enormity of the despicable acts was advertised as never before, while
the endorsement of them by federalist legislators went upon record.
Petitions for repeal came in so numerous and numerously signed that the
VIth Congress could not but raise a committee to consider such action.
It reported adversely, and the report was accepted, the majority in the
House, fifty-two to forty-eight, trying contemptuously to cough down
every speaker lifting his voice on the opposite side.
[1799]
This sullen obstinacy in favor of a miserable experiment sealed the doom
of Federalism. In vain did the party orators plead that liberty of
speech and the press is not license, but only the right to utter "the
truth," that hence this liberty was not abridged by the acts in
question, and that aliens had no constitutional rights, but enjoyed the
privileges of the land only by favor. The fact remained, more and more
appreciated by ordinary people, that a land ruled by such maxims could
never be free.
So a deep distrust of Federalism sprung up, as out of sympathy with
popular government. It was furthered by the attachment of prominent
Federalists to England. Several of them are on record as ready to
involve the United States in an expedition planned by one Miranda, to
conquer Spanish America in aid of Great Britain, Spain and ourselves
being perfectly at peace. The federalist chieftains were too proud,
ignoring too much the common voter. They often expressed doubt, too, as
to the permanence of popular institutions. Federalism had too close
affinity with Puritanism to suit many outside New England. And
then--deadly to the party even had nothing else concurred--there was a
quarrel among its leaders. Hamilton, the Essex Junto (Pickering, Cabot,
Quincy, Otis), and their supporters were set against Adams and his
friends. This rivalry of long standing was brought to a head by Adams's
noble and self-sacrificing independence in accepting France's overtures
for peace, when Hamilton, Pickering, King, and all the rest, out of
private or party interest rather than patriotism, wished war.
[1800]
Toward 1800, Democracy bade fair soon to come into power, but the
Federalists learned no wisdom. Rather were they henceforth more factious
than ever, opposing Jefferson and Madison even when they acted on purely
federalist principles. Tooth and nail they fought against the
acquisition of Louisiana, the War of 1812, and the protective tariff of
1816, which was carried by Republicans. A worse spirit still was shown
in their disunion scheme of 1804, after the purchase of Louisiana, and
in the Hartford Convention of 1814. Federalism had further lost ground
by its mean and revolutionary devices on resigning power in 1801, first
to make Burr President instead of Jefferson, and, failing in this, to
use its expiring authority in creating needless offices for its clients.
In consequence of such ill-advised steps, federalist strength waned
apace. In 1804 Connecticut, Delaware, and Maryland alone chose
federalist electors, the last only two such. In 1808 these were joined
by the remaining New England States, North Carolina also casting three
federalist votes. In 1812, indeed, Clinton received eighty-nine votes to
Madison's one hundred and twenty-eight; but in 1816 again only
Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Delaware were federalist. In 1820 not a
State had a federalist majority. State elections in Maryland, North
Carolina, Delaware, and Connecticut commonly went federalist till 1820,
and in Massachusetts till 1823, when the Republicans swept this
commonwealth too, Essex County and all.
Yet Federalism did not die without fixing its stamp indelibly upon our
institutions. Not to mention the Whig and the modern Republican Parties,
close reproductions of it, or the public credit, its child, methods of
administration passed with little change from Adams to Jefferson and his
successors, and federalist principles modified the entire temper, and
directed in no small degree the action, of the Democratic Party while in
power. The nation was exalted more, state rights subordinated, and the
Constitution construed ever more broadly. Thus there was silently and
gradually imparted to our governmental fabric a consistency and a
solidity which were of incalculable worth against storms to come.
CHAPTER VII.
THE WEST
[1787]
A simple resolution of the Continental Congress in 1780 has proved of
the highest consequence for the subsequent development of our country.
It declared that all territorial land should be national domain, to be
disposed of for the common benefit of the States, with the high
privilege of itself growing into States coequal with the old Thirteen.
The treaty of 1783 carried this domain north to the Lakes, west to the
Mississippi. The Ohio divided it into a northwestern and a southwestern
part. The land to the west of themselves Virginia and North Carolina
claimed, and it became Kentucky and Tennessee, respectively, erected
into statehood, the one June 1, 1792, the other June 1, 1796, these
being the fifteenth and sixteenth States in order. Vermont, admitted in
1791, was the fourteenth. Virginia never released Kentucky till it
became a State. The Tennessee country, ceded to the United States by
North Carolina in 1784, the cession revoked and afterward repeated, had
already, under the name of Frankland, enjoyed for some time a separate
administration. The nucleus of Kentucky civilization was on the northern
or Ohio River border, that of Tennessee in the Cumberland Valley about
Nashville; but by 1800 the borders of these two oases had joined.
United States land has since broadened westward to the Pacific, over the
infinite areas which in 1800 belonged to Spain. From an early period
there have been, as now, unorganized territory and also partially
organized and fully organized territories, the last being inchoate
States, ready to be admitted to full membership in the Union when
sufficiently populous, on condition of framing each for itself a
republican constitution.
[Illustration: Portrait]
General Arthur St. Clair.
[1788]
The great ordinance of 1787, re-enacted by the First Congress, forever
sealing the same to civil and religious liberty, opened the Northwest
for immediate colonization, twenty thousand people settling there in the
next two years. The territory was organized and General St. Clair made
governor. In 1788 Marietta was founded, named from Marie Antoinette,
also Columbia near the mouth of the Little Miami. In the same year
Losantiville, subsequently called Fort Washington, and now Cincinnati,
was laid out, the first houses having gone up in 1780. Louisville,
settled so early as 1773, contained in 1784 over one hundred houses.
Emigrants in hundreds and thousands yearly poured over the mountains and
down the Ohio. By the census of 1790 there were 4,280 whites northwest
of this river, 1,000 at Vincennes, 1,000 on the lands of the Ohio
Company, 1,300 on Symmes's purchase between the Great and the Little
Miami, Cincinnati being part of this purchase. In 1800 these numbers had
much increased. The settlements which had Pittsburgh for a nucleus had
also greatly extended, reaching the Ohio. Northern and Central
Pennsylvania west of the Susquehanna Valley was yet a wilderness. St.
Louis, in Spanish hands, but to become French next year, had been
founded, and opposite it were the beginnings of what is now Alton, Ill.
[1790]
The centre of United States population in 1790 was twenty-three miles
east of Baltimore. It has since moved westward, not far from the
thirty-ninth parallel, never more than sixteen miles north of it, or
three to the south. In 1800 it was eighteen miles west of Baltimore; in
1810 it was forty-three miles northwest by west of Washington; in 1820,
sixteen miles north of Woodstock, Va.; in 1830, nineteen miles
west-southwest of Moorfield, W. Va.; in 1840, sixteen miles south of
Clarksburg, same State; in 1850, twenty-three miles southeast of
Parkersburg, same State; in 1860, twenty miles south of Chillicothe, 0.;
in 1870, forty-eight miles east by north of Cincinnati; in 1880, eight
miles west by south of that city; in 1890, twenty miles east of
Columbus, Ind., west by south of Greensburg. It has never since been so
far north as in 1790, and it has described a total westward movement of
four hundred and fifty-seven miles.
