From a broad point of view, the placing of sixty years of territorial expansion in the hands of the party opposed to the practice by birth and nature is a strong evidence of the checks and balances which have made the nation. Under strict construction, territorial expansion became a potent factor in loosening the bonds in which the Government might have been confined. Under loose construction, expansion might have become a centrifugal force through foreign conquest and colonial holding which would have destroyed the free system it was intended to build up. The Jeffersonians were moved in later expansions by a desire to extend an economic system and to make party capital. They never sought national aggrandisement, as their opponents might have done had they been in power. Proud of the territorial growth of the Union as we now are, and seeing so clearly the wisdom of the final consummation, we forget that the domain might have been increased too rapidly or too extensively in more sympathetic hands.
In still another way was the fallacy of strict construction laid bare by the Louisiana question. The remedy of an amendment to the Constitution to bestow needed powers had been the one frequently suggested. Here was an early opportunity to test this constitutional preventive against central usurpation. But time was wanting. "From the moment that France takes possession of the mouth of the Mississippi," said Jefferson, "she becomes our mortal enemy." Amendment-making is necessarily a slow process. Months if not years are required. Jefferson was obliged reluctantly to abandon his first thought of an amendment to cover both the present case of Louisiana and the future affair of the Floridas, if they were not included in Louisiana. He was forced to suggest to members of Congress that the less said about any constitutional difficulty the better, and that it would be desirable for that body to do what was necessary in silence.
If the Jeffersonians had been driven from their first ground by this territorial acquisition, the Federalists had fared no better. They had first called into being the genii of the "implied powers," and now had the mortification of seeing it serve their enemies. Having swung in the change of 1801 from the "ins" to the "outs," they became the opposition party and were compelled to resist many measures and principles which they had formerly advocated. They had gradually lost State after State until they were confined to New England. The former great national party, the party of Hamilton, Jay, and Adams, the party to which Washington had leaned, was shrinking into a sectional faction. Where it had once wished to give the Union every means of aggrandisement, it was now compelled to oppose almost doubling its domain, lest the balance of power between the different parts be lost. It feared the ascendency which Louisiana would give to the Southern interests, never foreseeing from the shape of the addition that the advantage would in time lie with the North. Professing devotion to the Union, they would now deprive it of the advantages resulting from prolonging indefinitely its holding of colonies. They must have seen the result if the domain had never extended beyond the Mississippi. The territory both north and south of the Ohio would speedily be made into States according to existing arrangements. The great prestige inuring to the Union from territorial control would thereby cease. But with the addition of new provinces from time to time, the holding of territories preliminary to statehood must be indefinitely prolonged. The functions of the Union would be multiplied instead of diminished.
By the acquisition of Louisiana, Jefferson effectually settled the twenty years of internal dispute over the navigation of the lower Mississippi. From source to mouth, it flowed presumably through American territory. Americans were to be found on both sides the great water highway. Those west of the river had crossed upon invitation of Spain, who hoped in this way to people her province without loss to her other possessions. The colonists taken across the river by Colonel Morgan and others had caused no little alarm to statesmen in the Confederation days, lest the population of the United States be drawn off to people a Spanish possession and so weaken the Republic. Among the thirty-five thousand or more people to be found about the city of New Orleans and along the lower Mississippi and the Red rivers was a small percentage of Americans; but a much larger proportion was to be found in the six thousand inhabitants of St. Louis and the small villages near by.
This leaven of Americans affected the whole. They had been accustomed to the fostering hand of the National Government in the matter of improving means of transportation and communication in the older States from which they had migrated, and they did not hesitate to demand such aid for their new localities. Thus the people in their westward movement, carrying with them remembrances of the benefits of government assistance enjoyed in their former homes, have extended the system of national improvements across the continent.
There was a pressing demand for assistance in the Louisiana country. The province had been long neglected because of the frequent changes in ownership and the Latin method of colony holding. The task of Americanising this foreign element was imperative. The extent of territory to be brought under harmonious rule was extensive and varied. It was impossible for the Administration, in providing for the welfare and defence of the acquisition, not to be drawn into measure after measure of that paternalistic nature for which the party had so roundly criticised the Federalists. The sole management of Territories was vested in the National Government. The individual States could have no part in providing for the inhabitants of the Louisiana Purchase.
[Illustration: TAKING POSSESSION OF THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE. Occupying presumably the same balcony in which Laussat, Wilkinson, and Claiborne stood on the front of the Spanishcabildoat New Orleans, in December, 1803, witnessing the replacing of the French flag by the American flag in the public square below, there stand, in the illustration, the Governor of Louisiana, with a descendant of Claiborne, the Archbishop and the Mayor of New Orleans, enacting the scene in December, 1903.]
Federalist precedent had paved the way for Republican action. Since the Revolutionary days, Congress had been accustomed to maintain troops on the border for the protection of settlers. The establishment of forts in distant parts made necessary the construction of roads between the posts and their connection with the settled parts for the conveyance of troops and supplies. The addition of the vast tract of Louisiana demanded an immediate extension of military posts and military roads.
