Three days after Jefferson gave his consent to the repeal of the
embargo, the Presidency passed in succession to the second of the
Virginia Dynasty. It was not an impressive figure that stood beside
Jefferson and faced the great crowd gathered in the new Hall of
Representatives at the Capitol. James Madison was a pale, extremely
nervous, and obviously unhappy person on this occasion. For a masterful
character this would have been the day of days; for Madison it was a
fearful ordeal which sapped every ounce of energy. He trembled violently
as he began to speak and his voice was almost inaudible. Those who could
not hear him but who afterward read the Inaugural Address doubtless
comforted themselves with the reflection that they had not missed much.
The new President, indeed, had nothing new to say--no new policy to
advocate. He could only repeat the old platitudes about preferring
"amicable discussion and reasonable accommodation of differences to a
decision of them by an appeal to arms." Evidently, no strong assertion
of national rights was to be expected from this plain, homespun
President.
At the Inaugural Ball, however, people forgot their President in
admiration of the President's wife, Dolly Madison. "She looked a queen,"
wrote Mrs. Margaret Bayard Smith. "She had on a pale buff-colored
velvet, made plain, with a very long train, but not the least trimming,
and beautiful pearl necklace, earrings, and bracelets. Her head dress
was a turban of the same colored velvet and white satin (from Paris)
with two superb plumes, the bird of paradise feathers. It would be
ABSOLUTELY IMPOSSIBLE for any one to behave with more perfect propriety
than she did. Unassuming dignity, sweetness, grace. Mr. Madison, on the
contrary," continued this same warm-hearted observer, "seemed spiritless
and exhausted. While he was standing by me, I said, 'I wish with all my
heart I had a little bit of seat to offer you.' 'I wish so too,' said
he, with a most woebegone face, and looking as if he could hardly stand.
The managers came up to ask him to stay to supper, he assented, and
turning to me, 'but I would much rather be in bed,' he said." Quite
different was Mr. Jefferson on this occasion. He seemed to be in high
spirits and "his countenance beamed with a benevolent joy." It seemed to
this ardent admirer that "every demonstration of respect to Mr. M.
gave Mr. J. more pleasure than if paid to himself." No wonder that
Mr. Jefferson was in good spirits. Was he not now free from all the
anxieties and worries of politics? Already he was counting on retiring
"to the elysium of domestic affections and the irresponsible direction"
of his own affairs. A week later he set out for Monticello on horseback,
never again to set foot in the city which had witnessed his triumph and
his humiliation.
The election of Madison had disclosed wide rifts in his party. Monroe
had lent himself to the designs of John Randolph and had entered the
list of candidates for the Presidency; and Vice-President Clinton had
also been put forward by other malcontents. It was this division in the
ranks of the opposition which in the end had insured Madison's election;
but factional differences pursued Madison into the White House. Even
in the choice of his official family he was forced to consider the
preferences of politicians whom he despised, for when he would have
appointed Gallatin Secretary of State, he found Giles of Virginia and
Samuel Smith of Maryland bent upon defeating the nomination. The Smith
faction was, indeed, too influential to be ignored; with a wry face
Madison stooped to a bargain which left Gallatin at the head of the
Treasury but which saddled his Administration with Robert Smith, who
proved to be quite unequal to the exacting duties of the Department of
State.
The Administration began with what appeared to be a great diplomatic
triumph. In April the President issued a proclamation announcing that
the British orders-in-council would be withdrawn on the 10th of June,
after which date commerce with Great Britain might be renewed. In the
newspapers appeared, with this welcome proclamation, a note drafted
by the British Minister Erskine expressing the confident hope that all
differences between the two countries would be adjusted by a special
envoy whom His Majesty had determined to send to the United States.
The Republican press was jubilant. At last the sage of Monticello was
vindicated. "It may be boldly alleged," said the National Intelligencer,
"that the revocation of the British orders is attributable to the
embargo."
Forgotten now were all the grievances against Great Britain. Every
shipping port awoke to new life. Merchants hastened to consign the
merchandise long stored in their warehouses; shipmasters sent out
runners for crews; and ships were soon winging their way out into
the open sea. For three months American vessels crossed the ocean
unmolested, and then came the bitter, the incomprehensible news that
Erskine's arrangement had been repudiated and the over-zealous diplomat
recalled. The one brief moment of triumph in Madison's administration
had passed.
