The United States of America Part 15

The crudity of American life and manners had been sarcastically described by Ashe, Fearon, Davis, and other European travellers.

American writers countered these attacks by comparing the treatment of the slaves in America with the condition of British paupers and East Indians. Charges of negro kidnapping were contrasted with child-stealing in England; our gouging the eyes in fisticuffs with their prize-fighting; the harshness of our slave code with their criminal laws; and the condition of our free clergy with the circ.u.mscribed established clergymen. A dispute arose between writers of the two countries over the responsibility of England for American slavery by having fostered it in the American colonies.

This war of words, which continued even after the close of hostilities with England, went so far as to involve discussions whether G.o.dfrey or Hadley had invented the quadrant; whether Hulls or Fulton was the father of the steamboat; whether steamboats were first used in England or America; and whether Fulton should have offered his invention of the submarine torpedo to France as well as to England. One may easily say at the present time that the national spirit should have risen superior to such trivialities; but the national spirit was taking a most provincial cast. Originality was claimed for everything; inheritance counted as nothing.

A maritime war is peculiarly a commercial war in that it affects trade and consequently becomes a sectional war, since all portions of the land are not equally affected. The War of 1812 was a sectional war which arrayed the former friends of consolidated government against the Administration, and consequently made the former enemies of consolidation its most devoted supporters. The early att.i.tude of the various sections toward the war, with due allowance for party allegiance, may be studied in the vote of the two houses of Congress on the measure ent.i.tled "An act declaring war between Great Britain and her dependencies and the United States and their Territories,"

which pa.s.sed the House on June 4th, and the Senate on June 17, 1812.

VOTE OF CONGRESS DECLARING THE WAR OF 1812 ______________________________________________________ | | | | HOUSE | SENATE | STATES |_______________|_______________| | For | Against | For | Against | _____________________|_____|_________|_____|_________| Vermont..............| 3 | 1 | 1 | 0 | New Hampshire........| 3 | 2 | 1 | 1 | Ma.s.sachusetts........| 6 | 8 | 1 | 1 | Rhode Island.........| 0 | 2 | 0 | 2 | Connecticut..........| 0 | 7 | 0 | 2 | New York.............| 3 | 11 | 1 | 1 | New Jersey...........| 2 | 4 | 1 | 1 | Pennsylvania.........| 16 | 2 | 2 | 0 | Delaware.............| 0 | 1 | 0 | 2 | Maryland.............| 6 | 3 | 1 | 1 | Virginia.............| 14 | 5 | 2 | 0 | North Carolina.......| 6 | 3 | 2 | 0 | South Carolina.......| 8 | 0 | 2 | 0 | Georgia..............| 3 | 0 | 2 | 0 | Kentucky.............| 5 | 0 | 2 | 0 | Tennessee............| 3 | 0 | 1 | 1 | Ohio.................| 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | ______________________________________________________

The unanimity of the inland and non-commercial States, with the exception of the party vote of the Ohio Senators, is manifest. They were secure from the ravages of maritime war. Ma.s.sachusetts showed a stronger war sentiment than New York, although the course of the Administration in these States during the war reversed this condition.

The Ma.s.sachusetts House of Representatives had pa.s.sed resolutions against the proposed war. The New York opposition represented the commercial interests. Fifty-eight business men of New York City, headed by John Jacob Astor, protested against a war. Among these were sixteen Republicans. The opposition in Rhode Island and Connecticut, which a.s.sumed such a serious aspect during the war, is clearly indicated in this vote. Regarding the sections as North and South, a distinction most unfortunately emphasised during the progress of the war, the popularity of the war in the South may be seen by a table:

House Senate North of Mason and Dixon line /For........34........ 7 Against....37........ 9 South of Mason and Dixon line /For........45........l3 Against....11........ 2

