THE prosperity that followed the Peace of Ghent suffered no check
during the year 1816, or during the remainder of Madison’s term. The
exports of domestic produce, officially valued at $45,000,000 for the
year ending Sept. 30, 1815, were valued at nearly $65,000,000 for
the following year, and exceeded $68,000,000 for 1817. The Southern
States still supplied two thirds of the exported produce. Cotton to the
amount of $24,000,000, tobacco valued at nearly $13,000,000, and rice
at $3,500,000, contributed more than forty of the sixty-five millions
of domestic exports in 1816. The tables[138] showed that while South
Carolina, Georgia, and Louisiana gained with unparalleled rapidity, New
England lost ground, and New York only maintained its uniform movement.
While the domestic exports of Georgia and Louisiana trebled in value,
those of New York increased from eight to fourteen millions.
Notwithstanding the great importations from Europe which under ordinary
conditions would have counterbalanced the exports, the exchanges soon
turned in favor of the United States. Before the close of 1816 specie
in considerable quantities began to flow into the country. Canada,
being nearest, felt the drain first, and suffered much inconvenience
from it; but during the summer of 1816 and 1817 Europe also shipped
much specie to America. Every ship brought some amount, until the
export began to affect the Bank of England, which at last found its
bullion diminishing with alarming rapidity. The returns showed a
drain beginning in July or August, 1817, when the Bank of England
held £11,668,000, until August, 1819, when the supply was reduced to
£3,595,000; and in the interval a commercial crisis, with a general
destruction of credit, occurred. The reaction could not fail in the
end to affect America as it affected England, but the first result
was stimulating beyond all previous experience. In England the drain
of specie embarrassed government in returning to specie payments. In
the United States the influx of specie made the return easy, if not
necessary.
The recovery of internal exchanges kept pace with the influx of specie.
At Boston, July 27, 1816, United States six-per-cent bonds were quoted
at eighty-five, and Treasury notes at ninety-four to ninety-four and
one-half; at New York six-per-cents stood at ninety, and Treasury
notes at par; in Philadelphia six-per-cents were worth ninety-eight,
and Treasury notes one hundred and seven; in Baltimore six-per-cents
were selling at one hundred and two, and Treasury notes at one hundred
and twelve. During the next five months the recovery was steady
and rapid. The banks of New York, September 26, began to cash their
one-dollar notes, thus relieving the community from the annoyance of
fractional currency. October 26 the six-per-cents stood at ninety-two
in Boston, at ninety-three and one-half in New York, at ninety-eight
in Philadelphia, and at one hundred and one and one-half in Baltimore.
November 28 they sold at ninety-six in Boston; November 30 they sold
at ninety-six and one-quarter in New York, at one hundred and one and
one-half in Philadelphia, and at one hundred and five in Baltimore.
January 1, 1817, the Treasury resumed payments at Boston in Boston
money, and no further discredit attached to government securities.
The banks of the Middle States were less disposed than the government
to hasten the return of specie payments. In order to do so, they were
obliged to contract their circulation and discounts to an extent that
would have been unendurable in any time but one of great prosperity;
and only the threats of Dallas overcame their reluctance, even under
most favorable conditions. Both Dallas and the President were irritated
by their slowness.[139] July 22, 1816, the Secretary of the Treasury
issued a circular warning them that, at whatever cost, the Treasury
must carry into effect the order of Congress to collect the revenue,
after Feb. 20, 1817, only in specie or its equivalent. “The banks in
the States to the South,” he said,[140] “and to the west of Maryland,
are ready and willing, it is believed, to co-operate in the same
measure. The objection, or the obstacle to the measure, principally
rests with the banks of the Middle States.” Dallas invited them to
assist the Treasury in resuming specie payments with the least possible
delay; and accordingly the banks of the Middle States held a convention
at Philadelphia, August 6, to consider their course.
