The dire calamity which Jefferson and his colleagues had for ten years
bent all their energies to avert had now befallen the young Republic.
War, with all its train of attendant evils, stalked upon the stage, and
was about to test the hearts of pacifist and war-hawk alike. But nothing
marked off the younger Republicans more sharply from the generation to
which Jefferson, Madison, and Gallatin belonged than the positive relief
with which they hailed this break with Jeffersonian tradition. This
attitude was something quite different from the usual intrepidity of
youth in the face of danger; it was bottomed upon the conviction which
Clay expressed when he answered the question, "What are we to gain
by the war?" by saying, "What are we not to lose by peace? Commerce,
character, a nation's best treasure, honor!" Calhoun had reached the
same conclusion. The restrictive system as a means of resistance and of
obtaining redress for wrongs, he declared to be unsuited to the genius
of the American people. It required the most arbitrary laws; it
rendered government odious; it bred discontent. War, on the other hand,
strengthened the national character, fed the flame of patriotism, and
perfected the organization of government. "Sir," he exclaimed, "I would
prefer a single Victory over the enemy by sea or land to all the good we
shall ever derive from the continuation of the non-importation act!" The
issue was thus squarely faced: the alternative to peaceable coercion was
now to be given a trial.
Scarcely less remarkable was the buoyant spirit with which these young
Republicans faced the exigencies of war. Defeat was not to be found in
their vocabulary. Clay pictured in fervent rhetoric a victorious army
dictating the terms of peace at Quebec or at Halifax; Calhoun scouted
the suggestion of unpreparedness, declaring that in four weeks after the
declaration of war the whole of Upper and part of Lower Canada would be
in our possession; and even soberer patriots believed that the conquest
of Canada was only a matter of marching across the frontier to Montreal
or Quebec. But for that matter older heads were not much wiser as
prophets of military events. Even Jefferson assured the President that
he had never known a war entered into under more favorable auspices,
and predicted that Great Britain would surely be stripped of all her
possessions on this continent; while Monroe seems to have anticipated
a short decisive war terminating in a satisfactory accommodation with
England. As for the President, he averred many years later that while he
knew the unprepared state of the country, "he esteemed it necessary to
throw forward the flag of the country, sure that the people would press
onward and defend it."
There is something at once humorous and pathetic in this self-portrait
of Madison throwing forward the flag of his country and summoning his
legions to follow on. Never was a man called to lead in war who had so
little of the martial in his character, and yet so earnest a purpose to
rise to the emergency. An observer describes him, the day after war
was declared, "visiting in person--a thing never known before--all the
offices of the Departments of War and the Navy, stimulating everything
in a manner worthy of a little commander-in-chief, with his little round
hat and huge cockade." Stimulation was certainly needed in these two
departments as events proved, but attention to petty details which
should have been watched by subordinates is not the mark of a great
commander. Jefferson afterward consoled Madison for the defeat of his
armies by writing: "All you can do is to order--execution must depend
on others and failures be imputed to them alone." Jefferson failed
to perceive what Madison seems always to have forgotten, that a
commander-in-chief who appoints and may remove his subordinates can
never escape responsibility for their failures. The President's first
duty was not to stimulate the performance of routine in the departments
but to make sure of the competence of the executive heads of those
departments.
William Eustis of Massachusetts, Secretary of War, was not without
some little military experience, having served as a surgeon in the
Revolutionary army, but he lacked every qualification for the onerous
task before him. Senator Crawford of Georgia wrote to Monroe caustically
that Eustis should have been forming general and comprehensive
arrangements for the organization of the troops and for the prosecution
of campaigns, instead of consuming his time reading advertisements of
petty retailing merchants, to find where he could purchase one hundred
shoes or two hundred hats. Of Paul Hamilton, the Secretary of Navy,
even less could be expected, for he seems to have had absolutely no
experience to qualify him for the post. Senator Crawford intimated
that in instructing his naval officers Hamilton impressed upon them the
desirability of keeping their superiors supplied with pineapples and
other tropical fruits--an ill-natured comment which, true or not,
gives us the measure of the man. Both Monroe and Gallatin shared the
prevailing estimate of the Secretaries of War and of the Navy and
expressed themselves without reserve to Jefferson; but the President
with characteristic indecision hesitated to purge his Cabinet of these
two incompetents, and for his want of decision he paid dearly.