Possibly the spectacle of a war favoured by the Southern and Western people to protect Northern commerce and seamen, a kind of protection not desired by the people who were being imposed on, no less than the extraneous nature of these causes, has given rise to the saying current in the United States that she went to war after the causes were removed and did not secure anything for which she made war. The war message of President Madison, sent to Congress on the 1st day of June, 1812, cited a series of aggressive acts on the part of Great Britain dating from 1802. The most prominent were the seizure of American seamen and goods, and the pretended blockade under the orders in council. More recent and less manifest impositions were described in the disavowal of agreements made by an accredited minister, Erskine; in the attempt to dismember the American Union through a secret British agent in the United States; and the instigation of the Northwest Indians to hostility by British traders. The message acknowledged that France had also been guilty of some of these offensive acts, but intimated that they would be abandoned through negotiations now in progress with that power.

Of these five charges, that concerning the Indians and that charging intrigue were difficult to prove. Responsibility for Erskine's actions was easily disavowed through the explanation that he had exceeded his instructions. The blockades were really withdrawn before war was declared, although the news had not reached this country. The freedom of sailors and goods was finally guaranteed by the end of the Napoleonic wars and consequently were not mentioned in the treaty which closed the War of 1812. Thus the calendar was cleared, and the saying about the causes and results of the war substantiated. Sometimes it is called the "second war for independence." Undoubtedly the treatment which the United States received from European powers before and after the war formed a remarkable contrast. Yet the change was due to changed conditions in Europe rather than to any compulsion wrought by the hostilities. The most valuable independence gained in the war was in the national feeling of the people, as will be shown later in this story.

To the British mind, it must be confessed, this second war with the United States presented a different aspect. Napoleon had absorbed France and all her continental neighbours save Prussia, Austria, and Russia. These with difficulty held back his land forces. To England was left the duty of keeping him in check upon the sea. War was declared by the United States just when Napoleon's invasion of Russia demanded the strictest enforcement of the blockade. England would willingly have avoided a war with the United States at this time, but felt that she could surrender neither the blockade nor right of search so essential to the conquest of Napoleon. It seemed to the English people that they alone stood between this man and the freedom of the world.

They thought it extremely ungrateful that the Americans should resent their Orders in Council and other measures considered essential to their naval supremacy over the French. Granted that these blockades cut off some of the trade which the Americans as neutrals had secured during the two decades of European war; they should be willing to suffer so much in the common cause of liberty against one-man aggression.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BLANK COMMISSION FOR PRIVATEER IN WAR OF 1812. Under these commissions, hundreds of private vessels armed themselves and preyed on the enemy, atoning for the ill success of the American arms on the land.]

Every resistance to England's coercive measures was considered by her as a tacit aid to Napoleon. To the English mind, the hostile att.i.tude of the Americans was a return to the French-American alliance of the Revolutionary days. The Americans were repaying their debt of obligations, but with an important difference. Where a King of France had aided colonists struggling for freedom, the colonists, now grown to a nation, were aiding the greatest enemy to freedom the world had yet seen. It was said that it would be simply a just retribution on America if England should withdraw from the breach and allow Napoleon to turn his ambitious designs upon the Western Republic. He would not hesitate to retake Louisiana, according to British opinion, for his revived American Empire.

Clay had not been the only speaker to indulge in braggadocio and boasting. In all the debates in Congress, Canada was to be invaded on the northern boundary and rolled up at each end. In vain the conservatives showed the neglected condition of the national defences.

Jefferson's policy of economy had reduced the regular army to less than seven thousand men and had scaled down the navy to fifteen vessels, carrying a total of 352 guns, and 63 little gunboats, the offspring of Jefferson's speculative genius. Nor were all these parts of "the Liliputian navy" ready for commission. Six of the largest frigates, mounting 170 of the guns, had been allowed to become useless for lack of repairs. It would require six months' work and a half million dollars to put them in fighting order. Of the little "mosquito fleet," as Jefferson's gunboats were contemptuously styled by the Federalists, 102 were drawn up under sheds at the various navy-yards and few of them seaworthy. Notwithstanding these cold facts, one of the few war advocates in New England said we needed no regular army to take Canada; that the militia of his section needed only authority to do the business; simply give the word of command and the thing was done.

