The Ifs of History Part 5

Would there be a ninth?

Two thirds of the delegates in the convention of New York were firmly opposed to ratification. They believed the Const.i.tution meant an end of the liberties of the States. They saw a royal throne looming up for America. They feared, they said, a great central power which should oppress and overtax the people of the States. Governor Clinton led the opposition to ratification. Hamilton's able arguments had no effect. New York would not come in.

All the remaining States were believed to be also opposed. New Hampshire had refused to comply with the requisitions of the Confederation; why should it look with more favor on the Const.i.tution? In Virginia, Patrick Henry led the opposition to ratification with impa.s.sioned eloquence.

Richard Henry Lee, William Grayson, George Mason and James Monroe, all great men in the State, were unalterably opposed to ratification. It certainly looked black for the Union.

But in this moment of apparent triumph, while the New York convention was in session, Governor Clinton and his party in the convention heard surprising news. New Hampshire, under the influence of Ma.s.sachusetts and of the wiser counsels of some of its own leaders, ratified the Const.i.tution on the 21st of June, 1788--more than nine months after the adoption of the instrument by the Const.i.tutional Convention at Philadelphia.

This event put a new face on the situation in New York. The Union was now decreed. If New York did not enter it, she must be prepared to stand alone, as an independent nation. Could she do that? The new Confederation would hem her in on both sides. To it would belong New Jersey, which flanked her only seaport on the west, and Connecticut and Ma.s.sachusetts, which walled her in on the east. The shape of the State adapted it very badly indeed for an independent position. Moreover, influences were known to be at work which would precipitate a hostile tariff against the States which remained out of the Union. A few months later such a tariff was actually adopted against Rhode Island, which was treated as a foreign country in the levying of duties on imports.

New York could not stand that. Gilbert Livingston and a few others changed their votes under a distinct announcement that the pressure of "sister States" had made it impracticable to continue the opposition.

But even at the last, the Const.i.tution was ratified by a majority of only two in a vote of sixty! Gilbert Livingston held the fate of the State in his hands, and he, though pledged against the Union, put New York into the Union by his vote.

One vote would have kept New York out.

We have noted the fact that New York's position was unfavorable for an attempt at independence. But the fact that the voice of but one man prevented the attempt shows that the other opposing delegates were not much afraid of making the leap. Supposing Gilbert Livingston had voted the other way, and the vote had been thirty-one to twenty-nine against ratification, instead of the same figure in its favor? What would have resulted?

Let us see. Two other States were radically opposed to the Const.i.tution--Rhode Island and North Carolina. Very likely they would have been glad to form a defensive alliance with New York. Virginia ratified a few days after New Hampshire, but she might easily have retracted her ratification, for she had no heart in it. With Virginia, the malcontent States would have had (census of 1790) a population of 1,550,306, against 2,378,908 for the remaining colonies, including Vermont, which was not yet in. This would not have been an utterly hopeless foundation for a new league, const.i.tuted on the easy terms upon which, and upon which only, these States were willing to enter the Union. The want of contiguity of territory would have been the worst objection to the formation of the league.

But the real effect of New York's self-exclusion, so narrowly prevented, would have been a negative one. It would have prevented all cohesion in the new Union. It would have driven a wedge straight through the new republic, from west to east. Worse, it would have erected secession into a principle from the start. Ere long we should have had at least three republics instead of one, and probably more. Politically we should have been what Central and South America are now. Real progress would have been barred. Wars would have been probable between the States. European political influences would have penetrated the weaker States, or alliances of States.

In short, the "American idea," government of the people by the people and for the people, would probably have been stillborn. By his change of vote, Gilbert Livingston signed the death warrant of the principle of secession. Not only did he set going the unifying influences which prevailed over State sovereignty, but he decreed the Empire State, destined to be a bulwark against disunion.

CHAPTER XV

IF THE PIRATE JEAN LAFITTE HAD JOINED THE BRITISH AT NEW ORLEANS

After the battle of New Orleans, on the 8th of January, 1814, General Andrew Jackson, the victorious commander, called before him a certain officer, of dashing and Frenchy appearance, and publicly thanked him for the important part which he had borne in the battle. To judge from the signal honor done to this man, the credit for the victory was in no inconsiderable part due to him. And, indeed, this was the case.