The land system of the United States was at first a bad one, intended
to secure immediate revenue from the sale of immense pieces at auction,
on long credit, at very few points, the land to find its way into the
hands of actual settlers only through mercenary speculators. The honest
pioneer was therefore at the mercy of these land-sharks, greedy and
unpatriotic in the extreme.
The western movement aroused the Indians, of whom there were, in 1790,
from 20,000 to 40,000 north of the Ohio. The idea of amalgamating or
even civilizing these people had long been practically given up.
Settlers agreed in denouncing them as treacherous, intractable,
bloodthirsty, and faithless. So incessant and terrific were their
onslaughts, the Ohio Valley had come to be known as "the dark and bloody
ground." The British, still occupying the western posts, used their
influence to keep up and intensify Indian hostility to the United States
settlers and Government.
In September, 1790, Governor St. Clair sent Harmar against the Indians
on the Miami and Maumee. He had about fifteen hundred men, two-thirds of
them militia. The expedition was ill-managed from the first, and, after
advancing as far as the present Fort Wayne, came back with great loss to
itself, having exasperated rather than injured the red men. Harmar,
chagrined, soon resigned.
The Indians south of the Ohio were perhaps twice as numerous as those
north, and partly civilized. The Chickasaws and Choctaws, nearest the
Mississippi, gave little trouble. Not so the Cherokees and Creeks, whose
seats were nearer the whites. The Creeks claimed parts of Tennessee,
Georgia, and the Carolinas, justified herein by acts of the Continental
Congress. However, the whites invaded this territory, provoking a fierce
war, wherein the Cherokees allied themselves with the Creeks of Alabama
and Georgia. This brave tribe had border troubles of its own with
Georgia. These various hordes of savages, having the Florida Spaniards
to back them with counsel, arms, and ammunition, were a formidable foe,
which might have annihilated Georgia but for aid from the general
Government. McGillivray, the half-breed chief of the Creeks, was enticed
to New York, where the kindness of Washington and the evident desire of
Congress to deal with his people fairly, resulted in a treaty, August
13, 1790, which secured peace to the Southwest for a long time.
[1791]
Touching the northwestern redskins, Harmar's defeat had convinced
Washington that mild measures were not yet the thing. A larger force was
fitted out against them under St. Clair in person, whom, as an old
Revolutionary comrade, Washington still trusted. General Butler was
second in command. The two thousand regulars and one thousand militia
rendezvoused at Cincinnati in the autumn of 1791. Part object of the
expedition was to build a military road, with forts at intervals, all
the way to the upper Wabash. Progress was therefore slow.
A fort was constructed on the present site of Hamilton, 0.; then one to
the northwest, near Greenville, 0., close to the present Indiana line.
From here the army pressed northwesterly still farther.
St. Clair was heroic, but incompetent through age and the gout. Some of
his militia deserted. Chills and fever shook the remainder of his too
slender host. His orders were not well obeyed. On November 9th,
encamping by a small branch of the Wabash, St. Clair's force was most
vehemently attacked by Indians, under the redoubtable Joseph Brant or
Thayendanegea--famed for his bloody exploits against us during the
Revolution--and well-nigh annihilated. Five high officers, including
Butler, were killed, and as many more sank from wounds. Cannons, guns,
accoutrements, in fact the whole equipment of the army, were lost. After
a four hours' fight St. Clair, sick but brave as a tiger, horse after
horse shot beneath him, part of the time carried in a litter, his gray
locks streaming in the breeze, put himself at the head of the five
hundred who remained unscathed, and hewed his way through walls of
savages to the rear. Six o'clock that night found the survivors back at
Greenville, twenty-nine miles from the scene of carnage. Had the Indians
pursued instead of stopping to mutilate the slain, every soul must have
perished.
[Illustration: Portrait.]
Joseph Brant or Thayendanegea.
[1793]
The announcement of this disaster called forth in the East a universal
howl of rage at the unfortunate commander. Even Washington went beside
himself: "To suffer that army to be cut to pieces, hacked, butchered,
tomahawked, by a surprise--the very thing I guarded him against! O God!
O God, he is worse than a murderer! How can he answer it to his country?
The blood of the slain is upon him, the curse of widows and orphans, the
curse of Heaven." St. Clair came East to explain. Hobbling into
Washington's presence, he grasped his hand in both his own and sobbed
aloud. He was continued as governor, but had to resign his
major-generalship, which passed to Anthony Wayne.
Wayne was every inch a warrior. Cautiously advancing over the road St.
Clair's fugitives had reddened with their blood, he reached Fort
Jefferson, at Greenville, in June, 1793. Next year he advanced to the
junction of the Au Glaize with the Maumee. The Indians fleeing, he
pursued to the foot of the Maumee Rapids, where he encountered them
encamped by a fort which the English, defying the treaty, still held,
fifty miles inside our lines. Wayne, agreeably to Washington's policy,
tried to treat. Failing, he attacked, routed the enemy, and mercilessly
ravaged the country, burning crops and villages. Building Fort Wayne as
an advanced post, he came back and made his headquarters at Fort
Jefferson. The Indians' spirit and opposition were at last broken. Their
delegates flocked to Wayne, suing for peace. Captives were surrendered.
The whole Ohio Territory now lay open to peaceful occupation, and
emigrants crowded northward from the Ohio in great companies.
[1794]
The pioneer bought land wherever he found a vacant spot that pleased
him, building his hut, breaking up any open land for crops, and as
rapidly as possible clearing for more. His white neighbors, if any were
near, lent their assistance in this work. His rough dwelling of logs,
with one room, floored with puncheon, caulked with mud, and covered with
bark or thatch, however uncomfortable from our point of view, made him a
habitable home. When this primitive mansion was no longer sufficient, he
was usually able to rear another out of hewn logs, with glass windows
and a chimney. Then he felt himself an aristocrat, and who will deny
that he was so? A large family grew up around him, neighbors moved in,
the forest disappeared, the savages and wild beasts that at first
harassed him slunk away, while the fruitful soil, with such exchanges
and mail privileges as were speedily possible, yielded him all the
necessaries and many of the comforts of life.
[1800]
So rapid was the increase of population henceforth, that Congress, in
1800, divided the territory, the line running north from the junction of
the Kentucky with the Ohio. All west of this was to be known as the
Indiana Territory, William Henry Harrison its governor, and a
territorial legislature to follow so soon as a majority of the
inhabitants should desire.
On February 19, 1803, Ohio became a State. Mainly through Governor
Harrison's exertions a better system of marketing public land was begun,
in healthy contrast with the old. It allowed four land-offices in Ohio
and Indiana. Lands once offered at auction and not sold could be
pre-empted directly by private individuals on easy terms. Actual
settlement and cultivation were thus furthered, speculation curbed, and
the government revenues vastly increased.
[Illustration: Man wearing a gun and dog standing in a doorway.]
Dugout of a Southwestern Pioneer
[1802]
We have spoken mostly of the Northwest. The present States of Alabama
and Mississippi north of 31 degrees, except a narrow strip at the
extreme north owned by South Carolina, were claimed by Georgia, but the
part of this territory south of 32 degrees 30 minutes the United States
also claimed, as having before the Revolution been separated from
Georgia by the king and joined to West Florida, so that it, like the
Northwest, passed to the United States at the treaty of 1783. This
section was organized in 1798 as the Mississippi Territory. In 1802
Georgia relinquished all claim to the northern part as well, which
Congress added to the Mississippi Territory. At this date there were
settlements along the Mississippi bluffs below the Yazoo bottom.