The President had just left the Capital for his country place at
Montpelier toward the end of August, when the news came that General
William Hull, who had been ordered to invade Upper Canada and begin the
military promenade to Quebec, had surrendered Detroit and his
entire army without firing a gun. It was a crushing disaster and a
well-deserved rebuke for the Administration, for whether the fault was
Hull's or Eustis's, the President had to shoulder the responsibility.
His first thought was to retrieve the defeat by commissioning Monroe to
command a fresh army for the capture of Detroit; but this proposal which
appealed strongly to Monroe had to be put aside--fortunately for all
concerned, for Monroe's desire for military glory was probably not
equalled by his capacity as a commander and the western campaign proved
incomparably more difficult than wiseacres at Washington imagined.
What was needed, indeed, was not merely able commanders in the field,
though they were difficult enough to find. There was much truth in
Jefferson's naive remark to Madison: "The creator has not thought
proper to mark those on the forehead who are of the stuff to make good
generals. We are first, therefore, to seek them, blindfold, and then let
them learn the trade at the expense of great losses." But neither seems
to have comprehended that their opposition to military preparedness had
caused this dearth of talent and was now forcing the Administration to
select blindfold. More pressing even than the need of tacticians was the
need of organizers of victory. The utter failure of the Niagara campaign
vacated the office of Secretary of War; and with Eustis retired also
the Secretary of the Navy. Monroe took over the duties of the one
temporarily, and William Jones, a shipowner of Philadelphia, succeeded
Hamilton.
If the President seriously intended to make Monroe Secretary of War
and the head of the General Staff, he speedily discovered that he was
powerless to do so. The Republican leaders in New York felt too keenly
Josiah Quincy's taunt about a despotic Cabinet "composed, to all
efficient purposes, of two Virginians and a foreigner" to permit Monroe
to absorb two cabinet posts. To appease this jealousy of Virginia,
Madison made an appointment which very nearly shipwrecked his
Administration: he invited General John Armstrong of New York to become
Secretary of War. Whatever may be said of Armstrong's qualifications for
the post, his presence in the Cabinet was most inadvisable, for he did
not and could not inspire the personal confidence of either Gallatin
or Monroe. Once in office, he turned Monroe into a relentless enemy and
fairly drove Gallatin out of office in disgust by appointing his
old enemy, William Duane, editor of the Aurora, to the post of
Adjutant-General. "And Armstrong!"--said Dallas who subsequently as
Secretary of War knew whereof he spoke--"he was the devil from the
beginning, is now, and ever will be!"
The man of clearest vision in these unhappy months of 1812 was
undoubtedly Albert Gallatin. The defects of Madison as a War-President
he had long foreseen; the need of reorganizing the Executive Departments
he had pointed out as soon as war became inevitable; and the problem of
financing the war he had attacked farsightedly, fearlessly, and
without regard to political consistency. No one watched the approach of
hostilities with a bitterer sense of blasted hopes. For ten years he had
labored to limit expenditures, sacrificing even the military and naval
establishments, that the people might be spared the burden of needless
taxes;--and within this decade he had also scaled down the national debt
one-half, so that posterity might not be saddled with burdens not of
its own choosing. And now war threatened to undo his work. The young
republic was after all not to lead its own life, realize a unique
destiny, but to tread the old well-worn path of war, armaments, and
high-handed government. Well, he would save what he could, do his
best to avert "perpetual taxation, military establishments, and other
corrupting or anti-republican habits or institutions."
If Gallatin at first underrated the probable revenue for war purposes,
he speedily confessed his error and set before Congress inexorably the
necessity for new taxes-aye, even for an internal tax, which he had once
denounced as loudly as any Republican. For more than a year after
the declaration of war, Congress was deaf to pleas for new sources of
revenue; and it was not, indeed, until the last year of the war that
it voted the taxes which in the long run could alone support the public
credit. Meantime, facing a depleted Treasury, Gallatin found himself
reduced to a mere "dealer of loans"--a position utterly abhorrent to
him. Even his efforts to place the loans which Congress authorized must
have failed but for the timely aid of three men whom Quincy would
have contemptuously termed foreigners, for all like Gallatin were
foreign-born--Astor, Girard, and Parish. Utterly weary of his thankless
job, Gallatin seized upon the opportunity afforded by the Russian
offer of mediation to leave the Cabinet and perhaps to end the war by
a diplomatic stroke. He asked and received an appointment as one of the
three American commissioners.
