BETWEEN 1801 and 1815, great changes in the American people struck the
most superficial observer. The Rights of Man occupied public thoughts
less, and the price of cotton more, in the later than in the earlier
time. Although in 1815 Europe was suffering under a violent reaction
against free government, Americans showed little interest and no alarm,
compared with their emotions of twenty years before. Napoleon resumed
his empire, and was overthrown at Waterloo, without causing the people
of the United States to express a sign of concern in his fate; and
France was occupied by foreign armies without rousing among Americans a
fear of England. Foreign affairs seemed reduced to the question whether
England would consent to negotiate a treaty of commerce.
After excluding most of the American demands, Lord Castlereagh
consented to a commercial convention abolishing discriminating duties,
and admitting American commerce with the East Indies. This treaty,
signed July 3, seemed to satisfy American demands, and the British
Ministry showed no wish to challenge new disputes. With France, the
disturbed condition of government permitted no diplomatic arrangement.
The only foreign country that required serious attention was Algiers;
and Decatur, with a strong squadron of the new American cruisers,
speedily compelled the Dey to sign a treaty more favorable to the
United States than he had yet signed with any other nation. Tunis and
Tripoli showed a similar disposition, and Decatur returned home in the
autumn, having settled to his satisfaction all the matters intrusted to
his care.
Under such circumstances, without an anxiety in regard to foreign or
domestic affairs, President Madison sent his Annual Message to Congress
December 5, 1815. It told a pleasant story of successful administration
and of rapidly growing income; but its chief historical interest
lay in the lines of future party politics that Madison more or less
unconsciously sketched. The Message proved, or seemed to prove, that
Madison’s views and wishes lay in the direction of strong government.
He advised “liberal provision” for defence; more military academies;
an improved and enlarged navy; effectual protection to manufactures;
new national roads and canals; a national university; and such an
organization of the militia as would place it promptly and effectually
under control of the national government. Madison seemed to take his
stand, beyond further possibility of change, on the system of President
Washington.
Dallas’s report echoed the tone of Alexander Hamilton. Very long,
chiefly historical, and interesting beyond the common, this Treasury
Report of 1815 recommended a scale of annual expenditure exceeding
twenty-seven millions, in place of the old scale of ten millions. The
expenditure was to be but a part of the system. A protective tariff of
customs duties was assumed to be intended by Congress, and a national
bank was urged as the only efficient means by which the government
could recover control over the currency.
Although the President was less emphatic than the secretary in holding
a national bank to be the only cure for the disorders of the currency,
he was prepared to go a step further by issuing government paper as a
national currency, and suggested that alternative in his Message. A
national bank or a national currency was an equally energetic exercise
of supreme central powers not expressly granted by the Constitution and
much disputed by theorists. Dallas’s objection to the national currency
did not relate to its inefficiency, but to the practical difficulty of
issuing paper and keeping it in issue. Either course of action implied
a recurrence to the principles of President Washington. The Executive
proposed to start afresh in 1816 from its point of departure in 1790.
The Fourteenth Congress was well disposed to support the attempt. Under
the stress of war the people had selected as their representatives the
ablest and most vigorous men of their generation. The war leaders were
mostly returned,--Calhoun, Clay, Lowndes, Richard M. Johnson, Peter
B. Porter, and John Forsyth,--while the old peace party was strongly
represented by Timothy Pickering, Daniel Webster, John Randolph,
Grosvenor of New York, and Stanford of North Carolina; but perhaps the
most distinguished member of all was William Pinkney of Maryland. A
swarm of younger men, far above the average, reinforced both sides of
the House. Philip P. Barbour sat again for Virginia. John McLean sat
again for Ohio. Henry St. George Tucker came for the first time into
the House. Joseph Hopkinson, Samuel D. Ingham, and John Sergeant raised
the character of the Pennsylvania delegation; and Samuel Smith, at
last ejected from the Senate by a Federalist legislature in Maryland,
reappeared in the House for the first time since 1803.
