THE VIRGINIAN DYNASTY
I have spoken of Jefferson's election as if it had been a direct act of
the people; and morally it was so. But in the actual proceedings there
was a certain hitch, which is of interest not only because it
illustrated a peculiar technical defect in the original Constitution and
so led to its amendment, but because it introduces here, for the first
time, the dubious but not unfascinating figure of Aaron Burr.
Burr was a politician of a type which democracies will always produce,
and which those who dislike democracy will always use for its reproach.
Yet the reproach is evidently unjust. In all societies, most of those
who meddle with the government of men will do so in pursuit of their own
interests, and in all societies the professional politician will reveal
himself as a somewhat debased type. In a despotism he will become a
courtier and obtain favour by obsequious and often dishonourable
services to a prince. In an old-fashioned oligarchy he will adopt the
same attitude towards some powerful noble. In a parliamentary
plutocracy, like our own, he will proceed in fashion with which we are
only too familiar, will make himself the paid servant of those wealthy
men who finance politicians, and will enrich himself by means of "tips"
from financiers and bribes from Government contractors. In a democracy,
the same sort of man will try to obtain his ends by flattering and
cajoling the populace. It is not obvious that he is more mischievous as
demagogue than he was as courtier, lackey, or parliamentary intriguer.
Indeed, he is almost certainly less so, for he must at least in some
fashion serve, even if only that he may deceive them, those whose
servant he should be. At any rate, the purely self-seeking demagogue is
certainly a recurrent figure in democratic politics, and of the
self-seeking demagogue Aaron Burr was an excellent specimen.
He had been a soldier not without distinction, and to the last he
retained a single virtue--the grand virtue of courage. For the rest, he
was the Tammany Boss writ large. An able political organizer, possessed
of much personal charm, he had made himself master of the powerful
organization of the Democratic party in New York State, and as such was
able to bring valuable support to the party which was opposing the
administration of Adams. As a reward for his services, it was determined
that he should be Democratic candidate for the Vice-Presidency. But here
the machinery devised by the Convention played a strange trick. When the
votes of the Electoral College came to be counted, it was found that
instead of Jefferson leading and yet leaving enough votes to give Burr
the second place, the votes for the two were exactly equal. This, under
the Constitution, threw the decision into the hands of the House of
Representatives, and in that House the Federalists still held the
balance of power. They could not choose their own nominee, but they
could choose either Jefferson or Burr, and many of them, desiring at the
worst to frustrate the triumph of their great enemy, were disposed to
choose Burr; while Burr, who cared only for his own career, was ready
enough to lend himself to such an intrigue.
That the intrigue failed was due mainly to the patriotism of Hamilton.
All that was best and worst in him concurred in despising the mere
flatterer of the mob. Jefferson was at least a gentleman. And, unfairly
as he estimated him both morally and intellectually, he knew very well
that the election of Jefferson would not be a disgrace to the Republic,
while the election of Burr would. His patriotism overcame his
prejudices. He threw the whole weight of his influence with the
Federalists against the intrigue, and he defeated it. It is the more to
his honour that he did this to the advantage of a man whom he could not
appreciate and who was his enemy. It was the noblest and purest act of
his public career. It probably cost him his life.
Jefferson was elected President and Burr Vice-President, as had
undoubtedly been intended by the great majority of those who had voted
the Democratic ticket at the elections. But the anomaly and disaster of
Burr's election had been so narrowly avoided that a change in the
Constitution became imperative. It was determined that henceforward the
votes for President and Vice-President should be given separately. The
incident had another consequence. Burr, disappointed in hopes which had
almost achieved fulfilment, became from that moment a bitter enemy of
Jefferson and his administration. Also, attributing the failure of his
promising plot to Hamilton's intervention, he hated Hamilton with a new
and insatiable hatred. Perhaps in that hour he already determined that
his enemy should die.
Jefferson's inauguration was full of that deliberate and almost
ceremonial contempt of ceremony in which that age found a true
expression of its mood, though later and perhaps more corrupt times have
inevitably found such symbolism merely comic. It was observed as
striking the note of the new epoch that the President rejected all that
semi-regal pomp which Washington and Adams had thought necessary to the
dignity of their office. It is said that he not only rode alone into
Washington (he was the first President to be inaugurated in the newly
built capital), dressed like any country gentleman, but, when he
dismounted to take the oath, tethered his horse with his own hands. More
really significant was the presence of the populace that elected
him--the great heaving, unwashed crowd elbowing the dainty politicians
in the very presence chamber. The President's inaugural address was full
of a generous spirit of reconciliation. "We are all Republicans," he
said, "we are all Federalists." Every difference of opinion was not a
difference of principle, nor need such differences interfere with "our
attachment, to our Union and to representative government."
Such liberality was the more conspicuous by contrast with the petty
rancour of his defeated rival, who not only refused to perform the
customary courtesy of welcoming his successor at the White House, but
spent his last hours there appointing Federalists feverishly to public
offices solely in order to compel Jefferson to choose between the
humiliation of retaining such servants and the odium of dismissing
them. The new President very rightly refused to recognize nominations so
made, and this has been seized upon by his detractors to hold him up as
the real author of what was afterwards called "the Spoils System." It
would be far more just to place that responsibility upon Adams.
