the preparations for opening the National Bank as early as Jan. 1, 1817. Soon afterward, September 12, he renewed his notice that the notes of suspended banks would be rejected by the Treasury after Feb. 20, 1817.

The Bank subscription was filled in August, a deficit of three million dollars being taken by Stephen Girard in a single mass.[143] In October the board of directors was chosen by the shareholders, and in November the directors met and elected as President the former Secretary of the Navy, William Jones. One of their first acts was much debated, and was strongly opposed in the board of directors by J. J. Astor. They sent John Sergeant, of Philadelphia, abroad with authority to purchase some millions of bullion; and his mission was calculated to impress on the public the conviction that specie payments were to be resumed as soon as the Bank could open its doors.

Hurried by Dallas, the Bank actually began its operations in January, 1817, and under the double pressure from the Treasury the State banks had no choice but to yield. Another meeting was held at Philadelphia, February 1, consisting of delegates from the banks of New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Richmond. The convention entered into a compact with the Secretary of the Treasury to resume payments, on certain conditions, at the day fixed by Congress. The compact was carried into effect February 20, a few days before the close of Madison’s Presidency. Its success was magical. In New York, at ten o’clock on the morning of February 20, specie was at two and one half per cent premium. The banks opened their doors, and in half an hour all was once more regular and normal.

Thus the worst financial evil of the war was removed within two years after the proclamation of peace. A debt of about one hundred and thirty millions remained; but the people which only twenty years before had shrunk with fear and disgust from a debt of eighty millions, gave scarcely a thought in 1816 to their funded obligations. The difference between the two periods was not so much economical as political. Population and wealth had increased, but the experience of the people had advanced more rapidly than their numbers or capital. In measuring the political movement shrewd judges might easily err, for the elections of 1816 showed little apparent change in parties; but in truth parties had outgrown their principles, and in politics, as in finance, the close of Madison’s Administration obliterated old distinctions.

Neither party admitted the abandonment of its dogmas. The New York election in the spring of 1816 showed no considerable change in votes. In 1810 Governor Tompkins was elected by ten thousand majority; even in the dark days of 1813 he had a majority of thirty-six hundred; in 1816, notwithstanding his popularity and the success of his war administration, his majority was less than seven thousand. In Massachusetts John Brooks, who succeeded Governor Strong as candidate of the Federalist party, received forty-nine thousand five hundred votes, while Samuel Dexter received forty-seven thousand four hundred. Six years before, in 1810, the Republican candidate, Elbridge Gerry, had received more than forty-six thousand five hundred, and Governor Strong had polled only forty-four thousand. Apparently the Republicans had lost ground in Massachusetts since 1810. In Connecticut, where the election turned on church issues, the result was somewhat different. The Anglican church, a small body but rich and influential, strongly Federalist in politics and conservative in character, joined the Democrats to overthrow the reign of the Congregational clergy. Oliver Wolcott, a Federalist who supported the war, was their candidate; and the combination nearly carried the State. Wolcott received about ten thousand two hundred votes; his Federalist opponent was elected by eleven thousand three hundred and seventy votes. The Federalists also carried Rhode Island, once a strongly Democratic State, and seemed socially as well as politically to be little affected by their many mistakes and misfortunes.

Yet every one felt that real distinctions of party no longer existed. The Anglicans of Connecticut, the Unitarians of Boston, the Universalists and Baptists, looked chiefly to the overthrow of the established New England church; and the Democrats of New York, like the Republicans of Virginia and North Carolina, labored for a system of internal improvements and for increased energy in national government. Parties, no longer held together by discipline, were liable at any moment to fall into confusion; and, as frequently happened in such stages of public opinion, they were extraordinarily affected by influences seemingly trivial. In 1816 the relaxation of party spirit resulted in a phenomenon never before witnessed. The whole community rose against its own representatives, and showed evident pleasure in condemning them. The occasion for this outbreak of popular temper was the Compensation Bill; but the instinct that could alone account for the public pleasure in punishing public men, could not be explained by a cause so trifling as that Act.

