WAR WITH ENGLAND
In May, 1811, there occurred one of those accidents which happen on
purpose, and often serve as a relief when the public temper is in an
exasperated and almost dangerous condition. This was the fight between
the American frigate President, of forty-four guns, and the English
sloop-of-war Little Belt, of eighteen guns. This vessel belonged to the
British squadron which was ordered to the American coast to break up the
trade from the United States to France; and the President was one of the
few ships the government had for the protection of its commerce. The
ships met a few miles south of Sandy Hook, chased each other in turn,
then fired into each other without any reasonable pretext for the first
shot, which each accused the other of having fired. The loss on board
the English ship, in an encounter which lasted only a few minutes, was
over thirty in killed and wounded, while only a single man was slightly
wounded on board the President. It was, as Mr. Madison said, an
"occurrence not unlikely to bring on repetitions," and that these would
"probably end in an open rupture or a better understanding, as the
calculations of the British government may prompt or dissuade from war."
This certainly was obvious enough; though it would be a great deal
easier for England to bring on a war than to avert it, in the angry mood
in which the majority of the Democratic party then was. But Mr. Madison
preserved his equanimity. Considering his old proclivity for France, and
his old dislike of England, his impartiality between them is rather
remarkable. But his aim was still to keep the peace while he abated
nothing of the well-founded complaints he had against both powers. When
a new Congress assembled in the autumn he was careful to point out in
his message the delinquencies of France as well as the offenses of
England. He insisted that while England should have acknowledged the
Berlin and Milan decrees to be revoked and have acted accordingly,
France showed no disposition to repair the many wrongs she had inflicted
upon American merchants, and had lately imposed such "rigorous and
unexpected restrictions" upon commerce that it would be necessary,
unless they were speedily discontinued, to meet them by "corresponding
restrictions on importations from France."
This tone is even more pronounced in his letters for some following
months. If anything, it is France rather than England that seems to be
looked upon as the chief offender, with whom there was the greater
danger of armed collision. A fortnight after Congress had assembled he
wrote to Barlow, the new minister to France, that though justified in
assuming the French decrees to be so far withdrawn that a withdrawal of
the British orders might be looked for, "yet the manner in which the
French government has managed the repeal of the decrees, and evaded a
correction of other outrages, has mingled with the conciliatory tendency
of the repeal as much of irritation and disgust as possible." "In fact,"
he adds, "without a systematic change from an appearance of crafty
contrivance and insatiate cupidity, for an open, manly, and upright
dealing with a nation whose example demands it, it is impossible that
good-will can exist; and that the ill-will which her policy aims at
directing against her enemy should not, by her folly and iniquity, be
drawn off against herself." French depredations upon American commerce
in the Baltic were "kindling a fresh flame here," and, if they were not
stopped, "hostile collisions will as readily take place with one nation
as the other;" nor would there be any hesitation in sending American
frigates to that sea, "with orders to suppress by force the French and
Danish depredations," were it not for the "danger of rencounters with
British ships of superior force in that quarter."
By this time, however, Congress, under the lead of younger, vigorous
men--chief among them Clay and Calhoun--panting for leadership and
distinction, was beginning its clamor for war with England. How much
respect had Madison for this movement, and how much faith in it? A
letter to Jefferson of February 7 answers both questions. Were he not
evidently amused, he would seem to be contemptuous. "To enable the
Executive to step at once into Canada," he says, "they have provided,
after two months' delay, for a regular force requiring twelve to raise
it, and after three months for a volunteer force, on terms not likely to
raise it at all for that object. The mixture of good and bad, avowed and
disguised motives, accounting for these things, is curious enough, but
not to be explained in the compass of a letter." This is not the tone of
either hope or fear. If war was in his mind at that time, it was not war
with England. Three weeks later he writes to Barlow at Paris. On various
points of negotiation between that minister and the French government,
he observes much that "suggests distrust rather than expectation." He
complains of delay, of vagueness, of neglect, of discourtesy, of a
disregard of past obligations as to the liberation of ships and cargoes
seized, and of late condemnations of ships captured in the Baltic; and
concerning all these and other grievances he says: "We find so little of
explicit dealing or substantial redress mingled with the compliments and
encouragements, which cost nothing because they mean nothing, that
suspicions are unavoidable; and if they be erroneous, the fault does not
lie with those who entertain them." He believed that France, in asking
for a new treaty, which he thinks unnecessary, is only seeking to gain
time in order to take advantage of future events. The commercial
relations between the two countries are so intolerable that trade "will
be prohibited if no essential change take place." Unless there be
indemnity for the great wrongs committed under the Rambouillet decree,
and for other spoliations, he declares that "there can be neither
cordiality nor confidence here; nor any restraint from self-redress in
any justifiable mode of effecting it." The letter concludes with the
emphatic assertion that, if dispatches soon looked for "do not exhibit
the French government in better colors than it has yet assumed, there
will be but one sentiment in this country; and I need not say what that
will be."