The most important event of Jefferson's first administration was the
Louisiana Purchase. The colony of Louisiana at the mouth of the
Mississippi, with its vast _hinterland_ stretching into the heart of the
American continent, had, as we have seen, passed in 1762 from French
into Spanish hands. Its acquisition by the United States had been an old
project of Jefferson's. When Secretary of State under Washington, he had
mooted it when settling with the Spanish Government the question of the
navigation of the Mississippi. As President he revived it; but before
negotiations could proceed far the whole situation was changed by the
retrocession of Louisiana to France as part of the terms dictated by
Napoleon to a Spain which had fallen completely under his control. The
United States could not, in any case, have regarded the transfer without
uneasiness, and to all schemes of purchase it seemed a death-blow, for
it was believed that the French Emperor had set his heart upon the
resurrection of French Colonial power in America. But Jefferson was an
excellent diplomatist, at once conciliatory and unyielding: he played
his cards shrewdly, and events helped him. The Peace of Amiens was
broken, and, after a very brief respite, England and France were again
at war. Napoleon's sagacity saw clearly enough that he could not hope to
hold and develop his new colony in the face of a hostile power which was
his master on the sea. It would suit his immediate purpose better to
replenish his treasury with good American dollars which might soon be
urgently needed. He became, therefore, as willing to sell as Jefferson
was to buy, and between two men of such excellent sense a satisfactory
bargain was soon struck. The colony of Louisiana and all the undeveloped
country which lay behind it became the inheritance of the American
Federation.
Concerning the transaction, there is more than one point to be noted of
importance to history. One is the light which it throws on Jefferson's
personal qualities. Because this man held very firmly an abstract and
reasoned theory of the State, could define and defend it with
extraordinary lucidity and logic, and avowedly guided his public conduct
by its light, there has been too much tendency to regard him as a mere
theorist, a sort of Girondia, noble in speculation and rhetoric, but
unequal to practical affairs and insufficiently alive to concrete
realities. He is often contrasted unfavourably with Hamilton in this
respect: and yet he had, as events proved, by far the acuter sense of
the trend of American popular opinion and the practical requirements of
a government that should command its respect; and he made fewer mistakes
in mere political tactics than did his rival. But his diplomacy is the
best answer to the charge. Let anyone who entertains it follow closely
the despatches relating to the Louisiana purchase, and observe how
shrewdly this supposed visionary can drive a good bargain for his
country, even when matched against Talleyrand with Bonaparte behind him.
One is reminded that before he entered politics he enjoyed among his
fellow-planters a reputation for exceptional business acumen.
Much more plausible is the accusation that Jefferson in the matter of
Louisiana forgot his principles, and acted in a manner grossly
inconsistent with his attitude when the Federalists were in power.
Certainly, the purchase can only be defended constitutionally by giving
a much larger construction to the powers of the Federal authority than
even Hamilton had ever promulgated. If the silence of the Constitution
on the subject must, as Jefferson had maintained, be taken as forbidding
Congress and the Executive to charter a bank, how much more must a
similar silence forbid them to expend millions in acquiring vast new
territories beyond the borders of the Confederacy. In point of fact,
Jefferson himself believed the step he and Congress were taking to be
beyond their present powers, and would have preferred to have asked for
a Constitutional Amendment to authorize it. But he readily gave way on
this to those who represented that such a course would give the
malcontent minority their chance, and perhaps jeopardize the whole
scheme. The fact is, that "State Rights" were not to Jefferson a first
principle, but a weapon which he used for the single purpose of
resisting oligarchy. His first principle, in which he never wavered for
a moment, was that laid down in the "Declaration"--the sovereignty of
the General Will. To him Federalism was nothing and State Sovereignty
was nothing but the keeping of the commandments of the people. Judged by
this test, both his opposition to Hamilton's bank and his purchase of
the Louisiana territory were justified; for on both occasions the nation
was with him.
Jefferson's inconsistency, therefore, if inconsistency it were, brought
him little discredit. It was far otherwise with the inconsistency of the
Federalists. For they also changed sides, and of their case it may be
said that, like Milton's Satan, they "rode with darkness." The most
respectable part of their original political creed was their
nationalism, their desire for unity, and their support of a strong
central authority. Had this been really the dominant sentiment of their
connection, they could not but have supported Jefferson's policy, even
though they might not too unfairly have reproached him with stealing
their thunder. For not only was Jefferson's act a notable example of
their own theory of "broad construction" of the Constitution, but it was
perhaps a more fruitful piece of national statesmanship than the best of
Hamilton's measures, and it had a direct tendency to promote and
perpetuate that unity which the Federalists professed to value so
highly, for it gave to the States a new estate of vast extent and
incalculable potentialities, which they must perforce rule and develop
in common. But the Federalists forgot everything, even common prudence,
in their hatred of the man who had raised the people against them. To
injure him, most of them had been ready to conspire with a tainted
adventurer like Burr. They were now ready for the same object to tear up
the Union and all their principles with it. One of their ablest
spokesmen, Josiah Quincey, made a speech against the purchase, in which
he anticipated the most extreme pronouncements of the Nullifiers of 1832
and the Secessionists of 1860, declared that his country was not America
but Massachusetts, that to her alone his ultimate allegiance was due,
and that if her interests were violated by the addition of new Southern
territory in defiance of the Constitution, she would repudiate the Union
and take her stand upon her rights as an independent Sovereign State.