Slowly and painfully the public learned the truth. Erskine had exceeded
his instructions. Canning had not been averse to concessions, it is
true, but he had named as an indispensable condition of any concession
that the United States should bind itself to exclude French ships of war
from its ports. Instead of holding to the letter of his instructions,
Erskine had allowed himself to be governed by the spirit of concession
and had ignored the essential prerequisite. Nothing remained but to
renew the NonIntercourse Act against Great Britain. This the President
did by proclamation on August 9, 1809, and the country settled back
sullenly into commercial inactivity.
Another scarcely less futile chapter in diplomacy began with the arrival
of Francis James Jackson as British Minister in September. Those who
knew this Briton were justified in concluding that conciliation had no
important place in the programme of the Foreign Office, for it was he
who, two years before, had conducted those negotiations with Denmark
which culminated in the bombardment and destruction of Copenhagen. "It
is rather a prevailing notion here," wrote Pinkney from London, "that
this gentleman's conduct will not and cannot be what we all wish." And
this impression was so fully shared by Madison that he would not hasten
his departure from Montpelier but left Jackson to his own devices at the
capital for a full month.
This interval of enforced inactivity had one unhappy consequence. Not
finding employment for all his idle hours, Jackson set himself to
read the correspondence of his predecessor, and from it he drew the
conclusion that Erskine was a greater fool than he had thought possible,
and that the American Government had been allowed to use language of
which "every third word was a declaration of war." The further he read
the greater his ire, so that when the President arrived in Washington
(October 1), Jackson was fully resolved to let the American Government
know what was due to a British Minister who had had audiences "with most
of the sovereigns of Europe."
Though neither the President nor Gallatin, to whose mature judgment he
constantly turned, believed that Jackson had any proposals to make, they
were willing to let Robert Smith carry on informal conversations with
him. It speedily appeared that so far from making overtures, Jackson was
disposed to await proposals. The President then instructed the Secretary
of State to announce that further discussions would be "in the written
form" and henceforth himself took direct charge of negotiations. The
exchange of letters which followed reveals Madison at his best. His
rapier-like thrusts soon pierced even the thick hide of this conceited
Englishman. The stupid Smith who signed these letters appeared to be no
mean adversary after all.
In one of his rejoinders the British Minister yielded to a flash of
temper and insinuated (as Canning in his instructions had done) that the
American Government had known Erskine's instructions and had encouraged
him to set them aside--had connived in short at his wrongdoing. "Such
insinuations," replied Madison sharply, "are inadmissible in the
intercourse of a foreign minister with a government that understands
what it owes itself." "You will find that in my correspondence
with you," wrote Jackson angrily, "I have carefully avoided drawing
conclusions that did not necessarily follow from the premises advanced
by me, and least of all should I think of uttering an insinuation where
I was unable to substantiate a fact." A fatal outburst of temper which
delivered the writer into the hands of his adversary. "Sir," wrote the
President, still using the pen of his docile secretary, "finding that
you have used a language which cannot be understood but as reiterating
and even aggravating the same gross insinuation, it only remains, in
order to preclude opportunities which are thus abused, to inform you
that no further communications will be received from you." Therewith
terminated the American Mission of Francis James Jackson.
Following this diplomatic episode, Congress Wain sought a way of escape
from the consequences of total nonintercourse. It finally enacted a
bill known as Macon's Bill No. 2, which in a sense reversed the former
policy, since it left commerce everywhere free, and authorized the
President, "in case either Great Britain or France shall, before the
3d day of March next, so revoke or modify her edicts as that they shall
cease to violate the neutral commerce of the United States," to cut off
trade with the nation which continued to offend. The act thus gave the
President an immense discretionary power which might bring the country
face to face with war. It was the last act in that extraordinary series
of restrictive measures which began with the Non-Intercourse Act of
1806. The policy of peaceful coercion entered on its last phase.
And now, once again, the shadow of the Corsican fell across the seas.
With the unerring shrewdness of an intellect never vexed by ethical
considerations, Napoleon announced that he would meet the desires of the
American Government. "I am authorized to declare to you, Sir," wrote
the Duc de Cadore, Minister of Foreign Affairs, to Armstrong, "that the
Decrees of Berlin and Milan are revoked, and that after November 1 they
will cease to have effect--it being understood that in consequence of
this declaration the English are to revoke their Orders-in-Council,
and renounce the new principles of blockade which they have wished to
establish; or that the United States, conformably to the Act you have
just communicated [the Macon Act], cause their rights to be respected by
the English."