If Madison really believed that the people of the United States would
unitedly press onward and defend the flag when once he had thrown it
forward, he must have been strangely insensitive to the disaffection
in New England. Perhaps, like Jefferson in the days of the embargo,
he mistook the spirit of this opposition, thinking that it was largely
partisan clamor which could safely be disregarded. What neither of
these Virginians appreciated was the peculiar fanatical and sectional
character of this Federalist opposition, and the extremes to which
it would go. Yet abundant evidence lay before their eyes. Thirty-four
Federalist members of the House, nearly all from New England, issued an
address to their constituents bitterly arraigning the Administration
and deploring the declaration of war; the House of Representatives
of Massachusetts, following this example, published another address,
denouncing the war as a wanton sacrifice of the best interests of
the people and imploring all good citizens to meet in town and county
assemblies to protest and to resolve not to volunteer except for a
defensive war; and a meeting of citizens of Rockingham County, New
Hampshire, adopted a memorial drafted by young Daniel Webster, which
hinted that the separation of the States--"an event fraught with
incalculable evils"--might sometime occur on just such an occasion as
this. Town after town, and county after county, took up the hue and cry,
keeping well within the limits of constitutional opposition, it is true,
but weakening the arm of the Government just when it should have struck
the enemy effective blows.
Nor was the President without enemies in his own political household.
The Republicans of New York, always lukewarm in their support of the
Virginia Dynasty, were now bent upon preventing his reelection. They
found a shrewd and not overscrupulous leader in DeWitt Clinton and
an adroit campaign manager in Martin Van Buren. Both belonged to that
school of New York politicians of which Burr had been master. Anything
to beat Madison was their cry. To this end they were willing to condemn
the war-policy, to promise a vigorous prosecution of the war, and even
to negotiate for peace. What made this division in the ranks of
the Republicans so serious was the willingness of the New England
Federalists to make common cause with Clinton. In September a convention
of Federalists endorsed his nomination for the Presidency.
Under the weight of accumulating disasters, military and political, it
seemed as though Madison must go down in defeat. Every New England State
but Vermont cast its electoral votes for Clinton; all the Middle States
but Pennsylvania also supported him; and Maryland divided its vote. Only
the steadiness of the Southern Republicans and of Pennsylvania saved
Madison; a change of twenty electoral votes would have ended the
Virginia Dynasty.* Now at least Madison must have realized the poignant
truth which the Federalists were never tired of repeating: he had
entered upon the war as President of a divided people.
* In the electoral vote Madison received 128; Clinton, 89.
Only a few months' experience was needed to convince the military
authorities at Washington that the war must be fought mainly by
volunteers. Every military consideration derived from American history
warned against this policy, it is true, but neither Congress nor the
people would entertain for an instant the thought of conscription. Only
with great reluctance and under pressure had Congress voted to increase
the regular army and to authorize the President to raise fifty thousand
volunteers. The results of this legislation were disappointing, not
to say humiliating. The conditions of enlistment were not such as to
encourage recruiting; and even when the pay had been increased and the
term of service shortened, few able-bodied citizens would respond. If
any such desired to serve their country, they enrolled in the State
militia which the President had been authorized to call into active
service for six months.
In default of a well-disciplined regular army and an adequate volunteer
force, the Administration was forced more and more to depend upon such
quotas of militia as the States would supply. How precarious was the
hold of the national Government upon the State forces, appeared in the
first months of the war. When called upon to supply troops to relieve
the regulars in the coast defenses, the governors of Massachusetts and
Connecticut flatly refused, holding that the commanders of the State
militia, and not the President, had the power to decide when exigencies
demanded the use of the militia in the service of the United States.
In his annual message Madison termed this "a novel and unfortunate
exposition" of the Constitution, and he pointed out--what indeed was
sufficiently obvious--that if the authority of the United States could
be thus frustrated during actual war, "they are not one nation for the
purpose most of all requiring it." But what was the President to do?