[Illustration: Portrait.]
Robert Fulton
CHAPTER VIII.
SOCIAL CULTURE AT THE TURN OF THE CENTURY
[1800]
In 1800 the population of our land was 5,305,482, of whom 896,849 were
slaves. New York City had 60,489; Philadelphia, 40,000; Boston, 24,937;
Baltimore, 23,971; Charleston, 18,712; Providence, 7,614; Washington,
3,210. The population of Vermont, Northern and Western New York, and the
Susquehanna Valley of Pennsylvania had grown considerably more dense
since 1790. The social life, ideas, and habits of the rural districts
had not altered much from those prevalent in colonial days, but in the
more favored centres great improvements, or, at any rate, changes, might
have been marked.
Even far in the country framed buildings were now the most common, the
raising of one being a great event. The village school gave a half
holiday. Every able-bodied man and boy from the whole country-side
received an invitation--all being needed to "heave up," at the boss
carpenter's pompous word of command, the ponderous timbers seemingly
meant to last forever. A feast followed, with contests of strength and
agility worthy of description on Homer's page.
Skating was not yet a frequent pastime, nor dancing, save in cities and
large towns. Balls every pious New Englander abhorred as sinful. The
theatre was similarly tabooed--in Massachusetts, so late as 1784, by
law. New York and Philadelphia frowned upon it then, though jolly
Baltimore already gave it patrons enough. When, in 1793, yellow fever
desolated Philadelphia, one theory ascribed the affection to the
admission of the theatre. In other cities passion for the theatre was
growing, and even Massachusetts tolerated it by an act passed in 1793.
President Washington, while in New York, oftener than many thought
proper, attended the old, sorrily furnished play-house in John Street,
the only one which the city could then boast. John Adams also went now
and again. Both were squinted at through opera-glasses, which were just
coming into use and thought by the crowd to be infinitely ridiculous.
Good hours were kept, as the play began at five.
[Illustration: Two men in a small scow with hand driven paddle-wheels.]
Fulton's First Experiment with Paddle-wheels.
All sorts of shows, games, and sports which the country could afford or
devise were immensely popular, the most so, and the roughest, in the
South. Horse-racing, cock-fighting, shooting matches, at all which
betting was high, were there fashionable, as well as most brutal
man-fights, in which ears were bitten off and eyes gouged out. President
Thomas Jefferson was exceedingly fond of menageries and circuses, his
diary abounding in such entries as: "pd for seeing a lion 21 months old
11-1/2 d.;" "pd seeing a small seal .125 ;" "pd seeing elephant .5;" "pd
seeing elk .75 ;" "pd seeing Caleb Phillips a dwarf .25;" "pd seeing a
painting .25."
Lotteries were universal, and put to uses which now seem excessively
queer. Whenever a bridge or a public edifice, as a schoolhouse, was to
be built, a street paved or a road repaired, the money was furnished
through a lottery. In the same way manufacturing companies were started,
churches aided, college treasuries replenished. It was with money
collected through a lottery that Massachusetts first encouraged cotton
spinning; that the City Hall of New York was enlarged, the Court House
at Elizabeth rebuilt, the Harvard University library increased, and many
pretentious buildings put up at the Federal City. [Footnote: McMaster's
United States, 588.] This was but a single form of the sporting mania.
The public stocks, as well as the paper of the numerous canals,
turnpikes, and manufacturing corporations now springing up, were gambled
in a way which would almost shock Wall Street today.
[Illustration: About twenty men on the deck of a sixty foot ship with a
smokestack.]
Departure of the Clermont on her First Voyage.
Anthracite coal had been discovered and was just beginning to be mined,
but on account of the plentifulness of wood was not for a long time
largely used. The first idea of steam navigation was embodied in an
English patent taken out by Jonathan Hulls in 1736. The initial
experiment of the kind in this country was by William Henry, on the
Conestoga River, Pennsylvania, in 1763. John Fitch navigated the
Delaware steam-wise in 1783-84. In 1790 one of Fitch's steam
paddle-boats made regular trips between Philadelphia and Trenton for
four months. In 1785-86 Oliver Evans experimented in this direction, as
did Rumsey, in Virginia, in 1787. One Morey ran a stern-wheeler of his
own make from Hartford to New York in 1794. Chancellor Livingston built
a steamer on the Hudson in 1797. It was only in 1807 that Fulton
finished his "Clermont" and made a passage up the Hudson to Albany from
New York. It took thirty-three hours, and was the earliest thoroughly
successful steam navigation on record. He subsequently built the
"Orleans" at Pittsburgh. It was completed and made the voyage to New
Orleans in 1811. No steamboat ruffled the waters of Lake Ontario till
1816. The pioneer steam craft on Lake Erie was launched at Black Rock,
May 28, 1818. It is recorded as wonderful that in less than two hours it
had gotten fifteen miles from shore.
[Illustration: Four men on the deck of a forty foot ship with a short
smokestack.]
John Fitch's Steamboat at Philadelphia.
[Illustration: Large paper bill.]
Massachusetts Bill of Three Shillings in 1741.
At the North the muster or general training was, for secular
entertainment, the day of days, when the local regiment came out to
reveal and to perfect its skill in the manual and in the evolutions of
the line. Side-shows and a general good time constituted for the crowds
its chief interest. Cider, cakes, pop-corn, and candy drained boys'
pockets of pennies, those who could afford the fun going in to see the
one-legged revolutionary soldier with his dancing bear, the tattooed
man, the ventriloquist, or the then "greatest show on earth." College
commencements, too, at that time usually had all these festive
accompaniments, and many a boy debated whether to spend his scant change
here or at the muster. In New England, Christmas was not observed; it
was hardly known, in fact, Thanksgiving taking its place, proclaimed
with the utmost formality by the Governor some weeks in advance.
Intemperance was still terribly common; worst in the newer sections of
the country. There is extant a message of William Henry Harrison, while
Governor of Indiana Territory, to his legislature, against this evil,
urging better surveillance of public-houses. "The progress of
intemperance among us," it runs, "outstrips all calculation, and the
consequences of its becoming general I shudder to unfold. Poverty and
domestic embarrassment and distress are the present effects, and
prostration of morals and change of government must inevitably follow.
The virtue of the citizens is the only support of a Republican
Government. Destroy this and the country will become a prey to the first
daring and ambitious chief which it shall produce."
[Illustration: Large paper bill.]
New Hampshire Bill of Forty Shillings in 1742.
To counteract this and other vices, which were justly viewed as largely
the results of ignorance, philanthropic people were at this period
establishing Sunday-schools, following the example of Robert Raikes, who
began the movement at Gloucester, England, in 1781. They had been
already introduced in New England, but were now making their way in
Philadelphia and elsewhere. The first Methodist bishop, Asbury,
zealously furthered them. They had, to begin with, no distinctive
religious character, and churches even looked upon them with disfavor;
but their numbers increased and their value became more apparent until
the institution was adopted by all denominations.
