THE
SECOND ADMINISTRATION
OF
JAMES MADISON
1813–1817
HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES.
BY
HENRY ADAMS.
VOLS. I. AND II.--THE FIRST ADMINISTRATION OF JEFFERSON.
1801–1805.
VOLS. III. AND IV.--THE SECOND ADMINISTRATION OF JEFFERSON.
1805–1809.
VOLS V. AND VI.--THE FIRST ADMINISTRATION OF MADISON.
1809–1813.
VOLS. VII., VIII., AND IX.--THE SECOND ADMINISTRATION OF
MADISON. 1813–1817. WITH AN INDEX TO THE ENTIRE WORK.
HISTORY
OF THE
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
DURING THE SECOND ADMINISTRATION OF
JAMES MADISON
BY HENRY ADAMS
VOL. II.
NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
1891
_Copyright, 1890_
BY CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS.
University Press:
JOHN WILSON AND SON, CAMBRIDGE.
CONTENTS OF VOL. II.
CHAPTER PAGE
I. MASSACHUSETTS DECIDES 1
II. CHIPPAWA AND LUNDY’S LANE 24
III. FORT ERIE 62
IV. PLATTSBURG 91
V. BLADENSBURG 120
VI. BALTIMORE 149
VII. SLOOPS-OF-WAR AND PRIVATEERS 174
VIII. EXHAUSTION 212
IX. CONGRESS AND CURRENCY 239
X. CONGRESS AND ARMY 263
XI. THE HARTFORD CONVENTION 287
XII. NEW ORLEANS IN DANGER 311
XIII. THE ARTILLERY BATTLE 340
XIV. THE BATTLE OF NEW ORLEANS 367
HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES.
CHAPTER I.
AT the beginning of the year 1814, the attitude of New England
pleased no one, and perhaps annoyed most the New England people
themselves, who were conscious of showing neither dignity, power,
courage, nor intelligence. Nearly one half the people of the five New
England States supported the war, but were paralyzed by the other half,
which opposed it. Of the peace party, one half wished to stop the war,
but was paralyzed by the other half, which threatened to desert their
leaders at the first overt act of treason. In this dead-lock every one
was dissatisfied, but no one seemed disposed to yield.
Such a situation could not last. In times of revolution treason might
be necessary, but inert perversity could at no time serve a useful
purpose. Yet the Massachusetts Federalists professed only a wish to
remain inert. Josiah Quincy, who fretted at restraints, and whose
instincts obliged him to act as energetically as he talked, committed
his party to the broad assertion that “a moral and religious people”
could not express admiration for heroism displayed in a cause they
disapproved. They would defend Massachusetts only by waiting to be
invaded; and if their safety depended on their possessing the outlet
of Lake Champlain, they would refuse to seize it if in doing so
they should be obliged to cross the Canadian line. With one accord
Massachusetts Federalists reiterated that until their territory should
be actually invaded, they would not take arms. After January 1, 1814,
when news of the battle of Leipzig arrived, the dreaded invasion of New
England became imminent; but the Federalists, officially and privately,
insisted on their doctrine of self-defence.
“In the tumult of arms,” said Governor Strong in his speech to
the legislature, January 12, 1814, “the passions of men are
easily inflamed by artful misrepresentations; they are apt to
lose sight of the origin of a contest, and to forget, either
in the triumph of victory or the mortification of defeat, that
the whole weight of guilt and wretchedness occasioned by war is
chargeable upon that government which unreasonably begins the
conflict, and upon those of its subjects who, voluntarily and
without legal obligation, encourage and support it.”
The Massachusetts Senate echoed the sentiment in language more
emphatic:--
“Beyond that submission which laws enacted agreeably to the
Constitution make necessary, and that self-defence which the
obligation to repel hostile invasions justifies, a people can
give no encouragement to a war of such a character without
becoming partakers in its guilt, and rendering themselves
obnoxious to those just retributions of Divine vengeance by
which, sooner or later, the authors and abettors of such a war
will be assuredly overtaken.”