Even if he, James Madison, author of the Virginia Resolutions of
1798, could so forget his political creed as to conceive of coercing
a sovereign state, where was the army which would do his bidding? The
President was the victim of his own political theory.
These bitter revelations of 1812--the disaffection of New England,
the incapacity of two of his secretaries, the disasters of his
staff officers on the frontier, the slow recruiting, the defiance of
Massachusetts and Connecticut--almost crushed the President. Never
physically robust, he succumbed to an insidious intermittent fever in
June and was confined to his bed for weeks. So serious was his condition
that Mrs. Madison was in despair and scarcely left his side for five
long weeks. "Even now," she wrote to Mrs. Gallatin, at the end of
July, "I watch over him as I would an infant, so precarious is his
convalescence." The rumor spread that he was not likely to survive, and
politicians in Washington began to speculate on the succession to the
Presidency.
But now and then a ray of hope shot through the gloom pervading the
White House and Capitol. The stirring victory of the Constitution over
the Guerriere in August, 1812, had almost taken the sting out of Hull's
surrender at Detroit, and other victories at sea followed, glorious in
the annals of American naval warfare, though without decisive influence
on the outcome of the war. Of much greater significance was Perry's
victory on Lake Erie in September, 1813, which opened the way to the
invasion of Canada. This brilliant combat followed by the Battle of the
Thames cheered the President in his slow convalescence. Encouraging,
too, were the exploits of American privateers in British waters, but
none of these events seemed likely to hasten the end of the war. Great
Britain had already declined the Russian offer of mediation.
Last day but one of the year 1813 a British schooner, the Bramble, came
into the port of Annapolis bearing an important official letter from
Lord Castlereagh to the Secretary of State. With what eager and anxious
hands Monroe broke the seal of this letter may be readily imagined. It
might contain assurances of a desire for peace; it might indefinitely
prolong the war. In truth the letter pointed both ways. Castlereagh had
declined to accept the good offices of Russia, but he was prepared to
begin direct negotiations for peace. Meantime the war must go on--with
the chances favoring British arms, for the Bramble had also brought the
alarming news of Napoleon's defeat on the plains of Leipzig. Now for
the first time Great Britain could concentrate all her efforts upon
the campaign in North America. No wonder the President accepted
Castlereagh's offer with alacrity. To the three commissioners sent to
Russia, he added Henry Clay and Jonathan Russell and bade them Godspeed
while he nerved himself to meet the crucial year of the war.
Had the President been fully apprized of the elaborate plans of the
British War Office, his anxieties would have been multiplied many
times. For what resources had the Government to meet invasion on
three frontiers? The Treasury was again depleted; new loans brought
in insufficient funds to meet current expenses; recruiting was slack
because the Government could not compete with the larger bounties
offered by the States; by summer the number of effective regular troops
was only twenty-seven thousand all told. With this slender force,
supplemented by State levies, the military authorities were asked to
repel invasion. The Administration had not yet drunk the bitter dregs of
the cup of humiliation.
That some part of the invading British forces might be detailed to
attack the Capital was vaguely divined by the President and his Cabinet;
but no adequate measures had been taken for the defense of the city
when, on a fatal August day, the British army marched upon it. The
humiliating story of the battle of Bladensburg has been told elsewhere.
The disorganized mob which had been hastily assembled to check the
advance of the British was utterly routed almost under the eyes of the
President, who with feelings not easily described found himself obliged
to join the troops fleeing through the city. No personal humiliation was
spared the President and his family. Dolly Madison, never once doubting
that the noise of battle which reached the White House meant an American
victory, stayed calmly indoors until the rush of troops warned her of
danger. She and her friends were then swept along in the general rout.
She was forced to leave her personal effects behind, but her presence of
mind saved one treasure in the White House--a large portrait of General
Washington painted by Gilbert Stuart. That priceless portrait and the
plate were all that survived. The fleeing militiamen had presence of
mind enough to save a large quantity of the wine by drinking it, and
what was left, together with the dinner on the table, was consumed
by Admiral Cockburn and his staff. By nightfall the White House,
the Treasury, and the War Office were in flames, and only a severe
thunderstorm checked the conflagration.*
* Before passing judgment on the conduct of British officers
and men in the capital, the reader should recall the equally
indefensible outrages committed by American troops under
General Dearborn in 1813, when the Houses of Parliament and
other public buildings at York (Toronto) were pillaged and
burned. See Kingsford's "History of Canada," VIII, pp. 259-
61.