This convention, on discussing the possibility of resumption, agreed
that the banks needed more time than the government was disposed to
allow. Credit had been necessarily expanded by the unusual scale of
commerce and enterprise. So sudden and violent a contraction as was
required for specie payments could not fail to distress the public, and
might cause great suffering. Yet in some degree the new United States
Bank could relieve this pressure; and therefore the resumption should
not be attempted by the State banks until the National Bank should be
fairly opened and ready to begin its discounts. The State banks in
convention foresaw, or imagined, that the United States Bank could
not begin operations so early as Feb. 20, 1817, and they declined to
risk resumption without its aid. Acting on this impression, they met
Dallas’s urgency by a formal recommendation that their banks should
begin to pay specie, not on the 20th of February, but on the first
Monday of July, 1817.
This decision, though unsatisfactory to Dallas and the President, could
not be considered unreasonable. Credit was expanded beyond the limit of
safety, and the government was largely responsible for the expansion.
Many of the State banks were probably unsound from the first, and
needed careful management. Between 1810 and 1830, on a total capital of
one hundred and forty millions, the bank failures amounted to thirty
millions, or more than one fifth of the whole.[141] In Pennsylvania the
country banks reduced their issues from $4,756,000 in November, 1816,
to $1,318,000 in November, 1819. The latter moment was one of extreme
depression, but the former was probably not that of the greatest
expansion. When the banks of the Middle States held their convention,
Aug. 6, 1816, contraction had already begun, and steadily continued,
while specie flowed into the country to supply a foundation for bank
paper. Under such circumstances the banks asked no extravagant favor in
recommending that eleven months, instead of seven, should be allowed
for resumption.
Dallas was not disposed to concede this favor. Having at last the
necessary machinery for controlling the State banks, he used it with
the same vigor that marked all his acts. No sooner had the convention
announced its unwillingness to co-operate with the Treasury in
executing the order of Congress, than Dallas issued instructions,
August 16,[142] hastening the preparations for opening the National
Bank as early as Jan. 1, 1817. Soon afterward, September 12, he renewed
his notice that the notes of suspended banks would be rejected by the
Treasury after Feb. 20, 1817.
The Bank subscription was filled in August, a deficit of three million
dollars being taken by Stephen Girard in a single mass.[143] In October
the board of directors was chosen by the shareholders, and in November
the directors met and elected as President the former Secretary of the
Navy, William Jones. One of their first acts was much debated, and was
strongly opposed in the board of directors by J. J. Astor. They sent
John Sergeant, of Philadelphia, abroad with authority to purchase some
millions of bullion; and his mission was calculated to impress on the
public the conviction that specie payments were to be resumed as soon
as the Bank could open its doors.
Hurried by Dallas, the Bank actually began its operations in January,
1817, and under the double pressure from the Treasury the State banks
had no choice but to yield. Another meeting was held at Philadelphia,
February 1, consisting of delegates from the banks of New York,
Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Richmond. The convention entered into
a compact with the Secretary of the Treasury to resume payments, on
certain conditions, at the day fixed by Congress. The compact was
carried into effect February 20, a few days before the close of
Madison’s Presidency. Its success was magical. In New York, at ten
o’clock on the morning of February 20, specie was at two and one half
per cent premium. The banks opened their doors, and in half an hour all
was once more regular and normal.
Thus the worst financial evil of the war was removed within two
years after the proclamation of peace. A debt of about one hundred
and thirty millions remained; but the people which only twenty years
before had shrunk with fear and disgust from a debt of eighty millions,
gave scarcely a thought in 1816 to their funded obligations. The
difference between the two periods was not so much economical as
political. Population and wealth had increased, but the experience of
the people had advanced more rapidly than their numbers or capital.
In measuring the political movement shrewd judges might easily err,
for the elections of 1816 showed little apparent change in parties;
but in truth parties had outgrown their principles, and in politics,
as in finance, the close of Madison’s Administration obliterated old
distinctions.
Neither party admitted the abandonment of its dogmas. The New York
election in the spring of 1816 showed no considerable change in votes.
In 1810 Governor Tompkins was elected by ten thousand majority; even
in the dark days of 1813 he had a majority of thirty-six hundred;
in 1816, notwithstanding his popularity and the success of his
war administration, his majority was less than seven thousand. In
Massachusetts John Brooks, who succeeded Governor Strong as candidate
of the Federalist party, received forty-nine thousand five hundred
votes, while Samuel Dexter received forty-seven thousand four hundred.