Congress all this while was lashing itself into fury against England.
The ambitious young leaders of the Democratic party in the House were,
so to speak, "spoiling for a fight," and they chose to have it out with
England rather than with France. Not that there was not quite as much
reason for resentment against France as against England. Some, indeed,
of the more hot-headed were anxious for war with both; but these were of
the more impulsive kind, like Henry Clay, who laughed in scorn at the
doubt that he could not at a blow subdue the Canadas with a few
regiments of Kentucky militia. But war with England was determined upon,
partly because the old enmity toward her made that intolerable which to
the old affection for France was a burden lightly borne; and partly
because the instinctive jealousy of the commercial interest, on the part
of the planter-interest, preferred that policy which would do the most
harm to the North. On April 1, 1812, just five weeks after the writing
of this letter to Barlow, Mr. Madison sent to Congress a message of five
lines recommending the immediate passage of an act to impose "a general
embargo on all vessels now in port or hereafter arriving for the period
of sixty days." It was meant to be a secret measure; but the intention
leaked out in two or three places, and the news was hurried North by
several of the Federalist members in time to enable some of their
constituents to send their ships to sea before the act was passed. Nor,
probably, was it a surprise to anybody; for war with England had been
the topic of debate in one aspect or another all winter, and the purpose
of the party in power was plain to everybody. That the embargo was
intended as a preparation for war was frankly acknowledged. An act was
speedily passed, though the period was extended from sixty to ninety
days. Within less than sixty days, however, another message from the
President recommended a declaration of war. On June 3 the Committee on
Foreign Relations, of which Calhoun was chairman, reported in favor of
"an immediate appeal to arms," and the next day a declaratory act was
passed. Of the seventy-nine affirmative votes in the House, forty-eight
were from the South and West, and of the other thirty-one votes from the
Northern States, fourteen were from Pennsylvania alone. Of the
forty-nine votes against it, thirty-four were from the Northern States,
including two from Pennsylvania. On the 17th, a fortnight later, the
bill was got through the Senate by a majority of six.
Mr. Madison for years had opposed a war with England as unwise and
useless,--unwise, because the United States was not in a condition to go
to war with the greatest naval power in the world; and useless, because
the end to be reached by war could be gained more certainly, and at
infinitely less cost, by peaceful measures. The situation had not
changed. Indeed, up to within a month of the message recommending an
embargo as a precursor of war, his letters show that, if he thought war
was inevitable, it must be with France, not England. But the faction
determined upon war must have at their command an administration to
carry out that policy. Their choice was not limited to Madison for an
available candidate. Whoever was nominated by the Democrats was sure to
be chosen, and Madison had two formidable rivals in James Monroe,
secretary of state, and De Witt Clinton, mayor of New York, both eager
for war. The choice depended on that question and between the embargo
message of April 1 and the war message of June 1, the nomination was
given to Madison by the congressional caucus. It was understood, and
openly asserted at the time by the opponents of the administration,
that the nomination was the price of a change of policy. At the next
session of Congress, before a year had passed away, Mr. Quincy said in
the House: "The great mistake of all those who reasoned concerning the
war and the invasion of Canada, and concluded that it was impossible
that either should be seriously intended, resulted from this, that they
never took into consideration the connection of both those events with
the great election for the chief magistracy which was then pending. It
was never sufficiently considered by them that plunging into a war with
Great Britain was among the conditions on which the support for the
presidency was made dependent." The assertion, so plainly aimed at
Madison, passed unchallenged, though the charge of any distinct bargain
was vehemently denied.