At the next session of Congress, Calhoun, lapsing in the middle of a speech into his usual meditative speculation, remarked, as though he were perplexed to account for his own theory, that in his belief the House of Representatives was not a favorite with the American people.[144] Had he expressed the opinion that freedom of thought or speech was not a favorite with the American people, he would have said nothing more surprising. If the House was not a favorite, what part of the government was popular, and what could be hoped for representative government itself? Of all the machinery created by the Constitution, the House alone directly reflected and represented the people; and if the people disliked it, they disliked themselves.

The people best knew whether Calhoun was right. Certainly the House, owing in part to its size, its frequent elections and changes, its lack of responsibility and of social unity, was the least steady and least efficient branch of government. Readers who have followed the history here closed, have been surprised at the frequency with which the word imbecility has risen in their minds in reading the proceedings of the House. So strong was the same impression at the time, that in the year 1814, at the close of the war, every earnest patriot in the Union, and many men who were neither earnest nor patriotic, were actively reproaching the House for its final failure, at an apparent crisis of the national existence, to call out or organize any considerable part of the national energies. The people in truth, however jealous of power, would have liked in imagination, though they would not bear in practice, to be represented by something nobler, wiser, and purer than their own average honor, wisdom, and purity. They could not make an ideal of weakness, ignorance, or vice, even their own; and as they required in their religion the idea of an infinitely wise and powerful deity, they revolted in their politics from whatever struck them as sordid or selfish. The House reflected their own weaknesses; and the Compensation Act seemed to them an expression of their own least agreeable traits. They rebelled against a petty appropriation of money, after enduring for years a constant succession of worse offences.

“Who would have believed,” asked John Randolph,[145] six months afterward,—“who would have believed,” he repeated, “that the people of the United States would have borne all the privations and losses of the late war, and of the measures that led to it; that they would have quietly regarded a national debt, swelled to an amount unknown,—to an amount greater than the whole expense of our seven years’ war; that they would have seen the election of President taken out of their hands [by the caucus]; that they would have borne with abuse and peculation through every department of the government,—and that the great Leviathan, which slept under all these grievances, should be roused into action by the Fifteen-Hundred-Dollar Law?”

Only with difficulty could members persuade themselves that the public anger was real. They could not at first conceive that the people should be seriously angry because Congress had thought proper to pay its members a sum not in itself extravagant or adequate to their services. Not until the members returned to their homes did they appreciate the force of public feeling; but they soon felt themselves helpless to resist it. Richard M. Johnson and Henry Clay, the two most popular men in Kentucky, found their entire constituency attacking them. “When I went home,” said Clay,[146] “I do not recollect to have met with one solitary individual of any description of party who was not opposed to the Act,—who did not, on some ground or other, think it an improper and unjust law.” Benjamin Hardin,[147] another of the Kentucky victims, said: “If a man came into the county court to be appointed a constable or surveyor of the road, he entered his solemn protest against the Compensation Law. If a petty demagogue wanted to get into the legislature, he must post up, or put in the newspapers, his protest against it.”

“There was at first a violent excitement,” said Philip P. Barbour of Virginia;[148] “gentlemen might call it, if they pleased, a storm. But that storm, even when its fury abated, subsided into a fixed and settled discontent at the measure; it met the disapprobation and excited the discontent of the grave, the reflecting, and the deliberate; and such he believed to be the case with an immense majority of the American people.”

Grand juries denounced it in Vermont and Georgia; the State legislature denounced it in Massachusetts; town-meetings protested against it; county conventions sat upon it; all classes and parties united in condemning it, and the brunt of this sweeping popular reproval fell upon the House of Representatives. Close as the House stood to the people, its want of popularity was evident,—as Calhoun, with his usual insight, bore witness. The House had as a body few friends and no protection against popular tempests. The first to suffer, it was always the last to escape. One after another the weaker members gave way, and either declined re-election or were not re-elected. The chiefs succeeded for the most part by personal popularity in maintaining their hold on their districts, although several leading members lost their seats.