Six years before, in 1810, the Republican candidate, Elbridge Gerry,
had received more than forty-six thousand five hundred, and Governor
Strong had polled only forty-four thousand. Apparently the Republicans
had lost ground in Massachusetts since 1810. In Connecticut, where the
election turned on church issues, the result was somewhat different.
The Anglican church, a small body but rich and influential, strongly
Federalist in politics and conservative in character, joined the
Democrats to overthrow the reign of the Congregational clergy. Oliver
Wolcott, a Federalist who supported the war, was their candidate; and
the combination nearly carried the State. Wolcott received about ten
thousand two hundred votes; his Federalist opponent was elected by
eleven thousand three hundred and seventy votes. The Federalists also
carried Rhode Island, once a strongly Democratic State, and seemed
socially as well as politically to be little affected by their many
mistakes and misfortunes.
Yet every one felt that real distinctions of party no longer
existed. The Anglicans of Connecticut, the Unitarians of Boston,
the Universalists and Baptists, looked chiefly to the overthrow of
the established New England church; and the Democrats of New York,
like the Republicans of Virginia and North Carolina, labored for a
system of internal improvements and for increased energy in national
government. Parties, no longer held together by discipline, were liable
at any moment to fall into confusion; and, as frequently happened in
such stages of public opinion, they were extraordinarily affected by
influences seemingly trivial. In 1816 the relaxation of party spirit
resulted in a phenomenon never before witnessed. The whole community
rose against its own representatives, and showed evident pleasure in
condemning them. The occasion for this outbreak of popular temper was
the Compensation Bill; but the instinct that could alone account for
the public pleasure in punishing public men, could not be explained by
a cause so trifling as that Act.
At the next session of Congress, Calhoun, lapsing in the middle of
a speech into his usual meditative speculation, remarked, as though
he were perplexed to account for his own theory, that in his belief
the House of Representatives was not a favorite with the American
people.[144] Had he expressed the opinion that freedom of thought or
speech was not a favorite with the American people, he would have said
nothing more surprising. If the House was not a favorite, what part of
the government was popular, and what could be hoped for representative
government itself? Of all the machinery created by the Constitution,
the House alone directly reflected and represented the people; and if
the people disliked it, they disliked themselves.
The people best knew whether Calhoun was right. Certainly the House,
owing in part to its size, its frequent elections and changes, its lack
of responsibility and of social unity, was the least steady and least
efficient branch of government. Readers who have followed the history
here closed, have been surprised at the frequency with which the word
_imbecility_ has risen in their minds in reading the proceedings
of the House. So strong was the same impression at the time, that
in the year 1814, at the close of the war, every earnest patriot
in the Union, and many men who were neither earnest nor patriotic,
were actively reproaching the House for its final failure, at an
apparent crisis of the national existence, to call out or organize
any considerable part of the national energies. The people in truth,
however jealous of power, would have liked in imagination, though they
would not bear in practice, to be represented by something nobler,
wiser, and purer than their own average honor, wisdom, and purity. They
could not make an ideal of weakness, ignorance, or vice, even their
own; and as they required in their religion the idea of an infinitely
wise and powerful deity, they revolted in their politics from whatever
struck them as sordid or selfish. The House reflected their own
weaknesses; and the Compensation Act seemed to them an expression
of their own least agreeable traits. They rebelled against a petty
appropriation of money, after enduring for years a constant succession
of worse offences.
“Who would have believed,” asked John Randolph,[145] six months
afterward,--“who would have believed,” he repeated, “that the
people of the United States would have borne all the privations
and losses of the late war, and of the measures that led to
it; that they would have quietly regarded a national debt,
swelled to an amount unknown,--to an amount greater than the
whole expense of our seven years’ war; that they would have
seen the election of President taken out of their hands [by the
caucus]; that they would have borne with abuse and peculation
through every department of the government,--and that the great
Leviathan, which slept under all these grievances, should be
roused into action by the Fifteen-Hundred-Dollar Law?”