The Senate was also improved. The disappearance of Leib and Samuel
Smith was made more suggestive by the resignation of Giles. David Stone
of North Carolina, another independent much given to opposition at
critical moments, also resigned; and another of the same class, Joseph
Anderson of Tennessee, who had been a member of the Senate since 1797,
retired to become First Comptroller of the Treasury. These retirements
removed the chief abettors of faction, and changed the character of
the Senate until it seemed to belong to a different epoch. Jonathan
Roberts still sat in the place of Leib. Armistead Mason took the seat
of Giles, and with James Barbour gave Madison for the first time the
full support of Virginia. Macon took the place of David Stone. George
W. Campbell took the place of Joseph Anderson. Robert G. Harper, the
old champion of Federalism, succeeded Samuel Smith from Maryland. The
Senate scarcely recognized itself as the same body that since 1808 had
so persistently thwarted and fretted the President.
In the arrangement of new party divisions the Fourteenth Congress,
unlike its recent predecessors, consciously aimed to take a decided
share. The House seemed for the first time in many years to pride
itself on intellectual superiority. William Pinkney, Calhoun, Lowndes,
Clay, Daniel Webster, John Randolph, and their associates were not men
who bowed to authority, even of the people, but rather looked on the
task of government as a function of superior intellect. They proposed
to correct what they considered mistaken popular tendencies. Each
expressed his ideas with sufficient clearness in the form natural to
him. Calhoun generalized before descending to particulars.[120]
“In the policy of nations,” reasoned Calhoun, “there are two
extremes: one extreme, in which justice and moderation may sink
in feebleness; another, in which that lofty spirit which ought
to animate all nations, particularly free ones, may mount up to
military violence. These extremes ought to be equally avoided;
but of the two, I consider the first far the most dangerous....
I consider the extreme of weakness not only the most dangerous
of itself, but as that extreme to which the people of this
country are peculiarly liable.”
Clay, aiming at the same objects, dwelt chiefly on foreign dangers as
the motive of the strong government he wished to establish. “That man
must be blind to the indications of the future,” he declared,[121]
“who cannot see that we are destined to have war after war with
Great Britain, until, if one of the two nations be not crushed, all
grounds of collision shall have ceased between us.” He wished to
create a government that should control the destinies of both American
continents by a display of armed force. “He confessed with infinite
regret that he saw a supineness throughout the country which left him
almost without hope that what he believed the correct policy would
be pursued,” toward aiding the Spanish colonies against their mother
country. Both Calhoun and Clay admitted that they wished to govern in
a sense not approved by an apparent majority of the nation; and the
sympathies of the House were openly or secretly with them.
Of the contrary sentiment, John Randolph was the champion. Although
his early career had ended in the most conspicuous failure yet known
in American politics, he returned to the House, with intelligence
morbidly sharpened, to begin a second epoch of his life with powers and
materials that gave him the position of equal among men like Calhoun,
Pinkney, and Webster. Randolph held a decisive advantage in wishing
only to obstruct. He had no legislation to propose, and his political
philosophy suited that extreme “to which,” according to Calhoun, “the
people of this country are peculiarly liable.” Early in the session
Randolph showed that he understood even better than Calhoun and Clay
the division between himself and them. “If the warning voice of Patrick
Henry,” he said in the debate of January 31, 1816,[122] “had not
apprised me long ago, the events of this day would have taught me that
this Constitution does not comprise one people, but that there are two
distinct characters in the people of this nation.” In every growing
people two or more distinct characters were likely to rise, else the
people would not grow; but the primal character, which Randolph meant
to represent, enjoyed the political advantage of passive resistance to
impulse from every direction.
In reply to Calhoun, Randolph defined the issue with his usual skill of
words:[123]--
“As the gentleman from South Carolina has presented the question
to the House, they and the nation cannot have the slightest
difficulty in deciding whether they will give up the States or
not; whether they will, in fact, make this an elective monarchy.
The question is whether or not we are willing to become one
great consolidated nation; or whether we have still respect
enough for those old, respectable institutions to regard their
integrity and preservation as a part of our policy.”
Randolph’s eccentricities, which amounted to insanity, prevented him
from exercising in the House the influence to which his experience and
abilities entitled him, but did not prevent him from reflecting the
opinions of a large part of the nation, particularly in the South.
Between these two impulses the Fourteenth Congress was to choose a
path, subject to the future judgment of their constituents.