Even against so feeble and factious a body as the Thirteenth Congress, such condemnation would have seemed exceptional; but the peculiarity that made this popular reproof singular and suggestive was the popular admission that the Fourteenth Congress, for ability, energy, and usefulness, never had a superior, and perhaps, since the First Congress, never an equal. Such abilities were uncommon in any legislative body, American or European. Since Federalist times no Congress had felt such a sense of its own strength, and such pride in its own superiority; none had filled so fully the popular ideal of what the people’s representatives should be. That this remarkable body of men should have incurred almost instantly the severest popular rebuke ever visited on a House of Representatives, could not have been mere accident.

The politics of 1816 seemed absorbed in the Compensation Act, and in the union of parties to condemn their representatives. The Senate escaped serious censure; and President Madison, so far from being called to account for errors real or imaginary, seemed to enjoy popularity never before granted to any President at the expiration of his term. The apparent contentment was certainly not due to want of grievances. The internal taxes pressed hard on the people, especially in New England, where the suffering was general and in some places severe; but no popular cry for reduction of taxes disturbed the elections. No portion of the country seemed displeased that a fourth Virginian should be made President by the intrigues of a Congressional caucus. The State legislatures for the most part chose as usual the Presidential electors; and in December the public learned, almost without interest, that James Monroe had received one hundred and eighty-three electoral votes, representing sixteen States, while Rufus King had received thirty-four electoral votes, representing Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Delaware. Daniel D. Tompkins of New York was made Vice-President by the same process. Nothing in the elections, either for President or for Congress, showed that the people were disposed to scrutinize sharply the workings of any part of their government except the House of Representatives.

As the winter approached when Madison was to meet Congress for the last time, the sixteen years of his official service, which had been filled with excitement and violence, were ending in political stagnation. Party divisions had so nearly disappeared that nothing prevented the President elect from selecting as the head of his Cabinet the son of the last Federalist President, who had been the object of more violent attack from the Republican party than had been directed against any other Federalist. Old Republicans, like Macon and John Randolph, were at loss to know whether James Monroe or J. Q. Adams had departed farthest from their original starting-points. At times they charged one, at times the other, with desertion of principle; but on the whole their acts tended to betray a conviction that J. Q. Adams was still a Federalist in essentials, while Monroe had ceased to be an old Republican. In the political situation of 1817, if Jefferson and his contemporaries were right in their estimates, Federalist views of government were tending to prevail over the views of the Jeffersonian party.

With this tendency, the national prosperity and the state of the Treasury had much to do. Dallas carried out his purpose, and in October quitted the Treasury. In retiring, he left with the President a sketch of the condition of the finances such as no previous secretary had been so fortunate as to present. For the year ending Sept. 30, 1816, the receipts amounted to $47,670,000.[149] From the customs, which Dallas had estimated at $21,000,000, duties to the amount of $36,000,000 were received. A surplus of more than $20,000,000 was likely to accumulate in the Treasury before the close of the year.

Old ideas of economy and strict restraints on expenditure could not long maintain themselves in the presence of such an income; but besides the temptation to expand the sphere of government in expenditures, other influences were at work to establish Federalist principles in the system itself. Dallas remained in office chiefly in order to organize the Bank, and to render certain the resumption of specie payments. When he retired, in October, 1816, both objects were practically attained. His administration of the Treasury had then lasted two years. He found the government bankrupt; he left it with a surplus of twenty millions for the year. His measures not only relieved the country from financial disorders equalled only by those of the Revolutionary War, but also fixed the financial system in a firm groove for twenty years. He failed only in his attempt to obtain from Congress a larger degree of protection for domestic industries. Had his scheme of protection been adopted, possibly the violence of subsequent changes in revenue and legislation might have been moderated, and certainly the result could have been no more mischievous than it was.

Dallas retired to private life by his own wish, and the public three months afterward heard with surprise and regret the news of his sudden death. Like most of the men who rendered decisive services during the war, he received no public reward commensurate with his deserts. He fared better than Armstrong, who created the army; but even Gallatin, who shaped the diplomatic result, was content to retire into the comparative obscurity of the mission to Paris; while Perry and Macdonough, whose personal qualities had decided the fortunes of two campaigns and won the military basis on which peace could be negotiated, received no more reward than fell to the lot of third-rate men. In the case of Dallas and Gallatin, the apparent neglect was their own choice. Gallatin might have returned to the Treasury, but declined it; and the President transferred W. H. Crawford from the War Department to the charge of the finances, while Clay was offered the War Department in succession to Crawford.