Only with difficulty could members persuade themselves that the public
anger was real. They could not at first conceive that the people should
be seriously angry because Congress had thought proper to pay its
members a sum not in itself extravagant or adequate to their services.
Not until the members returned to their homes did they appreciate the
force of public feeling; but they soon felt themselves helpless to
resist it. Richard M. Johnson and Henry Clay, the two most popular
men in Kentucky, found their entire constituency attacking them.
“When I went home,” said Clay,[146] “I do not recollect to have met
with one solitary individual of any description of party who was not
opposed to the Act,--who did not, on some ground or other, think it an
improper and unjust law.” Benjamin Hardin,[147] another of the Kentucky
victims, said: “If a man came into the county court to be appointed
a constable or surveyor of the road, he entered his solemn protest
against the Compensation Law. If a petty demagogue wanted to get into
the legislature, he must post up, or put in the newspapers, his protest
against it.”
“There was at first a violent excitement,” said Philip P.
Barbour of Virginia;[148] “gentlemen might call it, if they
pleased, a storm. But that storm, even when its fury abated,
subsided into a fixed and settled discontent at the measure; it
met the disapprobation and excited the discontent of the grave,
the reflecting, and the deliberate; and such he believed to be
the case with an immense majority of the American people.”
Grand juries denounced it in Vermont and Georgia; the State legislature
denounced it in Massachusetts; town-meetings protested against it;
county conventions sat upon it; all classes and parties united in
condemning it, and the brunt of this sweeping popular reproval fell
upon the House of Representatives. Close as the House stood to the
people, its want of popularity was evident,--as Calhoun, with his
usual insight, bore witness. The House had as a body few friends and
no protection against popular tempests. The first to suffer, it was
always the last to escape. One after another the weaker members gave
way, and either declined re-election or were not re-elected. The chiefs
succeeded for the most part by personal popularity in maintaining their
hold on their districts, although several leading members lost their
seats.
Even against so feeble and factious a body as the Thirteenth
Congress, such condemnation would have seemed exceptional; but the
peculiarity that made this popular reproof singular and suggestive
was the popular admission that the Fourteenth Congress, for ability,
energy, and usefulness, never had a superior, and perhaps, since the
First Congress, never an equal. Such abilities were uncommon in any
legislative body, American or European. Since Federalist times no
Congress had felt such a sense of its own strength, and such pride in
its own superiority; none had filled so fully the popular ideal of what
the people’s representatives should be. That this remarkable body of
men should have incurred almost instantly the severest popular rebuke
ever visited on a House of Representatives, could not have been mere
accident.
The politics of 1816 seemed absorbed in the Compensation Act, and in
the union of parties to condemn their representatives. The Senate
escaped serious censure; and President Madison, so far from being
called to account for errors real or imaginary, seemed to enjoy
popularity never before granted to any President at the expiration of
his term. The apparent contentment was certainly not due to want of
grievances. The internal taxes pressed hard on the people, especially
in New England, where the suffering was general and in some places
severe; but no popular cry for reduction of taxes disturbed the
elections. No portion of the country seemed displeased that a fourth
Virginian should be made President by the intrigues of a Congressional
caucus. The State legislatures for the most part chose as usual the
Presidential electors; and in December the public learned, almost
without interest, that James Monroe had received one hundred and
eighty-three electoral votes, representing sixteen States, while
Rufus King had received thirty-four electoral votes, representing
Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Delaware. Daniel D. Tompkins of New
York was made Vice-President by the same process. Nothing in the
elections, either for President or for Congress, showed that the people
were disposed to scrutinize sharply the workings of any part of their
government except the House of Representatives.
As the winter approached when Madison was to meet Congress for the last
time, the sixteen years of his official service, which had been filled
with excitement and violence, were ending in political stagnation.
