THE leaders of the war party next performed in Congress a scene in some
respects new in the drama of history.
November 29, Peter B. Porter of New York, from the Committee of Foreign
Relations, presented to the House his report, in part.
“Your committee will not incumber your journals,” it began, “and
waste your patience with a detailed history of all the various
matters growing out of our foreign relations. The cold recital
of wrongs, of injuries, and aggressions known and felt by every
member of this Union could have no other effect than to deaden
the national sensibility, and render the public mind callous to
injuries with which it is already too familiar.”
Admission of weakness in the national sensibility gave the key-note of
the report, and of the speeches that supported it. Even the allusion to
the repeal of the French Decrees showed fear lest the truth might make
the public mind callous to shame:--
“France at length ... announced the repeal ... of the Decrees
of Berlin and Milan; and it affords a subject of sincere
congratulation to be informed, through the official organs of
the Government, that those decrees are, so far at least as our
rights are concerned, really and practically at an end.”
Porter had not studied the correspondence of the Department of State so
thoroughly as to learn that Russia and Sweden were in the act of making
war to protect American rights from the operation of those decrees
which, as he was informed, were “really and practically at an end.” His
report ignored these difficulties, but added that England affected to
deny the practical extinction of the French Decrees. In truth, England
not affectedly but positively denied the extinction of those decrees;
the United States offered no sufficient evidence to satisfy even
themselves; and a declaration of war founded on England’s “affected”
denial was in a high degree likely to deaden the national sensibility.
With more reason and effect, the committee dwelt on the severity with
which England enforced her blockades as far as the American coast; and
last of all, added, almost in a tone of apology, an allusion to the
practice of impressments:--
“Your committee are not, however, of that sect whose worship
is at the shrine of a calculating avarice; and while we are
laying before you the just complaints of our merchants against
the plunder of their ships and cargoes, we cannot refrain from
presenting to the justice and humanity of our country the
unhappy case of our impressed seamen. Although the groans of
these victims of barbarity for the loss of (what should be
dearer to Americans than life) their liberty; although the cries
of their wives and children, in the privation of protectors and
parents, have of late been drowned in the louder clamors at the
loss of property,--yet is the practice of forcing our mariners
into the British navy, in violation of the rights of our flag,
carried on with unabated rigor and severity. If it be our duty
to encourage the fair and legitimate commerce of this country by
protecting the property of the merchant, then indeed, by as much
as life and liberty are more estimable than ships and goods, so
much more impressive is the duty to shield the persons of our
seamen, whose hard and honest services are employed equally with
those of the merchants in advancing under the mantle of its laws
the interests of their country.”
Truisms like these, matters of course in the oldest despotisms of
Europe, and the foundation of even Roman society, sounded altogether
new in the mouth of a democratic Legislature, which uttered them
as though their force were not universally admitted. The weakness
of the report in its premises was not strengthened by vigor in the
self-excuses that followed, more apologetic than convincing:--
“If we have not rushed to the field of battle, like the nations
who are led by the mad ambition of a single chief or the avarice
of a corrupted court, it has not proceeded from a fear of war,
but from our love of justice and humanity.”
As the sway of Jefferson’s philosophy ceased, these formulas, never
altogether pleasing, became peculiarly repulsive. Indeed, the only
sentence in the committee’s report that commanded respect was its
concluding appeal to the people to abandon the policy which had
proceeded, as it claimed, from their love of justice and humanity:--
“The period has arrived when in the opinion of your committee
it is the sacred duty of Congress to call forth the patriotism
and resources of the country. By the aid of these, and with the
blessing of God, we confidently trust we shall be enabled to
procure that redress which has been sought for by justice, by
remonstrance, and forbearance in vain.”
The report closed with six Resolutions, recommending an increase of ten
thousand men to the regular army; a levy of fifty thousand volunteers;
the outfit of all the vessels of war not in actual service; and the
arming of merchant vessels.
In opening the debate on the report, Porter spoke in language more
candid than the report itself. “It was the determination of the
committee,” he said, “to recommend open and decided war,--a war as
vigorous and effective as the resources of the country and the relative
situation of ourselves and our enemy would enable us to prosecute.”