The House of Representatives could see but one contingency that
warranted Massachusetts in making voluntary exertion:--
“It is only after the failure of an attempt to negotiate,
prosecuted with evidence of these dispositions on the part of
our Administration, that any voluntary support of this unhappy
war can be expected from our constituents.”
In thus tempting blows from both sides, Massachusetts could hardly fail
to suffer more than by choosing either alternative. Had she declared
independence, England might have protected and rewarded her. Had she
imitated New York in declaring for the Union, probably the Union would
not have allowed her to suffer in the end. The attempt to resist both
belligerents forfeited the forbearance of both. The displeasure of
Great Britain was shown by a new proclamation, dated April 25, 1814,
including the ports of New England in the blockade; so that the whole
coast of the Union, from New Brunswick to Texas, was declared to be
closed to commerce by “a naval force adequate to maintain the said
blockade in the most rigorous and effective manner.”[1]
However annoying the blockade might be, it was a trifling evil compared
with other impending dangers from Great Britain. Invasion might be
expected, and its object was notorious. England was known to regret the
great concessions she had made in the definitive treaty of 1783. She
wished especially to exclude the Americans from the fisheries, and to
rectify the Canadian boundary by recovering a portion of Maine, then a
part of Massachusetts. If Massachusetts by her neutral attitude should
compel President Madison to make peace on British terms, Massachusetts
must lose the fisheries and part of the District of Maine; nor was it
likely that any American outside of New England would greatly regret
her punishment.
The extreme Federalists felt that their position could not be
maintained, and they made little concealment of their wish to commit
the State in open resistance to the Union. They represented as yet only
a minority of their party; but in conspiracies, men who knew what they
wanted commonly ended by controlling the men who did not. Pickering
was not popular; but he had the advantage of following a definite
plan, familiar for ten years to the party leaders, and founded on the
historical idea of a New England Confederation.[2] For Pickering,
disunion offered no terrors. “On the contrary,” he wrote, July 4, 1813,
“I believe an immediate separation would be a real blessing to the
‘good old thirteen States,’ as John Randolph once called them.”[3] His
views on this subject were expressed with more or less fidelity and
with much elaboration in a pamphlet published in 1813 by his literary
representative, John Lowell.[4] His policy was as little disguised as
his theoretical opinions; and in the early part of the year 1814, under
the pressure of the embargo, he thought that the time had come for
pressing his plan for a fourth time on the consideration of his party.
Without consulting his old associates of the Essex Junto, he stimulated
action among the people and in the State legislature.
The first step was, as usual, to hold town-meetings and adopt addresses
to the General Court. Some forty towns followed this course, and voted
addresses against the embargo and the war. Their spirit was fairly
represented by one of the most outspoken, adopted by a town-meeting at
Amherst, over which Noah Webster presided Jan. 3, 1814.[5] The people
voted--
“That the representatives of this town in the General Court are
desired to use their influence to induce that honorable body to
take the most vigorous and decisive measures compatible with the
Constitution to put an end to this hopeless war, and to restore
to us the blessings of peace. What measures it will be proper
to take, we pretend not to prescribe; but whatever measures
they shall think it expedient to adopt, either separately or in
conjunction with the neighboring States, they may rely upon our
faithful support.”
The town of Newbury in Essex County made itself conspicuous by
adopting, January 31, a memorial inviting bloodshed:--
“We remember the resistance of our fathers to oppressions which
dwindle into insignificance when compared with those which we
are called on to endure. The rights ‘which we have received
from God we will never yield to man.’ We call on our State
legislature to protect us in the enjoyment of those privileges
to assert which our fathers died, and to defend which we profess
ourselves ready to resist unto blood. We pray your honorable
body to adopt measures immediately to secure to us especially
our undoubted right of trade within our State. We are ourselves
ready to aid you in securing it to us to the utmost of our
power, ‘peaceably if we can, forcibly if we must;’ and we pledge
to you the sacrifice of our lives and property in support of
whatever measures the dignity and liberties of this free,
sovereign, and independent State may seem to your wisdom to
demand.”