By such an attitude the Federalists destroyed only themselves. Some of
the wiser among them left the party on this issue, notably John Quincey
Adams, son of the second President of the United States, and himself to
be raised later, under somewhat disastrous circumstances, to the same
position. The rump that remained true, not to their principles but
rather to their vendetta, could make no headway against a virtually
unanimous nation. They merely completed and endorsed the general
judgment on their party by an act of suicide.
But the chief historical importance of the Louisiana purchase lies in
the fact that it gave a new and for long years an unlimited scope to
that irresistible movement of expansion westward which is the key to all
that age in American history. In the new lands a new kind of American
was growing up. Within a generation he was to come by his own; and a
Westerner in the chair of Washington was to revolutionize the
Commonwealth.
Of the governing conditions of the West, two stand out as of especial
importance to history.
One was the presence of unsubdued and hostile Indian tribes. Ever since
that extraordinary man, Daniel Boon (whose strange career would make an
epic for which there is no room in this book), crossed the Alleghanies a
decade before the beginning of the Revolution and made an opening for
the white race into the rich valleys of Kentucky, the history of the
western frontier of European culture had been a cycle of Indian wars.
The native race had not yet been either tamed or corrupted by
civilization. Powerful chiefs still ruled great territories as
independent potentates, and made peace and war with the white men on
equal terms. From such a condition it followed that courage and skill in
arms were in the West not merely virtues and accomplishments to be
admired, but necessities which a man must acquire or perish. The
Westerner was born a fighter, trained as a fighter, and the fighting
instinct was ever dominant in him. So also was the instinct of loyalty
to his fellow-citizens, a desperate, necessary loyalty as to comrades in
a besieged city--as, indeed, they often were.
The other condition was the product partly of natural circumstances and
partly of that wise stroke of statesmanship which had pledged the new
lands in trust to the whole Confederacy. The Westerner was
American--perhaps he was the first absolutely instinctive American. The
older States looked with much pride to a long historical record which
stretched back far beyond the Union into colonial times. The
Massachusetts man would still boast of the Pilgrim Fathers. The
Virginian still spoke lovingly of the "Old Plantation." But Kentucky and
Tennessee, Ohio and Indiana were children of the Union. They had grown
to statehood within it, and they had no memories outside it. They were
peopled from all the old States, and the pioneers who peopled them were
hammered into an intense and instinctive homogeneity by the constant
need of fighting together against savage nature and savage man. Thus,
while in the older settlements one man was conscious above all things
that he was a New Englander, and another that he was a Carolinian, the
Western pioneer was primarily conscious that he was a white man and not
a Red Indian, nay, often that he was a man and not a grizzly bear. Hence
grew up in the West that sense of national unity which was to be the
inspiration of so many celebrated Westerners of widely different types
and opinions, of Clay, of Jackson, of Stephen Douglas, and of Abraham
Lincoln.
But this was not to take place until the loyalty of the West had first
been tried by a strange and sinister temptation.
Aaron Burr had been elected Vice-President coincidently with Jefferson's
election as President; but his ambition was far from satisfied. He was
determined to make another bid for the higher place, and as a
preliminary he put himself forward as candidate for the Governorship of
New York State. It was as favourable ground as he could find to try the
issue between himself and the President, for New York had been the
centre of his activities while he was still an official Democrat, and
her favour had given him his original position in the party. But he
could not hope to succeed without the backing of those Federalist
malcontents who had nearly made him President in 1800. To conciliate
them he bent all his energies and talents, and was again on the point of
success when Hamilton, who also belonged to New York State, again
crossed his path. Hamilton urged all the Federalists whom he could
influence to have nothing to do with Burr, and, probably as a result of
his active intervention, Burr was defeated.
Burr resolved that Hamilton must be prevented from thwarting him in the
future, and he deliberately chose a simple method of removing him. He
had the advantage of being a crack shot. He forced a private quarrel on
Hamilton, challenged him to a duel, and killed him.
He can hardly have calculated the effect of his action: it shocked the
whole nation, which had not loved Hamilton, but knew him for a better
man than Burr. Duelling, indeed, was then customary among gentlemen in
the United States, as it is to-day throughout the greater part of the
civilized world; but it was very rightly felt that the machinery which
was provided for the vindication of outraged honour under extreme
provocation was never meant to enable one man, under certain forms, to
kill another merely because he found his continued existence personally
inconvenient. That was what Burr had done; and morally it was
undoubtedly murder. Throughout the whole East Burr became a man marked
with the brand of Cain. He soon perceived it, but his audacity would not
accept defeat. He turned to the West, and initiated a daring conspiracy
which, as he hoped, would make him, if not President of the United
States, at least President of something.