The Federalists had been accustomed, as previously described, to construct new post-roads instead of confining the mails to roads already built by State or private funds. Some of these post-roads were nothing more than a "trace" cut through the woods, which permitted a man on horseback to pass, carrying a post-bag. Even this could not be done without some expenditure. Occasionally the expense was met by a donation of public lands through which the trace passed. In other instances, payment was made from the postal receipts and appropriations. The constitutionality of such action had been attacked occasionally by the Republicans before they came into power. But having assumed the national control, they were compelled to continue the construction of military and post-roads. Even the fear of a standing army and the desire to economise could not warrant a neglect of the inhabitants scattered through the new possession. Congress owed protection to them not only as an implied power, but as an implied duty.
Thus it came about that Jefferson, who a few years before was taking Madison to task for thinking that the power to establish post-roads meant to construct new ones rather than to establish post-routes on those already made, was engaged with his Cabinet in planning a vast system of new highways to and through Louisiana. Among other enterprises, they contemplated a great post-road to New Orleans through Georgia, instead of the long water route heretofore used by way of Nashville and Natchez. The new way, it was estimated, would shorten the journey five hundred miles. Branches were planned to St. Louis and to Detroit. The difficulties of frontier travel may be imagined from the fact that the surveyor-general, who was despatched to examine the feasibility of the Georgia route, was nearly three months in reaching New Orleans from Washington.
Interested in scientific knowledge and exploration, and desirous of keeping American ships off the seas by developing internal trade, Jefferson had anticipated the purchase of Louisiana by proposing confidentially to Congress the despatch of a few men on an investigating trip up the Missouri River. Trade with the Indians needed to be cultivated in this manner, but no State was sufficiently concerned to undertake it. Jefferson found an easy way to warrant national action. "The interests of commerce," said he, "place the principal object within the constitutional powers and care of Congress." Not even Randolph, who deplored every departure from old policies, could ever regret the expenditure of the $2500 which sent the Lewis and Clark expedition across the continent and laid the claims for national addition nearly a half-century later. After this precedent, it was easy to send Lieutenant Pike to ascertain the true source of the Mississippi and to explore the vast plains on the south-west toward the Spanish possessions. Many expeditions for scientific purposes and for exploration have been sent by the National Government since that day; but it must be remembered that the practice was inaugurated under the strict constructionists, with no other warrant than "to regulate commerce."
The Lewis and Clark expedition called fresh attention to the possibilities of the great West, and justified the urgent demand of the Western people for national aid. The danger of Western secession had long since disappeared; but many plotters had shown a tendency to use the frontiersmen as allies in the European wars. Genet, over ten years before the Lewis and Clark expedition, contemplated the use of an American force against British Canada. Miranda proposed to use the same recruiting-ground for his movements on Spanish South America, and even Hamilton consented to the scheme, if he could be commander of the expedition. Now came Burr, planning an expedition of these hardy trans-Alleghenians into New Orleans and thence into the disintegrating Spanish possessions of the South-west. Napoleon's success seemed to have turned the heads of all ambitious men of the day toward foreign conquest and they proposed to use the Mississippi valley as a rallying-ground. To invade the territory of a nation with whom the United States was at peace was contrary to Federal law. Jefferson turned his attention toward punishing Burr on even more serious grounds; but Gallatin was keen enough to discover the cause for selecting the Western people as tools. It was not a novel idea to suggest better means of communication between the East and the West; but it was novel to attribute Western disaffection to a lack of touch and sympathy between the people of the two sections. Trade and intrigue with foreign neighbours, so Gallatin thought, could be suppressed more easily by kindness than by punishment. It was true that the National Government had permanently opened the Mississippi River as an outlet for the West. But the journey down was long and tedious, delays might be encountered at New Orleans because of the limited number of ocean vessels on which produce could be transshipped, and only a limited cargo if any was possible on the return journey up-stream. The increase in population and the consequent increase in the size of crops to be transported to a market would speedily bring a demand for some means of taking the products directly to the Atlantic seaboard and of bringing manufactured goods in return.
Gallatin embodied some of these thoughts in his celebrated report on the topography of the United States, which he submitted to Congress in 1808. He first described the few attempts which had thus far been made by States and private companies toward constructing canals and turnpikes. Then he threw party theories to the wind and, with a constructive statesmanship second only to that of Hamilton, he suggested a vast system of national improvements on a worthy scale to be undertaken and carried to completion by the central authority. It would require not less than twenty million dollars. Since there would be an annual surplus of five million dollars because of the unredeemable form of the national debt, he would appropriate large sums to these "national objects." Not only would the distant parts be bound together, the mail better accommodated, and internal trade assisted, but, as Gallatin pointed out, it would be possible to transport troops hurriedly from place to place, adding to the national defence. Nature had interposed mountains, falls, and sandbars in the pathways of interstate communication. "The General Government alone," said he, "can remove these obstacles."
Gallatin was compelled to acknowledge, however, that the execution of his plan would be hampered because the National Government could not, under the limits of the Constitution, undertake the construction of a road or canal through a State without the express permission of that State. In the Territories alone would it be possible. State consent might be difficult to obtain, because so many States had inaugurated similar enterprises, which would be obliged to compete with the national roads and canals. Jefferson, in accord with his general theory, suggested an amendment to the Constitution, removing this objection. He overlooked the fact that national post-roads and military roads had been already constructed within States. With such an amendment, he was willing to use the national income accruing above the national expenses for "the improvement of roads, canals, rivers, education, and other great foundations of prosperity and union," as he said in his last annual message.