If Mr. Madison's conscience was not always vigorous enough to enable him
to resist temptation, it was so sensitive as to prompt him to look for
excuses for yielding. In a sense this was to his credit as one of the
better sort of politicians, without assuming it to be akin to that
hypocrisy which is the homage vice pays to virtue. Perhaps it was this
sentiment which led him to accept so readily the pretended disclosures
of John Henry, and to make the use of them he did. These were contained
in twenty-four letters, for which the President, apparently without
hesitation, paid fifty thousand dollars. On March 9 he sent them to
Congress with a message, and on the same day, in a letter to Jefferson,
alludes to them as "this discovery, or rather formal proof of the
cooperation between the Eastern Junto and the British cabinet." In the
message he intimates that this secret agent was sent directly by the
British government to Massachusetts to foment disaffection, to intrigue
"with the disaffected for the purpose of bringing about resistance to
the laws, and eventually, in concert with a British force, of destroying
the Union" and reannexing the Eastern States to England. In the war
message of June 1 these charges are repeated as among the reasons for an
appeal to arms. Mr. Calhoun's committee followed this lead and improved
upon it in the report recommending an immediate declaration of war. The
Henry affair was declared an "act of still greater malignity" than any
of the other outrages against the United States of which Great Britain
had been guilty, and that which "excited the greatest horror." The
incident was seized upon, apparently, to answer a temporary purpose, and
then, so far as Mr. Madison was concerned, was permitted to sink into
oblivion. In the hundreds of pages of his published letters, written in
later life, in which he reviews and explains so many of the events of
his public career, there is no allusion whatever to the Henry
disclosures, which in 1812 were held, with the ruin of American commerce
and the impressment of thousands of American citizens, as an equally
just cause for war. In truth there was nothing whatever in these
disclosures, for which was paid an amount equal to the salary of half a
presidential term, to warrant the assumptions of either Mr. Madison's
messages or Mr. Calhoun's report. The man had been sent, at his own
suggestion, early in 1809, by the governor of Canada to Massachusetts to
learn the state of affairs there and observe the drift of public
opinion. His national proclivity--he was an Irishman--to conspiracy and
revolution had led him to see in the dissatisfaction with the embargo a
determination in the New England people to destroy the Union, reannex
themselves to England, and return to the flesh-pots of the colonial
period. To learn how far gone they were in these designs, to put himself
in intimate relations with the leading conspirators and to bring them
into communication with Sir James Craig, the governor-general of Canada,
that sufficient aid should come through him at the proper moment from
the British government, was Henry's mission. Of this truly Irish plot
Henry was the villain and Craig the fool; but it is hardly possible that
three years afterward Madison and his friends, with all the letters
spread before them, could really have been the dupes.
Henry went to Boston and remained there about three months, living at a
tavern. He found out nothing because there was nothing to be found out.
He knew nobody, and nobody of any note knew him, and all the information
he sent to Craig might have been, and doubtless was, picked up in the
ordinary political gossip of the tavern barroom, or culled from the
columns of the newspapers of both parties. He compromised nobody,
for--as Mr. Monroe, as secretary of state, testified in a report to the
Senate--he named no person or persons in the United States who had, "in
any way or manner whatever, entered into or countenanced the project or
views" of himself and Craig; and all he had to say was pointless and
unimportant, except so far as his opinions might have some interest as
those of a shrewd observer of public events. Indeed, his own conclusion
was that there was no conspiracy in the Eastern States; that the Federal
party was strong enough to keep the peace with England; and that there
was no talk of disunion, nor any likelihood of it unless it should be
brought about by war. The correspondence itself showed, in a letter from
Robert Peel, then secretary to Lord Liverpool, that the letters of Henry
were found, as a matter of course, among Canadian official papers, as
they related to public affairs; but they had either never attracted any
attention or had been entirely forgotten, and Lord Liverpool was quite
ignorant of any "arrangement or agreement" that had been made between
the governor of Canada and his emissary to New England. It was only
because of his failure to get any reward from the British government or
from Craig's successor in Canada, for what he was pleased to call his
services, that the adventurer came to Washington in search of a market
for himself and his papers. He came at an opportune moment.
Notwithstanding the secretary of state frankly declared, that neither by
writing nor by word of mouth did the man implicate by name anybody in
the United States; notwithstanding one of the letters was evidence, the
more conclusive because incidental, that the British secretary of state
had known nothing of this mission contrived between Henry and
Craig,--yet Mr. Madison pronounced the letters to be the "formal proof
of the cooperation between the Eastern Junto and the British cabinet."