Heartsick and utterly weary, the President crossed the Potomac at about
six o'clock in the evening and started westward in a carriage toward
Montpelier. He had been in the saddle since early morning and was nearly
spent. To fatigue was added humiliation, for he was forced to travel
with a crowd of embittered fugitives and sleep in a forlorn house by the
wayside. Next morning he overtook Mrs. Madison at an inn some sixteen
miles from the Capital. Here they passed another day of humiliation, for
refugees who had followed the same line of flight reviled the President
for betraying them and the city. At midnight, alarmed at a report that
the British were approaching, the President fled to another miserable
refuge deeper in the Virginia woods. This fear of capture was quite
unfounded, however, for the British troops had already evacuated the
city and were marching in the opposite direction.
Two days later the President returned to the capital to collect his
Cabinet and repair his shattered Government. He found public sentiment
hot against the Administration for having failed to protect the city.
He had even to fear personal violence, but he remained "tranquil as
usual... though much distressed by the dreadful event which had taken
place." He was still more distressed, however, by the insistent popular
clamor for a victim for punishment. All fingers pointed at Armstrong as
the man responsible for the capture of the city. Armstrong offered
to resign at once, but the President in distress would not hear of
resignation. He would advise only "a temporary retirement" from the city
to placate the inhabitants. So Armstrong departed, but by the time he
reached Baltimore he realized the impossibility of his situation and
sent his resignation to the President. The victim had been offered
up. At his own request Monroe was now made Secretary of War, though
he continued also to discharge the not very heavy duties of the State
Department.
It was a disillusioned group of Congressmen who gathered in September,
1814, in special session at the President's call. Among those who gazed
sadly at the charred ruins of the Capitol were Calhoun, Cheves, and
Grundy, whose voices had been loud for war and who had pictured their
armies overrunning the British possessions. Clay was at this moment
endeavoring to avert a humiliating surrender of American claims at
Ghent. To the sting of defeated hopes was added physical discomfort. The
only public building which had escaped the general conflagration was the
Post and Patent Office. In these cramped quarters the two houses awaited
the President's message.
A visitor from another planet would have been strangely puzzled to make
the President's words tally with the havoc wrought by the enemy on every
side. A series of achievements had given new luster to the American
arms; "the pride of our naval arms had been amply supported"; the
American people had "rushed with enthusiasm to the scenes where danger
and duty call." Not a syllable about the disaster at Washington! Not
a word about the withdrawal of the Connecticut militia from national
service, and the refusal of the Governor of Vermont to call out the
militia just at the moment when Sir George Prevost began his invasion of
New York; not a word about the general suspension of specie payment by
all banks outside of New England; not a word about the failure of the
last loan and the imminent bankruptcy of the Government. Only a single
sentence betrayed the anxiety which was gnawing Madison's heart: "It
is not to be disguised that the situation of our country calls for its
greatest efforts." What the situation demanded, he left his secretaries
to say.
The new Secretary of War seemed to be the one member of the
Administration who was prepared to grapple with reality and who had the
courage of his convictions. While Jefferson was warning him that it was
nonsense to talk about a regular army, Monroe told Congress flatly that
no reliance could be pled in the militia and that a permanent force
of one hundred thousand men must be raised--raised by conscription if
necessary. Throwing Virginian and Jeffersonian principles to the winds,
he affirmed the constitutional right of Congress to draft citizens. The
educational value of war must have been very great to bring Monroe
to this conclusion, but Congress had not traveled so far. One by one
Monroe's alternative plans were laid aside; and the country, like a
rudderless ship, drifted on.
An insuperable obstacle, indeed, prevented the establishment of any
efficient national army at this time. Every plan encountered ultimately
the inexorable fact that the Treasury was practically empty and the
credit of the Government gone. Secretary Campbell's report was a
confession of failure to sustain public credit. Some seventy-four
millions would be needed to carry the existing civil and military
establishments for another year, and of this sum, vast indeed in those
days, only twenty-four millions were in sight. Where the remaining
fifty millions were to be found, the Secretary could not say. With this
admission of incompetence Campbell resigned from office. On the 9th of
November his successor, A. J. Dallas, notified holders of government
securities at Boston that the Treasury could not meet its obligations.