Gallatin said in his report that the only work undertaken by the United States at their sole expense, and to which the consent of the States had been obtained, was the road from Cumberland to Brownsville. Further appropriations for that object were constitutional. As to other projects, he thought the National Government was empowered to do nothing more at present than to assist those undertaken by giving them loans or subscribing to their stock. Also the Federal engineers might be employed in making surveys for proposed improvements. It seems strange, in the light of modern Government initiative, to see statesmen blocked in a desired undertaking by constitutional quibbling. Having embarked in the work in the case of military and post-roads and in the Cumberland Road, they hesitated to go on.
[Illustration: WRITTEN LAW OF THE NORTH-WEST TERRITORY. A law passed at Vincennes, now in Indiana, against gambling. In the absence of printing-presses it is said the judges were accustomed to nail up copies of the laws on trees for the information of the public.]
This Cumberland National Turnpike is an excellent example of the constant menace to individualism and the irresistible tendency toward unionism resulting from the advance of population, the topography of the country, and the cupidity of the people. The portage across the watershed from the streams of the Atlantic plain to those of the Ohio valley had been a matter of concern from colonial times. Artificial waterways were impossible from lack of water-supply on the high levels. The Union inherited this problem when the policy of creating national Territories out of the back lands was inaugurated. Lack of funds prevented any extensive attempt to solve the problem.
The State of Ohio was the first to be created out of the public domain. The unsold public lands lying within its boundaries remained in the possession of the United States, although sovereignty over them passed to the State. By an agreement between the two powers, the State refrained from taxing the lands for five years, in return for which the Federal Government promised to spend five per cent, of the proceeds of the land sales within the State in the construction of public roads. A portion of this was to be devoted to building a highway over the Allegheny Mountains to the State. Strict-construction scruples were satisfied by securing the consent of the States through which the road was to be built.
Consent having been given by the State Legislatures of Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania, work was begun in 1808 at the eastern terminus of the portage, Fort Cumberland, Maryland, a name eventually given to the entire road. Grants of money were made from the land sales; but the proceeds accumulated so slowly that they were inadequate for carrying on the work. The demand for the completion of the road increased with growth of travel to the West. A way out of the difficulty was found by making appropriations directly from the national treasury "to be repaid out of the fund reserved for laying out and making roads to the state of Ohio." When this condition would be dropped and appropriations made openly for the road, the same as for the army, the navy, and other specified obligations of the National Government, would depend entirely upon the demands of the people. Every appropriation simply whetted the appetite for more.
As Gallatin said, the Cumberland Road is unique. It is a solitary example. It did not mean the adoption by the Jeffersonians of a party policy on such liberal principles. But it made easier the adoption of such a policy after the War of 1812 had demonstrated in a most unpleasant manner the absolute necessity for such action on the part of the General Government.
Jefferson had a most delightful manner of satisfying his conscience and adjusting himself to the inevitable by likening national to individual actions. In the case of the Louisiana purchase he had compared the National Administration to a guardian who adds a desirable bit of property to his ward's farm and then throws himself on the mercy of the ward for approval. He pardoned the assumption of a constitutional right to build the Cumberland Road by likening the Administration to a farmer who wishes to sell some distant and inaccessible portion of his land, and is compelled to spend part of the proceeds in constructing roads to it in order to sell the remainder. Regardless of the soundness or folly of such philosophy, the mischief was done. Insidiously the internal-improvement precedent had been allowed to creep into the strict-construction fold. How it grew until one veto after another was required to bring the people back to their senses remains to be described later.
During the latter portion of Jefferson's eight years of administration, the party was saved from being driven into more Union-making actions, because domestic matters were overshadowed by the hostile aspect of foreign affairs. Measures looking to the improvement of internal communication, development of interstate commerce, interior exploration and discovery, and the spread of intelligence had to be postponed from session to session to consider retaliation on the European foes to American commerce. Such aggressive acts as the attack of theLeopardon theChesapeakecould brook no delay. But it was inevitable that when the engrossing foreign questions should cease, the demand for paternalistic measures would be renewed with a zeal doubled by delay and by the new spirit of nationality. The important fact to be noted at this time is that the movement of the people across the continent went on steadily, whatever might be the aspect of affairs on the Atlantic coast.
The foreign relations of the United States were rapidly coming to a point which would terminate the predominance of European influence on American political parties. The struggle of the French people for liberty, which had appealed so powerfully to Jefferson and his followers, was now lost in the ambitions of Napoleon. "I had hoped," said Jefferson at a later time, "that he would have seen the difference between the example of a Cromwell and a Washington." Ten years before, Jefferson would willingly have seen his countrymen fighting side by side with the French patriots against monarchical England; but to be allied with Napoleon meant to further the ends of Napoleon. With the single exception of the Louisiana transaction, Jefferson's diplomatic administration is a story of European intrigue and imposition upon an impotent and helpless neutral. American commercial rights were lost sight of in the world-struggle between Napoleon and his enemies. The decrees of one belligerent were followed by checkmating orders in council of the other, andvice versa, with no regard for neutral rights, and no object save starving each other into submission.