Another brushed aside even the fear of an invasion from Canada by boasting that even the army of Napoleon which had conquered at Austerlitz could not march through New England.

According to one speaker in the House, when the storm of war had been poured on Canada and Halifax, it would sweep through with the resistless impetuosity of Niagara. "The Author of Nature," cried another, "has marked our limits in the South by the Gulf of Mexico and on the North by the regions of eternal frost." This braggadocio, however deplorable from a present view, may be pardoned as characteristic of young men and a young nation. It may be charged to the account of European aggression and British sneers. But it is also significant as marking the dawn of a feeling of nationality. It showed an appreciation of the probable effects of new-world isolation, inter-dependence, and destiny.

It was not a far cry from this position to "America for the Americans,"

a few years later.

The new nation terminated the war into which their enthusiasm plunged them more fortunately than could have been hoped. On the land, it is true, where the "war-hawks" had placed their boasted strength, little was accomplished. Upon the high seas, where little dependence was placed, wonders were accomplished by privateers. No less than 1607 British merchantmen were captured, in addition to sixteen British war-ships. The Americans in turn lost heavily, a total of probably 1400 vessels of all kinds, but their financial loss was small compared with that of the enemy. As in many later instances, the genius of the American for individual initiative proved his salvation.

That an outburst of national pride should follow so many disasters by land is explicable only through the battle of New Orleans, whose crowning victory changed the aspect of prior engagements in the public memory, while it placed a new value on the marksmanship of the American soldiery. Charges made by veterans of Wellington and of Nelson were resisted by unorganised American forces, dependent upon individual initiative and upon skill in shooting. Jackson's motley army was symbolic of the race composition of America and suggestive of the recent acquisition of the land in which they were fighting. There were free negroes, San Domingans, Louisiana Creoles, regular troops, old French soldiers, and swarthy pirates, backed by the hunters of Tennessee in their homespun hunting-shirts, and the Kentuckians with their long knives. The latter boasted of their endurance of hardships and that they were not of woman born, but were half horse and half alligator.

One stanza of a popular song, much used in a later campaign where the hero of New Orleans was the main issue, runs:

"We raised a bank to hide our b.r.e.a.s.t.s, Not that we thought of dying; But then we always liked to rest, Unless the game was flying.

Behind it stood our little force None wished it to be greater, For every man was half a horse, And half an alligator."

Here were demonstrated again the difficulties under which trained battalions fought in the American backwoods. The experience of Braddock was repeated during the month consumed by Pakenham in getting his troops into position. The farmers, who waited at Bunker Hill until the whites of the enemy's eyes were visible in order to insure a good aim against troops firing in volleys, lived again in the hunters of the South at New Orleans. Small wonder that dwelling in memory on these facts aroused an intense American confidence and even undue self-esteem.

If the stimulating effects of war upon nationality are to be noted in all these details, the disintegrating effects on political parties are no less evident. By a reversal of position, both Republicans and Federalists were being drawn from extreme to medium grounds. Many conservatives among the Republicans deplored this shifting to the former views of their opponents. In the actual preparations for war, the pa.s.sing of acts for an embargo, for a loan, for increasing the army and adding to the navy, John Randolph, the overtalented genius of Roanoke, raised his voice in both derision and prophecy.

"If a writ were to issue," said he, with an eloquence too erratic to be convincing, "against the Republican party of 1798, it would be impossible for a constable with a search-warrant to find it. Death, resignations, and desertions, have thinned its ranks. New men and new measures have succeeded."

He predicted that a standing army, being created by the Republicans, would be as fatal to them as it had been to their opponents in 1798.

In one of his frequent speeches, he summed up the principles of the party in olden days when it was opposed to an army, to burdensome taxation, and to excessive expenditures. "Such," said he, "were our opinions in 1798. What has produced the change I do not know, unless we were then _out_ and now we are _in_." The whole philosophy of the compulsory force making for nationality through political parties is expressed in that sentence.