What Burr's plan, as his own mind conceived it, really was it is
extremely difficult to say; for he gave not only different but directly
opposite accounts to the various parties whom he endeavoured to engage
in it. To the British Ambassador, whom he approached, he represented it
as a plan for the dismemberment of the Republic from which England had
everything to gain. Louisiana was to secede, carrying the whole West
with her, and the new Confederacy was to become the ally of the Mother
Country. For the Spanish Ambassador he had another story. Spain was to
recover predominant influence in Louisiana by detaching it from the
American Republic, and recognizing it as an independent State. To the
French-Americans of Louisiana he promised complete independence of both
America and Spain. To the Westerners, whom he tried to seduce, exactly
the opposite colour was given to the scheme. It was represented as a
design to provoke a war with Spain by the invasion and conquest of
Mexico; and only if the Federal Government refused to support the
filibusters was the West to secede. Even this hint of hypothetical
secession was only whispered to those whom it might attract. To others
all thought of disunion was disclaimed; and yet another complexion was
put on the plot. The West was merely to make legitimate preparations for
the invasion of Mexico and Florida in the event of certain disputes then
pending with Spain resulting in war. It was apparently in this form that
the design was half disclosed to the most influential citizen and
commander of the militia in the newly created State of Tennessee, Andrew
Jackson, the same that we saw as a mere school-boy riding and fighting
at Hanging Rock.
Jackson had met Burr during the brief period when he was in Congress as
representative of his State. He had been entertained by him and liked
him, and when Burr visited Tennessee he was received by Jackson with all
the hospitality of the West. Jackson was just the man to be interested
in a plan for invading Mexico in the event of a Spanish war, and he
would probably not have been much shocked--for the West was headstrong,
used to free fighting, and not nice on points of international law--at
the idea of helping on a war for the purpose. But he loved the Union as
he loved his own life. Burr said nothing to him of his separatist
schemes. When later he heard rumours of them, he wrote peremptorily to
Burr for an explanation. Burr, who, to do him justice, was not the man
to shuffle or prevaricate, lied so vigorously and explicitly that
Jackson for the moment believed him. Later clearer proof came of his
treason, and close on it followed the President's proclamation
apprehending him, for Burr had been betrayed by an accomplice to
Jefferson. Jackson at once ordered out the militia to seize him, but he
had already passed westward out of his control. The Secretary for War,
who, as it happened, was a personal enemy of Jackson's, thinking his
connection with Burr might be used against him, wrote calling in
sinister tone for an account of his conduct. Jackson's reply is so
characteristic of the man that it deserves to be quoted. After saying
that there was nothing treasonable in Burr's communications to him
personally, he adds: "But, sir, when proofs showed him to be a Treator"
(spelling was never the future President's strong point), "I would cut
his throat with as much pleasure as I would cut yours on equal
testimony."
The whole conspiracy fizzled out. Burr could get no help from any of the
divergent parties he had attempted to gain. No one would fight for him.
His little band of rebels was scattered, and he himself was seized,
tried for treason, and acquitted on a technical point. But his dark,
tempestuous career was over. Though he lived to an unlovely old age, he
appears no more in history.
Jefferson was re-elected President in 1804. He was himself doubtful
about the desirability of a second tenure, but the appearance at the
moment of a series of particularly foul attacks upon his private
character made him feel that to retire would amount to something like a
plea of guilty. Perhaps it would have served his permanent fame better
if he had not accepted another term, for, owing to circumstances for
which he was only partly to blame, his second Presidency appears in
history as much less successful than his first.
Its chief problem was the maintenance of peace and neutrality during the
colossal struggle between France under Napoleon and the kings and
aristocracies of Europe who had endeavoured to crush the French
Revolution, and who now found themselves in imminent peril of being
crushed by its armed and amazing child.
Jefferson sincerely loved peace. Moreover, the sympathy for France, of
which he had at one time made no disguise, was somewhat damped by the
latest change which had taken place in the French Government. Large as
was his vision compared with most of his contemporaries, he was too much
soaked in the Republican tradition of antiquity, which was so living a
thing in that age, to see in the decision of a nation of soldiers to
have a soldier for their ruler and representative the fulfilment of
democracy and not its denial. But his desire for peace was not made
easier of fulfilment by either of the belligerent governments. Neither
thought the power of the United States to help or hinder of serious
account, and both committed constant acts of aggression against American
rights. Nor was his position any stronger in that he had made it a
charge against the Federalists that they had provided in an
unnecessarily lavish fashion for the national defence. In accordance
with his pledges he had reduced the army. His own conception of the best
defensive system for America was the building of a large number of small
but well-appointed frigates to guard her coasts and her commerce. It is
fair to him to say that when war came these frigates of his gave a good
account of themselves. Yet his own position was a highly embarrassing
one, anxious from every motive to avoid war and yet placed between an
enemy, or rather two enemies, who would yield nothing to his
expostulations, and the rising clamour, especially in the West, for the
vindication of American rights by an appeal to arms.
Jefferson attempted to meet the difficulty by a weapon which proved
altogether inadequate for the purpose intended, while it was bound to
react almost as seriously as a war could have done on the prosperity of
America. He proposed to interdict all commerce with either of the
belligerents so long as both persisted in disregarding American rights,
while promising to raise the interdict in favour of the one which first
showed a disposition to treat the United States fairly. Such a policy
steadily pursued by such an America as we see to-day would probably have
succeeded. But at that time neither combatant was dependent upon
American products for the essentials of vitality. The suppression of the
American trade might cause widespread inconvenience, and even bring
individual merchants to ruin, but it could not hit the warring nations
hard enough to compel governments struggling on either side for their
very lives in a contest which seemed to hang on a hair to surrender
anything that might look like a military advantage. On the other hand,
the Embargo, as it was called, hit the Americans themselves very hard
indeed. So great was the outcry of the commercial classes, that the
President was compelled to retrace his steps and remove the interdict.
The problem he handed over unsolved to his successor.