Before 1800 the new United States coinage, with nearly the same pieces
as now, had begun to circulate, but had had little success at that date
in driving out the old foreign coins of colonial times. Especially were
there still seen Spanish dollars, halves, quarters, fifths or
pistareens, and eighths--the last being the Spanish "real," "ryall," or
"royall," worth twelve and a half cents--and sixteenths or half-reals,
worth six and one-quarter cents each. Many of these pieces were sadly
worn, passing at their face value only when the legend could be made
out. Sometimes they were heated to aid in this. Many were so worn that a
pistareen would bring only a Yankee shilling, sixteen and two-thirds
cents; the half-pistareen, only eight cents; the real, ten; the
half-real, five.
[Illustration: Square coin.]
Massachusetts Twopence of 1722.
The denominations of the colonial money of account were also still in
daily use, and, indeed, might be heard so late as the Civil War. The
"real," twelve and one-half cents, was in New York a shilling, being
one-twentieth of the pound once prevalent in the New York colony. In New
England it was a "nine-pence," constituting nearly nine-twelfths, or
nine of the twelve pence of an old New England shilling of sixteen and
two-thirds cents. Twenty such shillings had been required for the New
England pound, which was so much more valuable than the pound of the New
York colony. But neither one or any colonial pound was the equivalent of
the pound sterling.
[Illustration: Coin.]
Pine Tree Twopence.
"IN MASATHVSET" "NEW ENGLAND" "1662"
[Illustration: Coin.]
Pine Tree Threepence.
"MASATHVSET" "NEW ENGLAND" "1652" "III"
In the middle colonies, including Pennsylvania, the pound had possessed
still a different value, the Spanish dollar, in which the Continental
Congress kept its accounts, there equalling ninety pence. This is why
those accounts stand in dollars and ninetieths, a notation so puzzling
to many. A "real" would here be about one-eleventh of ninety pence,
hence called the "eleven-penny-piece," shortened into "levy." Dividing
a levy by two would give five (and a fraction); hence the term
"five-penny-piece," "fippenny," or "fip," for the half-real or six and
one-quarter cent piece. There are doubtless yet people in Virginia and
Maryland who never say "twenty-five cents," but instead, "two levies and
a fip."
[Illustration: Coin.]
Pine Tree Sixpence.
"IN MASATHVSET" "ANO NEW ENGLAND" "1652" "VI"
General intelligence had improved, partly from the greater number,
better quality, and quicker and fuller distribution of newspapers.
Correspondents were numerous. Intelligent persons visiting at a distance
from home were wont to write long letters to their local newspapers,
containing all the items of interest which they could scrape together.
Papers sprung up at every considerable hamlet. Even the Ohio Valley did
not lack. Perhaps four and a half million copies a year were issued in
the whole country by 1800. They were admitted now--not so, however,
under the original postal law--as a regular part of the mails, and thus
found their way to nearly all homes. The news which they brought was
often old news, of course, post riders requiring twenty-nine and
one-half hours between Philadelphia and either New York or Baltimore;
but they were read with none the less avidity. Its first mail reached
Buffalo in 1803, on horseback. Mail went thither bi-weekly till 1806,
then weekly. Postal rates were high, ranging for letters from six cents
for thirty miles to twenty-five for four hundred and fifty miles or
over. So late as 1796 New York City received mails from North and from
South, and sent mails in both directions, only twice weekly between
November 1st and May 1st, and but thrice weekly the rest of the year. In
1794 the great cities enjoyed carriers, who got two cents for each
letter delivered. In 1785 there were two dailies, The Pennsylvania
Packet and The New York Advertiser, but, as yet, no Sunday paper
appeared, nor any scientific, religious, or illustrated journal, nor any
devoted to literature or trade. The New York Medical Repository began in
1797, the first scientific periodical in America. In 1801 seventeen
dailies existed. Paper was scarce and high, so that appeals were
published in most of the news sheets imploring people to save their
rags.
[Illustration: Coin.]
Pine Tree Shilling.
"IN MASATHVSET" "ANO NEW ENGLAND" "1652" "XII"
[Illustration: Two part mosaic; above, postman on a horse; below, a
moving train grabbing a mailpouch from a post.]
Postal Progress, 1776-1876.
The press was more violently partisan and indecently personal than now.
To oppose the federalist United States Gazette the republican National
Gazette had been started, which, with brilliant meanness, assailed not
only Washington's public acts, but his motives and character. Him, and
still more Adams, Hamilton, and the other leading Federalists, it, in
nearly every issue, charged with conspiracy to found a monarchy.
Republican journals reeked with such doggerel as:
"See Johnny at the helm of State,
Head itching for a crowny;
He longs to be, like Georgy, great,
And pull Tom Jeffer downy."
[Footnote: 2 McMaster, 383]
Federalists were not behind in warfare of this sort. Jefferson was the
object of their continual and vilest slander. In New England, the
stronghold of Federalism, nearly every Sunday's sermon was an
arraignment of the French, and impliedly of their allies, the
Republicans. [Footnote: 2 McMaster, 383] From Jefferson's election--he
was a conservative free-thinker--they seemed to anticipate the utter
extermination of Christianity, though the man paid in charities, mostly
religious, as for Bibles, missionaries, chapels, meeting-houses, etc.,
one year of his presidency, $978.20; another year, $1,585.60. One
preacher likened the tribute which Talleyrand demanded of Adams's envoys
to that which Sennacherib required of Hezekiah. [Footnote: Isaiah, 36]
Another compared Hamilton, killed in a duel, to Abner, the son of Ner,
slain by Joab. Another took for his text the message which Hezekiah sent
to the Prophet Isaiah: "This is a day of trouble and of rebuke and of
contumely," [Footnote: Isaiah, 37: 3 seq.] etc. Another attacked
Republicanism outright from the words: "There is an accursed thing in
the midst of thee, O Israel." [Footnote: Joshua. 7: 13] The coolest
federalist leaders could fall prey to this partisan temper. Lafayette
meditated settling in this country. Such was his popularity here that no
one would have dared to oppose this openly. Hamilton, however, while
favoring it publicly, yet, lest the great Frenchman's coming should help
on the republican cause, secretly did his utmost to prevent it. Even
Washington, who was human after all, connived, it seems, at this piece
of duplicity.
According to a federalist sheet, Hamilton's death called forth "the
voice of deep lament" save from "the rancorous Jacobin, the scoffing
deist, the snivelling fanatic, and the imported scoundrel." "Were I
asked," said an apologist, "whether General Hamilton had vices, in the
face of the world, in the presence of my God, I would answer, No."
Another poetized of the
"Great day
When Hamilton--disrobed of mortal clay--
At God's right hand shall sit with face benign,
And at his murderer cast a look divine."
In 1800 instrumental music might have been heard in some American
churches. There were Roman Catholic congregations in Boston, New York,
Philadelphia, and Baltimore. Baltimore had its Catholic bishop. The
Protestant Episcopal Church in America had been organized. Methodism,
independent of England since 1784, was on its crusade up and down the
land, already strong in New York and the South, and in 1790 a Methodist
church had been gathered in Boston.