Party divisions had so nearly disappeared that nothing prevented the
President elect from selecting as the head of his Cabinet the son of
the last Federalist President, who had been the object of more violent
attack from the Republican party than had been directed against any
other Federalist. Old Republicans, like Macon and John Randolph, were
at loss to know whether James Monroe or J. Q. Adams had departed
farthest from their original starting-points. At times they charged
one, at times the other, with desertion of principle; but on the
whole their acts tended to betray a conviction that J. Q. Adams was
still a Federalist in essentials, while Monroe had ceased to be an
old Republican. In the political situation of 1817, if Jefferson and
his contemporaries were right in their estimates, Federalist views of
government were tending to prevail over the views of the Jeffersonian
party.
With this tendency, the national prosperity and the state of the
Treasury had much to do. Dallas carried out his purpose, and in October
quitted the Treasury. In retiring, he left with the President a sketch
of the condition of the finances such as no previous secretary had been
so fortunate as to present. For the year ending Sept. 30, 1816, the
receipts amounted to $47,670,000.[149] From the customs, which Dallas
had estimated at $21,000,000, duties to the amount of $36,000,000 were
received. A surplus of more than $20,000,000 was likely to accumulate
in the Treasury before the close of the year.
Old ideas of economy and strict restraints on expenditure could not
long maintain themselves in the presence of such an income; but besides
the temptation to expand the sphere of government in expenditures,
other influences were at work to establish Federalist principles in the
system itself. Dallas remained in office chiefly in order to organize
the Bank, and to render certain the resumption of specie payments. When
he retired, in October, 1816, both objects were practically attained.
His administration of the Treasury had then lasted two years. He found
the government bankrupt; he left it with a surplus of twenty millions
for the year. His measures not only relieved the country from financial
disorders equalled only by those of the Revolutionary War, but also
fixed the financial system in a firm groove for twenty years. He
failed only in his attempt to obtain from Congress a larger degree of
protection for domestic industries. Had his scheme of protection been
adopted, possibly the violence of subsequent changes in revenue and
legislation might have been moderated, and certainly the result could
have been no more mischievous than it was.
Dallas retired to private life by his own wish, and the public three
months afterward heard with surprise and regret the news of his
sudden death. Like most of the men who rendered decisive services
during the war, he received no public reward commensurate with his
deserts. He fared better than Armstrong, who created the army; but
even Gallatin, who shaped the diplomatic result, was content to retire
into the comparative obscurity of the mission to Paris; while Perry
and Macdonough, whose personal qualities had decided the fortunes of
two campaigns and won the military basis on which peace could be
negotiated, received no more reward than fell to the lot of third-rate
men. In the case of Dallas and Gallatin, the apparent neglect was
their own choice. Gallatin might have returned to the Treasury, but
declined it; and the President transferred W. H. Crawford from the War
Department to the charge of the finances, while Clay was offered the
War Department in succession to Crawford.
These arrangements affected Madison but little. He had no longer
an object to gain from the disposal of patronage, and he sought to
smooth the path of his successor rather than to benefit himself.
Few Presidents ever quitted office under circumstances so agreeable
as those which surrounded Madison. During the last two years of his
Administration almost every month brought some difficulty to an end, or
accomplished some long-desired result. The restoration of the finances
was perhaps his greatest source of satisfaction; but the steadiness
with which the whole country, except New England, recovered prosperity
and contentment afforded him a wider and more constant pleasure. The
ravages of war left few traces. Even at Washington the new public
buildings were pressed forward so rapidly that the effects of fire
were no longer seen. The Capitol began to rise from its ruins. The new
halls of Congress promised to do honor to Madison’s judgment. Benjamin
Latrobe was the architect in charge; and his Representative Chamber,
without reproducing that which Jefferson had helped to design, was
dignified and worthy of its object. The old sandstone columns were
replaced by another material. On the shore of the Potomac, near
Leesburg, Latrobe noticed a conglomerate rock, containing rounded
pebbles of various sizes and colors, and capable of being worked in
large masses. His love of novelty led him to employ this conglomerate
as an ornamental stone for the columns of the Hall of Representatives;
and the effect was not without elegance.
Several years were still to pass before Congress occupied its permanent
quarters, and Madison did not return to the White House; but the traces
of national disaster disappeared in the process of reconstruction
before he quitted the Presidency.