It is true that the American traders sought every opportunity of evading these orders and decrees and continuing the most profitable trade America had ever known. For instance, Britain forbade all trading directly between France, Holland, Spain, and their colonies in order to cut off supplies. In order to evade this, an American captain would take a cargo in these colonies, sail to some American port, enter his cargo, and immediately clear with the same, without really unloading. He was entitled to a drawback of the duties he had paid. Having now broken his voyage, as he claimed, he sailed to a French or Spanish port without danger of violating the British orders. The British admiralty courts soon declared that this was an evasion; that there had been in reality no "broken voyage." Then American traders began the practice of really landing the goods in some American port, while the vessel was overhauled and repaired, then continuing the voyage, after reloading. The British courts conceded this to be a broken voyage.
In 1805, so ample were the supplies furnished France and Spain by this method of evading the law, that the British court reversed its former opinion. A large number of seizures followed. To cover the entire continental coast, a paper blockade was declared by Britain about the same time. The Administration could no longer continue its policy of forbearance. Negotiation had failed. Retaliation was the only method left. Jefferson, the father of his people, was a warrior neither by nature nor practice. A foreign war meant to him the disarrangement of domestic affairs, interference with domestic development, and the accumulation of a debt which must fall in the last analysis upon the common people, the least able to bear it. To a correspondent he expressed his desire to avoid war until the national debt was discharged, when the regular income would meet the expense of a war and so prevent a new debt and increased taxes. His policy of retrenchment, dictated by his love of the people, had reduced the army and navy and left the land without adequate means of defence. He further realised that war might bring undue national aggrandisement. The common defence must be undertaken by the Central Government. In the haste and the necessities of war, measures might be taken oppressive to the people and destructive of their individual rights, which would never be passed in the calm contemplations of peace. Reluctantly he was compelled to advise Congress to enter upon a system of total embargo on foreign trade, which might possibly avoid war and preserve the pattern of neutrality which had been set by the first President.
Notwithstanding the pacific motives which impelled Jefferson to choose that form of retaliation, the embargo was a part of the old colonial idea of restriction. To avoid the capture of American goods and sailors, keep them at home. Committing suicide is one way to avoid being killed by your enemy. A more modern way is to arm yourself. If the commercial interests, ruined by the embargo, as they claimed, had belonged to the individualistic rural States, or if Jefferson had been from the trading States, sectional differences might not have been so prominent during the continuation of this policy, and the reactionary laws leading to unification might not have been so apparent. The chief protestor against marching a Federal army into the sovereign State of Pennsylvania a score of years before was now stationing gunboats off the coast of the sovereign States of New England, and on Lake Champlain in the sovereign State of New York, for the purpose of coercing the people into an obedience to national laws. The section which at that time had supported so vigorously the repressive measures of Washington was now opposing as forcibly such actions when taken toward themselves. The people of Pennsylvania, a part of whom were then resisting the central authority, now offered an armed force to the President "to cram the embargo down the throats of the Yankees."
The paralysing effects of the embargo became apparent gradually during the fifteen months of its existence and brought the commercial States to the verge of rebellion. Nearly one-half the population of Salem, it was claimed, had been compelled to ask public aid. Prices on imported goods rose to a fabulous height, while surplus products, formerly exported, fell to ruinous rates. Inland commerce was equally affected, since there was no demand for carrying goods to or from the coast. Writers compared the embargo remedy to a snake biting itself with poisonous fang when surrounded by enemies; to a man cutting down his tree to rid it of caterpillars; or to the fool who cut off his head to rid himself of an aching tooth. The first anniversary of the embargo was observed throughout New England with tolling bells, flags at half-mast, and processions of unemployed seamen and artisans. The mayor of New York forbade riotous gatherings. When a number of men disguised as Indians retook a sloop caught by a man-of-war in forbidden trade, their action was compared to that of the patriots who threw overboard the East India tea.
It was claimed in the commercial States that the power "to regulate" commerce, bestowed by the Constitution, did not cover an embargo or prohibition of commerce. In advancing this argument, the New England people quoted the opinion of the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions that "an unconstitutional law is not binding on the people." In reply to this point made by the loose constructionists, the strict constructionists could do nothing more than quote the implied power. "To regulate" meant to keep the enemy from seizing. Time had wrought a strange transfer of doctrines.
Rhymesters exercised their wit in ridiculing both Jefferson and the embargo. Said one:
"Our ships all in motion once whitened the ocean,They sailed and returned with a cargo;Now doomed to decay, they have fallen a preyTo Jefferson, worms, and embargo."
Another paid his respects to the President in stanzas, one of which will suffice:
"Like the Tyrant of fame, he embargoes his ports,And to measures that ruin his subjects resorts;By fools he is flattered—by wise men accursed,For "No trade" is the maxim of Thomas the First."
These squibs illustrate the dominance which politics held over the composition of the day. The discussion over the adoption of the Constitution had long since given way to newspaper and pamphlet writing on political issues. These writings, frequently scurrilous and abusive, were caused by the rise of parties and, in turn, aided in forming parties. None of the wretched stuff survived.Peter Porcupine, theAurora, and the much loftierColumbiadare alike forgotten. Yet it is indicative of the extent to which politics ruled the day to note that inKnickerbocker's History of New York, Washington Irving turns aside from the ostensible object of a humorous sketch of early New York to ridicule President Jefferson. William the Testy, a dreamer, a speculative philosopher, an impractical inventor, with a smattering of all knowledge, was easily recognised as the President of the United States. His suggestion of windmills as a means of defence was a burlesque on Jefferson's little gunboats, and his government by proclamation a parody on the embargo and its proclamations.