That successor was James Madison, another Virginian, Jefferson's
lieutenant ever since the great struggle with the Federalists and his
intimate friend from a still earlier period. His talents as a writer
were great; he did not lack practical sagacity, and his opinions were
Jefferson's almost without a single point of divergence. But he lacked
Jefferson's personal prestige, and consequently the policy followed
during his Presidency was less markedly his own than that of his great
predecessor had been.
Another turn of the war-wheel in Europe had left America with only one
antagonist in place of two. Trafalgar had destroyed, once and for all,
the power of France on the sea, and she was now powerless to injure
American interests, did she wish to do so. England, on the other hand,
was stronger for that purpose than ever, and was less restrained than
ever in the exercise of her strength. A new dispute, especially
provocative to the feelings of Americans, had arisen over the question
of the impressment of seamen. The press-gang was active in England at
the time, and pursued its victims on the high seas. It even claimed the
right to search the ships of neutrals for fugitives. Many American
vessels were violated in this fashion, and it was claimed that some of
the men thus carried off to forced service, though originally English,
had become American citizens. England was clearly in the wrong, but she
refused all redress. One Minister, sent by us to Washington, Erskine,
did indeed almost bring matters to a satisfactory settlement, but his
momentary success only made the ultimate anger of America more bitter,
for he was disowned and recalled, and, as if in deliberate insult, was
replaced by a certain Jackson who, as England's Ambassador to Denmark in
1804, had borne a prominent part in the most sensational violation of
the rights of a neutral country that the Napoleonic struggle had
produced.
There seemed no chance of peace from any conciliatory action on the part
of Great Britain. The sole chance hung on the new President's
inheritance of Jefferson's strong leaning in that direction. But Madison
was by no means for peace at any price; and indeed Jefferson himself,
from his retreat at Monticello, hailed the war, when it ultimately came,
as unmistakably just. For a long time, however, the President alone held
the nation back from war. The War Party included the Vice-President
Munroe, who had been largely instrumental in bringing about the
Louisiana purchase. But its greatest strength was in the newly populated
West, and its chief spokesman in Congress was Henry Clay of Kentucky.
This man fills so large a space in American politics for a full
generation that some attempt must be made to give a picture of him. Yet
a just account of his character is not easy to give. It would be simple
enough to offer a superficial description, favourable or hostile, but
not one that would account for all his actions. Perhaps the best
analysis would begin by showing him as half the aboriginal Westerner and
half the Washington politician. In many ways he was very Western. He had
a Westerner's pugnacity, and at the same time a Westerner's geniality
and capacity for comradeship with men. He had to the last a Westerner's
private tastes--especially a taste for gambling--and a Westerner's
readiness to fight duels. Above all, from the time that he entered
Congress as the fiercest of the "war hawks" who clamoured for vengeance
on England, to the time when, an old and broken man, he expended the
last of his enormous physical energy in an attempt to bridge the
widening gulf between North and South, he showed through many grievous
faults and errors that intense national feeling and that passion for the
Union which were growing so vigorously in the fertile soil beyond the
Alleghanies. But he was a Western shoot early engrafted on the political
society of Washington--the most political of all cities, for it is a
political capital and nothing else. He entered Congress young and found
there exactly the atmosphere that suited his tastes and temperament. He
was as much the perfect parliamentarian as Gladstone. For how much his
tact and instinct for the tone of the political assembly in which he
moved counted may be guessed from this fact: that while there is no
speech of his that has come down to us that one could place for a
moment beside some of extant contemporary speeches of Webster and
Calhoun, yet it is unquestionable that he was considered fully a match
for either Webster or Calhoun in debate, and in fact attained an
ascendancy over Congress which neither of those great orators ever
possessed. At the management of the minds of men with whom he was
actually in contact he was unrivalled. No man was so skilful in
harmonizing apparently irreconcilable differences and choosing the exact
line of policy which opposing factions could agree to support. Three
times he rode what seemed the most devastating political storms, and
three times he imposed a peace. But with the strength of a great
parliamentarian he had much of the weakness that goes with it. He
thought too much as a professional; and in his own skilled work of
matching measures, arranging parties and moving politicians about like
pawns, he came more and more to forget the silent drive of the popular
will. All this, however, belongs to a later stage of Clay's development.
At the moment, we have to deal with him as the ablest of those who were
bent upon compelling the President to war.
Between Clay and the British Government Madison's hand was forced, and
war was declared. In America there were widespread rejoicings and high
hopes of the conquest of Canada and the final expulsion of England from
the New World. Yet the war, though on the whole justly entered upon, and
though popular with the greater part of the country, was not national in
the fullest sense. It did not unite, rather it dangerously divided, the
Federation, and that, unfortunately, on geographical lines. New England
from the first was against it, partly because most of her citizens
sympathized with Great Britain in her struggle with Napoleon, and partly
because her mercantile prosperity was certain to be hard hit, and might
easily be ruined by a war with the greatest of naval powers. When,
immediately after the declaration of war, in 1812, Madison was put
forward as Presidential candidate for a second term, the contest showed
sharply the line of demarcation. North-east of the Hudson he did not
receive a vote.