Surrounded by these pleasant conditions, Madison saw Congress assemble
for the last time to listen to his requests. The Message which he sent
to the legislature December 3 showed the extinction of party issues,
and suggested no action that seemed likely to revive party disputes
in any new form. The President expressed regret at the depression
in shipping and manufactures, the branches of industry unfavorably
affected by the peace. He suggested that Congress should consider
especially the need of laws counteracting the exclusive navigation
system of Great Britain. He recommended once more the time-worn
subjects of the Militia and a National University. He asked for
legislation against the Slave Trade, and urged a re-modification of the
Judiciary. He requested Congress to create a new Executive department
for Home or Interior Affairs, and to place the Attorney-General’s
office on the footing of a department. He gave a flattering account of
the finances; and his Message closed with a panegyric on the people and
their government, for seeking “by appeals to reason, and by its liberal
examples, to infuse into the law which governs the civilized world a
spirit which may diminish the frequency or circumscribe the calamities
of war, and meliorate the social and beneficent relations of peace: a
government, in a word, whose conduct, within and without, may bespeak
the most noble of all ambitions,--that of promoting peace on earth and
good-will to man.”
For the moment, Congressmen were too much interested in their own
quarrel to sympathize strongly with panegyrics on the people or their
government. The members of the House returned to Washington mortified,
angry, and defiant, disgusted alike with the public and with the public
service. No sooner were the standing committees announced, December 4,
than Richard M. Johnson moved for a special committee on the repeal
of the Compensation Law, and supported his motion in an unusually
elaborate speech, filled with argument, complaint, and irritation.
The committee was appointed,--Johnson at its head; William Findley of
Pennsylvania, second; Daniel Webster, third, with four other members.
After twelve days’ consideration, December 18, the committee presented
a report, written by Webster, defending the Act, but recommending a
return to the _per diem_ system, in deference to the popular wish.
The scale of the new allowance was left for Congress to determine.
Until this personal quarrel was discussed, no other business received
attention. The debate--postponed till Jan. 14, 1817, to save the
dignity of the House--lasted, to the exclusion of other business, until
January 23. As an exhibition of personal and corporate character,
it was entertaining; but it contained little of permanent interest
or value. Calhoun, always above his subject, spoke with much force
against yielding to popular outcry. “This House,” he said, “is the
foundation of the fabric of our liberty. So happy is its constitution,
that in all instances of a general nature its duty and its interests
are inseparable. If he understood correctly the structure of our
government, the prevailing principle is not so much a balance of power,
as a well-connected chain of responsibility. That responsibility
commenced here, and this House is the centre of its operation.”
The idea that the people had “resolved the government into its
original elements, and resumed to themselves their primitive power
of legislation,” was inconsistent with the idea that responsibility
commenced and centred in the House. “Are we bound in all cases to do
what is popular?” asked Calhoun. Could the House shift responsibility
from itself to the people without destroying the foundation of the
entire fabric?
Like most of Calhoun’s speculations, this question could receive its
answer only in some distant future. The Compensation Law lowered
permanently the self-respect of the House, which had already declined
from the formation of the government. “Of that House,” said Richard
Henry Wilde of Georgia,[150] “he feared it might be said in the
words of Claudian: ‘A fronte recedant imperii.’ Yes, sir, they were
receding,--they had receded from the front of empire. That House,
formerly the favorite of the American nation, the first and most
important branch of the government, the immediate image of the people,
had been losing, and continued to lose,--certainly by no fault of
theirs, but by the working of causes not for him to develop,--that rank
and power in the government originally belonging to them, and which
others at their expense had been secretly acquiring.” Yet the House,
while repealing the law, refused to admit itself in the wrong. The
law was repealed only so far as it applied to subsequent Congresses.
Leaving its successors to fix whatever compensation they thought proper
for their services, the Fourteenth Congress adhered to its own scale,
and took the money it was expected to refund.
Having disposed of this personal affair, the House turned to serious
business, and completed its remarkable career by enacting several
measures of far-reaching importance.