It might be supposed that President Madison, knowing with whom he had to
deal, would have hesitated to accept Napoleon's asseverations at their
face value. He had, indeed, no assurances beyond Cadore's letter that
the French decrees had been repealed. But he could not let slip this
opportunity to force Great Britain's hand. It seemed to be a last chance
to test the effectiveness of peaceable coercion. On November 2, 1810,
he issued the momentous proclamation which eventually made Great Britain
rather than France the object of attack. "It has been officially made
known to this government," said the President, "that the said edicts of
France have been so revoked as that they ceased, on the first day of the
present month, to violate the neutral commerce of the United States."
Thereupon the Secretary of the Treasury instructed collectors of customs
that commercial intercourse with Great Britain would be suspended after
the 2d of February of the following year.
The next three months were full of painful experiences for President
Madison. He waited, and waited in vain, for authentic news of the formal
repeal of the French decrees; and while he waited, he was distressed and
amazed to learn that American vessels were still being confiscated in
French ports. In the midst of these uncertainties occurred the biennial
congressional elections, the outcome of which only deepened his
perplexities. Nearly one-half of those who sat in the existing Congress
failed of reelection, yet, by a vicious custom, the new House, which
presumably reflected the popular mood in 1810, would not meet for
thirteen months, while the old discredited Congress wearily dragged out
its existence in a last session. Vigorous presidential leadership, it
is true, might have saved the expiring Congress from the reproach
of incapacity, but such leadership was not to be expected from James
Madison.
So it was that the President's message to this moribund Congress was
simply a counsel of prudence and patience. It pointed out, to be sure,
the uncertainties of the situation, but it did not summon Congress
sternly to face the alternatives. It alluded mildly to the need of
a continuance of our defensive and precautionary arrangements,
and suggested further organization and training of the militia; it
contemplated with satisfaction the improvement of the quantity and
quality of the output of cannon and small arms; it set the seal of the
President's approval upon the new military academy; but nowhere did it
sound a trumpet-call to real preparedness.
Even to these mild suggestions Congress responded indifferently. It
slightly increased the naval appropriations, but it actually reduced the
appropriations for the army; and it adjourned without acting on the bill
authorizing the President to enroll fifty thousand volunteers. Personal
animosity and prejudice combined to defeat the proposals of the
Secretary of the Treasury. A bill to recharter the national bank, which
Gallatin regarded as an indispensable fiscal agent, was defeated; and a
bill providing for a general increase of duties on imports to meet the
deficit was laid aside. Congress would authorize a loan of five million
dollars but no new taxes. Only one bill was enacted which could be said
to sustain the President's policy--that reviving certain parts of
the Non-Intercourse Act of 1809 against Great Britain. With this last
helpless gasp the Eleventh Congress expired.
The defeat of measures which the Administration had made its own
amounted to a vote of no confidence. Under similar circumstances an
English Ministry would have either resigned or tested the sentiment of
the country by a general election; but the American Executive possesses
no such means of appealing immediately and directly to the electorate.
President and Congress must live out their allotted terms of office,
even though their antagonism paralyzes the operation of government.
What, then, could be done to restore confidence in the Administration of
President Madison and to establish a modus vivendi between Executive and
Legislative?
It seemed to the Secretary of Treasury, smarting under the defeat of
his bank bill, that he had become a burden to the Administration, an
obstacle in the way of cordial cooperation between the branches of the
Federal Government. The factions which had defeated his appointment
to the Department of State seemed bent upon discrediting him and his
policies. "I clearly perceive," he wrote to the President, "that my
continuing a member of the present Administration is no longer of any
public utility, invigorates the opposition against yourself, and must
necessarily be attended with an increased loss of reputation by myself.
Under those impressions, not without reluctance, and after perhaps
hesitating too long in the hopes of a favorable change, I beg leave to
tender you my resignation."
This timely letter probably saved the Administration. Not for an instant
could the President consider sacrificing the man who for ten years
had been the mainstay of Republican power. Madison acted with unwonted
promptitude. He refused to accept Gallatin's resignation, and determined
to break once and for all with the faction which had hounded Gallatin
from the day of his appointment and which had foisted upon the President
an unwelcome Secretary of State. Not Gallatin but Robert Smith should
go. Still more surprising was Madison's quick decision to name Monroe
as Smith's successor, if he could be prevailed upon to accept. Both
Virginians understood the deeper personal and political significance of
this appointment. Madison sought an alliance with a faction which had
challenged his administrative policy; Monroe inferred that no opposition
would be interposed to his eventual elevation to the Presidency when
Madison should retire. What neither for the moment understood was the
effect which the appointment would have upon the foreign policy of the
Administration. Monroe hesitated, for he and his friends had been open
critics of the President's pro-French policy. Was the new Secretary
of State to be bound by this policy, or was the President prepared to
reverse his course and effect a reconciliation with England?