The voters of Newbury were constituents of Pickering. Their address
could not have reached him at Washington when a few days afterward he
wrote to Samuel Putnam, an active member of the General Court, then in
session, urging that the time for remonstrances had passed, and the
time for action had come:[6]--
“Declarations of this sort by Massachusetts, especially if
concurred in by the other New England States, would settle the
business at once. But though made now by Massachusetts alone,
you surely may rely on the co-operation of New Hampshire, Rhode
Island, and Connecticut, and I doubt not of Vermont and New
York. With the executives and legislatures of most, and the
representatives of all of them, you can freely communicate.
Ought there not to be a proposal of a convention of delegates
from those six States?”
The project of a New England convention was well understood to violate
the Constitution, and for that reason alone the cautious Federalists
disliked and opposed it. Doubtless a mere violence done to the law
did not necessarily imply a wish for disunion. The Constitution was
violated more frequently by its friends than by its enemies, and often
the extent of such violations measured the increasing strength of the
Union. In such matters intent was everything; and the intent of the
proposed New England convention was made evident by the reluctance with
which the leaders slowly yielded to the popular demand.
The addresses of the towns to the General Court were regularly referred
to a committee, which reported February 18,[7] in a spirit not
altogether satisfactory to the advocates of action:--
“Whenever the national compact is violated and the citizens
of this State are oppressed by cruel and unauthorized laws,
the legislature is bound to interpose its power and wrest from
the oppressor his victim. This is the spirit of our Union, and
thus it has been explained by the very man who now sets at
defiance all the principles of his early political life.... On
the subject of a convention, the committee observe that they
entertain no doubt of the right of the legislature to invite
other States to a convention and to join it themselves for
the great purposes of consulting for the general good, and of
procuring Amendments to the Constitution whenever they find that
the practical construction given to it by the rulers for the
time being is contrary to its true spirit and injurious to their
immediate constituents.... This was the mode proposed by Mr.
Madison[8] in answer to objections made as to the tendency of
the general government to usurp upon that of the States.”
The _argumentum ad personam_ commonly proved only weakness.
Madison’s authority on these points had always been rejected by the
Federalists when in power; and even he had never asserted the right
of States to combine in convention for resistance to measures of
the national government, as the General Court was asked to do. So
revolutionary was the step that the committee of both Houses shrank
from it: “They have considered that there are reasons which render
it inexpedient at the present moment to exercise this power.” They
advised that the subject should not be immediately decided, but
should be referred to the representatives soon to be returned for the
next General Court, who would “come from the people still more fully
possessed of their views and wishes as to the all-important subject of
obtaining by future compact, engrafted into the present Constitution,
a permanent security against future abuses of power, and of seeking
effectual redress for the grievances and oppressions now endured.”
To the people, therefore, the subject of a New England convention was
expressly referred. The issue was well understood, and excluded all
others in the coming April election. So serious was the emergency,
and so vital to the Administration and the war was the defeat of a
New England convention, that the Republicans put forward no party
candidate, but declared their intention to vote for Samuel Dexter, a
Federalist,--although Dexter, in a letter dated February 14, reiterated
his old opinions hostile to the embargo, and professed to be no further
a Republican than that he offered no indiscriminate opposition to the
war. His Federalism was that of Rufus King and Bayard.
“What good is to be expected,” he asked,[9] “from creating
division when engaged in war with a powerful nation that has
not yet explicitly shown that she is willing to agree to
reasonable terms of peace? Why make publications and speeches
to prove that we are absolved from allegiance to the national
government, and hint that an attempt to divide the empire might
be justified?... The ferocious contest that would be the effect
of attempting to skulk from a participation of the burdens of
war would not be the greatest calamity.”