[Illustration: PRESIDENT JEFFERSON'S SECOND INAUGURAL ADDRESS.]
This isolated work of Irving, written ten years before the beginning of his literary career, finds a counterpart in a long "poem" on the embargo, advertised extensively in the newspapers of New York and New England. It was composed by William Cullen Bryant, aged thirteen, no doubt gladly forgotten in later years and to be found in few editions of his works.
"Go, wretch! resign thy Presidential chair,Disclose thy secret measures, foul or fair,"
was the gentle manner in which the young rhymester addressed the author of the hated embargo. The following orthographic puzzle went the rounds of the Federalist papers. By beginning at the central letter, the phrase "Embargo will ruin us" may be read in countless directions.
The friends of the embargo attempted to rally the home spirit of the people in order to support the measure. President Jefferson ordered sufficient dark-blue cloth from Colonel Humphreys to make himself a coat, saying: "Homespun is become the spirit of the times. My idea is that we shall encourage home manufactures to the extent of our own consumption of everything of which we raise the raw material." The Legislatures of Virginia, North Carolina, Vermont, and Ohio fixed a day, after which no imported clothing should be worn by members. Pennsylvania used the proceeds of a dog tax to introduce a better breed of sheep into the State. Clay, offering a resolution in the Kentucky Legislature to use only homespun, was denounced by a fellow-member as a demagogue, the affair ending, quite naturally, in a duel. A rally of Americanism which would support the embargo was denied to Jefferson, but Clay reaped the full benefit of these early efforts at a later time.
The closing days of Jefferson's administration were not the most pleasant he had to remember. Like the husband who, at his own request, assumes direction of the household expenditures with high ideas of reform, he found theory and practice far removed from each other. His policy of retrenchment, it was true, had scaled down the army, navy, and consular service nearly two million dollars a year, and the pension list had been reduced to the lowest point in the history of the nation. The public debt was lowered from eighty-three million dollars to fifty-seven million, and could have been reduced still more if it had been redeemable. Whatever pleasure the retiring President might have derived from contemplating these facts was lost sight of in the demoralising effects of the embargo. The exports had been reduced to one-fifth their normal amount, the customs cut in half, and the entire income of the nation had decreased from seventeen to seven million dollars.
No American statesman before Greeley believed so confidently in the goodness of the people and none so much desired their happiness. Nor was ever altrurian more bitterly disappointed. The frustration of a high hope and the selfishness of interests alike find exemplification in the eight years of Jefferson. Assuming office with an aversion to coercion in any form, assuring the people that the energies of the nation should be used for the improvement of man and not wasted in his destruction, he had been forced before leaving office to exclaim: "Where is the patriotism of the people?" The individual had long since been lost sight of in compelling the whole people to obey the law. It was as impossible for Jefferson to carry the people to the thinly populated plains of individualism as it had been found impossible to transfer them to the elect city of centralisation. Defeated in his attempts to avert war by commercial restriction, disheartened by his failure to rally the patriotism of the people without recourse to war, he confessed on leaving the Presidency that no prisoner, on being released from his chains, felt such pleasure as he did in shaking off the shackles of power.
The United States, as a maritime nation, could scarcely expect to escape the maelstrom of war induced by the task of suppressing the French Revolution and Napoleon, a task which occupied the legitimists of Europe for a quarter of a century, and involved every civilised nation of the Old World. President Washington had early laid the course of the ship of state on the medium way of neutrality. He maintained the course, although at the penalty of such abuse as we gladly forget at the present day. To continue that policy, President Adams wrecked his party, cut himself off with one term, and became a vicarious sacrifice when he chose negotiations with France instead of war. President Jefferson spent eight unhappy years for the same object. He endured national humiliation, was forced into coercive measures from which his soul revolted, and brought his country to the verge of commercial ruin to avoid war. President Madison, during his first four years, was made the tool of British diplomatic equivocation and the plaything of Napoleonic strategy to maintain the position chosen nearly two decades before; so great was the task and so fearful the cost of founding a neutral nation.
This delay of war proved most fortunate in the end. Those twenty years allowed the American merchantmen to increase in numbers until they were able to work such devastation on British commerce as marked the course of the War of 1812. The period allowed the new nation to acquire the strategic mouth of the Mississippi, and to make such inroads of settlers in the debatable land of the Floridas that Britain was unable to secure a permanent footing in them during hostilities. Twenty years carried forward the Old World struggle to a point so near its close that the Americans were able in the end to make surprisingly good terms in the general European demand for a world-peace.
As if to put the strict constructionists to the test on every side, the twenty years for which the Hamilton bank had been chartered expired in the midst of a conviction that war was inevitable. The bank, as a means of securing loans, would be indispensable during a war. The liberal-minded Gallatin brought in a report to Congress advocating a re-charter of the bank for another term of years. His arguments were much like those of Hamilton twenty years before. Is it given to the departed to know such a mortal pleasure as vindication?