CHAPTER XVII

TRANSFER OF PARTY POLICIES

In predicting defeat as a result of the war measures, Randolph overlooked the facts of history. No party has ever failed to retain the affection of the people when making preparations for war; and the corollary is that no party has ever opposed war successfully. Reasons for this fact were advanced in describing the war scare of 1798. The Federalists, losing State after State during Jefferson's administration, had been temporarily revived in the New England opposition to his embargo. But the accusation of being unpatriotic, of placing commerce above love of country, and the suspicion of holding intercourse with the commercial enemy had driven many from their ranks. John Quincy Adams, the hope of his father's age, was not the only apostate of the day. A member from Kentucky taunted the remnant of Federalists in the House during the war debates with remembrance of New England patriotism.

Said he,

"During embargo days, when our domestic enemies were encouraged by a proclamation under authority of the King of England, these minions of royalty, concentrating in the east, talked of the violations of the laws as virtue; they demoralized the community by raising the floodgates of civil disorder; they gave absolution to felons and invited the commission of crime by the omission of duty."

From time to time instances were not wanting to prove that the remnant of the Federalists was being forced by opposing the Administration into the former att.i.tude of the Republicans. The most frequently cited case is that of Josiah Quincy, a Ma.s.sachusetts member of the House of Representatives, who became so alarmed over the effect which the admission of the State of Louisiana would have on the political balance of the sections that he declared such action virtually dissolved the Union and freed the States from their moral obligations. Regardless of the past theories of his party, he declared the Union a partnership of States into which no new member could be admitted from territory outside the original domain. He declared the whole question was "whether the proprietors of the good old United States should manage their own affairs in their own way, or whether they and their const.i.tution and their political rights should be trampled under foot by foreigners, introduced through a breach in the Const.i.tution." The Federal opposition to the proposed War of 1812 has been described. It was a result of the "low, grovelling parsimony of the counting-room," as Clay denounced it.

The reversal of party position on both sides was due not to choice, but to interchange of situation. The very act of conducting the government on the one hand and of opposing it on the other brought this exchange. Jefferson, the former advocate of peace, from his retirement now urged a vigorous policy which involved retaliation on England, if she burned American cities, by hiring discontented workmen in London to burn British buildings, by conquering Canada, and, after dictating terms of peace with Britain, by making war upon Napoleon.

The reversal of party brought consequent exchange of policy. Instead of Federal encroachment on individual rights, the Republicans must now become aggressors, and the Federalists protestants. Instead of the protests coming from Virginia and Kentucky they now emanated from the New England States. Instead of regarding the State Legislatures as the ultimate protectors of the States, the resistants now went beyond that agency and adopted the very expedient so frequently urged by Jefferson, and the one which Madison testified that he had contemplated in 1799--a convention of delegates from the States.

Some parts of the resolutions adopted by this convention of twenty-seven delegates from the five New England States which met at Hartford, Connecticut, in December, 1814, might easily be supposed to have been voiced by Virginia and Kentucky fifteen years before, so completely had parties and sections exchanged.

"It is as much a duty of the state authorities to watch over the rights _reserved_, as of the United States to exercise the powers which are _delegated_" was the voice of southern individualism speaking through a New England convention. "In cases of deliberate, dangerous, and palpable infractions of the Const.i.tution, affecting the sovereignty of a state and the liberties of the people, it is not only the right, but the duty of such a state to interpose its authority for their protection."

Thus was the doctrine of "interposition" transferred from South to North, equalising sections, and conducing to the ultimate making of the nation.