The manufacture of corduroys, bed-ticking, fustian, jeans, and
cotton-yarn had been started. Iron ore and iron ware of nearly all sorts
was produced. Syracuse was manufacturing salt. Lynn already made morocco
leather, and Dedham, straw braid for hats. Cotton was regularly exported
in small quantities from the South. In New York one could get a decayed
tooth filled or a set of false teeth made. Four daily stages ran between
New York and Philadelphia. The Boston ship Columbia had circumnavigated
the globe. The United States Mint was still working by horse-power, not
employing steam till 1815. Whitney's cotton-gin had been invented in
1793. Terry, of Plymouth, Conn., was making clocks. There were in the
land two insurance companies, possibly more. Cast-iron ploughs, of home
make, were displacing the old ones of wood. Morse's "Geography" and
Webster's "Spelling-book" were on the market, and extensively used.
[Illustration: Drawing.]
Cotton Plant.
[Illustration: Drawing.]
The Cotton-Gin.
From the original model.
The great industrial inventions which were to color the entire
civilization of mankind had a powerful effect upon America. So early as
1775, in England, Crompton's mule-jenny had superseded Hargreaves'
spinning machine. The latter had improved on the old spinning-wheel by
making eight, and later eighty, threads with the effort and time the old
arrangement had required for one; but the threads were no better, and
could be used only for woof, linen being required for warp. Arkwright's
roller arrangement was an improvement upon Hargreaves'. It bettered the
quality of the threads, making them evener, so that they could serve for
warp as well as woof. Crompton's mule was another quantitative
improvement, combining the excellences of both Hargreaves and Arkwright.
One man could with this machinery work twenty-two hundred spindles, and
they went much faster than by the ancient wheel. Then came steam-power.
Watts's engine was adapted to spinning and carding cotton at Manchester
in 1783. Two years later the cylinder printing of cottons was invented,
and a little after began the use of acid in bleaching.
[Illustration: Portrait.]
Eli Whitney.
These mighty industrial devices did not cross to America immediately,
but were all here before the time of which we now write. A
spinning-jenny was indeed exhibited in Philadelphia so early as 1775.
During the Revolution, Philadelphia was a seat of much manufacture. We
have in an earlier chapter remarked that Beverly, Mass., had a cotton
factory in 1787. Oxen furnished its power, as a horse did that for the
first Philadelphia mill. A cotton mill was also started very early at
Worcester, but whether in 1780 or 1789 may admit of doubt. There is some
evidence that before July, 1790, a cotton factory run by water, with
ginning, carding, and spinning machines, the last of eighty-four
spindles apiece, was in operation near Statesburg, S. C.; but whether it
was successful or not is not known. Oliver Evans was operating a
single-flue boiler for steam-power by 1786. Soon after he had one with
two flues, and in 1779 a high-pressure or non-condensing engine, the
principle of which he is by many believed to have invented. He was the
earliest builder of steam-engines in the United States, having in 1804
secured a patent for the high-pressure device. His factory furnished
engines to all parts of the country.
England did her best to prevent all knowledge of the new manufacturing
machinery from crossing the Atlantic. The Act 21 George III., c. 37,
denounced upon anyone who should aid toward giving America any tool,
machine, or secret relating to manufacture in any branch, a penalty of
200 pounds and one year's imprisonment. In vain. Partly by smuggling,
partly by invention, the new arts soon flourished here as there. Some
Scotch artisans who came to Bridgewater, Mass., by invitation from Mr.
Hugh Orr, of that town, constructed, about 1786, the first
cotton-spinning machines in America, including the Arkwright inventions.
To build and launch the English machinery with full success was,
however, reserved for Samuel Slater, a native of Belper, Derbyshire,
England, who, in 1790, erected at Pawtucket, R. I., the Old Mill in rear
of Mill Street, which still stands and runs. Slater had served his time
at the making of cotton-manufacturing machinery with J. Strutt, who, had
been Arkwright's partner. In Strutt's factory he had risen to be
overseer. So thoroughly had he mastered the business that, on arriving
here, he found himself able to imitate the foreign machines from memory
alone, without model, plan, or measurement. Having gotten his gear in
readiness, almost solely with his own hands, December 20, 1790, he
started three cards, drawing and roving, also seventy-two spindles, all
on the Arkwright plan, the first of the kind ever triumphantly operated
on this side of the ocean. President Jackson styled Slater "the father
of American manufactures," and 1790 may be taken as the birth-year of
the American factory system.
The Tariff, the embargo policy of President Jefferson, and the hatred
toward England, taking form in organizations pledged to wear only
home-made clothing, all powerfully stimulated the erection of factories.
A report in 1810, of Albert Gallatin, Madison's Secretary of the
Treasury, states that by the end of the year preceding, eighty-seven
cotton factories had arisen in this country, calculated for eighty
thousand spindles. The power loom, however, not used in England till
about 1806, did not begin its work here till after the War of 1812.
[Footnote: See. further, Period II., Chap. VIII.]
CHAPTER IX.
DEMOCRACY AT THE HELM
[1801]
By the original mode of election, President and Vice-President could not
be separately designated on electors' tickets, so that, soon as party
spirit led each elector to vote for the same two men, these two were
tied for the first place. This occurred in 1801. The republican
candidates were Jefferson and Burr. Each had the same number of
electoral votes, seventy-three, against sixty-five for Adams, sixty-four
for C. C. Pinckney, and one for John Jay. There being no choice, the
election went to the House. This had a federalist majority, but was, by
the parity of the two highest candidates, constitutionally shut up to
elect between these, both of them Republicans. Jefferson as the abler
and from the South, was more than Burr an object of federalist hate.
Against Hamilton's advice, to his honor be it remembered, the
Federalists agreed to throw their votes for Burr. But the vote then, as
to-day in such a case, had to be by States. There were sixteen States,
nine being necessary to a choice. In nineteen ballots on February 11th,
nine the 12th, one the 13th, four the 14th, one each the 16th and 17th,
thirty-five in all, Jefferson every time carried eight States and Burr
six, while Maryland and Vermont were equally divided, and therefore
powerless.
The fear at last began to be felt that the Union would go to pieces and
the Federalists be to blame. Accordingly, on the 36th ballot, five
Federalists from South Carolina, four from Maryland, one from Vermont,
and one from Delaware--Mr. Bayard, grandfather to President Cleveland's
first Secretary of State--did not vote, enabling the republican members
from Vermont and Maryland to cast the votes of those States for
Jefferson. Thus, with ten States, he was elected, Burr becoming
Vice-President. This crisis led, in 1804, to the XIIth Amendment to the
Constitution, which directs each elector to vote for Vice-President as
such. There can hardly now be a tie between the two leading presidential
candidates, and if there is for any reason delay in electing the
President, the Senate may proceed to elect the Vice-President at once.
The improvement became manifest when, in 1825, the House again had to
elect the President, and chose John Quincy Adams over Crawford and
Jackson.
[Illustration: Portrait.]
Thomas Jefferson.
From the painting by Gilbert Stuart--property of T. Jefferson Coolidge.
The Democratic Party proved to have entered upon a long lease of power.
For forty years its hold upon affairs was not relaxed, and it was in no
wise broken even by the elections of Harrison in 1840 and Taylor in
1848. Nor did it ever appear probable that the Whigs, upon anyone of the
great issues which divided them from the Democrats, were in a way to win
permanent advantage. Not till after 1850 had the ruling dynasty true
reason to tremble, and then only at the rise of a new party, the modern
Republicans, inspired by the bold cry of anti-slavery, which the Whigs
had never dared to raise.