The Executive urged them on. Dallas began by sending to Calhoun, the
chairman of the Committee on Currency, a plan for a national bank with
a capital of thirty-five millions and power to increase it to fifty
millions; with twenty-five directors, five of whom were to be appointed
by the government to represent its share in the bank stock, of which
the government was to subscribe one fifth.[124]
In another report, dated Feb. 12, 1816, Dallas recommended a protective
tariff and sketched its details. Upon cotton fabrics he proposed a duty
of thirty-three and one half per cent on their value; on woollens,
twenty-eight per cent; on linen, hemp, and silk, twenty per cent; on
paper, leather, etc., thirty-five per cent; on earthenware, glassware,
etc., thirty per cent; on bar-iron, seventy-five cents per hundred
weight; on rolled iron, a dollar and a half; and on unenumerated
articles, fifteen per cent. These duties were avowedly protective,
intended to serve as the foundation of a system, and to perpetuate the
policy to which the Government stood pledged by its legislation for the
last six years. In connection with a proposed reduction of internal
taxes, the Bank and the Tariff covered the financial field.
The House first grappled with the subject of revenue. The Committee
of Ways and Means, through William Lowndes, reported, Jan. 9, 1816, a
scheme embodied in twelve Resolutions intended to serve as the guide
to definite legislation. Lowndes assumed a net annual revenue of
$25,369,000; and to obtain this sum he proposed to shift the burden of
about seven million dollars from internal taxation to the customs, by
an addition of forty-two per cent to the rates of permanent duty.[125]
The direct tax was to be retained to the amount of three million
dollars, and an annual fund of $13,500,000 was to be set aside for the
interest and principal of the national debt.
Hardly had the debate begun when Randolph, January 16, dragged
the question of a protective system into the prominence it was
thenceforward to maintain. Two years of repose had singularly improved
his skill in the choice of language and in the instigation of class
against class.
“The manufacturer,” said he,[126] “is the citizen of no place
or any place; the agriculturist has his property, his lands,
his all, his household Gods to defend,--and like that meek
drudge the ox, who does the labor and ploughs the ground, then
for his reward takes the refuse of the farm-yard, the blighted
blades and the mouldy straw, and the mildewed shocks of corn
for his support.... Alert, vigilant, enterprising, and active,
the manufacturing interest are collected in masses, and ready
to associate at a moment’s warning for any purpose of general
interest to their body. Do but ring the fire-bell, and you can
assemble all the manufacturing interest of Philadelphia in
fifteen minutes. Nay, for the matter of that they are always
assembled; they are always on the Rialto, and Shylock and
Antonio meet there every day as friends, and compare notes, and
possess in trick and intelligence what, in the goodness of God
to them, the others can never possess.”
Randolph’s political sagacity was nowhere better shown than in
replying, Jan. 31, 1816, to a speech of Calhoun: “On whom do your
impost duties bear?” he asked.[127] “Upon whom bears the duty on coarse
woollens and linens and blankets, upon salt, and all the necessaries of
life? On poor men, and on slaveholders.” With a perception abnormally
keen, Randolph fixed on the tariff and the slaveholders as the
necessary combination to oppose the nationalizing efforts of Calhoun
and Clay.
No leader of note supported Randolph. He stood alone, or with only the
support of Stanford, as far as concerned debate; but he led nearly
half the House. Upon Benjamin Hardin’s motion, February 3, to repeal
the direct tax immediately and altogether, a motion which struck at
the root of Dallas’s scheme, the House decided by eighty-one votes
against seventy-three to sustain the secretary. On the passage of the
bill to continue the direct tax of three million dollars for one year,
the minority lacked but a change of three votes to defeat it. The bill
passed, March 4, by a vote of sixty-seven to sixty-three.