But the means to be employed were not the same in each case. Resistance in the Union to unconst.i.tutional acts had been the Republican plan of 1798; withdrawal from a Union, whose government had been grossly and corruptly administered ever since the first twelve years of prosperity and happiness, was the Federalist thought of 1814. "Even at this late hour," said the Hartford Convention report, "let government leave to New England the remnant of her resources and she is ready and able to defend her territory." The peaceful dissolution of the Union and the subst.i.tution of "a new form of confederacy among those states which shall intend to maintain a federal relation to each other" was declared to be a possibility. A severance of the Union by one or more States withdrawing against the will of the rest was justified only in case of absolute necessity. The immediate remedy was to perfect "an arrangement which may at once be consistent with the honor and interest of the national government and the security of the states." By the readjustment which they proposed to make between the States and the Union, the latter would practically withdraw from the Eastern States so far as revenue and defence, the two highest attributes of sovereignty, were concerned.

Ultimately the convention hoped for certain amendments to the Const.i.tution, Jefferson's remedy again, "to strengthen and if possible to perpetuate the union of the states," and, incidentally, to curb the national strength of their opponents. To this end, the two-fifths negro representation which the slave States had been given in the Const.i.tution was to be abolished; the extension of Southern power by creating more States from the Louisiana Purchase was to be curbed by requiring a two-thirds vote in each House for the admission of a new State into the Union; Northern commerce was to be protected from future annihilation by limiting embargoes to sixty days; a two-thirds vote of both Houses was to be required to declare war or non-intercourse with a nation; the pro-French element in national politics was to be curbed by forbidding naturalised persons to hold national office; future eight-year Jeffersons and Madisons were to be prevented, and the Virginia presidential trust broken by making a President ineligible for a second term, and by prohibiting two consecutive Presidents to be elected from the same State. A complete transition of the fear of presidential usurpation had been wrought by the burden of war falling more heavily on one section than the other.

[Ill.u.s.tration: DISLOYALTY OF NEW ENGLAND DURING THE WAR OF 1812. This cartoon represents Ma.s.sachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island contemplating jumping into the arms of John Bull, while Maine prays below for guidance. The King says "Oh 'tis my Yankee boys, jump in, my fine fellows, plenty mola.s.ses and codfish, plenty of goods to smuggle, honours, t.i.tles, and n.o.bility into the bargain." Ma.s.sachusetts, nearest the King, says "What a dangerous leap! but we must jump, Brother Conn." Connecticut, in the middle, says "I cannot, Brother Ma.s.s. Let me pray and fast some little longer Little Rhode Island will jump the first." Rhode Island says "Poor little I! What will become of me? This leap is of a frightful size. I sink into despondency."]

National finances were seriously impaired by the war. The lending section refused to support the Administration. Of the loan authorised in 1814, less than one-half was taken and that at a discount of twenty per cent. During the same year, the Government defaulted on the interest due on the national debt. Moneyed men claimed that business had been so impaired by the embargo and war as to prevent their coming to the relief of the nation. Unfortunately, strict-construction theory had cut off the bank which might otherwise have been a source of supply.

A glance at a table of statistics of the commerce and financial standing of the United States during the embargo and war period will show the effects of a maritime war and explain the causes of the complaints of commercial New England. The following sums are in round numbers of millions of dollars.

Exports Imports National Debt 1807........... 108........... 138........... 69 1808........... 22........... 56........... 65 1811........... 61........... 53........... 48 1812........... 38........... 77........... 77 1813........... 27........... 22........... 55 1814........... 16........... 12........... 81 1815........... 52........... 113........... 99 1816........... 81........... 147........... 127

Almost annihilated by the embargo of 1808 and the War of 1812-15, the exports and imports, when relieved from such inc.u.mbrances, leaped to figures which caused anger and rebellion when contemplated. The prospect of wiping out the national debt was indefinitely postponed. Increased burdens of national taxation brought as loud a protest from the Federalists in 1814 as came from the Republicans in 1798.