Under such circumstances the load of the embargo became too heavy for
the Massachusetts Republicans to carry. They tried in every manner to
throw it off, as persistently as President Madison tried to hold it
on. Their candidate, Dexter, argued strongly against the restrictive
system in his letter consenting to stand. They drew a distinction
between the restrictive system and the war; but even in regard to the
war they required not active support, but only abstinence from active
resistance. The Federalists used the embargo to stimulate resistance
to the war, and advocated a New England convention under cover of the
unpopularity of commercial restrictions.
With the pertinacity which was his most remarkable trait, Madison clung
to the embargo all winter in face of overwhelming motives to withdraw
it. A large majority in Congress disliked it. England having recovered
her other markets could afford to conquer the American as she had
conquered the European, and to wait a few months for her opportunity.
The embargo bankrupted the Treasury, threatened to stop the operations
of war, and was as certain as any ordinary antecedent of a consequent
result to produce a New England convention. Yet the President
maintained it until the news from Europe caused a panic in Congress.
The Massachusetts election took place in the first days of April,
while Congress was engaged in repealing the embargo and the system
of commercial restrictions. The result showed that Dexter might have
carried the State and defeated the project of a New England convention,
had the embargo been repealed a few weeks earlier. A very large
vote, about one hundred and two thousand in aggregate, was cast. The
Federalists, whose official vote in 1813 was 56,754, threw 56,374
votes; while the Republicans, who cast 42,789 votes in 1813, numbered
45,359 in 1814.
The reduction of the Federalist majority from fourteen thousand to
eleven thousand was not the only reason for believing that Dexter
might have carried Massachusetts but for the embargo. At the same time
William Plumer, supported like Dexter by the Republicans, very nearly
carried New Hampshire, and by gaining a majority of the executive
council, precluded the possibility that New Hampshire as a State
could take part in a New England convention. The President’s Message
recommending a repeal of the embargo was sent to Congress March 31, and
the Act of Repeal was signed April 14. Two weeks later, April 28, the
New York election took place. To this election both parties anxiously
looked. The Administration press admitted that all was lost if New York
joined Massachusetts,[10] and the New England Federalists knew that a
decisive defeat in New York would leave them to act alone. The returns
were watched with such anxiety as had seldom attended a New York
election, although no general State officer was to be chosen.
In May, 1813, Governor Tompkins carried the State by a majority of only
3,506, and the Federalists in the House of Assembly numbered sixty,
while the Republicans numbered fifty-two. The city of New York and
the counties of Queens, Westchester, Dutchess, Columbia, Rensselaer,
and Washington--the entire range of counties on the east shore of the
Hudson--were then Federalist. The counties of Albany, Montgomery,
Oneida, Otsego, Madison, and Ontario in the centre of the State
were also Federalist. At the congressional election of 1812, twenty
Federalists and six Republicans had been chosen. The May election
of 1814 was for the State Assembly and for Congress. No opportunity
was given for testing the general opinion of the State on a single
issue, but no one could mistake what the general opinion was. City and
State reversed their political character. The Republicans recovered
possession of the Assembly with a large majority of seventy-four to
thirty-eight, and the Congressional delegation numbered twenty-one
Republicans and only six Federalists.
The result was supposed to be largely due to a dislike of the New
England scheme and to a wish among New York Federalists that it should
be stopped. The energy of the demonstration in New York marked the
beginning of an epoch in national character; yet the change came too
late to save Massachusetts from falling for the first time into the
hands of the extreme Federalists. The towns of Massachusetts chose as
their representatives to the General Court a majority bent on taking
decisive action against the war. Connecticut and Rhode Island were
controlled by the same impulse, and the discouraged Republicans could
interpose no further resistance. A New England convention could be
prevented only by a treaty of peace.