The war opened prosperously for the Republic, with the destruction by
Commander Perry of the British fleet on Lake Ontario--an incident which
still is held in glorious memory by the American Navy and the American
people. Following on this notable success, an invasion of Canada was
attempted; but here Fortune changed sides. The invasion was a complete
failure, the American army was beaten, forced to fall back, and
attacked, in its turn, upon American soil. Instead of American troops
occupying Quebec, English troops occupied a great part of Ohio.
Meanwhile, Jefferson's frigates were showing their metal. In many duels
with English cruisers they had the advantage, though we in this country
naturally hear most--indeed, it is almost the only incident of this war
of which we ever do hear--of one of the cases in which victory went the
other way--the famous fight between the _Shannon_ and the _Chesapeake_.
On the whole, the balance of such warfare leant in favour of the
American sea-captains. But it was not by such warfare that the issue
could be settled. England, summoning what strength she could spare from
her desperate struggle with the French Emperor, sent an adequate fleet
to convoy a formidable army to the American coast. It landed without
serious opposition at the mouth of the Chesapeake, and marched straight
on the national capital, which the Government was forced to abandon.
No Englishman can write without shame of what followed. All the public
buildings of Washington were deliberately burnt. For this outrage the
Home Government was solely responsible. The general in command received
direct and specific orders, which he obeyed unwillingly. No pretence of
military necessity, or even of military advantage, can be pleaded. The
act, besides being a gross violation of the law of nations, was an
exhibition of sheer brutal spite, such as civilized war seldom witnessed
until Prussia took a hand in it. It had its reward. It burnt deep into
the soul of America; and from that incident far more than from anything
that happened in the War of Independence dates that ineradicable hatred
of England which was for generations almost synonymous with patriotism
in most Americans, and which almost to the hour of President Wilson's
intervention made many in that country doubt whether, even as against
Prussia, England could really be the champion of justice and humanity.
Things never looked blacker for the Republic than in those hours when
the English troops held what was left of Washington. Troubles came
thicker and thicker upon her. The Creek Nation, the most powerful of the
independent Indian tribes, instigated partly by English agents, partly
by the mysterious native prophet Tecumseh, suddenly descended with fire
and tomahawk on the scattered settlements of the South-West, while at
the same time a British fleet appeared in the Gulf of Mexico, apparently
meditating either an attack on New Orleans or an invasion through the
Spanish territory of Western Florida, and in that darkest hour when it
seemed that only the utmost exertions of every American could save the
United States from disaster, treason threatened to detach an important
section of the Federation from its allegiance.
The discontent of New England is intelligible enough. No part of the
Union had suffered so terribly from the war, and the suffering was the
bitterer for being incurred in a contest which was none of her making,
which she had desired to avoid, and which had been forced on her by
other sections which had suffered far less. Her commerce, by which she
largely lived, had been swept from the seas. Her people, deeply
distressed, demanded an immediate peace. Taking ground as discontented
sections, North and South, always did before 1864, on the doctrine of
State Sovereignty, one at least, and that the greatest of the New
England States, began a movement which seemed to point straight to the
dilemma of surrender to the foreigner or secession and dismemberment
from within.
Massachusetts invited representatives of her sister States to a
Convention at Hartford. The Convention was to be consultative, but its
direct and avowed aim was to force the conclusion of peace on any terms.
Some of its promoters were certainly prepared, if they did not get their
way, to secede and make a separate peace for their own State. The
response of New England was not as unanimous as the conspirators had
hoped. Vermont and New Hampshire refused to send delegates. Rhode Island
consented, but qualified her consent with the phrase "consistently with
her obligations"--implying that she would be no party to a separate
peace or to the break-up of the Union. Connecticut alone came in without
reservation. Perhaps this partial failure led the plotters to lend a
more moderate colour to their policy. At any rate, secession was not
directly advocated at Hartford. It was hinted that if such evils as
those of which the people of New England complained proved permanent, it
might be necessary; but the members of the Convention had the grace to
admit that it ought not to be attempted in the middle of a foreign war.
Their good faith, however, is dubious, for they put forward a proposal
so patently absurd that it could hardly have been made except for the
purpose of paving the way for a separate peace. They declared that each
State ought to be responsible for its own defences, and they asked that
their share of the Federal taxes should be paid over to them for the
purpose. With that and a resolution to meet again at Boston and consider
further steps if their demands were not met, they adjourned. They never
reassembled.
In the South the skies were clearing a little. Jackson of Tennessee,
vigorous and rapid in movement, a master of Indian warfare, leading an
army of soldiers who worshipped him as the Old Guard worshipped
Napoleon, by a series of quick and deadly strokes overthrew the Creeks,
followed them to their fastnesses, and broke them decisively at Tohopeka
in the famous "hickory patch" which was the holy place of their nation.
He was rewarded in the way that he would have most desired: by a
commission against the English, who had landed at Pensacola in Spanish
territory, perhaps with the object of joining hands with their Indian
allies. They found those allies crushed by Jackson's energy, but they
still retained their foothold on the Florida coast, from which they
could menace Georgia on the one side and New Orleans on the other. Spain
was the ally of England in Europe, but in the American War she professed
neutrality. As, however, she made no effort to prevent England using a
Spanish port as a base of operations, she could not justly complain when
Jackson seized the neighbouring port of Mobile, from which he marched
against the British and dislodged them. But the hardest and most
glorious part of his task was to come. The next blow was aimed at New
Orleans itself. Jackson hastened to its defence. The British landed in
great force at the mouth of the Mississippi and attacked the city from
both sides. Jackson's little army was greatly outnumbered, but the skill
with which he planned the defence and the spirit which he infused into
his soldiers (the British themselves said that Jackson's men seemed of a
different stuff from all other American troops they had encountered)
prevailed against heavy odds. Three times Jackson's lines were attacked:
in one place they were nearly carried, but his energy just repaired the
disaster. At length the British retired with heavy losses and took to
their ships. New Orleans was saved.