These arrangements affected Madison but little. He had no longer an object to gain from the disposal of patronage, and he sought to smooth the path of his successor rather than to benefit himself. Few Presidents ever quitted office under circumstances so agreeable as those which surrounded Madison. During the last two years of his Administration almost every month brought some difficulty to an end, or accomplished some long-desired result. The restoration of the finances was perhaps his greatest source of satisfaction; but the steadiness with which the whole country, except New England, recovered prosperity and contentment afforded him a wider and more constant pleasure. The ravages of war left few traces. Even at Washington the new public buildings were pressed forward so rapidly that the effects of fire were no longer seen. The Capitol began to rise from its ruins. The new halls of Congress promised to do honor to Madison’s judgment. Benjamin Latrobe was the architect in charge; and his Representative Chamber, without reproducing that which Jefferson had helped to design, was dignified and worthy of its object. The old sandstone columns were replaced by another material. On the shore of the Potomac, near Leesburg, Latrobe noticed a conglomerate rock, containing rounded pebbles of various sizes and colors, and capable of being worked in large masses. His love of novelty led him to employ this conglomerate as an ornamental stone for the columns of the Hall of Representatives; and the effect was not without elegance.

Several years were still to pass before Congress occupied its permanent quarters, and Madison did not return to the White House; but the traces of national disaster disappeared in the process of reconstruction before he quitted the Presidency.

Surrounded by these pleasant conditions, Madison saw Congress assemble for the last time to listen to his requests. The Message which he sent to the legislature December 3 showed the extinction of party issues, and suggested no action that seemed likely to revive party disputes in any new form. The President expressed regret at the depression in shipping and manufactures, the branches of industry unfavorably affected by the peace. He suggested that Congress should consider especially the need of laws counteracting the exclusive navigation system of Great Britain. He recommended once more the time-worn subjects of the Militia and a National University. He asked for legislation against the Slave Trade, and urged a re-modification of the Judiciary. He requested Congress to create a new Executive department for Home or Interior Affairs, and to place the Attorney-General’s office on the footing of a department. He gave a flattering account of the finances; and his Message closed with a panegyric on the people and their government, for seeking “by appeals to reason, and by its liberal examples, to infuse into the law which governs the civilized world a spirit which may diminish the frequency or circumscribe the calamities of war, and meliorate the social and beneficent relations of peace: a government, in a word, whose conduct, within and without, may bespeak the most noble of all ambitions,—that of promoting peace on earth and good-will to man.”

For the moment, Congressmen were too much interested in their own quarrel to sympathize strongly with panegyrics on the people or their government. The members of the House returned to Washington mortified, angry, and defiant, disgusted alike with the public and with the public service. No sooner were the standing committees announced, December 4, than Richard M. Johnson moved for a special committee on the repeal of the Compensation Law, and supported his motion in an unusually elaborate speech, filled with argument, complaint, and irritation. The committee was appointed,—Johnson at its head; William Findley of Pennsylvania, second; Daniel Webster, third, with four other members. After twelve days’ consideration, December 18, the committee presented a report, written by Webster, defending the Act, but recommending a return to the per diem system, in deference to the popular wish. The scale of the new allowance was left for Congress to determine.

Until this personal quarrel was discussed, no other business received attention. The debate—postponed till Jan. 14, 1817, to save the dignity of the House—lasted, to the exclusion of other business, until January 23. As an exhibition of personal and corporate character, it was entertaining; but it contained little of permanent interest or value. Calhoun, always above his subject, spoke with much force against yielding to popular outcry. “This House,” he said, “is the foundation of the fabric of our liberty. So happy is its constitution, that in all instances of a general nature its duty and its interests are inseparable. If he understood correctly the structure of our government, the prevailing principle is not so much a balance of power, as a well-connected chain of responsibility. That responsibility commenced here, and this House is the centre of its operation.” The idea that the people had “resolved the government into its original elements, and resumed to themselves their primitive power of legislation,” was inconsistent with the idea that responsibility commenced and centred in the House. “Are we bound in all cases to do what is popular?” asked Calhoun. Could the House shift responsibility from itself to the people without destroying the foundation of the entire fabric?