He went so far as to point out the intended military operations,--the
destruction of British fisheries, and of British commerce with America
and the West Indies, and the conquest of Canada. “By carrying on such a
war at the public expense on land, and by individual enterprise at sea,
we should be able in a short time to remunerate ourselves ten-fold for
all the spoliations she had committed on our commerce.”
Such ideas were not unbecoming to Porter, who began life as a
Federalist, and had no philosophical theories or recorded principles to
explain or defend; but what Porter might advise without a qualm, was
much less simple for Republicans from the South; and while his speech
had its value for the public as a straightforward declaration, it had
little or none for individuals who were conscious that it advised what
they had always condemned. The true spokesman of the committee was not
Porter, but Felix Grundy of Tennessee.
Grundy, like Henry Clay a Virginian by birth and born the same year,
1777, like Clay began his career in Kentucky, where he rose to be
chief-justice of the State before he was thirty years old. In 1807 he
removed from Kentucky to Tennessee, and was next elected to the Twelfth
Congress expressly to advocate war. As a new member, whose duty, like
that of all new members, required him to exchange some controversial
hostilities with John Randolph, he could not afford to miss his mark;
and when Randolph called upon him by a sneering request to tell what
were the constitutional resources of the committee and its talents,
Grundy spoke. He apologized for his remarks as embarrassed, and indeed
his speech showed less fluency than the subject and occasion seemed to
warrant; but though it made no pretence of wit or rhetoric, it went to
the heart of the subject, and dealt seriously with the difficulties
which Grundy and his party felt.
“What cost me more reflection than anything else,” he admitted,
“was the new test to which we are to put this government. We are
about to ascertain by actual experiment how far our republican
institutions are calculated to stand the shock of war; and
whether, after foreign danger has disappeared, we can again
assume our peaceful attitude without endangering the liberties
of the people.”
At the outset, Grundy stumbled upon the difficulty which checked every
movement of his party. Obliged to reconcile his present action with
the attitude taken by his friends in opposition to the Federalist
armaments of 1798, he could only charge that the armaments of 1798
were made not for war, but to provide Executive patronage and affect
domestic politics,--a charge which, whether true or not, did not meet
the objection.
“If your minds are resolved on war,” continued the speaker,
“you are consistent, you are right, you are still Republican;
but if you are not resolved, pause and reflect, for should this
Resolution pass and you then become faint-hearted, remember that
you have abandoned your old principles and trod in the paths of
your predecessors.”
Thus, according to Grundy, from the moment a party intended in earnest
to make war against a foreign enemy, armies, loans, patronage, taxes,
and every following corruption, with all the perils of European
practice, became Republican. Only when armies were to be raised for
domestic purposes were they unrepublican. The Administration of 1798
would gladly have accepted this test, had the Republicans then been
willing to permit armaments on any terms.
Grundy weakened the argument further by attempting to show that in the
present case, unlike that of 1798, sufficient cause for war existed:
“It is the right of exporting the productions of our own soil and
industry to foreign markets.” The statement, considering Grundy’s
reputation, was not skilfully made. The blockades maintained by England
in 1811 were less hostile to American products and industry than
were the decrees of Napoleon, or the French Decrees of 1798, which
confiscated every American ship laden in whole or in part with goods of
English origin, and closed France to every American ship that entered
an English port. Grundy still maintained that the decrees of 1798 had
not justified the Federalist armaments; he could hardly maintain that
the British blockades of 1811 alone gave cause for armaments of the
same kind,--yet this he did. “What are we now called on to decide?”
he asked. “It is whether we will resist by force the attempt ... to
subject our maritime rights to the arbitrary and capricious rule of her
will.”
Grundy spoke of impressments as an outrage which called loudly for
the interposition of the government, but he did not allege them as in
themselves a sufficient cause for war. He laid more weight on the
influence of England in turning the minds of the northwestern Indians
toward hostilities. “War is not to commence by land or sea; it is
already begun,” he said, alluding to the battle of Tippecanoe, fought
a month before; yet if ever a war was aggressive, it was the war which
Harrison had begun for no other object than to win the valley of the
Wabash, and England had interfered neither directly nor indirectly to
produce the outbreak of these hostilities.