These very natural misgivings the President brushed aside by assuring
Monroe's friends that he was very hopeful of settling all differences
with both France and England. Certainly he had in no wise committed
himself to a course which would prevent a renewal of negotiations
with England; he had always desired "a cordial accommodation." Thus
reassured, Monroe accepted the invitation, never once doubting that he
would reverse the policy of the Administration, achieve a diplomatic
triumph, and so appear as the logical successor to President Madison.
Had the new Secretary of State known the instructions which the British
Foreign Office was drafting at this moment for Mr. Augustus J. Foster,
Jackson's successor, he would have been less sanguine. This "very
gentlemanlike young man," as Jackson called him, was told to make some
slight concessions to American sentiment--he might make proper amends
for the Chesapeake affair but on the crucial matter of the French
decrees he was bidden to hold rigidly to the uncompromising position
taken by the Foreign Office from the beginning--that the President was
mistaken in thinking that they had been repealed. The British Government
could not modify its orders-in-council on unsubstantiated rumors that
the offensive French decrees had been revoked. Secretly Foster was
informed that the Ministry was prepared to retaliate if the American
Government persisted in shutting out British importations. No one in
the ministry, or for that matter in the British Isles, seems to have
understood that the moment had come for concession and not retaliation,
if peaceful relations were to continue.
It was most unfortunate that while Foster was on his way to the United
States, British cruisers would have renewed the blockade of New York.
Two frigates, the Melampus and the Guerriere, lay off Sandy Hook and
resumed the old irritating practice of holding up American vessels and
searching them for deserters. In the existing state of American feeling,
with the Chesapeake outrage still unredressed, the behavior of the
British commanders was as perilous as walking through a powder
magazine with a live coal. The American navy had suffered severely
from Jefferson's "chaste reformation" but it had not lost its fighting
spirit. Officers who had served in the war with Tripoli prayed for a
fair chance to avenge the Chesapeake; and the Secretary of the Navy had
abetted this spirit in his orders to Commodore John Rodgers, who was
patrolling the coast with a squadron of frigates and sloops. "What has
been perpetrated," Rodgers was warned, "may be again attempted. It is
therefore our duty to be prepared and determined at every hazard to
vindicate the injured honor of our navy, and revive the drooping spirit
of the nation."
Under the circumstances it would have been little short of a miracle if
an explosion had not occurred; yet for a year Rodgers sailed up and down
the coast without encountering the British frigates. On May 16, 1811,
however, Rodgers in his frigate, the President, sighted a suspicious
vessel some fifty miles off Cape Henry. From her general appearance he
judged her to be a man-of-war and probably the Guerriere. He decided to
approach her, he relates, in order to ascertain whether a certain seaman
alleged to have been impressed was aboard; but the vessel made off and
he gave chase. By dusk the two ships were abreast. Exactly what then
happened will probably never be known, but all accounts agree that a
shot was fired and that a general engagement followed. Within fifteen
minutes the strange vessel was disabled and lay helpless under the guns
of the President, with nine of her crew dead and twenty-three wounded.
Then, to his intense disappointment, Rodgers learned that his adversary
was not the Guerriere but the British sloop of war Little Belt, a craft
greatly inferior to his own.
However little this one-sided sea fight may have salved the pride of
the American navy, it gave huge satisfaction to the general public. The
Chesapeake was avenged. When Foster disembarked he found little interest
in the reparations which he was charged to offer. He had been prepared
to settle a grievance in a good-natured way; he now felt himself obliged
to demand explanations. The boot was on the other leg; and the American
public lost none of the humor of the situation. Eventually he offered
to disavow Admiral Berkeley's act, to restore the seamen taken from the
Chesapeake, and to compensate them and their families. In the course
of time the two unfortunates who had survived were brought from their
prison at Halifax and restored to the decks of the Chesapeake in Boston
Harbor. But as for the Little Belt, Foster had to rest content with the
findings of an American court of inquiry which held that the British
sloop had fired the first shot. As yet there were no visible signs
that Monroe had effected a change in the foreign policy of the
Administration, though he had given the President a momentary advantage
over the opposition. Another crisis was fast approaching. When Congress
met a month earlier than usual, pursuant to the call of the President,
the leadership passed from the Administration to a group of men who had
lost all faith in commercial restrictions as a weapon of defense against
foreign aggression.