The man to whom the victor's thanks had been thus conspicuously awarded was Jean Lafitte, the Baratarian pirate. That the success of Jackson in defeating and virtually destroying the army of Pakenham, consisting of the very flower of the Duke of Wellington's soldiery, hinged, in an important sense, upon this extraordinary corsair and buccaneer, has never been adequately acknowledged in American history.

Jean Lafitte, the foremost of the three pirate brothers of Barataria, was a man of extraordinary influence and popularity among the French and other Latin inhabitants of Louisiana and New Orleans. He was a native of France, and a brave and chivalrous corsair, as corsairs go. A price had already been put upon his head by the American governor, Claiborne. But so secure was Lafitte in the affections of the Creole people, whom he served in many ways, that he frequently attended parties and receptions in New Orleans. Arriving, on such occasions, in the full splendor of his outlaw state, and bringing joy to the heart of every lady in the room by his attractive manners as well as by his fame, the pirate chief would practically defy the authorities to lay a hand upon him. If agents of the law were sent to arrest him, he knew of it, through a hundred spies, long before they reached the place, and withdrew at once to some near-by hiding place which was well known to him. In New Orleans he had a hundred safe places of refuge.

Under his command was a force of pirates who were many or few, according to the exigencies of the moment; for they could masquerade as peaceful fishermen if necessary, or they could, upon occasion, muster a force of several hundred at a word's notice--always perfectly armed, perfectly drilled, thoroughly redoubtable.

Lafitte preyed impartially upon all the commerce of the Gulf of Mexico, and, when pursued, ran into one of the numerous mouths of the Mississippi or some inlet of the Gulf--into Barataria Lake, into Bayou Lafourche, or into Bayou Teche. There it was vain to follow him, for the intricacies of these pa.s.sages were known only to his men or to the dwellers along their sh.o.r.es, who were in sympathy with him.

When the British descended upon New Orleans in the autumn of 1813, they offered Jean Lafitte a captain's commission in the British naval service, thirty thousand dollars in money, a full pardon for past offenses and rewards in money and lands for his followers if he would join them in making war on the Americans. He could easily have done so.

The French people of Louisiana had no keen loyalty for the Stars and Stripes at that time. As Lafitte went they might have gone. The British knew this, and made their bait a rich one.

But Lafitte, although Claiborne's price was on his head, and his brother Pierre in prison in New Orleans, refused the offer. Instead, he sent the letters from Captain Lockyer, of the British navy, making this proposition, to the Louisiana legislature. Later, after Pierre had escaped, he actually joined General Jackson's nondescript army with a force of riflemen. He seems to have acted from a very honest love for the young American republic.

Jackson, at first, under a misapprehension of the circ.u.mstances, had refused to accept the aid of these "h.e.l.lish banditti," as he had called Lafitte's men in a proclamation on his arrival. But when he found that the British were upon him, and that a considerable proportion of his poorly equipped militia were without flints for their muskets, he not only accepted the flints that Lafitte sent him, but gave the pirate an important command on his right wing. There Jean and his men performed signal service.

If Lafitte had joined the British with his men and ships, there is little likelihood that the Americans would have had in this fight the powerful aid of the vessels of war _Carolina_ and _Louisiana_, on the river. Nor is it likely that they would have had the pa.s.sive support of the French population. Nor that they would have found any subst.i.tute for the flints with which Lafitte supplied them. And it is very likely that the British a.s.sault upon Jackson's intrenchments would have been attended with a different result.

Jackson, indeed, might have been crushed very much as Windsor had been crushed at Washington, not long before.

Such a result at New Orleans would not have affected the outcome of the war, for a peace favorable to the American arms had already been declared at Ghent. But how profoundly a defeat would have influenced the personal and political fortunes of Andrew Jackson and all the events in American history which hung upon his subsequent career!