The first of these measures was a Navigation Act, approved March
1, 1817, imposing on foreign vessels the same restrictions and
prohibitions which were imposed by foreign nations on Americans. The
second resembled the first in its object, but related only to the
importation of plaster of Paris from Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.
These two Acts began a struggle against the foreign navigation systems,
which ended in their overthrow.
For the present the House postponed the establishment of an Interior
Department, and allowed the Attorney-General to remain without an
office or a clerk; but it passed an Act, approved March 3, 1817,
concentrating in the Treasury the accounting business of government,
and appointing four more auditors and one more comptroller for the
purpose.
The fourth and most important measure that became law was a Neutrality
Act, approved March 3, 1817, which authorized collectors of customs to
seize and detain “any vessel manifestly built for warlike purposes,
... when the number of men shipped on board, or other circumstances,
shall render it probable that such vessel is intended by the owner”
to cruise against the commerce of a friendly State. Nearly fifty
years were to pass before the people of the United States learned to
realize the full importance of this Act, which laid the foundation
for all the subsequent measures taken by the United States and Great
Britain for preserving neutrality in their relations with warring
countries.[151] The Neutrality Act of 1817 furnished the measure of
neutral obligations.
Besides these important laws, the Fourteenth Congress passed another
bill, which closed its own activity and that of President Madison. None
of the previous measures bore any direct relation to party politics,
either past or future; but the bill for internal improvements, which
Congress passed and the President vetoed, was an event of no small
meaning in party history.
Calhoun moved, December 16, “that a committee be appointed to inquire
into the expediency of setting apart ... a permanent fund for internal
improvement.” The committee was appointed the same day,--Calhoun,
Sheffey of Virginia, Creighton of Ohio, Grosvenor of New York, and
Ingham of Pennsylvania. December 23 Calhoun reported a bill[152]
setting aside the bonus paid by the Bank, $1,500,000, and the future
dividends from Bank stock, “as a fund for constructing roads and
canals.” February 4 he introduced his bill by a speech, showing that a
system of internal improvements was necessary, and could, in certain
instances, be created by the national government alone.
“Let it not be forgotten,” said Calhoun,[153] with the air of
sombre forecast which marked his mind and features, “let it be
forever kept in mind, that the extent of our republic exposes us
to the greatest of all calamities, next to the loss of liberty,
and even to that in its consequence,--_disunion_. We are
great, and rapidly--I was about to say fearfully--growing. This
is our pride and danger, our weakness and our strength. Little
does he deserve to be intrusted with the liberties of this
people, who does not raise his mind to these truths. We are
under the most imperious obligation to counteract every tendency
to disunion.... If ... we permit a low, sordid, selfish, and
sectional spirit to take possession of this House, this happy
scene will vanish. We will divide, and in its consequences will
follow misery and despotism.”
The Constitutional question Calhoun reserved for the future; he thought
it scarcely worth discussion, since the good sense of the States might
be relied on to prevent practical evils. Nevertheless he discussed
it, and drew sufficient authority from the “general welfare” clause,
and from the power to “establish” post-roads. Granting that the
Constitution was silent, he saw no restraint on Congress:--
“If we are restricted in the use of our money to the enumerated
powers, on what principle can the purchase of Louisiana be
justified?... If it cannot, then are we compelled either to deny
that we had the power to purchase, or to strain some of the
enumerated powers to prove our right.”
The debate was interesting. Timothy Pickering, with the accumulated
experience of seventy years, suggested that the right to regulate
commerce among the several States, as in the case of light-houses and
beacons, covered the proposed appropriation. Clay supported the bill
with his usual energy, avowing that among his strongest motives was the
wish to add this new distinction to the Fourteenth Congress, so harshly
judged by the people. The chief Constitutional argument against the
measure was made by Philip P. Barbour of Virginia; but other members
opposed it on different grounds, and chiefly because as long as the
internal taxes were still exacted, internal improvements should not be
undertaken.