The effect of the attitude of New England was felt throughout the
Union, and, combined with the news from Europe, brought a general
conviction that peace must be made. No man in the Union was more
loyal to the war than Governor Shelby of Kentucky, but Shelby already
admitted that peace had become necessary.
“I may in confidence confess to you,” wrote Shelby, April 8,[11]
“that I lament over my country that she has in her very bosom a
faction as relentless as the fire that is unquenchable, capable
of thwarting her best interests, and whose poisonous breath is
extending to every corner of the Union. There is but one way
to cure the evil, and that is an awful and desperate one; and
in the choice of evils we had better take the least. Were we
unanimous I should feel it less humiliating to be conquered, as
I verily believe that the Administration will be driven to peace
_on any terms_ by the opposition to the war.”
If Governor Shelby had reached this conclusion before he knew the
result of the Massachusetts election, the great mass of citizens who
had been from the first indifferent to the war felt that peace on any
terms could no longer be postponed. Mere disunion was not the result
chiefly to be feared. That disunion might follow a collapse of the
national government was possible; but for the time, Massachusetts
seemed rather disposed to sacrifice the rest of the Union for her own
power than to insist on a separation. Had the Eastern States suffered
from the hardships of war they might have demanded disunion in despair;
but in truth New England was pleased at the contrast between her own
prosperity and the sufferings of her neighbors. The blockade and the
embargo brought wealth to her alone. The farming and manufacturing
industries of New England never grew more rapidly than in the midst of
war and commercial restrictions.[12] “Machinery for manufactures, etc.,
and the fruits of household industry increase beyond calculation,”
said a writer in the “Connecticut Herald” in July, 1813. “Wheels roll,
spindles whirl, shuttles fly. We shall export to other States many
more productions of industry than ever were exported in any one former
season.” Manufactures were supposed to amount in value to fifteen or
twenty million dollars a year. The Federalists estimated the balance
due by the Southern States to New England at six million dollars a
year.[13] The New England banks were believed to draw not less than
half a million dollars every month from the South.
“We are far from rejoicing at this state of things,” wrote a
Connecticut Federalist;[14] “and yet we cannot but acknowledge
the hand of retributive justice in inflicting the calamities
of war with so much more severity on that section of the Union
which has so rashly and so unmercifully persisted in their
determination to commence hostilities. The pressure of this
balance is sensibly felt, and will continue to increase as long
as the war continues.”
John Lowell declared[15] that “the banks are at their wits’ end to lend
their capital, and money is such a drug ... that men against their
consciences, their honor, their duty, their professions and promises,
are willing to lend it secretly to support the very measures which
are intended and calculated for their ruin.” To avoid the temptation
of lending money to support Madison’s measures, many investors bought
British government bills of exchange at twenty to twenty-two per cent
discount. These bills were offered for sale in quantities at Boston;
and perhaps the most legitimate reason for their presence there was
that they were taken by New England contractors in payment for beef and
flour furnished to the British commissariat in Canada.
While New England thus made profits from both sides, and knew not what
to do with the specie that flowed into her banks, the rest of the
country was already insolvent, and seemed bent on bankruptcy. In March,
1814, the legislature of Pennsylvania passed a bill for the creation of
forty-one new banks. March 19 Governor Snyder vetoed it.[16]
“It is a fact well ascertained,” said Governor Snyder, “that
immense sums of specie have been withdrawn from the banks in
Pennsylvania and certain other States to pay balances for
British goods which Eastern mercantile cupidity has smuggled
into the United States. The demand for specie has in consequence
been and is still so great that the banks in Philadelphia and in
some other parts have stopped discounting any new paper. I ask a
patriotic legislature, Is this an auspicious era to try so vast
an experiment? Shall we indirectly aid our internal and external
enemies to destroy our funds and embarrass the government by
the creating of forty-one new banks which must have recourse
for specie to that already much exhausted source? Is there at
this time an intelligent man in Pennsylvania who believes that a
bank-note of any description is the representative of specie?”