General Jackson won the presidency in 1828 because he was the military hero of the day. His popularity was due to the brilliant victory that he won at New Orleans. After his defeat in 1824, a spectacular visit which he made to the field of the 1814 battle renewed the souvenirs of the great fight and intensified his popularity; and in 1828 he was triumphantly elected. If he had been defeated in battle by Pakenham, and New Orleans had been taken, his fame would have been extinguished then and there.

And without Jackson--should we ever have had machine politics? It was he who introduced these into our government. He was the inventor and discoverer of the spoils system. "To the victors belong the spoils" was the maxim of his lieutenant, Marcy, and his own principle of action. We have never been able quite to shake off the system which he fastened upon the country. Patronage has been the curse of our politics from that day to this.

Then there was his determined and disastrous a.s.sault on the United States Bank. Upon this inst.i.tution, which was founded by Alexander Hamilton, and whose position somewhat resembled the present position of the Bank of England, the financial system of the country depended.

Jackson attacked it as a "wicked monopoly," as a concrete expression of the "money power." He succeeded in wrecking the bank, in bringing on the panic of 1837, which wrought untold ruin and disaster to the people, and in inaugurating in its place the system of wildcat State banks and currency chaos which lasted up to the Civil War.

But Jackson attacked more than the United States Bank and the principle that public office is a public trust. He attacked nullification.

Nullification meant that the States could refuse to recognize or obey the laws of the United States. He struck that dictum hard, when it made its appearance in South Carolina, and paralyzed it to such an extent that the portion of the nation which did not believe in secession was able to get its preponderant growth, and organize its strength, and prevent disunion, when the test finally came.

Jackson saved the Union by stunning the nullification snake until the republic was big enough and strong enough to trample it under foot. And that, no doubt, was the greatest event that hung on the contingency of Lafitte's choice of sides at New Orleans.

CHAPTER XVI

IF JAMES MACDONNEL HAD NOT CLOSED THE GATES OF HUGOMONT CASTLE

According to the Duke of Wellington himself, the success of the allies at the Battle of Waterloo turned on an amazingly slight contingency, namely, the closing of a gate or door of wood in the wall of a building.

This fact was conclusively brought out when, years after the battle, an English clergyman, Rev. Mr. Narcross of Framlingham, died and left in his will the sum of five hundred pounds simply "to the bravest man in England." The executors of the estate were completely nonplussed. Who was the bravest man in England? Doubtless many would have come forward gladly to claim the distinction and the legacy, but who was worthy of them? In their trouble, the executors applied to the Duke of Wellington for an answer to the question.

The Iron Duke was not a man to be beaten by any question whatsoever, least of all by a military one. He went back a little in his recollections--until he came to the battle of Waterloo. Then he wrote to the executors of the Framlingham parson that that battle was the greatest that had been fought in recent times. "The success of it," he went on to say, "turned upon the closing of the gates of Hugomont; these gates were closed in the most courageous manner, at the very nick of time, by Sir James Macdonnel; and he is the man to whom you should pay the five hundred pounds."

Thereupon the executors went to Sir James with the money; but he said to them: "I cannot claim all the credit of closing the gates of Hugomont. My sergeant, John Graham, seeing with me the importance of the step, rushed forward to help me; and by your leave I will share the legacy with him." The request was granted, and the fact was to this extent judicially established that Sir James Macdonnel and John Graham had closed the gates of Hugomont Castle, thereby settling the issue of the battle and the fate of Europe.

Let us see what events hinged upon this act, and how they depended on it. The army with which the great Napoleon faced the miscellaneous a.s.sortment of British, Prussians, Hanoverians, Dutch and Belgians at Waterloo was smaller than that of the Allies, but vastly more efficient as a whole. Most of the troops of the Allies were raw, and some of them were poor stuff indeed. Napoleon's soldiers were hardened, practiced, brave and splendidly commanded.