Grundy’s next argument was still less convincing. The pledge given
to France, he said, made necessary the Non-importation Law against
England; but this act was an intolerable burden to the United States:--
“Ask the Northern man, and he will tell you that any state of
things is better than the present. Inquire of the Western people
why their crops are not equal to what they were in former years,
they will answer that industry has no stimulus left, since
their surplus products have no markets. Notwithstanding these
objections to the present restrictive system, we are bound to
retain it; this, and our plighted faith to the French government
have tied the Gordian knot. We cannot untie it. We can cut it
with the sword.”
Reasoning like this was dear to John Randolph, never so happy as
when he had such a slip to expose. In defiance of remonstrance, the
President and Congress had insisted upon imposing the non-importation,
on the ground that they had entered into a contract with France; and
no sooner had they done so, than, in order to free themselves from
their contract with France, they insisted upon war with England. On the
same reasoning their only means of rendering the contract void was by
annexing themselves to the empire of Napoleon.
Finally Grundy appealed to an argument wholly new:--
“This war, if carried on successfully, will have its advantages.
We shall drive the British from our continent.... I am willing
to receive the Canadians as adopted brethren. It will have
beneficial political effects; it will preserve the equilibrium
of the government. When Louisiana shall be fully peopled, the
Northern States will lose their power; they will be at the
discretion of others; they can be depressed at pleasure, and
then this Union might be endangered. I therefore feel anxious
not only to add the Floridas to the South, but the Canadas to
the North of this empire.”
Grundy was the first of Southern statesmen to express publicly the
Southern belief that when Louisiana and Florida should be peopled,
the Northern States would lose their power and be at the discretion
of others, to be depressed at pleasure. Such was the theory of the
time, and the political history of the United States seemed to support
it; but the Republican party in 1798 would have looked on any of its
representatives as insane who had proposed to make war on England in
order to give more power to the Northern States.
To this speech John Randolph replied in his usual keen and desultory
style; but Randolph’s arguments had lost historical interest, for the
question was not so much whether war should be made, as upon what new
ground the United States should stand. The Federalists, conscious of
the change, held their peace. The Republicans, laboring to convince
not their opponents but themselves, argued day after day that cause
for war existed, as though they doubted their own assertion; but no
sooner did they reach delicate ground than they became confused. Many
of the speakers avoided argument, and resorted to declamation. The
best representative of this class was R. M. Johnson of Kentucky, who,
after five years of national submission to both European belligerents,
declared that a sixth year would prove fatal: “We must now oppose the
further encroachments of Great Britain by war, or formally annul the
Declaration of Independence.” On this doubtful foundation he imagined
visionary conquests. “I should not wish to extend the boundary of the
United States by war if Great Britain would leave us to the quiet
enjoyment of independence; but considering her deadly and implacable
enmity, and her continued hostilities, I shall never die contented
until I see her expulsion from North America, and her territories
incorporated with the United States.” Probably these appeals carried
weight with the Western people; but even earnest supporters of war
might doubt whether men of sense could be conciliated or persuaded by
such oratory, or by descriptions of Harrison’s troops at Tippecanoe,
“in the silent watches of the night, relieved from the fatigues of
valor, and slumbering under the perfidious promises of the savages, who
were infuriated and made drunk by British traders,” and so massacred
unawares.
Among the Republican speakers was J. C. Calhoun, who had lately taken
his seat as a member for South Carolina. Of all the new men, Calhoun
was the youngest. He had not yet reached his thirtieth birthday, and
his experience in life was slight even for his years; but his speech
of December 12 much excelled that of Grundy in merit, showing more
clearness of statement, and fairly meeting each successive point that
had been made by Randolph. Little could be added to what Calhoun said,
and no objection could be justly made against it, except that as an
expression of principles it had no place in the past history of the
Republican party.
“Sir,” exclaimed Calhoun, “I know of but one principle to make
a nation great, to produce in this country not the form but the
real spirit of union; and that is to protect every citizen in
the lawful pursuit of his business.... Protection and patriotism
are reciprocal. This is the road that all great nations have
trod.”