As to its main outlines, the democratic policy was well foreshadowed in
Jefferson's first inaugural. It favored thrift and simplicity in
government, involving close limitation of army, navy, and diplomatic
corps to positive and tangible needs. It professed peculiar regard for
the rights and interests of the common man, whether of foreign or of
native parentage. Strict construction of the Constitution, which was to
a great extent viewed as a compact of States, was another of its
cherished ideas. It also maintained special friendliness for agriculture
and commerce. From its strict constructionism sprung, further, its
hostility to internal improvements; from this and from its regard to
agriculture and commerce resulted its dislike to restrictive tariffs.
Particularly after the whig schism, about 1820, did these ideas stand
forth definite and pronounced as the authoritative democratic creed. In
and from Jackson's time they were more so still.
Yet in most respects Jefferson has remained the typical Democrat, He had
genuine faith in the people, in free government, in unfettered
individuality, His administration was frugal almost to a fault. He
insisted upon making the civil power supreme over the military, and
scorned all pretensions on the part of any particular class to rule, In
two points only was his democracy ideal rather than illustrative of that
which followed, viz., adroitness in giving trend and consistency to
legislation, and non-partisan administration of the civil service. In
the former no executive has equalled him, in the latter none since
Quincy Adams.
Growing up as a scholar and a gentleman-farmer, with refined tastes,
penning the great Declaration, which was early scouted for its
abstractions, long minister to France, where abstract ideas made all
high politics morbid, the sage of Monticello turned out to be one of the
most practical presidents this nation has ever had. If he overdid
simplicity in going to the Capitol on horseback to deliver his first
inaugural, tying his magnificent horse, Wildair, to a tree with his own
hands, he yet entertained elegantly, and his whole state as President,
far from humiliating the nation, as some feared it would, was in happy
keeping with its then development and nature. His cabinet, Madison,
Gallatin, Dearborn, Smith, and Granger, was in liberal education
superior to any other the nation has ever had, every member a college
graduate, and the first two men of distinguished research and
attainments.
As to the civil service, Jefferson, it is true, made many removals from
office, some doubtless unwise and even unjust; but in judging of these
we must remember his profound and unquestionably honest conviction that
the Federalists lacked patriotism. It was this belief which dictated his
prosecution, almost persecution, of Burr, whom Federalists openly
befriended and defended.
[Illustration: Portrait.]
Aaron Burr.
From a painting by Vallderlyn at the New York Historical Society.
Aaron Burr was the brilliant grandson of President Edwards. Graduating
at Princeton at the early age of seventeen, he studied theology a year,
then law, which on the outbreak of the Revolution he deserted for army
life at Boston. He went in Arnold's expedition to Canada, was promoted
to be colonel, and served on Washington's staff. In Canada he did
service as a spy, disguised as a priest and speaking French or Latin as
needed. His legal studies completed, 1783 found him in practice in New
York, office at No. 10 Little Queen Street. Both as lawyer and in
politics he rose like a meteor, being Hamilton's peer in the one, his
superior in the other. Organizing his "Little Band" of young
Republicans, spite of federalist opposition and sneers from the old
republican chiefs, he became Attorney-general of New York in 1789. In
1791, superseding Schuyler, he was United States senator from that
State, and in 1800, Vice-President.
Higher he could not mount, as federalist favor cursed him among his own
party, yet was too weak to aid him independently. It was kept down by
Hamilton, who saw through the man and opposed him with all his might.
For this Burr forced him to a duel, and fatally shot him, July 11, 1804.
Indicted for murder, Burr now disappears from politics, but only to
emerge in a new role. During all the early history of our Union the
parts beyond the Alleghanies were attached to it by but a slender
thread, which Spanish intrigue incessantly sought to cut. At this very
time Spain was pensioning men in high station there, including General
Wilkinson, commanding our force at New Orleans. Could not Burr detach
this district or a part of it from our Government and make here an
empire of his own? Or might he not take it as the base of operations for
an attack on Spanish America that should give him an empire there? Some
vision of this sort danced before the mad genius's vision, as before
that of Hamilton in the Miranda scheme. Many influential persons
encouraged him, with how much insight into his plan we shall never know.
Wilkinson was one of these. Blennerhassett, whose family and estate Burr
irreparably blasted, was another. He expected aid from Great Britain,
and from disaffected Mexicans.
From the outset the West proved more loyal than he hoped, and when, at
the critical moment, Wilkinson betrayed him, he knew that all was lost.
Sinking his chests of arms in the river near Natchez, he took to the
Mississippi woods, only to be recognized, arrested by Jefferson's order,
and dragged to Richmond to jail. As no overt act was proved, he could
not be convicted of treason; and even the trial of him for misdemeanor
broke down on technical points. The Federalists stood up for Burr as if
he had been their man, while Jefferson on his part pushed the
prosecution in a fussy and personal way, ill becoming a President.
Jefferson's most lasting work as national chief-magistrate was his
diplomacy in purchasing for the Union the boundless territory beyond the
Mississippi, prized then not for its extent or resources, both as yet
unknown, but as assuring us free navigation of the river, which sundry
French and Spanish plots had demonstrated essential to the solid loyalty
of the West. Louisiana, ceded by France to Spain in 1762, became French
again in 1801. Napoleon had intended it as the seat of a colonial power
rivalling Great Britain's, but, pressed for money in his new war with
that kingdom, concluded to sell. He wished, too, the friendship of the
United States against Great Britain, and knew not the worth of what he
was bargaining away. Willing to take fifty million francs, he offered
for one hundred million, speedily closing with Livingston and Monroe's
tender of eighty, we to assume in addition the French spoliation claims
of our citizens. The treaty of purchase was signed May 2, 1803, and
ratified by the Senate the 17th of the following October.
This stupendous transaction assured to our Republic not only leading
hand in the affairs of this continent, but place among the great powers
of the world. Its 1,124,685 square miles doubled the national domain. It
opened path well toward, if not to, the Pacific, and made ours
measureless tracts of agricultural and mining lands, rich as any under
the sun.
[Illustration: Portrait.]
Stephen Decatur.
If it originated many of the most perplexing questions which have
agitated our national politics, as those relating to slavery in this
territory itself, to the acquisitions from Mexico, to the Pacific
railways, and to the Indians and the Chinese, all this has been amply
compensated by the above and countless other benefits.
Equally brilliant if less impressive was another piece of Jefferson's
foreign policy. He might be over-friendly to France, but elsewhere he
certainly did not believe in peace at any price. The Barbary powers had
begun to annoy our commerce soon after Independence. The Betsey was
captured in 1784, next year the Maria, of Boston, and the Dauphin, of
Philadelphia, and their crews of twenty-one men carried to a long and
disgraceful captivity in Algiers.
The Dey's bill for these captives, held by him as slaves, was:
3 Captains at $6,000 $18,000
2 Mates at $4,000 8,000
2 Passengers at $4,000 8,000
14 Seamen at $1,400 19,600
---------
$53,600
For custom, eleven per cent 5,896
---------
$59,496
Later a single cruise lost us ten vessels to these half-civilized
people.
Following European precedent, Washington had made, in 1795, a
ransom-treaty with this nest of pirates, to carry out which cost us a
fat million. The captives had meantime increased to one hundred and
fifteen, though the crews of the Maria and the Dauphin had wasted away
to ten men. Nearly a million more went to the other North-African
freebooters. The policy of ransoming was, indeed, cheaper than force.