Gallatin's recommendation evoked a storm of dissent from those members of the party who adhered to early principles. They would not give a new lease of life to this monopoly, unconstitutional in its origin and abused in its administration. State banks, if given an opportunity, could care for the United States money as well as an aristocratic, exclusive institution, seven-tenths of whose stock was held in England. This plea for the individual was the argument by which the opponents of re-charter met the predictions of financial ruin with which the advocates of Gallatin's suggestion filled the air. The withdrawal of twenty-four million dollars from circulation would mean a national panic, it was claimed. Arguments of expediency were heard where constitutionality had held twenty years before.
The unionising process which the former individualists had undergone in ten years of administration is illustrated by the speech of Crawford, of Georgia, a lifelong adherent to the principles of Jefferson in the main, but too liberal to be bound to a dead past. A rational analysis of the Constitution, he thought, would show that it was not perfect in language as commonly supposed, but that it occasionally gave a general power followed by a specific power.
"This analysis," said he, "may excite unpleasant sensations, it may assail honest prejudices; for there can be no doubt that honest prejudices frequently exist and are many times perfectly innocent. But when these prejudices tend to destroy even the object of their affection, it is ostensibly necessary that they should be eradicated."
In pleading that the Constitution should not be held down to a construction which would render it "wholly imbecile," he took as advanced ground on the implied powers as had any Federalist in the olden days. Ridiculing those who clung to the old restrictive theory, he cited numerous actions of the party during the ten years it had been in power which could be justified only by constitutional implication. Among these, he said, were laws for the punishment of counterfeiters, passed under the power to coin money; the erection of lighthouses under the power to regulate commerce; the prohibition of offences against the post-office department under the power to establish post-offices and post-roads; and the acceptance of sites for arsenals, forts, and dockyards under the power to control them. Even the acceptance of the District of Columbia depended upon the implied instead of the direct language of the Constitution. Nor did he fail to point out that in 1802, when removing the judges of the circuit courts established by the Federalists in their last hours, the party was proceeding entirely upon the assumption that the expressed power to create inferior courts contained the implied power to abolish them.
Petitions both for and against a re-charter of the Hamilton bank poured in from merchants in various cities and from branches of the bank. Instructions against the bank came from the State Legislatures of Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Kentucky. So nearly was opinion divided that a new lease of life for the bank was prevented in the House by only one vote, and in the Senate by the deciding vote of Vice-President Gerry, of Massachusetts, who chose to abide by party principles rather than to listen to the voice of the majority of people in his own State.
The predicted extension of State banks and the disorder in the finances of the country were alike experienced after the expiration of the United States Bank in 1811. More than two hundred of these private institutions were chartered in the various States to take the place of the branches of the old bank. They were to be found especially in the newer portions of the country, where banking facilities had been previously unknown. Flooding the land with their bank-notes, they speedily drove coin out of circulation. The latter was hoarded. When the war began, banks found it impossible to secure this hoarded coin to redeem their notes and were compelled to suspend specie payment completely. The National Government, having made these banks depositaries for the revenue collectors, according to the individualistic demands, suffered loss and disarrangement of its funds. The lesson was severe, especially in the face of an impending war.
In the final struggle of the giants, which began, near the close of Madison's first term, with Napoleon's preparations for the invasion of Russia, every offensive and defensive principle known to English commercial history (and few are abandoned) was revived in the attempt to starve out the French and prevent the long-anticipated invasion of England. The seizure of American goods on the high seas had long been a source of complaint from the commercial interests; but it never affected the masses or so aroused them to the point of fury as did the practice of taking seamen from American vessels. Britain was the worst offender in both forms of reprisal, not alone because she was the greatest maritime power, but also because a common speech characterised the sailors of Britain and the United States. Yet it was largely a matter of different views of citizenship. That a man should voluntarily exile himself from British protection and citizenship was as offensive to British pride as injurious to British strength. That an allegiance could exist better than that of England was incomprehensible to the British public; that a man deluded into so thinking should be set right was a natural duty. "Once a subject, always a subject," gave the sovereign a right to the services of every man born under the British flag or having sworn fealty thereto. The subject could be taken by a press-gang on shore or could be impressed from the deck of any vessel on which he had taken refuge. Such doctrine was especially objectionable to Americans, who depended largely upon aliens to people their vast domain, and who placed so much stress upon individual freedom of motion. Perpetual allegiance of the subject was as obnoxious as perpetual ownership of the land to a people who were all aliens once, twice, or thrice removed.
On the other hand, the British complained that their seamen were seduced from their allegiance to fill up the American merchant marine. Formal naturalisation papers were said to be given to men who sailed two years from American ports. These deserters were engaged, for a large part, in the neutral trade. Thus the enemies of Britain were being served by British sailors. Not only was her trade injured and the enemy strengthened, but this was being done by the loss of blood from her own navy. Her writers called upon the Government to sacrifice even the good-will of the Americans rather than to submit to the imposition of neutrals on British trade and the loss of British sailors.