Like most of Calhoun’s speculations, this question could receive its answer only in some distant future. The Compensation Law lowered permanently the self-respect of the House, which had already declined from the formation of the government. “Of that House,” said Richard Henry Wilde of Georgia,[150] “he feared it might be said in the words of Claudian: ‘A fronte recedant imperii.’ Yes, sir, they were receding,—they had receded from the front of empire. That House, formerly the favorite of the American nation, the first and most important branch of the government, the immediate image of the people, had been losing, and continued to lose,—certainly by no fault of theirs, but by the working of causes not for him to develop,—that rank and power in the government originally belonging to them, and which others at their expense had been secretly acquiring.” Yet the House, while repealing the law, refused to admit itself in the wrong. The law was repealed only so far as it applied to subsequent Congresses. Leaving its successors to fix whatever compensation they thought proper for their services, the Fourteenth Congress adhered to its own scale, and took the money it was expected to refund.

Having disposed of this personal affair, the House turned to serious business, and completed its remarkable career by enacting several measures of far-reaching importance.

The first of these measures was a Navigation Act, approved March 1, 1817, imposing on foreign vessels the same restrictions and prohibitions which were imposed by foreign nations on Americans. The second resembled the first in its object, but related only to the importation of plaster of Paris from Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. These two Acts began a struggle against the foreign navigation systems, which ended in their overthrow.

For the present the House postponed the establishment of an Interior Department, and allowed the Attorney-General to remain without an office or a clerk; but it passed an Act, approved March 3, 1817, concentrating in the Treasury the accounting business of government, and appointing four more auditors and one more comptroller for the purpose.

The fourth and most important measure that became law was a Neutrality Act, approved March 3, 1817, which authorized collectors of customs to seize and detain “any vessel manifestly built for warlike purposes, ... when the number of men shipped on board, or other circumstances, shall render it probable that such vessel is intended by the owner” to cruise against the commerce of a friendly State. Nearly fifty years were to pass before the people of the United States learned to realize the full importance of this Act, which laid the foundation for all the subsequent measures taken by the United States and Great Britain for preserving neutrality in their relations with warring countries.[151] The Neutrality Act of 1817 furnished the measure of neutral obligations.

Besides these important laws, the Fourteenth Congress passed another bill, which closed its own activity and that of President Madison. None of the previous measures bore any direct relation to party politics, either past or future; but the bill for internal improvements, which Congress passed and the President vetoed, was an event of no small meaning in party history.

Calhoun moved, December 16, “that a committee be appointed to inquire into the expediency of setting apart ... a permanent fund for internal improvement.” The committee was appointed the same day,—Calhoun, Sheffey of Virginia, Creighton of Ohio, Grosvenor of New York, and Ingham of Pennsylvania. December 23 Calhoun reported a bill[152] setting aside the bonus paid by the Bank, $1,500,000, and the future dividends from Bank stock, “as a fund for constructing roads and canals.” February 4 he introduced his bill by a speech, showing that a system of internal improvements was necessary, and could, in certain instances, be created by the national government alone.

“Let it not be forgotten,” said Calhoun,[153] with the air of sombre forecast which marked his mind and features, “let it be forever kept in mind, that the extent of our republic exposes us to the greatest of all calamities, next to the loss of liberty, and even to that in its consequence,—disunion. We are great, and rapidly—I was about to say fearfully—growing. This is our pride and danger, our weakness and our strength. Little does he deserve to be intrusted with the liberties of this people, who does not raise his mind to these truths. We are under the most imperious obligation to counteract every tendency to disunion.... If ... we permit a low, sordid, selfish, and sectional spirit to take possession of this House, this happy scene will vanish. We will divide, and in its consequences will follow misery and despotism.”