On the tariff the House was more closely divided. The Committee of
Ways and Means consisted of seven members. Lowndes was chairman. Three
other members were from the South, one of whom, Robertson of Louisiana,
wished protection for sugar. Three members were from the North, one of
whom, Ingham of Pennsylvania, represented Dallas’s views. The chief
question concerned the duty on cottons and woollens. So close was
the division that Ingham, to use his own words, was struck dumb with
astonishment when the committee, after adopting a duty of fifty-six per
cent for the protection of sugar, voted to impose a duty of only twenty
per cent on cottons and woollens. “It was, however, too glaringly
inconsistent and palpably wrong to be persisted in, and therefore
it was that the Committee of Ways and Means, upon reconsideration,
substituted the twenty-five per cent which was reported in the
bill.”[128]
When the bill came before the House, Clay moved, March 21, to
substitute the rate of thirty-three and one third per cent for that of
twenty-five per cent on cottons, for the express purpose of testing the
sense of the House. Clay and the Northern protectionists held that the
committee’s bill did not afford protection enough. The committee, also
admitting the propriety of protection, maintained that twenty-five per
cent was sufficient. On both sides some temper was shown, and charges
of sectionalism were made. By a vote of sixty-eight to sixty-one, the
House in committee voted, March 22, to impose a duty of thirty per
cent. Daniel Webster then moved to limit this rate to two years, after
which the duty should be twenty-five per cent for two years more, when
it should be reduced to twenty per cent. Finally the House adopted a
duty of twenty-five per cent for three years. Webster also carried,
March 27, a motion to reduce the proposed duty on bar-iron from
seventy-five to forty-five cents a hundred weight.
All the members of note, except Randolph, professed to favor
protection. Calhoun was as decided as Ingham. “He believed the
policy of the country required protection to our manufacturing
establishments.”[129] The bill was assumed to offer protection enough,
and the House disputed only whether the adopted duties were or were not
sufficient. The actual free-trade sentiment was shown, April 8, when
Randolph made a final motion to postpone, and was beaten by a vote of
ninety-five to forty-seven.
The bill promptly passed the Senate, and was approved by the President
April 27; but the true issue was undecided. No one could deny that
if the duty of twenty-five per cent on cottons and woollens should
prove to be insufficient, the House was pledged to increase it. The
bill was avowedly protective. In regard to the coarser Indian cottons,
it was practically prohibitive, since it valued them all, for tariff
purposes, at twenty-five cents a yard,--a rate which on the cheaper
fabrics raised the duty above one hundred per cent. Yet when the tariff
of 1816 proved to be little protective, in after years it was commonly
represented as a revenue and not a protective tariff. In substance,
Randolph’s opinions controlled the House.
Dallas was more fortunate in regard to the Bank. Randolph’s hostility
to State banks was greater than to the Bank of the United States.
Calhoun reported, January 8, the bill to incorporate for twenty years
a new National Bank with a capital of thirty-five million dollars,
and supported it, February 26, by a speech showing that the Bank was
a proper means for attaining the Constitutional object of restoring
the money of the country to its true medium. Active opposition came
chiefly from the Federalists. Even Samuel Smith seemed to plead rather
that the State banks should be gently treated than that the National
Bank should be opposed. Randolph, while professing hostility to the new
Bank on any and every ground suggested by others, concluded by pledging
himself to support any adequate means for reducing the overpowering
influence of the State banks. Clay thought himself obliged to leave the
Speaker’s chair in order to recant in the most public manner his errors
of 1811. Forsyth, one of Calhoun’s ablest allies, went so far in his
support of the measure as to assert without reserve that the power to
suspend specie payments--a power expressly reserved to the government
by Calhoun’s bill--belonged undoubtedly to Congress, an opinion which
the House did not share. In the Republican ranks open opposition to
the Bank seemed almost silenced; and the member who made himself most
conspicuous in hostility to the bill was Daniel Webster,--the last of
all in whom such a course was natural.
Webster’s criticism on Calhoun’s Constitutional argument was made in
his loftiest manner. The currency, he said, needed no reform, for it
was, by the Constitution and the law, gold and silver; nor had Congress
the right to make any other medium current. The true remedy was for
Congress to interdict the bills of the suspended banks.[130] Had he
been content to rest his opposition on that ground alone, Webster could
not have been answered, although he might have been regarded as an
impracticable politician; but as the bill came toward its passage, and
as several Federalists declared in its favor, he pressed his hostility
so far, and with so much dogmatism, that several of his own party
revolted, and Grosvenor of New York replied sharply that he did not
propose to be drilled to vote on whatever any one might choose to call
a principle.