The Americans were forced by public sentiment to take a stand for national citizenship. A broad patriotism was rallied which overcame all scruples about the differences between national and State citizenship. The matter manifestly belonged to the central rather than the individual governments. When threatened by foreign powers, Federal citizenship assumed a new value in the eyes of the Jeffersonians, much akin to that which it had long borne in the opinion of the Federalists. The party which ten years before was endeavouring to distinguish between State and national citizenship was now compelled to take action to protect sailors who were not residents of any State. Many of them had no homes. They could look to no protector except the Union, under whose flag they sailed.
It is questionable whether the Federalists, had they remained in power, could have avoided a war with Britain when once the people had become fully aroused by the continued attacks of Britain on American commerce and American citizenship. Long-suffering and patient toward British offence, that party had avoided war for at least ten years. Jefferson and Madison, more devoted to maintaining neutrality than restrained by love of Britain, postponed the inevitable war for twelve years more. But Madison's was a gradually waning power. The end of his first administration marks the termination of the one-man era. Hamilton and Jefferson by turn had dominated national affairs. Perhaps no man could have continued the monopoly. The day of many counsellors was at hand. Revolutionary statesmen and warriors alike were to be cast aside by a second generation, which knew not the horrors of war. The supremacy of the Atlantic coast in national affairs had begun to wane. Political power was moving westward with the people.
This war element, which practically took matters from Madison's hands, was composed of men who were to measure their careers by decades instead of years. Its constituents had been reared in the strenuous life of the frontier. Separated from Old World influence by the Allegheny barrier, they felt the first impulses of true Americanism. A continuation of dominant foreign influence under them was impossible. Instead of seceding to a foreign power, as their fathers had threatened, these trans-Allegheny frontiersmen had now been absorbed by the Union and were to secure their long-delayed rights by controlling their own government, which had once been disposed to neglect them. They were, for the most part, country-bred lawyers, belonging to the agricultural and borrowing class rather than the bank-founding, lending Federalists. In this respect, they would be in accord with Jefferson and Madison, but totally at variance with them in their inland attitude toward ocean commerce.
Like true Democrats, they breathed the air of the individual rather than the masses. Clay was the son of a dissenting clergyman in aristocratic Virginia, which was still under the spell of an establishment of religion. By removing to Kentucky, he not only exemplified the movement of national power, but freed himself from all disadvantages of caste. The only aristocracy on the frontier was that of worth. Calhoun came of equally humble birth and inherited his individualistic principles. His father had been a country member of the Virginia Convention and had opposed the adoption of the Federal Constitution. Much of Calhoun's bias toward democracy was derived, as he confessed, from an early conversation with the sage of Monticello. Bred in the upland district of South Carolina, a region more akin to Tennessee than to the seaboard, Calhoun may have had in mind the massacre of his grandmother by the Indians as he arose in the war session of Congress to make his report as chairman of the important Committee of Foreign Affairs. He arraigned the British agents from Canada circulating among the American Indians, and charged them with the outrages committed on the American frontier. Members from the Ohio valley did not hesitate to attribute the recent outbreak, culminating in the battle of Tippecanoe, to intrigues of the British in Canada, whereby the profitable fur trade would be diverted to their posts. "If we are to be permanently free from this danger," said one speaker in the debate which followed the report, "we must drive the British from Canada. I, for one, am willing to receive the Canadians themselves as adopted brothers." Grundy, of Tennessee, who, like Clay, had been born on the Atlantic slope and had followed the advance of population across the Alleghenies, arose to declare that the whole Western country was eager to avenge their fallen heroes, and awaited but the word of Congress to march into Canada.
The frontiersmen, never free from the hostility of the savage, sought to explain it by every cause except the true one—their constant invasion of the lands reserved to him by the National Government in treaties made with him. Here lies at least one explanation of the long endurance of British commercial wrongs by the United States before war was declared. The West, with its grievance of Indian tampering, had not yet come into control of national affairs. The frontiersmen, by their conquests of nature, had come to despise the strength of all enemies. With no commerce to be endangered by a foreign war, safe in the almost roadless interior from the peril of invasion, the Western representatives were able to carry by storm in Congress their temporising, commercial brethren of the coast. When discussing the embargo bill as a preliminary war measure in 1812, Clay, made Speaker during his first session in the House, scorned the appeal of New York for peace, in her defenceless condition, as her representatives described her. "I do not wish to hear," said Clay, "of the opinion of Brockholst Livingston or any other man. I consider this a war measure, and approve of it because it is a direct precursor of war." Fourteen Legislatures of the South and West, he said, had put themselves on record as wishing to avenge the insults of Britain. The Legislature of his own State had supported Jefferson's embargo four years previously with such zeal that they almost passed a measure abolishing the English common law in Kentucky courts.