The Constitutional question Calhoun reserved for the future; he thought it scarcely worth discussion, since the good sense of the States might be relied on to prevent practical evils. Nevertheless he discussed it, and drew sufficient authority from the “general welfare” clause, and from the power to “establish” post-roads. Granting that the Constitution was silent, he saw no restraint on Congress:—

“If we are restricted in the use of our money to the enumerated powers, on what principle can the purchase of Louisiana be justified?... If it cannot, then are we compelled either to deny that we had the power to purchase, or to strain some of the enumerated powers to prove our right.”

The debate was interesting. Timothy Pickering, with the accumulated experience of seventy years, suggested that the right to regulate commerce among the several States, as in the case of light-houses and beacons, covered the proposed appropriation. Clay supported the bill with his usual energy, avowing that among his strongest motives was the wish to add this new distinction to the Fourteenth Congress, so harshly judged by the people. The chief Constitutional argument against the measure was made by Philip P. Barbour of Virginia; but other members opposed it on different grounds, and chiefly because as long as the internal taxes were still exacted, internal improvements should not be undertaken.

If the final vote was a correct test, Constitutional objections had but little weight with Congress. The bill passed the House, February 8, by the small majority of eighty-six to eighty-four. Of the minority no less than thirty-three were New England Federalists, whose opposition was founded on local and sectional reasons. From the slave States about forty-two votes were given against the bill; but a number of these were Federalist, and others were influenced by peculiar reasons. Two thirds of the Virginians voted against the bill; two thirds of the South Carolinians voted in its favor. Probably not more than twenty-five or thirty members, in the total number of one hundred and seventy, regarded the Constitutional difficulty as fatal to the bill.

In the Senate the bill passed by a vote of twenty to fifteen. Of the minority nine represented New England, and six represented Southern States. Every senator from the Middle States, as well as both senators from Virginia, supported the bill. Both senators from Massachusetts, the Republican Varnum and the Federalist Ashmun, opposed it; while Jeremiah Mason of New Hampshire and Rufus King of New York voted in its favor. The confusion of parties was extreme; but the State-rights school of old Republicans seemed to command not more than five or six votes in thirty-five.

The divisions on this bill seemed to leave no question that Congress by an overwhelming majority regarded the Constitutional point as settled. No one doubted that the Judiciary held the same opinion. The friends of the bill had reason to feel secure in regard to the Constitutional issue if on nothing else, and were the more disappointed when, March 3, President Madison exercised for the last time his official authority by returning the bill with a veto founded on Constitutional objections.

“The power to regulate commerce among the several States,” he said, “cannot include a power to construct roads and canals, and to improve the navigation of water-courses in order to facilitate, improve, and secure such a commerce, without a latitude of construction departing from the ordinary import of the terms, strengthened by the known inconveniences which doubtless led to the grant of this remedial power to Congress. To refer the power in question to the clause ‘to provide for the common defence and general welfare’ would be contrary to the established and consistent rules of interpretation, as rendering the special and careful enumeration of powers which follow the clause nugatory and improper. Such a view of the Constitution would have the effect of giving to Congress a general power of legislation.”

Every one who looked at the Constitution as an instrument or machine to be employed for the first time, must have admitted that Madison was right. Interpreted by no other aid than its own terms and the probable intent of a majority of the Convention which framed and the States which adopted it, the Constitution contained, and perhaps had been intended to contain, no power over internal improvements. The wide difference of opinion which so suddenly appeared between the President and Congress could not have been the result so much of different views of the Constitution, as of conclusions reached since the Constitution was framed. Congress held the bill to be Constitutional, not because it agreed with the strict interpretation of the text, but because it agreed with the interpretation which for sixteen years the Republican party, through Congress and Executive, had imposed upon the text.

On that point Calhoun’s argument left no doubt; and his question—the last of his speculations pregnant with future history—echoed unanswered: “On what principle can the purchase of Louisiana be justified?” Dismissing all other violations or violence offered to the Constitution by President Madison or his predecessors,—such as the Bank, the Embargo, the Enforcement laws, the laws for the government of Orleans Territory, the seizure of West Florida,—Calhoun’s question went to the heart of the issue between President and Congress.