In spite of determined opposition from Webster, Pitkin, John Sergeant,
and other Federalists, the House passed the bill, March 14, by a vote
of eighty to seventy-one. The majority was small, but of the minority
not less than thirty-eight were Federalists; and, omitting Randolph
and Stanford, only thirty-one Republicans voted against the bill. The
House contained one hundred and seventeen Republicans. In the Senate
the opposition was almost wholly confined to Federalists, and the bill
passed by a majority much larger than that in the House. Twenty-two
senators voted in its favor; only twelve voted against it, and of the
twelve only four were Republicans. The President approved it April 10;
and thus, after five years of financial disorder, the Republican party
reverted to the system of Washington, and resumed powers it had found
indispensable to government.
The Federalists of New England were in a situation too alarming to
bear even the little delay required to organize the Bank. For them a
general return to specie payments was the only escape from imminent
ruin; and acting on this conviction, Webster moved, April 26, a joint
Resolution ordering that all taxes should be collected after Feb. 1,
1817, in some medium equivalent to specie, thus allowing but nine
months for the work of resumption. The same day the House passed the
Resolution by the decisive majority of seventy-one to thirty-four. The
Senate substituted February 20 as the day of resumption, and passed the
Resolution April 29, which was approved by the President the next day.
In contrast with the imbecility of many previous Congresses, the vigor
of the Fourteenth Congress in thus settling the new scale of government
was remarkable; but other measures of importance were not wanting. An
Act approved April 29 appropriated one million dollars annually for
three years to build ships of war; an Act approved April 19 authorized
the people of Indiana to form a State government. A bill, which passed
the House but was postponed by the Senate and became law at the next
session, provided for the admission of Mississippi. In still another
direction the House showed its self-confidence in a manner that caused
unusual popular excitement. It undertook to increase the pay of its own
members and of senators.
The scale of salary for public officials was low. The President,
relatively highly paid, received twenty-five thousand dollars. The
Secretaries of State and Treasury received five thousand; those of
War and Navy, four thousand; the Attorney-General, three thousand;
Chief-Justice Marshall was paid four thousand, and the six associate
justices received thirty-five hundred dollars each.
While the Executive and Judiciary were paid regular salaries, Congress
stood on a different footing. Legislators had never been paid what
was considered an equivalent for their time and services. They were
supposed to be unpaid; but such a rule excluded poor men from the
public service, and therefore the colonial legislatures adopted a
practice, which Congress continued, of allowing what were supposed
to be the reasonable expenses of members. The First Congress fixed
upon six dollars a day, and six dollars for every twenty miles of
estimated journey, as a suitable scale of expense both for senators
and representatives;[131] and the same rate had been continued
for twenty-five years. No one supposed it sufficient to support a
household, but poor men could live upon it. Desha of Kentucky averred
that it was a fair allowance for the average representative. According
to him, board was twelve or thirteen dollars a week, and the total cost
of a session of one hundred and fifty days amounted to five hundred
and seventy or eighty dollars; so that the western and southwestern
members, with whose habits he was familiar, carried home, with their
mileage, about four hundred and fifty dollars in savings.[132]
In the pride of conscious superiority the Fourteenth Congress undertook
to change the system; and Richard M. Johnson, probably the most popular
member of the House, assumed the risk of popular displeasure. In moving
for a committee, March 4, Johnson repudiated the idea of increasing
the pay; and his committee, including Webster, Pitkin, Jackson, the
President’s brother-in-law, Grosvenor, and McLean of Ohio, reported
through him that fifteen hundred dollars a year was the correct
equivalent of six dollars a day.
The bill known as the Compensation Bill was reported March 6, and
was debated for two days with some animation. Among its supporters
John Randolph was prominent, and gave offence to the opponents of the
measure by his usual tactics. Most of the friends of the bill stoutly
insisted that it did not increase the pay; most of its opponents
averred that it more than doubled the amount. Calhoun admitted the
increase of pay, and favored it, in order to retain “young men of
genius without property” in the public service. The bill was hurried
through the House.