Before this last and most brilliant of American victories had been
fought and won, peace had been signed at Ghent. News travelled slowly
across the Atlantic, and neither British nor American commanders knew of
it for months later. But early in the year negotiations had been opened,
and before Christmas they reached a conclusion. Great Britain was more
weary of the war than her antagonist. If she had gone on she might have
won a complete victory, or might have seen fortune turn decisively
against her. She had no wish to try the alternative. Napoleon had
abdicated at Fontainebleau, and been despatched to Elba, and there were
many who urged that the victorious army of the Peninsula under
Wellington himself should be sent across the Atlantic to dictate terms.
But England was not in the mood for more fighting. After twenty years of
incessant war she saw at last the hope of peace. She saw also that the
capture of Washington had not, as had been hoped, put an end to American
resistance, but had rather put new life into it. To go on meant to
attempt again the gigantic task which she had let drop as much from
weariness as from defeat a generation before. She preferred to cry
quits. The Peace, which was signed on behalf of a Republic by Clay--once
the most vehement of "war-hawks"--was in appearance a victory for
neither side. Frontiers remained exactly as they were when the first
shot was fired. No indemnity was demanded or paid by either combatant.
The right of impressment--the original cause of war, was neither
affirmed nor disclaimed, though since that date England has never
attempted to use it. Yet there is no such thing in history as "a drawn
war." One side or the other must always have attempted the imposition of
its will and failed. In this case it was England. America will always
regard the war of 1812 as having ended in victory; and her view is
substantially right. The new Republic, in spite of, or, one might more
truly say, because of the dark reverses she had suffered and survived,
was strengthened and not weakened by her efforts. The national spirit
was raised and not lowered. The _mood_ of a nation after a war is a
practically unfailing test of victory or defeat; and the mood of America
after 1814 was happy, confident, creative--the mood of a boy who has
proved his manhood.
In 1816 Madison was succeeded by Monroe. Monroe, though, like his
successor, a Virginian and a disciple of Jefferson, was more of a
nationalist, and had many points of contact with the new Democracy which
had sprung up first in the West, and was daily becoming more and more
the dominant sentiment of the Republic. "Federalism" had perished
because it was tainted with oligarchy, but there had been other elements
in it which were destined to live, and the "National Republicans," as
they came to call themselves, revived them. They were for a vigorous
foreign policy and for adequate preparations for war. They felt the
Union as a whole, and were full of a sense of its immense undeveloped
possibilities. They planned expensive schemes of improvement by means of
roads, canals, and the like to be carried out at the cost of the Federal
Government, and they cared little for the protests of the doctrinaires
of "State Right." To them America owes, for good or evil, her Protective
system. The war had for some years interrupted commerce with the Old
World, and native industries had, perforce, grown up to supply the wants
of the population. These industries were now in danger of destruction
through the reopening of foreign trade, and consequently of foreign
competition. It was determined to frame the tariff hitherto imposed
mainly, if not entirely, with a view to revenue in such a way as to
shelter them from such peril. The exporting Cotton States, which had
nothing to gain from Protection, were naturally hostile to it; but they
were overborne by the general trend of opinion, especially in the West.
One last development of the new "national" policy--the most questionable
of its developments and opposed by Clay at the time, though he
afterwards made himself its champion--was the revival, to meet the
financial difficulties created by the war, of Hamilton's National Bank,
whose charter, under the Jeffersonian _régime_, had been suffered to
expire.
But the Western expansion, though it did much to consolidate the
Republic, contained in it a seed of dissension. We have seen how, in the
Convention, the need of keeping an even balance between Northern and
Southern sections was apparent. That need was continually forced into
prominence as new States were added. The presence or absence of Negro
Slavery had become the distinguishing badge of the sections; and it
became the apple of discord as regards the development of the West.
Jefferson had wished that Slavery should be excluded from all the
territory vested in the Federal authority, but he had been overruled,
and the prohibition had been applied only to the North-Western Territory
out of which the States of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois were carved. The
South-West had been left open to Slavery, and it had become the custom,
with the purpose of preserving the balance in the Senate, to admit Slave
States and Free in pairs. This worked satisfactorily enough so long as
the States claiming admission were within a well-defined geographical
area. But when Missouri became sufficiently populated to be recognized
as a State, there was a keen contest. Her territory lay across the line
which had hitherto divided the sections. She must be either a Northern
promontory projecting into the south or a Southern promontory projecting
into the north. Neither section would yield, and matters were
approaching a domestic crisis when Clay intervened. He was in an
excellent position to arbitrate, for he came from the most northern of
Southern States, and had ties with both sections. Moreover, as has been
said, his talents were peculiarly suited to such management as the
situation required. He proposed a settlement which satisfied moderate
men on both sides, was ratified by a large majority in Congress, and
accepted on all hands as final. Missouri was to enter the Union, as she
apparently desired to do, as a Slave State, but to the west of her
territory the line 36° 30' longitude, very little above her southern
border, was to be the dividing line of the sections. This gave the South
an immediate advantage, but at a heavy ultimate price, for it left her
little room for expansion. But one more Slave State could be carved out
of the undeveloped Western Territory--that of Arkansas. Beyond that lay
the lands reserved by treaty to the Indian tribes, which extended to the
frontier of the Western dominions of Mexico. Clay, who, though by no
means disposed to be a martyr on the question, sincerely desired to
bring about the gradual extinction of Slavery, may well have
deliberately planned this part of his compromise to accomplish that end.