Count d'Estaing used to say that bombarding a pirate town was like
breaking windows with guineas. The old Dey of Algiers, learning the
expense of Du Quesne's expedition to batter his capital, declared that
he himself would have burnt it for half the sum.
Yet it makes one's blood hot to-day to read how our fathers paid tribute
to those thieves. The Dey had, in so many words, called us his slaves,
and had actually terrorized Captain Bainbridge, of the man-of-war George
Washington, into carrying despatches for him to Constantinople, flying
the Algerine pirate flag conspicuously at the fore. After
anchoring--this was some requital--Bainbridge was permitted to hoist the
Stars and Stripes, the first time that noble emblem ever kissed the
breeze of the Golden Horn.
[1803]
Jefferson loathed such submission, and vowed that it should cease.
Commodore Dale was ordered to the Mediterranean with a squadron to
protect our ships there from further outrage. One of his vessels, the
Experiment, soon captured a Tripoli cruiser of fourteen guns, the
earliest stroke of any civilized power for many years by way of showing
a bold front to these pestilent corsairs.
This was on August 6, 1801. In 1803 Preble was placed in command of the
Mediterranean fleet, with some lighter ships to go farther up those
shallow harbors. Bainbridge had the misfortune while in pursuit of a
Tripoli frigate to run his ship, the Philadelphia, on a rock, and to be
taken prisoner with all his crew. The sailors were made slaves.
Lieutenant Decatur penetrated the Tripoli harbor under cover of night,
and burned the Philadelphia to the water's edge. Tripoli was bombarded,
and many of its vessels taken or sunk. Commodore Barron, who had
succeeded Preble, co-operated with a land attack which some of the
Pasha's disaffected subjects, led by the American General Eaton, made
upon Tripoli. The city was captured, April 27th, and the pirate prince
forced to a treaty. Even now, however, we paid $60,000 in ransom money.
[Illustration: Hand-to-fighting with swords and pistols.]
Lieutenant Decatur on the Turkish Vessel during the Bombardment of
Tripoli.
CHAPTER X.
THE WAR OF 1812
[1807]
Although paying, so long as Jay's treaty was in force, for certain
invasions of our commerce, Great Britain had never adopted a just
attitude toward neutral trade. She persisted in loosely defining
contraband and blockade, and in denouncing as unlawful all commerce
which was opened to us as neutrals merely by war or carried on by us
between France and French colonies through our own ports.
The far more flagrant abuse of impressment, the forcible seizure of
American citizens for service in the British navy, became intolerably
prevalent during Jefferson's administration. Not content with reclaiming
deserters or asserting the eternity of British citizenship, Great
Britain, through her naval authorities, was compelling thousands of men
of unquestioned American birth to help fight her battles. Castlereagh
himself admitted that there had been sixteen hundred bona fide cases of
this sort by January 1, 1811. And in her mode of asserting and
exercising even her just claims she ignored international law, as well
as the dignity and sovereignty of the United States. The odious right of
search she most shamefully abused. The narrow seas about England were
assumed to be British waters, and acts performed in American harbors
admissible only on the open ocean. When pressed by us for apology or
redress, the British Government showed no serious willingness to treat,
but a brazen resolve to utilize our weak and too trustful policy of
peace.
One instance of this shall suffice. Commodore Barron, in command of the
United States war vessel Chesapeake, was attacked by the Leopard, a
British two-decker of fifty guns, outside the mouth of Chesapeake Bay,
to recover three sailors, falsely alleged to be British-born, on board.
Their surrender being refused, the Leopard opened fire. The Chesapeake
received twenty-one shots in her hull, and lost three of her crew killed
and eighteen wounded. She had been shamefully unprepared for action, and
was hence forced to strike, but Humphreys, the Leopard's commander,
contemptuously declined to take her a prize. There was no excuse
whatever for this wanton and criminal insult to our flag, yet the only
reparation ever made was formal, tardy, and lame.
[Illustration: Portrait.]
James Madison.
From a painting by Gilbert Stuart--property of T. Jefferson Coolidge.
Bad was changed to worse with the progress of the new and more desperate
war between Great Britain and Napoleon. The Emperor shut the
North-German ports to Britain; Britain declared Prussian and all West
European harbors in a state of blockade. The Emperor's Berlin decree,
November, 1806, paper-blockaded the British Isles; his Milan decree,
December, 1807, declared forfeited all vessels, wherever found,
proceeding to or from any British port, or having submitted to British
search or tribute. In fine, Britain would treat as illicit all commerce
with the continent, France all with Britain. But while Napoleon, in
fact, though not avowedly, more and more receded from his position,
England maintained hers with iron tenacity.
[1810]
Sincere as was our Government's desire to maintain strict neutrality in
the European conflict, it naturally found difficulty in making England
so believe. Their opponents at home ceaselessly charged Jefferson,
Madison, and all the Republicans with partiality to France, so that
Canning and Castlereagh were misled; and they were confirmed in their
suspicion by Napoleon's crafty assumption that our embargo or
non-intercourse policy was meant to act, as it confessedly did,
favorably to France. Napoleon's confiscation of our vessels, at one time
sweeping, he advertised as a friendly proceeding in aid of our embargo.
Yet all this did not, as Castlereagh captiously pretended, prove our
neutrality to be other than strict and honest. At this time it certainly
was both. So villainously had Napoleon treated us that all Americans now
hated him as heartily as did any people in England.
[1812]
The non-intercourse mode of hostility, a boomerang at best, had played
itself out before Jefferson's retirement; and since George's ministry
showed no signs whatever of a changed temper, guiltily ill-prepared as
we were, no honorable or safe course lay before us but to fight Great
Britain. Clay, Calhoun, Quincy Adams, and Monroe--the last the soul of
the war--deserved the credit of seeing this first and clearest, and of
the most sturdy and consistent action accordingly. Their spirit proved
infectious, and the Republicans swiftly became a war party.
Most of the "war-hawks," as they were derisively styled, were from the
South and the southern Middle States. Fearing that, if it were a naval
war, glory would redound to New England and New York, which were hotbeds
of the peace party, they wished this to be a land war, and shrieked, "On
to Canada." They made a great mistake. The land operations were for the
most part indescribably disgraceful. Except the exploits of General
Brown and Colonel Winfield Scott, subsequently the head of the national
armies, not an action on the New York border but ingloriously failed.
The national Capitol was captured and burnt, a deed not more disgraceful
to England in the commission than to us in the permission. Of the
officers in command of armies, only Harrison and Jackson earned laurels.
Harrison had learned warfare as Governor of Indiana, where, on November
7, 1811, he had fought the battle of Tippecanoe, discomfiting Tecumseh's
braves and permanently quieting Indian hostilities throughout that
territory. In the new war against England, after Hull's pusillanimous
surrender of Detroit, the West loudly and at length with success
demanded "Tippecanoe" as commander for the army about to advance into
Canada. Their estimate of Harrison proved just. Overcoming many
difficulties and aided by Perry's flotilla on Lake Erie, he pursued
Proctor, his retreating British antagonist, up the River Thames to a
point beyond Sandwich. Here the British made a stand, but a gallant
charge of Harrison's Kentucky cavalry irreparably broke their lines. The
Indians, led by old Tecumseh in person, made a better fight, but in
vain. The victory was complete, and Upper Canada lay at our mercy.