The Pennsylvania legislature instantly overrode Governor Snyder’s veto
and chartered the new banks, which were, according to the governor,
insolvent before they had legal existence. In ordinary times such
follies punished and corrected themselves in regular course; but in
1814 the follies and illusions of many years concentrated their
mischiefs on the national government, which was already unequal to
the burden of its own. The war was practically at an end as far as
the government conducted it. The army could not show a regiment with
ranks more than half full.[17] The first three months of the year
produced less than six thousand recruits.[18] The government could
defend the frontier only at three or four fortified points. On the
ocean, government vessels were scarcely to be seen. The Treasury was
as insolvent as the banks, and must soon cease even the pretence of
meeting its obligations.
The Secretary of the Treasury, authorized by law to borrow twenty-five
millions and needing forty, offered a loan for only ten millions
shortly before Congress adjourned. In Boston the government brokers
advertised that the names of subscribers should be kept secret,[19]
while the Boston “Gazette” of April 14 declared that “any man who lends
his money to the government at the present time will forfeit all claim
to common honesty and common courtesy among all true friends to the
country.” The offers, received May 2, amounted to thirteen millions,
at rates varying from seventy-five to eighty-eight. Jacob Barker, a
private banker of New York, offered five million dollars on his single
account. The secretary knew that Barker’s bid was not substantial, but
he told the President that if it had been refused “we could not have
obtained the ten millions without allowing terms much less favorable to
the government.”[20] The terms were bad at best. The secretary obtained
bids more or less substantial for about nine millions at eighty-eight,
with the condition that if he should accept lower terms for any part
of the sixteen millions still to be offered, the same terms should be
conceded to Barker and his associates. The operation was equivalent to
borrowing nine millions on an understanding that the terms should be
fixed at the close of the campaign. Of this loan Boston offered two
millions, and was allotted about, one million dollars.
The event proved that Campbell would have done better to accept all
solid bids without regard to rate, for the government could have
afforded to pay two dollars for one within a twelve-month, rather
than stop payments; but Campbell was earnest to effect his loan at
eighty-eight, and accordingly accepted only four million dollars
besides Barker’s offer. With these four millions, with whatever part
of five millions could be obtained from Barker, with interest-bearing
Treasury notes limited to ten million dollars,[21] and with the
receipts from taxes, the Treasury was to meet demands aggregating about
forty millions for the year; for the chance was small that another
loan could succeed, no matter what rate should be offered.
For this desperate situation of the government New England was chiefly
responsible. In pursuing their avowed object of putting an end to
the war the Federalists obtained a degree of success surprising even
to themselves, and explained only by general indifference toward the
war and the government. No one could suppose that the New England
Federalists, after seeing their object within their grasp, would desist
from effecting it. They had good reason to think that between Madison’s
obstinacy and their own, the national government must cease its
functions,--that the States must resume their sovereign powers, provide
for their own welfare, and enter into some other political compact; but
they could not suppose that England would forego her advantages, or
consent to any peace which should not involve the overthrow of Madison
and his party.
In such conditions of society morbid excitement was natural. Many
examples in all periods of history could be found to illustrate every
stage of a mania so common. The excitement of the time was not confined
to New England. A typical American man-of-the-world was Gouverneur
Morris. Cool, easy-tempered, incredulous, with convictions chiefly
practical, and illusions largely rhetorical, Morris delivered an
oration on the overthrow of Napoleon to a New York audience, June 29,
1814.
“And thou too, Democracy! savage and wild!” began Morris’s
peroration,--“thou who wouldst bring down the virtuous and wise
to the level of folly and guilt! thou child of squinting envy
and self-tormenting spleen! thou persecutor of the great and
good!--see! though it blast thine eyeballs,--see the objects
of thy deadly hate! See lawful princes surrounded by loyal
subjects!... Let those who would know the idol of thy devotion
seek him in the island of Elba!”