Perhaps it was an accident that this twelfth Congress was composed almost one-half of new members; but more likely it was the result of popular impatience with the compromising foreign attitude of the National Government. It was an incipient political revolution, without involving a change of administration, a form of rebuke not infrequent in the history of the Republic. The fact that these new and inexperienced members, known as "war-hawks," were able to secure the leadership may have been due to the accidental conjunction of natural leaders; but a larger view would see in it a shifting of political power with the advance of the people. The grievance of these Southern and Western people against the Indians could neither be appreciated nor believed by the New England and Middle Atlantic States, far removed from the frontier and the savages. To their minds, the broader accusation of preying upon American commerce was more real. Yet so profitable had grown the monopoly of trade secured by them as neutrals in the Napoleonic wars that they could well afford to lose occasionally by foreign orders and decrees for the sake of the profit as a whole. The War of 1812 from a sectional standpoint presents, therefore, the unusual aspect of an inland, agricultural people forcing a war upon the country for the protection of a marine, commercial people, who were for the most part opposed to it. When Clay, in the lofty style common to the time, declared the Americans unconquerable, and that if the enemy should lay in ashes New York, Philadelphia, and Boston, and should devastate the whole Atlantic coast, the people would retreat beyond the Alleghenies to live and flourish there, a member from New Jersey protested that this was too high a price for him; that he had no inclination to go beyond the Alleghenies; and that even the Mississippi valley would be a poor consolation to him after everything that was near and dear to him and his people had been destroyed.
The desire for commercial independence, which had been growing steadily since political independence had been gained, was responsible for some of this defiant attitude. Speaker after speaker described the spirit of our forefathers who used only homespun in the rising Revolutionary days. The career of the United States, if commercially independent of Europe, was compared with her present situation, a victim of foreign oppression on the highways of the world. One speaker thought we should never be true Americans so long as we had to go to Europe for our national airs. It was not admitted generally that England's restrictive measures were due to her desire to starve out Napoleon, but as prompted by jealousy of "her new commercial rival," the United States. "England sickens at your prosperity," said Clay, "and beholds in your growth the foundations of a power which at no distant day is to make her tremble for her naval superiority." A foolish pride, characteristic of youth, urged on the war spirit. It was said that a few years before we had resolved for war, retaliation, or submission. The retaliatory measures had been withdrawn; war or submission was the only choice left.
Beneath the hostility arising from Britain's war measures lay, in the American mind, the irritation caused by her patronising air. The Americans had chafed under British social as well as commercial intolerance ever since the birth of the Republic. In the British thought, the Americans were still colonists in that they were not to the manor born. The Declaration of Independence and the severance of political ties had left them still dependent upon Britain in the higher aspects of life.
"The Americans asserted their independence," said theEdinburgh Review, "upon principles which they derived from us. They are descended from our loins, they retain our usages and manners, they read our books, they have copied our freedom, they rival our courage, and yet they are less popular and esteemed among us than the base and bigoted Portuguese and the ferocious and ignorant Russians."
When an English statesman suggested that his Government would do well to cultivate the new Republic for the sake of trade if for no higher motive, Lord Brougham ridiculed the proposition of paying heed to "a people whose armies are as yet at the plough, or making awkward attempts at the loom, whose assembled navies could not lay siege to an English sloop of war." These sneers, although containing a large proportion of truth, exasperated the young nation beyond control. The provincialism of the day writhed under any suggestion that the New World was not the rival of the Old in every intellectual particular. A broader spirit would have confessed that time is required for the development of genius and the surroundings which conduce to a high development of intellectual and artistic life. Two decades later, Lowell satirised this American tendency in theFable for Criticsby saying that while the Old World has produced barely eight poets, the New World begets a whole crop each year.
"Why, there's scarcely a huddle of log-huts and shanties,That has not brought forth its own Miltons and Dantes;I myself know ten Byrons, one Coleridge, three Shelleys,Two Raphaels, six Titians, (I think) one Apelles,Leonardos and Rubenses plenty as lichens,One (but that one is plenty) American Dickens,A whole flock of Lambs, any number of Tennysons,—In short, if a man has the luck to have any sons,He may feel pretty certain that one out of twainWill be some very great person over again."
These extravagant claims incited fresh attacks. One British writer insisted that Federal America had done nothing either to extend, diversify, or embellish the sphere of human knowledge, and could produce nothing to bring her intellectual efforts into any sort of comparison with those of Europe. "Noah Webster, we are afraid," said he, "still occupies the first place in criticism, Timothy Dwight and Joel Barlow in poetry, and Mr. Justice Marshall in history." Another pronounced the celebrated Philosophic Hall in Philadelphia a "meeting house" for the society, where its transactions were "scooped together" in the "genuine dialect of tradesmen." Not only the published papers of the Philosophic Society were held up to ridicule, but also John Quincy Adams'sLetters from Silesia, Marshall'sLife of Washington, Barlow'sColumbiad, Dwight's poetry, and Lewis and Clark's history of their expedition.
"But why should the Americans write books," asked theEdinburgh Review, "when a six weeks' passage brings them in their own tongue our sense, science, and genius in bales and hogsheads. Prairies, steamboats, grist-mills are their natural objects for centuries to come."
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 circumscribed 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 Godfrey 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 attitude 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 entitled "An act declaring war between Great Britain and her dependencies and the United States and their Territories," which passed 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 |Massachusetts……..| 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. Massachusetts showed a stronger war sentiment than New York, although the course of the Administration in these States during the war reversed this condition. The Massachusetts House of Representatives had passed 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 assumed 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 SenateNorth of Mason and Dixon line /For……..34…….. 7\Against….37…….. 9South 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.
[Illustration: 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 attitude 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 breasts,Not that we thought of dying;But then we always liked to rest,Unless the game was flying.Behind it stood our little forceNone 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 passing 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 thenoutand now we arein." The whole philosophy of the compulsory force making for nationality through political parties is expressed in that sentence.