Napoleon had forced the Allies back at Quatre Bras. He captured their position at La Haye Sainte. He perceived that the strategic key to the whole field of battle was the hill crowned by the old stone _chateau_ of Hugomont. If that could be taken, Napoleon would be able to attack and turn Wellington's right flank. That accomplished, a junction of Blucher and his Prussians with the English would be prevented; the forces of the Allies would be split in two, and Napoleon would in all probability defeat them in detail, according to his time-honored method. The emperor could easily have finished off the Austrians in their turn, as he planned to do; and the combined European attempt to oust him would have been frustrated. Thus the Corsican would have been, probably for so long as he lived, the master of France at the least, even if the checks he had already received had restricted his mastery of the rest of the continent.

Knowing well that upon this cast his fate was staked, Napoleon hurled his best troops, under Prince Jerome, against the little old _chateau_ on the hill. Again and again they a.s.saulted it. Twelve thousand men were launched against the half-dilapidated castle, which had been pierced with loopholes for the British riflemen. And now and here came the crucial incident whose importance was rated so high by Wellington. At a moment when the chief defence of the _chateau_ was entrusted to the Coldstream Guards, under Colonel James Macdonnel, the French were within a hair's breadth of taking it. They pushed against the gate of the castle, and had actually forced it open, when the Coldstream Guards charged out with their bayonets, forcing the advance rank of the French back a little.

But the French were pouring up, and could no longer be held back at the point of the bayonet. It was at this instant, when a slight leeway had been gained, that Colonel Macdonnel and Sergeant Graham, under a galling fire from the French, stepped forward and with their own hands closed the _chateau_ gates, barricaded them, and thus enabled the troops to resume their fierce rifle fire from within.

After this the French made many more a.s.saults on the heavy gates, but could not force them open again. Wellington meanwhile commanded a general advance, following a fresh repulse of the French onset; and the French line was thrown into confusion. He knew that Blucher was now at hand--it was by this time half-past seven in the evening--to support him. Blucher, indeed, arrived, and attacked and crushed the broken French right, forcing Napoleon to retreat in disorder. Thus was completed the victory which the heroic defence of Hugomont had made possible.

The crushing of the British right wing on this occasion, had Napoleon been able thus to effect it, would have reversed a vast deal of history.

It is not necessary to take an extreme view of the situation to realize this. On the immediate field, the British, Dutch and Hanoverians must have been forced back upon Brussels, and Blucher would have been unable to maintain a front against the French. Even if the remnants of the allied armies had escaped, and made another stand, Napoleon must instantly have regained a degree of prestige and position that would have enabled him to consolidate his power at home and make excellent terms abroad. Even after Leipsic, when he had seemed to be utterly beaten, the powers had been willing to give him France's "natural frontiers"--namely, the Rhine, the Alps and the Pyrenees.

It is likely that Leipsic and Elba had already taught the emperor wisdom which would have deterred him from attempting to carry the boundaries of his domain once more to the Baltic, or to parcel out the rest of Europe among his relatives and dependents. But within the frontiers I have named, and west of the Rhine, he must have remained impregnable; and all the momentous consequences which resulted from his defeat must have been thwarted and turned aside.

Out of the victory of the Allies at Waterloo came, first, the banishment and early death of Napoleon Bonaparte; the placing of Louis XVIII on the throne of France; the complete subduing of the Revolution; the creation of the joint kingdom of Holland and Belgium (which meant the modern intensely industrialized Belgian state, and Leopold, and the Congo); the aggrandizement and lasting leadership of Prussia in Germany; the foundation of the modern Italy through the annexation of the Genoese republic to the Piedmont kingdom; the enlargement of Switzerland by three cantons taken from France; the taking of Norway from Denmark and its bestowal upon Sweden; the absorption of what was left of Poland by Russia--and some other reparceling of territory in an arbitrary sense which has nevertheless for the most part endured. There is scarcely a political articulation in Europe to-day which does not date from Waterloo; new tendencies still operate which had their inception then!

Indirectly the consequences were momentous. The aggrandizement of Prussia prepared the way for the unification of Germany and the gradual atrophy of Austria as a German state. As I have said, the enlargement of Piedmont foretokened a united Italy, and built up another power which has contributed to the enforced shrinkage of Austria. The two great constructive European statesmen of the nineteenth century, Bismarck and Cavour, were both the children of Waterloo.