The idea that American democracy was savage and wild stood in flagrant
contrast to the tameness of its behavior; but the belief was a part
of conservative faith, and Gouverneur Morris was not ridiculed, even
for bad taste, by the society to which he belonged, because he called
by inappropriate epithets the form of society which most of his
fellow-citizens preferred. In New England, where democracy was equally
reviled, kings and emperors were not equally admired. The austere
virtue of the Congregational Church viewed the subject in a severer
light, and however extreme might be the difference of conviction
between clergymen and democrats, it was not a subject for ridicule.
To men who believed that every calamity was a Divine judgment, politics
and religion could not be made to accord. Practical politics, being
commonly an affair of compromise and relative truth,--a human attempt
to modify the severity of Nature’s processes,--could not expect
sympathy from the absolute and abstract behests of religion. Least
of all could war, even in its most necessary form, be applauded or
encouraged by any clergyman who followed the precepts of Christ. The
War of 1812 was not even a necessary war. Only in a metaphysical or
dishonest sense could any clergyman affirm that war was more necessary
in 1812 than in any former year since the peace of 1783. Diplomacy had
so confused its causes that no one could say for what object Americans
had intended to fight,--still less, after the peace in Europe, for
what object they continued their war. Assuming the conquest of Canada
and of Indian Territory to be the motive most natural to the depraved
instincts of human nature, the clergy saw every reason for expecting a
judgment.
In general, the New England clergy did not publicly or violently press
these ideas. The spirit of their class was grave and restrained rather
than noisy. Yet a few eccentric or exceptional clergymen preached
and published Fast-day sermons that threw discredit upon the whole
Congregational Church. The chief offenders were two,--David Osgood,
of the church at Medford, and Elijah Parish, a graduate of Dartmouth
College, settled over the parish of Byfield in the town of Newbury,
where political feeling was strong. Parish’s Fast-day sermon of April
7, 1814, immediately after the election which decided a New England
convention, was probably the most extreme made from the pulpit:--
“Israel’s woes in Egypt terminated in giving them the fruits
of their own labors. This was a powerful motive for them to
dissolve their connection with the Ancient Dominion. Though
their fathers had found their union with Egypt pleasant and
profitable, though they had been the most opulent section in
Egypt, yet since the change of the administration their schemes
had been reversed, their employments changed, their prosperity
destroyed, their vexations increased beyond all sufferance.
They were tortured to madness at seeing the fruit of their
labors torn from them to support a profligate administration....
They became discouraged; they were perplexed. Moses and others
exhorted them not to despair, and assured them that _one_ mode
of relief would prove effectual. Timid, trembling, alarmed, they
hardly dared to make the experiment. Finally they dissolved the
Union: they marched; the sea opened; Jordan stopped his current;
Canaan received their triumphant banners; the trees of the field
clapped their hands; the hills broke forth into songs of joy;
they feasted on the fruits of their own labors. Such success
awaits a resolute and pious people.”
Although Parish’s rhetoric was hardly in worse taste than that of
Gouverneur Morris, such exhortations were not held in high esteem by
the great body of the Congregational clergy, whose teachings were
studiously free from irreverence or extravagance in the treatment of
political subjects.[22] A poor and straitened but educated class, of
whom not one in four obtained his living wholly from his salary, the
New England ministers had long ceased to speak with the authority
of their predecessors, and were sustained even in their moderate
protest against moral wrong rather by pride of class and sincerity
of conviction than by sense of power. Some supported the war; many
deprecated disunion; nearly all confined their opposition within the
limits of non-resistance. They held that as the war was unnecessary and
unjust, no one could give it voluntary aid without incurring the guilt
of blood.
The attitude was clerical, and from that point of view commanded a
degree of respect such as was yielded to the similar conscientiousness
of the Friends; but it was fatal to government and ruinous to New
England. Nothing but confusion could result from it if the war should
continue, while the New England church was certain to be the first
victim if peace should invigorate the Union.