Of the tenets held by the Virginia school, none had been more often
or more earnestly taught than that the United States ought not to be
made a great nation by pursuing the road that all great nations had
trod. Had Calhoun held such language in 1798, he would have been
branded as a monocrat by Jefferson, and would not long have represented
a Republican district; but so great was the revolution in 1811 that
Calhoun, thinking little of his party and much of the nation, hardly
condescended to treat with decent respect the “calculating avarice”
which, though he alluded to its authors only in vague words, had been
the pride of his party.
“It is only fit for shops and counting-houses,” he said, “and
ought not to disgrace the seat of sovereignty by its squalid
and vile appearance. Whenever it touches sovereign power, the
nation is ruined. It is too shortsighted to defend itself.
It is an unpromising spirit, always ready to yield a part to
save the balance. It is too timid to have in itself the laws
of self-preservation. It is never safe but under the shield of
honor.”
Not without reason did Stanford of North Carolina retort that he very
well recollected to have heard precisely the same doctrines in a strain
of declamation at least equally handsome, upon the same subject, and
from the same State; but the time was in 1799, and the speaker was the
Federalist leader of the House,--Robert Goodloe Harper.
Troup of Georgia presently followed with a criticism that seemed more
sensible than any yet made. He was ready to vote, but he begged for
some discretion in debate. He threatened to call for the previous
question if idle verbiage and empty vociferations were to take the
place of energetic conduct. “Of what avail is argument, of what avail
is eloquence, to convince, to persuade--whom? Ourselves? The people?
Sir, if the people are to be reasoned into a war now, it is too soon,
much too soon, to begin it; if their representatives here are to be led
into it by the flowers of rhetoric, it is too soon, much too soon, to
begin it.” The House, he said, had chosen to debate in public a subject
which should have been discussed with closed doors, to announce that
its measures were intended as measures of offensive hostilities, that
its army was to attack Canada; and what was all this but a declaration
of war, contrary to all warlike custom,--a magnanimous notice to the
enemy when, where, and how the blow would fall? Troup protested against
this novel strategy, and pointed out the folly of attacking Canada if
England were given such liberal notice to reinforce it; but sensible
as the warning was, the debate, which was meant to affect public
opinion both in America and in England rather than to prepare for
hostilities, went on as before. Even Macon insisted on the wisdom of
talking, and pledged himself to support war in order to maintain “the
right to export our native produce;” while old William Findley, who
had sat in almost every Congress since 1790, voted for the Resolutions
on the unrepublican principle that the best means to prevent war was
to prepare for it. No concealment was affected of conquests to be made
in the Canadas. “Ever since the report of the Committee on Foreign
Relations came into the House,” said Randolph on the last day of the
debate, “we have heard but one word,--like the whippoorwill, but one
monotonous tone,--Canada, Canada, Canada!”
Stanford of North Carolina made one of the peculiar speeches in which
he delighted, but which had ceased to irritate his party, even though
he went so far as to aver that the Federalists in 1798 had more cause
for war with France than existed in 1811 with England, and though he
declared the Sedition Law of 1798 to be no more direct an attack on
free discussion than was the “previous question” of 1810. He showed
little mercy to Grundy and Calhoun, and he proved to the delight of the
Federalists the inconsistency of his party; while Randolph, in another
speech, redoubled his bitter comments on the changes of political faith
which left no one but Stanford and himself true to the principles for
which they had taken office. They talked to deaf ears. The Republican
party no longer cared for principles. Under the beneficent pressure of
England, the theories of Virginia were, for the time, laid aside.
The Resolutions proposed by the Committee on Foreign Relations were
adopted, December 16, by what was in effect a unanimous vote. Only
twenty-two members recorded their names against the increase of the
regular army, and only fifteen voted against fitting out the navy.