It was at this crisis, when bankruptcy stared the Government in the
face, that the Legislature of Massachusetts appointed delegates to
confer with delegates from other New England legislatures on their
common grievances and dangers and to devise means of security and
defense. The Legislatures of Connecticut and Rhode Island responded
promptly by appointing delegates to meet at Hartford on the 15th
of December; and the proposed convention seemed to receive popular
indorsement in the congressional elections, for with but two exceptions
all the Congressmen chosen were Federalists. Hot-heads were discussing
without any attempt at concealment the possibility of reconstructing the
Federal Union. A new union of the good old Thirteen States on terms set
by New England was believed to be well within the bounds of possibility.
News-sheets referred enthusiastically to the erection of a new Federal
edifice which should exclude the Western States. Little wonder that the
harassed President in distant Washington was obsessed with the idea that
New England was on the verge of secession.
William Wirt who visited Washington at this time has left a vivid
picture of ruin and desolation:
"I went to look at the ruins of the President's house. The rooms which
you saw so richly furnished, exhibited nothing but unroofed naked walls,
cracked, defaced, and blackened with fire. I cannot tell you what I
felt as I walked amongst them.... I called on the President. He looks
miserably shattered and wobegone. In short, he looked heartbroken. His
mind is full of the New England sedition. He introduced the subject, and
continued to press it--painful as it obviously was to him. I denied the
probability, even the possibility that the yeomanry of the North
could be induced to place themselves under the power and protection of
England, and diverted the conversation to another topic; but he took the
first opportunity to return to it, and convinced me that his heart and
mind were painfully full of the subject."
What added to the President's misgivings was the secrecy in which the
members of the Hartford Convention shrouded their deliberations. An
atmosphere of conspiracy seemed to envelop all their proceedings. That
the "deliverance of New England" was at hand was loudly proclaimed
by the Federalist press. A reputable Boston news-sheet advised the
President to procure a faster horse than he had mounted at Bladensburg,
if he would escape the swift vengeance of New England.
The report of the Hartford Convention seemed hardly commensurate with
the fears of the President or with the windy boasts of the Federalist
press. It arraigned the Administration in scathing language, to be
sure, but it did not advise secession. "The multiplied abuses of
bad administrations" did not yet justify a severance of the Union,
especially in a time of war. The manifest defects of the Constitution
were not incurable; yet the infractions of the Constitution by the
National Government had been so deliberate, dangerous, and palpable
as to put the liberties of the people in jeopardy and to constrain the
several States to interpose their authority to protect their citizens.
The legislatures of the several States were advised to adopt measures to
protect their citizens against such unconstitutional acts of Congress
as conscription and to concert some arrangement with the Government at
Washington, whereby they jointly or separately might undertake their
own defense, and retain a reasonable share of the proceeds of Federal
taxation for that purpose. To remedy the defects of the Constitution
seven amendments were proposed, all of which had their origin in
sectional hostility to the ascendancy of Virginia and to the growing
power of the New West. The last of these proposals was a shot at Madison
and Virginia: "nor shall the President be elected from the same State
two terms in succession." And finally, should these applications of the
States for permission to arm in their own defense be ignored, then and
in the event that peace should not be concluded, another convention
should be summoned "with such powers and instructions as the exigency of
a crisis so momentous may require."
Massachusetts, under Federalist control, acted promptly upon these
suggestions. Three commissioners were dispatched to Washington to effect
the desired arrangements for the defense of the State. The progress of
these "three ambassadors," as they styled themselves, was followed with
curiosity if not with apprehension. In Federalist circles there was a
general belief that an explosion was at hand. A disaster at New Orleans,
which was now threatened by a British fleet and army, would force
Madison to resign or to conclude peace. But on the road to Washington,
the ambassadors learned to their surprise that General Andrew Jackson
had decisively repulsed the British before New Orleans, on the 8th of
January, and on reaching the Capital they were met by the news that
a treaty of peace had been signed at Ghent. Their cause was not only
discredited but made ridiculous. They and their mission were forgotten
as the tension of war times relaxed. The Virginia Dynasty was not to end
with James Madison.