From the Virginia side only one answer was possible. In returning to their early views of resistance to centralization, Madison and Jefferson must have maintained the invalidity of precedents to affect the Constitution. The veto seemed to create a new classification of public acts into such as were Constitutional; such as were unconstitutional, but still valid; and such as were both unconstitutional and invalid. The admitted validity of an act, like the purchase of Louisiana, even though it were acknowledged to be unconstitutional, did not create a precedent which authorized a repetition of a similar act.

Viewed only from a political standpoint, the veto marked the first decided reaction against the centralizing effect of the war. Unfortunately for the old Republican party, whose principles were thus for a second time to be adopted in appearance by a majority of the people, sixteen years had affected national character; and although precedents might not bind Congress or Executive, they marked the movement of society.

The Veto Message of March 3, 1817, was Madison’s Farewell Address. The next day he surrendered to Monroe the powers of government, and soon afterward retired to Virginia, to pass, with his friend Jefferson, the remaining years of a long life, watching the results of his labors.

CHAPTER VII.

The Union, which contained 5,300,000 inhabitants in 1800, numbered 7,240,000 in 1810, and 9,634,000 in 1820. At the close of Madison’s Administration, in 1817, the population probably numbered not less than 8,750,000 persons. The average rate of annual increase was about three and five-tenths per cent, causing the population to double within twenty-three years.

The rate of increase was not uniform throughout the country, but the drift of population was well defined. In 1800 the five New England States contained about 1,240,000 persons. Virginia and North Carolina, united, then contained nearly 1,360,000, or ten per cent more than New England. In 1820 the two groups were still nearer equality. New England numbered about 1,665,000; the two Southern States numbered 1,700,000, or about two per cent more than New England. While these two groups, containing nearly half the population of the Union, increased only as one hundred to one hundred and twenty-nine, the middle group, comprising New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, increased in the relation of one hundred to one hundred and ninety-two,—from 1,402,000 in 1800, to 2,696,000 in 1820. Their rate was about the average ratio for the Union; and the three Western States,—Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee,—grew proportionally faster. Their population of 370,000 in 1800 became 1,567,000 in 1820, in the ratio of one hundred to four hundred and twenty-three.

Careful study revealed a situation alarming to New England and Virginia. If only Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts, without its district of Maine, were considered, a total population numbering 742,000 in 1800 increased only to 881,000 in 1820, or in the ratio of one hundred to one hundred and eighteen in twenty years. If only the white population of Virginia and North Carolina were taken into the estimate, omitting the negroes, 852,000 persons in 1800 increased to 1,022,000 in 1820, or in the ratio of one hundred to one hundred and twenty. Maryland showed much the same result, while Delaware, which rose from 64,270 in 1800 to 72,674 in 1810, remained stationary, numbering only 72,749 in 1820,—a gain of seventy-five persons in ten years. The white population showed a positive decrease, from 55,361 in 1810 to 55,282 in 1820.

Probably a census taken in 1817 would have given results still less favorable to the sea-coast. The war affected population more seriously than could have been reasonably expected, and stopped the growth of the large cities. New York in 1800 contained 60,000 persons; in 1810 it contained 96,400, but a corporation census of 1816 reported a population of only one hundred thousand, although two of the six years were years of peace and prosperity. From that time New York grew rapidly, numbering 124,000 in 1820,—a gain of about twenty-five per cent in four years. Even the interior town of Albany, which should have been stimulated by the war, and which increased four thousand in population between 1800 and 1810, increased only three thousand between 1810 and 1820. Philadelphia fared worse, for its population of 96,000 in 1810 grew only to 108,000 in 1820, and fell rapidly behind New York. Baltimore grew from 26,000 in 1800 to 46,000 in 1810, and numbered less than 63,000 in 1820. Boston suffered more than Baltimore; for its population, which numbered 24,000 in 1800, grew only to 32,000 in 1810, and numbered but 43,000 in 1820. Charleston was still more unfortunate. In 1800 its population numbered about eighteen thousand; in 1810, 24,700; in 1817 a local census reported a decrease to 23,950 inhabitants, and the national census of 1820 reported 24,780, or eighty persons more than in 1810. The town of Charleston and the State of Delaware increased together by the same numbers.