A still stronger proof of political revolution was the vote of
ninety-seven to twenty-two in favor of the Resolution which authorized
merchant vessels to arm. This measure had the effect of a declaration
of war. In former years it had been always rejected as improper,
because it created a private war, taking from the Government and giving
to private citizens the control over war and peace; but December 19
the House adopted this last and decisive measure, and while many
Republicans would not vote at all, and even Lowndes and Macon voted
against it, Josiah Quincy, Timothy Pitkin, and most of the extreme
Federalists recorded their votes in its favor.
Meanwhile the Senate had acted. In the want of reports, no record
remains of what passed in debate before December 17; but the Journal
shows that William B. Giles was made chairman of the Committee on
Foreign Relations, with Crawford and five other senators as his
associates; and that Giles reported December 9 a bill for raising, not
ten thousand regular troops, as the President recommended, but ten
regiments of infantry, two of artillery, and one of cavalry,--in all
twenty-five thousand men for five years, in addition to an existing
army nominally ten thousand strong. Each regiment was to number two
thousand men, and whether its ranks were filled or not, required a full
complement of officers. Rumor reported, and Giles admitted, that his
bill was not an Administration measure, but on the contrary annoyed
the Administration, which had asked for all the regular force it could
raise or organize within a year. The public, though unwilling to side
with Giles against the President, could not but admit that the conquest
of Canada by ten thousand men was uncertain, even with the assistance
of volunteers and militia, while the entire scheme of war would become
a subject of ridicule if Congress avowed the intention of vanquishing
all the forces of Great Britain with only ten thousand raw troops.
Perhaps a better economy would have covered the ocean with cruisers,
and have used the army only for defence; but although in any case the
military result would probably have been what it was, the party which
undertook to wage a great war by a government not at all equipped for
the purpose, without experience and with narrow resources, proved
wisdom in proportion as it showed caution. The President evidently
held this opinion. Senator Anderson of Tennessee, acting probably on
Executive advice, moved to amend the bill with a view of returning to
the original plan of ten or twelve thousand additional troops; and
on this motion, December 17, Giles made a speech that could not have
been more mischievous had he aimed only to destroy public trust in the
Government. He avowed the difference between himself and the Secretary
of War in regard to the number of troops needed, and he showed only too
easily that the force he proposed was not more than competent to the
objects of the Government; but not content with proving himself wiser
than the President and the Secretary of War, he went out of his way to
attack the Secretary of the Treasury with virulence that surprised the
Federalists themselves.
The decrepit state of the Treasury, said Giles, was the tenderest
part of the discussion; but instead of dealing tenderly with it, he
denounced Gallatin, whose financial reputation, he declared, was
made to his hand by others, and was founded less on facts than on
anticipation. “If reliance can be placed on his splendid financial
talents, only give them scope for action, apply them to the national
ability and will, let them perform the simple task of pointing out
the true _modus operandi_, and what reason have we to despair of
the republic? What reason have we to doubt of the abundance of the
Treasury supplies? Until now the honorable secretary has had no scope
for the demonstration of his splendid financial talents.” He went so
far as to assert that during the last three years all the measures
that had dishonored the nation were, in a great degree, attributable
to the unwillingness of Jefferson and Madison to disturb Gallatin’s
popularity and repose; that the repeal of the salt tax, the failure of
the embargo, the refusal to issue letters of marque, were all due to
Gallatin’s influence; and that it would have been infinitely better to
leave the national debt untouched, than to pay it by surrendering the
smallest attribute of national sovereignty.