Yet the chief grievance voiced by the Hartford Convention was neither the loss of commerce nor increased national debt. A question had arisen in the course of the war which brought out the old contention between the right of the State and the nation, although with parties and sections exactly reversed. Fear of the abuse of the military power in the hands of the central authority, which prompted the framers of the Const.i.tution to limit all appropriation for the army to two years'

duration, had also persuaded them to restrict the national use of the State militia to three emergencies, viz., to execute the national laws, to suppress insurrection, and to repel invasion. Test had been made of the first two uses in suppressing the excise rebellion. The War of 1812 brought out the third. The contemplated invasion of Canada was the result of no one of these conditions. Objection to using the militia in carrying on a foreign war had been raised frequently in Congress during the debates on the war measures. A kindred dispute had arisen over the right of the national authorities to appoint officers of the State militia when called into national use. The old Revolutionary State jealousies over this question seemed to have come to life again.

Among the Federalists, now grown to be sticklers for State rights, was a representative in Congress from New York, who cried out in debate:

"If it shall come to that, that militia officers are appointed by the President, I am a militia officer--I will never surrender the state's rights--I would not be commanded by them--and I say, so help me G.o.d, if I do. Militia were never intended for the United States, but for individual states, to defend their states' rights."

In the twenty years of peace administration, this question of employing the militia in a foreign war had never arisen. If the National Government in 1812 had been ready for war, either in force or finance; if the war had been favoured in the commercial States where the available wealth of the country was acc.u.mulated; or if the administration had not been embarra.s.sed constantly by lack of soldiers and revenue, the resistance of New England to the Federal attempts to control her militia, to recruit her young men, and even to contemplate drafting her able-bodied citizens might never have arisen. But if the test had not come, the governors of Ma.s.sachusetts and Connecticut would not have put themselves on record as resisting the call of the President for their quota of militia to serve both inside and outside the State, and the section would have missed committing itself to the former ground of its opponent. The creation of a "Federal army" out of the State militia was now criticised as violently in New England as it had been in the Southern States during the suppression of the whiskey insurrection a score of years before.

This refusal of the thickly populated Eastern States, which had been largely the source of supply in the Revolutionary War, to furnish their share of soldiery, threw the brunt of the Canadian expeditions upon the south-western sections, and thus contributed to the Union in another and less evident manner. The volunteers from those trans-Allegheny regions would never forget the hardships of their journeys through the roadless North-west. Frontier militiamen, who hewed their way through pathless woods and subsisted on roots and berries because there were no roads on which to bring supplies; officers, who guided their commands to streams and found them too small in midsummer, when most needed, to transport their troops; artificers, who built boats on the Great Lakes and could not get armaments to them,--these men were unlikely to allow const.i.tutional objections to lie in the way of future improvements in the Western Territories. They placed the blame for the failure of the campaigns in those parts to lack of means of communication. The freshly cut military roads were strewn with the ruins of flour-barrels, cordage, and various equipment, abandoned in transit. Fully two-thirds of the flour put down at Fort Meigs could not be used. The flour on the Harrison campaign cost the Government not less than eight dollars a barrel. Government commissaries claimed to have been ruined in their contracts by lack of roadways. Only eight hundred pack-horses survived of four thousand employed in the Detroit campaign. The extra expense of one of the northern campaigns would have built a good road to the inaccessible portion if the need could have been foreseen. The experience in the war demanded immediate action for the future public defence, regardless of party interpretation of powers.

Provision for necessary means of communication in the older portions might safely be left to the States; but for the more recently settled regions, especially the Territories, only the States united could provide highways and waterways. The fact that the Union had charge of the Indians in the Territories made the permission easier to grant. Also, during the war, many military roads had been constructed, whose const.i.tutionality no one had time to question. During the intermissions of warfare, soldiers had been employed in constructing military roads between various posts on the frontier. John Randolph had several times aroused the wrath of the war- hawks in Congress by suggesting that the volunteer troops be employed, when not on campaigns, in building highways and digging ca.n.a.ls. He thought the land forces would make some return in this way for the vast sum to be expended on them. After the close of hostilities, the regular troops continued to be employed in such work, receiving extra pay. In various parts of the United States one may still trace the old "military roads,"