If the final vote was a correct test, Constitutional objections had but
little weight with Congress. The bill passed the House, February 8, by
the small majority of eighty-six to eighty-four. Of the minority no
less than thirty-three were New England Federalists, whose opposition
was founded on local and sectional reasons. From the slave States about
forty-two votes were given against the bill; but a number of these were
Federalist, and others were influenced by peculiar reasons. Two thirds
of the Virginians voted against the bill; two thirds of the South
Carolinians voted in its favor. Probably not more than twenty-five
or thirty members, in the total number of one hundred and seventy,
regarded the Constitutional difficulty as fatal to the bill.
In the Senate the bill passed by a vote of twenty to fifteen. Of the
minority nine represented New England, and six represented Southern
States. Every senator from the Middle States, as well as both senators
from Virginia, supported the bill. Both senators from Massachusetts,
the Republican Varnum and the Federalist Ashmun, opposed it; while
Jeremiah Mason of New Hampshire and Rufus King of New York voted in
its favor. The confusion of parties was extreme; but the State-rights
school of old Republicans seemed to command not more than five or six
votes in thirty-five.
The divisions on this bill seemed to leave no question that Congress by
an overwhelming majority regarded the Constitutional point as settled.
No one doubted that the Judiciary held the same opinion. The friends
of the bill had reason to feel secure in regard to the Constitutional
issue if on nothing else, and were the more disappointed when, March 3,
President Madison exercised for the last time his official authority by
returning the bill with a veto founded on Constitutional objections.
“The power to regulate commerce among the several States,” he
said, “cannot include a power to construct roads and canals,
and to improve the navigation of water-courses in order to
facilitate, improve, and secure such a commerce, without a
latitude of construction departing from the ordinary import
of the terms, strengthened by the known inconveniences which
doubtless led to the grant of this remedial power to Congress.
To refer the power in question to the clause ‘to provide for the
common defence and general welfare’ would be contrary to the
established and consistent rules of interpretation, as rendering
the special and careful enumeration of powers which follow the
clause nugatory and improper. Such a view of the Constitution
would have the effect of giving to Congress a general power of
legislation.”
Every one who looked at the Constitution as an instrument or machine
to be employed for the first time, must have admitted that Madison was
right. Interpreted by no other aid than its own terms and the probable
intent of a majority of the Convention which framed and the States
which adopted it, the Constitution contained, and perhaps had been
intended to contain, no power over internal improvements. The wide
difference of opinion which so suddenly appeared between the President
and Congress could not have been the result so much of different views
of the Constitution, as of conclusions reached since the Constitution
was framed. Congress held the bill to be Constitutional, not because
it agreed with the strict interpretation of the text, but because it
agreed with the interpretation which for sixteen years the Republican
party, through Congress and Executive, had imposed upon the text.
On that point Calhoun’s argument left no doubt; and his question--the
last of his speculations pregnant with future history--echoed
unanswered: “On what principle can the purchase of Louisiana be
justified?” Dismissing all other violations or violence offered to the
Constitution by President Madison or his predecessors,--such as the
Bank, the Embargo, the Enforcement laws, the laws for the government
of Orleans Territory, the seizure of West Florida,--Calhoun’s question
went to the heart of the issue between President and Congress.
From the Virginia side only one answer was possible. In returning
to their early views of resistance to centralization, Madison
and Jefferson must have maintained the invalidity of precedents
to affect the Constitution. The veto seemed to create a new
classification of public acts into such as were Constitutional;
such as were unconstitutional, but still valid; and such as were
both unconstitutional and invalid. The admitted validity of an act,
like the purchase of Louisiana, even though it were acknowledged to
be unconstitutional, did not create a precedent which authorized a
repetition of a similar act.
Viewed only from a political standpoint, the veto marked the first
decided reaction against the centralizing effect of the war.
Unfortunately for the old Republican party, whose principles were thus
for a second time to be adopted in appearance by a majority of the
people, sixteen years had affected national character; and although
precedents might not bind Congress or Executive, they marked the
movement of society.
The Veto Message of March 3, 1817, was Madison’s Farewell Address. The
next day he surrendered to Monroe the powers of government, and soon
afterward retired to Virginia, to pass, with his friend Jefferson, the
remaining years of a long life, watching the results of his labors.