At the same time, Maine--a territory hitherto attached to
Connecticut--was admitted as a Free State to balance Missouri.
Such was the great Missouri Compromise which kept the peace between the
sections for a generation, and which gradually acquired an almost
religious sanction in the minds of Americans devoted to the Union. It
struck the note of the new era, which is called in American history "the
era of good feeling." Sectional differences had been settled, political
factions were in dissolution. Monroe's second election was, for the
first time since Washington's retirement, without opposition. There were
no longer any organized parties, such as Hamilton and Jefferson and even
Clay had led. There were, of course, still rivalries and differences,
but they were personal or concerned with particular questions. Over the
land there was a new atmosphere of peace.
Abroad, America had never been stronger. To this period belongs the
acquisition of Florida from Spain, an acquisition carried through by
purchase, but by a bargain rather leonine in character. It cannot,
however, be said that the United States had no reasonable grievance in
the matter. Spain had not been able--or said that she had not been
able--to prevent the British from taking forcible possession of one of
her principal ports during a war in which she was supposed to be
neutral. She declared herself equally unable to prevent the Creek and
Seminole Indians from taking refuge in her territory and thence raiding
the American lands over the border. Monroe had a good case when he
pressed on her the point that she must either maintain order in her
dominions or allow others to do so. Jackson, who was in command against
the Seminoles, insisted--not unreasonably--that he could not deal with
them unless he was allowed to follow them across the Spanish frontier
and destroy their base of operations. Permission was given him, and he
used it to the full, even to the extent of occupying important towns in
defiance of the edicts of their Spanish governors. Monroe's Cabinet was
divided in regard to the defensibility of Jackson's acts, but these acts
probably helped to persuade Spain to sell while she could still get a
price. The bargain was struck: Florida became American territory, and
Jackson was appointed her first governor.
But the best proof that the prestige of America stood higher since the
war of 1812 was the fact that the Power which had then been her rather
contemptuous antagonist came forward to sue for her alliance. The French
Revolution, which had so stirred English-speaking America, had produced
an even greater effect on the Latin colonies that lay further south.
Almost all the Spanish dominions revolted against the Spanish Crown, and
after a short struggle successfully established their independence.
Naturally, the rebels had the undivided sympathy of the United States,
which was the first Power to recognize their independence. Now, however,
the Holy Alliance was supreme in Europe, and had reinstated the Bourbons
on the Spanish as on the French throne. It was rumoured that the rulers
of the Alliance meditated the further step of re-subjugating Spain's
American empire. Alexander I. of Russia was credited with being
especially eager for the project, and with having offered to dispatch a
Russian army from Siberia for the purpose: it was further believed that
he proposed to reward himself by extending his own Alaskan dominions as
far south as California. England, under Canning's leadership, had
separated herself from the Holy Alliance, and had almost as much reason
as the United States to dread and dislike such a scheme as the Czar was
supposed to meditate. Canning sent for the American Ambassador, and
suggested a joint declaration against any adventures by European powers
on the American Continent. The joint declaration was declined, as
seeming to commit the United States too much to one of those "entangling
alliances" against which Washington had warned his fellow-countrymen;
but the hint was taken.
Monroe put forth a proclamation in which he declared that America was no
longer a field for European colonization, and that any attempt on the
part of a European power to control the destiny of an American community
would be taken as a sign of "an unfriendly disposition towards the
United States."
Canning let it be understood that England backed the declaration, and
that any attempt to extend the operations of the Holy Alliance to
America would have to be carried out in the teeth of the combined
opposition of the two great maritime powers so recently at war with each
other. The plan was abandoned, and the independence of the South
American Republics was successfully established.
But much more was established. The "Monroe Doctrine" became, and remains
to-day, the corner-stone of American foreign policy. It has been greatly
extended in scope, but no American Government has ever, for a moment,
wavered in its support. None could afford to do so. To many Englishmen
the doctrine itself, and still more the interpretation placed upon it by
the United States in later times, seems arrogant--just as to many
Americans the British postulate of unchallengeable supremacy at sea
seems arrogant. But both claims, arrogant or no, are absolutely
indispensable to the nation that puts them forward. If the American
Republic were once to allow the principle that European Powers had the
right, on any pretext whatever, to extend their borders on the American
Continent, then that Republic would either have to perish or to become
in all things a European Power, armed to the teeth, ever careful of the
balance of power, perpetually seeking alliances and watching rivals. The
best way to bring home to an honest but somewhat puzzled American--and
there are many such--why we cannot for a moment tolerate what is called
by some "the freedom of the seas," is to ask him whether he will give us
in return the "freedom" of the American Continent. The answer in both
cases is that sane nations do not normally, and with their eyes open,
commit suicide.