“The Compensation Bill,” said Forsyth at the next session,[133]
“was the only one of any interest pushed through the Committee
of the whole House and ordered to a third reading in a single
day. All motions to amend were rejected; for the committee to
rise and report progress and ask leave to sit again, met with
a similar fate.... The House refused repeated propositions to
adjourn, and continued its sittings until the bill was ordered
to be engrossed.”
No time was lost. Johnson moved for a committee March 4; the committee
reported the bill March 6; the House in committee took it up March 7,
and reported it the same day. The House passed it March 8, by a vote
of eighty-one to sixty-seven. In the Senate the bill was read for a
second time March 12. In the course of the debate one of the New Jersey
senators, commenting on the haste shown by the House to pass the bill,
added that also “in the Senate postponement, commitment, and amendment
are all refused, and it is to be pushed through by main strength with a
haste altogether unusual.” The Senate passed it March 14, by a vote of
twenty-one to eleven; and it received the President’s signature March
19, barely a fortnight after Johnson’s request for a committee.
At the time when the bill was still under consideration by the
President, and the House had just passed the Bank Act, the Republican
members of both Houses met to nominate a candidate to succeed Madison
as President. Three candidates were in the field,--Daniel D. Tompkins,
William H. Crawford, and James Monroe.
The choice was a matter of small consequence, for any candidate of the
Republican party was sure of almost unanimous election, and all were
respectable men; but Tompkins could expect little support at a time
when Congress selected the candidate, for only men well known in the
national service were likely to satisfy the standard of Congressmen.
The true contest lay between Crawford and Monroe, and was complicated,
as far as the candidates themselves understood it, by personal
intrigues on both sides. Perhaps Crawford’s strength was the greater,
for four fifths of the New York members favored him rather than
the Virginian.[134] In cases where no strong feeling fixed results,
dexterity in management might overcome a preference between persons;
and by some means never explained, the preference of the New York
members for Crawford was overcome. One of these members--a competent
observer--believed that Martin Van Buren and Peter B. Porter, for
reasons of their own, prevented New York from declaring for Crawford
when such a declaration would have decided the result.[135] Crawford
himself at the last professed to withdraw from the contest,[136] and
several of his warm friends did not attend the caucus. On the evening
of March 15, one hundred and nineteen senators and representatives
appeared in the hall of the House of Representatives in obedience to an
anonymous notice addressed to one hundred and forty-three Republican
members. Sixty-five, or less than half the Republican representation,
voted for Monroe; fifty-four voted for Crawford; and eighty-five then
united in nominating Governor Tompkins as Vice-President.
Monroe’s character was well known, and his elevation to the Presidency
was a result neither of great popularity nor of exceptional force,
but was rather due to the sudden peace which left him the residuum of
Madison’s many Cabinets. A long list of resignations alone remained
to recall the memory of his associates. Robert Smith, Cæsar Rodney,
William Eustis, Paul Hamilton, Gallatin, G. W. Campbell, William Jones,
William Pinkney, and John Armstrong had all resigned in succession,
leaving Monroe and Dallas in possession of the government when peace
was declared. Dallas was not a popular character, whatever were his
abilities or services; and no other man occupied high ground. Under
such circumstances the strength shown by Crawford was surprising, and
proved that Monroe, notwithstanding his advantages, was regarded with
no exclusive favor.
In truth Monroe had no party. His original friends were the old
Republicans,--John Taylor of Caroline, Littleton Tazewell, John
Randolph, and their associates, from whom he had drawn apart. His new
friends were chiefly northern Democrats, whose motives for preferring
him to Crawford were selfish. In any case an epoch of personal politics
could be foreseen, for men like Crawford, Calhoun, and Clay never
submitted long to a superior; and for such an epoch Monroe was probably
the best choice.
Shortly after the nomination Dallas gave notice to the President that
he meant to retire from the Treasury in order to resume his practice
at the bar.[137] Madison immediately wrote to Gallatin, April 12,
inviting him to resume charge of the Treasury; but Gallatin was weary
of domestic politics, and preferred diplomacy. He went as minister to
France, while Dallas remained at the Treasury until October, to set the
new Bank in motion.
These arrangements closed the first session of the Fourteenth Congress,
which adjourned April 30, leaving Madison in unaccustomed peace,
harassed by no more enemies or dissensions, to wait the close of his
public life.