The charge was monstrous, for this pretended proof had no existence. If
the President, however, could persuade himself that the story was true,
it would help him to justify himself to himself for a change of policy,
the result of which would be the coveted renomination for the
presidency.
Not that there had never been talk of disunion in New England. There had
been in years past, as there was to be in years to come. But talk of
that kind did not belong exclusively to that particular period, nor was
it confined to that particular region of country. Ever since the
adoption of the Constitution the one thing that orators, North and
South, inside the halls of Congress and outside them, were agreed upon
was, that in all debate there was one argument, equally good on both
sides, to which there could be no reply; that in all legislation there
was one possible supreme move that would bring all the wheels of
government to a dead stop. The solemn warning or the angry threat was
always in readiness for instant use, that the bonds of the Union, in one
or another contingency, were to be rent asunder. But so frequent had
been these warning cries of the coming wolf that they were listened to
with indifference, except when some positive act indicated real danger,
as in the Jefferson-Madison "resolutions of '98." It was easy,
therefore, to alarm the public with confessions of a secret emissary, as
he pretended, who had turned traitor to the government which had
employed him and to the conspirators to whom he had been sent; and the
more reprehensible was it, therefore, in a President of the United
States, to make the use that was made of this story, which an impartial
examination would have shown was essentially absurd and infamously
false. Mr. Madison's intelligence is not to be impugned. He was too
sagacious, as well as too unimpassioned a man, to be taken in by the
ingenious tale of such an adventurer as Henry. In a letter to Colonel
David Humphreys, written the next spring, in defense of the policy of
commercial restrictions, he says: "I have never allowed myself to
believe that the Union was in danger, or that a dissolution of it could
be desired, unless by a few individuals, if such there be, in desperate
situations or of unbridled passions." New England, he continues, "would
be the greatest loser by such an event, and not likely therefore
deliberately to rush into it." "On what basis," he asks, "could New
England and Old England form commercial stipulations?" Their commercial
jealousy, he contends, forbade an alliance between them, for that was
"the real source of our Revolution." He closes with the significant
assertion that, "if there be links of common interest between the two
countries, they would connect the Southern and not the Northern States
with that part of Europe." How, then, could he seriously accept Henry's
pretended disclosures as "formal proof," as he wrote to Jefferson at
that time, "of the cooperation between the Eastern Junto and the British
cabinet"? By the Eastern Junto is meant the Federal party, or at least
the influential and able leaders of that party; and he could not
consider, nor would he have spoken of them as "a few individuals, if
such there be, in desperate situations or of unbridled passions." He
accepted, then, the Henry story in spite of his deliberate opinions, as
a help to involve the country in a party war.
Even at the risk of some prolixity it is needful to follow the course of
events that led to this war a little farther; for here was the
culmination of Mr. Madison's career, and from his course in shaping and
directing these events we best learn what manner of man he was, and
where his true place is among the public men of our earlier history. For
a year and a half the United States had acted on the assumption that
France had recalled her decrees, and that England had not revoked her
orders. The extracts from Mr. Madison's letters, given on previous
pages, show his conviction that the revocation of either decrees or
orders was practically no more true of one power than it was of the
other. The government of the United States, nevertheless, submitted to
the one, and against the other it first reenacted the non-intercourse
act, then proclaimed an embargo preparatory to war, and finally declared
war. Yet the whole world knew, and nobody so surely as the emperor of
France, that the Berlin and Milan decrees had never been formally
repealed at all; meanwhile French outrages upon American commerce had
continued, and all redress so persistently refused that, so late as the
last week in February, 1812, the President intimated that war--war with
France, not England--might prove the only remedy. But he suddenly
yielded to the clamors of the war party at home, whatever may have been
his motive. Then, and not till then, were the decrees actually revoked
by Napoleon. In May, 1812, more than a month after the President had
recommended an embargo, the hostile purport of which was so well
understood, a decree was proclaimed by the emperor which for the first
time really revoked those of Berlin and Milan. True, it was
dated--"purported to be dated," it was said in an official English
document--April, 1811. But that was of no moment; the essential point
was, that it had never seen the light; that any hint of its existence
had never been given to the American government, or its representatives
abroad, till the United States had taken measures to "cause their rights
to be respected by the English," which was the original condition of a
revocation of the decrees. Its ostensible date was when the news reached
France that non-intercourse had been again enforced against England in
March, 1811; but its promulgation was to all intents and purposes the
real date, when news reached France, in April or May, 1812, that war
against England was finally determined upon.