Giles had long been in open opposition to the President, he had
intrigued with every other factious spirit to embarrass the Government,
and had scandalized his own State by the bitterness of his personal
hatreds; but he had not before shown himself ready to sacrifice the
nation to his animosities. Every one knew that had he expected to give
the Administration the splendid success of a military triumph, he would
never have thrust upon it an army competent to the purpose. Every
one believed that he hoped to ruin President Madison by the war that
was threatened, and wished to hasten the ruin before the next autumn
election. Those who had watched Giles closely knew how successfully he
had exerted himself to cripple the Treasury,--how he had guided the
attacks on its resources; had by his single vote destroyed Gallatin’s
only efficient instrument, the Bank; had again by his single vote
repealed the salt tax against Gallatin’s wishes; and how he had himself
introduced and supported that repeal of the embargo which broke the
influence of Gallatin and went far to ruin Madison’s Administration
before it was fairly in office. So notorious was his conduct that
Senator Anderson of Tennessee and his colleague G. W. Campbell, in
replying, went to the verge of the rules in charging Giles with motives
of the blackest kind. Campbell pointed out that Giles’s army would
frustrate its own objects; would be unable to act against Canada as
quickly as would be necessary, and would cause needless financial
difficulty. “I trust,” continued Campbell, “it is not the intention
of any one by raising so large a regular force, thereby incurring
so great an expenditure beyond what it is believed is necessary, to
drain your treasury, embarrass your fiscal concerns, and paralyze
the best concerted measures of government. If, however, such are the
objects intended, a more effectual mode to accomplish them could
not be adopted.” Giles’s speech offered an example, unparalleled in
American history, of what Campbell described as “the malignity of the
human mind;” but although his object was evident, only twelve senators
supported Madison, while twenty-one voted for Giles’s army. As though
to prove the true motive of the decision, every Federalist senator
voted with Giles, and their votes gave him a majority.
Giles’s bill passed the Senate December 19, and was referred at
once to the House Committee on Foreign Relations, which amended it
by cutting down the number of troops from twenty-five thousand to
fifteen thousand men; but when this amendment was proposed to the
House, it met, in the words of Peter B. Porter, with a gust of zeal
and passion. Henry Clay and the ardent war democrats combined with
the Federalists to force the larger army on the President, although
more than one sound Democrat invoked past experience and ordinary
common-sense to prove that twenty-five thousand men--or even half that
number--could not be found in the United States willing to enlist in
the regular army and submit for five years to the arbitrary will of
officers whom they did not know and with whom they had nothing in
common. The House voted to raise Giles’s army, but still took the
precaution of requiring that the officers of six regiments only should
be commissioned, until three fourths of the privates for these six
regiments should have been enlisted. Another amendment was proposed
giving the President discretion to raise only these six regiments, if
he thought circumstances rendered the larger force unnecessary; but
Grundy defeated this effort of caution by the argument that too much
power had formerly been given to the Executive, and therefore Congress
must insist on leaving him no discretion, but obliging him to take
twice the army and double the patronage he had asked or could use. More
than twenty Federalists supported Grundy, and gave him a majority of
sixty-six to fifty-seven. Calhoun came to Grundy’s assistance with a
more reasonable argument. Delay was becoming dangerous; the New Year
had arrived; the public began to doubt whether Congress meant to act;
he would vote to prevent delay.
At length, January 6, the bill passed the House by a vote of
ninety-four to thirty-four. Six or eight Federalists, including
Josiah Quincy, voted with the majority; six or eight Republicans,
including Macon, Randolph, and Stanford, voted with the minority. The
bill returned to the Senate, where the amendments were immediately
and almost unanimously struck out. The House, in no kind temper,
was obliged to discuss the subject once more. Even the most zealous
advocates of war were staggered at the thought that all the officers of
thirteen new regiments in the regular army must be at once appointed,
when no one felt confident that the ranks of these regiments could ever
be filled. The support given by the Federalists to every extravagant
measure increased the uneasiness of Republicans; and John Randolph’s
ridicule, founded as it was on truth, did not tend to calm it.
“After you have raised these twenty-five thousand men,” said
Randolph, “if I may reason on an impossibility,--for it has, I
think, been demonstrated that these men cannot be raised, it
will be an army on paper only,--shall we form a Committee of
Public Safety, or shall we depute the power to the Speaker--I
should not wish it in safer hands--to carry on the war? Shall
we declare that the Executive, not being capable of discerning
the public interest, or not having spirit to pursue it, we have
appointed a committee to take the President and Cabinet into
custody?... You have an agent to execute certain business; he
asks from you a certain amount for effecting the business on
hand; you give him double,--you force it upon him, you compel
him to waste it!”
Again the Federalists decided the result. Half of the Federalist
members voted with the extreme war Republicans. The House, by
sixty-seven votes to sixty, abandoned its amendments; the bill passed,
as Giles had framed it, and January 11 received the President’s
signature.