[Illustration: Portrait.]
Tecumseh
Andrew Jackson also began his military experience by operations against
Indians. The southern redskins had been incited to war upon us by
British and Spanish emissaries along the Florida line. Tecumseh had
visited them in the same interest. The horrible massacre at Fort Mims,
east of the Alabama above its junction with the Tombigbee, was their
initial work. Five hundred and fifty persons were there surprised, four
hundred of them slain or burned to death. Jackson took the field, and in
an energetic campaign, with several bloody engagements, forced them to
peace. By the battle of the Horse-Shoe, March 27, 1814, the Creek power
was entirely crushed.
Subsequently placed in command of our force at New Orleans, Jackson was
attacked by a numerous British army, made up in large part of veterans
who had seen service under Wellington in Spain. Pakenham, the hero of
Salamanca, commanded. Jackson's position was well chosen and strongly
fortified. After several preliminary engagements, each favorable to the
American arms, Pakenham essayed to carry the American works by storm.
The battle occurred on January 8, 1815. It was desperately fought on
both sides, but at its close Jackson's loss had been trifling and his
line had not been broken at a single point, while the British had lost
at least 2,600, all but 500 of these killed or wounded. The British
immediately withdrew from the Mississippi, leaving Jackson entirely
master of the position.
But the naval operations of this war were far the most famous, exceeding
in their success all that the most sanguine had dared to hope, and
forever dispelling from our proud foe the charm of naval invincibility.
The American frigate Constitution captured the British Guerriere. The
Wasp took the Frolic, being soon, however, forced to surrender with her
prize to the Poitiers, a much larger vessel. The United States
vanquished the Macedonian, and the Constitution the Java. One of the
best fought actions of the war was that of McDonough on Lake Champlain,
with his craft mostly gunboats or galleys. His victory restored to us
the possession of Northern New York, which our land forces had not been
able to maintain.
[Illustration: Portrait.]
Oliver H, Perry.
[1813-1814]
The crowning naval triumph during the war, one of the most brilliant, in
fact, in all naval annals, was won by Oliver Hazard Perry near
Put-in-Bay on Lake Erie, September 10, 1813, over the Briton, Barclay, a
naval veteran who had served under Nelson at Trafalgar. The fleets were
well matched, the American numbering the more vessels but the fewer
guns. Barclay greatly exceeded Perry in long guns, having the latter at
painful disadvantage until he got near. Perry's flag-ship, the Lawrence,
was early disabled. Her decks were drenched with blood, and she had
hardly a gun that could be served. Undismayed, Perry, with his insignia
of command, crossed in a little boat to the Niagara. Again proudly
hoisting his colors, aided by the wind and followed by his whole
squadron, he pressed for close quarters, where desperate fighting
speedily won the battle. Barclay and his next in command were wounded,
the latter dying that night. "We have met the enemy and they are ours,"
Perry wrote to Harrison, "two ships, two brigs, one schooner, and one
sloop."
Triumph far more complete might have attended the war but for the
perverse and factious federalist opposition to the administration. Some
Federalists favored joining England out and out against Napoleon. Having
with justice denounced Jefferson's embargo tactics as too tame, yet when
the war spirit rose and even the South stood ready to resent foreign
affronts by force, they changed tone, harping upon our weakness and
favoring peace at any price. Tireless in magnifying the importance of
commerce, they would not lift a hand to defend it. The same men who had
cursed Adams for avoiding war with France easily framed excuses for
orders in council, impressment, and the Chesapeake affair.
Apart from Randolph and the few opposition Republicans, mostly in New
York, this Thersites band had its seat in commercial New England, where
embargo and war of course sat hardest, more than a sixth of our entire
tonnage belonging to Massachusetts alone. From the Essex Junto and its
sympathizers came nullification utterances not less pointed than the
Virginia and Kentucky resolutions, although, considering the sound
rebukes which the latter had evoked, they were far less defensible.
Disunion was freely threatened, and actions either committed or
countenanced bordering hard upon treason. The Massachusetts Legislature
in 1809 declared Congress's act to enforce embargo "not legally
binding." Governor Trumbull of Connecticut declined to aid, as requested
by the President, in carrying out that act, summoning the Legislature
"to interpose their protecting shield" between the people and "the
assumed power of the general Government." "How," wrote Pickering,
referring to the Constitution, Amendment X., "are the powers reserved to
be maintained, but by the respective States judging for themselves and
putting their negative on the usurpations of the general Government?" A
sermon of President Dwight's on the text, "Come out from among them and
be ye separate, saith the Lord," even Federalists deprecated as hinting
too strongly at secession. This unpatriotic agitation, from which, be it
said, large numbers of Federalists nobly abstained, came to a head in
the mysterious Hartford Convention, at the close of 1814, and soon began
to be sedulously hushed--in consequence of the glorious news of victory
and peace from Ghent and New Orleans.
[Illustration: Five men in a small boat on the ocean. They are
surrounded by smoke and bursting shells.]
Perry transferring his Colors from the Lawrence to the Niagara.
While the Congregationalists, especially their clergy, were nearly all
stout Federalists, opposing Jefferson, Madison, and the war, the
Methodists and Baptists almost to a man stood up for the administration
and its war policy with the utmost vigor, rebuking the peace party as
traitors. [Footnote: The writer's grandfather, a Baptist minister, was
as good as driven from his pulpit and charge at Templeton, Mass.,
because of his federalist sympathies in this war.] Timothy Merritt, a
mighty Methodist preacher on the Connecticut circuit, has left us from
these critical times a stirring sermon on the text, Judges v. 23, "Curse
ye Meroz, said the angel of the Lord, curse ye bitterly the inhabitants
thereof; because they came not up to the help of the Lord, to the help
of the Lord against the mighty." Meroz was the federalist party and
England's ministry and army were "the mighty."
Czar Alexander, regarding our hostility as dangerous to England, with
whom he then stood allied against Napoleon, sought to end the war. The
Russian campaign of 1812 practically finished Napoleon's career, so
leaving England free to press operations in America. In April, 1814,
Paris was captured. The United States therefore accepted Alexander's
offices. Our commissioners, Adams, Clay, Gallatin, Marshall, Bayard, and
Russell met the English envoys at Ghent, and after long discussions, in
which more than once it seemed as if the war must proceed, the treaty of
Ghent was executed, December 24, 1814, a fortnight before the battle of
New Orleans.
It was an honorable peace. If we gained no territory we yielded none.
The questions of Mississippi navigation and the fisheries were expressly
reserved for future negotiations. Upon impressment and the abuse of
neutrals, exactly the grievances over which we had gone to war, the
treaty was silent, and peace men laughed at the war party on this
account, calling the war a failure. The ridicule was unjust. Had
Napoleon been still on high, or the negotiations been subsequent to the
New Orleans victory, England would doubtless have been called upon to
renounce these practices. But experience has proved that such a demand
would have been unnecessary. No outrage of these kinds has occurred
since, nor can anyone doubt that it was our spirit as demonstrated in
the war of 1812 which changed England's temper. Hence, in spite of our
military inexperience, financial distress, internal dissensions, and the
fall of Napoleon, which unexpectedly turned the odds against us, the war
was a success.
End of Volume II.