Although the war lasted less than three years, its effect was so great in checking the growth of the cities that during the period from 1810 to 1820 the urban population made no relative increase. During every other decennial period in the national history the city population grew more rapidly than that of the rural districts; but between 1810 and 1820 it remained stationary, at four and nine-tenths per cent of the entire population. While Boston, Philadelphia, and Charleston advanced slowly, and New York only doubled its population in twenty years, Western towns like Pittsburg, Cincinnati, and Louisville grew rapidly and steadily, and even New Orleans, though exposed to capture, more than trebled in size; but the Western towns were still too small to rank as important. Even in 1820 the only cities which contained a white population of more than twenty thousand were New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Boston.

The severest sufferers from this situation were the three southern States of New England,—Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts, excluding the district of Maine, which was about to become a separate State. Fortunately the northern part of New England, notwithstanding the war, increased much more rapidly than the southern portion; but this increase was chiefly at the cost of Massachusetts, and returned little in comparison with the loss. The situation of Massachusetts and Connecticut was dark. Had not wealth increased more rapidly than population, Massachusetts would have stood on the verge of ruin; yet even from the economical point of view, the outlook was not wholly cheerful.

Judged by the reports of Massachusetts banks, the increase of wealth was surprising. The official returns of 1803, the first year when such returns were made, reported seven banks in the State, with a capital of $2,225,000 and deposits of $1,500,000. In June, 1816, twenty-five banks returned capital stock amounting nearly to $11,500,000 and deposits of $2,133,000. The deposits were then small, owing to the decline of industry and drain of specie that followed the peace, but the capital invested in banks had more than quintupled in thirteen years.

This multiplication was not a correct measure of the general increase in wealth. Indeed, the banks were in excess of the public wants after the peace, and their capital quickly shrunk from $11,500,000 in June, 1816, to $9,300,000 in June, 1817, a decline of nearly twenty per cent in a year. From that time it began to increase again, and held its improvement even in the disastrous year 1819. Assuming 1803 and 1817 as the true terms of the equation, the banking capital of Massachusetts increased in fourteen years from $2,225,000 to $9,300,000, or more than quadrupled.

Gauged by bank discounts the increase of wealth was not so great. In 1803 the debts due to the banks were returned at $3,850,000; in June, 1817, they were $12,650,000. If the discounts showed the true growth of industry, the business of the State somewhat more than trebled in fourteen years. Probably the chief industries that used the increased banking capital were the new manufactures, for the older sources of Massachusetts wealth showed no equivalent gain. Tested by the imports, the improvement was moderate. In 1800 the gross amount of duties collected in Massachusetts was less than $3,200,000; in 1816 it somewhat exceeded $6,100,000, but had not permanently doubled in sixteen years. Tested by exports of domestic produce, Massachusetts showed no gain. In 1803 the value of such produce amounted to $5,400,000; in 1816, to $5,008,000.[154]

Other methods of calculating the increase of wealth gave equally contradictory results. The registered tonnage of Massachusetts engaged in foreign trade exceeded two hundred and ten thousand tons in 1800; in 1816 it was two hundred and seventy-four thousand tons. In the coasting-trade Massachusetts employed seventy-five thousand tons in 1800, and one hundred and twenty-nine thousand in 1816. The tonnage employed in the fisheries showed no growth. The shipping of Massachusetts seemed to indicate an increase of about forty per cent in sixteen years.

The system of direct taxation furnished another standard of comparison. In 1798 a valuation was made in certain States of houses and lands for direct taxes; another was made in 1813; a third in 1815. That of 1798 amounted to eighty-four million dollars for Massachusetts; that of 1813, to one hundred and forty-nine millions; that of 1815, to one hundred and forty-three millions,—a gain of seventy per cent in sixteen years; but such a valuation in 1817 would probably have shown a considerable loss on that of 1815.