The Duke of Bassano, the French minister, had not, moreover, brought out
this year-old decree without pressure from the American minister,
Barlow. The President had written Barlow, in that February letter
already quoted, that if his expected dispatches did not "exhibit the
conduct of the French government in better colors than it has yet
assumed, there will be but one sentiment in this country, and I need not
say what that will be." When the dispatches came, Mr. Madison received
no assurances of redress for past wrongs and no promises for the future;
but he learned, on the contrary, that Bassano, in a recent report to the
emperor, had referred to the decrees of Berlin and Milan as still in
force against all neutral nations which submitted to the seizure of
their ships by the British when containing contraband goods or enemy's
property. Naturally the British ministry was not slow in presenting this
precious acknowledgment to the United States as a proof that she had all
along been in the wrong, and that in common justice to England the
non-importation act should now be repealed. The assurance was at the
same time repeated, possibly in a tone of considerable satisfaction,
that when Napoleon really should revoke his decrees Great Britain was
ready, as she always had been, to follow his example with her orders. It
was an awkward dilemma for the President and his minister to France. But
by this time, the Presidential nomination impending, Mr. Madison had
made up his mind what to do. He was not exactly a wolf; neither was
Great Britain a lamb; but the argument he used was the argument of the
fable. Instead of advising--Bassano having declared the decrees still in
force--a repeal of the non-importation act, as Great Britain claimed was
in justice and comity her due, he recommended a war measure. But Barlow
evidently felt himself to be under some decent restraint of logic and
consistency. He urged upon the French minister the necessity now of a
positive and imperial declaration that the decrees, so far as regarded
the United States, were absolutely revoked; for this recent assertion of
Bassano, that they were still in force, put the United States in an
attitude both towards France and England utterly and absurdly in the
wrong. Barlow represented that, should the revocation be extended only
to the United States, Great Britain would not for that alone repeal her
orders. In that case France would lose nothing of the advantage of her
present position, while everything would be lost should the United
States be compelled to repeal her non-importation laws against England.
Bassano was quick to see the necessity of jumping into the bramble-bush
and scratching his eyes in again, and he then produced his year-old
edict. Being a year old, it of course covered all questions. But was it
a year old? Who knew? It had never been published? No, the duke said;
but it had been shown to Mr. Jonathan Russell, who at that time was
charge d'affaires at Paris. Mr. Russell denied it, though a denial was
hardly needed. He would not have ventured to withhold information so
important from his government; and it was evident, from the tone of his
dispatches of a subsequent date, that he had no suspicion of its
existence. For he had maintained it, as a point of "national honor,"
that the revocation of the French decrees must have preceded the
President's proclamation of November 1, 1810; and this he would not have
dared to do had he known that the actual revocation by the French
minister was not made till six months after the date of the President's
proclamation, and was then made secretly.
However, as if to defeat all these machinations of France and the United
States, Great Britain immediately recalled her orders in council, when,
in May, 1812, the Duke of Bassano announced the edict of April, 1811,
revoking the Berlin and Milan decrees, though so far only as they
concerned American vessels. The declaration of war of June 18 had not
reached England, and there was still a chance for peace. Foster, the
late English minister to the United States, learned at Halifax--where he
had stopped on his way home--that the orders in council were repealed,
and he took immediate steps to bring about an armistice between the
naval commanders on the coast of Nova Scotia, and between the governor
of Canada and the American general, Dearborn, in command of the
frontier. The government at Washington, however, refused to ratify any
suspension of hostilities. Some negotiations followed, but, decrees and
orders being out of the way, there was nothing left to negotiate about
except the question of impressment. Upon that question the two
governments were as wide apart as ever, and not in the least likely to
come together. Mr. Madison determined that on that ground alone the war
should go on. It had been as good and sufficient ground for such a war
any time for the past dozen years; but whether it could be settled by an
appeal to arms was a question of possibilities and probabilities by
which both Jefferson and Madison had hitherto been ruled. Was that still
the essential question? With the result came the answer. Two years later
the administration was glad to accept a treaty of peace in which
impressment was not even alluded to. Great Britain did not relinquish by
a syllable her assumed right to board American ships in search of
British seamen; and the administration instructed its peace
commissioners not even to ask that she should.